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We realize the subject matter is about as tangential to the core themes discussed here as possible, but since hypocrisy of this magnitude has to be seen to be believed, and traditionally was only possible when emanating from the Federal Reserve (did we say tangential?) we present: Liestrong… in his own words.

I’m not sure why ‘Gun Appreciation Day’ organizer Larry Ward decided it was a good idea to come on and spar with the Rev. Al Sharpton over the legacy of MLK and whether he would have approved of his upcoming event, which is scheduled just before the holiday honoring Dr. King, but all I can say is, it wasn’t pretty.

Ward appeared on CNN last week and made the ridiculous statement that “slavery would not have happened if slaves were armed” and pretended that his event “honors the legacy of Dr. King.” Sharpton took apart that and the rest of his arguments quite nicely during this interview.

WATCH: Gun Appreciation Day organizer insists he’s honoring MLK’s legacy, Sharpton responds:

Ward joined Rev. Al Sharpton on PoliticsNation to defend his controversial comments about King, and Sharpton argued vigorously about King’s legacy, pointing out that the civil rights leader preached non-violence and was killed by a gun. […]

Ward justified his argument by pointing out that King once applied for and was denied a gun permit, but Sharpton added that King later said he was glad he had been turned down for the permit and that he would never carry a gun again.

Ward continued to push the issue as a civil right. “Dr.King fought for equal opportunity, and we look at cities like Chicago and New York that have a majority of minorities in it right now and those cities themselves do not grant the same access the same equal opportunity that somebody in Texas would have to defend themselves.”

Sharpton and Ward discussed Ward’s claim that slavery wouldn’t have happened if slaves could own guns. When Sharpton pointed out that armed slave rebellions of the early 19th century failed to liberate any slaves, Ward continued his argument that gun ownership is a civil right and that citizens have the right to use whatever weapons the government uses against them.

Ward also tried to distance Gun Appreciation Day from the Newtown shooting. ”This Gun Appreciation Day, just so we’re clear, is not in reaction to the shooting in Newtown,” Ward said. “It’s in reaction to the reaction.”

When asked if Gun Appreciation Day included appreciating high capacity ammunition and automatic weapons, Ward said, “Absolutely,” adding that he believes that “any ban on a semi-automatic weapon would not have changed the outcome of what happened in Newtown.”

According to ABC News, “Ward represents conservative clients through his firm, Political Media; Revolution PAC, the libertarian group launched by Ron Paul supporters, is one of his biggest.” Color me not shocked given Ron Paul’s history. Looks like he’s doing his best to make sure he raises his profile by getting some face time in the corporate media with this stunt.

LONDON (Reuters) – British inflation held at 2.7 percent for the third month running in December, while producer prices dipped below forecast as a rise in utility bills was offset by lower fuel costs.

Some analysts had feared a higher headline inflation number and financial markets on Tuesday took the figures as modestly reassuring for British consumers and for policymakers struggling to fend off recession.

But the numbers were unlikely to make it any easier for the Bank of England to push ahead with more moves to stimulate growth.

The FTSE 100 share index ticked higher, having been flat, while the pound hit a session high against the dollar before trimming those gains.

“It’s a relatively good number. If you look at the core (inflation) as well that’s down to 2.4 percent,” said Deutsche Bank economist George Buckley.

“It’s still too high. It needs to come down further obviously,” Buckley said, suggesting slack in the economy could help bring down inflation over the course of the next year. “But for the moment it’s remained sticky.”

The Office for National Statistics said utility prices rose 3.9 percent on the year while fuel costs fell by 0.2 percent. It said the biggest downward pressure on the index came from a fall in transport costs as airlines cut fares.

Prices at the factory gates rose 2.2 percent on the year, below a Reuters poll forecast of 2.4 percent.

Stubborn inflation, above the Bank of England’s 2 percent target since November 2009, is likely to have been a key argument against more quantitative easing at the bank’s monthly policy meeting last week.

Several analysts said higher food costs – up 13.4 percent from domestic producers – would likely push consumer inflation back above 3 percent at some point this year. That would force central bank governor Mervyn King to write a letter to the finance ministry explaining why he is so far off target.

“Looking further ahead it looks likely that we’ll get another inflation overshoot in 2013,” said Commerzbank economist Peter Dixon. “It’s entirely possible that by mid-year we’ll get a very sharp spike in inflation back above 3 percent.”

High inflation has put pressure on consumer spending, which accounts for around two thirds of all expenditure in the British economy.

The central bank’s latest quarterly forecasts, released in November, showed inflation peaking in the third quarter of 2013, falling below the target only a year later.

(This story is refiled to correct headline to clarify inflation held at 2.7 percent for 3rd month)

(Editing by Ruth Pitchford)

A new online survey asking over 5,000 US musicians detailed questions about the sources of their revenue has revealed that music sales only account for 6 percent of their income.

The “Money from Music” survey conducted by Peter DiCola at the Northwestern University School of Law examined how composing, recording, performing live, session work, merchandising, teaching, managing and promoting affected a musicians bottom line in the digital age.

Based on his sample of musicians, only 12 percent of their income was earned directly from copyrighted material, while 10 percent was earned from sources with a “mixed relationship to copyright.” Meanwhile, 78 percent of their revenue was generated from sources indirectly related to copyright or unrelated to copyright.

More specifically, the study revealed that only 6 percent of the average musicians’ income came directly from recorded material. Lives performances, meanwhile, accounted for 28 percent.

DiCola’s survey also weakens the major labels’ longstanding argument that Internet piracy has diminished the next generation of artists by discouraging them from making music a full-time career.

While slightly more musicians agreed with the statements “Unauthorized file-sharing has made It more difficult for me to earn income,” and “My music has been devalued,” a higher percentage said overall, they could currently “make more money as a musician.”

DiCola concludes that many musicians would not feel much of a financial effect from increased copyright protection, with the exception of the richest artists — those earning an average $330,000 a year — where 68 percent of their income is directly related to copyright.

“Rather than providing marginal incentives to create to all musicians at all times, copyright law mostly affects the revenue of the highest-income musicians in a direct fashion. This is not a surprise, given the prevalence of winner-take-all markets in the entertainment industry,” DiCola writes.

The recording industry’s visceral stance against downloading is reflected in the fact that they have been hit hardest by piracy. The recording Industry Association of America says music sales more than halved from 14.6 billion in 1999, when Napster was first introduced, to $7.0 billion in 2011.

In what critics have described as a last ditch effort to stay afloat in the digital age, 360 deals are becoming increasingly popular, whereby labels now take a percentage of all an artist’s income, including live performances, recorded music, and any other sources of revenue in exchange for financial and promotional support.

Despite his doubts concerning the connection between revenue and stronger copyright protection for many artists, DiCola believes some copyright regime is still necessary, especially for many who have carved out a specific niche in the music world.

“Musical creativity takes a number of forms, not just the kinds that copyright law protects. This broader perspective should not, however, obscure the reliance on copyright for many musicians in particular subgroups.”

“Those who focus their activity on composing rely on composition revenue and are much more vulnerable to harm from copyright infringement. The same goes for recording artists who rely on sales of sound recordings.”

The real struggle confronting the United States is not between the Right and the Left in any traditional sense, but between those who believe in reality and those who are entranced by unreality. It is a battle that is testing whether fact-based people have the same determination to fight for their real-world view as those who operate in a fact-free space do in defending their illusions.President Ronald Reagan.

These battle lines do relate somewhat to the Right/Left divide because today’s right-wing has embraced ideological propaganda as truth more aggressively and completely than those on the Left, though the Left (and the Center, too) are surely not immune from the practice of ignoring facts in pursuit of some useful agit-prop.

But key elements of the American Right have set up permanent residence in the world of make-believe, making any commonsense approach to the real-world challenges nearly politically impossible. The Right’s fantasists also have the passions of true-believers, like a cult that gets angrier the more its views are questioned.

So, it doesn’t matter that scientific evidence proves global warming is real; the deniers will insist the facts are simply a government ploy to impose “tyranny.” It doesn’t matter how many schoolchildren are slaughtered by semi-automatic assault rifles — or what the real history of the Second Amendment was. To the gun fanatics, the Framers wanted armed rebellion against the non-violent political process they worked so hard to create.

On more narrow questions, it doesn’t matter whether President Barack Obama presents his short or long birth certificates, he must have somehow fabricated the Hawaiian state records to hide his Kenyan birth. Oh, yes, and Obama is “lazy” even though he may appear to an objective observer to be a multi-tasking workaholic.

Simply put, the Right fights harder for its fantasyland than the rest of America does for the real world.

The American Right’s collective departure from reality can be traced back decades, but clearly accelerated with the emergence of former actor Ronald Reagan on the national stage. Even his admirers acknowledge that Reagan had a strained relationship with facts, preferring to illustrate his points with distorted or apocryphal anecdotes.

Reagan’s detachment from reality extended from foreign policy to economics. As his rival for the 1980 Republican presidential nomination, George H.W. Bush famously labeled Reagan’s supply-side policies — of massive tax cuts for the rich which would supposedly raise more revenues — as “voodoo economics.”

But Bush, who knew better, then succumbed to Reagan’s political clout as he accepted Reagan’s vice presidential offer. In that way, the senior Bush would become a model for how other figures in the Establishment would pragmatically bend to Reagan’s casual disregard for reality.

Perception Management

The Reagan administration also built around the President a propaganda infrastructure that systematically punished politicians, citizens, journalists or anyone who dared challenge the fantasies. This private-public collaboration — coordinating right-wing media with government disinformationists — brought home to America the CIA’s strategy of “perception management” normally aimed at hostile populations.

Thus, the Nicaraguan Contras, who in reality were drug-connected terrorists roaming the countryside murdering, torturing and raping, became “the moral equivalent” of America’s Founding Fathers. To say otherwise marked you as a troublemaker who had to be “controversialized” and marginalized.

The remarkable success of Reagan’s propaganda was a lesson not lost on a young generation of Republican operatives and the emerging neoconservatives who held key jobs in Reagan’s Central American and public-diplomacy operations, the likes of Elliott Abrams and Robert Kagan. The neocons’ devotion to imperialism abroad seemed to motivate their growing disdain for empiricism at home. Facts didn’t matter; results did. [See Robert Parry’s Lost History.]

But this strategy wouldn’t have worked if not for gullible rank-and-file right-wingers who were manipulated by an endless series of false narratives. The Republican political pros manipulated the racial resentments of neo-Confederates, the religious zeal of fundamentalist Christians, and the free-market hero worship of Ayn Rand acolytes.

“What was left of the Left often behaved like disgruntled fans in the bleachers booing everyone on the field, the bad guys who were doing terrible things as well as the not-so-bad guys who were doing the best they could under impossible conditions.”

That these techniques succeeded in a political system that guaranteed freedom of speech and the press was not only a testament to the skills of Republican operatives like Lee Atwater and Karl Rove. It was an indictment of America’s timid Center and the nation’s ineffectual Left. Simply put, the Right fought harder for its fantasyland than the rest of America did for the real world.

There were a number of key turning points in this “info-war.” For instance, Reagan’s secret relationship with the Iranian mullahs was partly revealed in the Iran-Contra scandal, but its apparent origins in treacherous Republican activities during Campaign 1980 — contacting Iran behind President Jimmy Carter’s back — were swept under the rug by mainstream Democrats and the Washington press corps.

Similarly, evidence of Contra drug-trafficking — and even CIA admissions about covering up and protecting those crimes — were downplayed by the major newspapers, including the Washington Post and the New York Times. Ditto the work of Central American truth commissions exposing massive human rights violations that Reagan aided and abetted.

The fear of taking on the Reagan propaganda machine in any serious or consistent way was so great that nearly everyone looked to their careers or their personal pleasures. One side dug in for political warfare and the other, too often, favored trips to wine country.

Distrusting the MSM

As this anti-empiricism deepened over several decades, the remaining thinking people in America came to distrust the mainstream. The initials “MSM” — standing for “mainstream media” — became an expression of derision and contempt, not undeserved given the MSM’s repeated failure to fight for the truth.

National Democrats, too, showed little fight. When evidence of Republican misconduct was available — as in the investigations of the early 1990s into Iran-Contra, Iraq-gate and the October Surprise case — accommodating Democrats, such as Rep. Lee Hamilton and Sen. David Boren chose to look the other way. [See Robert Parry’s America’s Stolen Narrative.]

The Democrats even submitted when the Right and the Republicans overturned the electoral will of the American people, as happened in Election 2000 when George W. Bush stole the Florida election and thus the White House from Al Gore. [For details, see the book, Neck Deep.]

In the decades after the Vietnam War, the American Left also drifted into irrelevance. Indeed, it’s common in some circles on the Left to observe that “America has no Left.” But what was left of the Left often behaved like disgruntled fans in the bleachers booing everyone on the field, the bad guys who were doing terrible things as well as the not-so-bad guys who were doing the best they could under impossible conditions.

“The country is going to need its conscious inhabitants of the real world to stand up with at least the same determination as the deluded denizens of the made-up world.”

This post-modern United States may have reached its nadir with George W. Bush’s presidency. In 2002-03, patently false claims were made about Iraq’s WMD and virtually no one in a position of power had the courage to challenge the lies. Deceived by Bush and the neocons — with the help of centrists like Colin Powell and the editors of the Washington Post — the nation lurched off into an aggressive war of choice.

Sometimes, the Right’s contempt for reality was expressed openly. When author Ron Suskind interviewed members of the Bush administration in 2004, he encountered a withering contempt for people who refused to adjust to the new faith-based world.

Citing an unnamed senior aide to George W. Bush, Suskind wrote: “The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ …

“‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.’”

Reality Bites Back

Despite this imperial arrogance, real reality gradually reasserted itself, both in the bloody stalemate in Iraq and in the economic crises that Bush’s anti-regulatory and low-tax policies created at home. By Election 2008, the American people were awaking with a terrible hangover from a three-decade binge on anti-reality moonshine.

In that sense, the election of Barack Obama represented a potential turning point. However, the angry Right that Ronald Reagan had built — and the corresponding crippling effects on the Center and the Left — didn’t just disappear.

The Right counterattacked ferociously against the nation’s first African-American president, even intimating violent revolution if Obama acted on his electoral mandate; Obama often behaved like one of those accommodating Democrats (in retaining much of Bush’s national security team, for instance); the mainstream press remained careerist; and the Left demanded perfection regardless of the political difficulties.

This combination of dysfunction contributed to the rise of the Tea Party and the Republican congressional victories in 2010. But Election 2012, with Obama’s reelection and a general rejection of Tea Party fanaticism, has created the chance of a do-over for American rationalists.

After all, the United States continues to see the consequences of three decades of right-wing delusions, including high unemployment; massive deficits; self-inflicted financial crises; a degraded middle class; poor health care for millions; a crumbling infrastructure; an overheating planet; costly foreign wars; a bloated Pentagon budget; and children massacred by troubled young men with ridiculously easy access to semi-automatic assault rifles.

Yet, if rational and pragmatic solutions are ever going to be applied to these problems, it is not just going to require that President Obama display more spine. The country is going to need its conscious inhabitants of the real world to stand up with at least the same determination as the deluded denizens of the made-up world.

Of course, this fight will be nasty and unpleasant. It will require resources, patience and toughness. But there is no other answer. Reality must be recovered and protected — if the planet and the children are to be saved.

© 2012 Consortium News

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat. His two previous books are Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth’.

January 15, 2013  |  

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is no stranger to domestic violence. His father killed himself with a gunshot to his head more than four decades ago. And his state, Nevada, is no stranger as well. It’s had the nation’s highest rate of women killed by men–most by gunshots–during five of the past six years, the Violence Policy Center reported.   

But in 2010–where Nevada had that bloody distinction for the third year in a row–Reid did the gun lobby a big favor. Pro-gun libertarians were saying that the president’s health care reforms would allow government to compile a registry of gun owners. Reid feared the rumors could derail the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. So on page 776 of the giant bill, he added lines barring doctors from gathering information on a patient’s guns or ammunition, and also barred insurers from charging higher rates to gun owners.     

The National Rifle Association wanted the language, the Washington Post noted, which child health advocates and pediatricians noticed recently. Some were furious, asking how could they treat victims of violence if they could not ask about guns at home? Reid’s staff tried to spin it, saying he put it in because of insurance issues. But most of the language concerned limiting would-be gun registries, gun databases and data gathering.

“This illustrates the fact that the NRA has insinuated themselves into the small crevices of anything they can do in their power to prohibit sensible gun safety measures,” Denise Dowd, a Kansas City, Missouri, emergency care physician told the Post.

Insinuate is the right word. Since the early 1980s, a newly militant NRA has been at the forefront of finding, exploiting and nurturing cracks in state and federal gun controls–just as it has created and publicized an exaggerated view of Second Amendment rights. While its political successes are undeniable, it also has built a myth that it cannot be challenged–a myth that is starting to crumble in 2013’s emerging gun control debates.

Understanding how and what the gun lobby has accomplished is a prerequisite to unraveling its political influence and addressing gun violence–and assessing whether President Obama’s pending gun control reforms are likely to be effective.

A Long And Dark Shadow

It’s hard to believe that Reid’s staff didn’t know that the NRA and Republicans have put limits on the federal government’s abilities to collect, study and share gun-related crime data since 1996–part of a strategy to minimize informed public debate. But suppressing government and academic research on guns was only one part of the NRA playbook.

The gun lobby sponsored academics to write tilted Second Amendment analyses touting an individual’s gun rights while omitting America’s history of gun controls. They lobbied Congress and states to roll back as many gun laws as possible, or grant new privileges to gun owners, such as allowing concealed weapons in public. They donated to political campaigns–ramping up after horrific incidents such as 1999’s Columbine High School massacre–and were most successful when Republicans were in power.

As Dowd noted, they kept targeting and finessing the fine print of the law. Before the Newtown school shootings, they were the only group pushing the Justice Department to loosen rules letting non-citizens buy guns, which it did last June. And days before the Newtown shooting, the NRA was urging members to comment on a proposed DOJ regulation to allow the use of “armor-piercing” bullets for “sporting purposes.”

The modern gun lobby emerged in the late 1970s, after a libertarian faction led by Harlon Carter, a champion marksman and ex-federal Border Control Agency chief staged a coup inside the NRA and replaced a board of directors who wanted to focus on its historic hunting and marksmanship mission. (The NRA had supported gun control laws since its founding in 1871, but started having reservations in the late 1960s.) After the 1977 coup, Carter changed the NRA motto to an edited Second Amendment, “The Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms Shall Not Be Infringed.” That reflected its new agenda: making exaggerated constitutional claims of gun rights–to push back on gun controls; and a view that government was the enemy of gun owners’ freedom.

January 15, 2013  |  

Remember the Seinfeld episode where Jerry’s penis has an argument with his brain and loses? It’s a classic: we’ve all been torn between love/lust and logic. (If you haven’t, check for a belly button because this isn’t your home world.) This brilliant bit of comedy is totally relatable but a little misleading in one way: the brain is the one that sends signals to the penis in the first place. It’s pretty reliably running things, IMing the other body parts like crazy, regulating chemicals, making calculations and responding to stimuli, half the time without you even knowing about it. There’s a reason “the brains of the outfit” denotes someone who is really in charge. 

So why does the brain sometimes signal us to do stupid things, especially in regard to sex and relationships? Isn’t that a little like one conjoined twin punching the other in the mouth? How does the brain decide who attracts us? What is it doing behind our backs, and how do we change as we mature?

Here are some of the ways the joys, quandaries and mechanics of sex are all in your head.

1. Size matters.

The preoptic area of the hypothalamus, which regulates mating behavior, is a little more than twice as big in men as it is in women and has twice as many cells. Medical Net says difference starts to show up when we’re about four years old. 

2. Location. Location. Location.

The male brain devotes twice as much real estate to sex as the female brain. They think about it, but do they listen about it? 

Some men certainly do, and maybe more will now that there’s visible evidence of what some women have been trying to tell them for quite some time: there is a great deal of difference between vaginal and clitoral stimulation. Now you can see it. Researchers at Rutgers University used an MRI to map what locations on the sensory cortex correspond to the vagina, clitoris and nipples. All three clearly in very different locations in the brain. (Click and scroll down for the images.)

The fact that nipple stimulation lit up the areas corresponding to the genitals as well as the chest area seemed to come as a surprise. Linda Geddes of New Scientist quotes researcher Barry Komisaruk as saying, “When I tell my male neuroscientist colleagues about this, they say: ‘Wow, that’s an exception to the classical homunculus,'” he says. “But when I tell the women they say: ‘Well, yeah?’ It may help explain why a lot of women claim that nipple stimulation is erotic, he adds.”

Claim? 

Anyway, those images are pretty spiffy, and they’re ripe for a new line of greeting cards. Valentine’s Day is coming and those hearts and cherubs need a break. 

3. In what part of the brain do we find the “Not tonight, honey” headache?

It was a comic trope of the olden days for women who didn’t want sex to opt out due to headache, but it turns out migraine sufferers seem to have a higher libido than other sufferers. LiveScience reported on a 2006 study from the Wake Forest School of Medicine which found that people who suffer from migraine headaches reported a sex drive about 20% higher than those prone to regular tension headaches. The key might be the neurotransmitter serotonin. High serotonin levels are associated with low libido; the researchers reported that migraine sufferers had low serotonin levels. And About.com reports that a 2001 survey of women who had sex during migraines 30% noticed a decrease in pain, 5.3% said the pain increased, and 17.5% reported the pain went away. 

Correlation, causation; cause-and-effect; Birinyi’s Ruler; and Bernanke’s Hammer. CNBC’s Rick Santelli attempts to open some minds to the “nefarious” levels to which banks and politicians will go to infer from data and bolster our crowd-sourced confirmation biases. Santelli dismisses the meme that government dysfunction is the cause of our problems – instead stating that it is the effect. The main cause of this dysfunction is that we have problems we need to solve, politicians who know how to solve them, but that solving them is not only going to be painful for everyone – but most importantly for their respective bases – and therefore dysfunction ensues. From ratings downgrades not being caused by dysfunction (rather by an inability to deal with entitlements spending and debt) to the Federal Reserve losing the nation’s trust acting not for liquidity needs but for insolvency; Santelli aims his magic marker finally at the Keynesians, for whom cause-and-effect is all, adding that their answer to everything is “always more money” to paper over short-term pain, as he rhetorically asks “in ten years when we look back, is the weight of all this debt going to take care of all of these impulsive upticks?” Must watch…

Aaron Swartz was my friend, and I will always miss him. I think it’s important that, as we remember him, we remember that Aaron had a much broader agenda than the information freedom fights for which he had become known. Most people have focused on Aaron’s work as an advocate for more open information systems, because that’s what the Feds went after him for, and because he’s well-understood as a technologist who founded Reddit and invented RSS. But I knew a different side of him. I knew Aaron as a political activist interested in health care, financial corruption, and the drug war (we were working on a project on that just before he died). He was a great technologist, for sure, but when we were working together that was not all I saw.

In 2009, I was working in Rep. Alan Grayson’s office as a policy advisor. We were engaged in fights around the health care bill that eventually became Obamacare, as well as a much narrower but significant fight on auditing the Federal Reserve that eventually became a provision in Dodd-Frank. Aaron came into our office to intern for a few weeks to learn about Congress and how bills were put together. He worked with me on organizing the campaign within the Financial Services Committee to pass the amendment sponsored by Ron Paul and Alan Grayson on transparency at the Fed. He helped with the website NamesOfTheDead.com, a site dedicated to publicizing the 44,000 Americans that die every year because they don’t have health insurance. Aaron learned about Congress by just spending time there, which seems like an obvious thing to do. Many activists prefer to keep their distance from policymakers, because they are afraid of the complexity of the system and believe that it is inherently corrupting. Aaron, as with much of his endeavors, simply let his curiosity, which he saw as synonymous with brilliance, drive him.

Aaron also spent a lot of time learning how advocacy and electoral politics works from outside of Congress. He helped found the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a group that sought to replace existing political consulting machinery in the Democratic Party. At the PCCC, he worked on stopping Ben Bernanke’s reconfirmation (the email Aaron wrote called him “Bailout Ben”), auditing the Fed and passing health care reform. I remember he sent me this video of Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, on Reddit, offering his support to Grayson’s provision. A very small piece of the victory on Fed openness belongs to Aaron.

By the time I met and became friends with Aaron, he had already helped create RSS and co-founded and sold Reddit. He didn’t have to act with intellectual humility when confronting the political system, but he did. Rather than approach politics as so many successful entrepreneurs do, which is to say, try to meet top politicians and befriend them, Aaron sought to understand the system itself. He read political blogs, what I can only presume are gobs of history books (like Tom Ferguson’s Golden Rule, one of the most important books on politics that almost no one under 40 has read), and began talking to organizers and political advocates. He wanted, first and foremost, to know. He learned about elections, political advertising, the data behind voting, and grassroots organizing. He began understanding policy, by learning about Congressional process, its intersection with politics, and how staff and influence networks work on the Hill and through agencies. He analyzed money. He analyzed corruption.

And he understood how it worked. In November of 2008, Aaron emailed me  the following: “apologies if you’ve already seen it, but check out this mash note to Rubin from Lay. ahh, politics.” This was attached to the message.

This note, from Enron CEO Ken Lay to Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin, perfectly encapsulates the closed and corroded nature of our political system — two corporate good ole boys, one running Treasury and one running Enron, passing mash notes. This was everything Aaron hated, and fought against. What I respected about Aaron is that he burned with a desire for justice, but also felt a profound desire to understand the system he was attempting to reorganize. He didn’t throw up his hands lazily and curse at corruption, he spent enormous amounts of time and energy learning about and working the political system. From founding Reddit, to fighting the Fed. That was Aaron.

Aaron approached politics like he approached technology. His method was as follows – (1) Learn (2) Try (3) Gab (4) Build. He was methodical about his work, and his approach to life – this essay on procrastination will give you a good window into his mind. Aaron liked to “lean in” to difficult problems, work at them until he could break them down and solve them. He had no illusions about politics, which is why he eventually became so good at it. He didn’t disdain the political process the way so many choose to, but he also didn’t engage in flowery lazy thoughts about the glory of checks and balances. He broke politics down and systematically attempted to understand the system. Aaron learned, tried, gabbed, and then built.

This is a note I got from him years ago, when we were trying to put together flow charts of corporate PAC money and where it went.

“Been playing around with the numbers tonight. Turns out corporate PAC money explains 45% of the variance in ProgressivePunch scores among Dems. Scatterplot attached. Right is progressive, down is no corporate PAC money. So you can see how all the people with less than 80% progressive punch scores get more than 20% of their money from PACs.”

This is a chart of power, one of many Aaron put together to educate himself (and in this case, me). Most geeks hate the political system, and are at the same time awed by it. They don’t actually approach it with any respect for the underlying architecture of power, but at the same time, they are impressed by political figures with titles. Aaron recognized that politics is a corrupt money driven system, but also that it could be cracked if you spent the time to understand the moving parts. He figured out that business alliances, grassroots organizing, and direct lobbying to build coalitions was powerful, whereas access alone was a mirage. He worked very hard to understand how policy changes work, which ultimately culminated in his successful campaign to stop SOPA in 2011. This took many years of work and a remarkable amount of humility on his part.

But he was driven by a desire for justice, and not just for open information. He wanted an end to the drug war, he wanted a financial system not dominated by Bob Rubin, and he wanted monetary policy run to help ordinary people. Some of his last tweets are on monetary policy, and the platinum coin option for raising the debt ceiling (which is a round-about way of preventing cuts to social welfare programs for the elderly). Aaron was a liberal who saw class and race as core driving forces in American politics. In a lovely essay on how he organized his career, he made this clear in a very charming but pointed way.

So how did I get a job like mine? Undoubtedly, the first step is to choose the right genes: I was born white, male, American. My family was fairly well-off and my father worked in the computer industry. Unfortunately, I don’t know of any way of choosing these things, so that probably isn’t much help to you.

But, on the other hand, when I started I was a very young kid stuck in a small town in the middle of the country. So I did have to figure out some tricks for getting out of that. In the hopes of making life a little less unfair, I thought I’d share them with you.

Making “life a little less unfair.” Those aren’t the words of a techno-utopianist, those are the words of a liberal political organizer. They remind me of how Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren has described her own work. Aaron knew life would always be unfair, but that was no reason not to try to make society better. He had no illusions about power but maintained hope for our society if, I suppose, not always for himself. This is a very difficult way to approach the world, but it’s why he was so heroic in how he acted. I want people to understand that Aaron sought not open information systems, but justice. Aaron believed passionately in the scientific method as a guide for organizing our society, and in that open-minded but powerful critique, he was a technocratic liberal. His leanings sometimes moved him towards more radical postures because he recognized that our governing institutions had become malevolent, but he was not an anarchist.

I am very angry Aaron is dead. I’ve been crying off and on for a few days, as it hits me that he’s gone forever. Aaron accomplished more in 13 than nearly everyone I know will get done in their entire lives, and his breadth of knowledge and creativity in politics were stunning, all the more so since he was equally well-versed in many other fields. But what I respected was his curiosity and open-mindedness. He truly loved knowledge, and loved people who would share it. We used to argue about politics, him a hopeful and intellectually honest technocratic liberal and me as someone who had lost faith in our social institutions. We made each other really angry sometimes, because I thought he was too sympathetic to establishment norms, and he thought I couldn’t emotionally acknowledge when technocrats had useful things to say. But I respected him, and he frequently changed my mind.  I saw that what looked like stubbornness was just intellectual honesty and a deep thirst for evidence. He wanted to understand politics, because he thought that understanding, and then action, was the key to justice.

As I said, I am very angry that he is dead. I don’t want to get into the specifics of his case, because others have discussed it and the political elements of it more eloquently than I ever could. His family and partner have put out a powerful statement placing blame appropriately.

Aaron’s death is not simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach. Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s office and at MIT contributed to his death. The US Attorney’s office pursued an exceptionally harsh array of charges, carrying potentially over 30 years in prison, to punish an alleged crime that had no victims. Meanwhile, unlike JSTOR, MIT refused to stand up for Aaron and its own community’s most cherished principles.

I want to make a few points about why it’s not just sad that he is gone, but a tragedy, a symbol for all of us, and a call to action.

Aaron suffered from depression, but that is not why he died. Aaron is dead because the institutions that govern our society have decided that it is more important to target geniuses like Aaron than nurture them, because the values he sought — openness, justice, curiosity — are values these institutions now oppose. In previous generations, people like Aaron would have been treasured and recognized as the remarkable gifts they are. We do not live in a world like that today. And Aaron would be the first to point out, if he could observe the discussion happening now, that the pressure he felt from the an oppressive government is felt by millions of people, every year. I’m glad his family have not let the justice system off the hook, and have not allowed this suicide to be medicalized, or the fault of one prosecutor. What happened to Aaron is not isolated to Aaron, but is the flip side of the corruption he hated.

As we think about what happened to Aaron, we need to recognize that it was not just prosecutorial overreach that killed him. That’s too easy, because that implies it’s one bad apple. We know that’s not true. What killed him was corruption. Corruption isn’t just people profiting from betraying the public interest. It’s also people being punished for upholding the public interest. In our institutions of power, when you do the right thing and challenge abusive power, you end up destroying a job prospect, an economic opportunity, a political or social connection, or an opportunity for media. Or if you are truly dangerous and brilliantly subversive, as Aaron was, you are bankrupted and destroyed. There’s a reason whistleblowers get fired. There’s a reason Bradley Manning is in jail. There’s a reason the only CIA official who has gone to jail for torture is the person — John Kiriako – who told the world it was going on. There’s a reason those who destroyed the financial system “dine at the White House”, as Lawrence Lessig put it. There’s a reason former Senator Russ Feingold is a college professor whereas former Senator Chris Dodd is now a multi-millionaire. There’s a reason DOJ officials do not go after bankers who illegally foreclose, and then get jobs as partners in white collar criminal defense. There’s a reason no one has been held accountable for decisions leading to the financial crisis, or the war in Iraq. This reason is the modern ethic in American society that defines success as climbing up the ladder, consequences be damned. Corrupt self-interest, when it goes systemwide, demands that it protect rentiers from people like Aaron, that it intimidate, co-opt, humiliate, fire, destroy, and/or bankrupt those who stand for justice.

More prosaically, the person who warned about the downside in a meeting gets cut out of the loop, or the former politician who tries to reform an industry sector finds his or her job opportunities sparse and unappealing next to his soon to be millionaire go along get along colleagues. I’ve seen this happen to high level former officials who have done good, and among students who challenge power as their colleagues go to become junior analysts on Wall Street. And now we’ve seen these same forces kill our friend.

It’s important for us to recognize that Aaron is just an extreme example of a force that targets all of us. He eschewed the traditional paths to wealth and power, dropping out of college after a year because it wasn’t intellectually stimulating. After co-founding and selling Reddit, and establishing his own financial security, he wandered and acted, calling himself an “applied sociologist.”  He helped in small personal ways, offering encouragement to journalists like Mike Elk after Elk had broken a significant story and gotten pushback from colleagues. In my inbox, every birthday, I got a lovely note from Aaron offering me encouragement and telling me how much he admired my voice. He was a profoundly kind man, and I will now never be able to repay him for the love and kindness he showed me. There’s no medal of honor for someone like this, no Oscar, no institutional way of saying “here’s someone who did a lot of good for a lot of people.” This is because our institutions are corrupt, and wanted to quelch the Aaron Swartz’s of the world. Ultimately, they killed him. I hope that we remember Aaron in the way he should be remembered, as a hero and an inspiration.

In six days, on January 18th, it’s the one year anniversary of the blackout of Wikipedia, and some have discussed celebrating it as Internet Freedom Day. Maybe we should call this Aaron Swartz Day, in honor of this heroic figure. While what happened that day was technically about the internet, it should be remembered, and Aaron should be remembered, in the context of social justice. That day was about a call for a different world, not just protecting our ability to access web sites. And we should remember these underlying values. It would help people understand that justice can be extremely costly, and that we risk much when we allow those who do the right thing to be punished. Somehow, we need to rebuild a culture that respects people like Aaron and turns away from the greed and rent-extraction that he hated. There’s a cycle in American history, of religious “Great Awakenings”, where new cultural systems emerge in the form of religion, often sweeping through communities of young people dissatisfied with the society they see around them. Perhaps that is what we see in the Slow Food movement, or gay rights movement, or the spread of walkable communities and decline of vehicle miles, or maker movement, or the increasing acceptance of meditation and therapy, or any number of other cultural changes in our society. I don’t know. I’m sure many of these can be subverted. What I do know is that if we are to honor Aaron’s life, we will recognize him as a broad social justice activist who cared about transforming our society, and acted to do so. And we will take up his fight as our own.

Four men have been arrested in Britain on charges of seeking to travel to Syria to join a foreign-backed insurgency against the country’s popular government of president Bashar al Assad.

Scotland Yard said in a statement that its forces have arrested four men as part of an investigation into travel to Syria in support of terrorist activity there.

According to the statement, police forces detained one of the men while he was trying to take a flight from London’s Gatwick airport last Wednesday.

Three others were snatched at different addresses in east London the other day, added the statement.

The man arrested at the airport is aged 33 while the others were aged 18, 22 and 31 respectively, police said, adding that they were being held by the Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Command.

“These arrests form part of an investigation into travel to Syria in support of alleged terrorist activity. Inquiries continue,” police said.

“Two men have previously been charged in connection with this investigation.”

A British trainee doctor, Shajul Islam, 26, and another man, Jubayer Chowdhury, 24, are due to go on trial in Britain in June charged with the kidnapping of two Western journalists by terrorists in Syria.

MOL/HE

Egyptian police have attacked the protesters gathering in the main railway station in the city of Alexandria, demanding rail safety.

The protest came on Tuesday, hours after 19 people lost their lives when a train which was carrying Egyptian military recruits to an army camp in Cairo derailed in the Giza neighborhood of Badrasheen.

Police fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of protesters who had clashed with passengers and attempted to prevent the trains from leaving the station.

Egypt’s roads and railways have a poor safety record, with a string of deadly crashes.

In November 2012, nearly 50 school children were killed after a train collided with their bus in central Egypt.

Meanwhile, the opposition National Salvation Front issued a statement, saying that the Tuesday deadly incident along with the one that occurred last November “affirmed the urgent need for President [Mohamed] Morsi and his government to reorder their priorities.”

More than 100 people were also injured in the recent train incident.

According to Egyptian state media, Morsi paid a visit to the injured who had been transferred to military hospital in the capital for treatment.

In Egypt’s deadliest railway tragedy, more than 360 passengers were killed in a train incident in 2002.

MR/PKH

In economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman’s book, End This Depression Now!, there’s a chapter titled “The Second Gilded Age” in which he describes the extraordinary rise in wealth and power of the very rich during this era of unregulated greed. Since Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980, the top one percent of Americans have seen their incomes increase by 275 percent. After accounting for inflation, the typical hourly wage for a worker has increased just $1.23.

Big Money, as Krugman writes in his book, buys Big Influence. And that’s why the financiers of Wall Street never truly experience regime change – their cash brings both political parties to heel. So it is that the policies that got us where we are today – in this big ditch of chronic financial depression – have done little for most, but have been very good to a few at the top.

But they’re not satisfied with having only most of it – they want it all. If Krugman were writing his book today, he could find plenty of evidence in the deal that supposedly kept us from going over the fiscal cliff. Behind closed doors, Congress larded it with corporate tax breaks worth tens of billions of dollars – everything from tax credits for NASCAR racing and the railroads to subsidies for Hollywood, rebates for the rum industry and loopholes for off-shore financing that could help giant multinationals like General Electric avoid billions of dollars in corporate income taxes.

Writing in the conservative Washington Examiner, columnist Tim Carney says many of these expensive giveaways were “spawned by a web of lobbyists, donors and staffers surrounding Democratic Sen. Max Baucus of Montana,” chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. As we know from the Obamacare fight, Baucus is a connoisseur of revolving door corruption. “Pick any one of the special-interest tax breaks extended by the cliff deal,” Carney wrote, “and you’re likely to find a former Baucus aide who lobbied for it on behalf of a large corporation or industry organization.” Even the pro-business Wall Street Journal was appalled. They called it a “Crony Capitalist Blowout.”

And so it was – and more. It was payback time for all those campaign donations. CEOs and lobbyists were tripping over themselves as they traipsed up and down Pennsylvania Avenue between Congress and the White House. You’ve no doubt heard about Fix the Debt, that group of business execs and retired politicians taking out TV ads and campaigning to slash the deficit. In The New York Times, Nick Confessorereported, “…close to half of the members of Fix the Debt’s board and steering committee have ties to companies that have engaged in lobbying on taxes and spending, often to preserve tax breaks and other special treatment.”

Get it? They’re privately protecting their interests as they publicly urge austerity on everyone else.

Lloyd Blankfein, CEO and chair of the global investment giant Goldman Sachs, is on Fix the Debt’s Fiscal Leadership Council. Here’s what he said when asked by CBS News’ Scott Pelley about how he would reduce the federal deficit: “You’re going to have to undoubtedly do something to lower people’s expectations – the entitlements and what people think that they’re going to get, because it’s not going to – they’re not going to get it… Social Security wasn’t devised to be a system that supported you for a 30-year retirement after a 25-year career… in general, entitlements have to be slowed down and contained.”

Yes, but Blankfein and Goldman Sachs make sure their entitlements aren’t touched! Here’s the story: After 9/11, Congress created tax-exempt Liberty Zone bonds to help small businesses rebuild near Ground Zero. Turns out Goldman’s friends in high places consider it a small business, too, although it made $5.6 billion in profits last year. As the fiscal cliff fiasco was playing out over New Year’s Eve, faster than the ball dropped in Times Square, a deal was struck that will extend the subsidies for Goldman’s fancy new headquarters in lower Manhattan. In their 43 stories of glass and steel, and a footprint two city blocks long, Goldman Sachs reigns supreme — thanks to a system rigged by and for the powerful rich.

And then, according to The Wall Street Journal, just before the fiscal cliff deal’s higher individual tax rates kicked in, Goldman handed “Lloyd Blankfein and his top lieutenants a total of $65 million in restricted stock” – bonuses awarded a month earlier than usual so they could all beat the coming tax hike from which they have been spared for more than ten lucrative years.

It won’t surprise you to learn that, “Corporations announced more special dividends last month than in any other December since at least 1955.” Doing everything they can to avoid helping pay off the debt their CEOs have been urging Congress to cut.

As for working people – tough luck. Because the fiscal cliff deal ends the cut in payroll taxes, the average worker this year will take home about a thousand dollars less.

We have long been discussing the fundamental paradox dichotomy that Europe finds itself in, where on one hand the continent needs ECB intervention to keep it together with indirect debt monetization and current account deficit funding via TARGET2, yet on ther other, where ECB intervention always ends up pushing the EUR higher relative to its FX peers. The problem of course, is that the higher the EUR goes, the weaker German exports become, and as we observed just this morning, the faster Germany’s collapse into recession happens. Sure enough, Europe finally figured out what has been obvious to virtually anyone with half a brain for many months:

• JUNCKER SAYS EURO EXCHANGE RATE ‘DANGEROUSLY HIGH’

That’s great, and we agree with Juncker for once, but there is major problem with this: the lower the EUR goes, the greater the redenomination risk. Sorry Europe – that’s just the way it is. The second the EUR goes back to the mid and lower 1.20s, PIIGS bonds will go bidless, and “rednomination risk” will rear its ugly head.

Sure enough, the EURUSD plunges the second this latest vberbal intervention hits:

In other words, while Europe wants its cake and to eat it too, it can’t have it both ways. Unless of course, the ECB is in regime change mode, and instead of pushing the EUR higher going forward, it will send it lower, only for Mario Draghi come out and tell everyone to “not short the Euro, beeleeevee me.”

What is worse is that with all correlation algos pegging the ES to the EURUSD, a shift out of Europe will mean lower risk asset prices in the US, and more easing out of the Fed, which in turn will push the EUR once again much higher.

And so on.

Oh, aren’t currency wars so much fun, especially since Mario Draghi may now want to reassess his advice from last July, that “it’s pointless to go short on the euro.” So… is it pointful now?

Last, but never least, because we can’t say it enough, Tom Stolper FTW.

China is set to carry out a detailed survey of the disputed isles claimed by both Tokyo and Beijing in a bid “to safeguard its maritime rights and interests.”

According to a statement issued by China’s National Administration of Surveying, Mapping and Geoinformation on Tuesday, the geographical survey is part of a comprehensive program to map the country’s “territorial islands and reefs.”

No other details are given regarding the program.

The announcement comes a day after Japanese media said Tokyo would deploy two more patrol ships near the disputed islands in the East China Sea for defensive purposes.

According to Japanese public broadcaster, the NHK, the vessels, including a 3,100-ton Chikuzen and a 335-ton Kurose, are set to be positioned at the regional coast guard in August and October.

Japan and China have long been in a dispute over the sovereignty of the islands, which would give the owner exclusive oil, mineral and fishing rights in the surrounding waters.

The islands, which are controlled by Japan and form part of Okinawa prefecture, are known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China.

China presented the United Nations with a detailed explanation of its sovereignty over the disputed islands based on certain geological features in December 2012.

Tensions heightened between the two countries after Japan signed a deal on September 11, 2012 to buy three of the islands from their private Japanese owner in line with plans to nationalize the archipelago. Hundreds of Chinese held several anti-Japan demonstrations following the Japanese move.

MAM/PKH

France’s Renault has announced some 7,500 layoffs by 2016 as the floundering company seeks to sharpen its competitive edge.

Renault said on Tuesday that it has settled with unions over making 5,700 redundancies through natural attrition after making employees retire three years earlier.

“If an agreement is signed with unions, this staff redeployment would require neither a plant closure nor a voluntary redundancy program,” Renault Head of Operations in France Gerard Leclercq said.

The company says the 17 percent workforce reduction will contribute to saving 400 million euros through spending cuts, which will give Renault “room for investment and development of its activities.”

The layoffs come in a bid to make Renault more competitive to European and worldwide markets by hiring employees with “critical skills.”

“On the basis of a progressive recovery of the European market, establishing such an agreement would allow for growth in French output that is more sustained than that of the European market” as a whole, Renault said in its forecast.

The “staff redeployment” has already gone ahead in Renault’s division in the debt-stricken country of Spain.

According to new data released by the French Constructers’ Committee of French Automobiles (CCFA) in November 2012, the country’s car sales plummeted 13.3 percent in the first 10 months of last year.

French automakers have tried to solve their economic problems by slashing capacity and cutting costs.

The worsening debt crisis has forced EU governments to adopt harsh austerity measures and tough economic reforms, which have triggered incidents of social unrest and massive protests in many European countries.

GVN/PKH

Two men who lost their families in a horrific tower block fire have been telling of their phone conversations with their wives in the flat where they were sheltering.

It also emerged that another of the six victims, fashion designer Catherine Hickman, had asked previously asked why there were no diagrams showing where the fire exits were.

Rafael Cervi and Mbet Udoaka were both at work when the fire broke out at Lakanal House, Camberwell, south east London, on July 3, 2009.

Jurors at the “super inquest” at Lambeth Town Hall heard that Mr Cervi’s wife Dayana Francisquini, 26, his step-daughter Thais, six, and his son Felipe, three, all died in the blaze.

Dayana’s father Fernando Francisquini said he could see his daughter through the window moving curtains and a mattress to keep out the smoke.

Mr Cervi told the jury: “I lost my entire family, my wife and a couple of kids that I had. Everything that I built, everything that I dreamed of was over in three hours.”

On the day of the blaze, he rang his wife 10 times, trying to reassure her. He also called 999, and alerted her father who lived within walking distance of the flat.

Mr Francisquini said they pleaded with firefighters to rescue the family.

“Rafael and I were begging them to go and help them as the fire was in the flat next to hers,” he said.

Helen Udoaka, 34, and her three-week-old daughter Michelle also died in the blaze, along with Miss Hickman, 31.

Mrs Udoaka’s husband Mbet said: “My life will never be the same again, I can never get over these deaths, over the death of my beautiful Helen and my lovely Michelle.”

Mrs Udoaka, who was on maternity leave at the time, had moved to the UK in 2007 from Nigeria.

Counsel to the inquest James Maxwell-Scott read parts of a statement made by Mr Udoaka after the fire, recalling the last conversation he had with his wife.

The statement said: “The last words she said to me were that the smoke was too much, she couldn’t bear it any more, Michelle our daughter was going to heaven.”

Miss Hickman’s boyfriend of six years, Mark Bailey, said she had asked him where the fire exits were in the block, and why there were no diagrams to show residents where to go.

Two weeks before the blaze, he had asked a fireman in a park whether they could have a home visit to get advice but he replied it was “nothing to do with him”, the inquest heard.

Mr Bailey, who was in New York at the time of the fire, flew back to be with Miss Hickman’s family in the New Forest.

They were only informed she had died three or four days after the blaze.

“During that time I was feeling indescribable,” Mr Bailey said. “I was overwhelmed by grief and I would wake up every night screaming and crying.

“I would wake up and think that Catherine was next to me, and then realise what had happened.”

The inquest was adjourned until Wednesday.

Ballots are run though counting machines at a polling station in Janesville, Wis., on Election Day, Nov. 6, 2012. (Photo: Narayan Mahon / The New York Times)Boris Bazhanov was Joseph Stalin’s personal secretary from 1923 to 1928, and later served as secretary of the Soviet Political Bureau. In his memoirs published in 1980, he recounts something Stalin told him about voting.

“I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how,” Stalin said. “But what is extremely important is this — who will count the votes, and how.” Despite never having to worry about surviving popular elections, or really being a fan of democracy, Stalin knew the trick to subverting a democracy wasn’t in getting your people to vote, but instead was in making sure their votes were counted in a way that made sure your side won.

You can get 100% of the population voting, but if you can selectively decide which votes to count and which to throw out, you’ll win every time. As playwright Tom Stoppard quips in his play, Jumpers, “It’s not the voting that’s democracy; it’s the counting.”  

Now it appears the Republican Party has picked up on this, and is preparing for its boldest maneuver yet to ensure Democrats never again win the White House, by changing the way presidential Electoral Votes are counted.

The plan works like this: Instead of giving all of a state’s Electoral College votes to the popular vote winner of that state, Republicans want Electoral College votes in a small number of states to be doled out based on who won each Congressional district, plus two votes going to the popular vote winner. 

Of course, those Congressional districts in several traditionally blue states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Michigan were drawn by newly-elected Republicans state legislatures after the 2010 census. And they were drawn in a way that already gives Republicans an advantage by carving up Democratic strongholds and creating “safe” Republican seats. That’s how Republicans kept control of the House of Representatives in 2012, despite House Democrats winning  a million and a half more votes nationwide than House Republicans.

For example, last November President Obama won the popular vote in Wisconsin and thus received all of Wisconsin’s 10 Electoral College votes. But under this new Republican plan, he would have only received one Electoral College vote for each Congressional district that he won. Since he only won three newly-gerrymandered districts, he would have only gotten three votes, plus two more votes for winning the popular vote. Mitt Romney, who won five gerrymandered districts, would have received five votes. So, under this scenario, despite winning the popular vote in Wisconsin by a 7-point landslide last November, President Obama would have walked away from the Badger State with an equal number of Electoral College votes as Mitt Romney — five each.

Now you can see why Republicans like this idea!

With this simple tweak in how Electoral College votes are counted, the big win for the President in Wisconsin turns into a tie. In fact, had all the battleground states adopted this new vote counting scheme, Mitt Romney would be our President today, despite losing the popular, majority vote in every single battleground state: Ohio, Wisconsin, Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and so on.

The way Congressional districts in several blue states are drawn today means it would be virtually impossible for a Democrat to win the White House should all of these states adopt this new method of counting Electoral College votes — at least until 2020, when the next census comes due and Congressional districts are redrawn.

Again, as Stalin said, it’s not about who votes, it’s about how the votes are counted.

Now, as you might imagine, an idea like this is explosive. It would hand the White House over to Republican one-party rule. And any political party that truly believes in a democracy that reflects the will of the people would never embrace an election-rigging scheme like this.      

But Republicans have no shame.

This exact idea was first proposed in 2011 by Pennsylvania’s Republican Governor Tom Corbett. Again, that’s a Governor proposing it and not some local crackpot party official. Luckily, Corbett abandoned it before the election, or else Mitt Romney would have won the state’s majority share of Electoral College votes despite losing the popular vote statewide.

But, after seeing how bad they got shellacked in November, more and more prominent Republicans are voicing their support for this idea. The idea has been revived in Pennsylvania. Also, Wisconsin’s Governor Scott Walker said he supports it, and his colleague, Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos is promising to introduce legislation to make it happen. Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State, Jon Husted, wants to do it, too. And so, too, do Republican state lawmakers in Michigan.

But most shocking of all, the latest endorser of this election-rigging scheme is none other than the top Republican Party official himself, RNC Chair Reince Preibus. In an interview with the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Priebus said, “I think it’s something that a lot of states that have been consistently blue that are fully controlled red out to be looking at.” 

What all this adds up to is this: Republicans are really going to try to do this. Over the next few years, they really are going to try to rig the next election.

After all, what other choice do they have?

They could ditch trickle-down economics, which the American middle class now knows is nothing more than a scam that makes the rich richer while making the poor poorer. But since that would mean casting aside what George W. Bush referred to as his “base” — the billionaire class — we know that won’t happen.

Republicans could just accept the issue of women’s’ choice as settled and stop trying to limit women’s access to contraceptives or talking about “legitimate” rape. But that might cause the religious zealots on the Right who are preparing for the rapture to stop donating, and even leave the Republican Party. So, that won’t happen.

They could adopt a more compassionate approach to minorities in hopes of adapting to America’s changing demographics. Or they could just ditch their war on the New Deal and accept that the majority of Americans like social insurance programs like Medicare and Social Security. But we know that won’t happen, either — there’s too much money there that their bankster buddies on Wall Street want to get their hands on.

The truth of the matter is, Republicans simply aren’t willing to say “no” to the billionaires, and evolve from their prehistoric and unelectable current form into a political party that can actually build majority coalitions once again.

So, the only option left for a party that can’t win elections is to rig elections.

Consider this a warning. We thought we’d seen the worse. But Voter Suppression ID laws, cuts to early voting, long lines in heavily Democratic precincts, and new hurdles to voter registration are nothing compared to this latest vote-rigging scheme.

While most of us are focused on “fiscal cliffs” and budget battles in Washington, DC, the real fight for the future of our democracy is, right now, happening in State legislatures in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Michigan.

To badly paraphrase Paul Revere: Awaken the citizenry and spread the word!

Gun and ammunition sales in the US have spiked over the past two weeks as people rush to stock up arsenals before any restrictions that might be imposed, Press TV reports.

As impending restrictions on gun sales are spurring fear among some gun owners that they won’t have easy access to weaponry, leading liberal lawmakers plead for stores to curb gun sales.

“I’m urging our major gun retailers in America; the Walmart and the Sports Authority, to suspend sales of modern assault-style weapons until the Congress is able to fully consider and vote on legislation to curb gun violence,” said US Senator Chuck Schumer.

In a series of meetings with gun policy stakeholders, including the National Rifle Association (NRA), US Vice President Joe Biden offered a comprehensive package of proposals on preventing gun violence in the country.

NRA officials left the talks disenchanted and challenged negotiations with the Vice President on gun policy. Biden is to offer its proposals to President Barack Obama on Tuesday.

“The National Rifle Association is one of the most useless and reactionary groups in America,” said US domestic policy analyst Brent Budowsky.

“They offered the President nothing. They don’t want to give up any guns. They want people running around with machine guns and semi-automatic weapons.”

Following the Newtown shooting spree, President Obama appointed Biden to lead an effort to find proposals “to reduce the epidemic of gun violence.” The president also pledged to present the proposals to Congress.

Biden’s suggestions include universal background checks and limits on high capacity clips like the one used in the Sandy Hook shooting spree, which left 20 children and six adults dead on December 14, 2012.

TE/SS

An unarmed seventeen-year-old Palestinian boy was shot dead by Israeli security forces who claimed they only followed ‘standard rules of engagement’ on Tuesday.

Relatives of Samir Awad mourn his death at a hospital in Ramallah, to where his body was taken after the shooting. (Photograph: Issam Rimawi/Zuma Press/Corbis) Samir Awad was shot in “the head, back and chest,” according to reports. Though Israel Defense Force officials did admit that live fire was used, they claimed soldiers were within their right to use lethal force against the boy.

Palestinian witnesses, however, claim that Awad was killed “in cold blood” as he tried to run away from the area near the separation wall in West Bank village of Budrus.

As The Guardian reports:

[Awad was] among a group of boys who had just completed an exam on the last day of school before a midterm break when they approached the barrier, reports said. The Israeli Defense Forces said the youths were “attempting to infiltrate into Israel“, and its soldiers “responded immediately”. It confirmed live fire was used.

According to villagers, Samir was grabbed by soldiers who were concealed in a trench. He broke free and was running away when a soldier or soldiers opened fire. He was hit by three or four bullets, in his head, torso and leg.

Ayed Morrar, a member of the village popular resistance committee, said: “They shot him in cold blood, they shot him in the back. He wasn’t threatening them.” He said there had been no stone-throwing at the time of the shooting.

As Haaretz reports on Tuesday, Awad is the fourth Palestinian killed by IDF fire in recent days. On Monday a 21-year-old Gaza man, Mustafa Abu Jarad, died after being shot in the head by Israeli forces.

“Time and time again we hear of the claim that the young Palestinians provoked or hurled stones, but nothing justifies the shooting of live rounds at children.”

On Saturday a 21-year-old Palestinian was shot dead by IDF troops while trying to cross the barrier near the southern West Bank town of Dura, and the day before a 22-year-old man was killed and another injured–also by the IDF–in northern Gaza.

Morrar, also interview by Haaretz said there was “no just cause to open fire” in the Awad case and that the spate of recent killings by Israeli Defense Forces is creating increased tension throughout the occupied West Bank.

“In recent days we feel an escalation by the army, which shoots at everything that approaches the fence, even if they are children,” Mora told Haaretz. “Time and time again we hear of the claim that the young Palestinians provoked or hurled stones, but nothing justifies the shooting of live rounds at children.”

The true provocation, Mora explained, is Israelis building of the separation wall on private Palestinian lands.

Israelis, he said, “shouldn’t speak of provocations, the fact they built the fence on our lands is provocation.”

The drama around Chuck Hagel’s nomination for Secretary of Defense seems to be heading into its predictable third act. While much attention has been given to Hagel’s heterodox views (for D.C.) on the Middle East, and the threat that several Democrats might oppose his nomination over Israel, both the nominee and the party seem to be getting in line behind the President (and conveniently the lobby).Chuck Hagel’s nomination for Secretary of Defense seems to be heading into its predictable third act.

Politico is reporting this morning on a letter Hagel sent to California Sen. Barbara Boxer answering her concerns regarding his views on U.S. policy towards Iran and Israel, the Israel lobby, as well as issues pertaining to women and gays and lesbians in the military. You can read Hagel’s letter here. In it he does an about face on several positions to move towards the conventional wisdom in Washington. The most glaring example is the issue of sanctions against Iran, where Hagel had previously argued against unilateral U.S. sanctions in favor of multilaterial action. No longer. From the letter:

I have long supported economic sanctions that are applied in concert with allies and partners. I strongly supported the Obama Administation’s approach which has brought to bear unprecedented multilateral sanctions on Iran, including UN Council Resolution 1929. Regarding unilateral sanctions, I have told the President I completely support his policy on Iran. I agree that with Iran’s continued rejection of diplomatic overtures, further effective sanctions, both multilateral and unilateral — may be necessary and I will support the President.

Hagel also apologized for using the term “Jewish lobby” and promised the special relationship is in safe hands if he is confirmed:

As to my use of the phrase “Jewish lobby” to describe those who advocate for a strong U.S.-Israeli relationship, I’ve acknowledged that this was a very poor choice of words. I’ve said so publicly and I regret saying it. I used that terminology only once, in an interview. I recognize that this kind of language can be construed as anti-Israel. I know the pro-Israel lobby is comprised of both Jewish and non-Jewish Americans. In the Senate, I was a strong supporter of Defense appropriations, which provided enduring support for Israel’s security. Most Americans, myself included, are overwhelmingly supportive of a strong U.S.-Israel strategic and security relationship.

Hagel proves his pro-Israel bona fides by promising to deepen military cooperation with Israel and repeating a beltway mantra as American as baseball and apple cake:

America’s relationship with Israel is one that is fundamentally built on our nations shared values, common interests and democratic ideals. The Middle East is undergoing dramatic and historic changes, ones which surround Israel with tremendous uncertainty. We are working together daily, hand in hand, in unprecedented ways, to counter old, new and emerging mutual threats. I fully intend to expand the depth and breadth of U.S.-Israel cooperation.

Caving to political pressure sure pays quick dividends. Following the letter, Boxer annoucned she is on board with the Hagel nomination. Charles Schumer also announced he will support Hagel following similar outreach. From the New York Times:

Of deepest concern to Mr. Schumer and many Israel advocacy groups, are Mr. Hagel’s positions on the nuclear threat posed by Iran, particularly his suggestions in the past that a military strike against Iran would be counterproductive. It is a position that is out of step with the Obama administration, which became increasingly hawkish on Iran during the 2012 campaign.

“On Iran, Senator Hagel rejected a strategy of containment and expressed the need to keep all options on the table in confronting that country,” Mr. Schumer said. “But he didn’t stop there. In our conversation, Senator Hagel made a crystal-clear promise that he would do ‘whatever it takes’ to stop Tehran from obtaining nuclear weapons, including the use of military force.”

As a senator from Nebraska, Mr. Hagel voted against several rounds of sanctions against Iran that ultimately passed the Senate, citing unilateral sanctions are ineffective. On this matter too, Mr. Schumer seemed to find comfort. “Senator Hagel clarified that he ‘completely’ supports President Obama’s current sanctions against Iran,” Mr. Schumer said. “He added that further unilateral sanctions against Iran could be effective and necessary.”

On nearly every other issue that Mr. Schumer brought up with Mr. Hagel – his views on the militant Islamist groups Hezbollah and Hamas, his prior comments about gays, his use of the term “Jewish lobby” to refer to Israel advocacy groups – all seemed to be tamped down in the meeting.

“I know some will question whether Senator Hagel’s assurances are merely attempts to quiet critics as he seeks confirmation to this critical post,” Mr. Schumer said. “But I don’t think so. Senator Hagel realizes the situation in the Middle East has changed, with Israel in a dramatically more endangered position than it was even five years ago.”

President Barack Obama will unveil “a package of concrete proposals” to curb gun violence on Wednesday, the White House has said.

Vice President Joe Biden, who Mr Obama directed to lead a panel tasked with creating the proposals, will join the president at the White House at 11.45am to announce the measures.

“The president and the vice president will hold an event here at the White House to unveil a package of concrete proposals to reduce gun violence and prevent future tragedies like the one in Newtown, Connecticut,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

The Obama administration has been moving quickly on the issue following last month’s shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, which Mr Obama has called the worst day of his presidency.

But opposition has grown among pro-gun groups and Americans who fear their weapons will be taken away. The US has the highest rate of gun ownership of any country in the world.

