32 people have been arrested in Libya in connection with recent bomb attacks in the capital. All those detained are said to belong to a network of loyalists of the country’s former leader Muammar Gaddafi and have reportedly been receiving financial backing from abroad. RT talks to political analyst and Middle East consultant Peter Eyre.
The United Nations has issued a 102-page report, alleging that both sides on the Syrian conflict have carried out numerous “war crimes.” Now the trouble is in danger of spreading into Lebanon. The leader of Lebanon’s Progressive Socialist Party, Walid Jumblatt, has said that this could all herald the unraveling of Sykes-Picot, a reference to the secret agreement between the British and the French in 1919 that was meant to define their spheres of influence and control in the Middle East during World War I.
Separately, Indians celebrated on Wednesday the 65th anniversary of their country’s independence from Britain. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the country would send a rocket to Mars next year. India has one of the fastest growing economies in the world even if many of its people do not have a safe drinking water. In 2008, India sent a successful probe to the moon and detected evidence of water on the lunar surface for the first time. “A note to Mr. Singh, providing reliable water for your own people at home might be a better achievement,” said George Galloway.
At least eight people have been killed in the latest US assassination drone strike in the northwestern tribal belt of Pakistan, near the border with Afghanistan. The unmanned aircraft fired two missiles at a house in North Waziristan on Sunday morning.
Press TV has conducted an interview with Syed Tariq Pirzada, strategic affairs analyst, to hear his opinion on this issue.
TEHRAN, July 2 (MNA) – The Iranian ambassador to the Human Rights Council has said that lasting peace can be established in the region only if the Zionist regime ends its occupation of the Palestinian territories.
Ambassador Mohammad Reza Sajjadi made the remarks in Geneva on Monday in a speech during a meeting of the Human Rights Council after Richard Falk, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights on Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, presented his report to the council.
Following are excerpts of the text of Sajjadi’s speech:
My delegation would like to thank the Special Rapporteur for his detailed report submitted to the council.
Highlighting the violation of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory with reference to (the) “Israeli regime(‘s) policy and practice of targeted killing” as well as “widespread and abusive use of administrative detention procedures”, the report obviously illustrates flagrant violation of human rights in the Palestine and draws attention to some horrific incidents (caused) by so-called “Israeli Defense Forces.”
The incidences of extrajudicial executions or assassinations underscored in the report as well as the recent upsurge of violence by (the) Israeli regime in Gaza are just (the) tip of (the) iceberg demonstrating that this regime continues and even intensifies its heinous crimes against the oppressed and defenseless Palestinian people in defiance of human rights principles, international law, UN resolutions and even the basic norms of decency. What is perplexing is that the Israeli regime, enjoying the unflagging support of the Western bloc, continues to perpetrate its crimes and violations with a sense of impunity.
It is high time for the council to defend more effectively the human rights of (the) Palestinian people and adopt a firm position and urge the international community to counter the said regime’s inhumane policies and practices against the defenseless Palestinians.
The Islamic Republic of Iran believes that the settlement of the Palestinian crisis would be achievable only if the inalienable rights of the people of the occupied Palestine (are) fully recognized, restored, and maintained.
The only solution to the Palestinian issue (necessary for the) establishment of peace is restoration of the sovereignty right to Palestine and putting an end to occupation.
The Palestinian people should be allowed to express their opinions freely regarding their fate and future and the kind of state and government they want to have through a referendum with the participation of all (the) Palestinian people.
The Muslim Brotherhood’s President-elect Mohamed Mursi (C) meets with Christian leaders from different denominations at the presidential palace in Cairo. (Reuters)
By AL ARABIYA WITH AGENCIES
Egyptian youth activists and Christian leaders met with President-elect Mohammed Mursi on Wednesday to work towards “achieving the goals of the uprising which ousted his predecessor Hosni Mubarak last year,” the Egypt Independent newspaper reported.
Egyptian activist Wael Ghoneim, known for his prominent role during the January 25 Revolution, said the meeting discussed the importance of transparency in all decisions made by Mursi’s government, which is due to be installed after he is inaugurated at the weekend.
Ghoneim has previously said he has several reservations on the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mursi even though he voted for him.
“Many people did not vote for Mursi because he is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood or the chairman of its political wing the Freedom and Justice Party, but because they did not want to opt for a member of the former regime,” Ghoneim said earlier this month in reference to the election runoff which saw Mursi pitted against former prime minister Ahmed Shafiq.
In the talks Mursi held with the youth activists, Asmaa Mahfouz, one of the founders of Egypt’s April 6 Youth Movement, said Mursi’s promises “are calculated but he seems to mean well for Egypt,” Egypt Independent reported.
Mursi also met with Christian leaders and the families of those killed in the uprising, seeking to broaden support before a handover of power by the ruling generals, due by June 30.
His first appointments as president-elect of Egypt will be a woman and a Coptic Christian, his spokesman has told the Guardian this week, as he moves to allay fears of the Brotherhood.
Samah al-Essawy said that although the names of the two choices had not been finalized, they would be Mursi’s two vice-presidents.
When the appointments go through, they will constitute the first time in Egypt’s history that either a woman or a Coptic Christian has occupied such a high-ranking position.
Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday congratulated Egypt’s newly elected Islamist president, but cautioned that the election was just a first step towards true democracy.
“We have congratulated President (Mohammed) Mursi and the Egyptian people for continuing on their path to democratic transition,” Clinton told reporters in Helsinki.
President-elect Mursi, of the once-banned Muslim Brotherhood, is in the process of forming a government after he was proclaimed Egypt’s first democratically elected president on Sunday, a year and a half after street protests toppled veteran strongman and U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak.
“We have heard some very positive statements so far,” Clinton said, hailing among other things Mursi’s pledge to honor international obligations, “which would, in our view, cover the peace treaty with Israel,” signed in 1979 and which many feared could be abandoned with an Islamist in power.
However, Clinton cautioned, “one election does not a democracy make.”
The historic vote was “just the beginning of hard work, and hard work requires pluralism, respecting the rights of minorities, an independent judiciary and independent media,” she said.
“We expect President Mursi to demonstrate a commitment to inclusivity that is manifested by representatives of the women of Egypt, of the Coptic Christian community, of the secular, non-religious community and young people,” she added.
TEHRAN, July 2 (MNA) – The Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Committee has put forward a proposal to block the strategic Strait of Hormuz to prevent the passage of tankers that carry oil for the countries that have imposed sanctions on Iran, an Iranian MP announced on Sunday.
Speaking to the Persian service of the Mehr News Agency, MP Ebrahim Aqa-Mohammadi said that the proposal had been signed by 100 MPs as of Sunday.
The measure would be a response to the European Union’s oil embargo on Iran that took effect on July 1 and a new U.S. law that penalizes countries that do business with the Central Bank of Iran by denying their banks access to the United States market. The law came into force on June 28.
The Strait of Hormuz is one of the world’s most strategic shipping channels. It connects the vast majority of the world’s countries with the crude oil that fuels their economies.
At its narrowest point, the strait is 21 miles wide, with a two-mile shipping lane on either side. On average, 14 supertankers sail through the strait every day.
MP Arsalan Fat’hipour said on Sunday that if Iran is unfairly targeted, it will not allow “even one drop of oil” to pass through the Strait of Hormuz.
According to the Fars News Agency, he also played down the effects of sanctions against Iran and said, “We have been sanctioned for 33 years and have faced worse conditions than this, but nothing happened.”
At least 250 members of various Syrian opposition groups have gathered in Cairo to discuss a common political vision for their country. (Reuters)
By Al Arabiya with Agencies
A meeting for the Syrian opposition groups kicked off in Cairo on Monday mainly to discuss a new international plan for a transitional Syrian government. They are also expected to hold talks on Tuesday with Arab ministers in a bid to agree on a shared platform, Egyptian media and the Arab League said.
The Arab League chief called on the fragmented Syrian opposition to unite during the opening session of the meeting.
Arab League Secretary General Nabil al-Arabi addressed nearly 250 members of the Syrian opposition at the meeting on Monday in an effort to get disparate groups to pull together. It is the first time the Arab League hosts a meeting of the Syrian opposition.
Arabi said the opposition “must not miss this opportunity” to unite, adding that the Syrian people are more valuable than any factional disagreements.
Syria-based rebel fighters and activists earlier on Monday said they would boycott the opposition meeting in Cairo, denouncing it as a “conspiracy” that served the policy goals of Damascus allies Moscow and Tehran.
“We refuse all kinds of dialogue and negotiation with the killer gangs … and we will not allow anyone to impose on Syria and its people the Russian and Iranian agendas,” said a statement signed by the rebel Free Syrian Army and “independent” activists.
The signatories criticized the agenda of the Cairo talks for “rejecting the idea of a foreign military intervention to save the people … and ignoring the question of buffer zones protected by the international community, humanitarian corridors, an air embargo and the arming of rebel fighters.”