Mr Obama acknowledged a tough fight ahead in a deeply divided Congress, whose support would be needed to pass the most sweeping changes under consideration, including a ban on assault weapons, limits on high-capacity ammunition magazines and background checks for anyone seeking to purchase a gun.

Such changes “make sense,” Mr Obama said. Lawmakers will have to “examine their own conscience” in the debate ahead, he added.

But the gun issue will have to compete for Congress’ time in coming weeks with several looming fiscal issues, and Republican leaders have said action on guns will have to wait.

The president also can use his executive powers to make some changes, and congressional officials say he is considering 19 steps that he could enact without approval from Congress.

The plan’s most contentious elements face intense opposition from the influential National Rifle Association, which enjoys strong support from Republicans as well as several Democrats and is known to punish politicians who stray from its point of view.

The assault weapons ban, which Mr Obama has long supported, is expected to face the toughest opposition in Congress, which passed a 10-year ban on the high-grade, military-style weapons in 1994.

Supporters did not have the votes to renew it once it expired.

As the president spoke Monday, some parents who lost children in the Connecticut shooting spoke out for the first time, calling for a national dialogue to help prevent similar tragedies. They spoke one month after the shooting.

“We want the … shootings to be recalled as the turning point where we brought our community and communities across the nation together and set a real course for change,” said Tom Bittman, a co-founder of Sandy Hook Promise group.

States and cities have been moving against gun violence as well. In New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo was poised to sign into the law the most restrictive gun law in the nation.

“This is a scourge on society,” Gov Cuomo said Monday night. “At what point do you say, ‘No more innocent loss of life?'”

The New York bill had bipartisan support, with the leader of the Republican-held state Senate saying it does not infringe on the Constitution’s Second Amendment of the US Constitution, which guarantees the right of citizen to bear arms.

At the national level, advocacy groups also have been pushing Mr Obama to order the Justice Department to crack down on those who lie on background checks – only a tiny number are now prosecuted.

Such a step has support from the NRA, which has consistently argued that existing laws must be enforced before new ones are considered.

The president’s proposals are also expected to include steps for improving school safety and mental health care, as well as recommendations for addressing violence in entertainment and video games.

Further snow and transport disruption is expected across parts of Britain on Tuesday.

As much as six inches of snow has fallen on high ground overnight as a second heavier band was set to move south and east.

The weather has already led to more than 20 motorists needing to be rescued from their cars and forced one rail operator to restrict speeds and cancel services.

The Met Office issued an amber weather warning for snow on the East Midlands, eastern England, the North East and Yorkshire. Those warnings are expected to run until around 9am.

Widespread ice could also cause problems, with temperatures close to freezing.

Rail operator Greater Anglia said routes between London Liverpool Street and Cambridge, Colchester, Ipswich and Norwich would be subject to a 60mph speed limit overnight because of the snow.

Some parts of Norfolk and Lincolnshire could get a second snowfall as the weather system spins out over the North Sea overnight and back towards land again, Mr Lee added.

The rest of the country should have a dry but chilly day, but temperatures in Scotland, the North East and Eastern England will struggle to rise above zero, while London will get to around 3C (37F).

Temperatures are expected to drop further to around minus 8C (17.6F) on Wednesday night with the possibility of more light snow flurries.

Forecasters have warned the cold snap could last until Friday.

:: Send us your photos or videos of the snow where you are.

As initially reported here yesterday, in what is the biggest news of the week, and possibly the year, the Bundesbank has broken away from its “all is well” posturing exhibited as recently as three months ago, and in a dramatic reversal of its diplomatic position, has demanded repatriation of some of its NY Fed and all of its Paris-domiciled gold. We applaud Herr Wiedmann for this move, although we hope that the German people are allowed to witness, and verify, the arrival of the actual gold as opposed to simply empty crates. Of course, at the end of the day the actual delivery is irrelevant: what matters is this first shot across the bow of the current monetary system – one which juxtaposes sound money versus infinitely dilutable electronic fiat more than ever before – by a major conservative central bank, one in possession of the second largest official gold reserve, second only to the Fed itself. That said, we can only hope that the German request for gold repatriation is not met with the same enthusiastic response that France encountered when it too attempted to repatriate its gold held by London back in the 1930s, just before a whole lot of things in the global economy went horribly wrong…

Specifically, in 1965 The Economist interviewed Jacques Rueff, a French economist and advisor to the French Government. In the following exchange (caught on pages 84-85 of the pdf “Monetary Sins of the Past“, which are required reading to anyone who thinks what is going on now is in any way new or different), the Economist blames France for exerting pressure on London during the 1930s, through the withdrawal of sterling balances held at the Bank of England. We thank Martin Sibileau for the reminder about this key exchange.

What is disclosed is enlightening and entertaining, and may well serve as the basis for what the response Buba may encounter today.

Jacques Rueff: In 1930 I was financial attache in the French Embassy in London, and in that capacity I was responsible for the deposits of the French Treasury with British banks. They were the direct result of eight years of the gold-exchange standard, because we had kept the pounds sterling in London, as my colleagues in New York had kept in the American market the dollars that had been pouring into the French Treasury from 1927 onward. Then, in 1931, the failure of the Austrian Creditanstalt caused successive waves of repatriations; and it was this collapse of the gold-exchange standard that, without any possible doubt, transformed the depression of 1929 into the Great Depression of 1931.

The Economist: While you are on this historical episode, what would your comments be on the very widespread view that it was to a substantial extent French pressure on London at that time, through the withdrawal of sterling balances, that was in part responsible for the general collapse later on?

Jacques Rueff: Let me tell you that, unhappily for the world, the French pressure did not exist, or was so mild that it had no effect. There is a very interesting document from this period, a letter from Sir Austen Chamberlain, who was then Foreign Secretary in London, to M. Poincaré, who was Prime Minister and Finance Minister in France; it must be of 1928. Sir Austen said, “We know that you are entitled to ask gold for your sterling, but in the frame of the close friendship between Britain and France we ask you, so as to avoid trouble for the City of London, not to do that.” And we were, I must say, weak enough to comply with this request and not ask for gold. The fact that I had such important sterling deposits in London shows that we did not use this right to ask for gold. The adjustment, which would hardly have been felt if carried out on a day-to-day basis, was not made, and we had the fantastic boom of 1927, 1928, and 1929. This explains the depth of the collapse and of the depression, because the adjustment was so long delayed. We were too gentle in complying with official appeals not to convert our sterling balances into gold.

Fast forward to today, and we can’t help but wonder if some 30 years from today, an advisor to the Bundesbank will not rewrite the above to something as follows:

BUBA Advisor: …There is a very interesting document from this period, a letter from [William Dudley], who was then Foreign Secretary in London, to Herr Weidmann, who was Head of the Bundesbank; it must be of 2013. Sir Austen said, “We know that you are entitled to ask gold for your sterling, but in the frame of the close friendship between the United States and Germany we ask you, so as to avoid trouble for the Wall Street, not to do that.” And we were, I must say, weak enough to comply with this request and not ask for gold. The fact that I had such important sterling deposits in New York shows that we did not use this right to ask for gold. The adjustment, which would hardly have been felt if carried out on a day-to-day basis, was not made, and we had the fantastic boom of 2013, 2014, and 2015. This explains the depth of the collapse and of the depression, because the adjustment was so long delayed. We were too gentle in complying with official appeals not to convert our sterling balances into gold.

We can only hope that the Bundesbank is not quite as “gentle” as Paris was some 80 years ago in complying with London’s gentle denial to comply with the French repatriation request. In fact, quite the opposite: we hope Bundesbank pulls all of its gold, as do all other nations because in the aftermath of the “collapse and depression” that will soon follow, he who defected first, will have defected best. Everyone else will be left with paper promises of repayment by a broke and insolvent government which went as far as suggesting the minting of a trillion dollar coin to absolve it of its own particular monetary sins.

h/t Martin Sibileau

Indonesian factory workers claimed a small victory on Tuesday after news spread that suppliers for international sportswear behemouth Nike paid local military personnel to intimidate them into agreeing to below minimum wage pay.

(Image via developeconomies.com) Workers at the Nike shoe factory in the west Java city of Sukabumi will now be paid a higher minimum wage after reporting that they were bullied into signing a petition saying that they supported the factory’s claim to be exempt from the recent wage increase.

After news of the harrassment leaked, the Jakarta Globe is reporting that the factory has revoked their application for exemption.

Three labor rights groups– US-based Educating for Justice (EFJ), the Alliance for Labor Unions in Indonesia (MPBI) and the Trade Union Rights Center–revealed on Monday the findings of a recent investigation into several Nike factories that were seeking wage exemptions.

ABC Australia reports:

In mobile phone footage of the factory, shown to ABC, a man standing over workers can be heard telling them, “you all have to sign it”.

The woman who took the footage does not want to be named, but says she and other workers tried to reject the pay restriction.

“We got summoned by military personnel that the company hired to interrogate us and they intimidated us,” she said.

“The first thing that scared me was his high tone of voice and he banged the table.

“And also he said that inside the factory there were a lot of military intelligence officers. That scared me.”

Additionally, EFJ director Jim Keady reports that trade union officials at the factory were deceived into signing the agreement when a meeting’s sign-in sheet was “fraudulently attached to a document that stated the signatories agree to the factory management’s requests to be exempt from the new minimum wage.”

“Nike unfortunately exercises imperialist values–values that run counter to the commitments to democracy and human rights,” Keady said.

Indonesian workers won a 44 percent minimum wage raise to 2.2 million rupiah ($228) a month after millions of workers striked this fall over low pay and cost of living increases; the pay increase in Jakarta was supposed to be made effective January 1.

According to the Surya Tjandra, director of Indonesia’s Trade Union Rights Center, at least six Nike-contracted factories had applied for an exemption to the recent pay increase, allowing employees to be paid $3.70 a day instead of $4.

“You have to provide financial conditions of the company in the last two years which show some not profit, and then you have to accept some consent from the workers directly, which is not that easy because for the workers, the new wages is [sic] actually better and fairer,” he said.

Of Tuesday’s news that the Sukabumi factory was retracting their bid for exemption, Keady said:

I’m very happy for the workers in the factory. They are getting the justice they deserve.

Now we have to move forward case by case, factory by factory and make sure that in all 40 [Indonesian] Nike factories, the 171,000 workers get what they deserve.

So far, the investigative team has only looked into shoe manufacturing plants, but they suspect the majority of Nike apparel factories will also be trying to avoid paying the new minimum wage.

A picture shows the entrance of Fitch ratings agency (AFP Photo / Miguel Medina)

If the US Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling and sends the country into default, it risks losing its top credit rating.

­One credit agency has already assured it may downgrade America’s score if there’s any sort of delay in coming up with a budget plan.

If the US fails to increase its debt limit by March 1, it may not be able to pay its bills and could fall into default. Fitch Ratings, a top credit agency, said Tuesday that it would downgrade the nation’s AAA credit rating if Congress fails to agree on a plan “in a timely manner”.

“In Fitch’s opinion, the debt ceiling is an ineffective and potentially dangerous mechanism for enforcing fiscal discipline,” the company said.

A credit rating influences a nation’s borrowing costs, which would be higher if a country proves unable to repay its debts. Lower credit ratings could potentially harm the US economy by increasing its borrowing costs. Even if the US were not sent into default, Fitch would consider downgrading America’s credit rating if it witnesses another heated bipartisan debate that stalls time-sensitive progress.

Fitch said on its website that a repeat of the 2011 congressional battle, which almost sent the US into default, would instigate a formal review of the country’s credit rating and increase skepticism in Congress’ ability to come to agreements.

“The pressure on the US rating, if anything, is increasing,” said David Riley, managing director of Fitch Ratings’ global sovereigns division. “We thought the 2011 crisis was a one-off event.”

Standard & Poor’s downgraded America’s AAA rating after Congress’ debt limit battle in 2011. Moody’s Investor Services did not downgrade the country’s rating, but gave it a negative outlook. The US is still burdened with this negative outlook, with Moody’s having expressed doubtfulness over its ability to come up with a deficit-reduction plan in a timely manner.

And even if the US once again averts the financial crisis, Fitch said it would consider downgrading the country’s rating anyway.

“In the absence of an agreed and credible medium-term deficit-reduction plan that would be consistent with sustaining the economic recovery and restoring confidence in the long-run sustainability of US public finances, the current negative outlook on the AAA rating is likely to be resolved with a downgrade later this year even if another debt-ceiling crisis is averted,” Fitch said.

And a downgraded credit rating is not the only consequence the country faces if it fails to raise the debt ceiling. The US may run out of cash to pay its bills, which would abandon those dependent on government assistance. The US would not be able to afford paying for Social Security, veterans benefits, US troops, aid for low-income families or government salaries.

In order to force the Obama administration to cut spending, some Republican leaders have pledged to allow the US to fall into default and shut down the government, thereby hurting the nation’s credit rating.

The top three credit rating agencies — Fitch Ratings, Standard & Poor’s, and Moody’s — have all at one point expressed doubt in Congress’ ability to raise the debt ceiling, and Fitch’s announcement makes the country’s economic outlook even more dire than before.

Thousands of people in the Indian-administered Kashmir have demonstrated to voice their anger over the killings of Shia Muslims in Pakistan, Press TV reports.

The demonstration was staged on Tuesday across the Muslim-majority region where the protesters carried banners declaring “We protest the killings of innocent Shia Muslims in Pakistan.” They also chanted slogans condemning the bomb attacks in Pakistan on January 10.

“We are asking how long these Shias of Pakistan have to suffer… We are here to express solidarity with the families (of the victims),” a protester told Press TV.

Reports say Shia Muslims in Kashmir have also shut down businesses to express solidarity with the victims and their families.

On January 10, nearly 130 people were killed and many others injured in a wave of bombings targeting both Pakistani security guards and civilians, including Shia Muslims.

More than 110 of the victims lost their lives in twin bomb attacks that targeted Shias in a crowded place in Quetta. The outlawed terrorist group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Massive protests were also held across Pakistan to denounce the violence with protesters accusing the Pakistani government of failing to take proper action to prevent terror attacks on Shias, who make up 20 percent of the country’s 180-million-strong population.

Violence has escalated against Shia Muslims in different parts of Pakistan in recent months. Since the beginning of 2012, hundreds of Shias have been killed in the country. Doctors, engineers, high-ranking government officials, teachers, and politicians have been the main targets of the deadly attacks.

MAM/PKH

Dozens of Saudi clerics have staged a protest against King Abdullah’s decision to appoint women to the Shura Council, a body that advises the government on new laws.

About 50 clerics gathered in front of the Royal Court in the capital, Riyadh, to express their opposition to the King’s decision to appoint 30 women to the previously all-male consultative Shura Council.

They demanded a meeting with King Abdullah and his top aide Khaled al-Tuwaijri to offer them what they called advice.

“The clerics were in front of the royal court to address the king and Tuwaijri with regard to women in the Shura Council…they waited for two hours but were denied access,” Waleed Abu al-Khair told Reuters by phone.

On Friday, the Saudi monarch gave a fifth of the seats in the consultative body to women as part of social reforms promised in 2011. The kingdom’s top religious authorities, including the Grand Mufti, have accepted the decision.

This is the second demonstration by clerics, who had issued a fatwa banning any kind of public protest, since the appointment of women to the council.

“There is a contradiction…. The real Salafis do not do what these (clerics) are doing,” said Saudi political analyst Khaled al-Dakheel.

“Maybe we are now faced with a socio-political change in the society where we have the traditional Salafi school of thought that adheres to all its principles and now there is a new generation of Salafis emerging that hopes for different proposals. This requires examination,” Dakheel said.

Saudi women need permission from their male guardians to travel or take certain jobs and will vote for the first time in 2014.

The kingdom is the only country that does not allow women to drive.

HM/PKH/SS

Nearly 1,500 foreign prisoners are being held in British jails beyond the term of their sentence.

A total of 547 foreign offenders are being held in prisons after their sentences have ended, while a further 919 are in immigration removal centres, immigration minister Mark Harper revealed.

Mr Harper, who was responding to a parliamentary question by Conservative MP Priti Patel, could not confirm how long the prisoners had been held.

Prime Minister David Cameron pledged nearly two years ago to put an end to agreements that mean foreign offenders cannot be returned home without their consent.

In April 2010, there were 701 foreign offenders detailed in jail after their sentence, which fell to 516 in April 2011 but rose again to 552 in the same month in 2012, the figures revealed.

The number of people held in immigration detention centres after completing a prison sentence has fallen from 1,213 in April 2010 to 812 in April 2012.

The Louvre Museum (RIA Novosti / Alexandra Masaltseva)

The French authorities are considering the option of hiring a non-French citizen for the post as head of one of France’s most prestigious museums.

The measure comes as the museum’s budget for 2013 will be reduced by Hollande’s administration, Bloomeberg reports. This means that the new Louvre director will have to attract investors, hence he or she will need to have broad international contacts and experience of finance.  

The new chief of Louvre will also be curating exhibitions, managing the staff. He will also need to know about the peculiarities of the French government system, be fluent in the French language and have work experience in one of the world’s top museums or culture centers.

The vacancy has opened after the present museum director Henri Loirette, who has served at the post for 12 years, announced his intention to quit the job in December 2012.

The museum needs to find a new chief before May 2013.

In 2013 the French budget cut spending by 10 billion Euros. The country’s culture budget was axed by 2,3 per cent compared to the previous year.

No other foreigner has ever headed the Louvre. Only one foreign citizen, German historian Werner Schpies has headed the National Museum of Modern Art at the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris, between 1997 and 2000.

Venezuela’s Vice President Nicolas Maduro has said President Hugo Chavez has made progress in recovering from the cancer operation.

Upon the return from visiting Chavez in Cuba’s capital Havana, Maduro said on Tuesday the president is “climbing the hill, he is advancing” to a full recovery.

Chavez spoke about national matters with Maduro and other members of the government who visited the ailing president over the past few days.

Maduro’s comments support what Chavez’s brother had said regarding the president’s medical condition.

“Reports that the president is in a coma and that the family is discussing ending life support are totally false,” Adnan Chavez, said on Sunday.

Venezuela’s Vice President departed for Cuba on January 11 to visit Chavez’s family, medical team and the commander himself.

Maduro, elected by Chavez to rule in his absence, led the government in its new term on January 10 after the Supreme Court unanimously decided that the current government could remain in office until Chavez takes the oath.

Chavez, who first came to power in 1999, was re-elected to a new six-year term in October 2012. He — when back to full strength — will swear-in as his third term in front of the Supreme Court.

The 58-year-old Venezuelan president traveled to Havana on December 10 for a fourth operation after his cancer reappeared.

GVN/PKH

As we anxiously await the titanic announcement about to spew forth from Menlo Park, we thought a look at 2013’s +20% performance was worthwhile. We would expect to hear a plethora of ‘monetizing mobile’ and a cajillion eyeballs must mean something. Will the Facebook phone replace the Obama-phone? Will being ‘liked’ provide external stimulus? Will they be merging with Dell (or Radioshack?) Feeling bullish? Be wary, implied vol is at its most expensivce to realized vol in 7 months… Rest assured, we will bring the critical headlines as they break…

• *FACEBOOK SAYS IT’S A PRODUCT ANNOUNCEMENT               :FB US
• *FACEBOOK ANNOUNCES GRAPH SEARCH                         :FB US

FB stumbling now -1.7%

Implied vol is very expensve to realizeds (i.e. people are ‘hedged’)…

From this Monday evening’s The Young Turks, this interview with Alex Jones wasn’t quite as contentious as the one he had with Piers Morgan last week, but it wasn’t a whole lot better. I did enjoy watching Cenk get a chance to ask him if he’d ever sought any mental health treatment after listening to quite a bit of his ranting and raving. I can also say it didn’t break my heart to see two of these wingnuts tearing each other apart and Jones ripping on Glenn Beck after he criticized his interview on CNN.

Alex Jones to Glenn Beck: ‘Thomas Jefferson would spit on you’:

In this clip from Cenk’s interview with radio host Alex Jones, whose rant on Piers Morgan’s CNN show was dismissed by Glenn Beck as an attempt to make gun advocates seems crazy, Jones says, “You jackass mainline conservatives don’t speak for me. You’re the ones that have discredited true conservatism and libertarianism. Thomas Jefferson would spit on you, you little bastard. You little piece of trash. That’s what I have to say to Glenn Beck.”

If you’re in for some more abuse, you can watch the extended interviews with Jones here and here.

New Zealand calls on Hobbit makers to pay back $56 million subsidy

Following the tremendous box office success of The Hobbit film a New Zealand official has called on the moviemakers to repay the $56 million (NZ$67 million) subsidy they received from the country’s taxpayers to fund shooting in New Zealand.

The first movie in Peter Jackson’s upcoming trilogy based on J.R.R.Tolkien’s best-selling children’s book “The Hobbit, or There and Back Again” has become one of the last year’s most successful film projects, that has so far grossed over $1 billion worldwide.

New Zealand official Winston Peters, a former deputy prime minister and leader of the state’s centrist First party suggests that Warner Bros and MGM should return the country’s money, the Guardian reports.

“Now the first movie has grossed more than $1 billion, Warner Brothers should repay the NZ$67 million subsidy the movie moguls sucked from Kiwi taxpayers,” The Guardian quotes Peters as saying.

In his statement, the official mentioned 3000 jobs, which the movie project would create in New Zealand. However he expressed doubt that these jobs actually went to New Zealanders.

“How many of [these jobs] will exist once the final film has premiered and how many of these jobs actually went to New Zealanders?” he asked. “There is no doubt now that the deal with the movie industry was more about lining pockets than creating jobs.“

Warner Bros, MGM and Peter Jackson’s production team received the funds from New Zealand after the producers threatened to transfer filming to central Europe.

No wonder the Fed and the OCC snubbed a request by Darryl Issa and Elijah Cummings to review the foreclosure fraud settlement before it was finalized early last week. What had leaked out while the Potemkin borrower reviews were underway showed them to be a sham, as we detailed at length in an earlier post. But even so, what actually took place was even worse than hardened cynics had imagined.

We are going to be reporting on this story in detail, since we are conducting an in-depth investigation. But this initial report by Huffington Post gives a window on a good deal of the dubious practices that took place during the foreclosure reviews. I strongly suggest you read the piece in full; there is a lot of nasty stuff on view.

There are some issues that are highlighted in the piece, others that are implication that get somewhat lost in the considerable detail. The first, as stressed by Sheila Bair and other observers, is that the reviews were never designed to succeed. This is something we and others pointed out; this was all an exercise in show. The OCC had entered into these consent orders in the first place with the aim of derailing the 50 state attorney general settlement negotiations. This was all intended to be diversionary, but to make it look like it had some teeth, borrowers who were foreclosed on in 2009 and 2010 who thought they were harmed were allowed to request a review. If hard was found, they could get as much as $15,000 plus their home back if they had suffered a wrongful foreclosure, or if they home had already been sold, $125,000 plus any equity in the home. Needless to say, the forms were written at the second grade college level, making them hard to answer. A whistleblower for Wells Fargo reported that of 10,000 letters, harm was found in none because the responses were interpreted in such a way as to deny harm (for instance, if the borrower did not provide dates of certain incidents, those details were omitted from the assessment).

But the results were even worse than that, hard as it is to believe. For instance, even though the OCC stipulated that the banks hire supposedly independent reviewers, they were firmly in control of the process. From the article, describing the process at Bank of America, where a regulatory advisory firm Promontory was supposed to be in charge:

Bank of America contractors were reviewing Bank of America loans at a Bank of America facility under the management of full-time Bank of America employees. They were reporting those results to Promontory, the outside independent consultant, whose employees started their reviews based on what Bank of America contractors had concluded.

As the auditor, Promontory had authority to overrule any conclusion drawn by a Bank of America contractor. Promontory has defended its work as independent from influence by Bank of America. But the Bank of America contractors said it was clear to them that what they noted during their reviews was integral to the process. They continued to do substantive, evaluative review work until a few months ago, they said, when they were told that their job going forward was simply to dig up documents for Promontory.

Of course, Promontory protests that it was in charge. It is hard to take that seriously when no one from Promontory was on premises. And the proof is that the Bank of America staff suppressed the provision of information:

Another contract employee recounted the time he noted in a file that he couldn’t find vital documents, such as notice supposedly sent to a homeowner that a foreclosure was pending. “Change your answer,” he said he was told on several occasions by his manager.

Second is that the OCC was changing the goalposts as the reviews were underway. But was that due to OCC waffling or pushback by the consultants acting in the interest of the banks to derail the process by making the results inconsistent over time? If you do the first month of reviews under one set of rules and then get significant changes in month two, that implies you have to revise or redo the work in month one. That serves the consultants just fine, their bills explode. And the banks get to bitch that the reviews are costing too much, which gives them (and the OCC) a pretext for shutting them down, which is prefect, since they were all intended to be a PR rather than a substantive exercise from the outset.

Consider this section:

From the the consultants’ point of view, it was the government regulators who had some explaining to do. First there was the constant change in guidance, throughout at least the first eight months of the process, as to what they wanted the auditors to do and how they wanted them to do it, they said. The back-and-forth was so constant, one of the consultants involved with the process said that specific guidelines for determining if a mortgage borrower had been harmed by certain kinds of foreclosure fraud still weren’t in place as late as November 2012.

Huh? Tell me how hard it is to determine harm. If a borrower was charged fees not permitted by statue or the loan documents, there was harm. If the fees were in excess of costs (not permitted) there was harm. If the fees were applied in the wrong order, there was harm. If a borrower was put into a mod, made the payments as required in the mod agreement, but they weren’t applied properly and they were foreclosed on despite following bank instructions, there was harm. Honestly, there are relatively few cases where there is ambiguity unless you are actively trying to throw a wrench in the process, and it is not hard to surmise that is exactly what was happening. That is not to say there might not have been ambiguity on the OCC side, but it is not hard to surmise that this was contractor/bank looking to create outs, not any real underlying problem of understanding harm v. not harm.

It looks that some of the costly process changes were also due to the consultants being caught out as being in cahoots with their clients rather than operating independently:

The role of the Bank of America contract employees did not change to simply doing support work for Promontory until near the end of last year. That happened after ProPublica reported that Promontory’s employees were checking over Bank of America’s work, rather than conducting a fully independent review.

Finally, the article mentions (but does not dwell on) the fact that there was considerable evidence of borrower harm:

The reviewer said she found some kind of bogus fee in every file she looked at, ranging from a few dollars to a few thousand dollars. Another who looked for errors that violated state statutes estimated that 30 to 40 percent of loan files contained mistakes.

One reviewer who provided a comment that we elevated into a post was far more specific:

…in one case I reviewed the borrower paid approximately 25K to reinstate his mortgage. Then he began to make his mortgage payments as agreed. Each time he made a payment the payment was sent back stating he had to be current for the bank to accept a payment. He made three payments and each time the response was the same. Each time he wrote and called stating he had sent in the $25K to reinstate the loan and had the canceled check to prove it. After several months the bank realized that they had put the 25K in the wrong account. At that time that notified him that they were crediting his account, but because of the delay in receiving the reinstatement funds into the proper account he owed them more interest on the monies, late fees for the payments that had been returned and not credited and he was again in default for failing to continue making his payment. The bank foreclosed when he refused to pay additional interest and late fees for the banks error. I was told that I shouldn’t show that as harm because he did quit making his payments. I refused to do that.

There was another instance when there was no evidence that the bank had properly published the notice of sale in the newspaper as required by law. The argument the bank made when it was listed as harm to the borrower was “here is the foreclosure sale deed, obviously we followed proper procedure, and you should change your answer as to harm.”

Often there is no evidence of a borrower being sent a proper notice of intent to accelerate the mortgage. When these issues are noted in a file we are told to ignore them and transfer those files to a “special team” set up to handle that kind of situation. You choose whatever meaning you like for that scenario.

To add insult to injury, the settlement fiasco was shut down abruptly without the OCC and the Fed coming with a method for compensating borrowers. So the records have been left in chaos. That pretty much guarantees that any payments will be token amounts spread across large number of borrowers, which insures that borrowers that suffered serious damage, such as the case cited above, where the bank effectively extorted an extra $25,000 from a borrower before foreclosing on him, will get a token payment, at most $8,000 but more likely around $2,000. Oh, and you can be sure that the banks will want a release from private claims as a condition of accepting payment. $2,000 for a release of liability is a screaming deal, and it was almost certainly the main objective of this exercise from the outset. Nicely played indeed.

No wonder the Fed and the OCC snubbed a request by Darryl Issa and Elijah Cummings to review the foreclosure fraud settlement before it was finalized early last week. What had leaked out while the Potemkin borrower reviews were underway showed them to be a sham, as we detailed at length in an earlier post. But even so, what actually took place was even worse than hardened cynics had imagined.

We are going to be reporting on this story in detail, since we are conducting an in-depth investigation. But this initial report by Huffington Post gives a window on a good deal of the dubious practices that took place during the foreclosure reviews. I strongly suggest you read the piece in full; there is a lot of nasty stuff on view.

There are some issues that are highlighted in the piece, others that are implication that get somewhat lost in the considerable detail. The first, as stressed by Sheila Bair and other observers, is that the reviews were never designed to succeed. This is something we and others pointed out; this was all an exercise in show. The OCC had entered into these consent orders in the first place with the aim of derailing the 50 state attorney general settlement negotiations. This was all intended to be diversionary, but to make it look like it had some teeth, borrowers who were foreclosed on in 2009 and 2010 who thought they were harmed were allowed to request a review. If hard was found, they could get as much as $15,000 plus their home back if they had suffered a wrongful foreclosure, or if they home had already been sold, $125,000 plus any equity in the home. Needless to say, the forms were written at the second grade college level, making them hard to answer. A whistleblower for Wells Fargo reported that of 10,000 letters, harm was found in none because the responses were interpreted in such a way as to deny harm (for instance, if the borrower did not provide dates of certain incidents, those details were omitted from the assessment).

But the results were even worse than that, hard as it is to believe. For instance, even though the OCC stipulated that the banks hire supposedly independent reviewers, they were firmly in control of the process. From the article, describing the process at Bank of America, where a regulatory advisory firm Promontory was supposed to be in charge:

Bank of America contractors were reviewing Bank of America loans at a Bank of America facility under the management of full-time Bank of America employees. They were reporting those results to Promontory, the outside independent consultant, whose employees started their reviews based on what Bank of America contractors had concluded.

As the auditor, Promontory had authority to overrule any conclusion drawn by a Bank of America contractor. Promontory has defended its work as independent from influence by Bank of America. But the Bank of America contractors said it was clear to them that what they noted during their reviews was integral to the process. They continued to do substantive, evaluative review work until a few months ago, they said, when they were told that their job going forward was simply to dig up documents for Promontory.

Of course, Promontory protests that it was in charge. It is hard to take that seriously when no one from Promontory was on premises. And the proof is that the Bank of America staff suppressed the provision of information:

Another contract employee recounted the time he noted in a file that he couldn’t find vital documents, such as notice supposedly sent to a homeowner that a foreclosure was pending. “Change your answer,” he said he was told on several occasions by his manager.

Second is that the OCC was changing the goalposts as the reviews were underway. But was that due to OCC waffling or pushback by the consultants acting in the interest of the banks to derail the process by making the results inconsistent over time? If you do the first month of reviews under one set of rules and then get significant changes in month two, that implies you have to revise or redo the work in month one. That serves the consultants just fine, their bills explode. And the banks get to bitch that the reviews are costing too much, which gives them (and the OCC) a pretext for shutting them down, which is prefect, since they were all intended to be a PR rather than a substantive exercise from the outset.

Consider this section:

From the the consultants’ point of view, it was the government regulators who had some explaining to do. First there was the constant change in guidance, throughout at least the first eight months of the process, as to what they wanted the auditors to do and how they wanted them to do it, they said. The back-and-forth was so constant, one of the consultants involved with the process said that specific guidelines for determining if a mortgage borrower had been harmed by certain kinds of foreclosure fraud still weren’t in place as late as November 2012.

Huh? Tell me how hard it is to determine harm. If a borrower was charged fees not permitted by statue or the loan documents, there was harm. If the fees were in excess of costs (not permitted) there was harm. If the fees were applied in the wrong order, there was harm. If a borrower was put into a mod, made the payments as required in the mod agreement, but they weren’t applied properly and they were foreclosed on despite following bank instructions, there was harm. Honestly, there are relatively few cases where there is ambiguity unless you are actively trying to throw a wrench in the process, and it is not hard to surmise that is exactly what was happening. That is not to say there might not have been ambiguity on the OCC side, but it is not hard to surmise that this was contractor/bank looking to create outs, not any real underlying problem of understanding harm v. not harm.

It looks that some of the costly process changes were also due to the consultants being caught out as being in cahoots with their clients rather than operating independently:

The role of the Bank of America contract employees did not change to simply doing support work for Promontory until near the end of last year. That happened after ProPublica reported that Promontory’s employees were checking over Bank of America’s work, rather than conducting a fully independent review.

Finally, the article mentions (but does not dwell on) the fact that there was considerable evidence of borrower harm:

The reviewer said she found some kind of bogus fee in every file she looked at, ranging from a few dollars to a few thousand dollars. Another who looked for errors that violated state statutes estimated that 30 to 40 percent of loan files contained mistakes.

One reviewer who provided a comment that we elevated into a post was far more specific:

…in one case I reviewed the borrower paid approximately 25K to reinstate his mortgage. Then he began to make his mortgage payments as agreed. Each time he made a payment the payment was sent back stating he had to be current for the bank to accept a payment. He made three payments and each time the response was the same. Each time he wrote and called stating he had sent in the $25K to reinstate the loan and had the canceled check to prove it. After several months the bank realized that they had put the 25K in the wrong account. At that time that notified him that they were crediting his account, but because of the delay in receiving the reinstatement funds into the proper account he owed them more interest on the monies, late fees for the payments that had been returned and not credited and he was again in default for failing to continue making his payment. The bank foreclosed when he refused to pay additional interest and late fees for the banks error. I was told that I shouldn’t show that as harm because he did quit making his payments. I refused to do that.

There was another instance when there was no evidence that the bank had properly published the notice of sale in the newspaper as required by law. The argument the bank made when it was listed as harm to the borrower was “here is the foreclosure sale deed, obviously we followed proper procedure, and you should change your answer as to harm.”

Often there is no evidence of a borrower being sent a proper notice of intent to accelerate the mortgage. When these issues are noted in a file we are told to ignore them and transfer those files to a “special team” set up to handle that kind of situation. You choose whatever meaning you like for that scenario.

To add insult to injury, the settlement fiasco was shut down abruptly without the OCC and the Fed coming with a method for compensating borrowers. So the records have been left in chaos. That pretty much guarantees that any payments will be token amounts spread across large number of borrowers, which insures that borrowers that suffered serious damage, such as the case cited above, where the bank effectively extorted an extra $25,000 from a borrower before foreclosing on him, will get a token payment, at most $8,000 but more likely around $2,000. Oh, and you can be sure that the banks will want a release from private claims as a condition of accepting payment. $2,000 for a release of liability is a screaming deal, and it was almost certainly the main objective of this exercise from the outset. Nicely played indeed.

Aaron Swartz.(Reuters / Noah Berger)

One of the prosecutors investigating Reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz, who committed suicide this weekend, has also been accused of driving another hacker to kill himself,

In 2008 Jonathan James killed himself after being implicated in the largest personal identity hack in history. The case was spearheaded by Massachusetts Assistant US Attorney Stephen Heymann, who was also integral to the investigation against Swartz, Buzzfeed reports.

Heymann reportedly pursued James with zeal, he was the first minor to be taken into custody for a federal cybercrime case.

In the criminal complaints filed with the US District Court in Massachusetts, James was believed to have been identified as “JJ.”

Two weeks after the Secret Service raided his house in conjunction with the investigation led by Heymann into the theft of tens of thousands of credit card numbers, James was found dead.

In his suicide note, James wrote the decision to take his own life was a direct response to the federal investigation implicating him in a crime he says he did not commit.

“I have no faith in the ‘justice’ system. Perhaps my actions today, and this letter, will send a stronger message to the public. Either way, I have lost control over this situation and this is my only way to regain control,” Buzzfeed cites the note as saying.

“Remember,” he continued, “it’s not whether you win or lose, it’s whether I win or lose, and sitting in jail for 20, 10, or even 5 years for a crime I didn’t commit is not me winning. I die free.”

In 2010 Heymann received the Attorney General’s Award for Distinguished Service for his role in “directing the largest and most successful identity theft and hacking investigation ever conducted in the United States.”

The case against Swartz however, was vastly different, as the Internet freedom activist was being investigated for his involvement in the theft of content hosted on JSTOR, a digital archive used by universities and other research institutions. Swartz, who was living in New York City at the time of his death, had accessed JSTOR through the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s library, which led to his 2011 indictment in Boston.

Though JSTOR decided not to press charges — and even urged the US government to drop the case — MIT went ahead with a civil suit. Other critics lambasted the US attorney in Boston for the office’s desire to press ahead with charges which would have Swartz behind bars for longer than some convicted of homicide. Those close to Swartz believe that the possibility of a lengthy prison sentence is what led to his suicide on January 11.

His defense team suspected federal attorneys were using Swartz as an example to show how serious they take online crime, the Huffington Post reports.

Swartz’s attorney Elliot Peters accused Heymann of aggressively pursuing Swartz because the case “”was going to receive press and he was going to be a tough guy and read his name in the newspaper.”

Andrew Good, a Boston attorney who had previously represented Swartz in the case, said he told federal prosecutors that Swartz was a suicide risk.

“Their response was, put him in jail, he’ll be safe there,” Good said.

Euro area industrial production decreased in November, for the third month running, and reached its lowest since April 2010. Indeed, industrial production fell by 0.3% m-o-m in November, worse than the 0.2% m-o-m rise expected. The October figure was revised up marginally from -1.4% m-o-m to -1.0% m-o-m.

Industrial production plunged for all periphery countries
In terms of country, the industrial production figures were mixed with 8 out of 12 countries experiencing negative m-o-m growth. It is worth noting that all periphery countries recorded a sharp monthly decrease: Italy: -1.0%, Spain: -2.5%, Greece: -1.5%, Portugal: -3.4% and Ireland: -1.1%. As a result, the rate of recovery in the periphery remains well below the average. As for core countries, industrial production increased slightly in Germany (0.1% m-o-m) for the first time since July 2012. France and the Netherlands also posted positive growth, 0.5% m-o-m and 1.0% m-o-m respectively.

Trough in Q4?
Recent business surveys (PMIs, Ifo, Insee and Isae) have confirmed a stabilisation in activity, albeit in negative territory. So there is still hope that Q1 could see some improvement in core countries, but yesterday’s result are more evidence of further contraction in Q4.

Deeper contraction in Q4
On average, October and November industrial production combined plunged 2.4% compared to Q3, significantly lower than the 0.3% q-o-q recorded in Q3. This tends to confirm our scenario of a strong contraction of overall economic activity in Q4. Therefore, we are standing by our forecast of -0.4% q-o-q real GDP growth in Q4, -0.4% for the whole of 2012 and -0.3 % for 2013 (consensus -0.1%).

Current optimism likely to be challenged by poor economic data
Despite hope of an improvement in activity in Q1 2013, the overall picture remains very gloomy, especially for the periphery countries. Without external help (ECB unorthodox measures, fiscal federalism, etc.) these countries are likely to remain entrenched in recession. As a result, doubts about their ability to service their debt are likely to resurface and therefore to dent the optimism currently prevailing on financial markets.

Critics of President Obama’s 2011 aerial intervention in Libya may recall one of that conflict’s most striking features: the administration’s failure to invoke the 1973 War Powers Resolution(WPR). The War Powers Resolution is that tasteless congressional fruit of the late Vietnam War era. A war-weary Congress, finally cognizant of decade-long failure to perform its most important duty, passed the joint resolution over Nixon’s veto as US troops departed South Vietnam for home. Engendered by a well-founded if woefully tardy legislative realization that presidents of neither party could be trusted with sole authority over decisions regarding overseas bombing, strafing, and shooting—never mind that the Constitution provided no such unilateral power—the WPR placed some real if manageable limits on presidential war making power.

The WPR permits the president to commit US forces abroad only with the express authorization of Congress or when forced to by “a national emergency created by attack on the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.” The law requires the president to alert Congress within forty-eight hours of committing armed forces to combat. It limits their deployment to sixty days, plus a further thirty-day withdrawal period, without a declaration of war or authorization for the use of military force.

Without exception, chief executives from Nixon on claimed the act unconstitutional. It’s not as easy to play Imperial President when hemmed in by such legal nonsense. Nevertheless, presidents have by and large played along with the terms of the WPR, mostly because it hasn’t much cramped their interventionary muscles, and because successive Congresses have authorized presidential wars when asked. Party affiliation does not predict the most egregious gaming of the WPR. Clinton and Obama were and are as manipulative as were Reagan or the Bushs. Cowardly federal courts have shied away from determining the constitutionality of the law.

A strict reading of the law ought to have prevented nearly all of the 130 plus instances when presidents reported their armed actions to Congress under the resolution. This is so for the simple reason that the US and its armed forces rarely find themselves under attack. Ironically, 9/11, the “new Pearl Harbor,’ legally justified an armed response but the glaring absence of a conventional enemy (obvious to some of us even then) has bedeviled the US military ever since. But, of course, the WPR has not been subject to plain readings.

Instead, presidents have gone to war when they saw fit, twisting or ignoring the WPR as needed to preclude or fend off the principled protests of a handful of legislators. When compelled by the WPR to stop bombing Kosovo in 1999, Bill Clinton kept the planes flying more than two weeks past the sixty-day deadline on the theory that Congress had funded and thus implicitly authorized the operation, a  reading that directly contradicted the resolution’s clause that funding was not equivalent to authorization. When compelled by the WPR to stop bombing Libya in 2011, Barack Obama kept the planes flying long past the deadline on the theory that the hundreds of sorties did not constitute “hostilities,” and that the operation was under NATO not US command.

Considering President Obama’s disingenuous response to the WPR in 2011, what explains his timely report to Congress of US aerial participation in the failed French extrication of its captive agent from Somalia? Newfound respect for the rule of law? Hardly. Instead, the action enables the President to claim he adhered to the law in a low risk one-off operation on behalf of an ally while scoring points with François Hollande. The US will collaborate closely with France as the war in Mali escalates. If US participation is limited to drones, there will not be much clamor for invocation of the WPR. The test will come should the French get bogged down in the vast deserts of northern Mali, and the armed US role expands.

The French expressed surprise, after the downing of an attack helicopter, at how well armed are its Islamist opponents in Mali. But why the surprise? The US knows, as France surely must, that thousands of Soviet-era MANPADS (shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles), among other lethal hardware, went missing following the fall of Ghaddafi. Tuareg members of Ghaddafi’s military likely made off with a bunch of them as they returned home to northern Mali. Some of these surely made their way into the hands of the new Islamist overlords of northern Mali who quickly sidelined the Tuareg struggle for an independent homeland. Only some portion of them are probably still functional (they require charged battery packs), but these are weapons that can far more easily down airliners than contemporary military aircraft. They are dream weapons for harming the innocent, for producing ‘collateral damage.’ They are on the loose as a direct result of US/NATO intervention in Libya, the conflict where President Obama failed to abide by the War Powers Resolution.

The WPR is the vehicle by which Congress sought to reassert its authority in the wake of its tragic failure in Vietnam. It is arguably unnecessary given Congress’ enumerated powers to declare war and mind the national treasury. But constitutionally necessary or not, the WPR is a failed means to the noble end of limiting executive war making. Congress should begin immediate hearings to consider a replacement, and in the meantime insist the current administration adhere to its imperfect writ in Mali and elsewhere.

Steve Breyman is Associate Professor of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.

The official unemployment rate in the US may be slowly ticking down, but the rank of those who classify as ‘the working poor’ has continued to skyrocket, according to a new report.

A server waits on customers. Hit hardest by the trend of stagnant wages are those in service industries, like retail jobs, food preparation, clerical work and customer assistance. (Jeff Adkins/For the Chicago Tribune) Along with overall income inequality growth in the US, a new report by Working Poor Families Project says that over 200,000 families fell into poverty in 2011 even with both parents working. 

National job growth saw a recovery from the worst days following the 2008 housing crash and subsequent financial crisis, but even as the recession ebbed in some areas or for some groups, many middle class or lower-middle class workers who returned to employment did so with much reduced wages.

As lead author of the report, Brandon Roberts, points out in an op-ed at Reuters on Tuesday:

These are not just the unemployed. Rather they are families that, despite having a working adult in the home, earn less than twice the federal poverty income threshold — a widely recognized measure of family self-sufficiency. They are working, but making too little to build economically secure lives. And their number has grown steadily over the past five years.

They are cashiers and clerks, nursing assistants and lab technicians, truck drivers and waiters. Either they are unable to find good, full-time jobs, or their incomes are inadequate and their prospects for advancement are poor.

The report, which analyzed figures from the US Census in 2011, determined that nearly 10.4 million such families – or 47.5 million Americans – now live near poverty, defined as earning less than $45,622 for a family of four.

Data showed that the top 20 percent of Americans received 48 percent of all income while those in the bottom 20 percent got less than 5 percent.

Statistics also showed that roughly 23.5 million, or 37 percent, of U.S. children lived in working poor families compared with about 21 million, or 33 percent, in 2007, the report said.

“Although many people are returning to work, they are often taking jobs with lower wages and less job security, compared with the middle-class jobs they held before the economic downturn,” the report said. “This means that nearly a third of all working families … may not have enough money to meet basic needs.”

“We’re not on a good trajectory,” Brandon Roberts, who manages the privately-funded Working Poor Families Project, told The Washington Post. “The overall number of low-income working families is increasing despite the recovery.”

And Reuters reports:

The group’s analysis adds to the body of data focused on the slipping U.S. middle class even as there are signs of the nation’s economy slowly coming back to life with improvements in the housing sector and lower unemployment rate.

For some Americans, the comeback has yet to begin.

Data showed that the top 20 percent of Americans received 48 percent of all income while those in the bottom 20 percent got less than 5 percent, the report said.

The analysis also found regional differences.

States in the South, such as Georgia and South Carolina, and those in the West, such as Arizona and Nevada, had the greatest increase in the number of working poor. The increase was slower in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast.

“It’s important to draw attention to the fact that there are real families behind those statistics,” said Alan Essig, who heads the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, adding that his state is still struggling with housing and unemployment.

And the Washington Post adds:

The growth in the ranks of the working poor coincides with continued growth in income inequality. Many of the occupations experiencing the fastest job growth during the recovery also pay poorly. Among them are retail jobs, food preparation, clerical work and customer assistance.

___________________________

At a book festival in Los Angeles recently, some writers (myself included) were making the usual arguments about the problems with American politics in the 1950s — until one panelist shocked the audience by declaring, “God, I miss the Cold War.” His grandmother, he said, had come to California from Oklahoma with a grade-school education, but found a job in an aerospace factory in L.A. during World War II, joined the union, got healthcare and retirement benefits, and prospered in the Cold War years. She ended up owning a house in the suburbs and sending her kids to UCLA.

Several older people in the audience leaped to their feet shouting, “What about McCarthyism?” “The bomb?” “Vietnam?” “Nixon?”

All good points, of course. After all, during the Cold War the U.S. did threaten to destroy the world with nuclear weapons, supported brutal dictators globally because they were anti-communist, and was responsible for the deaths of several million people in Korea and Vietnam, all in the name of defending freedom. And yet it’s not hard to join that writer in feeling a certain nostalgia for the Cold War era. It couldn’t be a sadder thing to admit, given what happened in those years, but — given what’s happened in these years — who can doubt that the America of the 1950s and 1960s was, in some ways, simply a better place than the one we live in now? Here are eight things (from a prospectively longer list) we had then and don’t have now.

1. The president didn’t claim the right to kill American citizens without “the due process of law.”

Last year we learned that President Obama personally approved the killing-by-drone of an American citizen living abroad without any prior judicial proceedings. That was in Yemen, but as Amy Davidson wrote at the New Yorker website, “Why couldn’t it have been in Paris?” Obama assures us that the people he orders assassinated are “terrorists.” It would, however, be more accurate to call them “alleged terrorists,” or “alleged terrorist associates,” or “people said by some other government to be terrorists, or at least terroristic.”

Obama’s target in Yemen was Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen who was said to be a senior figure in al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. According to the book Kill or Capture by Daniel Klaidman, the president told his advisors, “I want Awlaki. Don’t let up on him.” Steve Coll of the New Yorker commented that this appears to be “the first instance in American history of a sitting president speaking of his intent to kill a particular U.S. citizen without that citizen having been charged formally with a crime or convicted at trial.” (Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, whom no one claims was connected to terrorist activities or terror plots, was also killed in a separate drone attack.)

The problem, of course, is the due-process clause of the Fifth Amendment, which prohibits “any person” from being deprived of “life, liberty, or property without due process of law.”  It doesn’t say: “any person except for those the president believes to be terrorists.”

It gets worse: the Justice Department can keep secret a memorandum providing the supposed “legal” justification for the targeted killing of a U.S. citizen, according to a January 2013 decision by a federal judge. Ruling on a Freedom of Information lawsuit brought by the ACLU and the New York Times, Judge Colleen McMahon, wrote in her decision, “I can find no way around the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the executive branch of our government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws while keeping the reasons for their conclusion a secret.”

It’s true that the CIA has admitted it had an assassination program during the Cold War — described in the so-called “family jewels” or “horrors book,” compiled in 1973 under CIA Director James Schlesinger in response to Watergate-era inquiries and declassifiedin 2007. But the targets were foreign leaders, especially Fidel Castro as well as the Congo’s Patrice Lumumba and the Dominican Republic’s Rafael Trujillo. Still, presidents preferred “plausible deniability” in such situations, and certainly no president before Obama publicly claimed the legal right to order the killing of American citizens. Indeed, before Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. regularly condemned “targeted killings” of suspected terrorists by Israel that were quite similar to those the president is now regularly ordering in the Pakistani tribal borderlands, Yemen, and possibly elsewhere.

2. We didn’t have a secret “terrorism-industrial complex.”

That’s the term coined by Dana Priest and William Arkin in their book Top Secret America to describe the ever-growing post-9/11 world of government agencies linked to private contractors charged with fighting terrorism. During the Cold War, we had a handful of government agencies doing “top secret” work; today, they found, we have more than 1,200.

For example, Priest and Arkin found 51 federal organizations and military commands that attempt to track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks. And don’t forget the nearly 2,000 for-profit corporate contractors that engage in top-secret work, supposedly hunting terrorists. The official budget for “intelligence” has increased from around $27 billion in the last years of the Cold War to $75 billion in 2012. Along with this massive expansion of government and private security activities has come a similarly humongous expansion of official secrecy: the number of classified documents has increased from perhaps 5 million a year before 1980 to 92 million in 2011, while Obama administration prosecutions of government whistleblowers have soared.

It’s true that the CIA and the FBI engaged in significant secret and illegal surveillance that included American citizens during the Cold War, but the scale was small compared to the post-9/11 world.

3. Organized labor was accepted as part of the social landscape. 

“Only a fool would try to deprive working men and women of their right to join the union of their choice.” That’s what President Dwight D. Eisenhower said in 1952. “Workers,” he added, “have a right to organize into unions and to bargain collectively with their employers,” and he affirmed that “a strong, free labor movement is an invigorating and necessary part of our industrial society.” He caught the mood of the moment this way: “Should any political party attempt to… eliminate labor laws, you would not hear of that party again in our political history.” “There is,” he acknowledged, “a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things, but their number is negligible… And they are stupid.” 

You certainly wouldn’t catch Barack Obama saying anything like that today.  

Back then, American unions were, in part, defended even by Republicans because they were considered a crucial aspect of the struggle against Communism. Unlike Soviet workers, American ones, so the argument went, were free to join independent unions. And amid a wave of productive wealth, union membership in Eisenhower’s America reached an all-time high: 34% of wage and salary workers in 1955. In 2011, union membership in the private sector had fallen under 7%, a level not seen since 1932.

Of course, back in the Cold War era the government required unions to kick communists out of any leadership positions they held and unions that refused were driven out of existence. Unions also repressed wildcat strikes and enforced labor peace in exchange for multi-year contracts with wage and benefit increases. But as we’ve learned in the last decades, if you’re a wageworker, almost any union is better than no union at all.

4. The government had to get a warrant before it could tap your phone. 

Today, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments Act (yes, thatrepetitive tongue twister is its real name) gives the government vast powers to spy on American citizens — and it’s just been extended to 2017 in a bill that Obama enthusiastically signed on December 29th. The current law allows the monitoring of electronic communications without an individualized court order, as long as the government claims its intent is to gather “foreign intelligence.” In recent years, much that was once illegal has been made the law of the land. Vast quantities of the emails and phone calls of Americans are being “data-mined.” Amendments approved by Congress in 2008, for instance, provided “retroactive immunity to the telecom companies that assisted the Bush administration in its warrantless wiretapping program,” which was then (or should have been) illegal, as the website Open Congress notes. 

There were several modest congressional attempts to amend the 2012 FISA extension act, including one that would have required the director of national intelligence to reveal how many Americans are being secretly monitored. That amendment would in no way have limited the government’s actual spying program. The Senate nevertheless rejected it, 52-43, in a nation that has locked itself down in a way that would have been inconceivable in the Cold War years.

It’s true that in the 1950s and 1960s judges typically gave the police and FBI the wiretap warrants they sought. But it’s probably also true that having to submit requests to judges had a chilling effect on the urge of government authorities to engage in unlimited wiretapping.

5. The infrastructure was being expanded and strengthened.

Today, our infrastructure is crumbling: bridges are collapsing, sewer systems are falling apart, power grids are failing. Many of those systems date from the immediate post-World War II years. And the supposedly titanic struggle against communism at home and abroad helped build them. The best-known example of those Cold War infrastructure construction programs was the congressionally mandated National Defense Highways Act of 1956, which led to the construction of 41,000 miles of the Interstate Highway System. It was the largest public works project in American history and it was necessary, according to the legislation, to “meet the requirements of the national defense in time of war.” People called the new highways “freeways” or “interstates,” but the official name was “the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways.”

Along with the construction of roads and bridges came a similar commitment to expanding water delivery systems and the electrical and telephone grids. Spending on infrastructure as a share of gross domestic product peaked in the 1960s at 3.1%. In 2007, it was down to 2.4% and is assumedly still falling.

Today the U.S. has dropped far behind potential global rivals in infrastructure development. An official panel of 80 experts noted that China is spending $1 trillion on high-speed rail, highways, and other infrastructure over the next five years. The U.S., according to the report, needs to invest $2 trillion simply to rebuild the roads, bridges, water lines, sewage systems, and dams constructed 40 to 50 years ago, systems that are now reaching the end of their planned life cycles. But federal spending cuts mean that the burden of infrastructure repair and replacement will fall on state and local governments, whose resources, as everyone knows, are completely inadequate for the task.

Of course, it’s true that the freeways built in the 1950s made the automobile the essential form of transportation in America and led to the withering away of public mass transit, and that the environment suffered as a result. Still, today’s collapsing bridges and sewers dramatize the loss of any serious national commitment to the public good.

6. College was cheap.

Tuition and fees at the University of California system in 1965 totaled $220. That’s the equivalent of about $1,600 today, and in 1965 you were talking about the best public university in the world. In 2012, the Regents of the University of California, presiding over an education system in crisis, raised tuition and fees for state residents to $13,200. And American students are now at least $1 trillion in debt, thanks to college loans that could consign many to lifetimes as debtors in return for subprime educations.

In 1958, in the panic that followed the Soviet Union’s successful launch of Sputnik, the first satellite, public universities got a massive infusion of federal money when the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) was passed. The Department of Education website today explains that the purpose of the NDEA was “to help ensure that highly trained individuals would be available to help America compete with the Soviet Union in scientific and technical fields.” For the first time, government grants became the major source of university funding for scientific research. The Act included a generous student-loan program.

With the end of the Cold War, federal funding was cut and public universities had little choice but to begin to make up the difference by increasing tuitions and fees, making students pay more — a lot more.

True, the NDEA grants in the 1960s required recipients to sign a demeaning oath swearing that they did not seek the violent overthrow of the U.S. government, and that lots of government funding then supported Cold War military and strategic objectives. After all, the University of California operated the nuclear weapons labs at Livermore and Los Alamos. Still, compare that to today’s crumbling public education system nationwide and who wouldn’t feel nostalgia for the Cold War era?

7. We had a president who called for a “war on poverty.”

In his 1966 State of the Union address, President Lyndon Baines Johnson argued that “the richest Nation on earth… people who live in abundance unmatched on this globe” ought to “bring the most urgent decencies of life to all of your fellow Americans.” LBJ insisted that it was possible both to fight communism globally (especially in Vietnam) and to fight poverty at home. As the phrase then went, he called for guns and butter. In addition, he was determined not simply to give money to poor people, but to help build “community action” groups that would organize them to define and fight for programs they wanted because, the president said, poor people know what’s best for themselves.

Of course, it’s true that Johnson’s “War on Poverty,” unlike the Vietnam War, was woefully underfunded, and that those community action groups were soon overpowered by local mayors and Democratic political machines. But it’s also true that President Obama did not even consider poverty worth mentioning as an issue in his 2012 reelection campaign, despite the fact that it has spread in ways that would have shocked LBJ, and that income and wealth inequalities between rich and poor have reached levels not seen since the late 1920s. Today, it’s still plenty of guns — but butter, not so much.

8. We had a president who warned against “the excessive power of the military-industrial complex.”

In Eisenhower’s “farewell address,” delivered three days before John F. Kennedy’s inauguration, the departing president warned against the “unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.” He declared that “the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” The speech introduced the phrase “military-industrial complex” into the vernacular. It was a crucial moment in the Cold War: a president who had also been the nation’s top military commander in World War II was warning Americans about the dangers posed by the military he had commanded and its corporate and political supporters.

Ike was prompted to give the speech because of his disputes with Congress over the military budget. He feared nuclear war and firmly opposed all talk about such a war being fought in a “limited” way. He also knew that, when it came to the Soviet Union, American power was staggeringly preponderant. And yet his opponents in the Democratic Party, the arms industry, and even the military were claiming that he hadn’t done enough for “defense” — not enough weapons bought, not enough money spent.  President-elect Kennedy had just won the 1960 election by frightening Americans about a purely fictitious “missile gap” between the U.S. and the Soviets.

It’s true that Ike’s warning would have been far more meaningful had it been in his first or even second inaugural address, or any of his State of the Union speeches. It’s also true that he had approved CIA coups in Iran and Guatemala, and had green-lighted planning for an invasion of Cuba (that would become Kennedy’s Bay of Pigs disaster). He had also established Mutual Assured Destruction as the basis for Cold War military strategy, backed up with B-52s carrying atomic bombs in the air 24/7.

By the end of his second term, however, Ike had changed his mind. His warning was not just against unnecessary spending, but also against institutions that were threatening a crisis he feared would bring the end of individual liberty. “As one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization,” the president urged his fellow citizens to resist the military-industrial complex. None of his successors has even tried, and in 2013 we’re living with the results.

…But there is one thing I do NOT miss about the Cold War: nuclear arsenals on hair-trigger alert.

Our Cold War enemy had nuclear weapons capable of destroying us, and the rest of the planet, many times over. In 1991, when the Cold War ended, the Soviet Union had more than 27,000 nuclear weapons.  According to the Federation of American Scientists, these included more than 11,000 strategic nuclear weapons — warheads on land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched missiles, and weapons on bombers capable of attacking the US — along with more than 15,000 warheads for “tactical” use as artillery shells and short-range “battlefield” missiles, as well as missile defense interceptors, nuclear torpedoes, and nuclear weapons for shorter-range aircraft. We learned in 1993 that the USSR at one time possessed almost 45,000 nuclear warheads, and still had nearly 1,200 tons of bomb-grade uranium. (Of course, sizeable Russian — and American — nuclear arsenals still exist.) In comparison to all that, the arsenalsof al-Qaeda and our other terrorist enemies are remarkably insignificant.

New York is expected to pass gun control legislation Tuesday that bans military-style rifles and imposes tighter restrictions on ammunition. The bill also brings forth new requirements that will keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill.

The bipartisan measure was passed 43-18 by the New York Senate and is expected to pass the Democratic-controlled Assembly early Tuesday afternoon. The measure would be the first gun control bill to pass since the gun massacre at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., which left 26 people dead, 20 of which were first grade children.

“This is a scourge on society,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday night about the shooting. “At what point do you say, ‘No more innocent loss of life.’”

In an attempt to reduce gun violence — especially mass shootings — New York legislators have been working together to impose greater restrictions on the sale of deadly weapons. The new bill further restricts assault weapons by defining them based on a single feature, rather than two features. Under current state law, assault weapons are defined based on having two “military rifle” features, such as a muzzle flash suppressor, a bayonet mount, a pistol grip, or a folding stock. By reducing the qualifications to only one feature, more guns would be considered “assault weapons” and would therefore subject potential buyers to tighter background checks.

New Yorkers would no longer be able to buy assault weapons over the Internet, would be subjected to a background check in order to make a purchase from a private dealer, and would be charged with a misdemeanor for failure to store their weapon safely.