The boycotting groups said the talks follow the “dangerous decisions of the Geneva conference, which aim to safeguard the regime, to create a dialogue with it and to form a unity government with the assassins of our children.”
“The Cairo conference aims to give a new chance to (U.N.-Arab League) envoy Kofi Annan to try again to convince Assad to implement his six-point plan. .. while forgetting that thousands have been martyred since the plan came into force,” they said.
No transition in the presence of Assad
Reema Flaihan, spokesperson of the Local Coordination Committees (LCC), had told Al Arabiya that the responsible committee has prepared a document for the transitional period, which has been signed by the different opposition members.
According to reports, the opposition figures will most probably reject any discussion of a national unity government in the presence of President Bashar al-Assad.
On the ground, as many as 77 people have been killed in violent crackdown on dissent across the country on Sunday.
The Syrian opposition on Sunday branded an international plan for a transition in strife-torn Syria a failure, as the death toll mounted.
World powers meeting in Geneva on Saturday agreed that the transition plan could include current regime members, but the West did not see any role for Assad in a new unity government.
Russia and China insisted that Syrians themselves must decide how the transition takes place, rather than allow others to dictate their fate.
Moscow and Beijing, which have twice blocked U.N. Security Council resolutions on Syria, signed up to the final agreement that did not make any explicit call for Assad to cede power.
Extra powers to Annan and his team
In a special interview with Al Arabiya, Iraq’s Foreign Minister Hoshiar Zebary said that the principles agreed on in Geneva will give extra powers to Annan and his team for the sake of finding a solution to the Syrian crisis.
Official Syrian media slammed the outcome, in rare agreement with the main opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) and the LCC which organize protests.
The SNC said it had expected “more serious and effective action” to emerge from the Geneva talks and reiterated that Assad must quit power.
“The Syrian people were hoping that the international community would adopt more serious and effective measures in dealing with the regime, whose bloody behavior has become clear,” the SNC said.
“The Syrian National Council affirms that no initiative can be accepted by the Syrian people unless it clearly calls on Bashar al-Assad and the tyrants around him to step down.”
It also charged that the Geneva plan “lacked a clear mechanism for action and a timetable” to hold the regime accountable, and warned that this could mean “more bloodshed.”
The LCC said the outcome showed once again a failure to adopt a common position.
It called the transition accord “just one version, different in form only, of the demands of Russian leaders allied to the Assad regime and who cover it militarily and politically in the face of international pressure.”
Iran, a strong ally of Assad, said the Geneva meeting was “unsuccessful” because Damascus and Tehran were not invited.
The United States and European nations reportedly opposed the presence of Iran, although U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan and U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon had wanted Tehran to attend.
The Geneva deal came despite initial pessimism over the talks amid deep divisions between the West and China and Russia on how to end the violence that the Observatory says has killed more than 15,800 since March 2011.
Syria’s neighbor Turkey, which attended the Geneva talks, scrambled fighter jets after Syrian helicopters flew close to its border, the army said on Sunday, hiking tensions following last month’s downing of a Turkish plane.
Six F-16 warplanes took off from airbases in south Turkey on Saturday after Syrian helicopters flew closer to the border than is normal, the army said, specifying there had been three incidents but no violation of Turkish airspace.
Sunday’s highest concentration of deaths was in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor.
Annan said on Saturday it was up to the Syrians to decide who they wanted in a unity government. But he added: “I would doubt that Syrians… would select people with blood on their hands to lead them.”
The United States and France both said it was clear there was no future role for Assad.
TEHRAN, July 2 (MNA) — Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said on Monday that Iran is ready to upgrade its relations with Egypt to the level of ambassador whenever the Arab country announces its readiness.
“Iran has always expressed its interest in upgrading political relations between Tehran and Cairo to the level of ambassador, and, whenever the Egyptian side is ready, the Islamic Republic of Iran is ready to enhance ties between the two countries.”
Salehi described current relations between Iran and Egypt as “good”, adding, “However, the Egyptian side has so far set some conditions for enhancing political relations with Iran, but the election of (Mohamed) Morsi to serve as the Egyptian president has opened a new chapter in the country’s foreign policy.”
“The Foreign Ministry of the Islamic Republic of Iran hopes that the prospects of Egypt’s foreign policy will become brighter and that the country’s new government will take more serious measures to have more comprehensive and deeper relations with the Muslim world,” he added.
The Iranian foreign minister also said, “The Egyptian people did a great job by electing Morsi to serve as the president and brought the revolution to fruition.”
Richard Falk, a special U.N. rapporteur for human rights, said Palestinians in the occupied West Bank were offered no protection in Israeli law. (File photo)
By AFP
GENEVA
The U.N. pointman for Palestinian human rights launched a blistering attack on the international community Monday, accusing it of conspiring in Israeli settlement policies and branding the peace process a “trick.”
Richard Falk, the special U.N. rapporteur for human rights in the occupied territories, also took aim at the so-called Middle East Quartet’s peace envoy Tony Blair over his efforts in the region.
Falk, who spoke to reporters after addressing the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, said Palestinians in the occupied West Bank were offered no protection in Israeli law and that their treatment was akin to apartheid.
“I think one has to begin to call the reality by a name,” he said, likening the “discriminatory dualistic legal system” in the West Bank to the former system in South Africa.
In his report to the council, Falk expressed his concern about Israel’s use of administrative detention, the expansion of settlements and violence by settlers.
Israel in March severed contacts with the council after the 47-member body said it would investigate settlements in the occupied territories, which are considered illegal under international law.
Peace talks between the two sides have been on hold since September 2010, with the Palestinians refusing to resume them without a moratorium on settlement building.
“The peace process is a trick rather than a way to find a solution to the problem,” Falk said.
He also criticized the work of the former British prime minister Tony Blair in the region.
“Tony Blair has not much to show for his 86 visits to the Middle East… (it is) an extension of the peace process which I regard as a failure because while time passes the settlement culture continues.”
“The international community is conspiring – maybe unwittingly – in a process that has no way of bringing justice to the people involved in this conflict,” he said of settlements.
At least 3,500 buildings were under construction in the West Bank in 2011, Falk reported, not including Israeli settlements in annexed east Jerusalem.
Such building on Palestinian land “more or less closes the book on the reality and feasibility” of a two-state solution to the conflict, Falk said.
“The credibility of the Human Rights Council is very much at stake if there is nothing that is done about the non-cooperation or non-compliance” by Israel with the council’s recommendations, he said.
“The language of censure doesn’t help the Palestinian people if there is no action.”
Settler violence against Palestinians was a new feature of the drive to occupy the Palestinian territories, especially around Hebron and Nablus, he added.
“Many people say the Israeli government is an extension of the settlers and I think that is an accurate description,” he said.
Falk said Palestinians were disillusioned by the international peace efforts and had resorted to extreme measures such as hunger strikes to raise awareness of abuses including illegal detention by Israel.
But such action was ignored in Western media, Falk said, sending “the unfortunate signal that only violent protests will be noticed internationally.”
Peter Mertens, leader of the Workers’ Party of Belgium, believes the Eurozone debt crisis is pushing member states towards “a very large number of social conflicts.” Mertens told RT that Europe faces three alternatives – saving the euro with “authoritarian measures by taking national sovereignty overnight to the European level”, breaking up into “two, three or four Europes”, or adopting a socialist model, “where banking system is public, where energy system is public, where there is democracy.” He believes Europe needs radical changes to its financial sector.
NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Five of the biggest banks in the United States are putting finishing touches on plans for going out of business as part of government-mandated contingency planning that could push them to untangle their complex operations.
The plans, known as living wills, are due to regulators no later than July 1 under provisions of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law designed to end too-big-to-fail bailouts by the government. The living wills could be as long as 4,000 pages.
Since the law allows regulators to go so far as to order a bank to divest subsidiaries if it cannot plan an orderly resolution in bankruptcy, the deadline is pushing even healthy institutions to start a multi-year process to untangle their complex global operations, according to industry consultants.
“The resolution process is now going to be part of the cost-benefit analysis on where banks will do business,” said Dan Ryan, leader of the financial services regulatory practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers in New York. “The complexity of the organizations will shrink.”
JPMorgan Chase & Co , Bank of America Corp , Citigroup Inc , Goldman Sachs & Co and Morgan Stanley are among those submitting the first liquidation scenarios to regulators at the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, according to people familiar with the matter.
The five firms, which declined to discuss their plans for this story, have some of the biggest balance sheets, trading desks and derivatives portfolios of financial institutions in the United States.
Great Britain and other major countries are imposing similar requirements for “resolution” plans on their big banks, too.
The liquidation plans are coming amid renewed questions about the safety of big banks following JPMorgan’s stunning announcement last month that a trading debacle has cost it more than $2 billion – a sum far too small to endanger the bank, but shocking enough to bring back memories of the financial crisis.