“This is not about taking anyone’s rights away,” said Bronx Sen. Jeffrey Klein. “It’s about a safe society … today we are setting the mark for the rest of the country to do what’s right.”

The new provision also mandates a police registry of all assault weapons. Current owners will be required by law to register such weapons. New York would enter all information into a statewide gun registry, altering the current system in which each county or municipality sets its own standard.

New Yorkers will also be limited to purchasing magazines that carry seven bullets, which is a reduction from the current limit of 10.

To reduce the chance of the mentally ill acquiring weapons, therapists who believe their patients might have intentions to use a gun illegally will be required by law to report this to their mental health director, who will then report it to the state Department of Criminal Justice Services.

Additionally, penalties for gun crimes will be more severe than in the past. Taking a gun to a school, for example, would result in higher sentencing than previously.

Some opponents of tighter gun control regulations believe these measures are unnecessary and in some cases, unconstitutional.

“We have taken an entire category of firearms that are currently legal in the homes of law-abiding, tax-paying citizens. … We are now turning those law-abiding citizens into criminals,” said New York Sen. Greg Ball.

But Senate Republican leader Dean Skelos of Long Island believes the bill’s restrictions will only make the country safer without violating any rights.

“It is well-balanced, it protects the Second Amendment,” he said.

Meanwhile, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley has created a gun control proposal that is also expected to soon pass the state legislature.

“There is a sickness in our country. That sickness is gun violence,” O’Malley said Monday at a gun violence summit at Johns Hopkins University. “Perhaps there is no way to completely prevent the next Newtown tragedy. But then again, perhaps there is. None of us can predict the future… And, yet, we know every life is valuable.”

Like Cuomo, O’Malley plans to ban military-style “assault weapons” and limit the size of permitted gun magazines. He would also require tighter background checks and take steps to prevent guns from landing in the hands of the mentally ill.

The two governors have been leading figures in the post-Newtown gun control debate. While New York will most likely become the first in the nation to adopt tighter regulations after last month’s deadly massacre, other states may soon follow in Cuomo’s footsteps.

An investigation is under way at one of the country’s leading universities after students were alleged to have been caught having intercourse on camera during a safe sex ball.

The University of Exeter’s students’ guild has begun to look into the incident after footage from the event, during which an apparently naked couple appear to be having sex, was circulated on the internet.

The charity event was held just before Christmas.

A union spokesman said in a statement: “The students’ guild recognises that confidential CCTV footage has been filmed without our permission.

“The guild is making sure the affected parties will be supported during this difficult time.

“Measures were in place to provide high levels of security, but we are aware that irresponsible behaviour has taken place and we are working hard to rectify the situation.

“A full investigation is under way in which action proportionate to the seriousness of the situation will be taken.”

The university said it would be making no further comment.

Devon and Cornwall Police confirmed it had no plans to investigate the matter because a complaint of alleged criminal activity had not been made.

The University of Exeter recently accepted an invitation to join the Russell Group, which represents the UK’s leading research-intensive institutions, while it has also been named in the top ten of several recent “good university” guides.

According to Handelsblatt, a respected publication, Germany is serious about repatriating significant amounts of gold held outside of Germany, mostly by the Federal Reserve. This sends a message about storing gold near you and taking delivery no matter who is holding it.

When France did this years ago it sent panic amongst the US financial leadership to the degree of monetary aggression.

Why? The inviting question has always been does the US have fungible gold assets to the degree claimed.

ReservenBundesbank will deutsches Gold zurückholen
14.01.2013, 21:07 Uhr

Nach der Gründung der Bundesbank wurden große Teile der deutschen Goldreserven aus Sicherheitsgründen bei den Alliierten deponiert. Nun soll das Gold aus New York und Paris zurückgeholt werden.

Frankfurt. Die Bundesbank hat ein neues Konzept ausgearbeitet, wo sie künftig ihre Goldreserven lagern will. Nach Informationen des Handelsblatts sieht dieses Konzept, das am kommenden Mittwoch bekanntgegeben werden soll, vor, den heimischen Standort aufzuwerten, in New York dafür weniger Gold zu lagern und überhaupt kein Gold mehr in Paris zu horten.

Damit reagiert die Notenbank auch auf einen Bericht des Bundesrechnungshofes, der die Jahresabschlüsse der Bundesbank prüft und ihr empfohlen hatte, ein aktuelles Lagerstellenkonzept zu erstellen und zu dokumentieren.

More…

Charles De Gaulle was the first person in modern history to call the hand of the USA on its then obligation to convert French held dollar reserves into gold. I was a senior trader at the time.

History will look back on this salvo fired across US war financing as being the beginning of the end of the US dollar as the reserve currency of choice.

The reaction on the part of the US was to cut the tie between the dollar and convertibility. This again raises the question of does the USA have fungible gold to the degree that is claimed without 3rd party audits or any viewing publicly whatsoever.

If it is true as reliable sources today reported that Germany wishes to repatriate a significant amount of its gold, then that request is a modern version of the first salvo that Charles de Gaulle fired at the US treasury over convertibility.

Assume that no close violated Alf’s downside price and it is possible that today’s revelation concerning Germany is an event leading to gold’s first main target above the recent high of $2111. It is significant because under normal circumstances no major central bank would insult another major central bank in that manner.

Today’s report, if true, is a salvo fired at the concept that the USA has all the gold it claims and all the gold it stores for others. If true, this event is the most important gold development since Charles De Gaulle called the US hand that it would stand by convertibility which many then assumed it could not because even then the amount of gold held was publicly questioned.

Please review the following video of Charles De Gaulle

Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,

The Expansionist State is on the path to insolvency and systemic political crisis.

The S-Curve also helps us understand why the Expansionist Central State is doomed to inevitable implosion/collapse. This chart displays the key dynamics:

In its initial “boost phase,” State investment in the low-hanging fruit of public infrastructure offers a high yield. Examples include rural electrification, the rapid expansion of the railroad system, the construction of the Interstate Highway system, and the publicly funded research and development of science and technology that enabled the basic protocols and software infrastructure of the world wide web.
 

These investments of public tax revenues acted as multipliers of private investment and leaps in productivity.
 

We can see in the chart that modest fiscal deficits when public monies are leveraging fast growth in the overall economy have little consequence, for tax revenues are climbing more or less alongside State expenditures as the economy rapidly expands.
 

The key dynamic in State spending is this: the allocation of public capital is intrinsically a political process, not a market or communal process. Thus politically powerful cartels and guilds will secure State funding for their vested interests, and potentially higher-value investments will go begging.
 

This is the opportunity cost of any financial decision: the opportunities left behind in the decision-making must be weighed along with the purported benefits of the chosen avenue of spending.
 

As the State expands its share and control of the economy, this political allocation of capital and national income also expands. As the State grabs an ever-larger share of the economy and extends its Central Planning to every layer of the economy, the “best game in town” inevitably becomes lobbying the State for funds and perquisites.
 

Private investment decisions start being made on the basis of State subsidies and tax loopholes rather than market-based metrics. This dynamic is especially pernicious: not only does the State increasing choose to fund projects with diminishing returns as a result of political allocation, the State’s expansion of command and control distorts private investment as well.
 

The Expansionist State thus distorts the investment decisions of the entire economy, public and private. Households don’t buy a home because it is a fruitful investment, they buy it to obtain the mortgage interest deduction. Corporations buy medical-supply companies because they see Medicare as low-risk cash-cow, and so on.
 

State expenditures cease to yield productive returns as spending increasingly goes to politically favored cartels. Did the billions of dollars spent on the B-1 Bomber in the 1980s yield a weapons system that provided leverage amd dominance? No, it was a horrendously costly and inefficient jobs project, with the defense cartel skimming millions of dollars off a program that had been terminated by those who realized the money would be better spent on other defense needs.

Has higher education improved dramatically as a result of the vast increase in spending on higher education? Has the health of American improved dramatically as a result of the vast increase in spending on healthcare? The answer in both cases is obviously no. Increasing spending simply increases systemic friction and unproductive skimming.
 

Central State spending has reached the point of negative returns: money is dumped into cartels but the yield on the investment is near-zero. This is the point of stagnation, where spending keeps rising but tax revenues are no longer keeping pace because the State has become an enormous drag on the economy.
 

Political allocation of the national income knows no bounds. Politically, there are never any limits. If tax revenues aren’t keeping pace, then the State must borrow increasing sums of money to fund its spending. Politicians and their State fiefdoms/private-sector masters, the cartels of finance, defense, healthcare, education, construction, etc. are screaming for more funding; where it comes from is secondary to easing the political pain.
 

So the political class raises taxes on all but the parasitic class (finance) and wealthy cartels and corporations buy loopholes and exclusions to the new taxes. The burden falls on higher income households, who then have less to invest in the private sector.
 

We are at the inflection point indicated on the chart where the lines cross, just before the crisis: tax revenues are lagging spending in an enormous structural deficit; the State dominates the economy and its spending cannot possibly be contained, due to the political promises made to entitlement constituencies, fiefdoms and cartels, and the drag of unproductive State spending has sent the economy into systemic decline.
 

Each constituency, cartel and fiefdom is convinced that they are acting in their own best interests in demanding more State funding and subsidies. As a result, they are blind to the consequence of everyone becoming dependent on the Expansionist State: the collapse of a system that is now yielding a highly negative return on State spending.
 

When State spending is expanding faster than tax revenues (which are a function not just of tax rates but of economic expansion) and the underlying productive (non-State, non-finance) economy, then the gap can only be filled by borrowing money. This works until the interest on the fast-rising debt begins to crowd out spending on entitlements and other politically protected programs.
 

Progressives assume all State spending is productive; this is clearly a false assumption. Some State spending may be productive, but when it is allocated by a corrupting political process, the inevitable outcome is most State spending devolves to unproductive transfers from the politically weak to the politically powerful.
 

Tweaking tax policy or raising the debt ceiling will not change any of these dynamics.The Expansionist State is on the path to implosion (insolvency) and collapse, i.e. a political crisis. If we understand the core dynamics of the Expansionist Central State–the political allocation of scarce national income to favored constituencies and cartels–we understand why this process is inevitable.

New video with CHS and Gordon Long (25 min.): 2013 Themes:

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The Oscar nominations have been announced and despite much hope on this side of the pond there is no place for Skyfall in the Best Picture category. There is, however, a place for not one but two spy films telling good old fashioned patriotic tales: Argo and Zero Dark Thirty.  Argo tells the 1979-80 story of the ‘Canadian Caper’, part of the Iran hostage crisis in the wake of the ’79 revolution.  Zero Dark Thirty is the first big budget, big name production to depict the official story of the hunt for Osama Bin Laden, culminating in his death in May 2011.  Along with Lincoln, it is looking to be a great year for chest-beating, flag-saluting U!-S!-A!-chanting types.

Like Skyfall, Zero Dark Thirty is primarily a human story, focusing on the work of one CIA agent who is trying to find Bin Laden. Unsurprisingly, she is an attractive, young, white female, the demographic of character with the broadest appeal in the Western world.  ’Maya’ is shown tracking down Bin Laden over a number of years via a closely-trusted courier. Her insistence and persistence are a major factor in the success of the narrative in reaching its bloody climax. The other major factor is torture.

The film opens with an audio montage from 9/11, including the most-discussed ‘is this real world or exercise?’ dialogue from the NORAD tapes. With the horror of the attacks still ringing in our ears we are thrown forward several years and shown a ‘black site’ at an ‘undisclosed location’ where we are party to extended scenes of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’.

Hollywood’s Waterboard

The ‘detainees’ are portrayed being waterboarded, beaten, constantly degraded and insulted, generally abused and in one scene dehumanised by being made to strip naked and then led around on the floor via a dog collar and lead.  The sexual undertones to all this, particularly when S&M bonkbuster 50 Shades of Grey is the most successful book in recent memory, are presumably intended to titillate the audience.  This is Hollywood torture, where attractive young white spies dominate and humiliate tall dark strange terrorists.

This theme of dehumanising the ‘terrorists’ while sympathetically humanising the intelligence agents torturing them makes up most of the first hour of this lengthy film.  The implication is clear: the torture was a necessary response to 9/11.  This is the first major untruth of Zero Dark Thirty, as everything from the court record to declassified CIA ‘interrogation’ manuals proves that torture was an accepted practice in the more secretive agencies of governments in the US and beyond for decades prior to 9/11.

There has been considerable criticism of the films apparent advocation of torture in both the mainstream and alternative media, and some criticism of whether it is accurate to portray torture as being essential to the success of the hunt for Bin Laden.  Even acting CIA director Michael Morell said that the film, ‘creates the strong impression that the enhanced interrogation techniques that were part of our former detention and interrogation program were the key to finding Bin Laden. That impression is false.’  That torture was not only a necessary response to 9/11 but also that it was essential in finding the alleged sponsor of 9/11 — Bin Laden — is the second major untruth of the movie.

Despite this criticism, the question that hasn’t been asked is whether anything in this story is actually true.  Despite immense and perhaps unprecedented official co-operation in the making of Zero Dark Thirty struggled with basic facts.  For example, the film includes what was obviously a quite expensive CGI-laced reconstruction of the bus bombing in London on 7/7.  The film not only gets the route number of the bus wrong, it also shows it blowing up while moving rapidly (which it certainly wasn’t) and in the wrong spot in Tavistock Square.

These are quite basic details that one can establish with only a few minutes research.  That the filmmakers got these facts wrong illustrates that they weren’t really concerned with accuracy, but with telling a story in such a way that it would have an emotional impact.  The simulated bus explosion is just about the only action in the opening 40 minutes of the film that isn’t either torture sequences or CIA agents drinking coffee and looking stressed.  It livens up what is otherwise a horrifying but very tedious narrative.

Did they find Bin Laden?

According to Zero Dark Thirty, and much of the official information leaked or published before the film’s release, the CIA found Bin Laden’s courier and right-hand man Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti and he led them to the house in Abbottabad.  However, they were unable to get any kind of photographic or otherwise physical evidence of exactly who was in the house, and therefore whether it was Bin Laden.

The movie includes a scene showing then CIA director Leon Panetta asking his analysts how certain they are that Bin Laden is actually in the large, walled house in Abbottabad.  The answer comes back: 60% sure, with the notable exception of our sympathetic, flame-haired go-getting protagonist, who is 100% sure.  We never seen what Panetta said to President Obama because, despite Judicial Watch’s efforts to claim so, this wasn’t actually a party political film.  It was something far, far worse than that.  The presence of James Gandolfini — a man most famous for playing neurotic, serial killing gangster Tony Soprano — as head of the CIA is a sick joke that symbolises what this film is truly about.

According to the film the CIA and DOD were far from certain that they had actually found Bin Laden before the raid took place.  Nonetheless the order is given, and two stealth helicopters are provided for the job of getting over the Afghan border into Pakistan to carry out the assault.  The action is notably understated, with no musical score underpinning the various packs of SEALs running around the house shooting at people.  This is presumably to give the climax a realistic feel though it only requires a brief examination to find problems and questions.

The film offers a third version of events in the third floor of the house in Abbottabad.  Initial, officially-supported reports say that Bin Laden, or whoever the man was who was killed on the third floor of the house, used a woman as a human shield and fired shots at the encroaching SEALs before they killed him.

This story stood until it was directly contradicted in the 2012 book No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission that Killed Osama bin Laden.  In that book the pseudonymous Mark Owen says that ‘Bin Laden’ was unarmed and did not use anyone as a human shield.  Instead, he records how he was behind the ‘point man’ going up the stairs and that ‘Less than five steps’ from the top of the stairs he heard gunfire.  Apparently, ‘Bin Laden’ was shot when he ducked his head out from inside the room where he died.  No Easy Day replaced 50 Shades of Grey at the top of the bestseller lists shortly after September 11th 2012.

Zero Dark Thirty contradicts this again, showing no exchange of fire or human shields, but showing several SEALs waiting at the top of the stairs (not one with ‘Mark Owen’ a few steps further down).  They whisper ‘Osama’, and then when ‘Bin Laden’ opens the door they shoot him in the face.  While this is considerably closer to ‘Mark Owen’s version than to the White House version, it doesn’t fully replicate either story.

There are no sequences in Zero Dark Thirty depicting any kind of DNA testing, or the reported burial at sea that officially explains why there can be absolutely no external verification of who the man was that the SEALs shot on the third floor of that house.  Following the mission Zero Dark Thirty shows the body of ‘Bin Laden’ being flown back to a base in Afghanistan where it is quickly and unequivocally identified by the female CIA agent.

‘Maya’ is then shown getting into an immense cargo plane to fly home (on her own, a typically Pentagonian waste of resources) whereupon she breaks down and cries.  Again, the message is clear: what’s at stake here is not an illegal military operation and deception on a grand scale, but the fact that this pretty young woman doesn’t have anything to focus her life on anymore.

Official Secrets

The Bin Laden raid of early May 2011 was conducted in near-total secrecy.  No word of it leaked out beforehand.  In fact, and as Zero Dark Thirty highlights, by April 2011 there wasn’t much talk about Bin Laden and many people thought he was already dead and perhaps had been for several years.  It appears that no one even told the Pakistanis, despite the assault taking place on their soil.

It seems that the CIA had no specific information linking Bin Laden to the house before the raid.  The process by which the body was identified after the raid has been shrouded in secrecy.  FOIA requests from major mainstream news and ‘reputable’ lobbying organisations have been refused.  The DOD denies having a death certificate or any records of DNA testing or an autopsy.  They have also denied having any photographs of the body.

The DOD have released a small number of largely-redacted emails from people on the USS Vinson involved in the preparation and burial of the body.  While it does seem that a body was wrapped and buried at sea, none of the emails provide any confirmation of whose body it was and less than a dozen people were informed about what was happening.  No sailors watched the sea burial.  An email summarising the burial notes that, ‘The paucity of documentary evidence in our possession is a reflection of emphasis placed on operational security during the execution of this phase of the operation.’ The CIA have acknowledged that they hold some relevant records, both documents and photographs, but they have refused to release anything at all and so far the courts have backed them.

To fill the space left by ‘the paucity of documentary evidence’ we have been offered Zero Dark Thirty and we can expect a handful of copycat movies in the years to come.  It is a film that enjoyed truly extraordinary co-operation from the CIA, not just from the Office of Public Affairs but from everyone they dealt with in their pre-production meetings.  Even this was a largely secret matter, that we only know about now because the extremely partisan group Judicial Watch obtained many pages of emails detailing meetings between Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal and various people from the DOD and CIA.

Filling in the blanks

What is abundantly clear from these emails is just how enthusiastic the CIA were about the project, almost as though they had been sitting around waiting for someone to call them and ask about the Bin Laden raid.  The DOD were slightly more reticent, but ultimately very keen to help.  One email from July 17th 2011 details how meetings between CIA officials and Bigelow “went really, really well.  Mr Morell gave them 40 minutes, talked some of the substance again, told them we’re here to help with whatever they need, and gushed to Kathryn about how much he loved ‘The Hurt Locker’.”

Another CIA email says that, ‘We really do have a sense that this is going to be the movie about UBL — and we all want the CIA to be as well-represented in it as possible.’  Another email from the same person — Marie E Harf of the Office of Public Affairs — says, ‘I know we don’t pick favorites but it makes sense to get behind a winning horse… Mark and Kathryn’s movie is going to be the first and the biggest. It’s got the most money behind it, and two Oscar winners on board.’  It wasn’t all one way as another email records how Mark Boal ‘agreed to share scripts and details about the movie with us, so we’re absolutely comfortable with what he will be showing.’

The CIA even granted the filmmakers access to ‘The Vault’, an office where some of the key planning for the raid took place.  Similarly in one meeting with Boal and Bigelow the DOD even suggested a specific Navy SEAL for them to talk to about the raid.  These agencies have been so secretive about the assault itself, even when it is the mainstream news asking for information, and yet both the CIA and DOD were apparently willing to tell two Hollywood filmmakers all about it.  This is not just a hypocrisy, to fail to release evidence to the public while offering maximum possible information and assistance to Hollywood filmmakers.  It is the double dealing ‘secrecy’ of the security state.

In amongst the inaccuracies, the official revisionism, the humanising of faceless, murdering institutions and the endless glowering of the protagonist there is a dynamic at play that is crucial to understand and to resist.  The same pattern of behaviour can be found across almost all security services: refuse to release any facts, but give huge support to the fiction.  Just as the FAA/NORAD recordings asked ‘Is this real world or exercise?’ we might ask of Zero Dark Thirty: is this real world or myth-making? All the documents cited in this review can be download here, and they are perhaps as important for what they don’t record as they are for what they do.

The ultimate effect of this dynamic is the advanced of the security state.  Whoever was truly in that house in Abbottabad were actually killed, there appears to be no dispute about that.  There is no good reason, and certainly no hard evidence in the public domain, to believe that among those killed was Osama Bin Laden.  By refusing to release any evidence, but giving tremendous assistance to a Hollywood film depicting them in a very sympathetic light, the CIA and DOD have got away with murder, and even managed to get huge numbers of people to praise them for murder.

Indeed, the most poignant moment in the whole film, complete with emotive swelling music and softly edited slow-mo is when the SEALs have to blow up the downed stealth helicopter.  It is as though amongst all the murder and torture and traumatising of children and adults alike the loss of a helicopter is the greatest tragedy.  This truly alienated, immoral and boring film will no doubt win awards and make a handsome profit, but it is a vehicle for ongoing secrecy and ongoing violence.  It deserves to be boycotted, or at least to only be watched for free online at zero profit to the people who made it.

Same-sex marriage poses a “real threat” to the freedoms of teachers with traditionalist views, a Tory MP has warned.

David Burrowes said classrooms would be subjected to a “new state orthodoxy” where teachers who opposed gay weddings would be gagged for fear of being sacked.

His comments came as the former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey said legal advice showed churches which refused to marry gay couples could be sued and teachers sacked for refusing to teach about them.

However Burrowes also lashed out at a pro-life group’s “unhelpful and offensive” warnings that same-sex marriage could “gayify” straight children, insisting the issue was about marriage and not homosexuality.

The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) has written to secondary school heads calling for them to campaign against gay marriage.

As well as joining the warnings that “conscientious objectors” faced the sack, it highlighted fears schools would be forced to “promote homosexuality”.

At a launch event in London, one platform speaker warned of “invidious sexualisation” and gave graphic accounts of what she said was unsuitable material already shown to young people.

“Lads who would otherwise not be heading into ‘gayland’ will go there,” said Lisa Nolland, described as the convener of the Marriage, Sex and Culture Group of Anglican Mainstream.

Expanding gay sex education “will gayify our straight kids”, she added.

The approach drew a stinging retort from Burrowes during a question and answer session. He said he found it “offensive that the debate gets into this area”.

“That’s not needed or wanted,” he said, urging the group not to use the campaign against gay marriage for a more general attack on homosexuality.

He told the Huffington Post UK: “The campaign is about marriage, it is not about the issue of homosexuality. The focus is on whether marriage should be redefined or not.”

“I didn’t think it was helpful, or appropriate, or right, or relevant.”

“I was invited to a meeting about the real concerns there are among teachers about gay marriage.

“The issue is about teachers in schools who want to uphold the view of marriage as between a man and a woman who will feel reluctant to say that’s their view,” he said.

“People will feel circumscribed by a new state orthodoxy.

“As MPs we can say it until we are blue in the face but out in the classroom there will be a real threat to their freedoms.”

In his letter to peers Lord Carey said the advice of a senior lawyer prepared for the Coalition for Marriage campaign undermined the government’s “quadruple lock” to protect churches.

Ministers intend to legally bar the Church of England from carrying out same-sex marriages and put other measures in place to ensure no church is forced to against its wishes.

But the advice from Aidan O’Neill from Matrix Chambers suggested the ban was “eminently challengeable” in the European Court of Human Rights.

Lord Carey wrote: “More worrying still has been the failure of the government to see that they are creating significant problems for those working in the public sector, for parents and even children.

“Like you I was horrified at the treatment of Adrian Smith, the housing manager from Trafford, who was demoted and had his pay docked by 40% for posting a message to his friends on a social networking site, saying that gay marriage in churches was ‘an equality too far’.

“If the government presses ahead with its plans, cases like Mr Smith’s will almost certainly become commonplace.”

Colin Hart, campaign director of the Coalition for Marriage, said: “This detailed legal opinion puts a sword to the lie that the government’s safeguards will not be tested in the European Courts and the threats to them are negligible.”

At a book festival in Los Angeles recently, some writers (myself included) were making the usual arguments about the problems with American politics in the 1950s — until one panelist shocked the audience by declaring, “God, I miss the Cold War.” His grandmother, he said, had come to California from Oklahoma with a grade-school education, but found a job in an aerospace factory in L.A. during World War II, joined the union, got healthcare and retirement benefits, and prospered in the Cold War years. She ended up owning a house in the suburbs and sending her kids to UCLA.

Several older people in the audience leaped to their feet shouting, “What about McCarthyism?” “The bomb?” “Vietnam?” “Nixon?”

All good points, of course. After all, during the Cold War the U.S. did threaten to destroy the world with nuclear weapons, supported brutal dictators globally because they were anti-communist, and was responsible for the deaths of several million people in Korea and Vietnam, all in the name of defending freedom. And yet it’s not hard to join that writer in feeling a certain nostalgia for the Cold War era. It couldn’t be a sadder thing to admit, given what happened in those years, but — given what’s happened in these years — who can doubt that the America of the 1950s and 1960s was, in some ways, simply a better place than the one we live in now? Here are eight things (from a prospectively longer list) we had then and don’t have now.

1. The president didn’t claim the right to kill American citizens without “the due process of law.”

Last year we learned that President Obama personally approved the killing-by-drone of an American citizen living abroad without any prior judicial proceedings. That was in Yemen, but as Amy Davidson wrote at the New Yorker website, “Why couldn’t it have been in Paris?” Obama assures us that the people he orders assassinated are “terrorists.” It would, however, be more accurate to call them “alleged terrorists,” or “alleged terrorist associates,” or “people said by some other government to be terrorists, or at least terroristic.”

Obama’s target in Yemen was Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen who was said to be a senior figure in al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. According to the book Kill or Capture by Daniel Klaidman, the president told his advisors, “I want Awlaki. Don’t let up on him.” Steve Coll of the New Yorker commented that this appears to be “the first instance in American history of a sitting president speaking of his intent to kill a particular U.S. citizen without that citizen having been charged formally with a crime or convicted at trial.” (Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, whom no one claims was connected to terrorist activities or terror plots, was also killed in a separate drone attack.)

The problem, of course, is the due-process clause of the Fifth Amendment, which prohibits “any person” from being deprived of “life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” It doesn’t say: “any person except for those the president believes to be terrorists.”

It gets worse: the Justice Department can keep secret a memorandum providing the supposed “legal” justification for the targeted killing of a U.S. citizen, according to a January 2013 decision by a federal judge. Ruling on a Freedom of Information lawsuit brought by the ACLU and the New York Times, Judge Colleen McMahon, wrote in her decision, “I can find no way around the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the executive branch of our government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws while keeping the reasons for their conclusion a secret.”

It’s true that the CIA has admitted it had an assassination program during the Cold War — described in the so-called “family jewels” or “horrors book,” compiled in 1973 under CIA Director James Schlesinger in response to Watergate-era inquiries and declassified in 2007. But the targets were foreign leaders, especially Fidel Castro as well as the Congo’s Patrice Lumumba and the Dominican Republic’s Rafael Trujillo. Still, presidents preferred “plausible deniability” in such situations, and certainly no president before Obama publicly claimed the legal right to order the killing of American citizens. Indeed, before Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. regularly condemned “targeted killings” of suspected terrorists by Israel that were quite similar to those the president is now regularly ordering in the Pakistani tribal borderlands, Yemen, and possibly elsewhere.

2. We didn’t have a secret “terrorism-industrial complex.”

That’s the term coined by Dana Priest and William Arkin in their book Top Secret America to describe the ever-growing post-9/11 world of government agencies linked to private contractors charged with fighting terrorism. During the Cold War, we had a handful of government agencies doing “top secret” work; today, they found, we have more than 1,200.

For example, Priest and Arkin found 51 federal organizations and military commands that attempt to track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks. And don’t forget the nearly 2,000 for-profit corporate contractors that engage in top-secret work, supposedly hunting terrorists. The official budget for “intelligence” has increased from around $27 billion in the last years of the Cold War to $75 billion in 2012. Along with this massive expansion of government and private security activities has come a similarly humongous expansion of official secrecy: the number of classified documents has increased from perhaps 5 million a year before 1980 to 92 million in 2011, while Obama administration prosecutions of government whistleblowers have soared.

It’s true that the CIA and the FBI engaged in significant secret and illegal surveillance that included American citizens during the Cold War, but the scale was small compared to the post-9/11 world.

3. Organized labor was accepted as part of the social landscape. 

“Only a fool would try to deprive working men and women of their right to join the union of their choice.” That’s what President Dwight D. Eisenhower said in 1952. “Workers,” he added, “have a right to organize into unions and to bargain collectively with their employers,” and he affirmed that “a strong, free labor movement is an invigorating and necessary part of our industrial society.” He caught the mood of the moment this way: “Should any political party attempt to… eliminate labor laws, you would not hear of that party again in our political history.” “There is,” he acknowledged, “a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things, but their number is negligible… And they are stupid.” 

You certainly wouldn’t catch Barack Obama saying anything like that today.  

Back then, American unions were, in part, defended even by Republicans because they were considered a crucial aspect of the struggle against Communism. Unlike Soviet workers, American ones, so the argument went, were free to join independent unions. And amid a wave of productive wealth, union membership in Eisenhower’s America reached an all-time high: 34% of wage and salary workers in 1955. In 2011, union membership in the private sector had fallen under 7%, a level not seen since 1932.

Of course, back in the Cold War era the government required unions to kick communists out of any leadership positions they held and unions that refused were driven out of existence. Unions also repressed wildcat strikes and enforced labor peace in exchange for multi-year contracts with wage and benefit increases. But as we’ve learned in the last decades, if you’re a wageworker, almost any union is better than no union at all.

4. The government had to get a warrant before it could tap your phone. 

Today, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments Act (yes, that repetitive tongue twister is its real name) gives the government vast powers to spy on American citizens — and it’s just been extended to 2017 in a bill that Obama enthusiastically signed on December 29th. The current law allows the monitoring of electronic communications without an individualized court order, as long as the government claims its intent is to gather “foreign intelligence.” In recent years, much that was once illegal has been made the law of the land. Vast quantities of the emails and phone calls of Americans are being “data-mined.” Amendments approved by Congress in 2008, for instance, provided “retroactive immunity to the telecom companies that assisted the Bush administration in its warrantless wiretapping program,” which was then (or should have been) illegal, as the website Open Congress notes. 

There were several modest congressional attempts to amend the 2012 FISA extension act, including one that would have required the director of national intelligence to reveal how many Americans are being secretly monitored. That amendment would in no way have limited the government’s actual spying program. The Senate nevertheless rejected it, 52-43, in a nation that has locked itself down in a way that would have been inconceivable in the Cold War years.

It’s true that in the 1950s and 1960s judges typically gave the police and FBI the wiretap warrants they sought. But it’s probably also true that having to submit requests to judges had a chilling effect on the urge of government authorities to engage in unlimited wiretapping.

5. The infrastructure was being expanded and strengthened.

Today, our infrastructure is crumbling: bridges are collapsing, sewer systems are falling apart, power grids are failing. Many of those systems date from the immediate post-World War II years. And the supposedly titanic struggle against communism at home and abroad helped build them. The best-known example of those Cold War infrastructure construction programs was the congressionally mandated National Defense Highways Act of 1956, which led to the construction of 41,000 miles of the Interstate Highway System. It was the largest public works project in American history and it was necessary, according to the legislation, to “meet the requirements of the national defense in time of war.” People called the new highways “freeways” or “interstates,” but the official name was “the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways.”

Along with the construction of roads and bridges came a similar commitment to expanding water delivery systems and the electrical and telephone grids. Spending on infrastructure as a share of gross domestic product peaked in the 1960s at 3.1%. In 2007, it was down to 2.4% and is assumedly still falling.

Today the U.S. has dropped far behind potential global rivals in infrastructure development. An official panel of 80 experts noted that China is spending $1 trillion on high-speed rail, highways, and other infrastructure over the next five years. The U.S., according to the report, needs to invest $2 trillion simply to rebuild the roads, bridges, water lines, sewage systems, and dams constructed 40 to 50 years ago, systems that are now reaching the end of their planned life cycles. But federal spending cuts mean that the burden of infrastructure repair and replacement will fall on state and local governments, whose resources, as everyone knows, are completely inadequate for the task.

Of course, it’s true that the freeways built in the 1950s made the automobile the essential form of transportation in America and led to the withering away of public mass transit, and that the environment suffered as a result. Still, today’s collapsing bridges and sewers dramatize the loss of any serious national commitment to the public good.

6. College was cheap.

Tuition and fees at the University of California system in 1965 totaled $220. That’s the equivalent of about $1,600 today, and in 1965 you were talking about the best public university in the world. In 2012, the Regents of the University of California, presiding over an education system in crisis, raised tuition and fees for state residents to $13,200. And American students are now at least $1 trillion in debt, thanks to college loans that could consign many to lifetimes as debtors in return for subprime educations.

In 1958, in the panic that followed the Soviet Union’s successful launch of Sputnik, the first satellite, public universities got a massive infusion of federal money when the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) was passed. The Department of Education website today explains that the purpose of the NDEA was “to help ensure that highly trained individuals would be available to help America compete with the Soviet Union in scientific and technical fields.” For the first time, government grants became the major source of university funding for scientific research. The Act included a generous student-loan program.

With the end of the Cold War, federal funding was cut and public universities had little choice but to begin to make up the difference by increasing tuitions and fees, making students pay more — a lot more.

True, the NDEA grants in the 1960s required recipients to sign a demeaning oath swearing that they did not seek the violent overthrow of the U.S. government, and that lots of government funding then supported Cold War military and strategic objectives. After all, the University of California operated the nuclear weapons labs at Livermore and Los Alamos. Still, compare that to today’s crumbling public education system nationwide and who wouldn’t feel nostalgia for the Cold War era?

7. We had a president who called for a “war on poverty.”

In his 1966 State of the Union address, President Lyndon Baines Johnson argued that “the richest Nation on earth… people who live in abundance unmatched on this globe” ought to “bring the most urgent decencies of life to all of your fellow Americans.” LBJ insisted that it was possible both to fight communism globally (especially in Vietnam) and to fight poverty at home. As the phrase then went, he called for guns and butter. In addition, he was determined not simply to give money to poor people, but to help build “community action” groups that would organize them to define and fight for programs they wanted because, the president said, poor people know what’s best for themselves.

Of course, it’s true that Johnson’s “War on Poverty,” unlike the Vietnam War, was woefully underfunded, and that those community action groups were soon overpowered by local mayors and Democratic political machines. But it’s also true that President Obama did not even consider poverty worth mentioning as an issue in his 2012 reelection campaign, despite the fact that it has spread in ways that would have shocked LBJ, and that income and wealth inequalities between rich and poor have reached levels not seen since the late 1920s. Today, it’s still plenty of guns — but butter, not so much.

8. We had a president who warned against “the excessive power of the military-industrial complex.”

In Eisenhower’s “farewell address,” delivered three days before John F. Kennedy’s inauguration, the departing president warned against the “unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.” He declared that “the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” The speech introduced the phrase “military-industrial complex” into the vernacular. It was a crucial moment in the Cold War: a president who had also been the nation’s top military commander in World War II was warning Americans about the dangers posed by the military he had commanded and its corporate and political supporters.

Ike was prompted to give the speech because of his disputes with Congress over the military budget. He feared nuclear war and firmly opposed all talk about such a war being fought in a “limited” way. He also knew that, when it came to the Soviet Union, American power was staggeringly preponderant. And yet his opponents in the Democratic Party, the arms industry, and even the military were claiming that he hadn’t done enough for “defense” — not enough weapons bought, not enough money spent.  President-elect Kennedy had just won the 1960 election by frightening Americans about a purely fictitious “missile gap” between the U.S. and the Soviets.

It’s true that Ike’s warning would have been far more meaningful had it been in his first or even second inaugural address, or any of his State of the Union speeches. It’s also true that he had approved CIA coups in Iran and Guatemala, and had green-lighted planning for an invasion of Cuba (that would become Kennedy’s Bay of Pigs disaster). He had also established Mutual Assured Destruction as the basis for Cold War military strategy, backed up with B-52s carrying atomic bombs in the air 24/7.

By the end of his second term, however, Ike had changed his mind. His warning was not just against unnecessary spending, but also against institutions that were threatening a crisis he feared would bring the end of individual liberty. “As one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization,” the president urged his fellow citizens to resist the military-industrial complex. None of his successors has even tried, and in 2013 we’re living with the results.

…But there is one thing I do NOT miss about the Cold War: nuclear arsenals on hair-trigger alert.

Our Cold War enemy had nuclear weapons capable of destroying us, and the rest of the planet, many times over. In 1991, when the Cold War ended, the Soviet Union had more than 27,000 nuclear weapons.  According to the Federation of American Scientists, these included more than 11,000 strategic nuclear weapons — warheads on land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched missiles, and weapons on bombers capable of attacking the US — along with more than 15,000 warheads for “tactical” use as artillery shells and short-range “battlefield” missiles, as well as missile defense interceptors, nuclear torpedoes, and nuclear weapons for shorter-range aircraft. We learned in 1993 that the USSR at one time possessed almost 45,000 nuclear warheads, and still had nearly 1,200 tons of bomb-grade uranium. (Of course, sizeable Russian — and American — nuclear arsenals still exist.) In comparison to all that, the arsenals of al-Qaeda and our other terrorist enemies are remarkably insignificant.

© 2013 Jon Wiener

Jon Wiener teaches US history at UC Irvine. His latest book, How We Forgot the Cold War: A Historical Journey Across America (University of California Press), has just been published. He sued the FBI under the Freedom of Information Act for its files on John Lennon. With the help of the ACLU of Southern California, Wiener v. FBI went all the way to the Supreme Court before the FBI settled in 1997. That story is told in Wiener’s book, Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files.

At a book festival in Los Angeles recently, some writers (myself included) were making the usual arguments about the problems with American politics in the 1950s — until one panelist shocked the audience by declaring, “God, I miss the Cold War.” His grandmother, he said, had come to California from Oklahoma with a grade-school education, but found a job in an aerospace factory in L.A. during World War II, joined the union, got healthcare and retirement benefits, and prospered in the Cold War years. She ended up owning a house in the suburbs and sending her kids to UCLA.

Several older people in the audience leaped to their feet shouting, “What about McCarthyism?” “The bomb?” “Vietnam?” “Nixon?”

All good points, of course. After all, during the Cold War the U.S. did threaten to destroy the world with nuclear weapons, supported brutal dictators globally because they were anti-communist, and was responsible for the deaths of several million people in Korea and Vietnam, all in the name of defending freedom. And yet it’s not hard to join that writer in feeling a certain nostalgia for the Cold War era. It couldn’t be a sadder thing to admit, given what happened in those years, but — given what’s happened in these years — who can doubt that the America of the 1950s and 1960s was, in some ways, simply a better place than the one we live in now? Here are eight things (from a prospectively longer list) we had then and don’t have now.

1. The president didn’t claim the right to kill American citizens without “the due process of law.”

Last year we learned that President Obama personally approved the killing-by-drone of an American citizen living abroad without any prior judicial proceedings. That was in Yemen, but as Amy Davidson wrote at the New Yorker website, “Why couldn’t it have been in Paris?” Obama assures us that the people he orders assassinated are “terrorists.” It would, however, be more accurate to call them “alleged terrorists,” or “alleged terrorist associates,” or “people said by some other government to be terrorists, or at least terroristic.”

Obama’s target in Yemen was Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen who was said to be a senior figure in al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. According to the book Kill or Capture by Daniel Klaidman, the president told his advisors, “I want Awlaki. Don’t let up on him.” Steve Coll of the New Yorker commented that this appears to be “the first instance in American history of a sitting president speaking of his intent to kill a particular U.S. citizen without that citizen having been charged formally with a crime or convicted at trial.” (Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, whom no one claims was connected to terrorist activities or terror plots, was also killed in a separate drone attack.)

The problem, of course, is the due-process clause of the Fifth Amendment, which prohibits “any person” from being deprived of “life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” It doesn’t say: “any person except for those the president believes to be terrorists.”

It gets worse: the Justice Department can keep secret a memorandum providing the supposed “legal” justification for the targeted killing of a U.S. citizen, according to a January 2013 decision by a federal judge. Ruling on a Freedom of Information lawsuit brought by the ACLU and the New York Times, Judge Colleen McMahon, wrote in her decision, “I can find no way around the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the executive branch of our government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws while keeping the reasons for their conclusion a secret.”

It’s true that the CIA has admitted it had an assassination program during the Cold War — described in the so-called “family jewels” or “horrors book,” compiled in 1973 under CIA Director James Schlesinger in response to Watergate-era inquiries and declassified in 2007. But the targets were foreign leaders, especially Fidel Castro as well as the Congo’s Patrice Lumumba and the Dominican Republic’s Rafael Trujillo. Still, presidents preferred “plausible deniability” in such situations, and certainly no president before Obama publicly claimed the legal right to order the killing of American citizens. Indeed, before Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. regularly condemned “targeted killings” of suspected terrorists by Israel that were quite similar to those the president is now regularly ordering in the Pakistani tribal borderlands, Yemen, and possibly elsewhere.

2. We didn’t have a secret “terrorism-industrial complex.”

That’s the term coined by Dana Priest and William Arkin in their book Top Secret America to describe the ever-growing post-9/11 world of government agencies linked to private contractors charged with fighting terrorism. During the Cold War, we had a handful of government agencies doing “top secret” work; today, they found, we have more than 1,200.

For example, Priest and Arkin found 51 federal organizations and military commands that attempt to track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks. And don’t forget the nearly 2,000 for-profit corporate contractors that engage in top-secret work, supposedly hunting terrorists. The official budget for “intelligence” has increased from around $27 billion in the last years of the Cold War to $75 billion in 2012. Along with this massive expansion of government and private security activities has come a similarly humongous expansion of official secrecy: the number of classified documents has increased from perhaps 5 million a year before 1980 to 92 million in 2011, while Obama administration prosecutions of government whistleblowers have soared.

It’s true that the CIA and the FBI engaged in significant secret and illegal surveillance that included American citizens during the Cold War, but the scale was small compared to the post-9/11 world.

3. Organized labor was accepted as part of the social landscape. 

“Only a fool would try to deprive working men and women of their right to join the union of their choice.” That’s what President Dwight D. Eisenhower said in 1952. “Workers,” he added, “have a right to organize into unions and to bargain collectively with their employers,” and he affirmed that “a strong, free labor movement is an invigorating and necessary part of our industrial society.” He caught the mood of the moment this way: “Should any political party attempt to… eliminate labor laws, you would not hear of that party again in our political history.” “There is,” he acknowledged, “a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things, but their number is negligible… And they are stupid.” 

You certainly wouldn’t catch Barack Obama saying anything like that today.  

Back then, American unions were, in part, defended even by Republicans because they were considered a crucial aspect of the struggle against Communism. Unlike Soviet workers, American ones, so the argument went, were free to join independent unions. And amid a wave of productive wealth, union membership in Eisenhower’s America reached an all-time high: 34% of wage and salary workers in 1955. In 2011, union membership in the private sector had fallen under 7%, a level not seen since 1932.

Of course, back in the Cold War era the government required unions to kick communists out of any leadership positions they held and unions that refused were driven out of existence. Unions also repressed wildcat strikes and enforced labor peace in exchange for multi-year contracts with wage and benefit increases. But as we’ve learned in the last decades, if you’re a wageworker, almost any union is better than no union at all.

4. The government had to get a warrant before it could tap your phone. 

Today, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments Act (yes, that repetitive tongue twister is its real name) gives the government vast powers to spy on American citizens — and it’s just been extended to 2017 in a bill that Obama enthusiastically signed on December 29th. The current law allows the monitoring of electronic communications without an individualized court order, as long as the government claims its intent is to gather “foreign intelligence.” In recent years, much that was once illegal has been made the law of the land. Vast quantities of the emails and phone calls of Americans are being “data-mined.” Amendments approved by Congress in 2008, for instance, provided “retroactive immunity to the telecom companies that assisted the Bush administration in its warrantless wiretapping program,” which was then (or should have been) illegal, as the website Open Congress notes. 

There were several modest congressional attempts to amend the 2012 FISA extension act, including one that would have required the director of national intelligence to reveal how many Americans are being secretly monitored. That amendment would in no way have limited the government’s actual spying program. The Senate nevertheless rejected it, 52-43, in a nation that has locked itself down in a way that would have been inconceivable in the Cold War years.

It’s true that in the 1950s and 1960s judges typically gave the police and FBI the wiretap warrants they sought. But it’s probably also true that having to submit requests to judges had a chilling effect on the urge of government authorities to engage in unlimited wiretapping.

5. The infrastructure was being expanded and strengthened.

Today, our infrastructure is crumbling: bridges are collapsing, sewer systems are falling apart, power grids are failing. Many of those systems date from the immediate post-World War II years. And the supposedly titanic struggle against communism at home and abroad helped build them. The best-known example of those Cold War infrastructure construction programs was the congressionally mandated National Defense Highways Act of 1956, which led to the construction of 41,000 miles of the Interstate Highway System. It was the largest public works project in American history and it was necessary, according to the legislation, to “meet the requirements of the national defense in time of war.” People called the new highways “freeways” or “interstates,” but the official name was “the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways.”

Along with the construction of roads and bridges came a similar commitment to expanding water delivery systems and the electrical and telephone grids. Spending on infrastructure as a share of gross domestic product peaked in the 1960s at 3.1%. In 2007, it was down to 2.4% and is assumedly still falling.

Today the U.S. has dropped far behind potential global rivals in infrastructure development. An official panel of 80 experts noted that China is spending $1 trillion on high-speed rail, highways, and other infrastructure over the next five years. The U.S., according to the report, needs to invest $2 trillion simply to rebuild the roads, bridges, water lines, sewage systems, and dams constructed 40 to 50 years ago, systems that are now reaching the end of their planned life cycles. But federal spending cuts mean that the burden of infrastructure repair and replacement will fall on state and local governments, whose resources, as everyone knows, are completely inadequate for the task.

Of course, it’s true that the freeways built in the 1950s made the automobile the essential form of transportation in America and led to the withering away of public mass transit, and that the environment suffered as a result. Still, today’s collapsing bridges and sewers dramatize the loss of any serious national commitment to the public good.

6. College was cheap.

Tuition and fees at the University of California system in 1965 totaled $220. That’s the equivalent of about $1,600 today, and in 1965 you were talking about the best public university in the world. In 2012, the Regents of the University of California, presiding over an education system in crisis, raised tuition and fees for state residents to $13,200. And American students are now at least $1 trillion in debt, thanks to college loans that could consign many to lifetimes as debtors in return for subprime educations.

In 1958, in the panic that followed the Soviet Union’s successful launch of Sputnik, the first satellite, public universities got a massive infusion of federal money when the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) was passed. The Department of Education website today explains that the purpose of the NDEA was “to help ensure that highly trained individuals would be available to help America compete with the Soviet Union in scientific and technical fields.” For the first time, government grants became the major source of university funding for scientific research. The Act included a generous student-loan program.

With the end of the Cold War, federal funding was cut and public universities had little choice but to begin to make up the difference by increasing tuitions and fees, making students pay more — a lot more.

True, the NDEA grants in the 1960s required recipients to sign a demeaning oath swearing that they did not seek the violent overthrow of the U.S. government, and that lots of government funding then supported Cold War military and strategic objectives. After all, the University of California operated the nuclear weapons labs at Livermore and Los Alamos. Still, compare that to today’s crumbling public education system nationwide and who wouldn’t feel nostalgia for the Cold War era?

7. We had a president who called for a “war on poverty.”

In his 1966 State of the Union address, President Lyndon Baines Johnson argued that “the richest Nation on earth… people who live in abundance unmatched on this globe” ought to “bring the most urgent decencies of life to all of your fellow Americans.” LBJ insisted that it was possible both to fight communism globally (especially in Vietnam) and to fight poverty at home. As the phrase then went, he called for guns and butter. In addition, he was determined not simply to give money to poor people, but to help build “community action” groups that would organize them to define and fight for programs they wanted because, the president said, poor people know what’s best for themselves.

Of course, it’s true that Johnson’s “War on Poverty,” unlike the Vietnam War, was woefully underfunded, and that those community action groups were soon overpowered by local mayors and Democratic political machines. But it’s also true that President Obama did not even consider poverty worth mentioning as an issue in his 2012 reelection campaign, despite the fact that it has spread in ways that would have shocked LBJ, and that income and wealth inequalities between rich and poor have reached levels not seen since the late 1920s. Today, it’s still plenty of guns — but butter, not so much.

8. We had a president who warned against “the excessive power of the military-industrial complex.”

In Eisenhower’s “farewell address,” delivered three days before John F. Kennedy’s inauguration, the departing president warned against the “unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.” He declared that “the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” The speech introduced the phrase “military-industrial complex” into the vernacular. It was a crucial moment in the Cold War: a president who had also been the nation’s top military commander in World War II was warning Americans about the dangers posed by the military he had commanded and its corporate and political supporters.

Ike was prompted to give the speech because of his disputes with Congress over the military budget. He feared nuclear war and firmly opposed all talk about such a war being fought in a “limited” way. He also knew that, when it came to the Soviet Union, American power was staggeringly preponderant. And yet his opponents in the Democratic Party, the arms industry, and even the military were claiming that he hadn’t done enough for “defense” — not enough weapons bought, not enough money spent.  President-elect Kennedy had just won the 1960 election by frightening Americans about a purely fictitious “missile gap” between the U.S. and the Soviets.

It’s true that Ike’s warning would have been far more meaningful had it been in his first or even second inaugural address, or any of his State of the Union speeches. It’s also true that he had approved CIA coups in Iran and Guatemala, and had green-lighted planning for an invasion of Cuba (that would become Kennedy’s Bay of Pigs disaster). He had also established Mutual Assured Destruction as the basis for Cold War military strategy, backed up with B-52s carrying atomic bombs in the air 24/7.

By the end of his second term, however, Ike had changed his mind. His warning was not just against unnecessary spending, but also against institutions that were threatening a crisis he feared would bring the end of individual liberty. “As one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization,” the president urged his fellow citizens to resist the military-industrial complex. None of his successors has even tried, and in 2013 we’re living with the results.

…But there is one thing I do NOT miss about the Cold War: nuclear arsenals on hair-trigger alert.

Our Cold War enemy had nuclear weapons capable of destroying us, and the rest of the planet, many times over. In 1991, when the Cold War ended, the Soviet Union had more than 27,000 nuclear weapons.  According to the Federation of American Scientists, these included more than 11,000 strategic nuclear weapons — warheads on land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched missiles, and weapons on bombers capable of attacking the US — along with more than 15,000 warheads for “tactical” use as artillery shells and short-range “battlefield” missiles, as well as missile defense interceptors, nuclear torpedoes, and nuclear weapons for shorter-range aircraft. We learned in 1993 that the USSR at one time possessed almost 45,000 nuclear warheads, and still had nearly 1,200 tons of bomb-grade uranium. (Of course, sizeable Russian — and American — nuclear arsenals still exist.) In comparison to all that, the arsenals of al-Qaeda and our other terrorist enemies are remarkably insignificant.

© 2013 Jon Wiener

Jon Wiener teaches US history at UC Irvine. His latest book, How We Forgot the Cold War: A Historical Journey Across America (University of California Press), has just been published. He sued the FBI under the Freedom of Information Act for its files on John Lennon. With the help of the ACLU of Southern California, Wiener v. FBI went all the way to the Supreme Court before the FBI settled in 1997. That story is told in Wiener’s book, Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files.

British Airways employee Nadia Eweida holds her crucifix as she poses for a picture in central London on January 15, 2013.(AFP Photo / Carl Court)

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled that British Airways violated an employee’s right to freedom of religion by firing her for wearing a crucifix at work. The Strasbourg court awarded the Coptic Christian 32,000 euros in compensation.

­“The domestic authorities failed sufficiently to protect the first applicant’s right to manifest her religion, in breach of the positive obligation under article 9,” the ECHR said in a majority ruling, citing Article 9 of the European Convention of Human Rights, which guarantees freedom of thought, conscience and religion.

Nadia Eweida, a practicing Coptic Christian, was awarded €2,000 ($2,665) in compensation by the court after it ruled against an earlier decision by UK courts. A further €30,000 (almost $40,000) was awarded in legal costs. The British Airways check-in clerk was asked to leave her job in 2006 after refusing to remove her crucifix.

A UK employment tribunal ruled that Eweida had not been subjected to religious discrimination. However, by the time the court made its ruling, British Airways had already changed its uniform code on visible items of jewelry to allow symbols of faith to be worn.

“The fact that the company was able to amend the uniform code to allow for the visible wearing of religious symbolic jewelry demonstrates that the earlier prohibition was not of crucial importance,” the judges said in a comment on British Airways’ police change.

The ECHR ruling said the British court had failed to balance the competing issues in Eweida’s case. While the employer wished to protect a certain corporate image, Eweida desired to display her religious beliefs. Though British Airways had a legitimate motive, “the domestic courts accorded it too much weight,” the ECHR’s judgment said.  

With Eweida’s case as precedent, Strasbourg was not quite so benevolent to another complainant.

Shirley Chaplain, a nurse from Exeter, was transferred to a desk job by the Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Trust for refusing to remove a confirmation crucifix she had worn for 30 years. Though the case appears to be almost identical to Eweida’s, the judges ruled unanimously that the British courts had resolved Chaplain’s issue fairly.

The ECHR judges ruled that the request by the hospital authorities to remove the cross for reasons of health and safety to prevent the spread of infections “was inherently more important,” and that the hospital was “well placed to make decisions about clinical safety.”

UK Prime Minster David Cameron said he was “delighted” by the ECHR’s ruling, and that the “principle of wearing religious symbols at work has been upheld.”  

But Keith Porteous-Wood of the National Secular Society said the idea of a ban on wearing crosses was “absolutely risible,” because hundreds of thousands of people around the UK wear crosses “with no problem at all.”

Porteous-Wood said he was delighted with the ruling because “we don’t want to see a hierarchy of rights with religion at the top.”

Protesters braved a rare, wet snow as they demonstrated against the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline in Vancouver on Monday Jan. 14. (Photo:Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press)Thousands of activists marched on downtown Vancouver Monday to protest the nature of public hearings on the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline, claiming that “the public” opponents of the pipeline are being locked out while industry backers are given special access.

Buoyed by the recent vigor of the Idle No More campaign, environmental activists, indigenous groups and other opponents of the proposed tar sands pipeline condemned the public portion of the National Energy Board (NEB) panel hearings on the basis that they limit public comment.

“They’re constraining the dialogue,” said protest organizer Suresh Fernando, explaining that the presenters are being restrained in what they can say. For example, they “can’t make reference …to the oilsands and the bigger picture.”

Despite being heralded as “public”, the hearings are restricted to presenters, members of the NEB panel, industry backers including Enbridge representatives; members of the community are secluded to a seperate venue where they watch the proceedings via live stream.

According to a blog post on the Pipe Up Against Enbridge site, “the process set up to review the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline and tankers project, is keeping the public out of the public process.”

They continue:

Anyone who wishes to witness the proceedings can only do so at a separate hotel, three kilometres away, via a video feed.

This separation of public from public process is happening only for the community hearings in Victoria and Vancouver. These hearings are the only substantive opportunity for concerned citizens to share their concerns with the panel. They should also be the opportunity for us to witness our friends, neighbours, and community members, to watch and listen to the diversity of voices, the diversity of reasons for opposing tankers and pipelines.

Because it is through bearing witness, through listening to each other, that we build community and can work together to take whatever steps are needed to protect our coast.

But we are being denied witness.

In an address to the crowd outside, Eddie Gardner of the Stó:lo Nation blasted Stephen Harper, the Canadian Prime Minister, and other conservatives for recent changes made to environental laws declaring, “the Harper government has one of the most aggressive, high-carbon strategies in the world.”

He continued:

[Harper] implemented that legislation, it has become law, and he did it with crass and ruthless disregard for the environment.

Stephen Harper is hell bent to expand the tar sands.

Canada is coming alive to Harper’s real agenda… He is one of the biggest enemies of the environment.

The Canadian Press reports that the protests were “bolstered” by the “nationwide Idle No More campaign, which brought First Nations from as far as the Haisla Nation on the North Coast, near the would-be tanker port of Kitimat, B.C.”

The joint review panel is canvassing communities throughout B.C. and Alberta for comment on the proposed pipeline and has scheduled eight days of community hearings in Vancouver in the coming weeks. According to NEB spokeswoman Kristen Higgins, “(Whatever) information is on the public record is the information the panel can use to write their reports and make their recommendations.”

_____________________

Those who did make it in to the hearings did so with great effort. According to Pipe Up Against Enbridge, presenters had to register 18 months ago and schedule a presentation six months ago, “all without knowing when or where you would be speaking.” Reporting on some of the pipeline opponents testimonies, they wrote:

Dr. Gerald Graham, trained in marine response by the Canadian Coast Guard, said “the consequences of a major spill could be catastrophic and irreversible.” Reverend Ken Gray, an Anglican priest, reminded us to not treat others–including First Nations and all of creation–as we do not wish to be treated. This project, he said, “will injure us all and provide a shameful heritage for generations to come.”

A tar sands worker, Lliam Hildebrand, said that he would rather be using his trade to work in renewable energy. He shared with the panel a survey he conducted with his coworkers, “the hands and feet of our energy future.” A strong majority of these workers support a moratorium on raw oil exports and the transition of oil and gas subsidies to the renewable energy sector. “Workers in the oil sands understand that this project doesn’t make sense to Canada.”

_____________________

Outside of the hotel where the panel is taking place, a group of local multi-media artists erected a 25-foot-long installation called Hope the Whale. Twitter posts (#hopethewhale), videos and photos are projected onto the white whale’s skin, “to symbolize the expansive and growing community of people with a vision of an oil-free coast in BC,” wrote the group Pipe Up Against Enbridge.

Hope the Whale from Zack Embree on Vimeo.

One of the biggest “givens” of the New Normal was that no matter what happens, US corporations would build their cash hoard come hell or high water. Whether this was a function of saving for a rainy day in a world in which external liquidity could evaporate overnight, whether it was to have dry powder for dividends and other shareholder friendly transactions, or to be able to engage in M&A and other business transformations (but not CapEx, anything but CapEx), corporate cash swelled to over $2 trillion (the bulk of it held in deposit accounts, or directly invested in “cash equivalents” i.e. risk assets, in banks in the US and abroad). Whatever the use of funds, the source was quite clear: ever declining interests rate which allowed corporate refinancings into ever lower cash rates, a “buyer’s market” when it comes to employees, the bulk of which have been transformed into low paid geriatric (55 years and older), part-time workers: the only two categories that have seen a steady improvement in employment since the start of the second great depression, and low, low corporate taxes (for cash tax purposes; for GAAP purposes it is different story altogether). So some may be surprised that the great corporate cash hoard build appears to have finally tapered off. As the chart below from Goldman shows, after hitting an all time high of 11.2%, the ratio of S&P500 cash to total assets has once again started to decline.

The implications of this chart may be innocuous, or, more likely, they may be very profound.

Recall that it was about 2 quarters ago that corporate profit margins peaked and have since declined steadily. Add to that the decline in revenues and EPS, and one can see that the natural cash generation capacity of US companies is also declining in parallel. Of course, as this is a ratio, the question is what other assets are rising to compensate for it.

We know what assets are not rising: Net P,P&E for one has been flat at best if not declining, as the rate of Depreciation and Amortization has been far greater than CapEx investments in recent years. While this has been a benefit for cash flow creation (lower taxes), it has also meant that future revenues will continue contracting as absent reinvestment in a business, absent renewing the capital base of businesses, there can be no organic growth.

Which means the offset may be rising goodwill, which is possible with the recent increase in M&A, although as the H&P – Autonomy transaction showed, goodwill on balance sheets is one fraudulent reports away from being fully written down.

It could also be Net Working Capital, which however means that more and more corporate liquidity is locked up in Net-30/60/ or 90 terms, which while indicative of some easing in counterparty confidence, means that should companies need full access to their cash, they won’t have it.

Finally, it may well be a pure and simply outflow of cash as more and more is dividended to shareholders, or as retained earnings are built up following stock repurchases, following urgent shareholder demands to boost returns.

We hope to have a far more detailed answer to the question what is offsetting the drop in Corporate cash after the earning season is over, when we can analyze the full S&P500 balance sheet on a sequential basis. 

But what is certain is that the days of the inexorable corporate cash growth are now over, and cash is now declining. What is also declining is the future growth of corporations, as well as their general profitability, even as their capex spending remains at near all time low depressed levels, while the asset base is aging faster and faster, generating lower and lower ROAs. One thing that will certainly be rising for US corporations, are cash tax rates, meaning even more cash outflows.