Amid a global crackdown against alleged black money in secret accounts of Swiss banks, their bankers are selling a new safe-haven idea to their rich clients from India and other countries — the high-value 1,000 franc notes to be stored in safe deposit boxes.
These boxes — kept inside the premises of Swiss banks — are also said to be being used to stash gold, diamond, paintings and art works among other valuables — apparently because of limited risk of catching the preying eyes of foreign governments having signed banking information exchange treaties with Switzerland.
According to industry sources, bankers are telling their rich clients that Switzerland’s tax and information exchange treaties with India and other countries are mostly limited to funds in customers’ savings, deposit and investment accounts, and do not apply to the safe deposit boxes.
As a result, the demand has soared to record high levels for the safe deposit boxes and the 1,000 Swiss franc banknotes in Switzerland, as rich of the world are rushing to get them.
As per the data available with Switzerland’s central bank SNB (Swiss National Bank), the thousand-franc notes now account for 60 per cent of total value of all Swiss banknotes in circulation, up from about 50 per cent a year ago.
Replying to PTI queries, SNB confirmed that there was a significant surge in demand for thousand-franc notes and admitted that this could be due to a trend to store the money and a higher demand was being noticed from abroad for these high-value currency notes.
SNB did not reply to specific queries about demand from India and said that it did not have any data on deposit boxes.
Just one thousand-franc banknote is worth about Rs 60,000 in Indian currency, making it easier to store large amount of money in form of these notes
‘Sanctions only hurting EU, Iran cashing in on exemptions’
The EU embargo of Iranian oil is now in place, along with fresh U.S. sanctions against countries dealing with Tehran. The measures are aimed at pressurizing Iran to curb its nuclear programme. The Islamic Republic says however that it’s been stockpiling money as a buffer and that selling oil remains no problem – thanks to America exempting some countries from penalties – including China and Singapore. Author and journalist Afshin Rattansi says the sanctions are unlikely to have the desired effect.
The urgency for international agreement on Syria is underlined by the growing daily violence there. As Maria Finoshina reports, even the youngest in the country are being dragged into the conflict.
Missiles, bombs, drones & battleships: London ready for Olympics?
High-tech battleships and missiles are on stand-by to protect London during the upcoming Olympics. Some are concerned it looks more like war games than a sporting event. But as RT’s Laura Smith explains, heavy weaponry may not be enough to tackle the real threat.
Russia and China want the Syrian people to resolve the Syrian issue while the US and its allies who are causing the bloodshed is firm about dictating terms.
Interview with James Fetzer, professor and philosopher, Madison.
Syria’s rebels have rebuffed the latest plan for peace. World powers pushed for a unity government at talks in Geneva at the weekend – but the opposition insists Assad has to go. The deal was forged to try and end the drawn-out conflict, which the UN says has claimed more than 10-thousand lives. RT’s Maria Finoshina reports.
Navi Pillay, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, tells Al Jazeera that violence in Syria is being fuelled by the increasing flow of weapons to both the sides.
In a phone call to the Kremlin Sunday, July 1, Syrian President Bashar Assad said he needed just two months to finish off the revolt against his regime. “My new military tactics are working,” he said in a secret video-conference with Russian intelligence and foreign ministry officials who shape Moscow’s policy on Syria.
Reporting this exclusively, debkafile’s intelligence sources also register the fleeting life span of the new plan for ending the Syrian war which UN envoy Kofi Annan announced had been agreed at a multinational Action Group meeting in Geneva on Saturday, June 30. Within 24 hours, the principle of a national unity transitional government based on “mutual consent” was rejected by the regime and the Turkish-based opposition leaders alike, as the violence went into another month.
On the first day of July, 91 people were reported killed in the escalating Syrian violence after a record 4,000 in June.
The new military tactics to which Assad referred are disclosed here:
1. The sweeping removal of most of the veteran Syrian army commanders who led the 16-month bloody assault on regime opponents and rebels. They were sent home with full pay to make way for a new set of younger commanders, most of them drawn from the brutal Alawite Shabiha militia, which is the ruling family’s primary arm against its enemies.
The regular commanders had shown signs of fatigue and doubts about their ability to win Assad’s war. Their will to fight on was being badly sapped by the mounting numbers officers and men going over to the opposition camp in June.
One of the tasks set the new commanders is to stem the rate of defections.
To keep the veteran commanders from joining the renegades and reduce their susceptibility to hostile penetration, the officers were not sacked but retired on full pension plus all the perks of office, including official cars.
2. But a higher, unthinkable level of violence is the key to Assad’s “new tactics.” He has armed the new military chiefs with extra fire power – additional tank and artillery units, air force bombers and attack helicopters – for smashing pockets of resistance and unlimited permission to use it. Already the level of live fire used against the rebels has risen to an even more unthinkable level which explains the sharp escalation of deaths to an average of 120 per day.
On the Syrian-Turkish border, tensions continue to mount. Monday morning, Turkey was still pumping large-scale strength including tanks, antiaircraft and antitank guns, artillery, surface missiles and combat helicopters to the border region.
Saturday, half a dozen Turkish jets were scrambled to meet Syria helicopters approaching their common border.
In Tehran, Brig. Gen. Amir-Ali Hajizadeh, commander of Iran’s IRGC Aerospace Division, warned Ankara that if its troops ventured onto Syrian soil, their bases of departure would be destroyed. The threat was made during Hajizadeh’s announcement of a three-day missile exercise starting Monday in response to the European oil embargo. He reported that long-, medium- and short-range missiles would target “simulations of foreign bases in the northern Semnan Desert,” without mentioning any specific nation except Turkey.
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen of Denmark gives his monthly press briefing in Brussels, in Brussels, Belgium, 02 July 2012. EPA/BGNES
NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has played down the risk of a military confrontation between Turkey and Syria.
Rasmussen also said Ankara was justified in beefing up its defenses along the Syrian border, as cited by international media.
Turkey, a key NATO member, has strengthened its troop presence and air defenses along its southern border after Syria shot down one of its jets on June 22, heightening tensions between the neighbors caused by an uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Asked if he was concerned about Turkey‘s military buildup and whether there was a risk it could lead to a confrontation with Syria, Rasmussen said told a news conference:
“I commend Turkey for having shown restraint despite the very tragic aircraft incident,” Rasmussen told a news conference in Brussels on Monday.
“I find it quite normal that Turkey takes necessary steps to protect its population and its territory,” he said.
He added NATO had received no request from Turkey to deploy AWACS surveillance planes or other military equipment.
At an emergency meeting in Brussels last week, NATO allies condemned Syria‘s shooting down of the Turkish military plane, but stopped short of threatening a military response.
Syria says it shot down the Turkish jet in self-defense and that it was brought down in Syrian air space. Turkey says the jet accidentally violated Syrian air space for a few minutes but was brought down in international air space.
Turkey scrambled six F-16 fighter jets in three separate incidents responding to Syrian military helicopters approaching the border on Sunday, its armed forces command said on Monday.
Meanwhile, Arab states and Turkey urged Syria‘s divided opposition on Monday to unite and form a credible alternative to the government of President Bashar al-Assad, but rifts swiftly emerged at talks in Cairo.
The unity calls were made at the opening of a two-day meeting organized by the Arab League to try to rally Syria‘s opposition, which has been beset by in-fighting that diplomats say have made it tougher for the world to respond to the crisis.
Sixteen months into an uprising against Assad, squabbling among the opposition makes it less likely to be able to win international recognition or to get more than half-hearted foreign support.
“It is not acceptable to waste this opportunity in any way. The sacrifices of the Syrian people are bigger than us all and more precious than any differences or individual and party interests,” Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby said, addressing the roughly 200 Syrian politicians and activists.
As the Sudanese government intensifies its crackdown on anti-government protests that have been going on for almost two weeks, activists have called for a massive demonstration against the government’s austerity measures.
The protesters defiantly dubbed their anti-government rallies “licking elbows” after officials issued a statement telling people who are dissatisfied with the government to do just that.
The protests that were sparked by austerity measures have spread from the capital Khartoum to other areas of the country, with people now openly calling for an end to the 23-year-old rule of Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s president.
[In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit, for research and/or educational purposes. This constitutes 'FAIR USE' of any such copyrighted material.]
“ALEC has faced backlash recently for its role in crafting Florida’s Stand Your Ground laws. Now the organization is taking the same secretive approach to kill renewable energy development across the country.”
Today, behind closed doors in Charlotte, North Carolina, legislators from 15 states will meet with the oil and gas industry to discuss so-called “model legislation” as part of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). The result could be laws that handicap renewable energy targets — while creating loopholes for fossil fuels, written directly by the oil and gas industry itself.
ALEC has faced backlash recently for its role in crafting Florida’s Stand Your Ground laws. Now the organization is taking the same secretive approach to kill renewable energy development across the country.