Which leads us to square one: now that corporate cash is once again declining, as it did in the period from the early 2000s until 2007 when the Great Depression 2.0 hit, only to soar afterward, does this mean that any hope of aggressive corporate EPS growth is now limited at best, and any future growth in the S&P is solely due to multiple expansion driven by the Fed’s dilution of money in circulation. And since the answer is yes, the problem with the latter is that multiple expansion works, until it doesn’t – i.e., until such time as the pace of input cost increase overwhelms the rise in revenues, and the only way for corporate profitability, and shareholders returns, is down.

That will be the time to get out of corporate Dodge.

We are members of Peaceful Uprising and Utah Tar Sands Resistance, groups that are working to stop tar sands mining from beginning in Utah. As tar sands mining is scheduled to begin in Utah in 2013, we deeply valued the chance to visit the Tar Sands Blockade in Texas several months ago to gain insight from other grassroots organizers. Finding solidarity across such a distance inspired this piece.

On January 10, Oklahomans marched on a section of the Keystone XL pipeline in Stroud, Okla., to launch a direct action campaign against the project. Just three days earlier, more than 100 activists stormed into the Houston headquarters of TransCanada, the corporation contracted to build Keystone. Meanwhile, a new tree-sit went up to block the path of the pipeline’s construction in Diboll, Texas. These actions represent the spirit of Blockadia–a vast but interwoven web of campaigns standing up against the fossil fuel industry and demanding an end to the development of tar sands pipelines.

Blockadia is a place where the future of the environmental movement is being negotiated. In this vast region of proposed tar sands pipelines–particularly the Keystone XL, which reaches from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico; and the Northern Gateway, which extends from Alberta to the coast of British Columbia–communities are engaged in struggles that draw strength from one another. From ahunger strike in Houston to the third annual signingof the Save the Fraser Declaration in Vancouver, these communities have been ramping up their efforts in recent weeks.

Complemented by the recent firestorm of actions for indigenous rights by the Idle No More movement across Canada and the world, Blockadia is bringing a renewed emphasis on social justice to the environmental movement.

The efforts of communities throughout Blockadia share three main characteristics that make the struggle against tar sands pipelines different than any environmental campaign in U.S. history: the normalization of direct action; the involvement of rural and indigenous groups along with more typical “activists;” and the ability of tar sands extraction to motivate even those who tolerated conventional oil pipelines.

Through these qualities, Blockadia’s campaigns are building a unified front larger than anything the environmental movement has ever seen, making the struggle potentially winnable despite the steep odds against it.

1. Normalization of direct action in land defense

The communities along the pipeline routes have come to accept that it’s OK for people who don’t fit into a typical activist stereotype (think young, urban, and highly educated) to practice civil disobedience to protect their land. In Texas and elsewhere, rural landowners and others who never imagined themselves diving into direct action are doing so because it’s their only recourse to protect their homes and families. In Texas, landowners such as the 78-year-old Eleanor Fairchild have stood in the way of bulldozers.

“Direct action is scary, it’s technical, and it does require some knowledge and skill sharing,” says Ron Seifert, spokesperson for the Tar Sands Blockade. Nonetheless, when all other strategies have failed, locals have embraced itBlockadia isn’t just a Texas thing. Geraldine Thomas-Flurer, coordinator of the Yinka Dene Alliance–a group of six First Nations that stands against the Northern Gateway pipeline, which would carry tar sands from the Alberta mines to the coast of British Columbia–says the First Nations in this region are prepared to physically block its construction if it comes to that. Over 130 First Nations have signed onto a declaration prohibiting the pipeline–the Save the Fraser Declaration–that was coordinated by the Yinka Dene Alliance.“Many of our chiefs have said that they would lay down their lives in a nonviolent way if it came to that,” Thomas-Flurer says. “People have said they would die for this. I would die to stop this.” 

Jane Kleeb of Bold Nebraska, a group that defends the rights of bread-basket landowners facing TransCanada’s legal team, makes a similar point. “If construction were to start in our state, you would see people doing civil disobedience, no doubt.Some Nebraskans traveled to Washington, D.C., for the protests against the Keystone XL in August 2011, which ended in mass arrests.

“Some of the old timers say they’ve never picketed in their entire lives,” Kleeb says. “I could definitely see these [people] blocking roads with their pickup trucks or blocking roads with themselves and their neighbors.” She also pictures locals moving cattle into the pipeline’s path to stop construction, techniques that take advantage of the flat landscape and available resources.

2. Involvement of rural communities and indigenous peoples

Another way Blockadia differs from earlier movements is that local people are taking leading roles because they understand how the pipelines will affect their lives. This stands in stark contrast to other high-profile environmental campaigns–such as protests against mountaintop removal in Appalachia and the efforts to block logging in the Pacific Northwest–that culminated in bitter hostilities between non-resident organizers and locals who felt their livelihood was under attack.

Locals are not showing up holding pro-pipeline signs in this struggle. That’s due to the effective outreach concerned locals have made to their own communities.

Ron Seifert, spokesperson for the Tar Sands Blockade, emphasizes that local people began working to stop the pipeline years ago. Only later did non-resident activists come in and join with locals, who had already been drawing publicity toward the issue.

Geraldine Thomas-Flurer says First Nations and non-indigenous people are working together in solidarity in British Columbia. “It’s a unified voice,” she asserts, adding that the majority of the public in the province stands firmly against tar sands pipelines. “I never thought I would ever see the day that we would come together. Relationships are changing, stereotypes are disappearing, there’s more respect for one another. If anything, this Enbridge Northern Gateway has unified British Columbia.”

Labor is also joining the opposition. Dave Coles, president of Canada’s Communications, Energy, and Paperworkers Union, says a huge portion of workers in Alberta’s tar sands industry stand firmly against tar sands pipelines. “We represent thousands and thousands of members in the tar sands,” he says. “Our members who work in the tar sands are unanimous in their support for killing this thing.”

Not only do energy workers understand that the energy sector’s economic boom and bust cycle will eventually put them out of a job, he says, but they hold that the pipeline would be detrimental to Canada for economic reasons, as well as for human rights and the environment.

Although TransCanada and Enbridge have tried to launch counter-campaigns in support of the pipelines, these have not been successful. Enbridge launched a massive campaign to draw support for the Northern Gateway, but Thomas-Flurer says that it hasn’t been working.

“Enbridge tries to stir the pot,” she says. “They’re gonna try to divide and conquer. We’ve been there, done that. It’s old hat to us because it’s happened to our people throughout history.”

The building trades sector has also attempted to launch counter-protests, says Coles, but these have been driven by leadership rather than workers, and thus lack momentum.

Seifert adds that TransCanada’s propaganda campaign has been largely ineffective. “We have yet to be met with counter-protests,” he notes, saying the credit for that belongs to “local communities who have spent years building awareness.”

Another reason why counter-protests haven’t taken hold in the U.S. is that locals know they’re fighting a foreign corporation. According to Kleeb, “You constantly hear ranchers and farmers say, ‘How in America can a foreign corporation take land that my ancestors homesteaded, that portions of their family died for in the Dust Bowl?’”

In British Columbia, First Nations are also fighting against an invasive power. “We’ve never signed a treaty,” Thomas-Flurer says. “We’ve never ceded our land. We’ve never gone to war. We’ve never given up title to our traditional territories. And the law is on our side.”

3. People who tolerated fracking and oil pipelines are drawing the line at tar sands

Many of those rising up against tar sands pipelines tolerated other industries that environmentalists consider highly polluting. But the dangers of tar sands pipelines are too hard to ignore.

Earl Hatley, Riverkeeper of the Grand River in the Waterkeeper Allliance and member of the Cherokee Nation, is leading a battle against the Keystone XL in the Oklahoma courts. “I’m not against oil and gas pipelines,” he says. “I just couldn’t sit back in my watershed with all the problems that I’m facing and watch the pipeline go through.”

In Texas, one of the landowners who has been most outspoken about the pipeline–and who was arrested in October for standing in the way of a bulldozer–has been invested in the oil industry for much of her life, says Seifert.

“Eleanor Fairchild is the widow of an oil geologist, and her family was involved with the oil industry, and she’s not opposed to pipelines categorically or fossil fuels categorically,” he says.

Though Texas is known for its allegiance to the oil industry, many people felt betrayed by the industry’s deception.

“TransCanada misrepresented its pipeline to everyone,” Seifert explains. “It never mentioned to anyone that it was a tar sands pipeline, ever.” Tar sands pipelines carry diluted bitumen–tar sands oil–along with highly toxic solvents that are necessary to make the thick slurry flow through a pipe.

“A lot of people didn’t know what tar sands were at first, but they were outraged when they found out,” Seifert says. “They were outraged that they were never told what will be in the pipe.”

The future of Blockadia

Whether these unique factors will add up to a victory is anyone’s guess. Some seemingly key ingredients to success–ones that other campaigns like the anti-nuclear movement of the 1980s achieved–are still absent. This issue hasn’t cracked popular media, and as a consequence, few people besides environmentalists and front-line communities have heard about it. Tar sands hasn’t become a campaign issue in electoral politics, either.

Nevertheless, the three unifying factors of Blockadia form a vital foundation that gives this movement a chance not only to block the proposed tar-sands pipelines, but to radicalize the environmental movement as well. With historically marginalized people stepping into the forefront of the movement, and historically privileged groups fighting for rights they once took for granted, momentum is building.

The coming months will show whether Blockadia can win the hearts and minds of the broader public, catalyzing neighboring communities into action and creating the overwhelming support that would be required for the campaigns to achieve their ultimate goals.

In the meantime, throughout Blockadia, people are more fully comprehending and articulating the intertwined nature of social justice and environmental issues, and working together on these causes. The active engagement of people in the frontline communities is giving environmentalism the heart it desperately needed, connecting movements for the healthy survival of communities to movements bent on protecting our land and water.

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Transcript

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Paul Jay in Baltimore.

Aaron Swartz was a brilliant 26-year-old software developer who most recently worked at a company called Thoughtworks, a global software developer, but before that, was well known as a developer of Reddit, the inventor of RSS, and one of the designers of Creative Commons. Well, Aaron committed suicide on Friday, January 11. At the time of his death, Aaron Swartz was under indictment for using MIT access to log into JSTOR, a database of scholarly articles, and downloading those articles with the intent to make them public. If Swartz had been convicted of these charges, he faced more than 30 years in prison.Now joining us to talk about Aaron the man and the significance of this case: first of all, Roy Singham. He’s the founder and chairman of Thoughtworks Inc., the company that Aaron most recently worked for. And Brian Guthrie. Brian was a coworker with Aaron, and he’s also a software developer and internet activist. Thank you both for joining us. BRIAN GUTHRIE, SOFTWARE DEVELOPER AND INTERNET ACTIVIST: Thank you.JAY: So, Roy, first of all, talk quickly about the basic case, but really what was at stake. I mean, the question I suppose everybody’s asking is: why was the prosecutor going after Aaron with such fervor? Nothing actually was ever released. He took these documents perhaps with the intention of making them public, but he never did. But yet they were making a major case out of this.ROY SINGHAM, FOUNDER AND CHAIRMAN, THOUGHTWORKS: Yeah, no, no. The family issued a very, I think, poignant statement about this when they were defining this as prosecutorial overreach, and, unfortunately, in this case, also the complicity of MIT in letting this happen. I mean, understanding that these documents were downloaded, he had the right to access them, they were sitting on a server, nobody else received them, there was no victim in this alleged crime, none, why would you take–because you would have to allege intent to distribute.By the way, these documents are academic documents. These are not, you know, corporate secrets, they’re not state secrets. These are often–most of these documents were created over, you know, centuries of human knowledge. And so the idea that there was an economic benefit to be gained is not true. So there was no economic motivation. There was no damage done to any of the institutions. JSTOR, which was the actual company from–organization from which the documents were downloaded, was quite frankly aghast at the end that this would–’cause they would have said, we’d settle, we don’t believe in any charges.So here you have a government going after somebody where there are no damages and no victim, and at the same time the people who might have been the victim have said, please stop. Very unusual.JAY: So, clearly the objective has to be to send a message that anyone that has the kind of specialized know-how or talent that Aaron had, you stay away from privately owned or state-owned documents, period. This has to be about, you know, making–sending the message to this community.SINGHAM: Yeah. I mean, again, you know, different people have different views on this. Glen Greenwald, in his, I think, brilliant piece in The Guardian, looks at all the potential theories of why would this overreach have occurred. You know, was it because, you know, they wanted to make him a sample case? Was it because he had made some powerful enemies in the United States?As you probably know, he was the guy who led or certainly that he helped the movement against the defeat of the piracy act. You know, so he led that. He had already entangled with the government in showing then that the things [incompr.] that they had already produced for the courts ought to be free. He downloaded them. He had embarrassed them in this way. So he clearly had already reached the attention point of the FBI and the government. So we know that he was a target.What this individual prosecutor did, however, in Boston, in addition to whatever political issues are undoubtedly underlying his case–this was a vindictive, mean office of–and remember, this is the federal prosecutor’s office. It is the–you know, this was not a state issue. The state prosecutors in Massachusetts was not going after him. This was a federal prosecutor, you know, of Massachusetts, Carmin Ortiz. And the particular prosecutor, they were vicious over a two-year period in attempting to drive this young, beautiful boy, man, into jail. So, now, what is the political case versus what were the individual motives of these two prosecutors at a minimum? And we called for this in our press statement today [incompr.] Today I’m speaking as an individual to you. But in our press statement, this idea that, you know, you can have prosecutors who use the plea bargaining system to drive people into admission of guilt [incompr.] defend this stuff is millions of dollars, bankruptcy, 35 years in prison. This is terrifying to any person. And so a number of issues have to be called into play, in our opinion, and certainly in my opinion and Brian’s opinion, who also worked closely, you know, with Aaron. If this is allowed unchallenged, we will lose the next generation of Aarons, the next generation of the most important intellectual leaders of the planet. That’s what’s at stake. I have some personal views, which I would agree, you know, in terms of what was the underlying political motive. But I think first that the family really, you know, would want us to say this. You know, why was nobody in the federal government blocking the federal prosecution from taking on this [incompr.]JAY: Brian, you worked alongside Aaron. Tell us a little bit about the man. What motivated him, first of all, do you think, to take these documents in the first place? I don’t think he ever denied doing it. But it was part of a broader vision he had about the world. What was that?GUTHRIE: Aaron is most often known for his technical contributions, but he really had the soul of a philosopher and activist. He was extremely widely read. He reached out early and often in his life to his heroes and people he admired, asking how he could get involved and how he could help out. And he used those technical skills to improve things all over the internet. I mean, one thing that you see people talking about everywhere is how often Aaron would reach out, out of the blue, with offers to help, to get involved, to support their website in some way. He really had a prodigious intellect and genuinely wanted to use that intellect and his skills and energy to do good in the world.He was also a tremendous writer, very, very thoughtful. And his personality really comes out, I think, in his online writings. When you met Aaron in person, face to face, he was a little quiet, he was very humble. He didn’t come across as being this incredible activist. But really, when you follow what he had to say online and read the online archive of his thoughts and his opinions, you see this unbelievably thoughtful individual with a wealth of knowledge who really had done the research and worked his way through the issues.JAY: You must have discussed this specific case with him. How did he explain to you why he had done it and what his expectations were?SINGHAM: Aaron had a pretty disciplined approach to the way he worked and how he wanted to do good in the world in the issue of copyright specifically. He was targeting databases of documents that really had a public-good aspect and should have been opened by virtue of either government funding or content that was otherwise public domain as the property of the United States people. For example, the PACER database is a database of court documents that he helped to bring out into the open internet that PACER was charging money for. Those documents are public domain. They are funded and produced by the United States people. There’s no reason why they should be behind a paywall. And that was the sort of thing that Aaron did. He was looking for the disconnect between the laws that we have about our information and the way in which regular people have access to that information. And that’s what he was doing here. He was trying to bring an important database of documents that should have been opened out into the world.SINGHAM: And there’s all kinds of even [incompr.] nuances. For example, most academics who write these journals, they’re not getting paid for these materials. They’re often funded by state institutions. And so–and/or the copyright has expired and these kind of things. In fact, JSTOR just last week released millions of documents, because–.GUTHRIE: Twenty percent of their archive.SINGHAM: Twenty percent. One of the things that he said in his speech, I think, in 2011 was, you know, here we have the last hundreds of years of human knowledge. I as a student in a wealthy country, in a wealthy institution, I have access to this, but, you know, a young girl in India, she has no access to the world’s scientific and literary culture. I mean, this is a really dramatic change in how we think of knowledge. I mean, there was a library, and you can go read this. Now we’re saying that a poor, you know, child in some country, in Brazil, has no access to the world’s intellectual legacy. This really morally offended him. And he also understood, you know, the damage that it was going to do to society. GUTHRIE: [incompr.] JSTOR has a mission to do public good, and they were certainly founded with good intentions. And I think that we’ve been a lot happier with the way they’ve comported themselves here than with some of the other institutions that were involved. But Aaron’s point was that academics share access to that knowledge already. JSTOR started to charge a prescription fee to institutions to gain access to their databases. And academics already share access to that. They invite people into their networks. They’ll share passwords in order to give other people access. Academics form a community around sharing with the intent to bring that knowledge out into the world. They’re not, most of them, reflexively protective people of their research. They want more people to go out and read their research.But people growing up and living in places without access to those expensive subscriptions don’t have the same wherewithal to gain access to that knowledge. And he wanted to change that in a really big way.JAY: So, Roy, why does this prosecutor–and as you said, it’s not likely just one prosecutor here. There’s got to be other people in the justice department that are aware of all this. Why do they go after him (same question again) so strongly? Why do they consider this so threatening?SINGHAM: So, I mean, you know, obviously we don’t have the chance–I mean, Heymann, who is the particularly egregious prosecutor, he worked for Ortiz. He was the head of the office. The two of them have, in my opinion, a 100 percent culpability for the overreach and for what happened here. Whether or not, you know, Holder or other people discussed this case, it’s highly implausible to me that they didn’t. And if you look at the timing of when these charges were filed against Aaron, it was exactly at the time of, you know, Assange and Manning, and there was just this paranoia, you know, in the Justice Department, in Homeland Security, that [incompr.] There’s a generation of hackers out there that if we do not suppress and grab these people, our national security is in threat. And so the mood at the time was really, let us go out and guarantee [incompr.] even says this, not only Aaron, I mean, Jeremy Hammond, the Anonymous, a lot of these guys who–and [incompr.] who have been very active in internet freedom, they are being hunted down globally. I mean, this is–so if you ask me as a social–an historic thing, I had an internal debate with some of our colleagues last night about the press statement that we issued, because, you know, there is this question of why would Thoughtworks care as the company, ’cause we are very much calling for an investigation of prosecutorial overreach, and we’re calling also for an apology by MIT to the family and for changes in policy. Why is that important? Isn’t internet access important? Yes. If we allow the 12-year-old–and if you look at Aaron’s site, for example, there’s a 14-year-old who posted about how Aaron is their hero. Imagine if that 14-year-old who could be the next Aaron reads this thing about, you know, his–you know, the threats of imprisonment and what happened to Aaron. That young, you know, future humanist internet, you know, revolutionary is crushed.We have been forced into a defensive position to fight the suppression of civil resistance and disobedience. And unfortunately we, some of us–that’s why it was just amazing, the last two days, some of the most creative and intelligent responses of the community towards these egregious acts.JAY: Is part of this that, you know, the United States has military superiority over just about everybody, they have financial superiority over just about everybody? But is it–and when it comes to computer technology–and they are so vulnerable on that front–that maybe they don’t have intellectual superiority, and that leaves them feeling open?GUTHRIE: We have a narrative that we’ve constructed because technology is new and because it seems scary of the rogue hacker who can gain access to any system and do what they want with it at will, which simply isn’t true. I mean, our understanding of technology is certainly still evolving. But I think Aaron got sucked into that narrative that prosecutors can use to their advantage if they’re trying to bring home a prosecution, if they can paint Aaron in a particular way that makes him part of this unnoble, vast conspiracy of hackers. And Aaron–.JAY: Yeah. You explained something to me off-camera which is important, which is that Aaron actually didn’t hack anything. I mean, he had a password. What Aaron did is akin to somebody going into a library with their library card and photocopying books and then, you know, planning to hand out the copies, isn’t it?SINGHAM: But remember, he didn’t even make the copies. In that case, he didn’t even make the copies.GUTHRIE: Right. It’s equivalent to checking out a lot of books very quickly, right? Unfortunately, it impacted the system for other people because he was downloading the papers very quickly. But he didn’t do anything that any reasonable person would characterize as hacking. He didn’t break into any systems. He didn’t change any passwords. He didn’t do anything that the website he was accessing didn’t already allow people to access. He didn’t so much as change the URL, which is an extremely–SINGHAM: Obvious.GUTHRIE: –an extremely obvious–it’s something that increasingly has come to be used as a tool to accuse people of hacking. If you ever changed the URL of a YouTube video, there are people who would claim that under the wrong circumstances that’s hacking. And Aaron didn’t even go that far. He simply wasn’t that person.JAY: So doesn’t this mean–I mean, if an ordinary student that had no history of internet activism, of having had such high-level skills, if an ordinary student had done the same thing, it seems like it’s not likely to have had the same kind of prosecutorial effort here. Were they not going after him because he’s Aaron Swartz and because they’re afraid of what people like Aaron are capable of?SINGHAM: I mean, that’s my opinion, that this is a calculated move be the authorities to suppress the next generation. And, by the way, these civil disobedience are the same as Dr. King, the same as Gandhi, right? The argument that, you know, Gandhi broke the law because he called for the salt tax or, you know, Dr. King violated the law by, you know, breaking segregation, if a small transgression of an unjust law–. I mean, Aaron, you know, was a risk-taker. He believed–you know, and whether or not he could have possibly foreseen this [incompr.] absurd response is probably unlikely. But he understood that the laws that were no longer keeping up with the changes of technology, that laws that had passed 30 or 40 years ago had no relevance in this new area, were being used by a small group of very large corporations to privatize and monetize what was the human legacy of intellectual capital. That’s why even The Economist, not known for its progressive views, called him the “commons man” and not [incompr.] in the sense of the defender or one of the great defenders of the concept of the commons [incompr.] and, as we know, that complete erosion. So Aaron in that sense was taking on directly the economic interests of the people who are trying to privatize human knowledge.But he also knew that there was a relationship between that and the state, which was actually why most of what you worked with him on was activism around legislation for this, because he then began to realize that the broader context was a political context. Even as passionate as he was about the Creative Commons, he was also passionate about the next generation of fighters.JAY: Yeah. Brian, talk a little bit about the other areas that Aaron worked in, ’cause you told me off-camera this actually was really a very small piece of Aaron’s activism.GUTHRIE: Yeah. I mean, Aaron–again, we know him as a technologist, but technology to him was a tool. It’s something that he wanted to leverage to really make change in the world. The work we were doing with him at Thoughtworks involved building a piece of software using the same tools and techniques that your startups in Silicon Valley are using to get people to post more on Facebook, applying that same level of analytical detail to encourage people to do good in the world and bring their voice out into the collective of people who are trying to change things.And so to that end, they’re working on a piece of software that he intended to bring out and make–it’s available for free now. You can download it yourself. It’s released under an open-source license. He wanted to use that to bring the most advanced tools for social activism on the internet in the world to people who might not otherwise have access to them without a subscription fee.SINGHAM: Yeah. I mean, [incompr.] people think of him in some ways as a global Western hero. He was deeply an internationalist. I mean, in this particular [incompr.] he realized that the knowledge about campaigning and structuring right now is a wealthy-country phenomenon, and that even the progressives, there’s a risk that the agendas are set not by the people themselves, but by an elite, even an elite that’s pretending to speaking on behalf of the people. And so he was fiercely a democrat in the small-D sense of saying, what happens if I’m a villager in Burundi and I want to have my campaign around whatever my issues are, and I don’t want that agenda to be [incompr.] by somebody in Washington, or even [incompr.] person in New York, how do they use that [incompr.] cell phones and all these things. He was an incredibly advanced thinker about the nature of political power, how to democratize access, how the internet ought to have been used to disempower wealth accumulation and power accumulation. He was really one of the last standing, you know, in that sense, humanists who fought aggregated power and totalitarian states.JAY: Brian, people like Aaron usually are able to make a lot of money, and that’s what they focus on. But he never seemed all that interested in it, if that’s what–if I understand correctly. GUTHRIE: Yeah. It–to his enormous credit, you know, I think he could have gone almost anywhere and done almost anything. I think he fell into money rather than seeking it. And, you know, it’s to his enormous credit that he continued to pursue opportunities, wherever he could find them, to do good rather than make money. And he actively pursued that, rather than staying with the company helped found, Reddit.com, after it sailed to Condé Nast, he parted ways with them and used that money the same way we’d use oxygen, not to help propel him into the ranks of the wealthy, but to keep him going and give him the freedom to do what he needed to do to improve the world.SINGHAM: Yeah, I mean, just–you know, I mean, I think people–I mean, Larry said it in his pieces. It wasn’t a lot of money. It wasn’t as much money as people think. GUTHRIE: Yeah.SINGHAM: And he was only one of the owners. And he pretty much decimated that in the cause of all these things, PACER, living–you know, he wasn’t a man of means.GUTHRIE: Yeah.SINGHAM: Right? And so there’s a little bit of a misleading thing that–to believe that he sat there. So, therefore, here is this guy. And I–as a technologist, I’m very worried that young technical people are given the beautiful pictures of Steve Jobs as an icon. The human race needs Aaron Swartz as an icon, not Steve Jobs, because we are lucky, I mean, in our industry, because we get to do things we like for a living [inaud.] What do you use that for? And Aaron, in that sense, [incompr.] in my mind, the most important role model of your generation, certainly in the United States, and, I would argue, for somebody of privilege in the world, that there cannot be–.And, you know, it’s hard for me. And I think Aaron–and, I mean, you know, you and I are in this incredibly fortunate thing, ’cause we spent a lot of time with Aaron in the last, you know, six or eight months. And I have cried for two days straight, as you have. And it’s only today, in day three, that we can sort of begin to rebuild Aaron’s legacy in the way that we know he would want us to. The thing that really disturbs me in all this kind of stuff is that they want to pigeonhole Aaron into too many narrow sets, right? It’s the hacker or the internet guy. I have met–you and I have met lots of people. Can you imagine a deeper-caring person? I mean, it’s just incredible. I mean, I still cry. I mean, he would touch anybody and do anything. I–we had a meeting, you know, recently about how could we change American views towards Muslims. Here’s this young, beautiful Jewish kid. He walks into a room with a bunch of, you know, Muslim activists saying, we have to do something to change American opinion. He gets up on a white board and he says, listen, what we need to do is have a war against the merchants of hate. [incompr.] He walked in there for–what, you guys were in there for an hour or two.GUTHRIE: Right.SINGHAM: He would do those kind of things. His breadth of the issues that he would concern with were truly astounding. And a lot of the people, because he was in that sense quite a radical–I mean, he read Chomsky when he was 15. And those kind of things, again, people don’t want to talk about. He was deeply unsatisfied. In fact, one of his speeches on SOPA, you know, when he first called about it, he says, listen, I’m not interested in copyright law; I want to deal with health care access, you know, I want to deal with this financial crisis, I want to understand how we don’t have the Congress in the pay of these military contractors. I mean, he was thinking about every issue.JAY: Roy, a lot of people watching are going to ask–you know, are going to be asking the question, you know, why didn’t he want to fight this case. Now, we know that Aaron suffered from depression. And so–I mean, it’s not one and one equals two that he was facing a jail sentence and this was his choice; he wasn’t–you know, I mean, the depression obviously played a major role here.GUTHRIE: One of the things that’s come out into the internet after his passing is that–one of the things I’ve learned–I had no the problem was this big–is that the minimum amount of money to fight a federal grand jury case, even if you’re completely innocent, even if you do, I guess, one day of trial and then walk away, you’re looking at $1.5 million. I can’t imagine the kind of [crosstalk]SINGHAM: Money he didn’t have.GUTHRIE: Yeah. Yeah. And in order to do that, he would have had to go out and, I think, ask for that money, right? And that–.SINGHAM: And we were trying to help raise that money for him. I kept on personally saying, Aaron, the community will come to your defense. But he was such a polite, private person, that was just inconceivable to him. Yeah. And I think, you know, one never knows what happened to somebody’s–in their brain. And, you know, I’ve had to deal with it in my personal life, people who I know are depressed. And I’ve thought a lot about this question of depression. So I’m aware that depression is a complex thing. And he was very open about it. I mean, very few people of his stature would have been as open and honest as he was about this thing. You know.And I feel that, you know, I can say safely that he was loved. I mean, you know, his partner and his parents are just amazing people. You know, he knew that he was loved. But it is difficult, no matter what anybody says, to have somebody who’s thinking about the most deepest future of the human race to have this distraction, to be embarrassed about himself, to know there’s a possibility of going to jail. I have–none of us in the family or in the company allege a direct correlation. But, you know, we did care for him. [incompr.] loved him.And, of course, any time you have a tragic thing, we all had to go through a self-realization–did we do enough, could we have done more. I mean, there’s no way around that as a grieving process. But that misses the point. What if he hadn’t? Would that change the outcome of going after prosecutorial reach? Would that excuse what MIT did? Would not the same terror to a young person fearing a jail sentence have occurred? It doesn’t in the end matter, really, about the thing. It’s personally a tragedy for Aaron and personally a tragedy for all of us who loved him. And that’s a horrible thing, and we want accountability for that. But the broader is much deeper: intimidate the next generation of intellectual fighters, and we have created the world’s greatest totalitarian state that dwarfs 1984.JAY: Alright. Thank you both for joining us.GUTHRIE: Thank you.JAY: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.~~~ADAM SWARTZ: The internet really is out of control. But if we forget that, if we let Hollywood rewrite the story so it was just big company Google who stopped the bill, if we let them persuade us we didn’t actually make a difference, if we start seeing it as someone else’s responsibility to do this work and it’s our job just to go home and pop some popcorn and curl up on the couch to watch Transformers, well, then next time they might just win. Let’s not let that happen.TEXT ON SCREEN: Aaron Swartz 1986-2013.

End

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Leave it to Coultergeist to inject a little race baiting into the gun control debate on Hannity’s show. She just can’t stop herself: Coulter On Gun Violence: ‘If You Compare White Populations, We Have The Same Murder Rate As Belgium’:

Ann Coulter visited Sean Hannity‘s show Monday night to discuss President Obama‘s recent cabinet picks, as well as his possible actions on gun control. Coulter said she had just come back from England where they have “not bought into” the “diversity enthusiasm” of the States. “The liberals,” Coulter claimed, are “pushing and pushing and pushing” to have more mass murderers of color.

“If you compare white populations, we have the same murder rate as Belgium,” Coulter said. “So perhaps it’s not a gun problem, it’s a demographic problem.”

“Demographic problem,” huh? Perhaps it’s a poverty problem, Annie. I’m not sure where she’s getting her statistics, but I imagine it’s her usual source: pulled out of her rear end.

Never mind that the better part of these mass murderers we’ve seen lately were committed by white males, or that we might have more crime where most of the people actually live in the cities as opposed to rural areas, or in poverty-stricken inner cities as opposed to wealthy suburban areas. No, Ann would rather blame the homicide rates on the color of someone’s skin and pretend that white people never commit murder. It’s really disgusting, the things they’ll resort to on Fox in order to carry water for the gun manufacturers and their lobbyists at the NRA.

With price-targets now apparently nothing more than a ‘talking-point’, it is, perhaps, of little surprise that the gap between the average sell-side analyst’s price target for AAPL and the current price is the widest it has ever been. And of course, the ‘buys’ versus ‘sells’ has not budged at all… for your reading pleasure, the 50 analysts’ price targets for AAPL… and the two non-lemmings (Per Lindberg and Edward Zabitsky) that see potential downside for AAPL.

Average price target (orange) vs price (black)- and the difference (lower pane)… Evidently the number of ‘buys’ versus ‘sells’ has hardly budged…

with Topeka proudly clinging to their $1111 price target (talking point)…

Data: Bloomberg

Manslaughter charges have been dropped against Geoffrey Counsell after seven people died in a pile-up on the M5 during thick fog.

The 50-year-old was operating a firework display in a field close to the motorway, at Taunton Rugby Club, at the time of the crash on the night of November 4, 2011.

Mr Counsell, who is from Somerset, was charged with seven counts of manslaughter on October 19 last year.

But when he appeared at Bristol Crown Court, he was told the manslaughter charges were being dropped and he would instead face a charge under the Health and Safety at Work Act of failing to ensure the safety of others.

The incident, which involved 34 vehicles and left 51 people injured, was described as one of the worst British motorway crashes in memory.

Witnesses afterwards spoke of thick smoke causing visibility problems for motorists.

Anthony and Pamela Adams, Maggie and Michael Barton, Malcolm Beacham, Terry Brice and Kye Thomas all died.

Peter Blair, prosecuting, said they had reviewed the decision following meetings with a range of experts in different disciplines.

“The outcome of the review that took place and developments, including the additional charge of failing to ensure the safety of others under the Health and Safety Act, was the decision that the prosecution will not be pursuing the manslaughter charges,” he said.

Adrian Derbyshire, defending, told the court his client should “never have been charged with manslaughter”.

But he added the prosecution told him it was the right decision at the time and new evidence had come forward that prompted the decision to review the case.

Judge Neil Ford QC said the case would now be marked as a closed file.

Two men who lost their entire families in a devastating tower block fire were among bereaved relatives who have given evidence to a “super inquest” into the deaths of six people.

Rafael Cervi and Mbet Udoaka were both working when the fatal blaze broke out at Lakanal House, Camberwell, south east London on July 3, 2009, but managed to speak to their wives on the phone as smoke filled the flat where they were sheltering.

It also emerged that another victim of the fire, designer Catherine Hickman, had asked why there were no diagrams to show where fire exits were in the block.

Jurors at Lambeth Town Hall heard that Mr Cervi’s wife Dayana Francisquini, 26, his step-daughter Thais, six, and his son Felipe, three, all died in the tragedy.

Dayana’s father Fernando Francisquini could see his daughter through the window moving curtains and a mattress as she was trapped in the flat, the inquest was told.

Mr Cervi told the jury: “I lost my entire family, my wife and a couple of kids that I had. Everything that I built, everything that I dreamed of was over in three hours.”

On the day of the blaze, he rang his wife 10 times, trying to reassure her. He also called 999, and alerted her father who lived within walking distance of the flat.

Mr Francisquini said they pleaded with firefighters to rescue the family.

“Rafael and I were begging them to go and help them as the fire was in the flat next to hers,” he said.

Miss Hickman, 31, also died in the blaze, along with Helen Udoaka, 34, and her three-week-old daughter Michelle.

January 15, 2013  |  

Most activists tend to approach progressive change from one of two perspectives: First, there’s the “reform” tradition that assumes corporate control is a constant and that “politics” acts to modify practices within that constraint. Liberalism in the United States is representative of this tradition. Then there’s the “revolutionary” tradition, which assumes change can come about only if the major institutions are largely eliminated or transcended, often by violence.

But what if neither revolution nor reform is viable?

Paradoxically, we believe the current stalemating of progressive reform may open up some unique strategic possibilities to transform institutions of the political economy over time. We call this third option evolutionary reconstruction. Like reform, evolutionary reconstruction involves step-by-step nonviolent change. But like revolution, evolutionary reconstruction changes the basic institutions of ownership of the economy, so that the broad public, rather than a narrow band of individuals (i.e., the “one percent”) owns more and more of the nation’s productive assets.

1. A People’s Bank

One area where this logic can be seen at work is in the financial industry. At the height of the financial crisis in early 2009, some kind of nationalization of the banks seemed possible. It was a moment, President Obama told banking CEOs, when his administration was “the only thing between you and the pitchforks.” The president opted for a soft bailout, but that was not the only possible decision.

When the next financial crisis occurs — and many experts think it will –a different resolution may well be possible. One option has already been put on the table. In 2010, 33 senators voted to break up large Wall Street investment banks that were “too big to fail.” Such a policy would not only reduce financial vulnerability, it would alter the structure of institutional power .

Nor is an effort to break up banks, even if successful, likely to be the end of the process. The modern history of anti-trust and finance suggests that the big banks, even if broken up, will ultimately regroup. So what can be done when breaking them up fails?

Traditional reforms have aimed at improved regulation, higher reserve requirements and the channeling of credit to key sectors. But future crises may bring into play a spectrum of sophisticated proposals for more radical change. For instance, a “Limited Purpose Banking” strategy put forward by conservative economist Laurence Kolticoff would impose a 100% reserve requirement on banks. Since banks typically provide loans in amounts many times their reserves, this would transform them into modest institutions with little or no capacity to finance speculation. It would also nationalize the creation of all new money as federal authorities, rather than bankers, directly control system-wide financial flows.

More striking is the argument of Willem Buiter, the chief economist of Citigroup, that if the public underwrites the costs of bailouts, “banks should be in public ownership.” In fact, had the taxpayer funds used to bail out major financial institutions in 2007-2010 been provided on condition that voting stock be issued in return for the investment, one or more major banks would have become essentially public banks. 

Nor is this far from current political tradition. Unknown to most, there have been a large number of small and medium-sized public banking institutions for some time now. In fact, the federal government already operates 140 banks and quasi-banks that provide loans and loan guarantees for an extraordinary range of domestic and international economic activities.

The economic crisis has also produced widespread interest in the Bank of North Dakota, a highly successful state-owned bank founded in 1919. Between 1996 and 2008, the bank returned $340 million in profits to the state. The bank enjoys broad support in the business community, as well as among progressive activists. Legislative proposals to establish banks patterned in whole or in part on the North Dakota model have been put forward by activists and legislators in more than a dozen states .

 The Wall Street Journal headlined “An Internet Activist Commits Suicide.”

New York’s medical examiner announced death by “hang(ing) himself in his Brooklyn apartment.”

Lingering suspicions remain. Why would someone with so much to give end it all this way? He was one of the Internet generation’s best and brightest.

He advocated online freedom. Selflessly he sought a better open world. Information should be freely available, he believed. A legion of followers supported him globally.

Alive he symbolized a vital struggle to pursue. Death may elevate him to martyr status but removes a key figure important to keep alive.

The New York Times headlined “Internet Activist, a Creator of RSS, Is Dead at 26, Apparently a Suicide.”

He was an Internet folk hero. He supported online freedom and copyright reform. He advocated free and open web files. He championed a vital cause. He worked tirelessly for what’s right.

Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle called him “steadfast in his dedication to building a better and open world. He is among the best spirits of the Internet generation.”

Who’ll replace him now that he’s gone? He called locking up the public domain sinful. He selflessly strove to prevent it.

In July 2011, he was arrested. At the time, he was downloading old scholarly articles. He was charged with violating federal hacking laws. MIT gave him a guest account to do it.

He developed RSS and co-founded Reddit. It’s a social news site.

He was found dead weeks before he was scheduled to stand trial. He was targeted for doing the right thing. He didn’t steal or profit. He shared. His activism was more than words.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) defends online freedom, free speech, privacy, innovation, and consumer rights. It “champion(s) the public interest in every critical battle affecting digital rights.”

On January 12, it headlined “Farewell to Aaron Swartz, an extraordinary hacker and activist.” It called him “a close friend and collaborator.” Tragedy ended his life.

Vital questions remain unanswered. Supporters demand answers. So do family members.They blame prosecutors for what happened. Their statement following his death said the following:

“Aaron’s death is not simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach. Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts US Attorney’s office and at MIT contributed to his death.”

Swartz did as much or more than anyone to make the Internet a thriving open knowledge ecosystem. He strove to keep it that way. He challenged repressive Internet laws.

He founded Demand Progress. It “works to win progressive policy changes for ordinary people through organizing and grassroots lobbying,” he said.

It prioritizes “civil liberties, civil rights, and government reform.” It ran online campaigns for justice. It advocated in the public interest. It challenged policies harming it.

He mobilized over a million online activists. His other projects included RSS specification, web.py, tor2web, the Open Library, and the Chrome port of HTTPS Everywhere.

He launched Creative Commons. He co-founded Reddit. He and others made it successful. His Raw Thought blog discussed “politics and parody.” He had much to say worth hearing.

In 2011, he used the MIT campus network. He downloaded millions of journal articles. He used the JSTOR database. Authorities claimed he changed his laptop’s IP and Mac addresses. They said he did it to circumvent JSTOR/MIT blocks.

He was charged with “unauthorized (computer) access” under the Computer and Abuse Act. He did the equivalent of checking out too many library books at the same time.

Obama prosecutors claim doing so is criminal. They’ve waged war on Internet freedom. They want Net Neutrality and free expression abolished. They want fascist laws replacing them.

They usurped diktat power. They spurn rule of law principles and other democratic values. They enforce police state authority. They prioritize what no civil society should tolerate.

They claimed Aaron intended to distribute material on peer-to-peer networks. He never did. It hardly mattered. Documents he secured were returned. No harm. No foul. Federal authorities charged him anyway.

In July 2011, a Massachusetts grand jury indicted him. He was arraigned in Boston US District Court. He pled not guilty to all charges. He was freed on a $100,000 unsecured bond.

If convicted, he faced up to 35 years imprisonment and a $1 million dollar fine. He wanted scientific/scholarly articles liberated. They belong in the public domain. He wanted everyone given access. It’s their right, he believed.

He wanted a single giant dataset established. He did it before. He wasn’t charged. Why now?

“While his methods were provocative,” said EFF, his goal was “freeing the publicly-funded scientific literature from a publishing system that makes it inaccessible to most of those who paid for it.”

EFF calls it a cause everyone should support. Aaron was politically active. He fought for what’s right. Followers supported him globally.

In the “physical world,” at worst he’d have faced minor charges, said EFF. They’re “akin to trespassing as part of political protests.”

Doing it online changed things. He faced possible long-term incarceration. For years, EFF fought this type injustice.

Academic/political activist Lawrence Lessig called Aaron’s death just cause for reforming computer crime laws. Overzealous prosecutors are bullies. They overreach and cause harm.

EFF mourned his passing, saying:

“Aaron, we will sorely miss your friendship, and your help in building a better world.” Many others feel the same way.

Did Aaron take his own life or was he killed? Moti Nissani is Wayne State University Department of Biology Professor Emeritus. “Who Killed Aaron Swartz,” he asked?

He quoted Bob Marley saying: “How long shall they kill our prophets while we stand aside and look?” He listed reasons why Obama administration scoundrels wanted him dead.

His death “was preceded by a vicious, totally unjustified, campaign of surveillance, harassment, vilification, and intimidation.”

CIA/FBI/Mossad/MI5 assassins expertly “mak(e) murder look like suicide.” Numerous “enemies of the state” die under suspicious circumstances. Media scoundrels don’t explain.

US authorities “had excellent reasons to kill” Aaron. He was legendary in his own right like John Lennon, MLK, Malcolm X and others. He threatened status quo dominance. He denounced Obama’s kill list and anti-Iranian cyber attacks.

Powerful government and business figures deplored him. In 2009, FBI elements investigated him. Charges didn’t follow.

Despite extreme pressure, he pressed on. He defied prosecutorial authority. In October 2009, he posted his FBI file online. Doing do “probably signed his own lynch warrant,” said Nissani.

Two days before his death, JSTOR, his alleged victim, declined to press charges. It went further. It “announced that the archives of more than 1,200 of its journals would be available to the public free.”

Aaron had just cause to celebrate. “Are we to believe” he hanged himself instead?

Government officials and corporate bosses “had plenty of reasons” to want him dead. He challenged their totalitarian agenda. “He was creative, idealistic and unbendable.”

“He was young and admired by many.” Did “invisible government” elements kill him?

“They did so either indirectly through constant harassment….or, most likely, directly by hanging him and” blaming him for their crime.

“All this raises a dilemma for those of us possessing both conscience and a functioning brain.” How much longer will we stand by and do nothing?

How long will we tolerate what demands condemnation? When will we defend our own interests?

Freedom is too precious to lose. Preserving it depends on us. No one will do it for us. It’s not possible any other way. It never was. It never will be.

Aaron’s Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto

His own words say it best.

“Information is power,” he said. “But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves.”

“The world’s entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations.”

“Want to read the papers featuring the most famous results of the sciences? You’ll need to send enormous amounts to publishers like Reed Elsevier.”

“There are those struggling to change this. The Open Access Movement has fought valiantly to ensure that scientists do not sign their copyrights away but instead ensure their work is published on the Internet, under terms that allow anyone to access it.”

“But even under the best scenarios, their work will only apply to things published in the future. Everything up until now will have been lost.”

“That is too high a price to pay. Forcing academics to pay money to read the work of their colleagues? Scanning entire libraries but only allowing the folks at Google to read them?”

“Providing scientific articles to those at elite universities in the First World, but not to children in the Global South? It’s outrageous and unacceptable.”

” ‘I agree,’ many say, but what can we do?’ The companies hold the copyrights. They make enormous amounts of money by charging for access, and it’s perfectly legal — there’s nothing we can do to stop them. But there is something we can, something that’s already being done: we can fight back.”

“Those with access to these resources — students, librarians, scientists — you have been given a privilege. You get to feed at this banquet of knowledge while the rest of the world is locked out.”

“But you need not — indeed, morally, you cannot — keep this privilege for yourselves. You have a duty to share it with the world. And you have: trading passwords with colleagues, filling download requests for friends.”

“Meanwhile, those who have been locked out are not standing idly by. You have been sneaking through holes and climbing over fences, liberating the information locked up by the publishers and sharing them with your friends.”

“But all of this action goes on in the dark, hidden underground. It’s called stealing or piracy, as if sharing a wealth of knowledge were the moral equivalent of plundering a ship and murdering its crew. But sharing isn’t immoral — it’s a moral imperative. Only those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy.”

“Large corporations, of course, are blinded by greed. The laws under which they operate require it — their shareholders would revolt at anything less. And the politicians they have bought off back them, passing laws giving them the exclusive power to decide who can make copies.”

“There is no justice in following unjust laws. It’s time to come into the light and, in the grand tradition of civil disobedience, declare our opposition to this private theft of public culture.”

“We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world. We need to take stuff that’s out of copyright and add it to the archive.”

“We need to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks. We need to fight for Guerrilla Open Access.”

“With enough of us, around the world, we’ll not just send a strong message opposing the privatization of knowledge — we’ll make it a thing of the past. Will you join us?”

Does Aaron’s manifesto sound like someone planning suicide?

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/aaron-swartzs-suspicious-death/

Russia Nikolaev Eduard jumps with a truck at the 2013 Dakar Rally (AFP Photo / Franck Fife)

Top Kamaz driver Eduard Nikolaev has taken the overall lead in the truck category after Stage 9 of the Dakar Rally in South America.

­Nikolaev was only sixth on the stage between the Argentinean cities of San Miguel de Tucuman and Cordoba, but a breakdown for his main rival, Gerard de Rooy, propelled the Russian to the top.

The Dutchman’s Iveco truck stopped soon after the start due to the turbine failure and steering gear problems.  

Meanwhile, the stage victory was claimed by Ales Loprais, who represents Czech Republic behind the wheel of a Tatra.

“It was a very interesting stage, with a winding course not unlike those you can find in WRC,” Nikolaev told Dakar.com. “It was quite hard on the brakes. We had to tackle very fast parts and very slow ones. When all’s said and done, we had a good stage.”

“We went at our pace, even though we’d seen De Rooy stopped next to the course,” he added.

Nikolaev now leads the overall standing, with second placed Czech Tatra driver Martin Kolomy 17 minutes and 56 seconds behind.

The third spot in the standing is occupied by another Kamaz of Yrat Mardeev, with over 33 minutes separating him from the leader.

This year’s Dakar Rally consists of 14 stages, with the finish in Santiago de Chile on January 19.

Washington, DC – President Barack Obama urged Congress on Monday to lift the nation’s debt ceiling without spending cuts, warning of dire consequences to the economy if lawmakers again push deliberations to the brink.

In the last news conference of his first term, Obama said he wouldn’t negotiate with congressional Republicans who wanted to use the obligation to lift the debt ceiling as an opportunity to curtail federal spending.

“They will not collect a ransom in exchange for not crashing the American economy,” the president said. “The full faith and credit of the United States of America is not a bargaining chip.”

The tough talk came as Obama prepares to take his second oath of office and a new fiscal crisis looms, just two weeks after he and Congress tussled over a New Year’s deal to avoid a series of tax hikes and deep spending cuts.

That deal didn’t include raising the $16.4 trillion debt ceiling, which the Treasury Department said was reached Dec. 31. Treasury has tapped emergency borrowing authority to pay creditors, but that fix is fast expiring and the president warned Monday that “time is running short.”

He urged Congress to raise the debt ceiling without conditions and focus on a new fiscal plan to reduce the budget deficit by cutting spending and raising new revenue. He argued that the results of the November election show that voters side with his economic prescription.

“It turns out the American people agreed with me,” he said. “They want us to get our books in order in a balanced way, where everybody pulls their weight, everyone does their part.”

He said he’d be open to “modest adjustments” to programs such as Medicare, but he argued that the deficit can’t be solved by spending cuts alone. And he argued that lawmakers would risk the nation’s reputation by haggling over the debt ceiling — risking a credit downgrade like the one imposed in 2011 after a fight over raising the debt ceiling.

“To even entertain the idea of this happening, of the United States of America not paying its bills, is irresponsible,” he said.

Obama argued that raising the debt ceiling pays for expenses that already have accrued, likening the debate to arguing over a restaurant check once the diner has polished off his plate. And he warned that failing to lift the ceiling might delay Social Security checks and veterans’ benefits.

He brushed aside suggestions from congressional Democrats that he invoke an obscure provision in the Constitution to pay increased debt without congressional approval. “There are no magic tricks here. There are no loopholes,” the president said.

“What I will not do is to have that negotiation with a gun at the head of the American people,” he said. “The threat that unless we get our way, unless you gut Medicare or Medicaid . . . that we’re going to threaten to wreck the entire economy. That is not how historically this has been done. That’s not how we’re going to do it this time.”

Republicans reacted with some history of their own, noting that Obama had voted against raising the debt ceiling when he was a senator and George W. Bush was president.

“The president says he will not negotiate on cutting spending as part of raising the debt ceiling, but he voted against raising the debt ceiling as a United States senator, saying that to increase the debt ceiling constituted ‘a sign of leadership failure,’ ” said Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash, the chairwoman of the House Republican Conference.

“The president and his allies need to get serious about spending, and the debt-limit debate is the perfect time for it,” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said in a statement.

A month to the day of the elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn., Obama said he expected later this week to present his proposals for reducing gun violence. He said he intended to “vigorously pursue” them, but he acknowledged that Congress is unlikely to do all that he asks.

“Will all of them get through this Congress? I don’t know,” the president said, adding, “If there is a step we can take that will save even one child from what happened in Newtown, we should take that step.”

Obama declined to offer specifics on what he’ll propose.

But he said he continued to support more stringent background checks, a “meaningful” assault-weapons ban and the ability to keep high-capacity magazine clips “out of the hands of folks who shouldn’t have them.”

The administration also is expected to pursue some measures it can enact without congressional authorization, including improving how it tracks guns that fall into the hands of criminals.

The president warned against a “rush to judgment,” after criticism that thus far he’s picked only white men for top Cabinet positions in his second term. He argued that he had “as diverse if not a more diverse” White House and Cabinet in his first term than other administrations, and that he’d build on that record in his second.

“Until you’ve seen what my overall team looks like, it’s premature to assume that somehow we’re going backwards,” he said. “We’re not going backwards, we’re going forward.”

A man found guilty of murdering two British soldiers in Northern Ireland has had his convictions quashed.

Brian Shivers was sentenced to 25 years for the 2009 murders of English sappers Mark Quinsey, 23, and Patrick Azimkar, 21, outside Massereene army barracks in Antrim.

The Court of Appeal in Belfast has now ruled the verdicts in the non-jury trial unsafe.

His appeal against additional convictions on six counts of attempted murder and one of possession of two firearms and ammunition with intent to endanger life was also allowed.

The Public Prosecution Service (PPS) must now consider whether to apply for a retrial for the 47-year-old from Magherafelt, who is terminally ill with cystic fibrosis. He will remain in custody pending the decision.

Last January, judge Mr Justice Anthony Hart, who has now retired, found that Shivers set light to the getaway car used in the attack. Mr Justice Hart said he was satisfied that DNA on burnt matches found at the scene belonged to the defendant.

But the Court of Appeal ruled that such an act, after the shootings, was not sufficient to prove that Shivers was guilty of the role of secondary party in the murders.

The summary of judgement stated: “The Chief Justice (Sir Declan Morgan) said that the court did not accept that a person who provides assistance after a murder with full knowledge of what has happened becomes guilty of murder and that there was no authority to support such a proposition.”

Sappers Quinsey and Azimkar were gunned down at the gates of the barracks as they stepped outside to collect a pizza delivery in March 2009.

A Ministry of Defence spokesman said: “Our thoughts remain with the families of Sappers Patrick Azimkar and Mark Quinsey at this extremely difficult time.”

AFP Photo / Emmanuel Dunand

This is probably how all the libraries will look like in the future — lots of gadgets and no books. The US is about to get the first bookless public library.

The city of San Antonio is Texas is to introduce the new type of library, where there will be no books. Instead of printed copies the library will be loaning out e-readers and offering thousands of titles for the devices.

The idea behind the project is to bring the electronic reading gadgets to everyone, allowing those who cannot afford one the chance to read electronic books.

According to the San Antonio Express, the initiators of the project hope to open the first branch next fall.

“It’s not a replacement for the (city) library system, it’s an enhancement,” one of the men behind the idea, Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff is quoted by the newspaper as saying.

The idea is to launch new fully digital libraries in the areas where there are no traditional libraries. Adding the bookless electronic reading service to old libraries is still an option to be considered and most probably will be introduced as well.

The project will require at least $250,000 of investment to license the first 10,000 book titles. Other expenses, such as designing and constructing the spaces and purchasing the necessary equipment are also likely to be significant.

Want to increase your investment portfolio? Better ask your cat than a professional stockbroking team, the Observer’s share portfolio challenge has revealed.

­The challenge pitted professionals Justin Urquhart Stewart of wealth managers Seven Investment Management, Paul Kavanagh of stockbrokers Killick & Co, and Schroders fund manager Andy Brough against students from John Warner School in Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire. The third contestant group had only one member — a ginger feline named Orlando, the Guardian reported.

Each team was allowed to invest a notional $8,000 in any five companies from the FTSE All-Share index at the beginning of 2012. Every three months they could exchange their stocks, replacing them with others from the index.

While the professionals used their investment experience and traditional stock-picking methods, Orlando’s selections were guided by him pushing his favorite toy mouse over a grid of numbers associated with different companies.

By the end of September, the professionals had generated $802 of profit compared to the $471 earned by Orlando. However, fortunes changed in the fourth quarter: Lucky investment choices saw the cat increase its portfolio by an average of 4.2 percent to finish at year’s-end with $8,946, compared to the professionals’ $8,355.

All but one of Orlando’s stocks made gains during the last three months of the year, including Filtrona, which Orlando had hastily swapped for the underperforming Scottish American Investment Trust in September, the Guardian reported.

The professionals declined to swap out any stocks at the end of the third quarter, and later were poorer for it. British Gas and Imagination Technologies dragged their portfolio down by an average 7.1 percent, with British Gas sinking by 19 percent and Imagination Technologies falling 16.8 percent. At the same time, the students performed best in the final quarter, increasing their portfolio by an average of 5.4 percent, though they finished in last place. 

The stock market is notoriously difficult to predict, and the results of the challenge show that the random selection of stocks used as a strategy by Orlando could give even better results than professional skills and knowledge. The ‘random walk hypothesis’ was popularized by economist Burton Malkiel; it claims that share prices move completely at random, making stock markets entirely unpredictable. It may be wise to ask your cat for investment advice after all!

The London-based Palestinian Return Centre (PRC) is organizing an international conference to discuss “Britain’s legacy in Palestine”, which takes a deep look at the UK’s failed policy in Palestine.

The gathering, which coincides with the fourth Palestine Memorial Week, to be held from 19th-25th Jan 2013, will be used as a formal launching pad for an anti-Balfour Declaration Campaign.

International Balfour Campaign is a five year initiative by the PRC to mark the centenary of the Balfour Declaration in 2017.

The Balfour Declaration was a November 2, 1917 letter from British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to Lord Rothschild, the president of the British Zionist Federation that made public the British support of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

The Balfour Declaration led the League of Nations to entrust the United Kingdom with the Palestine Mandate in 1922.

Now, the main objective of the Balfour campaign is said to be raising awareness about Britain’s failed policies in Palestine and their devastating outcomes for the oppressed people of the region.

The UK’s failed policy in the region brought sufferings for thousands of Palestinians living under the British rule at the time and many more millions who are enduring terrible human rights abuses and occupation under the Zionist regime of Israel.

According to reports the conference will be inaugurated by Prof Manuel Hassassian, Palestinian Ambassador to the UK, Mohamad al Hamid of PRC and a number of MPs.

Among topics to be discussed during the conference there are three in the first session including the Theological and Ideological Roots of the Balfour Declaration, British Policy in Palestine, and the continuation of Britain’s colonial Legacy in Palestine by the Israeli regime.

“Ethnic cleansing of Palestine: Same goal different model”, and “Living Under occupation, the mechanics of ongoing ethnic cleaning”, are also among topics to be discussed at the second session of the conference.

Pushing the UK government to apologize to the Palestinians will also be top on the agenda of the International Campaign.

MOL/HE

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh says there cannot be “business as usual” between his country and neighboring Pakistan after “the barbaric” killing of two Indian soldiers by Pakistani troops in Kashmir.

“After the barbaric act there cannot be business as usual” with Pakistan, said Singh on Tuesday.

“What has happened is unacceptable. Those responsible for this crime will have to be brought to book,” he added.

On Monday, the Indian Army Chief General Bikram Singh also issued a statement saying that the recent attack was “a pre-planned activity” and Indian security forces will “retaliate aggressively.”

This comes after India said Pakistani forces have killed two Indian soldiers on the military control line (LoC) near disputed Kashmir on January 8.

According to military sources, an Indian patrol was ambushed by Pakistani soldiers in southern Kashmir’s Mendhar sector, 173 kilometers (107 miles) west of Jammu.

Pakistan, however, denied India’s allegations, saying Indian troops had crossed the de facto border of LoC in Kashmir, called the Line of Control, storming a military checkpoint.

Kashmir lies at the heart of more than 60 years of hostility between India and Pakistan. Both countries claim Kashmir in full but each only has control over a section of the territory.

Despite a 2003 ceasefire along the Line of Control, the area still witnesses violence by both sides.

MAM/PKH

I read the news about Colonel Denise Lind’s ruling in the case against Bradley Manning with great interest. She ruled that Manning, the U.S. soldier accused of releasing thousands of military and diplomatic emails and cables to Wikileaks was indeed subjected to excessively harsh treatment whilst in military detention and this must surely be seen as a small victory for the Manning defense team.

The punishment of Bradley Manning goes directly against the Uniform Code of Military Justice’s own laws, namely Section 813 article 13, which basically states, “No punishment before trial.” This law was obviously broken. People in this country are entitled to a “speedy trial,” which is normally between 100 and 120 days from the date of the crime. Bradley Manning has been incarcerated for more than 1,000 days before his trial has begun and even a United Nations investigation confirmed that Manning was being held in inhumane conditions that was tantamount to torture.

In my humble opinion, the judges’ ruling, granting Manning a 112-day reduction in any sentence he might receive, is welcome but far short of true justice. If the military broke its own laws and President Obama even declared publicly that Manning had broken the law, then how can anyone say that this could be a “fair” trial? Which military judge is going to go against the statements of his or her commander in chief?

An internal investigation by the Marine Corps, which operates the prison in which Manning was being held, stated that Manning’s jailers violated their own policies in imposing oppressive conditions. The Obama administration’s own State Department spokesman, PJ Crowley, denounced the detention conditions as “ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid” and was fired for his outspokenness.

President Obama, a constitutional lawyer, pays great lip service to “whistle blowers,” maintaining that the U.S. needs people who will attempt to tell the truth, that the country needs people of courage to step forward when they witness wrongdoing of any kind, but cannot see the need to protect Bradley Manning. Perhaps the greatest crime that Manning committed was one of embarrassing the military and disturbing the status quo and one also has to wonder why the newspapers that profited from the publication of the events are not being brought to task. Manning is accused of aiding the enemy but surely the members of Al-Qaeda can read the newspaper.

When Bradley Manning saw and was asked to take part in things that troubled his heart and soul he went through the normal channels, bringing his concerns to his superiors only to be disregarded. As a U.S. soldier Manning swore an oath to protect the constitution of the United States and when he witnessed murder and mayhem being carried out in the name of the American people he felt it necessary to reveal what he knew. I truly believe that he wanted, above all, to start a serious dialogue about what was really being done in our name.

When Daniel Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers to the American public in 1971, the case against him was thrown out when it was discovered that the Nixon administration had illegally broken into his offices. If, as the judge in Manning’s case declared, he was subjected to excessively harsh treatment in military detention then surely he case against Bradley Manning should be held to the same standards.

I became a citizen of this country more than 30 years ago and it is an honor and a privilege to be a small part of the USA. I came here to “the land of the free” because of the wonderful people I met and the beauty of the country I saw. The fact is that we are supposed to be a nation of laws, but when we break our laws and very little is done about it then I begin to question one of the primary reasons I came here in the first place.