Oil and gas corporations have a very strong role in politics through groups like Americans For Prosperity, American Petroleum Institute, and, of course, ALEC. Four of the largest oil and gas corporations and two of the most profitable U.S. corporations overall, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and BP, sit on ALEC’s task forces. And so today, according to documents posted by Common Cause, representatives from these and other energy groups will discuss potential legislation that would undermine clean energy standards and limit regulations of polluting industries.
(Reuters) – Greece’s president summoned party leaders on Saturday for one final attempt to avert new elections, but the effort looked doomed to fail after politicians deeply divided over austerity plans said they would stick to their guns.
Greece’s political landscape is in disarray a week after an election left parliament almost equally divided between parties backing and opposing an EU/IMF bailout that keeps Athens afloat in return for pledges of deep spending cuts and tax hikes.
If President Karolos Papoulias fails in a final attempt to persuade leaders to form a coalition, he will have to call a new vote in June. Opinion polls predict the balance of power would tip decisively towards the bailout’s radical leftist opponents, potentially jeopardizing Greece’s membership in the euro zone.
Papoulias called the leaders of the three biggest parties for coalition talks on Sunday at 0900 GMT, after Socialist leader Evangelos Venizelos became the third and last of them to acknowledge he had failed to assemble a coalition.
Without a government to negotiate a new aid tranche from the EU and IMF, Greece risks bankruptcy in weeks and – as European leaders now openly acknowledge – potential ejection from the common currency.
A week of efforts to put together a government failed because of disagreement over the bailout. Party officials said on Saturday they would not change their stances.
“There is no change (to our position),” said Panos Skourletis, a spokesman for the anti-bailout Left Coalition SYRIZA party, which placed second on Sunday and has since seen its popularity increase as anti-bailout voters rally around its charismatic 37-year-old leader, Alexis Tsipras.
“It is obvious that there is an effort to bring about a government that will implement the bailout. We are not participating in such a government,” Skourletis told Reuters.
Tsipras has the most to gain from a new vote. If, as polls predict, SYRIZA overtakes the conservatives to place first, it would be awarded an extra 50 seats in the 300-seat house, making the former student activist – little known outside Greece just weeks ago – into the country’s pre-eminent politician.
A senior official at the smaller and more moderate Democratic Left party, which has enough seats to give the pro-bailout parties a majority, reiterated that it would not participate in a government unless SYRIZA also agreed to join.
“Congressional ethics rules prohibit members from participating in most trips arranged by lobbyists.”
Although Owens filed a travel disclosure with the House Ethics Committee that identifies the trip’s sponsor as the Culture University, email messages and other documents reviewed by ProPublica show that lobbyists from the New York firm Park Strategies, founded by former New York Sen. Al D’Amato, had invited Owens on the trip and spent four months organizing it.
A rule passed by Congress after the Jack Abramoff scandal states: “Member and staff participation in officially-connected travel that is in any way planned, organized, requested, or arranged by a lobbyist is prohibited.”
Besides D’Amato, others involved in arranging the trip included two executives at his firm, John Zagame and Sean King, son of Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y. The Park Strategies lobbyists are registered foreign agents for the government of Taiwan.
“Lobbyists are not supposed to be associated with this trip in any way — they are not supposed to be organizing this or orchestrating it,” said Public Citizen’s Craig Holman, who helped draft the post-Abramoff reforms.
The Ethics Committee investigates potential rule violations and can recommend penalties, such as censure or a fine, to the full House. The committee approved Owens’ trip before he left, but the congressman’s filings with the panel listed only the Culture University as sponsor and did not mention Park Strategies.
Both Park Strategies and Owens’ spokesman told ProPublica they believe the trip complied with House rules.
Congress adopted the rule barring lobbyist involvement in most congressional travel after abuses exposed by the Abramoff influence-peddling scandal. Trips were a favorite method of Abramoff to warm members of Congress and staffers to his clients’ interests. In the most serious case, Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, was sentenced to 30 months in prison in 2007 after admitting he accepted luxury travel and other gifts from Abramoff while helping the lobbyist’s clients.
Park Strategies’ organizing role in the Owens trip stands out because it is documented by an unusually rich trove of email and other records filed by the firm with the Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires disclosure of congressional contacts by lobbyists for foreign governments, businesses and political organizations, among others.
The British government has been gearing up its security for this year’s Olympics. The code red level security has denied individuals’ access to England and Parliament could soon pass an anti-terrorism plan similar to the American Patriot Act, which would give the government access to it citizens’ emails, text messages, phone calls and online activity. So are the security measures being taken to the extreme? Here is our report.