© 2012 Graham Nash

Graham Nash is singer, songwriter, photographer and political activist. Member of the group Crosby, Stills, and Nash (and sometimes Young), Nash also helped create NukeFree.org.

I read the news about Colonel Denise Lind’s ruling in the case against Bradley Manning with great interest. She ruled that Manning, the U.S. soldier accused of releasing thousands of military and diplomatic emails and cables to Wikileaks was indeed subjected to excessively harsh treatment whilst in military detention and this must surely be seen as a small victory for the Manning defense team.

The punishment of Bradley Manning goes directly against the Uniform Code of Military Justice’s own laws, namely Section 813 article 13, which basically states, “No punishment before trial.” This law was obviously broken. People in this country are entitled to a “speedy trial,” which is normally between 100 and 120 days from the date of the crime. Bradley Manning has been incarcerated for more than 1,000 days before his trial has begun and even a United Nations investigation confirmed that Manning was being held in inhumane conditions that was tantamount to torture.

In my humble opinion, the judges’ ruling, granting Manning a 112-day reduction in any sentence he might receive, is welcome but far short of true justice. If the military broke its own laws and President Obama even declared publicly that Manning had broken the law, then how can anyone say that this could be a “fair” trial? Which military judge is going to go against the statements of his or her commander in chief?

An internal investigation by the Marine Corps, which operates the prison in which Manning was being held, stated that Manning’s jailers violated their own policies in imposing oppressive conditions. The Obama administration’s own State Department spokesman, PJ Crowley, denounced the detention conditions as “ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid” and was fired for his outspokenness.

President Obama, a constitutional lawyer, pays great lip service to “whistle blowers,” maintaining that the U.S. needs people who will attempt to tell the truth, that the country needs people of courage to step forward when they witness wrongdoing of any kind, but cannot see the need to protect Bradley Manning. Perhaps the greatest crime that Manning committed was one of embarrassing the military and disturbing the status quo and one also has to wonder why the newspapers that profited from the publication of the events are not being brought to task. Manning is accused of aiding the enemy but surely the members of Al-Qaeda can read the newspaper.

When Bradley Manning saw and was asked to take part in things that troubled his heart and soul he went through the normal channels, bringing his concerns to his superiors only to be disregarded. As a U.S. soldier Manning swore an oath to protect the constitution of the United States and when he witnessed murder and mayhem being carried out in the name of the American people he felt it necessary to reveal what he knew. I truly believe that he wanted, above all, to start a serious dialogue about what was really being done in our name.

When Daniel Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers to the American public in 1971, the case against him was thrown out when it was discovered that the Nixon administration had illegally broken into his offices. If, as the judge in Manning’s case declared, he was subjected to excessively harsh treatment in military detention then surely he case against Bradley Manning should be held to the same standards.

I became a citizen of this country more than 30 years ago and it is an honor and a privilege to be a small part of the USA. I came here to “the land of the free” because of the wonderful people I met and the beauty of the country I saw. The fact is that we are supposed to be a nation of laws, but when we break our laws and very little is done about it then I begin to question one of the primary reasons I came here in the first place.

© 2012 Graham Nash

Graham Nash is singer, songwriter, photographer and political activist. Member of the group Crosby, Stills, and Nash (and sometimes Young), Nash also helped create NukeFree.org.

© Copyright 2010 Press TV. All rights reserved.

Over on TechDirt, they’re asking this question: Why, two days before Aaron Swartz’ arrest, did the Secret Service take over handling of the case? Their question comes from Marcy Wheeler’s excellent reporting on new documents disclosed in his case:

According to a suppression motion in his case, however, two days before Aaron was arrested, the Secret Service took over the investigation.

On the morning of January 4, 2011, at approximately 8:00 am, MIT personnel located the netbook being used for the downloads and decided to leave it in place and institute a packet capture of the network traffic to and from the netbook.This was accomplished using the laptop of Dave Newman, MIT Senior Network Engineer, which was connected to the netbook and intercepted the communications coming to and from it.Later that day, beginning at 11:00 am, the Secret Service assumed control of the investigation. [my emphasis]

In fact, in one of the most recent developments in discovery in Aaron’s case, the government belatedly turned over an email showing Secret Service agent Michael Pickett offering to take possession of the hardware seized from Aaron “anytime after it has been processed for prints or whenever you [Assistant US Attorney Stephen Heymann] feel it is appropriate.” Another newly disclosed document shows the Pickett accompanied the local cops as they moved the hardware they had seized from Aaron around.

Her point is well-taken: According to the Secret Service website, they get involved in computer crime investigations in limited situations, and downloading academic papers from JSTOR fits none of the criteria.

But if you go and look at the testimony of the Secret Service before Congress, you might find the answer there. In April 2011, Special Agent Pablo Martinez testified before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism. The purpose of his testimony was to inform the subcommittee about measures to coordinate and investigate computer crimes which could result in economic loss. Buried in that testimony, there is this:

The Secret Service developed a multifaceted approach to combating cyber crime by: expanding our Electronic Crimes Special Agent Program; expanding our network of Electronic Crimes Task Forces; creating a Cyber Intelligence Section; expanding our presence overseas; forming partnerships with academic institutions focusing on cybersecurity; and working with DHS to establish the National Computer Forensic Institute to train our state and local law enforcement partners in the area of cyber crime. These initiatives led to the opening of 957 criminal cases and the arrest of 1,217 suspects in fiscal year 2010 for cyber crime related violations with a fraud loss of $507.7 million. The arrest of these individuals prevented an additional loss estimated at $7 billion dollars and involved the examination of 867 terabytes of data, which is roughly the equivalent of 867,000 copies of the Encyclopedia Britannica. As a result of these efforts, the Secret Service is recognized worldwide for our investigative and innovative approaches to detecting, investigating and preventing cyber crimes.

Could one of those partners have been MIT? Did the Secret Service and FBI fear that their partnership work in the area of combating computer crime and online fraud would be revealed?

On the question of partnerships, let’s have a look at Janet Napolitano’s speech at MIT and what she had to say about the government relationship with the university:

MIT, of course, is the source of one of the great national-security collaborations, in the form of the Lincoln Laboratory, which currently works with DHS on several projects. I have seen a good example of an impressive DHS-MIT project, which is called the Imaging System for Immersive Surveillance — or “ISIS.” The prototype camera, which is at Boston’s Logan Airport, greatly expands our ability to spot suspicious objects and quickly analyze any breaches in security.

Marcy asks whether MIT asked the Secret Service to get involved*. From these two pieces of information, it’s unclear whether or not they actually asked, or it was simply routine in cases where there was not just one (perceived) breach on the network, but a persistent effort to breach and download information. Accept for the moment that federal law enforcement agencies make wingnuts’ paranoia look mild. In my limited experience, they’re paranoid and make presumptions of major guilt over minor things, leaving the accused with the unpleasant task of proving their innocence.

Since MIT is a collaborator on national security via their Lincoln laboratory, I think it’s entirely possible that at the point where the feds were brought into the case, they were fearful that JSTOR was simply a dry run for their national security scholarship; hence, the Secret Service involvement.

There are other explanations as well, but they all seem to lead back to some kind of belief that Aaron Swartz was doing more than simply downloading journal articles from JSTOR. In short, I believe they feared he was going to steal and publish “national security secrets.” Take this little piece Special Agent Martinez’ subcommittee testimony with regard to the Secret Service CERT liason program:

The primary goals of the program are: to broaden the Secret Service’s knowledge of software engineering and networked systems security; to expand and strengthen partnerships and relationships with the technical and academic communities; to provide an opportunity to work closely with CERT-SEI and Carnegie Mellon University; and to present the results of this partnership at the quarterly meetings of our ECTFs.

In August 2004, the Secret Service partnered with CERT-SEI to publish the first ever “Insider Threat Study” examining the illicit cyber activity in the banking and finance sector. Due to the overwhelming response to this initial study, the Secret Service and CERT-SEI, in partnership with DHS S&T, are working to update the study. An updated study, expected to be released in late 2011, will analyze actual incidents of insider crimes from inception to prosecution. The research team will share its findings with federal, state, and local law enforcement, private industry, academia and other government agencies.

It’s always the damned banks, isn’t it? But the point here is that there’s clearly academic-government research partnerships, forensic partnerships, and policy partnerships. They want to guard those, and with some good reason.

The problem I see is that Aaron Swartz didn’t touch any data from those partnerships, yet from investigator to prosecutor, they treated him as though he were the modern-day Rosenberg spy team rolled up in one really, really smart young guy. Instead of reading what he wrote in the Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto, where he clearly said that he believed information should be free, and he intended to free it, they leapt to a conclusion and then reached for every fragment they could find to support it. As Marcy points out, the government invoked that manifesto for the very first time in their response to Swartz’ Motion to Suppress:

In other words, precisely at the moment the government defended all the searches it did of Swartz, it (for the first time, I believe) introduced a new descriptor (in addition to the adjectives “writer, hacker, and activist”): Swartz wrote the Guerilla Open Access Manifesto.

The reference is particularly odd, being introduced (though not elaborated on) in this brief defending the investigative approach used by MIT and then the government. It effectively invokes First Amendment protected speech to justify investigative tactics.

Of course, in the end, no Monday-morning quarterbacking will restore Aaron Swartz. But if it leads us to a place where we might have a real conversation about prosecutorial and investigatory overreach, perhaps it will at least begin to facilitate a long-overdue conversation about why people mistrust government with reason, what safeguards government should implement to protect the rights of citizens, and why we must reject celebrating prosecutors who want to “make examples” of others.

Now that the government has dropped the charges against him posthumously, I am hoping his attorneys will release all of the pleadings and documents related to his case. It’s time to have an honest conversation about this notion of “homeland security”, who exactly is being protected (besides banks, of course), and how it can come to pass that the full force of the FBI and Secret Service came down on the head of a smart, passionate person who simply wanted to publish academic papers for everyone to access.

*Update: As I was going through the new documents released in the case more carefully, I came across a report of new discovery released by Deputy US Attorney Heymann. It indicates that MIT police were involved in the investigation from day one and remained involved. That tracks with reports that MIT, unlike JSTOR, was not willing to drop the charges against Swartz and actually assisted in the investigation.

What is most heartbreaking, however, is that the US Attorney’s office, even after they had all of the facts and knew there had been no breach of national security, would not agree to any sentence that did not include prison time. They had also been warned that Swartz was a suicide risk, and showed no heart at all.

Andy Good, Swartz’s initial lawyer, is ­alternately sad and furious.

“The thing that galls me is that I told Heymann the kid was a suicide risk,” Good told me. “His reaction was a standard reaction in that office, not unique to Steve. He said, ‘Fine, we’ll lock him up.’ I’m not saying they made Aaron kill himself. Aaron might have done this anyway. I’m saying they were aware of the risk, and they were heedless.”

Good says the hard-line attitude was not unique to his case, but the facts were. People who steal things usually benefit financially from it. Swartz downloaded the material because he believed that such information – in this case, much of it research underwritten by taxpayers – should be free to the public. He did it not to make a buck, but to make a point.

Swartz and his lawyers were not looking for a free pass. They had offered to accept a deferred prosecution or probation, so that if Swartz pulled a stunt like that again, he would end up in prison.

Marty Weinberg, who took the case over from Good, said he nearly negotiated a plea bargain in which Swartz would not serve any time. He said JSTOR signed off on it, but MIT would not.

“There were subsets of the MIT community who were profoundly in support of Aaron,” Weinberg said. That support did not override institutional interests.

There it is, in black and white. An “almost done deal”, except it was MIT who walked away from it. They should be ashamed.

President Barack Obama during a news conference in the East Room of the White House, in Washington, January 14, 2013. (Photo: Stephen Crowley / The New York Times) Six and a half years ago, I drove out to Lompoc federal penitentiary in the hills outside Santa Barbara to interview Weldon Angelos, a young man who had received the improbable sentence of fifty-five years without parole for selling marijuana, ostensibly while carrying a small pistol in an ankle holster. 

A rap artist from Salt Lake City and friend to Napoleon and other eminences of the hip-hop world, Angelos had been ensnared by an informant in a series of undercover marijuana purchases that reeked of entrapment. What might have been a two-bit state pot case became a high-stakes federal case. When Angelos–who denied carrying a gun when dealing–refused to enter a guilty plea, the feds played hardball, piling more indictments onto the original charge. In December 2003, more than a year after he had been arrested, Angelos was found guilty on several counts, though he was acquitted on others. Because of mandatory minimum statutes linked to the firearms charges, the presiding judge–a George W. Bush appointee named Paul Cassell–was left with no discretion at sentencing. After asking the prosecuting and defense attorneys to advise him on the constitutionality of the sentence, a distraught Cassell handed down the fifty-five-year term, a punishment he called “unjust, cruel and even irrational.” In his opinion, he urged then-President Bush to pardon the young father of three and right a clear judicial wrong. 

Angelos was 23 when he was arrested. He was in his mid-20s when I met him. It was such an obvious injustice that I thought the odds were pretty good he’d be out of prison by the time he was 30. Surely one or another president would pardon him or commute his sentence, either reducing it or allowing him to be released on time served.

But today Angelos is in his early 30s and fast approaching his ten-year anniversary behind bars. Bush didn’t pardon him. Neither has President Obama–despite earlier pleas on Angelos’s behalf from several ex-governors, dozens of ex—federal prosecutors and judges, and four US attorneys general; despite growing concerns over mandatory minimum sentences from members of Congress; despite the pledge by onetime Salt Lake City mayor and civil rights lawyer Rocky Anderson to “do anything I can to remedy this unbelievable injustice”; despite The Washington Post and other leading publications urging clemency; despite the fact that, at least rhetorically, the Obama administration has moved away from the sensational, fearmongering tactics of the drug war, and that drug czar Gil Kerlikowske doesn’t even like to talk about a “war on drugs”; despite the fact that in late 2012 Obama said the feds had “bigger fish to fry” than prosecuting marijuana users in states moving toward legalization; despite the fact that one state after another has rolled back its most draconian mandatory minimum sentences for small-time drug users and dealers.

“He has a family who deserve to see their father at home with them,” wrote Napoleon (Mutah Beale) in a letter to President Obama urging him to secure Angelos’s release. “But the most important thing is he can be a benefit to the troubled kids as Weldon is a changed man.”

So why hasn’t Obama done the right thing? Could it be that Angelos has just gotten lost in the shuffle? Possibly–but if that’s the reason, there would be evidence that Obama has used his pardon and commutation powers wisely in other cases. Unfortunately, that’s not true.

While in the White House, Bill Clinton pardoned well over 100 people. So did President Bush. To date, Obama has pardoned less than two dozen and commuted even fewer sentences. His first commutation wasn’t until late November 2011, when, according to CBS News, he ordered the release of a woman who had served ten years of a twenty-two-year sentence for cocaine distribution. CBS reported that “the latest numbers from the US Pardon Attorney show that since taking office Obama has denied 872 applications for pardons and 3,104 for commutations of sentence.” A year later, ThinkProgress reported that the only presidential pardon granted in 2012 was for the lucky turkey, as part of the Thanksgiving tradition.

A president who talks the talk about more sensible, nuanced drug policy, and whose oratory frequently invokes what is best in the American political imagination, has shown himself remarkably reluctant to use one of the most important of presidential prerogatives–the power to right judicial wrongs. “This president,” says Anderson, “has been unbelievably timid and disinclined to do justice in cases that scream out for commutation. There’s not a lot of moral or political fortitude in play.”

On January 5, The New York Times ran an editorial calling on the president to exercise his pardon power–while also pointing out that the Justice Department, too, “has undermined the process with huge backlogs and delays, and sometimes views pardons as an affront to federal efforts to fight crime.” The Times also blamed Ronald Rodgers, the lawyer who runs the Office of the Pardon Attorney and has obstructed the process, and argued that his office should be replaced with “a new bipartisan commission under the White House’s aegis, giving it ample resources and real independence.”

In the long run, when it comes to preventing future unjust sentences like the one given Angelos, Congress and state legislatures should be the ones to roll back the excesses of the drug war. And there’s no doubt that Obama, a constitutional law scholar, understands how much more powerful legislation is than the willful, even capricious, pardon function of the president. (After all, Clinton was excoriated for what appeared to be pardons issued in exchange for campaign and other contributions. And Bush was heavily criticized for commuting the prison term of his disgraced adviser Lewis Libby.) But when there’s a massive miscarriage of justice–as has happened all too often during the forty years of the “war on drugs”–the president’s ability to pardon or commute sentences is vital.

How does one tell Weldon Angelos’s kids that their father will not only never walk them to school but that he will never walk their children to school? That if he survives fifty-five years in prison, he might get out just in time to walk his great-grandchildren to school. It’s unconscionable that such a sentence should stand. If Angelos and other drug war prisoners with absurd sentences remain in prison through Obama’s second term, it will be a stain on the president’s legacy.

Liliana Segura recently talked with documentary film maker Rebecca Richman Cohen, in “Why Should Medical Marijuana Providers Die in Prison?” (Nov. 30).

January 15, 2013  |  

On Friday, January 11, 2013, 26-year-old visionary technologist and social activist Aaron Swartz hanged himself in New York City. A passionate advocate for making access to online information as widespread as possible, Swartz was grappling with the fallout from his efforts to do just that.

Two years before Swartz ended his life, he was arrested by police from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the City of Cambridge, Mass., police for breaking and entering into an MIT storage closet. In the closet, Swartz had stashed an Acer laptop  he had programmed to download in bulk millions of scholarly articles from JSTOR, a non-profit database that provides access to the articles for academic libraries. At the time, articles on JSTOR were locked behind a paywall for non-academics who wished to access them through their own computers. Swartz aimed to make them available, free of charge, to anyone who wanted to read them.

At the time of his arrest, an investigation of Swartz’s MIT/JSTOR action was already underway, and two days earlier, the Secret Service’s online crime division assumed control of the probe. The Secret Service routinely conducts complex computer crime investigations; its involvement signaled the treatment of this as a major crime, not a caper. Six months later, U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz charged Swartz with a four-count indictment.  

To those who knew Swartz’ ethic, that indictment already seemed like overkill, essentially labeling an effort to share information as wire and computer fraud. But then last year, Ortiz multiplied each of the main charges, turning the same underlying actions into a 13-count indictment that threatened Swartz with a 35-year sentence.

Swartz had long struggled with depression that may have contributed to his suicide. But his family and associates have also blamed the government’s conduct in prosecuting Swartz. A statement issued by the family the day after Swartz’s suicide charges that “the U.S. Attorney’s office pursued an exceptionally harsh array of charges, carrying potentially over 30 years in prison, to punish an alleged crime that had no victims.”

And therein lies the almost incomprehensible legal background to this tragedy. Both before and after his arrest, Swartz had dedicated much of his life to using the internet to making information freely accessible. His goal here — the government claims he intended to publish the journals online, but made no claim he wanted to profit off of them — would have put academic research, much of it funded by federal grants, in the hands of the people who paid for it.

The Free Exchange of Ideas

Academic inquiry is founded on the free exchange of ideas. And most of the journals’ authors do not get paid for the articles they wrote. Swartz’s “crime” here would have served to foster intellectual exchange, the entire point of publishing scholarly journals. In fact, since Swartz’s indictment, JSTOR has opened up access to its journals for individuals who register. To some extent, then, Swartz’ goal has been implemented by his alleged victim.

Moreover, as Alex Stamos, an expert witness who would have testified in Swartz’s defense, points out, both the alleged victims of this crime had built their systems to foster openness. MIT deliberately allows visitors to access their system. At the time of the alleged crimes, JSTOR permitted users at MIT an unlimited number of downloads. Both networks lacked very basic safeguards to prevent abuse.

And both alleged victims have expressed regret at what has happened. Before the federal government charged Swartz, JSTOR settled its complaint against him, though MIT did not. In response to his death, JSTOR reiterated that it “regretted being drawn into from the outset, since JSTOR’s mission is to foster widespread access to the world’s body of scholarly knowledge.” And in addition to also expressing sorrow, MIT President Rafael Reif promised an investigation into MIT’s role in his prosecution, raising questions about what alternatives MIT had to cooperating in Swartz’s prosecution.

While MIT’s remorse may be tragically belated, both the alleged victims in this case seem to recognize that the prosecution violated the ethics of openness that JSTOR and MIT claim to uphold.

In spite of all this, the government portrayed Swartz’s action as theft, painting him as a common criminal. “Stealing is stealing whether you use a computer command or a crowbar, and whether you take documents, data or dollars. It is equally harmful to the victim whether you sell what you have stolen or give it away,” said Ortiz at a press conference announcing the charges.

January 15, 2013  |  

On Friday, January 11, 2013, 26-year-old visionary technologist and social activist Aaron Swartz hanged himself in New York City. A passionate advocate for making access to online information as widespread as possible, Swartz was grappling with the fallout from his efforts to do just that.

Two years before Swartz ended his life, he was arrested by police from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the City of Cambridge, Mass., police for breaking and entering into an MIT storage closet. In the closet, Swartz had stashed an Acer laptop  he had programmed to download in bulk millions of scholarly articles from JSTOR, a non-profit database that provides access to the articles for academic libraries. At the time, articles on JSTOR were locked behind a paywall for non-academics who wished to access them through their own computers. Swartz aimed to make them available, free of charge, to anyone who wanted to read them.

At the time of his arrest, an investigation of Swartz’s MIT/JSTOR action was already underway, and two days earlier, the Secret Service’s online crime division assumed control of the probe. The Secret Service routinely conducts complex computer crime investigations; its involvement signaled the treatment of this as a major crime, not a caper. Six months later, U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz charged Swartz with a four-count indictment.  

To those who knew Swartz’ ethic, that indictment already seemed like overkill, essentially labeling an effort to share information as wire and computer fraud. But then last year, Ortiz multiplied each of the main charges, turning the same underlying actions into a 13-count indictment that threatened Swartz with a 35-year sentence.

Swartz had long struggled with depression that may have contributed to his suicide. But his family and associates have also blamed the government’s conduct in prosecuting Swartz. A statement issued by the family the day after Swartz’s suicide charges that “the U.S. Attorney’s office pursued an exceptionally harsh array of charges, carrying potentially over 30 years in prison, to punish an alleged crime that had no victims.”

And therein lies the almost incomprehensible legal background to this tragedy. Both before and after his arrest, Swartz had dedicated much of his life to using the internet to making information freely accessible. His goal here — the government claims he intended to publish the journals online, but made no claim he wanted to profit off of them — would have put academic research, much of it funded by federal grants, in the hands of the people who paid for it.

The Free Exchange of Ideas

Academic inquiry is founded on the free exchange of ideas. And most of the journals’ authors do not get paid for the articles they wrote. Swartz’s “crime” here would have served to foster intellectual exchange, the entire point of publishing scholarly journals. In fact, since Swartz’s indictment, JSTOR has opened up access to its journals for individuals who register. To some extent, then, Swartz’ goal has been implemented by his alleged victim.

Moreover, as Alex Stamos, an expert witness who would have testified in Swartz’s defense, points out, both the alleged victims of this crime had built their systems to foster openness. MIT deliberately allows visitors to access their system. At the time of the alleged crimes, JSTOR permitted users at MIT an unlimited number of downloads. Both networks lacked very basic safeguards to prevent abuse.

And both alleged victims have expressed regret at what has happened. Before the federal government charged Swartz, JSTOR settled its complaint against him, though MIT did not. In response to his death, JSTOR reiterated that it “regretted being drawn into from the outset, since JSTOR’s mission is to foster widespread access to the world’s body of scholarly knowledge.” And in addition to also expressing sorrow, MIT President Rafael Reif promised an investigation into MIT’s role in his prosecution, raising questions about what alternatives MIT had to cooperating in Swartz’s prosecution.

While MIT’s remorse may be tragically belated, both the alleged victims in this case seem to recognize that the prosecution violated the ethics of openness that JSTOR and MIT claim to uphold.

In spite of all this, the government portrayed Swartz’s action as theft, painting him as a common criminal. “Stealing is stealing whether you use a computer command or a crowbar, and whether you take documents, data or dollars. It is equally harmful to the victim whether you sell what you have stolen or give it away,” said Ortiz at a press conference announcing the charges.

(Photo: Spc. Kim Browne / US Army)The tendency to invoke a national security framework in discussions of climate change can lead to misguided and opportunistic policies centered on greenwashed imperialism.

Over the past few years a handful of liberal environmentalists, pundits and scientists have been co-opting the language and methods of the National Security State in order to declare a “War on Climate Change.”

A number of recent articles on the topic illustrate just how far militarism has coiled its way around climate change politics. A recent blog post by Joe Romm, an editor at Climate Progress, noted President Obama’s likely (and now actual) nomination of Senator John Kerry (D-Massachusetts) as secretary of state. The article described Kerry as a “climate hawk” who “believes that climate change is the ‘biggest long term threat‘ to national security.”

Then there is the blog Climate Code Red, which published “Scientists call for war on climate change, but who on earth is listening?” on December 7, 2012. The magazine New Scientist, in a November 2, 2012 editorial: “The US military is a useful ally on climate change,” it exclaimed. “Letting the military lead the way might be the best way to build a new energy economy.” The editorial lauds the Pentagon’s ability to generate research dollars, and as a result develop new markets for new technologies.” Greens, too, should support the man oeuvre … when you’ve got a war to fight, it helps to have the big boys on your side.”

And three days after the New Scientist editorial, Boston Globe columnist Juliette Kayyem wrote, “After Sandy, environmentalists, military find common cause,” adding to the chorus of voices singing the praises of the National Security State’s interest and involvement in climate change.

Kayyem, coincidentally a former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, wrote, “War might be an entirely accurate – and now even more appropriate – word to describe the urgency of the effort to curb climate change … because climate change poses a continuing and unpredictable threat to national and global security.” The Pentagon first ranked climate change as a national security threat in 2010, and in November 2012 the National Academy of Sciences sounded alarms in a report that noted “the security establishment is going to have to start planning for natural disasters, sea-level rise, drought, epidemics and the other consequences of climate change.” However, the Boston Globe’s Kayyem does point out that the Pentagon’s involvement is not driven by altruistic humanitarian or ecological concern, but rather US geopolitical interests, such as the potential threat to US military bases around the globe as a result of a rise in sea-level.

The latest war metaphor was coined by Grist staff writer David Roberts in an October 2010 column, “Introducing ‘climate hawks‘.” Roberts says he wanted a new label to define a new subset of people concerned with climate change and clean energy. For Roberts, traditional environmentalists should not be leading the discussion on climate change. No, Roberts wanted to create a name that could bring people together from the usually opposed corporate, military and activist communities. He asked his readers for ideas, although “climate hawk” ended up being proposed by one of his colleagues at Grist. Roberts explains why he liked the term:

First and foremost, it doesn’t carry any implications about The Truth. It doesn’t say, ‘I’m right, you’re wrong. I’m smarter and more enlightened than you.’ Instead it evokes a judgment: that the risks of climate change are sufficient to warrant a robust response…. It becomes about values, about how hard to fight and how much to sacrifice to defend America and her future…. The health of Mother Earth just doesn’t move that many people. For better or worse, more Americans respond to evocations of toughness in the face of a threat. In foreign policy a hawk is someone who, as Donald Rumsfeld used to put it, ‘leans forward,’ someone who’s not afraid to flex America’s considerable muscle, someone who takes a proactive attitude toward gathering dangers.

Climate Progress’s Romm chose “Climate Hawk” as their phrase of the year in 2010. But the term has been gaining ground. More recently, after November’s election, it was used in a headline by Mother Jones,”Five Climate Hawks Who Won Tuesday”, demonstrating that the term is finding its way into mainstream environmental vernacular.

A “climate hawk” flexes muscles, fights and – most importantly – defends America. The term and the reasoning co-opt the language and logic of masculinity, militarism and nationalism, and thus perpetuate a cultural ailment that afflicts US society and how it approaches national and international dilemmas (think War on Drugs, War on Terror, etc.)”Any term one chooses to describe a movement will be more inviting to some and more alienating to others,” said Robert Jensen, a professor of journalism at University of Texas at Austin’s College of Communication. “Someone like me, who has been a harsh critic of US militarism and imperialism and an advocate for radical change to deal with climate, doesn’t care what a movement is called, because the work goes on.”

According to George Lakoff, Goldman Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley, the use of the term “climate hawk” and using national security within a climate frame are ambiguous and open to interpretations. He believes that a term like “climate hawk” and the nexus between climate change and national security are being used by some with the intention of instilling the urgency of the situation to our health as a nation and the need for aggressive policy and action. “Resorting to turning climate policy over to the Defense Department is certainly a failure,” said Lakoff, of a possible misinterpretation. “I don’t think that is what either Romm or Kerry has in mind.”

However, in its militarism, the term can alienate women, who are often on the front lines of climate struggle. “Many would argue that a culture of militarized nationalism is firmly established in the US, and that patriarchy directly relates to this culture. Patriarchy marginalizes that which is associated with femininity while privileging masculinity,” said Nicole Detraz, assistant professor of political science at the University of Memphis. “Societal depictions of women as caregivers or mothers, and men as leaders or fighters establish men as the ‘most appropriate’ actors to take care of the real world of security.”

Militarism has been creeping into the mainstream environmental movement for years. On December 4, 2012, The World Wildlife Federation announced it would use drones to track poachers in Africa, thanks to a $5 million grant from Google. Al Jazeera correspondent Eddie Walsh examined the global implications of non-state actors engaging in drone surveillance and other international security activities. Private military security contractors operating largely with impunity in Iraq, Afghanistan and other conflict zones already have brought similar issues to light.

“I strongly believe militarism stands in the way of achieving progress on climate change,” said Betsy Hartmann, director of the population and development program and professor of development studies at Hampshire College, who currently focuses on the militarization of climate change in her research and writing. “Linking climate change and national security is a dangerous road to go down.”

First “climate hawks,” now “enviro-drones.” While climate change does have the capacity to cause destabilization in areas of the world, as well as become an existential threat for many, looking at this through a national security framework divides the world between us and them, while reinforcing the dangerous notion of American exceptionalism. “Using this language suggests that there are no solutions, so we have to fight,” added Hartmann.

Unfortunately, this is a road we have been traveling down for some time now, and adopting foreign policy discourse and tools exacerbates this troubling tendency.

According to Detraz, whose research critically examines the environment, security and gender, the trend of “utilizing security discourse” for national and international problems dates back to the Cold War. “There is typically a perception that security issues garner a great deal of attention and resources, and that framing environmental issues as security issues can tap into this,” said Detraz. “For these reasons, environmentalists who want to raise awareness of climate change may use concepts/terms like climate security, the insecurity of energy dependence, or environmental conflict.”

In a 2009 editorial, The New York Times advocated securitizing environmental discourse. Lamenting Congress’s failure to pass legislation to reduce greenhouse gases, it argued in an editorial, “The Climate and National Security,” that, “Proponents of climate change legislation have now settled on a new strategy: Warning that global warming poses a serious threat to national security,” and that it was “pretty good politics” because “many politicians will do anything for the Pentagon.” Hampshire’s Hartmann said that this strategic decision by mainstream environmentalists is a testament to the power of the fossil fuel industry and climate denial in this country.

Also in 2009, the CIA opened the Center on Climate Change and National Security. But when a historian at the National Security Archived sent a Freedom of Information Act request to the CIA for copies of its reports on climate change the request was denied because the agency said the information was classified. Another example of the “benefits” of the CIA’s partnership with climate change activists comes courtesy of WikiLeaks. The US State Department, acting at the behest of the CIA, sent out a directive “seeking human intelligence on UN diplomats,” as well as “compromising intelligence on the officials running the climate negotiations” to undermine and manipulate the 2009 climate talks in Copenhagen, as the Guardian reported in two separate articles on Dec. 3, 2010.

The Obama Administration ended up closing the CIA’s center on climate change in November 2012. “The goal of the intelligence apparatus is to help make Americans safer and more secure,” Romm, also a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, told Public Radio International’s (PRI) program, “Living on Earth” on December 6, 2012. “And, since global warming is clearly a growing threat to our security, both directly and through how it affects countries that we have an interest in, we need to focus the CIA’s and the Pentagon’s thinkers on climate change.”

Do we? Professor Detraz argues that if actors adopt a relatively narrow, environmental conflict discourse we are likely to get policies that are narrowly focused on protecting and enhancing state security.

An October 2011 report prepared by the Defense Science Board, which advises the secretary of defense, supports Detraz’s argument. “The United States, however, has neither the knowledge nor the resources needed to produce widespread amelioration. US resources must be focused on the most serious US national risks,” it reads. The report, which pays particular attention to Africa, also pointed out, “In some instances, climate change will serve as a threat multiplier, exacerbating tensions between tribes, ethnic groups and nations. In other cases, [it] will seem more like Mother Nature’s weapon of mass destruction.”

“It’s dangerous that some liberal environmentalists bought into this climate conflict narrative about poor people of color becoming violent when climate change makes resources scarce. This narrative draws on deep-seated stereotypes of Africans in particular as savages and barbarians, incapable of technological and institutional innovation or cooperation,” said Hartmann. “The media loves this stuff because fear sells in this country, especially racialized fears of poor people. The tragedy is that this approach works against the kind of international solidarity we need to build popular, democratic and effective solutions to climate change.”

There have been other national security climate change projections of regional destabilizations caused by famine, droughts, subsequent migration flows, as well as wars fought over resources. This also calls into question the term “climate refugees,” a depoliticized term that minimizes or fails to consider the socioeconomic factors and institutionalized structures of racism and oppression that make certain populations more vulnerable to environmental instability.

“One of the strongest critiques of environmental security discourses [is] that they result in othering populations, many of whom are disproportionately vulnerable to climate change impacts. It is true that when institutions from the global North have discussed climate migrants they have tended to assume that it is a problem of people from Southern states entering their borders,” according to Detraz.

This can lead racist, xenophobic backlashes by both state actors and right-wing movements. “I advocate using narratives that highlight the human security threats that stem from environmental degradation, and the economic, social, and political vulnerabilities that make environmental insecurity a very real experience for millions of people,” she added.

As the Defense Science Board points out, it is not about stopping or reversing climate change, but rather the focus is about mitigating and adapting to projected crises that threaten US national security interests. And we shouldn’t fool ourselves. These interests are guided by maintaining US global hegemony and unfettered access to the world’s resources, not empathy, human rights or environmental sustainability. Accepting and perpetuating the narrative of climate security, and by talking about climate change through a national security framework, opens doors for the national security state to execute its imperial tools, with a new imperial alibi: a new, green humanitarian imperialism, with some NGO’s, International Financial Institutions, and academics serving as accessories. This is another method of preserving the global world order and Western-based notions of development.

For instance, the Pentagon’s enlisting of academics in its war efforts has stirred controversy in the recent past with university anthropologists helping the war efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq and University of Kansas geographers mapping indigenous land in Oaxaca, Mexico. The Scientific American reported in March 2012 in an article, “US Defense Department Develops Map of Future Climate Chaos” that University of Texas researchers, courtesy of a 5-year $7.6 million defense department grant, will be creating maps to show “where vulnerability to climate change and violent conflicts intersects throughout the African continent.” The US has expanded military operations in recent years with the creation of AFRICOM, something viewed as driven by “resource exploitation and imperial expansion,” and announced in December that it will be increasing troops and drones for 2013. The continent is in the midst of a natural resource boom, and China’s growing presence in the continent’s resource markets has bothered Washington and is perceived as challenging US hegemony in the region.

Also lurking in the dark imaginations of Pentagon planners could be something akin to regional military climate change operations – think Plan Colombia for climate change, and how the War on Drugs is not exclusively about stopping or controlling drug trafficking or consumption.

Guatemala has already provided an example of so-called environmental security. In 2010, then-president of Guatemala Alvaro Colom created a “green battalion” allegedly to protect Laguna del Tigre National Park Maya Biosphere Reserve in the department of Petén. But the creation of the battalion was the result of an agreement with French oil company Perenco. According to the Latin American Herald Tribune, “Colom said oil drilling is not the cause of environmental damage in that region and instead put the blame on land invasions by small farmers and cattle raising.” Indeed, this prediction seems to be coming true. “Some of these soldiers have taken part in forced evictions of communities living inside the park and are currently responsible for what amounts to a state of siege for those still living inside. Not only are the 25 to 30 communities inside the park forbidden from cutting a tree without a permit, they are under constant pressure from soldiers and armed park rangers,” wrote journalist Dawn Paley, writing for Briarpatch magazine in July 2012. In the US we’ve seen private mercenary company Blackwater called upon for security in response to natural disaster Hurricane Katrina, while BP hired private security contractors in 2010 to keep reporters away from the beaches after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf Coast.

It is sad that a national discussion on climate change that points to facts, science, solidarity and peaceful democratic measures has been lost on some people and deemed ineffective. Nevertheless, Lakoff, who is the author of Don’t Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate, a book widely believed to have influenced the Democratic Party and progressive organizations, points out that, “Peace, justice, and equality have been tried and don’t even motivate liberals, despite their truth.” But the voices that apply these principles risk being excluded from the conversation as a militaristic, fear-mongering framework gains more traction. It is important to examine the cultural pathologies that have taken us down this “dangerous road.”

“Human beings have always had a capacity for violence, but not all societies are pathological in their glorification of violence. I believe the root of this pathology is patriarchy, the foundational hierarchy of men over women,” said the University of Texas’s Jensen. “The domination-subordination dynamic at the heart of patriarchy defines our world, including our conceptions of nation, of racial identity, of wealth accumulation.”

This also currently defines our relationship with nature, which in modern times has been driven by accumulation and domination. Responses guided by this pathos, whether it is through militarism or scientific “panaceas,” such as genetically modifying agriculture or geoengineering, further illustrate this mentality.

So where do we begin?

“We start by recognizing that the story of progress, technological solutions and endless bounty are a fantasy. We face the fact that the human species is now facing an end to the endless expansion of the fossil fuel era and a permanent contraction,” said Jensen. “We start by growing up.”

A senior Iranian oil industry official says the Islamic Republic is the world’s leading exporter of fuel oil, selling an average of over 16 million liters per day of the product regardless of US-led sanctions.

Managing Director of the National Iranian Oil Products Distribution Company (NIOPDC) Mostafa Kashkouli said on Tuesday that Iran has exported 16.6 million liters of fuel oil per day since the beginning of the current Iranian calendar year (starting March 20, 2012).

Noting that Iran is currently among the biggest exporters of fuel oil in the world and the region, Kashkouli stated that Iran’s fuel oil conforms to the highest international standards.

The official added that Iran has sold an average of about 5 million liters of fuel oil and gasoline per day to passing vessels in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz since the beginning of the year.

The US and the EU have imposed tough sanctions against Iran’s financial and oil sectors since the beginning of 2012, claiming that the country’s nuclear energy program includes a military component.

The sanctions, which prevent other countries, including the European Union member states from purchasing Iran’s oil or extending insurance coverage for tankers carrying its crude, came into effect last summer.

On August 1, 2012, the US Congress approved more illegal embargoes against Tehran, which seek to punish banks, insurance companies, and shippers that help Tehran sell its oil.

Tehran refutes claims over its nuclear energy program, noting that frequent inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency have failed to prove any diversion in Iran’s nuclear energy program toward military purposes.

PG/SS/IS

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev meets with deputy prime ministers at Gorki residence, the Moscow region. From left: deputy prime ministers Dmitry Kozak, Olga Golodets, First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, right. Vladislav Surkov, second right, Deputy Prime Minister, and Chief of Government Staff.(RIA Novosti / Ekaterina Shtukina)

Only the Russian President is entitled to evaluate the government’s efficiency according to PM Dmitry Medvedev. The statement comes as media published ministers’ rating allegedly put together by officials from the presidential administration.

“The duty of the members of the presidential administration is to provide for the activities of the head of state,” stated Medvedev’s press-secretary Natalia Timakova. That is if those “high-ranking” officials really exist and were not made up by journalists,” she added.

On Tuesday, Izvestia daily wrote that the Kremlin is developing individual criteria to assess the work of heads of ministries and regional governors. The paper also published an unofficial rating of the cabinet members based on opinions given by senior representatives of the administration.

Unnamed Kremlin sources ranked the work of seven Russian ministers as high-powered. Those include, in particular, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, as well Interior Affairs chief Vladimir Kolokoltsev, and Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu.

Nine ministers were labeled as “stable.”There are some shortcomings in their performance, but they are improving and are stronger than their predecessors, a source in the administration told the paper.

Meanwhile, five members of the government got an “inefficient” mark. The backward team includes Ministers of Education, Regional Development, Labor, Transport and the Minister for the Development of the Russian Far East.

President Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, underlined the opinion of certain members of the Administration about government workers is subjective.

“So far, there is no official formula for the evaluation of efficiency of government members. It is being created. That would be a new practice in our country,” the press-secretary told Interfax.

The current government was formed in May last year, following Putin’s return to the Kremlin and Medvedevs’ — to the White House. Three quarters of the Cabinet that had previously been chaired by Putin were replaced by new members.

That was followed by a reshuffle in November 2012, when Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov was fired in the middle of a fraud scandal. He was replaced by Sergey Shoigu — the Governor of Moscow Region at a time. For 18 years prior to that, Shoigu was heading the Emergency Ministry — which was considered one of the country’s most efficient.

Policemen stand in front of a local train that derailed into a residential building in Saltsjoebaden, Sweden, on January 15, 2013.(AFP Photo / Jonas Ekstromer)

(6.3Mb) embed video

In a massive joyriding accident, a young cleaning lady stole a train and crashed into a house in the suburbs of Sweden’s capital, and was then taken to hospital hours later with serious injuries. No one else was hurt in the accident.

­On Tuesday morning, the 20-year-old cleaner managed to start the train, breaking her way through a line barrier after driving for about a mile only to derail and crash into a nearby house 25 meters further.

Luckily, no passengers were inside the locomotive at the time. The train, which destroyed the building’s wall and smashed the kitchen, did not kill any of the house’s residents.

“It’s incredibly lucky that no one in the house was injured,” a police spokesperson told Swedish TT news agency. It was later reported that five people were sleeping in the building when the train crashed into it.

The impact of the crash trapped the woman in the engine car of the hijacked vehicle for two hours. She was then extracted by rescue crews and flown to a hospital by helicopter, with serious injuries.

A local train derailed into a residential building in Saltsjoebaden, Sweden, on January 15, 2013.(AFP Photo / Scanpix Sweden)

A subcontractor operating the line where the accident took place said that it is not yet known why the woman stole the train. The unlucky cleaner-turned-train-conductor was reportedly detained on suspicion of destruction of public property.

The incident sparked a stir in Swedish media, with local politicians demanding that the public transport operator revise its security procedures. Questions arose as to how the woman managed to break into the train and then drive away so easily.

“It shouldn’t be possible for unauthorized people to drive our trains,” Christer G Wennerholm of the Stockholm County Council’s traffic committee said in a statement.

But public transport officials expressed confusion about the incident, and were unable to comment on the matter.

“The train must have been going much faster than it normally does,” a Stockholm public transport spokesperson was quoted by Swedish media as saying. He was only able to explain why the train escaped the depot barrier and then derailed.

Policemen stand in front of a local train that derailed into a residential building in Saltsjoebaden, Sweden, on January 15, 2013.(AFP Photo / Jonas Ekstromer)

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has called for a ceasefire in the West African nation of Mali, describing the recent military intervention in the country as “premature.”

Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the Secretary-General of the OIC to which Mali is a member, on Tuesday called for “an immediate ceasefire in Mali and for all parties to go back to the negotiations which were led by Burkina Faso” in December 2012.

Meanwhile, France says it will triple its soldiers who are currently fighting the rebels in Mali.

On Tuesday, a source close to French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said “There will be a gradual [French military] buildup [in Mali] to a figure of 2,500.”

France’s plan to increase troops in Mali comes after French President Francois Hollande said there were currently 750 soldiers in the West African country.

Meanwhile, the OIC chief also expressed deep concern over “the military escalation” in Mali, calling for maximum self-restraint from all parties in order to reach a peaceful solution to the conflict.

Chaos broke out in the African country after Malian President Amadou Toumani Toure was toppled in a military coup on March 22, 2012. The coup leaders said they mounted the coup in response to the government’s inability to contain the Tuareg rebellion in the north, which had been going on for two months.

MR/PKH/SS

Iran has dismissed allegations about clandestine nuclear activities at Parchin military site, which is situated near the capital, Tehran.

“Parchin is a military site and continues its own specific activities without having anything to do with [Iran’s] nuclear work,” Iran Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said on Tuesday.

He noted that inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have so far visited Parchin twice.

Mehmanparast said Iran and the IAEA can reach an agreement on the full recognition of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear rights in return for addressing concerns and removing possible ambiguities about Iran’s nuclear energy program.

Iran and the IAEA will hold a new round of talks in Tehran on Wednesday. They last met in December 2012.

On Tuesday, IAEA Deputy Director General Herman Nackaerts said the Agency’s inspectors hope to win Iran’s green light to visit Parchin.

“We hope that we will be allowed to go to Parchin and if access is granted we will welcome the chance to do so,” Reuters quoted Nackaerts as saying.

Iran Foreign Ministry spokesman criticized IAEA’s foot-dragging on closing Iran’s nuclear dossier.

“If every day fresh allegations are raised over one location in Iran and based on these allegations they (IAEA) demand to visit all our military sites without showing any commitment to our peaceful nuclear activities, this process will never end,” he added.

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 committed signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the IAEA, it is entitled to develop and acquire nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

KA/SS

A cleaner has been arrested after stealing a train before it crashed at high speed into a house, Swedish officials say.

The woman was seriously injured when the train derailed at Saltsjobaden station, southeast of Stockholm, and collided with the building, police spokesman Lars Bystrom confirmed.

She was flown to hospital in the capital city and has been arrested on suspicion of endangering the public.

The cleaner stole the four-carriage train at a depot then drove it around a mile (1.6km) before it crashed, a spokesman for train operator Arriva said.

Witnesses said the train did not slow down when it reached the station before smashing through the stop barriers at the end of the track.

No-one in the house, which sits around 50 metres from the stop barriers, was injured and there were no passengers on board the train at the time.

The film Zero Dark Thirty has sparked debate on its justification of torture, its misuse of facts, and its pro-CIA agenda. The main focus of the debate so far has been on whether torture was necessary to track Osama bin Laden and whether the film is pro or anti torture.

Criticism of the film has come from the highest levels of the political establishment. In a letter to the CIA, Diane Feinstein, Karl Levin and John McCain, members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, fault the film for showing that the CIA obtained through torture the key lead that helped track down Osama bin Laden. The letter further blasts former CIA leaders for spreading such falsehoods in public statements.

Film director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal, who worked with the CIA in the making of this film, likely did not expect such push back since they seem to have got a green light from the White House.

In the face of these attacks, some have risen to the film makers’ defense such as Mark Bowden, the author of The Finish: The Killing of Osama bin Laden. Writing in the Atlantic, he argues that the film is not pro-torture because the first scene shows that torture could not stop an attack in Saudi Arabia, instead it was cleverness and cunning that produced results.

Far more commentators, however, in a range of mainstream media from the New York Times, to CNN and the Daily Beast, have stated that the film lied about torture. Taking their lead from Feinstein et al numerous voices have condemned the film and insisted that bin Laden’s whereabouts where obtained through means other than torture.

It’s hard to say who is correct. The CIA clearly has an interest in promoting its version in order to win public support for its clandestine activities. The Democrats have an interest in distancing themselves from torture so as to separate themselves from the worst of the Bush era policies.

While much of the air is being sucked up by this debate, scant attention has been paid to the larger, and in my view, more significant message of this film: that extra judicial killing is good. The film teaches us that brown men can and should be targeted and killed with impunity, in violation of international law, and that we should trust the CIA to act with all due diligence.

At a time when the key strategy in the “war on terror” has shifted from conventional warfare to extra judicial killing, here comes a film that normalizes and justifies this strategy. The controversy around this film will no doubt increase its box office success, but don’t expect mainstream debate on extrajudicial killing. On this, there is bipartisan consent. Therefore the real scandal behind this Oscar nominated film–its shameless propaganda for extrajudicial murder–will remain largely hidden.

Rebranding the Killing Machine

Zero Dark Thirty has very clear cut “good guys” and “bad guys.” The CIA characters, in particular Maya and Dan, are the heroes and brown men, be they Arab or South Asian, are the villains.

The first brown man we encounter, Omar, is brutally tortured by Dan as Maya the protagonist (played by Jessica Chastain) watches with discomfort and anxiety. We soon learn, however, that Omar and his brethren wanted “to kill all Americans” thereby dispelling our doubts, justifying torture, and establishing his villainy.

In an interesting reversal (first established by the TV show 24) torture, a characteristic normally associated with villains, is now associated with heroes. This shift is acceptable because all the brown men tortured in the film are guilty and therefore worthy of such treatment. Maya soon learns to overcome her hesitation as she becomes a willing participant in the use torture. In the process, audiences are invited to advance with her from discomfort to acceptance.

A clear “us” versus “them” mentality is established where “they” are portrayed as murderous villains while “we” do what we need to in order to keep the world safe. One scene in particular captures “their” irrational rage against all Americans. This is the scene when Maya is attacked by a barrage of machine gun fire as she exits a safe house in her car. We are then told that her identity as a CIA agent is not public and that in fact all Americans are the targets of such murderous rage and brutal attacks in Pakistan.

Pakistan, the country in which the majority of the film is set, is presented as a hell hole. In one the early scenes, Maya as a CIA freshman new to the area, is asked by a colleague what she thinks of Pakistan. She replies: “it’s kind of fucked up.”

Other than being the target of bombing attacks in her car and at a hotel, a part of what seems to make Pakistan “fucked up” is Islam. In one scene she is disturbed late at night by the Muslim call to prayer sounding loud enough that it wakes her from her sleep. Disgusted by this, she grunts “oh God” and rolls back to sleep. Maya also uses the term “mullah crackadollah” to express her contempt for Muslim religious leaders (I have never heard this term before and hope that I transcribed it correctly. I certainly do not wish to waste another $14 to watch the film again, and will wait till the film is out on DVD to confirm this term).

What does not need re-viewing to confirm is the routine and constant use of the term “Paks” to refer to Pakistani people, a term that is similar to other racist epithets like “gooks” and “japs.” The film rests on the wholesale demonization of the Pakistani people. If we doubt that the “Paks” are a devious lot that can’t be trusted, the film has a scene where Maya’s colleague and friend is ambushed and blown to bits by a suicide bomber whom she expected to interrogate.

Even ordinary men standing by the road or at markets are suspicious characters who whip out cell phones to inform on and plot against the CIA. It is no wonder then that when Pakistanis organize a protest outside the US embassy we see them with contempt and through the eyes of Maya, who is standing inside the embassy, and whose point of view we are asked to identify with.

For a film maker of Bigelow’s talent it is shocking to see such unambiguous “good guys” and “bad guys.” The only way to be brown and not to be a villain in her narrative is to be unflinchingly loyal to the Americans, as the translator working for the CIA is. The “good Muslim” does not question, he simply acts to pave the way for American interests.

Against the backdrop of this racist dehumanization of brown men, Maya and her colleagues routinely use the word “kill” without it seeming odd or out of place. After Maya has comes to terms with the anguish of losing her friend in the suicide attack she states: “I’m going to smoke everybody involved in this operation and then I’m going to kill Osama bin Laden.” When talking about a doctor who might be useful in getting to bin Laden, she says if he “doesn’t give up the big man” then “we kill him.”

At the start of the film Maya refuses a disguise when she re-enters the cell in which Omar is being held. She asks Dan if the man will ever get out and thereby reveal her identity to which he replies “never,” suggesting that Omar will either be held indefinitely or killed.

A top CIA official blasting a group of agents for not making more progress in the hunt for bin Laden sums up the role of the CIA as a killing machine in the following manner, he says “do your fucking jobs and bring me people to kill.” By this point in the film, the demonization of brown men is so complete that this statement is neither surprising nor extraordinary.

It is a clever and strategic choice that the resolution of film’s narrative arc is the execution of Osama bin Laden. After all, who could possibly object to the murder of this heinous person other than the “do good” lawyers who are chastised in the film for providing legal representation for terrorists.

Here then is the key message of the film: the law, due process, and the idea of presenting evidence before a jury, should be dispensed with in favor of extra judicial killings. Further, such killings can take place without public oversight. The film not only uses the moral unambiguity of assassinating bin Laden to sell us on the rightness and righteousness of extra judicial killing, it also takes pains to show that this can be done in secret because of the checks and balances involved before a targeted assassination is carried out.

Maya is seen battling a male dominated bureaucracy that constantly pushes her to provide evidence before it can order the strike. We feel her frustration at this process and we identify with her when she says that she is a 100% sure that bin Laden is where she says he is. Yet, a system of checks and balances that involves scrupulous CIA heads, and a president who is “smart” and wants the facts, means that due diligence will not be compromised even when we know we are right.

This, in my view, is the key propaganda accomplishment of the film: the selling of secret extra judicial killing at a time when this has been designated the key strategy in the “war on terror” for the upcoming decade.

The Disposition Matrix

As I have argued in my book Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, the Obama administration has drawn the conclusion, after the failed interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, that conventional warfare should be ditched in favor of drone strikes, black operations, and other such methods of extra judicial killing.

The New York Times expose on Obama’s “kill list,” revealed that this strategy is one presided over by the president himself. John Brennen, his top counterterrorism advisor, is one of its key authors and architects. Brennen’s nomination to head the CIA is a clear indication that this strategy will not only continue but that the spy agency will more openly become a paramilitary force that carries out assassinations through drone attacks and other means, with little or no public oversight.

Greg Miller’s piece in the Washington Post reveals that the Obama administration has been working on a “blueprint for pursuing terrorists” based on the creation of database known as the “disposition matrix.” The matrix developed by the National Counterterrorism Center brings together the separate but overlapping kill lists from the CIA and the Joint Operations Special Command into a master grid and allocates resources for “disposition.” The resources that will be used to “dispose” those on the list include capture operations, extradition, and drone strikes.

Miller notes that Brennen has played a key role in this process of “codify[ing] the administration’s approach to generating capture/kill lists.” Based on extensive interviews with top Obama administration officials Miller states that such extra judicial killing is “likely to be extended at least another decade.” Brennan’s nomination to the CIA directorship no doubt will ensure such a result.

In short, at the exact point that a strategic shift has been made in the war on terror from conventional warfare to targeted killing, there comes a film that justifies this practice and asks us to trust the CIA with such incredible power.

No doubt the film had to remake the CIA brand dispelling other competing Hollywood images of the institution as a clandestine and shady outfit. The reality, however, is that unlike the film’s morally upright characters Brennan is a liar and an unabashed torture advocate (except for waterboarding).

As Glenn Greenwald notes, Brennen has “spouted complete though highly influential falsehoods to the world in the immediate aftermath of the Osama bin Laden killing, including claiming that bin Laden “engaged in a firefight” with Navy SEALS and had “used his wife as a human shield”.”

Zero Dark Thirty, nominated for the “best picture of year” Oscar award, is a harbinger of things to come. The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) signed into law by Obama earlier this month includes an amendment, passed in the House last May, that legalizes the dissemination of propaganda to US citizens. Journalist Naomi Klein argues that the propaganda “amendment legalizes something that has been illegal for decades: the direct funding of pro-government or pro-military messaging in media, without disclosure, aimed at American citizens.”

We can therefore expect not only more such films, but also more misinformation on our TV screens, in our newspapers, on our radio stations and in social media websites. What used to be an informal arrangement whereby the State Department and the Pentagon manipulated the media has now been codified into law. Be ready to be propagandized to all the time, everywhere.

We live in an Orwellian world: the government has sought and won the power to indefinitely detain and to kill US citizens, all wrapped in cloud of secrecy, and to lie to us without any legal constraints.

The NDAA allows for indefinite detention, and a judge ruled that the Obama administration need not provide legal justification for extra judicial killings based on US law thereby granting carte blanche authority to the president to kill whoever he pleases with no legal or public oversight.

Such a system requires an equally powerful system of propaganda to convince the citizenry that they need not be alarmed, they need not speak out, they need not think critically, in fact they need not even participate in the deliberative process except to pull a lever every couple of years in an elaborate charade of democracy. We are being asked, quite literally, to amuse ourselves to death.

© 2012 Mondoweiss.net

Deepa Kumar is an associate professor of Media Studies and Middle East Studies at Rutgers University. She is the author of Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire and Outside the Box: Corporate Media, Globalization and the UPS Strike.

The film Zero Dark Thirty has sparked debate on its justification of torture, its misuse of facts, and its pro-CIA agenda. The main focus of the debate so far has been on whether torture was necessary to track Osama bin Laden and whether the film is pro or anti torture.

Criticism of the film has come from the highest levels of the political establishment. In a letter to the CIA, Diane Feinstein, Karl Levin and John McCain, members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, fault the film for showing that the CIA obtained through torture the key lead that helped track down Osama bin Laden. The letter further blasts former CIA leaders for spreading such falsehoods in public statements.

Film director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal, who worked with the CIA in the making of this film, likely did not expect such push back since they seem to have got a green light from the White House.

In the face of these attacks, some have risen to the film makers’ defense such as Mark Bowden, the author of The Finish: The Killing of Osama bin Laden. Writing in the Atlantic, he argues that the film is not pro-torture because the first scene shows that torture could not stop an attack in Saudi Arabia, instead it was cleverness and cunning that produced results.

Far more commentators, however, in a range of mainstream media from the New York Times, to CNN and the Daily Beast, have stated that the film lied about torture. Taking their lead from Feinstein et al numerous voices have condemned the film and insisted that bin Laden’s whereabouts where obtained through means other than torture.

It’s hard to say who is correct. The CIA clearly has an interest in promoting its version in order to win public support for its clandestine activities. The Democrats have an interest in distancing themselves from torture so as to separate themselves from the worst of the Bush era policies.

While much of the air is being sucked up by this debate, scant attention has been paid to the larger, and in my view, more significant message of this film: that extra judicial killing is good. The film teaches us that brown men can and should be targeted and killed with impunity, in violation of international law, and that we should trust the CIA to act with all due diligence.

At a time when the key strategy in the “war on terror” has shifted from conventional warfare to extra judicial killing, here comes a film that normalizes and justifies this strategy. The controversy around this film will no doubt increase its box office success, but don’t expect mainstream debate on extrajudicial killing. On this, there is bipartisan consent. Therefore the real scandal behind this Oscar nominated film–its shameless propaganda for extrajudicial murder–will remain largely hidden.

Rebranding the Killing Machine

Zero Dark Thirty has very clear cut “good guys” and “bad guys.” The CIA characters, in particular Maya and Dan, are the heroes and brown men, be they Arab or South Asian, are the villains.

The first brown man we encounter, Omar, is brutally tortured by Dan as Maya the protagonist (played by Jessica Chastain) watches with discomfort and anxiety. We soon learn, however, that Omar and his brethren wanted “to kill all Americans” thereby dispelling our doubts, justifying torture, and establishing his villainy.

In an interesting reversal (first established by the TV show 24) torture, a characteristic normally associated with villains, is now associated with heroes. This shift is acceptable because all the brown men tortured in the film are guilty and therefore worthy of such treatment. Maya soon learns to overcome her hesitation as she becomes a willing participant in the use torture. In the process, audiences are invited to advance with her from discomfort to acceptance.

A clear “us” versus “them” mentality is established where “they” are portrayed as murderous villains while “we” do what we need to in order to keep the world safe. One scene in particular captures “their” irrational rage against all Americans. This is the scene when Maya is attacked by a barrage of machine gun fire as she exits a safe house in her car. We are then told that her identity as a CIA agent is not public and that in fact all Americans are the targets of such murderous rage and brutal attacks in Pakistan.

Pakistan, the country in which the majority of the film is set, is presented as a hell hole. In one the early scenes, Maya as a CIA freshman new to the area, is asked by a colleague what she thinks of Pakistan. She replies: “it’s kind of fucked up.”

Other than being the target of bombing attacks in her car and at a hotel, a part of what seems to make Pakistan “fucked up” is Islam. In one scene she is disturbed late at night by the Muslim call to prayer sounding loud enough that it wakes her from her sleep. Disgusted by this, she grunts “oh God” and rolls back to sleep. Maya also uses the term “mullah crackadollah” to express her contempt for Muslim religious leaders (I have never heard this term before and hope that I transcribed it correctly. I certainly do not wish to waste another $14 to watch the film again, and will wait till the film is out on DVD to confirm this term).

What does not need re-viewing to confirm is the routine and constant use of the term “Paks” to refer to Pakistani people, a term that is similar to other racist epithets like “gooks” and “japs.” The film rests on the wholesale demonization of the Pakistani people. If we doubt that the “Paks” are a devious lot that can’t be trusted, the film has a scene where Maya’s colleague and friend is ambushed and blown to bits by a suicide bomber whom she expected to interrogate.

Even ordinary men standing by the road or at markets are suspicious characters who whip out cell phones to inform on and plot against the CIA. It is no wonder then that when Pakistanis organize a protest outside the US embassy we see them with contempt and through the eyes of Maya, who is standing inside the embassy, and whose point of view we are asked to identify with.

For a film maker of Bigelow’s talent it is shocking to see such unambiguous “good guys” and “bad guys.” The only way to be brown and not to be a villain in her narrative is to be unflinchingly loyal to the Americans, as the translator working for the CIA is. The “good Muslim” does not question, he simply acts to pave the way for American interests.

Against the backdrop of this racist dehumanization of brown men, Maya and her colleagues routinely use the word “kill” without it seeming odd or out of place. After Maya has comes to terms with the anguish of losing her friend in the suicide attack she states: “I’m going to smoke everybody involved in this operation and then I’m going to kill Osama bin Laden.” When talking about a doctor who might be useful in getting to bin Laden, she says if he “doesn’t give up the big man” then “we kill him.”

At the start of the film Maya refuses a disguise when she re-enters the cell in which Omar is being held. She asks Dan if the man will ever get out and thereby reveal her identity to which he replies “never,” suggesting that Omar will either be held indefinitely or killed.

A top CIA official blasting a group of agents for not making more progress in the hunt for bin Laden sums up the role of the CIA as a killing machine in the following manner, he says “do your fucking jobs and bring me people to kill.” By this point in the film, the demonization of brown men is so complete that this statement is neither surprising nor extraordinary.

It is a clever and strategic choice that the resolution of film’s narrative arc is the execution of Osama bin Laden. After all, who could possibly object to the murder of this heinous person other than the “do good” lawyers who are chastised in the film for providing legal representation for terrorists.

Here then is the key message of the film: the law, due process, and the idea of presenting evidence before a jury, should be dispensed with in favor of extra judicial killings. Further, such killings can take place without public oversight. The film not only uses the moral unambiguity of assassinating bin Laden to sell us on the rightness and righteousness of extra judicial killing, it also takes pains to show that this can be done in secret because of the checks and balances involved before a targeted assassination is carried out.

Maya is seen battling a male dominated bureaucracy that constantly pushes her to provide evidence before it can order the strike. We feel her frustration at this process and we identify with her when she says that she is a 100% sure that bin Laden is where she says he is. Yet, a system of checks and balances that involves scrupulous CIA heads, and a president who is “smart” and wants the facts, means that due diligence will not be compromised even when we know we are right.

This, in my view, is the key propaganda accomplishment of the film: the selling of secret extra judicial killing at a time when this has been designated the key strategy in the “war on terror” for the upcoming decade.

The Disposition Matrix

As I have argued in my book Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, the Obama administration has drawn the conclusion, after the failed interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, that conventional warfare should be ditched in favor of drone strikes, black operations, and other such methods of extra judicial killing.

The New York Times expose on Obama’s “kill list,” revealed that this strategy is one presided over by the president himself. John Brennen, his top counterterrorism advisor, is one of its key authors and architects. Brennen’s nomination to head the CIA is a clear indication that this strategy will not only continue but that the spy agency will more openly become a paramilitary force that carries out assassinations through drone attacks and other means, with little or no public oversight.

Greg Miller’s piece in the Washington Post reveals that the Obama administration has been working on a “blueprint for pursuing terrorists” based on the creation of database known as the “disposition matrix.” The matrix developed by the National Counterterrorism Center brings together the separate but overlapping kill lists from the CIA and the Joint Operations Special Command into a master grid and allocates resources for “disposition.” The resources that will be used to “dispose” those on the list include capture operations, extradition, and drone strikes.

Miller notes that Brennen has played a key role in this process of “codify[ing] the administration’s approach to generating capture/kill lists.” Based on extensive interviews with top Obama administration officials Miller states that such extra judicial killing is “likely to be extended at least another decade.” Brennan’s nomination to the CIA directorship no doubt will ensure such a result.

In short, at the exact point that a strategic shift has been made in the war on terror from conventional warfare to targeted killing, there comes a film that justifies this practice and asks us to trust the CIA with such incredible power.

No doubt the film had to remake the CIA brand dispelling other competing Hollywood images of the institution as a clandestine and shady outfit. The reality, however, is that unlike the film’s morally upright characters Brennan is a liar and an unabashed torture advocate (except for waterboarding).

As Glenn Greenwald notes, Brennen has “spouted complete though highly influential falsehoods to the world in the immediate aftermath of the Osama bin Laden killing, including claiming that bin Laden “engaged in a firefight” with Navy SEALS and had “used his wife as a human shield”.”

Zero Dark Thirty, nominated for the “best picture of year” Oscar award, is a harbinger of things to come. The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) signed into law by Obama earlier this month includes an amendment, passed in the House last May, that legalizes the dissemination of propaganda to US citizens. Journalist Naomi Klein argues that the propaganda “amendment legalizes something that has been illegal for decades: the direct funding of pro-government or pro-military messaging in media, without disclosure, aimed at American citizens.”

We can therefore expect not only more such films, but also more misinformation on our TV screens, in our newspapers, on our radio stations and in social media websites. What used to be an informal arrangement whereby the State Department and the Pentagon manipulated the media has now been codified into law. Be ready to be propagandized to all the time, everywhere.

We live in an Orwellian world: the government has sought and won the power to indefinitely detain and to kill US citizens, all wrapped in cloud of secrecy, and to lie to us without any legal constraints.

The NDAA allows for indefinite detention, and a judge ruled that the Obama administration need not provide legal justification for extra judicial killings based on US law thereby granting carte blanche authority to the president to kill whoever he pleases with no legal or public oversight.

Such a system requires an equally powerful system of propaganda to convince the citizenry that they need not be alarmed, they need not speak out, they need not think critically, in fact they need not even participate in the deliberative process except to pull a lever every couple of years in an elaborate charade of democracy. We are being asked, quite literally, to amuse ourselves to death.

© 2012 Mondoweiss.net

Deepa Kumar is an associate professor of Media Studies and Middle East Studies at Rutgers University. She is the author of Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire and Outside the Box: Corporate Media, Globalization and the UPS Strike.

Fair Russia MPs Dmitry Gudkov (left) and Ilya Ponomaryov (right), photo by RIA Novosti / Vladimir Fedorenko

Members of the leftist opposition faction Fair Russia have officially asked parliament to cancel the legislative amendment that bans the adoption of Russian orphans by US citizens.

Three Fair Russia MPs submitted the legislative initiative to the State Duma on Tuesday even though on the same day the Lower House’s constitutional committee announced that no action must be taken on a similar petition prepared by the Novaya Gazeta daily and signed by over 100,000 Russian citizens.

Support of over 100,000 people officially obliges the parliament to treat any petition as a legislative initiative, but the head of the Constitutional Committee stated that there was no effective way to verify the signatures that had been submitted via the internet and therefore no further action would be taken.

Fair Russia’s support by-passes the loophole and forces the Lower House to again consider the fourth amendment to the Dima Yakovlev Law that bans all adoptions of Russian children by US citizens as well as the participation of any US organizations in such adoptions. At the same time, any changes to the law are highly unlikely as in late December the State Duma deputies unanimously voted in support of the bill that contained the ban.

“We want the State Duma to discuss the issue once again. This bill will definitely influence public opinion. Water wears away the stone, every new petition, every rally and every discussion bring us closer to changes,” one of the authors of the proposal, MP Dmitry Gudkov, said in an interview with Novaya Gazeta.

Fair Russia MPs said that they would suggest the Constitutional Committee consider their proposal at its session on Friday, January 18.

Fair Russia MPs added that they based their legislative proposal on the same petition from Novaya Gazeta. The original document reads that the suggestion to cancel the ban on US adoptions is based on the necessity to protect the orphans’ right for adoption and life in a full-pledged family, regardless of ethnicity and citizenship of the adoptive parents.

The ban on US adoption is a part of the Dima Yakovlev Law — a larger document that imposes sanctions on foreign nationals who are complicit in violations of Human Rights and on US officials who were involved in unlawful actions against Russian citizens.

The amendment on adoptions has already caused a lot of controversy in Russian society. Protests have come from the public, media and even officials, such as the Foreign Minister and Minister of Science and Education. Despite all this, the Dima Yakovlev Law was approved by Parliament, signed by the President and came into force on January 1 this year.

At the same time, Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters that the Russia-US adoptions agreement will remain in force for another year and those orphans whose adoption procedure had already started still had a chance to join their new families in America. He added that recent opinion polls showed that the majority of Russians supported the ban.

Putin’s spokesman noted that the people who expressed concern over the fate of Russian orphans were absolutely right. But he called upon them to understand that the legislative measures were not limited to a simple ban, but also included a whole package of measures seeking to simplify domestic adoptions and increase the state aid and tax bonuses for the adoptive parents.

Late last week, the New York Times made news — when it broke that the paper has shuttered its environment desk. The change isn’t supposed to result in any layoffs, and the managing editor for news operations, Dean Baquet, told the news site Inside Climate that it — they haven’t lost interest in covering environmental issues. The reporters will just be doing it from other formal desks.The New York Times shut down its environment desk earlier this month, after the hottest year on record. (Photograph: Richard Drew/AP)

The change is still disheartening, to put it mildly. Compelling, well-reported environmental stories are only becoming more important, and the Times has, without a doubt, been a leader of that coverage — especially since it launched the environment desk in 2009.

Take just one example of environmental coverage: climate change. Even as the issue gets more imperative, the science more complicated, and the implications more apparent, climate coverage has dropped around the world last year, according to a study by the Daily Climate. The Times was notable in that it led the five largest daily papers in the US in coverage of the issue, and actually increased the number of stories on it last year.

I couldn’t agree more with Baquet’s argument that environment stories are never really just about the environment: they’re “partly business, economic, national or local, among other subjects”. But these stories are also always united by the fact that they are about the environment in some way. They’re about how we affect the environment or how it affects us: they’re complex and multilayered, and reporting on the subject requires the story to have some degree of scientific context, a way of telling the story across those themes. And it requires something more from the reporter — a solid background in the subject matter, a reasonable understanding of the science and issues at play, and the ability to explain complex subjects in a way that will make sense to readers.

It’s true that “environment” stories are about a lot more than just that, but that very fact requires reporters dedicated to connecting those dots, as well as editors who can guide that coverage. That’s why having a team of reporters and an editor committed to that beat is essential.

That’s not to say that the other beats — business, health, politics — should not also be involved. But that can and should be done in addition to a dedicated team of reporters on the beat. Many of the reporters who cover this beat bring an educational background in the subject, or at least, have had years of covering it to develop an expertise. There is a skill set that needs to be developed in order to tell these stories well.

I also agree with the sentiment that the Times’ move will help shift environmental stories out of what has been called the “green ghetto”. It does often seem like many outlets marginalize environmental stories by putting them on a specific blog or webpage, rather than integrating them in the publication at large. Elsewhere, this practice tends to exacerbate the idea that the environment is some sort of niche or special interest.

I’ve never felt like that was true at the Times, where environmental stories regularly get prominent placement. If anything, it seemed that they were able to write stories worthy of front-page coverage specifically because they had a team dedicated to producing them.

I also get that environmental stories aren’t that sexy. (Trust me, I write them!) But they are important, and sometimes, as journalists, we cover things that are necessary, but not shiny. I think Glenn Kramon, the paper’s assistant managing editor, described it best as to why they’ve committed resources to covering the issue, in the recent Daily Climate piece:

“I ask myself, ‘In 20 years, what will we be proudest that we addressed, and where will we scratch our head and say why didn’t we focus more on that?'”

I asked Beth Parke, the executive director of the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ), about the Times’ decision. SEJ is membership group dedicated to supporting, training, and elevating environmental reporting and reporters, and I’m a proud member that has benefited from its mentorship and opportunities. Park noted — and I agree — that journalism organizations should be widening the net on environmental stories:

“I don’t think excellence in coverage necessarily has to be either team/unit or individual assignment based. The best outfits do both. Any news organization that aspires to excellence in public service must cover environmental issues or they are failing.

“They need to do it, consistently, via dedicated reporter(s), dedicated team(s), and through the lens of varied beats. Environment is a big story and only getting bigger.”

It’s good to hear that, at this point, the paper isn’t planning to cut any of those reporters; they’re just shifting them around. Should they expand the issues and skill sets of this beat to other desks? Of course. My concern is that there will simply be less environmental coverage, or at least, less prominent environmental coverage.

It’s hard not to think of some of the recent outlets that have cut their environment desks, making similar promises that this would not deflate their coverage of the issue. CNN reduced their environment team four years ago, stating at the time that the plan was “to integrate environmental, science and technology reporting into the general editorial structure rather than have a stand alone unit”. I think most CNN viewers would agree that the network’s environmental coverage has been lacking since then. NBC also slashed its environmental reporters in 2008 — in the middle of “Green Week”, an irony it failed to note.

I can only hope that the New York Times doesn’t follow that trend.

Late last week, the New York Times made news — when it broke that the paper has shuttered its environment desk. The change isn’t supposed to result in any layoffs, and the managing editor for news operations, Dean Baquet, told the news site Inside Climate that it — they haven’t lost interest in covering environmental issues. The reporters will just be doing it from other formal desks.The New York Times shut down its environment desk earlier this month, after the hottest year on record. (Photograph: Richard Drew/AP)

The change is still disheartening, to put it mildly. Compelling, well-reported environmental stories are only becoming more important, and the Times has, without a doubt, been a leader of that coverage — especially since it launched the environment desk in 2009.

Take just one example of environmental coverage: climate change. Even as the issue gets more imperative, the science more complicated, and the implications more apparent, climate coverage has dropped around the world last year, according to a study by the Daily Climate. The Times was notable in that it led the five largest daily papers in the US in coverage of the issue, and actually increased the number of stories on it last year.

I couldn’t agree more with Baquet’s argument that environment stories are never really just about the environment: they’re “partly business, economic, national or local, among other subjects”. But these stories are also always united by the fact that they are about the environment in some way. They’re about how we affect the environment or how it affects us: they’re complex and multilayered, and reporting on the subject requires the story to have some degree of scientific context, a way of telling the story across those themes. And it requires something more from the reporter — a solid background in the subject matter, a reasonable understanding of the science and issues at play, and the ability to explain complex subjects in a way that will make sense to readers.

It’s true that “environment” stories are about a lot more than just that, but that very fact requires reporters dedicated to connecting those dots, as well as editors who can guide that coverage. That’s why having a team of reporters and an editor committed to that beat is essential.

That’s not to say that the other beats — business, health, politics — should not also be involved. But that can and should be done in addition to a dedicated team of reporters on the beat. Many of the reporters who cover this beat bring an educational background in the subject, or at least, have had years of covering it to develop an expertise. There is a skill set that needs to be developed in order to tell these stories well.

I also agree with the sentiment that the Times’ move will help shift environmental stories out of what has been called the “green ghetto”. It does often seem like many outlets marginalize environmental stories by putting them on a specific blog or webpage, rather than integrating them in the publication at large. Elsewhere, this practice tends to exacerbate the idea that the environment is some sort of niche or special interest.

I’ve never felt like that was true at the Times, where environmental stories regularly get prominent placement. If anything, it seemed that they were able to write stories worthy of front-page coverage specifically because they had a team dedicated to producing them.

I also get that environmental stories aren’t that sexy. (Trust me, I write them!) But they are important, and sometimes, as journalists, we cover things that are necessary, but not shiny. I think Glenn Kramon, the paper’s assistant managing editor, described it best as to why they’ve committed resources to covering the issue, in the recent Daily Climate piece:

“I ask myself, ‘In 20 years, what will we be proudest that we addressed, and where will we scratch our head and say why didn’t we focus more on that?'”

I asked Beth Parke, the executive director of the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ), about the Times’ decision. SEJ is membership group dedicated to supporting, training, and elevating environmental reporting and reporters, and I’m a proud member that has benefited from its mentorship and opportunities. Park noted — and I agree — that journalism organizations should be widening the net on environmental stories:

“I don’t think excellence in coverage necessarily has to be either team/unit or individual assignment based. The best outfits do both. Any news organization that aspires to excellence in public service must cover environmental issues or they are failing.

“They need to do it, consistently, via dedicated reporter(s), dedicated team(s), and through the lens of varied beats. Environment is a big story and only getting bigger.”

It’s good to hear that, at this point, the paper isn’t planning to cut any of those reporters; they’re just shifting them around. Should they expand the issues and skill sets of this beat to other desks? Of course. My concern is that there will simply be less environmental coverage, or at least, less prominent environmental coverage.

It’s hard not to think of some of the recent outlets that have cut their environment desks, making similar promises that this would not deflate their coverage of the issue. CNN reduced their environment team four years ago, stating at the time that the plan was “to integrate environmental, science and technology reporting into the general editorial structure rather than have a stand alone unit”. I think most CNN viewers would agree that the network’s environmental coverage has been lacking since then. NBC also slashed its environmental reporters in 2008 — in the middle of “Green Week”, an irony it failed to note.

I can only hope that the New York Times doesn’t follow that trend.

Mali’s current agony has only just emerged in our headlines, but the roots go back generations. Like the other Western colonial powers that invaded and conquered Africa from the 19th century onwards, France used tactics of divide-and-rule in Mali, leading to entrenched bitterness between the nomadic Tuareg people — the base of the current revolt — and other communities in Mali.Soldiers preparing a French jet at the Saint Dizier airbase in eastern France on Sunday. French fighter jets bombed rebel targets in a major city in Mali’s north Sunday. (Photo: Laure-Anne Maucorps/French Army/AP)

To some Westerners, this is a distant past to be ignored, moved on from, and certainly not used to preclude noble interventions; but the consequences are still being felt on a daily basis. Initially, the French Foreign Minister, Laurent Fabius, suggested its colonial legacy ruled out a France-led intervention; its sudden involvement is far more rapid than expected.

But this intervention is itself the consequence of another. The Libyan war is frequently touted as a success story for liberal interventionism. Yet the toppling of Muammar Gaddafi’s dictatorship had consequences that Western intelligence services probably never even bothered to imagine. Tuaregs — who traditionally hailed from northern Mali — made up a large portion of his army. When Gaddafi was ejected from power, they returned to their homeland: sometimes forcibly so as black Africans came under attack in post-Gaddafi Libya, an uncomfortable fact largely ignored by the Western media.

Awash with weapons from Libya’s own turmoil, armed Tuaregs saw an opening for their long-standing dream for national self-determination. As the rebellion spread, the democratically elected President Amadou Toumani Touré was deposed in a military coup and — despite allowing a transitional civilian-led government to take power — the army retains its dominance.

There can certainly be no sympathy for the militia now fighting the Malian government. Originally, it was the secular nationalists of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad who led the uprising; they have now been pushed aside by Islamist jihadists with a speed that has shocked foreign analysts. Rather than achieving an independent Tuareg state, they have far more sweeping ambitions, linking up with similar groups based in northern Nigeria. Amnesty International reports horrendous atrocities: amputations, sexual violence, the use of child soldiers, and rampant extra-judicial executions.

But don’t fall for a narrative so often pushed by the Western media: a perverse oversimplification of good fighting evil, just as we have seen imposed on Syria’s brutal civil war. Amnesty reports brutality on the part of Malian government forces, too. When the conflict originally exploded, Tuaregs were arrested, tortured, bombed and killed by the security forces, “apparently only on ethnic grounds”, Amnesty says. Last July, 80 inmates arrested by the army were stripped to their underwear, jammed into a 5sqm cell; cigarettes were burnt into their bodies; and they were forced to sodomise each other. Back in September 2012, 16 Muslim preachers belonging to the Dawa group were rounded up at a checkpoint and summarily executed by the army. These are acts committed by those who are now our allies.

When the UN Security Council unanimously paved the way for military force to be used at some point last month, experts made clear warnings that must still be listened to. The International Crisis Group urged a focus on a diplomatic solution to restore stability, arguing that intervention could exacerbate a growing inter-ethnic conflict. Amnesty warned that “an international armed intervention is likely to increase the scale of human-rights violations we are already seeing in this conflict”. Paul Rogers, professor of peace studies at Bradford University, has argued that past wars show that “once started, they can take alarming directions, have very destructive results, and often enhance the very movements they are designed to counter”.

It is conceivable that this intervention could — for a time — achieve its goals of pushing back the Islamist militias, and shore up Mali’s government. But the Libyan war was seen as a success, too; and here we are now engaging with its catastrophic blowback. In Afghanistan, Western forces remain engaged in a never-ending war which has already helped destabilised Pakistan, leading to drone attacks that have killed hundreds of civilians and unleashed further chaos. The price of Western interventions may often be ignored by our media, but it is still paid nonetheless.

Western intervention led by France, supported by Britain and with possible US drone attacks on the way will undoubtedly fuel the narrative of radical Islamist groups. As Professor Rogers puts it to me, it will be portrayed as “one more example of an assault on Islam”. With the speed and reach of modern forms of communication, radical groups in Western Africa and beyond will use this escalating war as evidence of another front opened against Muslims.

It is disturbing — to say the least — how Cameron has led Britain into Mali’s conflict without even a pretence at consultation. Troops will not be sent, we are told; but the term “mission creep” exists for a reason, and an escalation could surely trigger deeper British involvement. The West has a terrible record of aligning itself with the most dubious of allies: the side we have picked are far from human-rights-loving democrats.

© 2012 The Independent

Owen Jones is a columnist for The Independent. Follow him: twitter.com/@OwenJones84

Mali’s current agony has only just emerged in our headlines, but the roots go back generations. Like the other Western colonial powers that invaded and conquered Africa from the 19th century onwards, France used tactics of divide-and-rule in Mali, leading to entrenched bitterness between the nomadic Tuareg people — the base of the current revolt — and other communities in Mali.Soldiers preparing a French jet at the Saint Dizier airbase in eastern France on Sunday. French fighter jets bombed rebel targets in a major city in Mali’s north Sunday. (Photo: Laure-Anne Maucorps/French Army/AP)

To some Westerners, this is a distant past to be ignored, moved on from, and certainly not used to preclude noble interventions; but the consequences are still being felt on a daily basis. Initially, the French Foreign Minister, Laurent Fabius, suggested its colonial legacy ruled out a France-led intervention; its sudden involvement is far more rapid than expected.

But this intervention is itself the consequence of another. The Libyan war is frequently touted as a success story for liberal interventionism. Yet the toppling of Muammar Gaddafi’s dictatorship had consequences that Western intelligence services probably never even bothered to imagine. Tuaregs — who traditionally hailed from northern Mali — made up a large portion of his army. When Gaddafi was ejected from power, they returned to their homeland: sometimes forcibly so as black Africans came under attack in post-Gaddafi Libya, an uncomfortable fact largely ignored by the Western media.

Awash with weapons from Libya’s own turmoil, armed Tuaregs saw an opening for their long-standing dream for national self-determination. As the rebellion spread, the democratically elected President Amadou Toumani Touré was deposed in a military coup and — despite allowing a transitional civilian-led government to take power — the army retains its dominance.

There can certainly be no sympathy for the militia now fighting the Malian government. Originally, it was the secular nationalists of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad who led the uprising; they have now been pushed aside by Islamist jihadists with a speed that has shocked foreign analysts. Rather than achieving an independent Tuareg state, they have far more sweeping ambitions, linking up with similar groups based in northern Nigeria. Amnesty International reports horrendous atrocities: amputations, sexual violence, the use of child soldiers, and rampant extra-judicial executions.

But don’t fall for a narrative so often pushed by the Western media: a perverse oversimplification of good fighting evil, just as we have seen imposed on Syria’s brutal civil war. Amnesty reports brutality on the part of Malian government forces, too. When the conflict originally exploded, Tuaregs were arrested, tortured, bombed and killed by the security forces, “apparently only on ethnic grounds”, Amnesty says. Last July, 80 inmates arrested by the army were stripped to their underwear, jammed into a 5sqm cell; cigarettes were burnt into their bodies; and they were forced to sodomise each other. Back in September 2012, 16 Muslim preachers belonging to the Dawa group were rounded up at a checkpoint and summarily executed by the army. These are acts committed by those who are now our allies.

When the UN Security Council unanimously paved the way for military force to be used at some point last month, experts made clear warnings that must still be listened to. The International Crisis Group urged a focus on a diplomatic solution to restore stability, arguing that intervention could exacerbate a growing inter-ethnic conflict. Amnesty warned that “an international armed intervention is likely to increase the scale of human-rights violations we are already seeing in this conflict”. Paul Rogers, professor of peace studies at Bradford University, has argued that past wars show that “once started, they can take alarming directions, have very destructive results, and often enhance the very movements they are designed to counter”.

It is conceivable that this intervention could — for a time — achieve its goals of pushing back the Islamist militias, and shore up Mali’s government. But the Libyan war was seen as a success, too; and here we are now engaging with its catastrophic blowback. In Afghanistan, Western forces remain engaged in a never-ending war which has already helped destabilised Pakistan, leading to drone attacks that have killed hundreds of civilians and unleashed further chaos. The price of Western interventions may often be ignored by our media, but it is still paid nonetheless.

Western intervention led by France, supported by Britain and with possible US drone attacks on the way will undoubtedly fuel the narrative of radical Islamist groups. As Professor Rogers puts it to me, it will be portrayed as “one more example of an assault on Islam”. With the speed and reach of modern forms of communication, radical groups in Western Africa and beyond will use this escalating war as evidence of another front opened against Muslims.

It is disturbing — to say the least — how Cameron has led Britain into Mali’s conflict without even a pretence at consultation. Troops will not be sent, we are told; but the term “mission creep” exists for a reason, and an escalation could surely trigger deeper British involvement. The West has a terrible record of aligning itself with the most dubious of allies: the side we have picked are far from human-rights-loving democrats.

© 2012 The Independent

Owen Jones is a columnist for The Independent. Follow him: twitter.com/@OwenJones84

In what was billed as the last press conference of his first term, US President Barack Obama laid out an agenda for his next term that will be focused on slashing hundreds of billions of dollars from federal health care and retirement programs, including Medicare and Social Security.

Obama couched his plans with a heavy dose of lying demagogy, seeking to present his administration as a force of opposition against Republican demands for austerity. In fact, differences between the two parties center largely on tactical disagreements over the precise mechanism by which cuts will be imposed.

The bulk of the press conference was focused on threats from House Republicans to refuse to raise the US debt limit without an agreement on huge spending cuts. The debt ceiling, which is due to be breached sometime next month, must be raised by Congress. If Congress does not do so, the federal government will be unable to pay some of its bills.

In 2011, both the Democrats and Republicans utilized the a debt ceiling crisis–which resulted in the decision by several ratings agencies to downgrade US debt–to push through major austerity measures. These included several of the components of the “fiscal cliff.” At the very beginning of the New Year, Obama reached an agreement with Republicans to extend most tax cuts that were part of the cliff, while delaying automatic spending cuts for two months.

In insisting that the debt ceiling not be used as a “bargaining chip,” Obama is expressing the concerns of dominant sections of the ruling class that doing so could imperil confidence in the US dollar and American debt.

“While I’m willing to compromise and find common ground over how to reduce our deficits” Obama insisted, “America cannot afford another debate with this Congress about whether or not they should pay the bills they’ve already racked up.” He added, “Let’s give our businesses and the world the certainty that our economy and our reputation are still second to none.”

The preference of the Obama administration is that Republicans and Democrats work out, separately from the debt issue, major cuts in entitlement programs, along with “comprehensive tax reform,” which would involve the lowering of corporate and income tax rates and the elimination of some deductions.

As a model, Obama held up his “grand bargain” framework with House Republican Speaker John Boehner discussed in 2011 and revived at the end of last year.

The discussions with Boehner reportedly revolved around some $900 billion in spending cuts. Specific measures included raising the retirement age for Medicare eligibility from 65 to 67 and reducing cost-of-living increases for Social Security. These measures, which are in fact only the beginning of the cuts that are being planned, will lead directly to fewer elderly people with health insurance and an increase in poverty among retirees.

Spelling out the bipartisan agenda, Obama said at the press conference, “If the goal is to make sure that we are being responsible about our debt and our deficit–if that’s the conversation we’re having, I’m happy to have that conversation. And by closing some additional loopholes through tax reform, which Speaker Boehner has acknowledged can raise money in a sensible way, and by doing some additional cuts, including making sure we are reducing our health care spending, which is the main driver of our deficits, we can arrive at a package that gets things done.”

Obama referred to the huge cuts in health care in typical Orwellian language as “modest adjustments to programs like Medicare to protect them from future generations.”

In the same breath as he proposed cuts in these very programs, Obama criticized Republicans for seeking to “cut commitments that we’ve made on things like Medicare or Social Security or Medicaid.”

The changes to Social Security, which already pays retired workers far below what is required to meet expenses, would be particularly devastating. Major cuts in benefits are to be pushed through by altering inflation calculations to reduce the annual cost of living adjustment (COLA).

In a recent editorial criticizing this proposal (while at the same time insisting that changes in Social Security can and must be made), the New York Times noted that “the administration appears to have embraced [the change] as a worthy end in itself”–that is, that the cuts are almost certain to be included in any agreement. Altering the inflation formula, the Times noted, would “reduce benefits by some $135 billion over 10 years, and far more in later decades.” This would all come directly from the income of retired workers.

The framework of the agreement that the administration hopes to reach was also made clear by the nomination of Jacob Lew, Obama’s chief of staff, to be treasury secretary. Lew, a former Wall Street executive, was the key Obama administration negotiator during the discussions over the “grand bargain” in 2011.

The thoroughly cynical posturing of the Obama administration cannot conceal the fact that in the past and current “debates” over the deficit, both the Democrats and Republicans are entirely agreed on the most basic issue: that while the corporate and financial elite pulls in record profits, the working class must be made to pay for the capitalist crisis through a drastic reduction of its living standards.

WASHINGTON – U.S. Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta has applauded France’s surprise airstrikes on Islamist rebels in northern Mali that began late last week and continued over the weekend.

The United States has poured money into training the Malian military in the last several years. Above, U.S. Special Forces inspect weapons in Mali in 2007. (Credit: The U.S. Army/ CC by 2.0) Panetta added that the U.S. government is readying plans for assistance in the ongoing operations, which scholars and human rights workers worry could continue for an extended period.

“I commend France for taking the steps that it has, and we have promised…to provide whatever assistance we can to try to help them in that effort,” Panetta told reporters on Monday.

“We have a responsibility to make sure that Al Qaeda does not establish a base for operations in North Africa and Mali,” he continued. “The effort is to try to do what is necessary to halt [rebel] advances and to try to secure some of the key cities in Mali.”

On Friday, the French government authorised airstrikes and ordered 550 French troops into Mali, where for 10 months the massive northern section of the country has been under the control of a combination of Islamists, ethnic Tuareg nationalists and criminal gangs. In March, the weak government in Bamako fell to a military coup, creating a power vacuum in the north.

Since then the international community has debated how to proceed. While France, Mali’s former colonial power, has pushed a military option, others such as the United States and the United Nations have been more cautious.

Still, in December, Washington and Paris co-sponsored a U.N. resolution that allowed for a military operation carried out by the West African grouping ECOWAS, for which the United States has offered training. (Washington is barred by law from training the Malian army until democratic elections are held.)

The ECOWAS force is not expected to be ready to enter Mali until the fall at the earliest, however. Meanwhile, Islamists reportedly linked to Al Qaeda have continued advancing against the Malian military. The French actions over the weekend sought to halt rebel attempts to take the central city of Konna, a strategy with which Washington appears to agree.

“It was clear to France and to all of us that that could not be allowed to continue,” Panetta said Monday. ”That’s the reason France has engaged, and it’s the reason that we’re providing cooperation to them in that effort.”

While Panetta refused to offer details of new U.S. assistance, he did state that there would be “some limited logistical support” and “intelligence support”, as well as “some areas of airlift”.

Both the United Kingdom and Canada have stated that they would send aircraft to assist in the Mali mission. The European Union on Monday said that it would not send any combat mission to North Africa, although it publicly supported the French decision.

Already a crisis

While France’s move appears to have taken observers by surprise, the strikes are reportedly received with cautious relief by many Malians.

Mali’s interim president, Dioncounda Traore, has been pleading for an intervention. And Oumou Sall Seck, the first woman mayor elected in northern Mali, warned in an opinion piece published in late December, “Immediately reclaiming northern Mali from violent extremists must become a priority. And it can’t be done without international help, especially from key powers like America and France.”

With international action now underway, however, the mission’s exact scope is unclear. “I’m very surprised that things moved so quickly, given that there had been no movement and just a lot of talk for some time,” Susanna Wing, a professor at Haverford College who has written widely on Mali, told IPS.

“The French are clearly operating in the hope of a rout, but that is not likely to happen quickly. I’m worried this could go on and on and result in a real civilian catastrophe. It’s important to remember that there’s already a humanitarian crisis in Mali, with some 400,000 refugees having fled.”

Humanitarian groups are sounding the alarm, with Medecins Sans Frontieres and Amnesty International on Monday calling on international forces to protect civilians and health infrastructure.

While rumours surfaced on Monday of greater U.S. involvement in the fast-evolving situation in Mali, Wing says such involvement seems unlikely.

“Intelligence support, troop training — that seems reasonable, but I would be very surprised if there were anything other than that,” she says. “Since Somalia, everyone knows the U.S. isn’t going to move to put troops on the ground anytime soon.”

A more recent memory guiding many international actors, including the United States, may be that of Libya. The 2011 intervention and the resulting outflow of both weapons and fighters are widely regarded as having led directly to the subsequent spike in violence in Mali.

Piecemeal intelligence

Washington has been building up a covert network of Special Forces bases and operations in Africa over the past decade, and the sudden and dramatic decline in stability in Mali in the past year has come as a stinging surprise to many U.S. policymakers, particularly in the military.

According to new analysis published on Monday in the New York Times, Washington under President Barack Obama has spent upwards of 600 million dollars in a “sweeping effort to combat militancy” in North Africa. The effort has included a significant focus on Mali, which was regarded as a bastion of stability and where the United States has poured money into training the military.

“Has this backfired?” Wing asked. “The Malian military training that was provided was useful, but what the U.S. government was not doing was putting all the pieces together.”

For instance, she said, the Pentagon should not have been surprised by discontent within the military that led to this spring’s coup. Furthermore, despite a key move during the 1990s to integrate ethnic Tuareg into the state military, Wing noted that little effort was put into actually resolving longstanding northern grievances of underdevelopment and decentralisation.

“The U.S. was always just looking at fragments of the picture and saying they would continue to support the situation through training operations,” Wing said. “It’s piecemeal intelligence — in Mali, somehow, the whole picture was never seen.”

© 2012 IPS North America

WASHINGTON – U.S. Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta has applauded France’s surprise airstrikes on Islamist rebels in northern Mali that began late last week and continued over the weekend.

The United States has poured money into training the Malian military in the last several years. Above, U.S. Special Forces inspect weapons in Mali in 2007. (Credit: The U.S. Army/ CC by 2.0) Panetta added that the U.S. government is readying plans for assistance in the ongoing operations, which scholars and human rights workers worry could continue for an extended period.

“I commend France for taking the steps that it has, and we have promised…to provide whatever assistance we can to try to help them in that effort,” Panetta told reporters on Monday.

“We have a responsibility to make sure that Al Qaeda does not establish a base for operations in North Africa and Mali,” he continued. “The effort is to try to do what is necessary to halt [rebel] advances and to try to secure some of the key cities in Mali.”

On Friday, the French government authorised airstrikes and ordered 550 French troops into Mali, where for 10 months the massive northern section of the country has been under the control of a combination of Islamists, ethnic Tuareg nationalists and criminal gangs. In March, the weak government in Bamako fell to a military coup, creating a power vacuum in the north.

Since then the international community has debated how to proceed. While France, Mali’s former colonial power, has pushed a military option, others such as the United States and the United Nations have been more cautious.

Still, in December, Washington and Paris co-sponsored a U.N. resolution that allowed for a military operation carried out by the West African grouping ECOWAS, for which the United States has offered training. (Washington is barred by law from training the Malian army until democratic elections are held.)

The ECOWAS force is not expected to be ready to enter Mali until the fall at the earliest, however. Meanwhile, Islamists reportedly linked to Al Qaeda have continued advancing against the Malian military. The French actions over the weekend sought to halt rebel attempts to take the central city of Konna, a strategy with which Washington appears to agree.

“It was clear to France and to all of us that that could not be allowed to continue,” Panetta said Monday. ”That’s the reason France has engaged, and it’s the reason that we’re providing cooperation to them in that effort.”

While Panetta refused to offer details of new U.S. assistance, he did state that there would be “some limited logistical support” and “intelligence support”, as well as “some areas of airlift”.

Both the United Kingdom and Canada have stated that they would send aircraft to assist in the Mali mission. The European Union on Monday said that it would not send any combat mission to North Africa, although it publicly supported the French decision.

Already a crisis

While France’s move appears to have taken observers by surprise, the strikes are reportedly received with cautious relief by many Malians.

Mali’s interim president, Dioncounda Traore, has been pleading for an intervention. And Oumou Sall Seck, the first woman mayor elected in northern Mali, warned in an opinion piece published in late December, “Immediately reclaiming northern Mali from violent extremists must become a priority. And it can’t be done without international help, especially from key powers like America and France.”

With international action now underway, however, the mission’s exact scope is unclear. “I’m very surprised that things moved so quickly, given that there had been no movement and just a lot of talk for some time,” Susanna Wing, a professor at Haverford College who has written widely on Mali, told IPS.

“The French are clearly operating in the hope of a rout, but that is not likely to happen quickly. I’m worried this could go on and on and result in a real civilian catastrophe. It’s important to remember that there’s already a humanitarian crisis in Mali, with some 400,000 refugees having fled.”

Humanitarian groups are sounding the alarm, with Medecins Sans Frontieres and Amnesty International on Monday calling on international forces to protect civilians and health infrastructure.

While rumours surfaced on Monday of greater U.S. involvement in the fast-evolving situation in Mali, Wing says such involvement seems unlikely.

“Intelligence support, troop training — that seems reasonable, but I would be very surprised if there were anything other than that,” she says. “Since Somalia, everyone knows the U.S. isn’t going to move to put troops on the ground anytime soon.”

A more recent memory guiding many international actors, including the United States, may be that of Libya. The 2011 intervention and the resulting outflow of both weapons and fighters are widely regarded as having led directly to the subsequent spike in violence in Mali.

Piecemeal intelligence

Washington has been building up a covert network of Special Forces bases and operations in Africa over the past decade, and the sudden and dramatic decline in stability in Mali in the past year has come as a stinging surprise to many U.S. policymakers, particularly in the military.

According to new analysis published on Monday in the New York Times, Washington under President Barack Obama has spent upwards of 600 million dollars in a “sweeping effort to combat militancy” in North Africa. The effort has included a significant focus on Mali, which was regarded as a bastion of stability and where the United States has poured money into training the military.

“Has this backfired?” Wing asked. “The Malian military training that was provided was useful, but what the U.S. government was not doing was putting all the pieces together.”

For instance, she said, the Pentagon should not have been surprised by discontent within the military that led to this spring’s coup. Furthermore, despite a key move during the 1990s to integrate ethnic Tuareg into the state military, Wing noted that little effort was put into actually resolving longstanding northern grievances of underdevelopment and decentralisation.

“The U.S. was always just looking at fragments of the picture and saying they would continue to support the situation through training operations,” Wing said. “It’s piecemeal intelligence — in Mali, somehow, the whole picture was never seen.”

© 2012 IPS North America

A 27-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of endangering railway safety after a bottle containing hydrochloric acid was left on a train, British Transport Police have said.

Middlesbrough railway station was cleared and the Northern Rail service to Darlington evacuated after the corrosive liquid was found on Sunday evening, sparking a major response by the emergency services.

British Transport Police released two CCTV images of a man officers wanted to trace, and a Middlesbrough man has since been arrested on suspicion of endangering safety on the railway.

A spokeswoman said: “We would like to thank members of the public for coming forward with information, as well as the media for assisting with our appeal.

“The man remains in custody and is currently helping police with their inquiries.”

https://www.btp.police.uk/(British Transport Police)

In 2008, Seyed Hasan, a father of 6, fled his home in the Wardak province of eastern Afghanistan. Hasan and his family were targeted by the Taliban for resisting their demands. It had been seven years since the United States had intervened to oust the group, but the Taliban was still acting with impunity in broad swaths of the country.

Hasan’s family applied for refugee status in Turkey, but their initial claim was rejected, leading them to seek assistance from the Istanbul-based Helsinki Citizens Assembly Refugee Advocacy and Support Program (HCA-RASP), an NGO for which I work. Over four years later, the family was finally granted refugee status. But their situation did not improve. Employers continued to exploit Hasan when he was lucky enough to find work, multiple family members were in need of medical assistance, and the children young enough to enroll in school lacked the resources to do well. 

Years of living life at an impasse led Hasan to recently ask me, his legal adviser, “Why do they treat us Afghans this way?” 

Turkey is not the worst place in the world to be a refugee, but nor is it the best. When signing the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol, Turkey applied a “geographical limitation,” or reservation whereby only individuals fleeing European countries would be recognized and afforded full rights as refugees. As a result, non-European asylum-seekers are granted access to “temporary asylum” while they await a determination of their status by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Once recognized as refugees, they are allowed residence in Turkey while the UNHCR attempts to have them resettled to third countries. Permanent legal residence, or local integration, is not an option. 

Hasan’s question arose from having watched many newly arrived Iranian and Iraqi refugees pass through the asylum system with relative ease, spending sometimes as little as one year in Turkey before having an opportunity for a fresh start in the West. Meanwhile, Afghans did not seem to be going anywhere. Young Afghan men lost prime years of their lives practically begging for access to education while others established informal refugee camps in public parks. Many took notice of the government’s generous provision of camps and other services for Syrian refugees. Conditions lead Hasan’s eldest son to attempt an illegal crossing to Greece, only to end up back with his family after being detained, returned, and fined. 

The New York Times and New American Media each recently featured compelling pieces highlighting the predicament facing thousands of Iraqis who have sacrificed their own personal safety cooperating with American service members and contractors, but face enduring obstacles in their ability to gain protection in the United States. Is the very same thing happening as the United States plans its withdrawal from Afghanistan?

The Refugee Admissions Program, administered by the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM), is the mechanism that allows for recognized refugees in other parts of the world to start new lives in the United States. As the world’s top receiver of refugees by far, the United States has set a ceiling for overall refugee admission at 80,000 for each of the last several years. In reality, only about 58,000 are actually admitted annually. The fact that over 20,000 spots have gone unfilled each year is indeed a problem, but not the only one. 

Only 428–or 0.8 percent of the total refugees admitted to the United States in 2011–were from Afghanistan. The U.S. government had allocated 35,500 of the yearly available spots for refugees from the Near East and South Asia, including Iraq, Bhutan, and Afghanistan. Almost 20 percent of the overall 2011 admissions, or 9,388 persons, were Iraqi. The recent articles advocate for an increase in this number and an ease in access to the system, but even a cursory look at the statistics should elicit a double-take at the tiny number of Afghans admitted. 

Hasan and other Afghans in Turkey represent only a small fraction of the over 2.6 million Afghan refugees worldwide, most of whom live in neighboring Pakistan and Iran. As new sanctions cripple Iran’s economy, Afghans are crossing the border into Turkey in increasing numbers and are expected to surpass Iranians to form the second-largest group of refugees in Turkey next year. 

Certainly responsibility for these refugees must be shared by various actors, not just the United States. Only 26 countries currently have resettlement programs, and those that do should increase their quotas. Turkey itself must open up local integration as a durable solution. But for now, Hasan must await an answer from the nation that put boots on the ground in his country in 2001.    

What response can our NGO give to Hasan? Is there anything more to it than the apparent brutal truth: among the already unwanted, you are the least favored? The standard explanation by UNHCR-Turkey that refugees from countries sharing a border with Turkey get priority due to security considerations has lost credibility, particularly since three times as many Somalis have left Turkey in the last seven years than Afghans. Although they may not know the specific name of the American law (the Lautenberg Amendment), Afghans know from experience that Iranian religious minorities are given priority in the resettlement system.

The recent attention to Iraqi refugees and their resettlement plight provides an opportunity to take stock of the broader inequities and inefficiencies of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. If our generous resettlement program is in fact an indication of our commitment to international law and humanitarianism, then we should establish a system that is transparent and does not favor specific religious groups while others wait endlessly. 

Resettlement quotas should reflect the size of each refugee group in first-countries of asylum like Turkey–and barring major vulnerability, referrals should be made according to the date of refugee recognition, so that new arrivals do not jump ahead of others. Simplifying the system will also lead to more resettlement for Afghans. In doing so, we will gain back the confidence and trust of many, like Hasan, who have lost their home and their future, at least in part to American geopolitical adventures.

© 2012 Foreign Policy In Focus

David Cameron’s former press secretary, Camborne and Redruth MP George Eustice, has attacked broadcast media for “undermining public trust” in politics by being too aggressive with politicians.

Speaking during a parliamentary debate on Tuesday, Eustice said political parties should be allowed to air more frequent party political broadcasts in order to speak directly to voters without having their words misinterpreted and over analysed by journalists.

“Broadcasters have duty to impartially enshrined in the Broadcasting Act, however the framework under which they operate does create a particular character of journalism,” he said.

“It does require them, by balancing both sides, to come up with, often, very anodyne reports which don’t necessarily hep the public reach an opinion.”

Eustice, who is one of the most vocal Tory supporters of the Leveson proposals for the statuary underpinning of independent press regulation, served as Cameron’s press secretary between 2005 and 2008. He was also head of press under Michael Howard’s leadership of the Tories.

Now a Tory MP himself, Eustice attacked the way TV news broadcasters such as the BBC and Sky News used their political journalists to explain to the viewers what politicians were saying – rather than just letting the MP speak for themselves.

“It does mean there is an emphasis on the two-way with the political correspondent, while the party leader who has just given a speech may be given 12 to 18 seconds to say what it is they are trying to do with a particular speech, there will then be plenty of time for a one or two minute two-way with the correspondent where they try and interpret or put a gloss on what a party leader is supposedly saying,” he said.

“That has led to what I think is an over emphasis on process and political strategy,” he said. “Rather than giving politicians the credit for what they are doing, which is saying what it is they actually believe.”

Politician’s words, Eustice said, were “always interpreted through the prism of political strategy which undermines public trust in the political process”.

“There is a tendency to have very hostile interview scenarios where you almost have a duel between the interviewer and the politician, where the objective from the programme’s point of view is to make the politican evasie and on the back foot,” he added.

Eustice said the law should be changed to allow political parties more chance to speak directly to voters.

“It is now OK to have advertising for toys to children at maybe 6.30 or 7.00 in the morning, but we can’t possibly tolerate the idea of advertising political ideas to grown adults. We need to challenge this idea,” he said.

Culture minister Ed Vaizey acknowledged that political broadcasts enabled parties to put their view across without the “gloss of a BBC political editor”.

However Vaizey said he did not want to “risk undermining the impartiality of British TV” by changing the rules governing political broadcasting.

Once the cafe tables are up, a wide pedestrian thoroughfare is an excellent place for a protest. Los Indignados march with a banner that reads “United for a Change”. (Photo via occupyclass.org)Scratch the surface of any austerity policy, and chances are you’ll see a bank protection program masquerading as good economic policy.

That’s certainly the case here in Spain, where banks are being made whole, while the middle class is getting flayed and spayed.

But curiously, there’s something missing.

The depression-scale economic collapse here isn’t accompanied by the kind of complete unmooring of society one would expect. In short, the economy is depressed, but the people aren’t.

Angry? Certainly. Active? Yes. You can read it in the ubiquitous graffiti; you can hear it in the massive protests in major cities like Barcelona and Madrid. But look closely at the pictures of these protesters, and you’ll see not despair and defeat, but conviction, and even the occasional smile.

If the US were experiencing 25% unemployment and a rapidly shrinking economy, the social fabric would be coming unmoored. But here in Spain, folks still amble along the many pedestrian-only promenades in their cities; they still sit in cafes sipping espresso or a glass of wine; they still congregate in parks and take the time to enjoy the day. Families are out and about, lovers stroll, old men congregate.

Life goes on; simple contentment and joy still seems possible.

On a trip to Ireland in 2011, I observed the same kind of thing. Ask about the economy at a local pub and you were likely to get a shrug and a smile and a slightly dark witticism. Their attitude seems to have been affluence was great while it lasted, but not really critical to their sense of well-being. Like a favorite Uncle who drifted into town, then left. Nice, but not necessary.

Back in the USA the economy is still growing and unemployment has been coming down, albeit very slowly. It’s less than half that of Ireland, Spain, or Greece. Yet the mood here borders on gloom, and the political discourse approaches hysteria.

It’s worth asking why.

The answer can be found in tunnels. Tunnels? Yup. Tunnels.

Here’s why.

Pass through the Pyrenees, and you’ll go through countless tunnels. The Spanish seem to bore through the mountains at the slightest sign of an impediment. A route that we would turn into several miles of switchbacks in the US is converted to a quarter mile of drilled rock in Spain.

The Spanish design their roads for the driver’s convenience. They’ve taken the same approach with their cities, their towns, their public policies, and their lifestyles. The endpoint — the polestar of their efforts — is human health and satisfaction.

In the US, we design for cost-effectiveness or profit. Tunnels are expensive. Publicly owned pedestrian promenades eat up valuable real estate and encourage leisure time, and leisure is free, but time is money. Take an entire afternoon with an espresso or two? No way. Gotta turn tables to make money. Siestas? Fugheddaboutit.

But the protests here in Spain are deadly serious business. If human satisfaction is the end point, social justice is a factor. Nobody likes to get screwed, and austerity is screwing the middle class in every country where it has been tried. Ironically, it’s

also further damaging their economies. At a time when middle class buying power is needed to fuel economic growth and enhance investor confidence, the middle class is being devastated. What company wants to invest in expansion when those it depends upon to buy, can’t?

There will come a tipping point, when the citizens of Spain — or Greece or Ireland or Portugal — can no longer tolerate the inequity and disparity and injustice of a system designed to benefit the few at the expense of the many and major political upheavals will occur. That time is very close in Spain and Greece.

But these upheavals will not be the result of blindly craving more stuff. They’ll be about a financial system designed to serve the few, colliding with a society that is used to a quality of life we can hardly fathom in the hamster-wheel economic system we’ve enslaved ourselves to in the US.

And now we have Republicans threatening to hold the entire world hostage, all for the purpose of concentrating yet more wealth in the top 1% of society, and giving corporations and the financial sector even more leeway to rob us blind, cheat us, and poison our climate.

Make no mistake, that is what this whole fiscal cliff thing is about. Debt and deficits are merely red herrings they use to further enrich the rich.

What we really need is a lot more tunnels and promenades … and a society which recognizes that the pursuit of happiness is more than a blind, lemming-like search for a few more dollars.

John Atcheson is author of the novel, A Being Darkly Wise, an eco-thriller and Book One of a Trilogy centered on global warming. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the San Jose Mercury News and other major newspapers. Atcheson’s book reviews are featured on Climateprogess.org.

Almost one third of people who voted Conservative in 2010 would vote for Ukip in the in European Parliament elections were the ballot to be held tomorrow, according to a poll published on Tuesday.

According to YouGov, 32% of voters who backed David Cameron at the general election would abandon the Tories in favour of Nigel Farage’s anti-EU party if given an immediate choice.

Joe Twyman, YouGov’s director of political and social research, said: “With a third of Conservative supporters in 2010 already saying they will vote for UKIP in 2014, the increased focus Europe and therefore UKIP will receive in the run-up to next year’s European Elections means it is possible that the numbers will get worse for the Conservatives as we get closer to polling day. If this trend continues it is likely Ukip will be picking up the most votes at the European Elections.”

The poll also revealed13% of voters who backed the europhile Liberal Democrats in the last general election would also back Ukip.

At present Labour is leading the polls for the European elections due in 2014, with 38% backing Ed Miliband.

The Conservatives are currently in second place on 27% and Ukip are third with 17%. The Lib Dems are fourth with just 12%.

Today’s YouGov poll highlights the problem the prime minister has with Ukip ahead of his major speech on Britain’s future membership of the EU.

Cameron is hoping that an offer of some form of referendum on the UK’s relationship with Brussels will satisfy eurosceptic voters and MPs who are unhappy with the present arrangement.

SEE ALSO: Nick Clegg Warns Referendum Could Have ‘Chilling Effect’ On Economy

Goldman Sachs has decided not to hold back investment bankers’ bonuses until the new financial year to benefit from the cut in the top rate of income tax from 50p to 45p, which comes into effect on April 6.

The development emerged just hours after Bank of England Governor Sir Mervyn King delivered a broadside at anyone planning to defer their bonus in this way, which he said would be “depressing” and “lacking in care and attention” to the rest of society.

He warned banks that they risk losing public goodwill if they defer payments to exploit the cut in the top rate, announced by Chancellor George Osborne in last year’s Budget.

Over the past few days, it became known that Goldman Sachs was considering holding back bonuses until after April 6, a move which could potentially cost the Treasury millions of pounds.

The company, which publishes its full-year results tomorrow and is expected to inform staff of 2012 bonus levels shortly afterwards, has declined to comment publicly on the issue.

But, according to people familiar with the process, the bank’s compensation committee decided at a meeting today not to go ahead with the deferral.

Earlier, the King slammed bosses at Goldman Sachs for considering delaying bonus payments so its millionaire bankers can pay less tax.

Goldman was one of a number of City institutions contemplating deferring bonuses until after April 6th when the top rate of income tax drops from 50p to 45p.

Mervyn King said he found the proposed tactic “depressing” given the country’s current economic situation.

He said: “I find it a bit depressing that people who earn so much find it would be even more exciting to adjust their payouts to benefit from the tax rate, knowing that this must have an impact of the rest of society.

“I think it would be a rather clumsy and lacking in care and attention to how other people might react. And in the long run, financial institutions do depend on goodwill from society.”

Such a move could cost the Treasury of millions of pounds.

King said that it would not be “unlawful” for banks to defer bonus payments in this way.

The chairman of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, Margaret Hodge, also condemned the reported move by Goldman Sachs.

“What we are seeing now is the immoral situation whereby people who earn a lot of money just believe it’s cool not to pay tax,” she told The Times.

“It fails to understand the importance of everyone contributing to the common good and Goldman Sachs just don’t get it. They feel no responsibility for paying their fair share of tax.”

His sentiments echoed those made in Westminster on Monday as Labour increased pressure on Chancellor George Osborne to prevent the “opportunistic money grab”.

Chris Leslie accused the government of being “out of touch”

Chris Leslie, shadow Treasury minister, said: “It cannot be right that this out-of-touch government is making millions of working people and pensioners on modest incomes pay more while giving millionaires and bankers a huge tax cut.

‘Banks need to think carefully about their own reputations if they seek to avoid tax in this way, but the ultimate responsibility lies with David Cameron and George Osborne.”

UPDATE: Goldman Sachs has decided not to hold back investment bankers’ bonuses until the new financial year to benefit from the cut in the top rate of income tax from 50p to 45p, which comes into effect on April 6.

The Governor of the Bank of England has slammed bosses at Goldman Sachs for considering delaying bonus payments so its millionaire bankers can pay less tax.

The bank is one of a number of City institutions contemplating deferring bonuses until after April 6th when the top rate of income tax drops from 50p to 45p.

Mervyn King said he found the proposed tactic “depressing” given the country’s current economic situation.

He said: “I find it a bit depressing that people who earn so much find it would be even more exciting to adjust their payouts to benefit from the tax rate, knowing that this must have an impact of the rest of society.

“I think it would be a rather clumsy and lacking in care and attention to how other people might react. And in the long run, financial institutions do depend on goodwill from society.”

The move could cost the Treasury of millions of pounds.

King said that it would not be “unlawful” for banks to defer bonus payments in this way.

The chairman of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, Margaret Hodge, also condemned the reported move by Goldman Sachs.

“What we are seeing now is the immoral situation whereby people who earn a lot of money just believe it’s cool not to pay tax,” she told The Times.

“It fails to understand the importance of everyone contributing to the common good and Goldman Sachs just don’t get it. They feel no responsibility for paying their fair share of tax.”

His sentiments echoed those made in Westminster on Monday as Labour increased pressure on Chancellor George Osborne to prevent the “opportunistic money grab”.

Chris Leslie accused the government of being “out of touch”

Chris Leslie, shadow Treasury minister, said: “It cannot be right that this out-of-touch government is making millions of working people and pensioners on modest incomes pay more while giving millionaires and bankers a huge tax cut.

‘Banks need to think carefully about their own reputations if they seek to avoid tax in this way, but the ultimate responsibility lies with David Cameron and George Osborne.”

US plan to continue its local police training bid in Afghanistan even after the pullout of its troops there has been rejected by top Afghan officials, highlighting persisting disputes over future role of American forces in the country.

Top Afghan officials insist that Obama’s recent offer to remove US troops from Afghan villages must include Special Operations forces tasked with training the so-called Afghan Local Police (ALP), despite assumption by American officials that police trainers would be exempt from the pledged military force drawdown, The Washington Post reports on Tuesday.

While the US military regards the ALP training mission as “critical to security throughout Afghanistan, the effort has been opposed by top Afghan officials, including President Hamid Karzai, who argues that it helps create lawless armed militias, undermining the authority of the central government’s security forces.

The dispute, the report says, “Underscores just how difficult negotiations over a long-term security partnership could be during the next year.”

The report adds that while US officials say the local police training prevents assaults by militant groups, President Karzai “insists that it invites attacks.”

According to the daily, nearly 4,500 US Special Operations forces are tasked with training the ALP, a force of over 18,000 villagers “who are armed, paid and taught to defend their communities against encroaching insurgents.”

The report further reiterates that although Karzai initially approved the formation of the ALP under pressure from US military commanders, he has persistently objected to the presence of US-led forces in Afghan villages, expressing skepticism of their ability to protect Afghan civilians and describing them as “a source of instability and tension.”

Meanwhile, the daily quotes Karzai’s spokesman Aimal Faizi as stating in a Monday interview that the Afghan president has met with a number of civilians in recent months that “have accused the local police of rape, murder and theft in their villages.”

The report goes on to add that “many Western human rights organizations” verify such assessment.

“The creation of the ALP is a high-risk strategy to achieve short-term goals in which local groups are again being armed without adequate oversight or accountability,” it says, quoting a 2011 Human Rights Watch report.

American officials, however, stand by the program, describing it as a viable solution to Afghanistan’s security problems in remote villages. This is despite reports that since 2010, there have been at least three instances of ALP recruits shooting at their American trainers.

MFB/MFB

Most of the major currencies are consolidating within yesterday’s trading ranges. The main feature has been comments from Japan’s Minister of Economic Revival that appeared to declare victory in the government’s attempt to weaken the yen. News wires quoted him saying that the yen had corrected its excessive rise and was currently in line with fundamentals. 

This triggered a wave of short covering yen positions, driving the down form around JPY89.60 to near JPY88.60 in initial reaction that lasted about an hour. It has been consolidating since, mostly below JPY88.90. The sharp recovery of the yen was also felt on the crosses, though a more consolidative tone that was seen in the European morning was fading and the currencies moved back toward the lows as North American traders prepared to return to their screens.  

The yen has weakened about 6.5% since the Japanese election was called that led to the LDP victory and the return of Abe, on promises of monetary and fiscal stimulus for an economy slipping into its third recession in four years. There was surprising little reaction from Japan’s trading partners from its effort to talk the yen down. That said, Bank of Korea Governor Soo said yesterday it may have to take action to counter the impact of the weak yen on Korean exports and last week, in an unusual reference to the foreign exchange market a regional Fed president (Bullard) said he was ” a little disturbed” by the yen.

It appears that Japanese officials had signaled that they were not looking for a large move or a persistent decline. The JPY90 level for the dollar was often cited as upper end of what they desired. Today’s comments by Minister Amari seems to be an attempt to blow air in the yen’s parachute to help assure a soft landing.  Separately, the BOJ’s quarterly report cut its assessment of 8 of 9 regions. This is consistent with new easing and even doubling its inflation goal at next week’s meeting. 

In terms of economic data, there were two features in the European morning. UK inflation was in line with expectations with CPI rising 0.5% for a 2.7% year-over-year increase. Input producer prices rose a 0.2%, a little more than expected , while output prices slipped 0.1%, whereas the consensus called for unchanged. This should be watched as it may be revealing information about profit margins. Separately, it was reported that the German economy expanded 0.7% last year, which points to a 0.5% contraction in Q4. There are other reports suggesting that the German government is preparing to slash this year’s growth forecast. 

There is another talking point today. A German paper is reporting that as soon as tomorrow the German government may announce a redeployment of its gold reserves, which currently mostly held by other central banks, including the Federal Reserve (45%), UK (13%), and France (11%). The report suggests some of the gold will be repatriated from the US and all of its holdings from France will return to Germany. Some observers are claiming this is a sign of underlying mistrust. 

This seems to assume what ought to proved. If Germany were to sell some of its Treasury holdings, with the same value of the gold, it would not raise questions.  Given the extent of the integration of Germany and France, the repatriation of German gold from France is hardly even a rounding error in the relationship. 

Separately, an interesting story in the precious metals today is that price of platinum has moved above the price of gold for the first time since last March. Apparently, a key factor here is shrinking supply from South Africa, which is by the far the world’s largest producer.

In the US today, there is full slate of economic reports.   The retail sales report would generally be among the features, but given that the payroll savings tax just increased to 2%, the data in the Dec reading is dated, though consumption appears to have held up going into the fiscal cliff. The Empire survey is for the month of January and thus more current. An improvement from the -8.1 reading in December is widely expected.    Producer prices are often just of passing interest to the capital markets. Business inventories, the last economic report, will help economists finalize Q4 GDP estimates. 

Iranian math scientist Maryam Mirzakhani has received the 2013 biennial Satter Prize in mathematics presented by American Mathematical Society.

The Satter Prize is dedicated to a woman to recognize and appreciate the winner’s mathematical accomplishments.

Born in 1977 in Tehran, Mirzakhani grew up in the Iranian capital and got her bachelor in math from the country’s prestigious university, Sharif University of Technology, in 1999, while later she received her master and PhD degrees from Harvard University in the United States.

“Thanks to my great teachers in Iran, both in high school and at Sharif University for providing a stimulating environment for their students,” she expressed at the award ceremony.

Mirzakhani is an alumna of Iran’s National Organization for Development of Exceptional Talents (NODET), who was crowned two gold international medals.

She won gold medals in both the International Mathematical Olympiad (Hong Kong 1994) in which she scored 41 out of 42 points, and in the International Mathematical Olympiad (Canada 1995) with a perfect score of 42 out of 42 points, ranking her 1st jointly with 14 other participants.

She became full professor of Mathematics at the age of 31 in 2008 at Stanford University where she is currently working.

Her research interests mainly include hyperbolic geometry,Teichmüller theory, ergodic theory, and symplectic geometry.

FGP/FGP

A Palestinian teenager has been shot dead by Israeli military forces in the northern West Bank, Palestinian medical and security sources say.

Seventeen-year-old Samir Ahmed Awad was killed instantly after being shot by Israeli forces in the chest and the leg near the village of Ras Karkar, some 10 kilometers (about six miles) northwest of the city of Ramallah.

Earlier, another young Palestinian was shot dead by Israeli troops.

A 21-year-old farmer, Mustafa Abu Jirad, was shot in the head near the city of Beit Lahia on Monday.

On January 11, a Palestinian man was killed and another injured by Israeli army gunfire in northern Gaza. The two men, one of them a 20-year-old farmer, were hit by live fire east of Jabaliya.

Israel launched a major military offensive against the besieged Palestinian territory on November 14, which lasted until November 21, 2012. The war left more than 160 Palestinians, including many women and children, dead and about 1,200 others injured.

AO/HN/HJL

An Iranian official says Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been invited by his Egyptian counterpart to participate in the upcoming summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Cairo.

During his weekly press conference on Tuesday, Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi had invited Ahmadinejad to attend the summit, which is scheduled for February 6-7.

Mehmanparast said the summit would be a good opportunity for the two presidents to hold talks.

During the February summit, Egypt will take over the OIC presidency for the next three years.

The OIC, which was established in 1969, is the second-largest inter-governmental organization after the United Nations and has 57 member states spread over four continents.

“Continuous consultation among influential regional countries, including Iran and Egypt, can be effective and beneficial to the expansion of bilateral relations and the resolution of regional crises,” Mehmanparast added.

Tehran and Cairo resumed their bilateral ties after the Egyptian revolution that toppled dictator Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

Iran had severed ties with Egypt because Cairo signed the 1978 Camp David Accord with the Israeli regime and offered asylum to Iran’s deposed monarch Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

Morsi visited Iran for the 16th Non-Aligned Movement in August 2012, which was the first trip by an Egyptian president to Tehran since the victory of the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

MYA/HMV/HJL

France is planning to triple the number of its military soldiers fighting anti-government militants in the West African nation of Mali.

“There will be a gradual build-up [in the number of French troops in Mali] to a figure of 2,500,” said a source close to Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian on Tuesday.

The announcement of France’s plans to increase the number of troops in Mali comes after French President Francois Hollande said there were currently 750 soldiers in the West African country.

During a visit to a French military base in the United Arab Emirates, Hollande had also announced a rise in the number of French troops in Mali, describing the overnight air raids against the fighters in Mali as successful.

On Sunday, French fighter jets pounded rebel bases in the cities of Gao and Kidal in northern Mali. A number of militants were reportedly killed.

According to reports, French warplanes also launched an attack on the rebels’ stockpiles of munitions and fuel in the town of Afhabo, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from Kidal.

Earlier on Tuesday, the United Nations Security Council expressed support for France’s military intervention in Mali.

The US has also voiced its support, offering to assist France in its bombing campaign.

Chaos broke out in the African country after Malian President Amadou Toumani Toure was toppled in a military coup on March 22, 2012. The coup leaders said they mounted the coup in response to the government’s inability to contain the Tuareg rebellion in the north of the country, which had been going on for two months.

SZH/SZH

Palestinian activists have devised plans to set up another tent village in the occupied Palestinian territories as a sign of protest against Israel’s settlement policies.

The exact location of the planned tent village has not been announced yet, but it is expected to be set up at the site of Israel’s future settlement projects, referred to by the Israelis as E1.

The move came following a forced evacuation of some 200 Palestinian and foreign activists, who had set up makeshift tents in the Israel-occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank on Friday to confront a recent Israeli plan to construct new settlement units in the area.

It is the second time that the pro-Palestine activists are using the tactic to protest against Tel Aviv’s settlement construction policies.

On Sunday, Israeli forces attacked the activists’ tent camp and forcibly evacuated them.

Palestinian protesters said that at least six activists were wounded in the attack.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday slammed Israel’s attack on peaceful Palestinian protesters, calling the protest non-violent. Ban reiterated that the Palestinians reserve the right to stage peaceful demonstrations, urging Israel to respect the inalienable right of the Palestinian people.

The UN chief also called on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to abandon his new plans of settlement construction in the West Bank.
Despite international condemnations, Israel has announced new plans to construct 170 new settler units and 84 “guest rooms” in the West Bank region.

The E1 project aims at connecting the West Bank settlement of Maale Adumim to the occupied Palestinian territory of East al-Quds (Jerusalem), about six kilometers away. The plan will cut off the northern part of the West Bank from the south.

More than half a million Israelis live in over 120 illegal settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank and East al-Quds.

The UN and most countries consider the Israeli settlements illegal because the territories were captured by Israel in the 1967 war and are hence subject to the Geneva Conventions, which forbid construction on occupied lands.

AO/HN/HJL

A Matisse painting worth £600,000 will be returned to a museum in Sweden this week, 25 years after it was stolen.

Art detective Chris Marinello, who has recovered £160m of stolen art work in the past two decades, located Matisse’s The Garden in Essex earlier this month.

It will now be returned to the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm.

In the last year alone, there has been a 10% rise in thefts of paintings and antiques.

The worldwide art black market is worth over £4bn.

There are 51,000 lost or missing art pieces in the UK according to the Lost Arts Register.

Mr Marinello told Sky News that waiting the thieves out is the best strategy.

He said: “Eventually they are going to try and sell them, there is nothing you can do with stolen art.

“It is essentially worthless, these pieces do find their way on to the market place and that’s when we pounce.”

For art galleries security has become paramount.

Last year thieves raided Rotterdam museum and walked off with works from the likes of Picasso, Monet, Gauguin and Matisse’s potentially worth hundreds of millions.

Richard Reed from Hiscox insurance says art galleries have to strike a fine balance.

He said: “It is their primary business to be open to the public and make their works accessible.

“At the same time they have a duty to protect them and it’s a knife edge they have to walk.”

Matisse’s The Garden is due to be returned to Sweden in the next few days before a formal exhibit being planned in the spring.

The US Military’s suicide rate grew a startling 15 percent in 2012. The Pentagon, which has put great effort into lowering military suicide rates, has acknowledged that battle casualties are no longer the primary reason for soldiers’ deaths.

­Modern US warfare is Internet-centric and relies heavily on drones and robots, which has helped bring combat losses to historic lows; suicide now accounts for more deaths of US soldiers than battlefield conflict.

The official website of the US Department of Defense has published preliminary reports of at least 177 potential active-duty suicides and 126 potential non-active-duty suicides in 2012. The report reveals a marked surge in suicides since 2011, when 165 confirmed active-duty and 118 non-active-duty suicides were registered.

In all, 349 servicemembers in all branches of the US Military committed suicide in 2012, up 15 percent from 301 suicides in the military in 2011, AP reported, citing a Pentagon source. The number of US Military suicides in 2012 exceeded the total combat fatalities in Afghanistan in 2012, which the AP calculated at 295 deaths.

Reports on US military suicides have revealed that the US Army, the largest body within the US military (around 562,000 personnel), has the highest number and rate of military suicides: Over 32 per 100,000 troops.

The US Marines Corps (over 202,000 personnel) was second with nearly 24 suicides per 100,000 troops. The US Navy (around 323,000 personnel) and US Air Force (around 330,000 personnel) have practically identical suicide rates of 18 per 100,000 troops.

The average suicide rate in the US military — 24 suicides per 100,000 soldiers — is lower than the civilian suicide rate for men aged 17 to 60 — 25 suicides per 100,000 in 2010.

The latest US military suicide statistics for 2011 suggest that a suicidal soldier is usually an unmarried white man under the age of 25, recently enlisted and with less than a college education. Around 60 percent of military suicides are committed with firearms, though in most cases the guns are personally owned, not military-issued.

The Pentagon has instated several measures in a bid to curb the rising number of suicides. For example, soldiers and their family members can receive professional psychological help from the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, where “trained consultants are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.”

The US Army sponsors research into medications to prevent suicides, such as a nasal spray that eliminates suicidal thoughts. But despite these breakthroughs, the problem has continued to grow.

David Rudd, a military suicide researcher and dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Utah, told AP that he is not optimistic about further anti-suicide developments. “Actually, we may continue to see increases,” Rudd explained, adding that Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans commit suicides because of PTSD, depression, alcohol and substance abuse, while those not deployed take their lives because of problems with relationships, finances or the law.

The suicide rate among veterans vastly exceeds that of active-duty troops. According to estimates last year by the US Department of Veterans’ Affairs, a US military veteran commits suicide every 80 minutes — totaling 18 veterans a day.

In 2010, the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America nonprofit reported that veterans account for 20 percent of the 30,000 annual US suicides, though only 1 percent of Americans have served in the military.

“Despite the increased efforts, the increased attention, the trends continue to move in a troubling and tragic direction,” Defense Secretary Leon Panetta acknowledged at a joint suicide prevention conference between the Pentagon and Department of Veterans’ Affairs in June 2012.

India has deplored the killings of two Indian soldiers by Pakistani troops, saying the Indian forces reserve the “right to retaliate at time and place of its choice.”

Indian Army chief General Bikram Singh termed the killing and beheading of an Indian soldier as “an unpardonable act,” saying the Indian army is fully prepared to respond to all internal and external challenges.

“I am proud to say that the Indian Army has been able to fulfill the country’s expectations. Our country has been facing both internal as well as external challenges and let me assure you, that the Indian Army is ready for all the challenges,” Singh said in New Delhi on Monday.

India says that Pakistani forces killed two Indian soldiers on the military control line (LoC) near disputed Kashmir on January 06.

According to military sources, an Indian patrol was ambushed by Pakistani soldiers in southern Kashmir’s Mendhar sector, 173 kilometers (107 miles) west of Jammu.

Pakistan, however, denied India’s allegations, saying Indian troops had crossed the de facto border of LoC in Kashmir, called the Line of Control, storming a military checkpoint.

Kashmir lies at the heart of more than 60 years of hostility between India and Pakistan. Both countries claim Kashmir in full but each only has control over a section of the territory.

Despite a 2003 ceasefire along the Line of Control, the area still witnesses violence by both sides.

AO/HN

Context: As yet there are no context links for this item.

Transcript

JAISAL NOOR (TRN AND FSRN): IN NY SATURDAY HUNDREDS OF ROCKAWAY RESIDENTS CALLED ON CONGRESS TO PASS TENS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN AID FOR STORM SURVIVORS. THE CROWD PASSED STREET AFTER STREET OF FLOOD DAMAGED HOMES, PILES OF GARBAGE,AND PIECES OF THE DESTROYED BOARDWALK ON THE STORM ERODED BEACH.

THE THEME OF ACTION WAS: “WALK A MILE IN OUR SHOES,” AND COMMUNITY LEADERS AND ELECTED OFFICIALS URGED THE PUBLIC TO HOLD CONGRESS ACCOUNTABLE FOR QUICKLY PASSING A COMPLETE AID PACKAGE.CONGRESSMEMBER GREGORY MEEKS REPRESENTS NEW YORK’S 5TH DISTRICT, WHICH INCLUDES HARD-HIT FAR ROCKAWAY. CONGRESSMEMBER GREGORY MEEKS”Come walk these beaches, come see these homes, because if you come see them and look into the eyes of all of you, because when we look into your eyes, you will see great Americans who deserve the help of their government and we need to pass the $51 billion dollars now” JN: MANY ARE FRUSTRATED BY THE SLOW PACE OF RECOVERY AND THE DELAYED ACTION BY CONGRESS. ROCKAWAY RESIDENT DENNIS SELEEBY HAS BEEN VOLUNTEERING SINCE THE STORM HIT MORE THAN TWO MONTHS AGO. HE SAYS THEY STILL NEED BASIC SUPPLIES Rockaway resident Dennis Seleeby”I bring truckloads of water-water to people, drinking water because water mains are breaking. And people aren’t supposed to do their wash in the water, so certainly of course not drink it. And this is America but not the America I grew up in. And I still put an American flag on everything I do, so its very painful for me to have to do this, and its disgusting for me to to see the things that I see”JN: EARLIER THIS MONTH, THE HOUSE AUTHORIZED NEARLY $10 BILLION DOLLARS FOR THE NATIONAL FLOOD INSURANCE PROGRAM, BUT DID NOT PASS AN ADDITIONAL $51 BILLION PREVIOUSLY APPROVED IN THE SENATE. THIS WEEK, THE HOUSE WILL CONSIDER TWO SEPARATE RELIEF BILLS, THE FIRST PROVIDING ABOUT $17 BILLION IN AID, THE SECOND, AN AMENDMENT FROM NEW YORK AND NEW JERSEY LAWMAKERS FOR ANOTHER $33 BILLION. THE LATTER IS EXPECTED TO FACE OPPOSITION BECAUSE IT CONTAINS FUNDING FOR NON-EMERGENCY PROGRAMS INCLUDING MONEY FOR PREVIOUS DISASTERS, BEACH REPLENISHMENT AND BETTER STORM FORECASTING. AT THE RALLY, RESIDENTS SAID FUNDING PREVENTIVE MEASURES IS ESSENTIAL TO BETTER PREPARE LOW LYING AREAS FOR FUTURE STORMS.ROCKAWAY RESIDENT”We have to take care of the first line of protection. And that’s obviously, as you see here, there’s no rocks, there’s no dunes, there’s no boardwalk, there’s no sea wall, we have zero protection. Its gone. We used to have a bigger beach, the beach used to be up to here. Now its gone. It was gone after Irene, It’s gone after this Superstorm Sandy, we need a lot of money here put on The Rockaways by the Army Corps of Engineers and we are going to be doing this, until we get it done. We are doing this rally today to make sure It all gets done. “JN: RESIDENTS ALSO SAID PASSING THE FULL AID BILL WAS NECESSARY TO FIX OTHER, POTENTIALLY HIDDEN PROBLEMS.PETER CORLISS, MARCH ORGANIZER”The big analogy I am trying to say is that what the Rockaways and all these communities are suffering from right now is is a kidney punch. everybody can see a bloody nose, and you can get a camera on that, but where the damage is now, you can see some of this here and God Bless them. “JN: MARCH ORGANIZER PETER CORLISS, WHOSE MOTHER LIVES IN THE ROCKAWAYS SAYS PASSING THE FULL AID PACKAGE IS CRITICAL BECAUSE IT INCLUDES MONEY TO PAY FOR MOLD REMOVAL, WHICH CAN BE COSTLY.PETER CORLISS, MARCH ORGANIZER”I think what is really important is that we get people to go down and see what mold looks like in a basement. I know my mom’s own house’s test results look like, they are not good. And I think that we also need to make sure people see how this is impacting family’s and businesses and you are going to tear apart communities if you can’t get these relief dollars in soon. “JN: MANY, LIKE CORLISS STRESSED THAT IMMEDIATE ACTION WAS NEEDED TO ASSIST THOUSANDS WHO REMAIN DISPLACED OR WITHOUT HEAT AND HOT WATERPETER CORLISS, MARCH ORGANIZER”If we don’t want want to see bodies piling up come the first winter storm, we need to get them to safe shelter, you just can’t play around with people’s lives. We have been very blessed with a mild winter so far, we can’t expect that to hold. JN: ACTIONS WERE ALSO HELD IN CONEY ISLAND, GERRITSEN BEACH, STATEN ISLAND, AND LONG ISLAND, AS WELL AS IN NEW JERSEY’S UNION BEACH, SEASIDE AND BRIGANTINE.ORGANIZERS SAY THEY WILL TAKE FURTHER ACTION IF THE LAWMAKERS FAIL TO APPROVE FULL FUNDING FOR SANDY RECOVERY. VIDEO COURTESY OF RENEGADE PIX. REPORTING FOR THE REAL NEWS AND FSRN, THIS IS JAISAL NOOR IN NEW YORK.

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The deputy mayor for policing in London is being investigated by the police watchdog over allegations linked to a previous job, it was revealed today.

A spokeswoman for the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) said the body received the referral about Stephen Greenhalgh yesterday from the Greater London Authority (GLA).

She said: “This referral follows a complaint made to the GLA regarding the conduct of deputy mayor for policing Stephen Greenhalgh.

“The allegations which form the complaint relate to Greenhalgh’s previous role at a London local authority. The complaint is currently being considered by the IPCC.”

Greenhalgh’s current role means he has the authority to appoint and sack senior officers in the capital.

Last month it was reported that Mayor of London Boris Johnson had warned Greenhalgh over claims he touched a woman’s bottom in a lift at City Hall.

Greenhalgh said he had no recollection of the alleged incident, but apologised for anything that might have been misunderstood.

This was not treated as misconduct and was not referred to the IPCC.

Winter energy bill hikes helped keep the annual rate of inflation at 2.7% for the third month in a row, official figures showed.

The Office for National Statistics said the Consumer Prices Index was unchanged in December, although some economists predict it could rise to above 3% by the summer.

Price increases from four of the “big six” energy suppliers came into effect last month, dampening the impact of a fall in fuel costs.

The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) says it supports France’s recent military intervention in the West African nation of Mali.

According to France’s UN Ambassador, Gerard Araud, a meeting of the 15-member UNSC on Mali expressed “understanding and support” for the military intervention on Monday.

On Sunday, French fighter jets pounded rebel bases in the cities of Gao and Kidal in northern Mali.

According to reports, French warplanes also launched an attack on the rebels’ stockpiles of munitions and fuel in the town of Afhabo, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from Kidal.

The UN also said that 30,000 people had fled the fighting.

Also on Sunday, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius announced that Algeria had authorized the overflight of its territory, allowing French warplanes to use its airspace for conducting bombing strikes on the north of the West African country.

US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has also backed the French intervention in Mali, saying that his country is willing “to provide whatever assistance” needed in the bombing campaign.

Chaos broke out in the African country after Malian President Amadou Toumani Toure was toppled in a military coup on March 22, 2012. The coup leaders said they mounted the coup in response to the government’s inability to contain the Tuareg rebellion in the north of the country, which had been going on for two months.

SZH/HN

Republicans have reacted with horror to the revelation that the Queen and the Prince of Wales exercise their power to veto legislation that is proposed by parliament, with the monarch even having blocked an attempt to hand MPs the power to declare war.

On Tuesday, the Guardian revealed that at least 39 bills had been subject to the monarchy’s power to agree to or block new laws.

The information came to light after Downing Street lost a court battle with the paper to prevent publication of the internal Whitehall record.

Graham Smith, the chief executive of Republic, the campaign group which wants to get rid of an unelected head of state, said the royal veto was “a serious affront to our democracy”.

“It is extraordinary that in this day and age our elected politicians have to ask the permission of the Queen and her eldest son before they can pass new laws,” he said.

“With Prince Charles routinely interfering in politics we can now see that he has real leverage over ministers. It’s no wonder they pay such close attention to his views.”

“The palace’s claims this is nothing more than a formality are unbelievable: why did the government fight tooth and nail to keep this information secret? It is time we had full disclosure on the extent of this royal power and how it has affected the laws we now all live under.”

The Cabinet Office document shows that among the new laws that required the Queen’s consent was the Civil Partnership Act 2004 as it contained a clause about the validity of the relationships “that would bind Her Majesty”.

And the government was obliged to ask the prince of Wales for his consent for the Merchant Shipping and Maritime Security Act 1997 as he owns the harbour of the Isle of Scilly though the Duchy of Cornwall.

The Queen also vetoed entirely a private member’s Bill, the Military Actions Against Iraq (Parliamentary Approval) Bill 1999, that would have transfered the power to authorise military strikes against Iraq from the monarch to Parliament

It is widely assumed that the royal prerogative, the authority to declare war, rests now with the prime minister rather than the Queen herself.

However, these documents raise questions about how much power the monarch still has over the elected government of the day.

Lib Dem MP Julian Huppert said the fact there had been a “fight to to keep this quiet” showed the significance of the Whitehall document.

“It’s quite concerning there is wider influence, and secretive influence, of the monarchy in these things than had previously been revealed,” he told The Huffington Post UK.

And he said he was particularly concerned about the revelation the Queen had fought to keep parliament from gaining the power to authorise, or block, military action.

“The power to go to war is an incredibly important thing,” he said. “It’s important to bring the country on side and to do things in a clear way and leave the choice up to parliament.

He added: “I think it’s astonishing that the first vote on Afghanistan happened in this parliament, there wasn’t one before that, that’s absolutely astounding in what claims to be parliamentary democracy.”

And Labour MP Paul Flynn told HuffPost that the revelations showed Britain was a “long way form having a full democracy”.

And he said the Monarchy had “so many privileges” the idea they could “amend or frustrate legislation” was “not part of the deal”.

Lib Dem Andrew George told The Guardian:”This is opening the eyes of those who believe the Queen only has a ceremonial role.”

“At any stage this issue could come up and surprise us and we could find parliament is less powerful than we thought it was.”

On Tuesday Cabinet Office minister Chloe Smith said the “signification” of the Queen’s and the Prince of Wales’s consent for certain Bills was “a parliamentary requirement” and noted that neither had refused to consent to any government Bill in the last ten years.

In a parliamentary answer given to George, she said the government did not hold figures for how many bills have required royal consent over the last 10 years and to collect such data would “incur disproportionate cost as there are many bills in each session”.

A Buckingham Palace spokeswoman said: “It is a long established convention that the Queen is asked by parliament to provide consent to those bills which parliament has decided would affect crown interests. The sovereign has not refused to consent to any bill affecting crown interests unless advised to do so by ministers.”

Related on HuffPost:

The world’s largest retail chain Walmart Stores Inc has announced plans to hire more than 100,000 veterans in the US over the next five years.

­“Hiring a veteran can be one of the best business decisions you make … veterans have a record of performance under pressure,” Reuters cited Walmart US Chief Executive Bill Simon’s speech be to delivered on Tuesday at the National Retail Federation conference.

The job offer will apply to any honorably discharged veteran within his or her first twelve months off active duty. “We believe Walmart is already the largest private employer of veterans in the country, and we want to hire more,” Simon said.

The company plans to provide most of the jobs at Walmart stores and clubs, while some veterans will be employed in distribution centers, according to Simon. The retailer will start its veterans’ jobs campaign on Memorial Day in May.

The company would be able to employ any veteran in at least a part-time job, according to New York Times, citing Gary Profit, senior director of military programs at Walmart as saying.

Currently Walmart group is the largest private employer in the United States, with about 1.4 million employees, according to a March regulatory filing.

Walmart’s hiring initiative was also welcomed by First Lady Michelle Obama’s team.

“As our wars come to an end and our troops continue to come home, it’s more important than ever that all of us — not just the government, but our businesses and non-profits as well — do our part to serve those who have served us so bravely,” Michelle Obama said in the Walmart statement.

Last year the US Congress passed legislation that — among other things — gave employers tax credits for hiring veterans.

The unemployment rate for veterans serving after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks is 10%, about two percentage points higher than the overall rate across the US, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. With lack of education and experience other than the military, and wounds of war both physical and mental, young veterans face a tough job market in the US.

While employers appreciate the qualities veterans bring such as resistance to stress and problem-solving skills, they are reluctant to hire them because of concerns about mental health, triggered by military experience, according to Veterans Affairs. Nearly 450,000 recent veterans have been diagnosed with PTSD and other mental disorders.

Pakistani supporters of Canadian-Pakistani cleric Tahir-ul Qadri look on during a protest march in Islamabad on January 15, 2013.(AFP Photo / Farooq Naeem)

Pakistani officers scuffled with followers of a cleric at a mass anti-government protest, firing shots in the air to disperse the demonstrators. Thousands gathered in Pakistan’s capital to call for revolution and the resignation of the government.

Followers of Canadian-Pakistani Sufi cleric Muhammad Tahirul Qadri marched through Islamabad as part of a two-day mass protest again government corruption. Qadri demanded that the Pakistani parliament dissolve itself by 11:00am local time (06:00 GMT) on Tuesday.

“Morally, your government and your assemblies have ended tonight,” he said in a public address on Monday. “I will give [the government] a deadline until tomorrow to dissolve the federal parliament and provincial assemblies. After that, the people’s assembly here will take their own decision.”

The situation spiraled out of control when the deadline passed, as scuffles broke out between protesters and the police. Officers fired tear gas shells at the ground and shots into the air to disperse the crowd.

Muhammad Tahirul Qadri, leader of Minhaj-ul-Quran movement speaks before a protest march from Lahore to Islamabad January 13, 2013.(Reuters / Mohsin Raza)

Pakistani supporters of Canadian-Pakistani cleric Tahir-ul Qadri rest during a protest march in Islamabad on January 15, 2013.(AFP Photo / Farooq Naeem)

Pakistani supporters of Canadian-Pakistani cleric Tahir-ul Qadri shout slogans during a protest march in Islamabad on January 15, 2013.(AFP Photo / Farooq Naeem)

Qadri’s supports pelted police with stones and beat them with sticks. Six activists were allegedly injured in the altercation. In an email to AP, Qadri blamed the security forces for the violence, claiming that they attempted to arrest him.

Thousands continued to rally in central Islamabad in support of the cleric after the spate of violence. A city official told Reuters that there were around 30,000 people remaining the streets.

Barricades were set up around government buildings in the center of Islamabad, and additional security personnel have been deployed. Mobile phone networks have also been shut down in the area, as authorities fear cellphones could be used to detonate bombs.

Qadri has demanded that the Pakistani governmental elections scheduled for this spring should be delayed until corruption is stamped out in the current regime.

The Pakistani government warned that they will not concede the cleric’s demands following the outbreak of violence. “We will not accept Qadri’s pressure because his demands are unconstitutional,” Interior Minister Rehman Malik told local television channels

Pakistani supporters of Canadian-Pakistani cleric Tahir-ul Qadri hold placards during a protest march in Islamabad on January 15, 2013.(AFP Photo / Farooq Naeem)

­

Military puppet?

Although Qadri enjoys significant support among Pakistan’s lower- and middle-class, some suspect that he is being backed by the Pakistani military.

The cleric has denied any involvement with the military, although he said that the army could form a transitional government while new rulers are elected, giving rise to speculation over his connections to the military.

“I have no link with military institutions,” he told Reuters earlier. “I am one of the biggest staunch believers… of democracy in the whole world.”

If the Pakistani elections proceed as planned this year, it will be the first time a civilian government has conducted democratic elections in the country’s history.

Pakistani supporters of Canadian-Pakistani cleric Tahir-ul Qadri chant slogans during a protest march in Islamabad on January 15, 2013.(AFP Photo / Farooq Naeem)

Women with a high risk of breast cancer could be prescribed drugs to prevent the disease.

New guidelines from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) recommend that post-menopausal women with a strong family history of breast cancer are given the option of taking medication to reduce their risk.

The move was hailed as “historic” by a leading breast cancer charity.

Between 3% and 5% of the 48,000 breast cancers each year are caused by genes that are passed down families. They raise the risk of the disease to around 80% – compared to 12% for the average woman.

Currently women with one of the genes have regular mammograms to spot tumours early.

Some, including Sharon Osbourne, choose to have their breasts removed even though they are perfectly healthy, to reduce their risk to low levels.

But recent studies have shown that taking the drugs tamoxifen or raloxifene for five years can halve the risk of cancer. Nice says the evidence is strong enough to recommend so-called “chemoprevention”.

The US Food and Drug Administration has already approved the drugs for preventing cancer.

Chris Askew, chief executive of Breakthrough Breast Cancer, said: “This draft guideline represents a historic step for the prevention of breast cancer.

“It is the first time drugs have ever been recommended for reducing breast cancer risk in the UK.

“This is exciting as, even though most women do not have a significant family history of the disease, it’s crucial that those who do have an array of options to help them control their risk.”

Neither of the drugs is currently licensed for preventing cancer and Nice warns that any doctor prescribing them would have to take “full responsibility for the decision”.

The recommendation is part of new draft guidelines on familial breast cancer.

They also extend genetic testing to more women with relatives affected by the disease, as well as recommend regular MRI scans for younger women who carry high risk genes.

Professor Mark Baker, director of the Centre for Clinical Practice at Nice, said: “It’s wise for any person with a family history of cancer to receive appropriate investigations and screening that would otherwise be unnecessary if a family history did not exist.”

Reuters / Brendan McDermid

Dell, once the world’s biggest producer of personal computers, is now about to stop trading its stock and go private. The company is looking for a new direction as tablets are replacing conventional PCs.

Dell Inc. is reportedly in talks with private — equity firms Silver Lake Partners and TPG about the buyout, according to The Wall Street Journal (WSJ).The have been going on for the last two or three months, and the talks could turn into a deal within the next 6 months, according to the media sources. Other investors including pension funds could also join the deal, with an exact list of the bidding group remaining unfinalized.

Dell’s “valuation is off the charts low,” WSJ quotes one industry executive.

The shares of the PCs producer lost above 30% during last year, as it’s suffering a painful shift in the industry.

In 2006 Dell lost its market championship, which was coupled with brand new gadgets such as smartphones and tablets grabbing consumer attention.

So — called new era gadgets have never been the focus of Dell’s operations, as PC sales still produce more than a half of the company’s revenue at a time when conventional computers seem to be going into oblivion. PC shipments fell 4.9% year on year in 4Q 2012, with Dell’s alone suffering a 20.9% decline, according to research firm Gartner.

The drop ate the into Dell’s bottom line, as its profit fell 47% year on yearin the quarter ended November 2.

At a meantime, other technological companies like Apple and Samsung that have led the tablet and smartphone boom and are boasting record high financials.

Experts agree that tablets are now winning the market, with conventional PCs likely to be abandoned altogether.

“Whereas as once we imagined a world in which individual users would have both a PC and a tablet as personal devices, we increasingly suspect that most individuals will shift consumption activity to a personal tablet, and perform creative and administrative tasks on a shared PC,” says Mikako Kitagawa, senior analyst at Gartner.

Investors were upbeat about Dell’s plans to go private, as its shares jumped on the news the company held talks of a buyout.

Rustam Adagamov.(AFP Photo / Natalia Kolesnikova)

Rustem Adagamov, a Russian professional blogger and a representative of the independent opposition, has decided to quit the state culture council a fortnight after his ex-wife publicly accused him of paedophilia.

Adagamov announced his departure via his Facebook account. The blogger wrote that in the months of participating in the Presidential Council on Culture he received no “reasonable” suggestions for taking part in any of the committees. He went on to call the council a ‘Potemkin village’, fraud and fiction.

However, the blogger’s announcement on voluntarily quitting came shortly after the Russian Culture Minister Vladimir Medinskiy said in a televised interview that he would insist on Adagamov’s removal from the council as the activist has not attended any sessions of the body. “We have not got a single excuse that would allow to state that he is of any value for us,” the minister added.

Neither mentioned the scandal that currently surrounds Adagamov. It started after the blogger’s ex-wife, Tatyana Delsal, publicly accused him of sexually abusing a 12-year old girl. According to Delsal’s statements that she repeated in an interview with RT, the paedophile cases took place several years ago when Adagamov lived in Norway and were the main reason she demanded a divorce.

Adagamov refuted the accusations and threatened to sue the people who distributed the information on social networks, but said he would not take any action against his ex-wife for moral reasons. So far, the blogger has made no legal moves, but Russian prosecutors said last week that they had started a preliminary investigation.

Rustem Adagamov has both Russian and Norwegian citizenship as he lived in Norway for a long time, working for an advertising agency. At the same time he maintained a blog on the Livejournal platform (which then belonged to its American creators), mostly posting photos and pictures, becoming one of the most popular bloggers in Livejournal’s Russian segment. In 2006 Livejournal was purchased by Russian company SUP Media and the new owners hired Adagamov as a professional blogger who would raise the interest in the project as well as represent it in public.

Since then, Adagamov’s posts became more and more politicized which can be explained by the Russian internet users’ general interest in politics and also by the fact that the latest parliamentary and presidential elections were important and popular events and therefore the new media wanted to capitalize on them.

Eventually the blogger was elected to the Coordination Council of Opposition — a semi-formal body uniting those who are critical of authorities but who do not support any alternative political party. The elections took place in October last year and about 81,000 people took part in them which is a miniscule share of about 108 million of voters.

After the paedophilia scandal broke some members of the Coordination Council suggested that Adagamov could be removed from their ranks, but added that they needed more solid proof than the allegations by an ex-spouse.

Nick Clegg has warned that uncertainty over the UK’s membership of the European Union could have a “chilling effect” on the British economy.

In a stark warning over calls for a referendum, the deputy PM said the public should only get a say if there was a transfer of powers to Brussels – and denied breaking a pre-election promise of a popular vote.

In a long-awaited speech on Friday, prime minister David Cameron is expected to announce plans for a referendum on a new settlement with Brussels after the 2015 general election.

He has rejected calls for an immediate in/out referendum on British membership, which he said would present voters with a “false choice”.

But he said it would be right to seek the “fresh consent” of the British people after negotiating a new settlement for the UK.

Cameron has been caught in an increasingly ill-tempered row within his party, with some Tory backbenchers calling for a public vote on the EU, while business leaders and grandees including Lord Heseltine have warned of the dangers of UK withdrawal.

The issue is also straining relations with the Tories’ strongly pro-EU Liberal Democrat coalition colleagues.

Lib Dem leader Clegg joined the warnings of business leaders over the impact of exit or the threatened prospect of it.

“I do not think we should do anything to jeopardise our leadership (in Europe) and we certainly should not do anything which would have a chilling effect on jobs in this country,” he said.

“We should be very careful at a time when the British economy is still haltingly recovering from the worst economic shock in a generation to create a very high degree and a prolonged period of uncertainty because in my view uncertainty is the enemy of growth and jobs and our priority, in this Government and in the national duty, has got to be to foster growth and jobs.

“If you are an investor investing in the United Kingdom to create jobs here it is unnecessary to create a high degree of uncertainty which might actually chase away that investment and might diminish the number of jobs in this country.”

He went on: “I obviously do not agree with the premise that we can, on our own, unilaterally, simply rewrite the terms of our membership of this European club.

“We do not know yet how the rules are going to be rewritten within the eurozone. We don’t know when that will happen, in what way and crucially we do not know what that will ask of the United Kingdom.

“We need to give the people of the United Kingdom the reassurance that if there is a new treaty… and if that new treaty asks new things of the United Kingdom – in other words a transfer of powers from Westminster to Brussels – then of course we should have a referendum at that point.”

The coalition had legislated to promise a referendum in that instance, he said.

In tetchy exchanges, he repeatedly denied going back on a 2010 election manifesto promise to offer voters a say on Britain’s membership of the EU.

“We have done in Government what we said in the manifesto,” he said, that there should be a vote “if there is a set of circumstances and a new treaty which asks new things of the United Kingdom involving a transfer of powers”.

During the election campaign Clegg declared that he remained “unambiguously committed” to having a plebiscite on the question of Britain’s membership of the EU when the issue next arose.

“When that comes back on the agenda then I think the only honest question to ask is the fundamental question: are you in or are you out?” he said in April 2010.

“I would argue fervently that we should be in there to lead.”

Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast has called on the Pakistani government to make greater efforts in combating terrorism.

“Unfortunately, terrorist attacks in regional countries have endangered the lives of innocent people and we expect Pakistan’s government to expend more effort in fighting terrorism,” Mehmanparast said during his weekly press conference on Tuesday.

On January 10, nearly 130 people, including Shia Muslims, were killed and many others injured in a wave of deadly attacks targeting both Pakistani security guards and civilians in the country.

“All regional countries should cooperate to uproot this ominous phenomenon,” Mehmanparast added.

“Terrorism is the result of the interference of foreign countries in the region; they created this ominous phenomenon in order to achieve their political objectives,” Mehmanparast said, adding that the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) can play a major role in mobilizing regional countries for the fight against acts of terror.

The crisis in Mali

Commenting on the crisis in Mali, the Iranian official said, “Our foreign policy is based on respecting the territorial integrity of countries,” adding that foreign countries must cease their support for armed groups that threaten the stability and security of countries.

Chaos broke out in the West African country after Malian President Amadou Toumani Toure was toppled in a military coup on March 22, 2012. The coup leaders said they had mounted the coup in response to the government’s inability to contain the Tuareg rebellion in the north of the country, which had been going on for two months.

French President Francois Hollande announced on Friday that his country had launched a military intervention in its former colony to fight against the rebels.

Mehamnparast added, “We believe security and stability must be established, the territorial integrity of countries must be respected and any popular demand must be met through democratic procedures.”

Iran-P5+1 talks

Referring to the talks between Iran and the P5+1 (Britain, China, France, Russia, and the US plus Germany), Mehmanparast said both sides had reached an agreement on the date of the negotiations.

The Iranian official added that the agreement had been concluded during a phone conversation between EU’s Deputy Secretary General for Political Affairs Helga Schmid and Undersecretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Ali Baqeri on Monday.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, however, did not mention the date of the next round of talks.

“The deputy of [EU foreign policy chief] Mrs. [Catherine] Ashton is expected to inform us of the P5+1 response about the venue of the talks so that we could resume the negotiations,” he added.

Iran and the P5+1 have held several rounds of multifaceted talks mainly over Iran’s nuclear energy program.

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 committed signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), it is entitled to develop and acquire nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

MYA/HMV/HJL

The director of Iranian Film Festival Australia is slated to travel Iran to dedicate the festival’s award to the acclaimed Iranian movie Facing Mirrors.

Anne Démy-Geroe one of the directors of the Australian festival will come to Iran to give the Pomegranate Audience Award during a ceremony.

The movie’s producer and screenwriter Fereshteh Taerpour, Negar Azarbaijani (director), the actress Shayesteh Irani and some other cineastes contributed to make the film are to attend the award ceremony.

Facing Mirrors won the prize at the 2nd edition of Iranian Film Festival Australia held in five cities of Brisbane, Canberra, Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney on October, 2012.

Negar Azarbaijani’s well-praised movie weaves together the lives of two women with different social and cultural backgrounds.

Facing Mirrors has been lauded at many international festivals as the film garnered numerous awards.

The movie won the Best Feature-length movie Award at the 2012 San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival as well as the Best Narrative Feature Award at the 2012 International Three Dollar Bill Cinema in Seattle.

Azarbaijani’s first directorial debut was also awarded at the 8th edition of Syracuse International Film Festival held in the United States.

The film was also well received by both Iranian and Canadian audiences at the 2011 edition of Montreal’s World Film Festival and therefore the authorities decided to schedule an extra screening at the event.

FGP/FGP

Ministers have assured British troops will not be drawn combat operations against al Qaida-backed rebels in Mali ahead of a meeting of the National Security Council on Tuesday.

Ministers insist the UK is providing only “limited logistical support” in support of the French military mission in the west African state, with no plans to deploy ground forces.

The first of two giant RAF C-17 transport aircraft was due to leave Paris last night with supplies for the French force sent in by President Francois Hollande following an appeal for help by the Mali government.

Britain is supplying logistical support and two C-17 transport aircraft

A second C-17 is expected to leave today after encountering what was described as a “minor technical fault” in the French capital.

Foreign Office minister Mark Simmonds said a “small detachment of technical personnel” was already at the airport in the capital Bamako to “operate and if necessary defend” the aircraft.

In a Commons statement yesterday he said David Cameron had made clear Britain was offering only limited back-up support when he spoke to Hollande at the weekend.

“The Prime Minister has made categorically clear that the initial supporting deployment will be for a period of one week,” he said.

“He has also made clear that there will be no combat troops from the UK involved and we have no plans to provide more military assistance.”

He said the situation in Mali was of “grave concern” to the UK and that it was essential to prevent the rebel-held north becoming a “springboard for extremism” in the region.

Meanwhile the European Union has said it is bringing forward a planned military training mission to Mali, which will now be launched “in the second half of February or early March”.

Hundreds of French troops were deployed to the country on Saturday after the rebels overran the strategically important town of Konna last week.

Despite the presence of the French, the government forces suffered a further setback with the loss of the garrison village of Diabaly in central Mali, taking the rebels within 250 miles of Bamako.

Former foreign office minister Peter Hain expressed scepticism at predictions by the French that their troops would be out of the country “in a matter of weeks”.

“That seems to me pretty unlikely,” he said. “This could become an incredibly long, drawn-out and difficult morass.”

A Ministry of Defence spokeswoman said an RAF C-17 carrying French military personnel and supplies has now arrived in Bamako.

Nick Clegg inadvertently lamented the death of his own party’s values on Monday when he unveiled a plaque commemorating the founding of the Liberal Party and refereed to it as a “memorial”.

As the Liberal Democrat leader reflected on the beginnings of the political party 150 years ago that led to the creation of the Lib Dems in 1988, he drew laughs from the crowd of about 25 people.

After a speech by Robert Davis, deputy leader of Westminster Council, Clegg said: “And also to reiterate your congratulations to the Liberal Democrat History Group who have done so much to raise funds for this memorial … not memorial, this sign of our rich party’s history.”

Nick Clegg and the “memorial”

Most historians date the Liberal Party’s origin to a meeting at Willis’s Rooms in King Street, St James’s, London, on June 6, 1859, when Whigs, Peelites and Radicals united to form the Liberals.

Now a modern office building called Almack House, opposite auction house Christie’s, the green plaque marks the site as the birthplace of one of Britain’s most enduring political movements.

The plaque reads: “The Liberal Party was founded on this site on 6th June 1859.”

Clegg, who was more than 20 minutes late, said: “There are many things about today which are different to 1859. I strongly suspect June 1859 was warmer than January 2013.”

The Lib Dem leader described being asked to unveil the plaque as a “privilege” and reminded the crowd that back in 1859, the liberal politicians came together to “bring down the conservative ministry of the time whilst of course we are now in coalition with the Conservative Party of our time”.

He added: “So much of what happened then has echoes today.”

Clegg said the Liberal Democrats are still a “party proud of representing a wide coalition of views” and “representing the country as a whole”.

He added: “Much has changed since then but much has endured and remained consistent over the ages as well.”

Duncan Brack, of the Liberal Democrat History Group, which is sponsoring the plaque, said of that meeting a century and a half ago: “Among those attending were Lord Palmerston, John Bright and Lord John Russell – and the meeting paved the way for the political ascendancy of Liberal prime minister William Gladstone.”

Davis described the occasion as “momentous” and said: “When Palmerston, Russell and their Radicals, Peelites and Whigs coalesced around the issue of Italian reunification, at this very location in 1859, I am sure everyone expected the union to be a temporary one.

“For generations British political life has been fluid, with numerous changes of government, factions and minority administrations.

“However, for what was then such a disparate union, the Liberal Party has endured, helping to shape so much of British politics since.

“And the timing of this unveiling could not be more appropriate, as its successor – the Liberal Democrat Party – once more finds itself in government.”

Aleksandr Kokorin (L) and Pavel Mamaev in Miami (Photo from instagram.com user kokorink9)

One of Russia’s most talented young footballers, Aleksandr Kokorin of Dynamo Moscow, says he is straight and photos with CSKA Moscow player Pavel Mamaev have been misinterpreted.

­The rumors appeared after pictures of Kokorin and Mamaev’s vacation in Miami posted on Instagram, showing the young men hugging and even kissing.

One of the photos of the two players together was followed by Mamaev’s caption, saying: “I love him.”

“It was funny to learn that some people responded to our pictures by wondering: ‘What’s their sexual orientation?’ Kokorin told Sovetsky Sport newspaper. “I can explain: I have known Pasha for a very long time, since my school days. On the pitch we’ve always been rivals, but became friends in life. He’s like a brother to me.”

The 21-year-old said that he has a girlfriend and that Mamaev is also in a relationship with a woman.

“It was them [the girlfriends], who took those pictures,” he added. “And we photographed them too. Only we decided not to upload their pictures.”

Kokorin is considered on of the most talented young footballers in Russia.
The forward has scored 11 goals in 20 appearances for Dynamo in the first half of the 2012/13 season.  

Russian national team’s coach, Fabio Capello, sees him as a first choice, with Kokorin already winning 12 caps and a goal for his country.

His friend Mamaev, 24, has played 160 games (9 goals) in the Russian Premier League for Torpedo Moscow and CSKA.

The defensive midfielder has an appearance for Russia to his name, but with an apparent difficult character that seems to be hampering his career.

Photo from instagram.com user kokorink9

Photo from instagram.com user kokorink9

Photo from instagram.com user kokorink9

CSKA Moscow’s Pavel Mamayev in the Russian Football Premier League’s Round 19 match against Mordovia Saransk.(RIA Novosti / Vladimir Fedorenko)

Dynamo Moscow’s Alexander Kokorin in the Russian Football Premier League’s 13th round match against Krylya Sovetov Samara..(RIA Novosti / Vladimir Fedorenko)

A new Israeli survey shows a majority of Israelis favor heavy cuts to settlement funding and the military budget, a report says.

According to a survey from “Voting for a Social Budget,” almost 63.7 percent of Israelis have shown a remarkable disconnection from Tel Aviv’s policies, saying the officials should make heavy cuts to the subsidies for settlement projects in the West Bank and the military spendings, Israeli paper Ha’aretz reported on Monday.

The recent poll triggers speculations that the voters of the upcoming election in the Occupied Palestinian Territories are more concerned about domestic issues rather than the occupation and oversea wars.

Despite earlier promises to allocate more finance to social reforms following months-long protests in the occupied territories last year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he will add three billion shekels (nearly USD 700 million) to the military budget.

This is while a recent report said that Israel’s budget deficit soared to its highest level in three years.

On Sunday, Israel’s Finance Ministry said the 2012 budget deficit came in at NIS (new Israeli shekel) 39 billion (over USD 10 billion), which corresponded with 4.2 percent of gross domestic product.

Israel’s 2012 budget deficit was the highest since 2009 when Israel was wrestling with a recession triggered by the global financial meltdown and overspending stood at 5.1 percent. However, the deficit dropped to 3.8 percent in 2010 and 3.3 percent in 2011.

In July 2011, Israeli demonstrators took to the streets across Israel to protest against the high costs of food, housing, education, and healthcare as well as huge income gaps and social inequalities.

AO/HN

Afghan soldiers have opened fire on US-led troopers in the latest “green-on-blue” attack in war-torn Afghanistan, Press TV reports.

The attack took place in the town of Bala Bolouk of the western Farah Province on Tuesday.

Afghan officials said that the attackers managed to escape the scene after the shooting.

The Taliban claimed three Italian troopers were killed and four others wounded in the “insider” attack – in which Afghan security forces turn their weapons on US-led forces.

However, neither Afghan nor NATO officials have reported any causalities, yet.

The Taliban also claimed that three Afghan soldiers involved in the attack joined the militant group following the attack.

More than 61 US-led forces were killed in “insider” attacks in Afghanistan in 2012, the highest since the US invaded the country in 2001.

The foreign troopers lost their lives in 45 “green-on-blue” attacks last year.

The fatalities do not include an American adviser, who was killed by an Afghan female police on December 24. A total of 35 US-led forces were shot dead by Afghan forces in 2011.

The United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001 under the pretext of combating terrorism. The invasion removed the Taliban from power, but Afghanistan remains insecure despite the presence of tens of thousands of US-led forces there.

AZA/DB/HN/HJL

A senior Iranian lawmaker says the next round of talks between Iran and a group of six world powers (P5+1) must focus on the removal of illegal US-engineered sanctions against Tehran.

“Considering the unjust and illegal sanctions imposed by the European Union and the United States against the Iranian nation, the lifting of the bans must be the main subject of the upcoming talks with the P5+1,” Alaeddin Boroujerdi, the chairman of Iran’s Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, said on Monday.

The Iranian lawmaker reiterated that all agreements with the P5+1- Britain, China, France, Russia, and the United States plus Germany – must be reached in line with Iran’s national interests and no unilateral concession should be given to the opposite party.

Referring to the venue and date of the upcoming negotiations, Boroujerdi said the talks will probably be held in the Turkish city of Istanbul in February. However, he said, “Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) will make the final decision” in this regard.

The last round of talks between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany was held in Moscow in June 2012.

Iran and the P5+1 have held several rounds of talks with a focus on Iran’s nuclear energy program.

Iran’s SNSC Secretary Saeed Jalili has said that Tehran welcomes the readiness of the six major world powers to hold constructive talks with Iran.

“Just as Iran feels obligated to act within the framework of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) regulations and in line with the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), it is adamant on asserting its rights within the same framework,” Jalili stated on January 4.

The United States, Israel and some of their allies have falsely accused Iran of pursuing non-civilian objectives in its nuclear energy program. The US and certain other countries have imposed sanctions against the Islamic Republic over the unfounded allegation.

Iran has vehemently rejected the allegations against its nuclear energy program, arguing that as a committed signatory to the NPT and a member of the IAEA, it is entitled to use nuclear technology for peaceful objectives.

In addition, the IAEA has conducted numerous inspections of Iran’s nuclear energy facilities, but has never found any evidence showing that Iran’s nuclear energy program has been diverted to nuclear weapons production.

YH/HMV/HJL

Recent figures, released for the month of November, suggest Italy remains deep in recession ahead of general elections in the country.

According to data, released by the country’s National Institute for Statistics (ISTAT) on Monday, Italy witnessed a 1.0 percent drop in its industrial output in November.

The fall follows a 1.1 percent drop in October, marking the country’s third steep consecutive monthly decline.

The recent industrial output figure shows a 7.6-percent fall from the same month last year.

The eurozone’s third-largest economy also faced a 2.1-percent decline in its energy production and a 1.3-percent drop in investment goods output in November.

Italy is facing general elections in February, which will determine the 630 members of the Chamber of Deputies and 315 elective members of the Senate, the two houses of the country’s parliament.

Under the government of Prime Minister Mario Monti, Italy’s public debt reached its highest level of EUR 2.0 trillion in October, the Bank of Italy said on December 28, 2012.

Italy also has the second-highest debt level in the eurozone. Greece holds the worst eurozone GDP debt level.

Europe plunged into financial crisis in early 2008. The worsening debt crisis has forced EU governments to adopt harsh austerity measures and tough economic reforms, which have triggered incidents of social unrest and massive protests in many European countries.

SZH/HN

HMV has thrown in the towel after years of struggling to fend off nimbler rivals by calling in administrators in a move which puts more than 4,000 jobs in jeopardy.

As Sky News revealed exclusively earlier on Monday evening, the board of HMV has served notice of its intention to appoint Deloitte to oversee last-ditch efforts to rescue the high street entertainment retailer.

Following a board meeting that lasted several hours, HMV directors, led by the chairman, Philip Rowley, and chief executive Trevor Moore, decided the business could no longer trade without insolvency protection.

HMV had been in talks with its lenders until last week about a new financing package, the terms of which could not be agreed, according to insiders.

The company said on Monday:

“On 13 December 2012, the Company announced that as a result of current market trading conditions, the Company faced material uncertainties and that it was probable that the Group would not comply with its banking covenants at the end of January 2013. The Company also stated that it was in discussions with its banks.

“Since that date, the Company has continued the discussions with its banks and other key stakeholders to remedy the imminent covenant breach.

“However, the Board regrets to announce that it has been unable to reach a position where it feels able to continue to trade outside of insolvency protection, and in the circumstances therefore intends to file notice to appoint administrators to the Company and certain of its subsidiaries with immediate effect.

“The Directors of the Company understand that it is the intention of the administrators, once appointed, to continue to trade whilst they seek a purchaser for the business.”

Trading in HMV’s shares, which are now expected to be worthless, will be suspended on Tuesday morning.

The appointment of Deloitte follows the accountancy firm’s work on the collapse of Woolworths in 2008.

HMV has been caught between the encroachment onto its turf of supermarket chains such as Tesco and Asda, and the explosive growth of digital specialists like Amazon which are unencumbered by hefty real estate costs.

Chuka Umunna, the shadow business secretary, said the news of HMV’s potential demise was “deeply worrying”:

“HMV is a national institution that has been a feature of our high streets for over 90 years, so this news is deeply worrying. For the sake of HMV’s employees, we hope a way can be found to keep the business going — the demise of this national institution would be a sad loss to British retail.”

HMV traces its roots back to 1921, when Sir Edward Elgar, the renowned composer and conductor, opened its first store on London’s Oxford Street.

Retail insiders said Deloitte is likely to be “inundated” with offers for parts of HMV’s business, including its brand, but said it was unlikely that any buyer would emerge for the whole business.

Lance Armstrong.(AFP Photo / Joel Saget)

US cyclist Lance Armstrong, who was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles by anti-doping authorities, has finally admitted that he took performance-enhancing drugs.

­Armstrong made his confession during an interview Monday with Oprah Winfrey recorded in his home town of Austin, Texas, the AP reported, quoting an anonymous source familiar with the situation.

The episode of the ‘Oprah Winfrey Show’ is set to air on Thursday, January 17.

”Just wrapped with @lancearmstrong More than 2 1/2 hours. He came READY!” Winfrey wrote on Twitter after her interview with the cyclist.

The confession came just several hours after he visited the Livestrong Foundation. Armstrong, a cancer survivor, founded the charity in 1997 to help others battling cancer.

The 41-year-old, who was forced to leave the charity after the doping scandal emerged last year, said “I’m sorry” to the organization’s staff, and expressed regret for the damaged caused by the controversy.

Armstrong had been accused of using banned performance-enhancing drugs throughout his whole career. The athlete previously denied all allegations, and even went to court to defend his name.

He was stripped of all his titles, including seven Tour de France wins, as a result of an investigation by the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA). All of Armstrong’s results after 1998 were annulled, and the American was banned for life from cycling.

At the time, the athlete did not confess to the doping, and claimed he was tired of fighting with the anti-doping authorities.

Eminent Iranian musician Arash Amini is slated to conduct Kazakhstan State Symphony Orchestra during a concert in the country’s northern region, Akmola.

Organized by ECO Cultural Institute (ECI), the concert is to be presented as part of Listen to Us III musical program which is to introduce the works of great composers in the ECO member states.

The concert titled The Dream of an Eastern Night will show the performance of Aram Khachaturian from Armenia, Fikret Amirov from Azerbaijan, Heshmat Sanjari and Loris Tjeknavorian from Iran, and several other ECO leading composers.

Arash Amini is the artist director of Iran’s Rudaki Symphony Orchestra as well as the director of Music Department in ECI.

Amini was hailed byTajikistan’s highest national honorary award in 2011 as he conducted the Opera Orchestra of Dushanbe in a commemoration ceremony for the 20th anniversary of Tajikistan’s independence.

He also performed a program along with a group of Iranian and Kazakh musicians in a cultural week on Persian poet and mathematician Omar Khayyam in the capital city of Kazakhstan, Astana.

The Dream of an Eastern Night is scheduled to be held on January 17, 2013.

FGP/FGP

An Iranian lawmaker has rejected as unfounded US claims about Iran’s interference in Yemen, describing Washington’s presence as the actual cause of instability in the region.

Ahmad Shohani said on Monday that the US accusations about Iran’s interference in Yemen’s domestic affairs are unfounded and based on political agendas.

Shohani said the US officials are trying to score political points by making anti-Iranian remarks.

“Over the past few years, the US has tried to create Iranophobia among regional countries by leveling accusations at Iran,” Shohani said, adding that Washington has, over the past year in particular, made the allegation of Iran’s interference in Yemen by “provoking the Yemeni officials.”

US Ambassador to Yemen Gerald Feierstein on Sunday accused Iran of interfering in Yemen’s domestic affairs.

Shohani added, “The US and the West are trying to influence regional public opinion by creating a negative anti-Iranian climate through using the media under their control and justify their meddlesome presence in the region by exploiting this hazy atmosphere,” Shohani said.

“The US seeks to create tension in the region, because tension serves this country’s interest as it can sell its weapons,” the Iranian lawmaker added.

Commenting on the same issue, another Iranian lawmaker, Seyyed Baqer Hosseini, said, “The Islamic Republic of Iran is against the disintegration of any Muslim country, because it considers the disintegration of regional countries, including Yemen, against the interests of the Muslim world and in the interests of enemies.”

Hosseini added, “Tehran respects other countries’ sovereignty and the nations’ right to determine [their] own fate and will never countenance interference in other countries’ internal affairs.”

MYA/HMV/HJL

Robbers dug a 30-metre tunnel into the safe deposit room of a Berlin bank, German police have said.

The criminals escaped with the contents of safety deposit boxes, setting fire to the tunnel as they left to destroy any evidence.

Berlin police spokesman Thomas Neuendorf says the tunnel led from an underground garage into Volksbank’s safe deposit room.

Mr Neuendorf said the tunnel was “very professional” and must have taken weeks or even months to complete.

It was elaborately constructed and even had ceiling supports.

Police were alerted to the break-in early Monday when a security guard noticed smoke coming from the deposit room.

Mr Neuendorf says police are still trying to determine what valuables were stolen from the deposit boxes.

A train carrying Egyptian military recruits to an army camp has derailed near the capital, Cairo, killing at least 19 people and injuring 107 others.

Officials say the incident took place on Tuesday when the train jumped the track in the Giza neighborhood of Badrasheen near the capital.

The injured passengers, some of them in critical condition, have been taken to nearby hospitals for treatment.

Egypt’s roads and railways have a poor safety record, which have caused a string of deadly crashes.

In November, nearly 50 school children lost their lives after a train collided with their bus in central Egypt.

In Egypt’s deadliest railway tragedy, more than 360 passengers were killed in a train incident in 2002.

DB/HN/HJL

French soldiers walk past a hangar they are staying at the Malian army air base in Bamako January 14, 2013.(Reuters / Joe Penney)

The US has pledged intelligence and logistic aid to French forces battling al-Qaeda militants in Mali. In response to the French bombardment of the country, rebel leaders pledged to strike the “heart of France” and open the “gates of Hell.”

The international community has rallied behind France’s campaign in Mali, offering logistical support. Fears have been voiced on the international stage that if al-Qaeda-linked rebels entrench in Mali, the country could become a platform for them to spread throughout the region.

US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta confirmed that the US was providing intelligence to French forces in Mali. “One is obviously to provide limited logistical support, two is to provide intelligence support and three to provide some airlift capability,” Panetta said during a press briefing.

“We have made a commitment that al-Qaeda is not going to find any place to hide,” Panetta told reporters on Monday. Canada, Belgium, Denmark and Germany have also publicly supported the French incursion, pledging logistical support in the crackdown on the rebels.

West African defense chiefs will meet on Tuesday to approve the deployment of ground troops into Mali to tackle the Islamist rebel forces.

“On January 15, the committee of Chiefs of Defense Staff will meet in Bamako to approve the contingency plan,” the mission head of the Economic Community Of West African States (ECOWAS), Aboudou Toure Cheaka, told Reuters.In one week, troops would effectively be on the ground as a precursor to a full intervention plan, Cheaka said.

The original UN-approved initiative to deploy 3,330 West African troops was scheduled for this September, but the plan was brought forward when the French began their aerial bombardment of northern and central Mali on Friday. Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Niger, Guinea and Senegal have all pledged troops, but said that a full deployment would have to wait because of training constraints.

The French government issued a statement on Monday that it would send 2,500 troops to support Malian government soldiers and the West African security force. France has already deployed some 550 troops to Mali under ‘Operation Serval.’

Despite the heavy French bombardment of rebel targets in the northern and central regions of the country over the weekend, Islamist militants are continuing to advance in their push towards the capital Bamako.

Rebel militants wrested the town of Diabaly from Malian security forces in a counterattack, the French Ministry of Defense reported on Monday. A leader of the al-Qaeda-affiliated of Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) told AFP that the rebels would strike the “heart of France” for their “attack on Islam.”

The French had “opened the gates of hell” and sprung a trap far “more dangerous than Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia,” the MUJAO leader said.

Northern Mali was captured by Islamist militants nine months ago; the international community has been debating since then over what action should be taken. The conflict escalated last week when France launched its air assault to “maintain stability in the region.”

The EU will hold a meeting on Thursday to assess the situation and how best to aid the French forces in Mali.

French soldiers walk past a hangar they are staying at the Malian army air base in Bamako January 14, 2013.(Reuters / Joe Penney)

The US has pledged intelligence and logistic aid to French forces battling al-Qaeda militants in Mali. In response to the French bombardment of the country, rebel leaders pledged to strike the “heart of France” and open the “gates of Hell.”

The international community has rallied behind France’s campaign in Mali, offering logistical support. Fears have been voiced on the international stage that if al-Qaeda-linked rebels entrench in Mali, the country could become a platform for them to spread throughout the region.

US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta confirmed that the US was providing intelligence to French forces in Mali. “One is obviously to provide limited logistical support, two is to provide intelligence support and three to provide some airlift capability,” Panetta said during a press briefing.

“We have made a commitment that al-Qaeda is not going to find any place to hide,” Panetta told reporters on Monday. Canada, Belgium, Denmark and Germany have also publicly supported the French incursion, pledging logistical support in the crackdown on the rebels.

West African defense chiefs will meet on Tuesday to approve the deployment of ground troops into Mali to tackle the Islamist rebel forces.

“On January 15, the committee of Chiefs of Defense Staff will meet in Bamako to approve the contingency plan,” the mission head of the Economic Community Of West African States (ECOWAS), Aboudou Toure Cheaka, told Reuters.In one week, troops would effectively be on the ground as a precursor to a full intervention plan, Cheaka said.

The original UN-approved initiative to deploy 3,330 West African troops was scheduled for this September, but the plan was brought forward when the French began their aerial bombardment of northern and central Mali on Friday. Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Niger, Guinea and Senegal have all pledged troops, but said that a full deployment would have to wait because of training constraints.

The French government issued a statement on Monday that it would send 2,500 troops to support Malian government soldiers and the West African security force. France has already deployed some 550 troops to Mali under ‘Operation Serval.’

Despite the heavy French bombardment of rebel targets in the northern and central regions of the country over the weekend, Islamist militants are continuing to advance in their push towards the capital Bamako.

Rebel militants wrested the town of Diabaly from Malian security forces in a counterattack, the French Ministry of Defense reported on Monday. A leader of the al-Qaeda-affiliated of Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) told AFP that the rebels would strike the “heart of France” for their “attack on Islam.”

The French had “opened the gates of hell” and sprung a trap far “more dangerous than Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia,” the MUJAO leader said.

Northern Mali was captured by Islamist militants nine months ago; the international community has been debating since then over what action should be taken. The conflict escalated last week when France launched its air assault to “maintain stability in the region.”

The EU will hold a meeting on Thursday to assess the situation and how best to aid the French forces in Mali.

An RAF transport aircraft loaded with French armoured vehicles has touched down in conflict-stricken Mali.

French forces have been carrying out air attacks on al Qaeda-backed rebels in the West African state in recent days.

The UK has offered two C-17 Globemaster transport planes to help out, but the Foreign Office insisted there are no plans to deploy British ground forces.

The Mali government appealed for France’s help after Islamist rebels began moving south at the end of last week.

Hundreds of French troops were deployed to the country at the weekend after the rebels overran the strategically important town of Konna – about halfway between Mali’s northern and southern borders – on Thursday.

France’s ambassador to the UN says thousands of African troops are expected in Mali, to support local and French forces in their fight against the rebels.

The first of the two giant RAF transport aircraft took off from Paris on Monday and landed in Mali with supplies for French forces.

A second C-17 is expected to leave soon after encountering what was described as a “minor technical fault” in the French capital.

Foreign Office Minister Mark Simmonds said David Cameron had offered only limited back-up support to French President Francois Hollande.

“The Prime Minister has made categorically clear that the initial supporting deployment will be for a period of one week,” he told the Commons.

“He has also made clear that there will be no combat troops from the UK involved and we have no plans to provide more military assistance.”

The US is providing intelligence-gathering assistance to the French in their assault, Defence Secretary Leon Panetta said.

EU foreign ministers are to hold an extraordinary meeting this week, probably on Thursday, to discuss the situation.

On Sunday, French forces forced back Islamists from the strategic town of Konna.

There had been fears that if their advance was not halted, they could have carried on all the way to the capital Bamako in the south.

Up to 60 Islamists are reported to have been killed in air assaults on Sunday, which were centred around Gao and Kidal.

Despite the French successes, Islamist forces still hold a huge swathe of the north of the country.

Russian long jumper, Darya Klishina (RIA Novosti / Syisoev)

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With Moscow set to host the World Athletics Championships this August, several top athletes, including reigning European indoor long jump champion, Darya Klishina, began this year’s campaign at the 20th Christmas Cup in Moscow.

­There are eight months to go until Russia hosts the World Athletics Championships for the first time.

With the New Year celebrations now over, several of the country’s top athletes gathered in Moscow for the capital’s first competitive meeting this year, while many former track stars and current coaches kept an eye on Russia’s upcoming talent.

“The Christmas Cup is an important preparation stage for the Russian championship, where the national team squad is determined,” Svetlana Masterkova, two-time Olympic champion, told RT. “Usually, around 40 per cent of the Russian team consists of Muscovites.”

“This is the opening competition of the season, and we can see the athletes’ form and approach,” Valentin Maslakov, Russia’s athletics head coach, stressed. “Many tournaments will be held this year and, despite there being eight months to go before the world championships, all athletes dream of performing there.”

Over the years, the Olympics have proved to be the swan song for numerous athletes as they hope to retire at the top, after the world’s biggest competition.

However, since Moscow was named host venue for this summer’s world championships, the prospect of ultimately performing in their home nation has changed the plans of many Russians.

“Long before the London Games, we asked a lot of our stars not to quit the sport after the Olympics as we want to perform well at the home world championships,”Maslakov revealed.

Still, many of those, who competed in London, preferred to watch the competition, rather than take part as they continued to rest after last year’s busy season.

Probably, the most notable athlete at the Christmas Cup was European indoor long jump champion, Darya Klishina, who had a poor season last year — failing to qualify for the Olympics — and has a lot to prove in 2013.

And, despite a relatively modest second-placed finish, the 21-year-old remains focused on improving.

“If I’d won gold at the Olympics, then I could relax a little,” Klishina stressed. “But things went wrong last year and I failed to make it to London. So I need to boost my results, as my dream is to perform at the Moscow world championships.”

The 2013 winter season started with the Christmas Cup, and this year will be one to remember for all the athletes and fans in the Russian capital as the focus turns towards Moscow’s first ever World Championships in August.

Afghan soldiers have opened fire on US-led troopers in the latest “green-on-blue” attack in war-torn Afghanistan, Press TV reports.

The Taliban said three Italian soldiers were killed and four others wounded in the Tuesday “insider” attack.

DB/HJL

Iraqi Tourism and Antiquities Ministry has organized a photo exhibition displaying the artifacts smuggled to outside the country, Press TV reports.

Most of the showcased antiquities were stolen during and after the US led invasion of Iraq in 2003, said Iraq’s Tourism and Antiquities Minister Liwaa Smaisim.

Iraq has held the exhibition in an attempt to retrieve its stolen and smuggled ancient pieces.

Over 133,000 looted antiquities due to Iraqi government’s attempts have been brought back from different countries so far, Smaisim noted.

Iraq is home to relics of the world’s most ancient urban civilizations but many of its priceless artifacts were plundered and sold to the collectors abroad during the country’s wars.

“One of the most important ancient pieces is the Jewish Scripts Archive which was stolen by the US government and handed over to Israel under the pretext of keeping it under maintenance after being damaged during the invasion,” said Head of the Iraqi Museums.

While Iraqi officials are following the case, the country’s historians have described the exhibition as a proof that the Iraqi government is officially claiming its national treasures.

FGP/FGP

The UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon has once again voiced concerns about Israel’s new settlement plans on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, urging the regime to put an end to its expansionist policies.

The UN chief is following “with concern” the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plans of illegal settlement construction in the E1 area, UN deputy spokesman, Eduardo del Buey said on Monday.

Despite international condemnations, Israel has announced new plans to construct 170 new settler units and 84 guest rooms in the West Bank region.

E1 project aims at connecting the West Bank settlement of Maale Adumim to East al-Quds (Jerusalem), about six kilometers away. The plan will cut off the northern part of the West Bank from the south.

Ban further threw his weight behind a recent Palestinian demonstration at the site of Israel’s new settlement projects, which was broken up by Israeli forces, urging Israel to respect Palestinians’ right to peaceful protests.

On Sunday, Israeli troops forcibly evacuated a protest camp, set up by Palestinian and foreign activists at Israel’s upcoming settlement sites in the occupied West Bank.

According to witnesses, at least six activists were wounded in clashes with Israeli forces.

The UN secretary-general has repeatedly criticized Israel for its E1 settlement, calling the settlements illegal under international law.

Israel is globally condemned for its continued construction of Jewish settlements on the occupied territories.

More than half a million Israelis live in over 120 illegal settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East al-Quds.

The UN and most countries regard the Israeli settlements as illegal because the territories were captured by Israel in the 1967 war and are hence subject to the Geneva Conventions, which forbid construction on occupied lands.

AO/HN

The Pakistani police have attacked supporters of an influential Muslim cleric during an anti-corruption rally in Islamabad.

The security forces used tear gas to disperse a growing crowd of demonstrators holding the protest rally near the parliament building on Tuesday.

Reports say the protesters also threw stones at security forces near the parliament and smashed the windowpanes of vehicles.

The demonstration was held after Pakistani cleric Tahir-ul Qadri called on his supporters to march into the capital to demand a peaceful “revolution” and the dissolution of parliament.

Qadri gave a one-day-long deadline to the government to dissolve the parliament.

“After that, the people’s assembly here will take their own decision,” he said on Monday.

Qadri and his followers left the city of Lahore on Sunday and reached Islamabad late on Monday.

The officials accuse the cleric of trying to delay elections, due by May, and sow political chaos.

However, the supporters of Qadri say he wants an end to the corruption and problems facing Pakistan.

DB/HN

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York.(AFP Photo / Stephen Chernin)

Russian markets are expected to react sharply to comments by US Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke, while gains in China are likely to boost indices.

­Russian indices moved higher Monday, supported by strong corporate results in the retail and resource sectors. The MICEX and the RTS both jumped 1.2%.

European stock markets closed in the red Monday as investors awaited a speech by US Fed Chief Ben Bernanke on the country’s monetary policy. The Stoxx Europe 600 fell 0.4% and the German DAX 30 rose 0.2%, led by gains of chemicals group BASF SE. The French CAC 40 rose 0.1%, supported by banking.

US stocks closed mostly lower on Monday after Apple announced a cut in iPhone production. Bernanke’s pledge that the Fed’s easing policy has a low risk of inflation also failed to cheer investors. The Dow Jones itched 0.1%, the S&P 500 shed less than 0.1% and the Nasdaq Composite lost 0.3%. Shares of Apple fell 3.6% in a $17bn selloff after the WSJ reported that LCD panel producers cut output for Apple amid slower-than-expected global sales of the iPhone 5.

Asian stocks traded mixed Tuesday, supported by Japanese gains on the weaker yen; losses by Apple also hit the tech sector. Japan’s Nikkei rose 0.7% to its highest level since the end of April 2010. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index shed 0.3% and the Shanghai Composite added 0.4%, extending gains on speculation that mainland China would open stock markets to foreign investors. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 declined 0.3%, and South Korea’s Kospi shed 0.9%.

A US juvenile court has convicted a 12-year-old Californian boy of second-degree murder over the shooting of his neo-Nazi father two years ago.

The court made the decision on Monday based on Joseph Hall’s motives and understanding of the law rather than a ruling of guilty or innocent.

“The minor knew what he did was wrong,” said Judge Jean Leonard of the Riverside County Superior Court, east of Los Angeles.

Hall, who has a disposition hearing on February 15, could serve 11 years inside a juvenile detention center.

According to Leonard, at the age of 10, the offender shot dead his father at point-blank range on May, 2011.

Hall’s father, Jeffrey, 32, was a regional director of the National Socialist Movement (NSM), a white separatist group.

The defense argued that Hall, as a child, had a lifetime of abuse and his father had conditioned him to violence.

“He was abused and neglected from the womb,” she said. “The NSM taught him things a minor should not know about,” said Leonard.

The court for the under-18s took into consideration the effects of a lifetime of torture from the parental figure.

Kathleen Heide, a criminologist, told reporters that as little as 16 murder victims over the past 32 years were slain by their offspring, who were 10-year-olds or younger ones.

GVN/HN

Title: Lipton

I’m a big rap fan, but it’s rare that I get to post any songs from that genre that aren’t profanity ridden and offensive to most. Luckily, this track from one of Wu-Tang’s lesser known members is nice and clean. Gat a favorite rap song?

Dopium
	Artist: U-God Price: $11.98 (As of 01/14/13 03:41 pm details)

French soldiers from the 2nd RIMA (French Navy Infantry Regiment), arriving from France, stand at the 101 military airbase near Bamako on January 14, 2013, before their deployment in north of Mali (AFP Photo / Eric Feferberg)

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France’s decision to intervene in Mali is just a public relations bid by President Hollande, as his domestic policies have yet to live up to his campaign promises, political activist John Rees has told RT.

­Instead of bombing yet another Muslim state, France, Rees argues, should work to resolve domestic disputes with their minorities.

RT: Paris says it’s waging ‘a war against terrorism’ in Mali — So its goals seem noble at least …

John Rees: Well, we’ve heard this so many times. I’m surprised that they haven’t bored themselves by repeating this line. We heard it over Afghanistan, we heard it over Iraq. We heard it over Libya and we should recall that more than a decade ago, at the beginning of this process, the head of the security service in Britain warned the then PM Tony Blair that the interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq which spread the threat of terrorism, not reduce it. That warning has proved sadly absolutely correct. There was no Al-Qaeda in Iraq before we invaded it- there is now. Al-Qaeda had not spread to Pakistan in the way that it has now since the invasion of Afghanistan. As we heard from your correspondent, the intervention in Libya has led directly to the spread of al- Qaeda in Mali now. We should at least have learned by now that this is not the way you reduce the threat of terrorism, this is actually the way in which you bolster it, in which you increase its attractiveness to young people in the region.

RT: Should France just sit back and let terrorism and extremism reign over Mali where it could perhaps become a haven for extremism and terrorism and just threaten regional stability but become a base for terrorist operation worldwide…

JR: If the French want to do something about reducing the antagonism between their state and the Muslim people both in France and abroad, they should start at home. They should start withdrawing the laws which make it illegal for women to wear Islamic hair dresses in France. They should withdraw the law that now makes it illegal for Muslims to pray in the streets in France. Perhaps if they want better relations with the Muslim world, they could start by bettering the relations with the Muslim community in France itself. That would be a far more significant step forward than bombing yet another Muslim country.

RT: When will African nations be left to solve their internal problems by themselves — without foreign interference?

JR: I think when they stand up to the imperial powers. I think it is a mistake on the part of the Mali government, no matter what its difficulties to call for help from the very who are people responsible since colonial times for so much of a disaster in that part of the world. Only a small look North and East would tell you that in the Middle East constant attention of the imperial powers have generation after generation worsened the problem not made it better.

RT: The dust has not yet settled since the Libyan military campaign spearheaded by France — and the country is at war once again — will the French public support it?

JR: They may well do. I think your correspondent was right when they said that there is very little difference in Sarkozy response over Libya and Hollande’s response over the Mali crisis. That is sad because Hollande promised so much. Its his inability to deliver on the domestic front, his inability to live up to the high hopes that many in France hoped that he would deal with austerity, which has driven him into incredibly reckless foreign policy in a hope that it would bolster his poll ratings. These gambles sometimes turnout to be correct but in recent history in Europe they often turned out to be incorrect. It was the end of Blair the premiership- when he attacked Iraq. It took some years to work himself through but that is what happened. Hollande needs to look at that and wonder whether or not he wants to shred the same power.

And just like that the Abe Yen “open-ended” devaluation is gone as soon as it came. About an hour ago the USDJPY proceed to plunge, first slowly and then very fast, following remarks from Japanese Economics Minister Akira Amari who said that excessive yen weakness could have a negative impact on people’s livelihoods through rises in prices of imports, and that it has corrected to a level in line with fundamentals. Almost immediately the USDJPY slid 100 pips to a low of 88.62 yen in the wake of Amari’s comments, and last stood at 88.96 yen, down 0.7 percent from late U.S. trade on Monday. As for giant “splatting” noise heard around that world, that was every Goldman senior banker slapping themselves on the forehead as effectively one comments ended the carefully built up tension leading to over 1000 pips in Yen devaluation on fears of unlimited easing without any actual intervention, and just promises, combined the best of what both the Fed and the ECB have done. Of course, each day that passes bring draws closer to some actual action out of the BOJ, and a day when the Yen slide with impunity based solely on fears of intervention, finally ends.

And speaking of Goldman bankers, prior to this news it was reported that the new, old PM Abe would meet with Yale Professor Emeritus Koichi Hamada and other academics today for lunch, and would consult on who should succeed Masaaki Shirakawa as head of the BOJ. For the sake of endless paper devaluation everywhere, and subsequent repatriation of gold by every central bank, it better be a Goldman banker (think Mark Carney).

Because only with the unlimited hubris that a central bank collective run entirely by Goldman alumni, can and will the final reset be dramatically accelerated.

British proposals to withdraw from EU law could make the UK “a refuge for foreign criminals” and repatriate justice powers from Brussels, Scottish chief constables have warned.

­The Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland (Acpos) has said that opting out of the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) would make it “significantly” difficult to locate and extradite suspects from abroad, as the system allows regional law enforcement agencies to access the databases of forces in Europe. This move, Acpos argues would result in more bureaucracy, costs and removal of agents from frontline policing.

In 2012 David Cameron indicated that the government would disengage the UK from some laws, including the EAW in 2014. In a statement to the Lords European Union Committee’s inquiry into Cameron’s proposal, Acpos cautioned against it, saying the UK the is “vulnerable to an increased risk of foreign criminals and criminality,” the Irvine Herald quoted.

The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service also objected the move saying “Scottish fugitives remain at large in serious cases while more foreign criminals would remain at large on our streets with little or no information available to the Scottish authorities about the risk they present to the public.”

In June this year, crime and policing legislation comes under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. London, under the Lisbon Treaty, must either opt out of every measure or allow the EU jurisdiction.

It is a well-known fact that President Obama wants a “grand bargain” with the Republicans, a deal that would reduce future deficits both by raising tax revenues and cutting spending, including on the so-called “entitlement programs”. He has offered this idea up repeatedly to Speaker Boehner and other Republican leaders in the 2011 debt ceiling talks and in the 2012 fiscal cliff debate, and media reports suggest that he is discussing the idea again with Republicans in the lead-up to the next perils of Pauline budget crisis in that is only a few weeks off.

Democrats in the progressive wing of the party (of which, full disclosure, I am a card-carrying member) think the idea of cutting Social Security, Medicare, and/or Medicaid benefits is terrible public policy because senior citizens who can least afford it will be badly hurt, and we have been working hard to convince the President to back away from this offer. This may be difficult to do, though, as the President has some strong (wrong, in my judgment, but compelling to the President’s political and legislative team) political reasons for wanting to do this grand bargain. But the politics of this deal are very different for the rest of the party, and it may well be that progressives can win over a lot more of those Democrats than conventional wisdom currently expects.

The Obama team’s logic is that they are sick and tired, understandably, of Republicans wanting to make every single issue, every policy debate, about the deficit issue, and they don’t want our country to keep lurching from fiscal crisis to fiscal crisis as Republicans continue to look for “leverage” to force more cuts. And the White House, to their credit, is eager to move on to other issues that will move the country forward, such as immigration reform and gun safety issues. They believe that if they can finally close the deal and get the grand bargain they have been searching for, they will be on strong political ground to say, “Hey, we’ve already done something big on that, it’s time to move on.”

Now I happen to believe their logic is wrong on the politics of the issue, as Republicans’ strongest political issue by far is the deficit, and they will never give it up– no matter what happens, they will keep demanding more and more cuts, and the deficit hawks in the media and well-funded groups like Fix The Debt will back them up. But even if you were to grant that the White House was right on the politics of this issue for them, for Democratic members of Congress the politics on this issue, the politics are completely different.

For starters, members of Congress are far more affected by what I call the intensity factor. Remember about 25 years ago when senior citizens surrounded Rep. Rostenkowski’s car and started rocking it back and forth because of a bill they didn’t like on catastrophic health care? Think what seniors today might do if their Social Security benefits were cut. That kind of intensity drives bad media coverage back home, primary challenges, contributions to opponents- and it kills your contributors’ and volunteers’ and base voters’ enthusiasm levels.

The threat of a primary is not as great on the Democratic side as on the Republicans, as the progressive movement has less money and capacity in general to mount many successful primary challenges. In the last several cycles, there has usually been one major primary challenge (some successful, some not) to an incumbent from the left, and that isn’t enough to strike fear into most Democrats’ hearts. The intensity factor, though, might change the dynamics on this, adding new money and volunteers to primary fights. Add to that the combination of progressive forces with older voters who have just had their Social Security cut, and incumbent Democrats might have something to worry about, especially in states like PA, OH, MI, WI, and IA with both large numbers of seniors and large numbers of union members.

Beyond the primaries, though, the politics of cutting benefits is far worse for Democratic incumbents in an off year general election. Think about the demographics alone: in the past two Presidential elections, the percent of the electorate that came from voters 65 and over was 16%, whereas in the 2010 off-year election it jumped to 21%. And seniors have been one of the most volatile demographic groups in the electorate in recent years, and one not inclined to like Democrats very well: Democrats lost them by 8% in 2008, by a whopping 21% in 2010, and by 12% in 2012.

But seniors are far from the only worry with a bad vote on Social Security or Medicare. The voters that Democrats have to turn out in big numbers in an off-year are base voters. Base voters hate the idea of cutting Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare, and a Democrat who had to defend that vote would be looking square in the face at a base voter constituency that was likely to be very depressed. I’ve lived through two off-year elections where Democratic base voters were unexcited about voting- 1994 and 2010- and I don’t relish living through that again.

What will be especially brutal in the off-year election for Democrats who believe they have cut a responsible bi-partisan deal that will protect them from Republican attacks is that the unaccountable outside groups with their millions of dollars in attack ads won’t hesitate to do brutal ads on them for cutting Social Security and Medicare, just as they did the last two elections attacking them for “cutting” Medicare. It won’t matter that the Republicans wanted to cut even more, or that the money for the ads comes from millionaires who would love to see these programs privatized: the attack dogs will not hesitate to make political hay off such a vote.

Beyond rank and file members of Congress, there is another major force in the Democratic party for whom a grand bargain is potentially deadly, and that is potential Presidential candidates. Try explaining your vote cutting Social Security to the heavily senior citizen and base activist-dominated Iowa caucuses. I’ve been involved in five different Presidential campaigns, and I feel pretty confident saying that it would be extremely tough to win a Democratic Presidential primary after voting to cut Social Security benefits.

Even if you grant that the politics of the grand bargain idea are good for President Obama, they are poison for Democrats in Congress who have to run again in 2014 and 2016. The President, who will never run for office again, may feel like his best political alternative is to ignore the wishes of both his base and the seniors who have never voted for him anyway on an issue like Social Security cuts. For the rest of the party, they had better take a close look at how this will affect their own political well-being.

At least 19 dead, scores injured in Egypt train crash

Egyptian state media say 19 people have been killed and 107 more wounded as two cars of a passenger train derailed outside Cairo.

­Health Ministry officials said the injured were already in hospitals near the accident site, in the Badrasheen neighborhood of Giza.

A security official speaking anonymously told Ahram Online that many of the wounded were in critical condition.

The train is said to have been carrying army recruits when it crashed.

President Mohamed Morsi named a new transportation minister just this month after the post was vacated following a November train accident that killed 49 kindergarteners.

Picture by Kaspersky Lab’s Global Research & Analysis Team

A sophisticated cyber-espionage network targeting the world’s diplomatic, government and research agencies has been uncovered by the Kaspersky Lab, whose experts say the malware’s complexity could rival that of the notorious Flame virus.

­The system’s targets include a wide range of countries, with the primary focus on Eastern Europe, former Soviet republics and Central Asia — although many in Western Europe and North America are also on the list.

In addition to attacking traditional computer workstations, Rocra — a shortened name for Red October, the name given the network by the Kaspersky team — can steal data from smartphones, dump network equipment configurations, snatch files from removable disk drives, including those that had been erased, and scan through email databases and local network FTP servers.  

Unlike other well-known highly automated cyber-espionage campaigns like Flame and Gauss, the Rorca’s attacks all appear to be carefully chosen. Each operation is apparently driven by the configuration of the victim’s hardware and software, native language and even habit of document usage.

The information extracted from infected networks is often used to gain entry into additional systems. For example, stolen credentials were shown to be compiled in a list for use when attackers needed to guess passwords or phrases.

The hackers behind the network have created more than 60 domain names and several server hosting locations in different countries — the majority of those known being in Germany and Russia — which worked as proxies in order to hide the location of the “mothership” control server.

That server’s location remains unknown.

Experts have uncovered over 1,000 modules belonging to 30 different module categories. While Rocra seems to have been designed to execute one-time tasks sent by the hackers’ servers, a number of modules were constantly present in the system executing persistent tasks. For example, retrieving information about a phone, its contact list, call history, calendar, SMS messages and even browsing history as soon as an iPhone or a Nokia phone is connected to the system.

The hackers’ primary objective is to gather information and documents that compromised governments, corporations or other organizations and agencies. In addition to focusing on diplomatic and governmental agencies around the world, the hackers also attacked energy and nuclear groups and trade and aerospace targets.

No details have been given so far as to who the attackers could be. However, there is strong technical evidence to indicate that the attackers have Russophone origins, as Russian words including slang have been used in the source code commentaries. Many of the known attacks have taken place in Russian-speaking countries.

Click to enlarge

The hackers designed their own authentic and complicated piece of software, which has its own unique modular architecture of malicious extensions, info-stealing modules and backdoor Trojans. The malware includes several extensions and malicious files designed to quickly adjust to different system configurations while remaining able to grab information from infected machines.

These included a ‘resurrection’ module, which allowed hackers to gain access to infected machines using alternative communications channels and an encoded spy module, stealing information from different cryptographic systems such as Acid Cryptofiler, which is known to be used by organizations such as NATO, the European Parliament and the European Commission since 2011.

The first instances of Red October malware were discovered in October 2012, but it has been infecting computers since at least 2007, according to Kaspersky. The Kaspersky Lab worked with a number of international organizations while conducting the investigation including the US, Romanian and Belorusian Computer Emergency Readiness Teams. 

The EU has attempted to counter the huge rise in cyber-espionage by launching the European Cybercrime Center, which opened on Friday.

Picture by Kaspersky Lab’s Global Research & Analysis Team

Wolf Richter  www.testosteronepit.com  www.amazon.com/author/wolfrichter

Normally, the media would have given it priority: French President François Hollande and Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault have become more unpopular than ever before. But the poll was shoved into the background by France’s bombing campaign in Mali–which released an avalanche of positive comments and support from all sides, at least in France. With impeccable timing.

In a poll conducted on Friday and Saturday just before the Mali intervention, only 39% of the respondents had a positive opinion of Hollande, a new low, a plunge of 19 percentage points in seven months. A brief uptick in November had been a mirage. By contrast, Nicolas Sarkozy, during the same period in his term (January 2008), was still riding high with an approval rating of 54%.

And poor Ayrault. He never even had an uptick. His ratings have gone straight to hell. Only the speed has varied from poll to poll. After seven months of watching his handiwork, only 35% of the French still have a positive opinion of him–down 21 percentage points since he took office. His predecessor, François Fillon, had never sunk this low.

“This raises the question of Jean-Marc Ayrault’s legitimacy,” explained the Institute LH2, which had conducted the poll. Even on the left, the “presidential and governmental action is not convincing….” He would soon have to be sacked.

Suddenly the intervention in Mali. A savior. It was triggered when jihadists, who’d taken over parts of northern Mali, started rolling south towards Mopti, the second largest city. It has an airport, and a paved highway to the capital Bamako about 400 miles to the south. Mopti would have been the staging point for taking Bamako. So the French started bombing jihadist positions and convoys.

The intervention has monopolized French media with talking heads and voices of all stripes, and with a tsunami of articles, overflowing with support for the operations.

Just before 11 p.m. Monday night, Ayrault emerged from a meeting at the Hôtel Matignon, his official residence, where he’d briefed ranking Members of Parliament. Steely-voiced, he told his compatriots: “Faced with the threat of terrorism, the government’s commitment will not weaken. I welcome the support shown by all political forces.”

Every detail was suddenly important. Hollande left for Abu-Dhabi and Dubai, but even while traveling, he’d make decisions. Nigerian troops were on their way to Mali and would be there next week. Algeria, which borders Mali along the northern edge, vowed to close its borders, as did Mali’s other neighbors. According to witnesses, about 30 French armored vehicles entered Mali from the Ivorian border town Pôgô.

Tuareg rebels, who took control of the northern territory of Azawad early last year and declared its independence, only to be sidelined or run off by jihadists, had their own announcement: they offered to support the French. “We’re ready to help, we are already involved in the fight against terrorism,” said a representative of their National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA).

All day, there was similarly exciting stuff to talk about–and the much maligned Prime Minister may have finally found his footing. Even Marine Le Pen, head of the right-wing National Front, who has relentlessly hammered away at the government, and who berated both the Hollande and Sarkozy governments for minimizing the “mounting Islamic fundamentalism in France,” well, even she grudgingly called Hollande’s decision “legitimate.”

There were a few holdouts however. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, left-wing firebrand and 4th in last year’s presidential elections, grumbled: “The UN mandate stipulated that this was an African problem to be resolved by Africans.” Not known for mincing words, he added, “They’re grown-ups, they have real countries, but yet again we find ourselves going back to our old bad habits of intervening here and there on the continent. We haven’t learned a single lesson.” And he asked, “Which of the wars over the last 20 years that had to be undertaken with urgency, and that would have solved a problem, actually succeeded?”

On the right, Dominique de Villepin, career diplomat, Prime Minister under Jacques Chirac, and archenemy of Sarkozy, penned an editorial that acknowledged the critical situation Mali found itself in when jihadists began rolling south, but… “Let’s not give in to the reflex of war for the sake of war,” he wrote. “The obvious haste, the déjà-vu of the arguments of the ‘war against terrorism’” worried him. “Let’s learn a lesson from a decade of lost wars, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Libya.”

Wars, he went on, “promote separatism, failed states, the iron law of armed militias.” He doubted that this war would lead to success; its goals were ill-defined, and France was fighting without a solid Malian partner. Pointing at the coups that had ousted the president in March and the prime minister in December, at the collapse of the divided army, and at the general failure of the state, he asked, “Who will support us?”

But for the moment, these concerns don’t matter. France has found a theme behind which to unite. To heck with the unemployment fiasco, the declining private sector, the collapsing auto industry. A breath of fresh air for the government. To be followed by a major jump in approval ratings. And Ayrault might cling to his job for a while longer.

Yet, the auto industry is at risk. “Volkswagen has chosen to wipe out PSA Peugeot Citroën,” said a source in Hollande’s entourage. But now there’s a plan, a desperate, misbegotten, taxpayer-funded deal. Read…. Secret French Plan In the European War Of The Automakers.

In what could be a watershed moment for the price, provenance, and future of physical gold, not to mention the “stability” of the entire monetary regime based on rock solid, undisputed “faith and credit” in paper money, German Handelsblatt reports in an exclusive that the long suffering German gold, all official 3,396 tons of it, is about to be moved. Specifically, it is about to be partially moved out of the New York Fed, where the majority, or 45% of it is currently stored, as well as the entirety of the 11% of German gold held with the Banque de France, and repatriated back home to Buba in Frankfurt, where just 31% of it is held as of this moment. And while it is one thing for a “crazy, lunatic” dictator such as Hugo Chavez to pull his gold out of the Bank of England, it is something entirely different, and far less dismissible, when the bank with the second most official gold reserves in the world proceeds to formally pull some of its gold from the bank with the most. In brief: this is a momentous development, one which may signify that the regime of mutual assured and very much telegraphed – because if the central banks don’t have faith in one another, why should anyone else? – trust in central banks by other central banks is ending.

Much more importantly, it is being telegraphed as such, with Buba fully aware of just what the consequences of this (first partial, and then full; and certainly full vis-a-vis the nouveau socialist regime of Francois Hollande which will soon hold zero German gold) repatriation will be in a global monetary arena, which is already scraping by on the last traces of faith in a monetary system that is slowly but surely dying but first diluting itself to oblivion. And in simple game theory terms, the first party to defect from the prisoner’s dilemma of all the bulk of global gold being held by the Fed, defects best. Then the second. Then the third. Until, in this particular case, the last central bank to pull its gold from the NY Fed and the other 2 primary depositories of developed world gold, London and Paris, just happens to discover their gold was never there to begin with, and instead served as collateral to paper gold subsequently rehypothecated several hundred times, and whose ultimate ownership deed is long gone.

It would be very ironic, if the Bundesbank, which many had assumed had bent over backwards to accommodate Mario Draghi’s Goldmanesque demands to allow implicit monetization of peripheral nations’ debts has just “returned the favor” by launching the greatest physical gold scramble of all time.

From Handelsblatt:

Die Bundesbank hat ein neues Konzept ausgearbeitet, wo sie künftig ihre Goldreserven lagern will. Nach Informationen des Handelsblatts (Dienstausgabe) sieht dieses Konzept, das am kommenden Mittwoch bekanntgegeben werden soll, vor, den heimischen Standort aufzuwerten, in New York dafür weniger Gold zu lagern und überhaupt kein Gold mehr in Paris zu horten.

Derzeit lagert das Gold der Bundesbank ihren Angaben zufolge in New York, London, Paris und Frankfurt. In der amerikanischen Notenbank Fed lagern 45 Prozent der insgesamt 3.396 Tonnen Gold, in der Bank of England in London 13 Prozent, in der Banque de France in Paris elf Prozent und im Hauptsitz in Frankfurt 31 Prozent. Diese Verteilung soll sich nun ändern.

We present it in the original for fear of losing something in translation, but in broad English terms the above reads as follows:

The German Bundesbank is developing a new approach as to where its gold will be stored. According to exclusive information, to be fully announced on Wednesday, the bank will in the future hold less gold in the New York Fed, and no more hold in Paris (Banque de France). As a result, the distribution of German gold, of which 45% is held in New York, 13% in London, 11% in Paris and 31% in Frankfurt, is about to change.

There is no need to explain why this is huge news (for those who have not followed our series on the concerns and issue plaguing German gold can catch up here, here, here, here, and certainly here) . At least no need for us to explain. Instead we will let the Bundesbank do the explanation. The following section is the answer provided by the Bundesbank itself in late October in response to the question why it does not move the gold back to Germany:

The reasons for storing gold reserves with foreign partner central banks are historical since, at the time, gold at these trading centres was transferred to the Bundesbank. To be more specific: in October 1951 the Bank deutscher Länder, the Bundesbank’s predecessor, purchased its first gold for DM 2.5 million; that was 529 kilograms at the time. By 1956, the gold reserves had risen to DM 6.2 billion, or 1,328 tonnes; upon its foundation in 1957, the Bundesbank took over these reserves. No further gold was added until the 1970s. During that entire period, we had nothing but the best of experiences with our partners in New York, London and Paris. There was never any doubt about the security of Germany’s gold. In future, we wish to continue to keep gold at international gold trading centres so that, when push comes to shove, we can have it available as a reserve asset as soon as possible. Gold stored in your home safe is not immediately available as collateral in case you need foreign currency. Take, for instance, the key role that the US dollar plays as a reserve currency in the global financial system. The gold held with the New York Fed can, in a crisis, be pledged with the Federal Reserve Bank as collateral against US dollar-denominated liquidity. Similar pound sterling liquidity could be obtained by pledging the gold that is held with the Bank of England.

And in case the above was not clear enough, below is the speech Buba’s Andreas Dobret delivered to none other than NY Fed’s Bill Dudley in early November:

Please let me also comment on the bizarre public discussion we are currently facing in Germany on the safety of our gold deposits outside Germany — a discussion which is driven by irrational fears.

In this context, I wish to warn against voluntarily adding fuel to the general sense of uncertainty among the German public in times like these by conducting a “phantom debate” on the safety of our gold reserves.

The arguments raised are not really convincing. And I am glad that this is common sense for most Germans. Following the statement by the President of the Federal Court of Auditors in Germany, the discussion is now likely to come to an end — and it should do so before it causes harm to the excellent relationship between the Bundesbank and the US Fed.

Throughout these sixty years, we have never encountered the slightest problem, let alone had any doubts concerning the credibility of the Fed [ZH may, and likely will, soon provide a few historical facts which will cast some serious doubts on this claim. Very serious doubts]. And for this, Bill, I would like to thank you personally. I am also grateful for your uncomplicated cooperation in so many matters. The Bundesbank will remain the Fed’s trusted partner in future, and we will continue to take advantage of the Fed’s services by storing some of our currency reserves as gold in New York.

Incidentally, what Zero Hedge did provide after this article, was factual evidence that the Buba’s very much “trusted partner” had been skimming it on physical gold deliveries on at least one occasion, in “Exclusive: Bank Of England To The Fed: “No Indication Should, Of Course, Be Given To The Bundesbank…”

So we wonder: what changed in the three months between November and now, that has caused such a dramatic about face at the Bundesbank, and that in light of all of the above, will make is explicitly very unambigous that the act of gold repatriation, assuming of course that Handelsblatt did not mischaracterize what is happening and misreport the facts, means the “excellent relationship” between the Fed and Buba, not to mention Banque de France which will shortly hold precisely zero German gold, has just collapsed.

Also, if the Bundesbank is first, who is next?

Finally, once the scramble to satisfy physical gold deliverable claims manifests itself in the market, we can’t help but wonder what will happen to the price of gold: both paper and physical?

By the look of things, Europe’s banking system is breaking down again.

Bankia’s shareholders have received a nasty new year’s surprise. They may lose most of their investments or even all of them says the Spanish bank rescue fund in its latest report.

According to FROB, the Fund for Orderly Bank Restructuring, Bankia has a negative value of 4.2 billion euros, and its parent group BFA is 10.4 bn in the red.

Valuation is key in the recapitalisation of Spain’s banking system, weighed down by massive bad loans accumulated in a property bubble that burst in 2008. Bankia/BFA is set to receive 18 bn euros of European aid, and become the country’s biggest bailout recipient.

http://www.euronews.com/2012/12/27/bankia-worthless-says-new-report/

Greece’s four largest banks need to boost their capital by 27.5 billion euros ($36.3 billion) after taking losses from the country’s debt swap earlier this year, the largest sovereign restructuring in history.     

National Bank of Greece SA, the country’s biggest lender, needs to raise 9.8 billion euros, according to an e-mailed report by the Athens-based Bank of Greece (TELL) today. Eurobank Ergasias SA (EUROB) needs 5.8 billion euros, Alpha Bank (ALPHA) needs 4.6 billion euros and Piraeus Bank SA (TPEIR) needs 7.3 billion euros, according to the report. Total recapitalization needs for the country’s banking sector amount to 40.5 billion euros, the report said.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-27/greek-bank-capital-needs-at-eu27-5-billion-bank-of-greece-says.html

The above articles tell us point blank that Europe’s banking crisis is neither fixed nor even close to over.

Consider the article on Spain.

A little known fact about the Spanish crisis is that when the Spanish Government merges troubled banks, it typically swaps out depositors’ savings for shares in the new bank.

So… when the newly formed bank goes bust, “poof” your savings are GONE. Not gone as in some Spanish version of the FDIC will eventually get you your money, but gone as in gone forever.

This is why Bankia’s collapse is so significant: in one move, former depositors at seven banks just lost virtually everything.

In the case of Greece, the above article needs some perspective. Sure, €27.5 billion sounds like a lot of money, but just how big is it relative to Greece’s banks.

The entire capital base of the Greek banking system is only €22 billion.

By saying that Greek banks need €27.5 billion Greece is essentially admitting that is needs to recapitalize its entire banking system. Also, you should know that Greek banks are still sitting on €46.8 billion in bad loans.

There is a word for a banking system with a capital base of €22 billion and bad loans of €46.8. It’s INSOLVENT.

Take note, the EU Crisis is anything but over. The ECB may have pushed it back by a year by promising unlimited bond buying… but that relief rally is coming to an end.

With that in mind, smart investors are taking advantage of the lull in the markets to position themselves for what’s coming.

We offer several FREE Special Reports designed to help them do this. They include:

Preparing Your Portfolio For Obama’s Economic Nightmare

What Europe’s Crisis Means For You and Your Savings

How to Protect Yourself From Inflation

And last but not least…

Bullion 101: Everything You Need to Know About Investing in Gold and Silver Bullion…

You can pick up free copies of all of the above at:

http://gainspainscapital.com/

Best

Phoenix Capital Research

I caught some of Obama’s last presser of his first administration and although he is fighting against the psychos wanting to destroy the global markets by refusing to raise the debt ceiling; I just don’t understand some of his other words pertaining to our economy. Why does the President spend so much time on convincing America that the deficit is the GOD of all things and he’s there to reduce it in a balanced approach? That’s not what he was elected for.

The always awesome Charles Pierce:

The general public seems to think that The Economy is defined by how many people are working and how many people are not. The political elite, including the president, and the courtier press that services that elite, all seem to define the economy through the deficit. The cognitive dissonance in Washington is about how best to deal with an economy defined by the deficit. The cognitive dissonance in the country is about how best to deal with an economy that is being defined at the highest levels of the government in a way that the rest of the country finds odd and inadequate. So when the general public hears the president say this…

As I said on the campaign, one component to growing our economy and broadening opportunity for the middle class is shrinking our deficits in a balanced and responsible way. And for nearly two years now I’ve been fighting for such a plan, one that would reduce our deficits by $4 trillion over the next decade, which would stabilize our debt and our deficit in a sustainable way for the next decade. That would be enough not only to stop the growth of our debt relative to the size of our economy, but it would make it manageable so it doesn’t crowd out the investments we need to make in people and education and job training and science and medical research – all the things that help us grow.

…it thinks the president has his priorities in the wrong order. When he talks about The American People, and the Middle Class thereof, he ought not to convince himself that he was re-elected because he’s the guy who’ll best bring down The Deficit. He got re-elected because the other guy convinced America that he wouldn’t much care if people ate grass by the side of the road. The people who voted for this president did not do so because they wanted a balance program to bring down the deficit. They did so because they thought he was less likely to make their everyday lives harder than they already are. Because, as the blog’s First Law Of Economics states: Fk The Deficit. People Got No Jobs. People Got No Money.

Prez Obama has used the Republican talking points about the federal debt for a long time now and I had hoped it would disappear for his second term, but I’ve been mistaken. I wonder if it’s the Beltway Villagers unduly influencing his advisers to make sure he constantly talks like this when discussing the economy in front of America, or if he really believes this FOX News strategy. It makes no sense at all. Americans want to work. Americans want to make money.

That’s what the economy means to them.

The additional maddening thing is that if you fix the jobs problem you largely fix the deficit problem. The reverse is not true. If you “fix” the deficit you kill the jobs.

It’s that simple.

The ten things you need to know on Tuesday 15 January 2012..

1) ‘THE GREAT POLITICAL SULK’

Last week, the PM and Deputy PM were renewing their vows and extolling the virtues and achievements of their coalition government. Last night, the latter’s party blocked a key proposal of the former’s party, prompting a Tory peer to denounce the deputy prime minister for his “great political sulk”.

From the Daily Mail:

“Angry Tories rounded on Nick Clegg for staging a ‘sulk’ after Libs Dems last night voted down constituency boundary reform.

“The Government was defeated by 300 votes to 231 in the Lords, where Lib Dem ministers voted against their Tory Coalition partners for the first time. Reforms will now be delayed until 2018.

“Last night Tory peer Lord Dobbs said Lib Dem leader Mr Clegg had staged ‘a great political sulk’.

“David Cameron has vowed to equalise constituency sizes, but the Lib Dems are furious over what they see as a betrayal after contentious plans to reform the House of Lords failed.”

The Tories desperately need this policy in order to secure around 20 extra seats at the next election and the prime minister is said to be prepared to use the Parliament Act in order to overturn the Lords amendment in a Commons vote later this month. But does he have enough support in the lower house to do so? The SNP has said it now plans to join Labour and the Lib Dems in voting against the boundary changes.

Good luck, Dave!

2) CAMERON’S EUROPE SPEECH, PART 101

Whatever happened to Great British Sovereignty, eh? The prime minister, it seems, doesn’t even have the power to decide which day to give a speech on.. er.. repatriating powers..

Due to German objections, it’ll now be on Friday, not next Tuesday, explains the Times splash:

“David Cameron will this week light a five-year fuse under Britain’s place in Europe after being forced, under pressure from Germany, to bring forward his long-awaited EU speech.

“..[A]rrangements for his EU speech slid into disarray yesterday when he was forced to change the date because of objections from Angela Merkel.

“The German Chancellor advised Mr Cameron during a telephone call on Sunday night that his preferred date of January 22 would be viewed poorly in Berlin and Paris.

“No 10 planners and the Foreign & Commonwealth Office failed to notice that next Tuesday is the 50th anniversary of the Elysée treaty, a key date in the Franco-German calendar, which is being marked by elaborate commemorations.”

Whoops!

Meanwhile, the Guardian reports that the UK is in “danger of putting at risk the fight against terrorism and organised crime if the Conservatives win a battle within the coalition to end British involvement in a series of European Union justice measures”.

Oh dear. Oh, and Nick Clegg has just been on the Today programme saying the Lib Dem position on a referendum has not changed: “We need to give the British people the reassurance that if there is a new [EU] treaty.. in the future.. then, of course, we should have a referendum at that point.” He also said a premature referendum could have a “chilling” effect on the UK economy.

3) NEW YEAR, NEW WAR

The French government has had strong backing from the UN Security Council overnight, for its ongoing attacks on Islamist rebels in Mali, but is urging African Union troops to take over the mission as soon as possible. The Guardian reports on its front page that ” an Islamist militant leader warned the French government its intervention in Mali had opened the ‘gates of hell’.”

Meanwhile, the Independent splashes on a “warning” to Number 10 from the UK military’s “top brass”:

“Defence chiefs have warned against Britain becoming enmeshed in the mission against Islamists in Mali, pointing out that any action could be drawn-out and require significantly greater resources than have so far been deployed.

“The most senior commanders are due to make their apprehension clear at a meeting of the National Security Council with the Prime Minister today. They have the backing of the Defence Secretary, Philip Hammond.”

Has the military learned the lessons of Iraq and especially Afghanistan? You’d hope so. Right?

4) MALI: BY NUMBERS

15.8m number of people living in Mali
90 percentage of population which is Muslim
53 average life expectancy
550 number of French troops deployed so far
1960 the year Mali gained independence from France

(via Huffington Post)

5) THE ROYALS’ ‘NUCLEAR DETERRENT’

Republicans like me are always accused of exaggerating the political and constitutional power of the good ol’ monarchy.

Well, check out this astonishing report in today’s Guardian:

“The extent of the Queen and Prince Charles’s secretive power of veto over new laws has been exposed after Downing Street lost its battle to keep information about its application secret.

“Whitehall papers prepared by Cabinet Office lawyers show that overall at least 39 bills have been subject to the most senior royals’ little-known power to consent to or block new laws.

“.. In one instance the Queen completely vetoed the Military Actions Against Iraq Bill in 1999, a private member’s bill that sought to transfer the power to authorise military strikes against Iraq from the monarch to parliament.

“.. Charles has been asked to consent to 20 pieces of legislation and this power of veto has been described by constitutional lawyers as a royal ‘nuclear deterrent’ that may help explain why ministers appear to pay close attention to the views of senior royals.”

Out-rageous!

BECAUSE YOU’VE READ THIS FAR…

Watch this video of the funniest moments from Sunday night’s Golden Globes awards ceremony.

6) GOD VS THE COALITION

Have ministers been attacking senior civil servants in recent weeks in order to distract attention from country’s economic problems and their own political difficulties? That’s the view of GOD – Gus O’Donnell – as reported in the Independent:

“In an unprecedented intervention, the recent Cabinet Secretary Lord O’Donnell accuses ministers of undermining civil service morale by blaming officials for self-inflicted difficulties..

“‘There is a correlation between attacking the civil service and a Government’s standing in the polls,’ Lord O’Donnell told The Independent. ‘The fact is that the eurozone crisis has meant the economy has not recovered as fast as everyone would have liked. But that is not the fault of the civil service.’ Lord O’Donnell also warned of the dangers of rushing through new policies without sufficient thought.

“‘No one could argue that this Government has been prevented (by the civil service) from pursuing radical policies,’ he said. ‘Just look at health, education and welfare. They are not short of radical policies. The issue is whether they are the right policies.'”

Ouch.

7) LOWER PENSIONS FOR ALL!

As I pointed out in yesterday’s Memo, the centre-right papers have been very excited about the government’s plans for a new flat-rate stat pension, which would help stay-at-home mums. Today’s Independent, citing research from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), pours cold water on the policy:

“According to the IFS, ‘the main effect in the long run will be to reduce pensions for the vast majority of people, while increasing rights for some particular groups, most notably the self-employed.’ It said this verdict applied to people born after about 1970. ‘In the long run, the reform will not increase accrual for part-time workers and women who take time out to care for children. In fact, in common with everyone else, these groups would end up with a lower pension.'”

8) CHRISTIANS, UNITE!

From the BBC:

“The European Court of Human Rights is due to deliver a landmark ruling in the cases of four British Christians who claim they suffered religious discrimination at work.

“They include an airline worker stopped from wearing a cross and a registrar who did not want to marry gay people.

“The four insist their right to express their religious beliefs was infringed.”

Watch this space. The ruling is expected at around 9am.

9) DEADBEAT NATION

Barack Obama, re-elected and reinvigorated, took the fight over the debt ceiling to the Republicans yesterday, with some pretty strong rhetoric – from the Huffington Post:

“President Barack Obama issued a strong warning to Republicans on Monday that he will not negotiate over the debt ceiling or allow Republicans to use it as a bargaining chip.

“‘To even entertain the idea of the United States of America not paying our bills is irresponsible. It’s absurd,’ Obama said in a press conference.

“.. If the country failed to meet these obligations, Obama argued, investors around the world would question the credibility of the United States.

“‘We are not a deadbeat nation,’ Obama said. ‘So there’s a very simple solution to this: Congress authorizes us to pay our bills.'”

Meanwhile, The Hill reports:

“‘I’m a pretty friendly guy. I like a good party,’ Obama said during his press conference Monday at the White House. He joked that, ‘now that my girls are getting older, they don’t want to spend that much time with me anyway, so I’ll be probably calling around, looking for somebody to play cards with.'”

10) BORIS BEAR

Sorry, what?

From the Times:

“A 12ft sculpture of a polar bear named Boris has been unveiled in Sloane Square to raise awareness of the plight of the species. It was unveiled by the Mayor of London’s father, Stanley Johnson, who is an environmental campaigner.”

PUBLIC OPINION WATCH

From the Sun/YouGov poll:

Labour 44
Conservatives 31
Lib Dems 11
Ukip 9

That would give Labour a majority of 124.

140 CHARACTERS OR LESS

@TomHarrisMP Thinking of writing an article about how Twitter’s increasing unpleasantness and intolerance is making it less relevant.

‏@DAaronovitch I enjoy the incredulity with which Government Nick Clegg reacts to evidence of Opposition Nick Clegg. #bbcr4today

@joshgreenman We are not a deadbeat nation. We are a dubstep nation.

900 WORDS OR MORE

Rachel Sylvester, writing in the Times, warns Cameron not to morph into a “pub bore”: “A tough line on Europe and shirkers may be popular, but the Prime Minister has to play the measured statesman.”

Polly Toynbee, writing in the Guardian, says: “On the economy, Europe, tax and the NHS, the trajectory is all in favour of Ed Miliband. Now his party can start to dare.”

Will Straw, writing in the Daily Telegraph, says: “A referendum would give pro-Europeans the chance to win the case for democratic reform.”

Got something you want to share? Please send any stories/tips/quotes/pix/plugs/gossip to Mehdi Hasan (mehdi.hasan@huffingtonpost.com) or Ned Simons (ned.simons@huffingtonpost.com). You can also follow us on Twitter: @mehdirhasan, @nedsimons and @huffpostukpol

The development and acquisition of drones has become crucial to the ever-expanding arms race between China and Japan, as tensions over disputed islands in the East China Sea could soon reach boiling point.

Weaknesses in Japan’s surveillance capability and the ongoing territorial dispute over the Senkaku islands, known as the Diaoyu in China, have spurred Tokyo to purchase an advanced drone model from the US.

Japan’s vulnerability was highlighted late last year when Japanese radar failed to detect a low-flying Chinese aircraft passing over the group of disputed islands.

The drones will seemingly be deployed “to counter China’s growing assertiveness at sea, especially when it comes to the Senkaku islands,” the Kyodo news agency quoted an unnamed defense ministry official as saying.

Japanese concerns that the islands will be used by China as a prelude to testing regional power balances, prompted Japan’s Defense Ministry to request $2.4 billion dollars from hawkish Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose conservative government swept to power on December 26.

The funds will be used for extra PAC-3 missile interceptors and upgrades for F-15 fighter planes, Bloomberg cites a document distributed by the ministry as saying.

Japan has further decided to increase overall defense spending to some $54.3 billion, the first defense hike in a decade. Abe further promised on the campaign trail to bulk up the country’s army and coast guard.

James Corbett, editor of the Japanese-based Corbett Report news website, told RT the latest conflict had yet to filter down to the citizen level in Japan like it had in China, where nationalistic sentiment is on the rise.

With the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands serving as the focal point for the current standoff, Corbett says Sino-Japanese military conflict will likely become the new norm.

“…now that Abe is in power — he’s known as a hardline nationalist — and now that Xi JinPing is taking the helm of China for the next 10 years, I think he’s looking to put his stake down as someone who is really a strong defender of China. So I think we’re really going to see an entrenched position on both sides and it looks like there is a new normal of wars and increasing [military] expenditures that are likely for the next several years.”

China has taken measures to significantly ratchet up its drone program in a move which US analysts described as a “worrisome trend.”

In October Chinese state media said 11 drone bases would be built along China’s coastline, and “at least one drone will be stationed at each base,” the Guardian cites China Radio International as reporting.

China rolled out eight new models in November at an annual air show in the southern coastal city of Zhuhai, photographs of which were featured prominently in the state-owned media.

In December it was further announced that the People’s Liberation Army were readying to test-fly a domestically developed drone, which analysts said is likely a clone of the US’s carrier-based X-47B.

The unclassified document published by the US Defense Science Board in July outlined fears China “could easily match or outpace US spending on unmanned systems.”

Sino-Japanese relations took a drastic turn for the worse after the Japanese government purchased the disputed islands from a private Japanese owner last September.

Tensions have continued to rise, as an increasingly frequent cat and mouse came between Chinese surveillance planes and Japanese F015 fighters risks descending into a potentially deadly game of brinkmanship.

Chinese government ships have entered Japanese-controlled waters on multiple occasions in recent months, prompting regular standoffs with the Japanese coast guard.

On Tuesday Japan summoned China’s ambassador to Tokyo to protest an incursion by 4 Chinese maritime surveillance ships, allegedly occurring Monday.

China remained undaunted, with Reuters quoting the Communist Party chief of China’s marine surveillance corps, Sun Shuxian, as saying “Japan has continued to ignore our warnings that their vessels and aircraft have infringed our sovereignty.”

“This behavior may result in the further escalation of the situation at sea and has prompted China to pay great attention and vigilance.”

January 14, 2013  |  

The following is an excerpt from The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? by Jared Diamond (Viking, 2012). 

How much freedom or encouragement do children have to explore their environment? Are children permitted to do dangerous things, with the expectation that they must learn from their mistakes? Or are parents protective of their children’s safety, and do parents curtail exploration and pull kids away if they start to do something that could be dangerous?

The answer to this question varies among societies. However, a tentative generalization is that individual autonomy, even of children, is a more cherished ideal in hunter-gatherer bands than in state societies, where the state considers that it has an interest in its children, does not want children to get hurt by doing as they please, and forbids parents to let a child harm itself.

That theme of autonomy has been emphasized by observers of many hunter-gatherer societies. For example, Aka Pygmy children have access to the same resources as do adults, whereas in the U.S. there are many adults-only resources that are off-limits to kids, such as weapons, alcohol, and breakable objects. Among the Martu people of the Western Australian desert, the worst offense is to impose on a child’s will, even if the child is only 3 years old. The Piraha Indians consider children just as human beings, not in need of coddling or special protection. In Everett’s words, “They [Piraha children] are treated fairly and allowance is made for their size and relative physical weakness, but by and large they are not considered qualitatively different from adults … This style of parenting has the result of producing very tough and resilient adults who do not believe that anyone owes them anything. Citizens of the Piraha nation know that each day’s survival depends on their individual skills and hardiness … Eventually they learn that it is in their best interests to listen to their parents a bit.”

Some hunter-gatherer and small-scale farming societies don’t intervene when children or even infants are doing dangerous things that may in fact harm them, and that could expose a Western parent to criminal prosecution. I mentioned earlier my surprise, in the New Guinea Highlands, to learn that the fire scars borne by so many adults of Enu’s adoptive tribe were often acquired in infancy, when an infant was playing next to a fire, and its parents considered that child autonomy extended to a baby’s having the right to touch or get close to the fire and to suffer the consequences. Hadza infants are permitted to grasp and suck on sharp knives. Nevertheless, not all small-scale societies permit children to explore freely and do dangerous things.

On the American frontier, where pop
ulation was sparse, the one-room schoolhouse was a common phenomenon. With so few children living within daily travel distance, schools could afford only a single room and a single teacher, and all children of different ages had to be educated together in that one room. But the one-room schoolhouse in the U.S. today is a romantic memory of the past, except in rural areas of low population density. Instead, in all cities, and in rural areas of moderate population density, children learn and play in age cohorts.

School classrooms are age-graded, such that most classmates are within a year of each other in age. While neighborhood playgroups are not so strictly age-segregated, in densely populated areas of large societies there are enough children living within walking distance of each other that 12-year-olds don’t routinely play with 3-year-olds.

But demographic realities produce a different result in small-scale societies, which resemble one-room schoolhouses. A typical hunter-gatherer band numbering around 30 people will on the average contain only about a dozen preadolescent kids, of both sexes and various ages. Hence it is impossible to assemble separate age-cohort playgroups, each with many children, as is characteristic of large societies. Instead, all children in the band form a single multi-age playgroup of both sexes. That observation applies to all small-scale hunter-gatherer societies that have been studied. In such multi-age playgroups, both the older and the younger children gain from being together. The young children gain from being socialized not only by adults but also by older children, while the older children acquire experience in caring for younger children. That experience gained by older children contributes to explaining how hunter-gatherers can become confident parents already as teenagers. While Western societies have plenty of teenage parents, especially unwed teenagers, Western teenagers are suboptimal parents because of inexperience. However, in a small-scale society, the teenagers who become parents will already have been taking care of children for many years.

Fresh trouble flared in east Belfast just hours after senior police and politicians on all sides called for peace on the streets.

Officers were attacked again on Monday evening in the lower Newtownards Road area after a series of small demonstrations by loyalists in protest against the decision to restrict the flying of the Union flag above City Hall.

Policing the riots has already cost more than £7 million

A number of roads were blocked for a time. Some motorists held up in long tailbacks complained that police failed to take tougher action to clear masked demonstrators waving flags.

Bus services in the east of the city were also suspended after what Translink described as “two incidents.” Water cannons were called in after mobs attacked officers with stones, bottles and missiles. There were no early reports of injuries.

Earlier senior police and politicians united in their demands for an end to the violent protests which have blighted Northern Ireland over the past six weeks. The first minister, Peter Robinson, branded rioters the enemies of democracy and claimed they were being exploited by elements seeking to wreck the peace process.

“You do not respect a Union flag if you are using it as a weapon to charge against someone,” Mr Robinson said. “You are not showing respect for the Union flag if you need to wear a mask when carrying it.

“For many the issue of the flying of the Union flag at Belfast City Council is now a cynical cover for the real political agenda which is to destroy the political process.”

Northern Ireland minister Theresa Villiers had talks in Belfast on Monday

Civil unrest has erupted in parts of Northern Ireland since Belfast City councillors voted on 3 December to restrict the number of days the Union flag would be flown over City Hall.

To date 101 police officers have been injured, one of whom is still in hospital.

There have been 112 arrests and 85 people, including a number of children, have been charged with public order offences.

The bill for policing the riots has already exceeded £7 million.

Northern Ireland’s top police officer Matt Baggott has called for politicians to act quickly to resolve the crisis.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) Chief Constable revealed his commanders on the ground were revising their tactics, but said sweeping protesters off the streets was not a realistic option.

He said: “Even when the PSNI was 12,000 strong it would not have been possible to take such a rigid approach towards protests. Our approach has always been to be measured and responsible.

“We have simply to put public safety first.”

Loyalists threw petrol bombs at police and also at homes and a Catholic church in the neighbouring Catholic Short Strand area.

Conall McDevitt, an SDLP member of the Northern Ireland Assembly, and one of the Belfast councillors who voted for the flag to come down, said the attack on St Matthews Church and surrounding houses was a shameful act of hate. He also said the continuing attacks on police were “sick”.