(LinkAsia News: 5/11/12) China’s tightly controlled state propaganda machine was in complete disarray as the Chen Guangcheng saga played out last week, with conflicting messages abounding. Contributor David Bandurski breaks down the sequence of events that played out between state and social media.
IMAGE: Police officers approach a journalist outside of Chaoyang Hospital, where blind activist Guangcheng was reported to be staying at, in Beijing: REUTERS/Carlos Barria
Native Congressional Candidate Responds to Media Usage of Indian Terms
FLAGSTAFF, ARIZONA – Harvard Law School graduate (’06) and Democratic candidate for Arizona’s First Congressional District, Wenona Benally Baldenegro has issued a statement in response to offensive media characterizations of American Indians, following questions of US Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren’s American Indian ancestry. Baldenegro was a student at Harvard Law School, during the same time that Dr. Warren was a Harvard Law professor.
Baldenegro, a member of the Navajo Nation, is running a historic campaign to be the first American Indian woman ever to be elected to the United States Congress.
“I do not have the answers to the questions regarding Dr. Warren and her background. Only she can answer any lingering questions. What I can say is that I am greatly concerned about the tremendous disrespect with which this story has been reported by some in the media. Fox News’ Michelle Malkin wrote an article where she referred to Dr. Warren, using extremely offensive names, including ‘Sacaja-whiner,’ ‘Pinocchio-hontas,’ ‘Chief Full-of-Lies,’ and ‘Running Joke.’”
“The right wing website, The Daily Caller, re posted Malkin’s piece, with the headline ‘Sitting Bulls**t.’ While The Daily Caller has since changed its title, Malkin’s article continues to be circulated around the internet without any accompanying commentary condemning the use of such degrading and offensive terms. We should not tolerate it, and I stand with the Native American Journalists Association, and the Indian nations that have publicly condemned these highly offensive characterizations. “
Facebook Co-Founder Saverin Gives Up U.S. Citizenship Before IPO
By Danielle Kucera, Sanat Vallikappen and Christine Harper
Eduardo Saverin, the billionaire co- founder of Facebook Inc. (FB), renounced his U.S. citizenship before an initial public offering that values the social network at as much as $96 billion, a move that may reduce his tax bill.
Facebook plans to raise as much as $11.8 billion through the IPO, the biggest in history for an Internet company. Saverin’s stake is about 4 percent, according to the website whoownsfacebook.com. At the high end of the proposed IPO market capitalization, that would be worth about $3.84 billion. His holdings aren’t listed in Facebook’s regulatory filings.
May 11 (Bloomberg) — Results of a Bloomberg investor poll show that 79 percent of respondents say Facebook is overvalued at $96 billion. Dominic Chu reports on Bloomberg Television’s “In The Loop.” (Source: Bloomberg)
Saverin, 30, joins a growing number of people giving up U.S. citizenship ahead of a possible increase in tax rates for top earners. The Brazilian-born resident of Singapore is one of several people who helped Mark Zuckerberg start Facebook in a Harvard University dormitory and stand to reap billions of dollars after the world’s largest social network holds its IPO.
“Eduardo recently found it more practical to become a resident of Singapore since he plans to live there for an indefinite period of time,” said Tom Goodman, a spokesman for Saverin, in an e-mailed statement.
Saverin’s name is on a list of people who chose to renounce citizenship as of April 30, published by the Internal Revenue Service. Saverin made that move “around September” of last year, according to his spokesman.
Besides helping cut tax bills stemming from the Facebook, the move may also help him avoid capital gains taxes on future investments since Singapore doesn’t have a capital gains tax.
3.6 Million Taxpayer Dollars Being Used To Support The Lavish Lifestyles Of Former Presidents Such As Bush And Clinton
You are not going to believe how much money is being spent on our former presidents. At a time when U.S. government spending is wildly out of control, a total of 3.6 million dollars is being used to support the lavish lifestyles of former presidents such as George W. Bush and Bill Clinton in 2012. For 2013, the plan is to increase that amount to 3.7 million dollars. But do any of them really need this kind of welfare? The truth is that all of them are very wealthy. So what justification is there for giving them so much money? You can see the GSA budget proposal for former presidents for 2013 right here. The 3.7 million dollars for 2013 does not even include the cost of Secret Service protection. Rather, it only covers expenses such as office rentals, travel, phone bills, postage, printing and pension benefits. Certainly it is not unreasonable to grant former presidents a small pension, but should we be showering them with millions of dollars each year? At a time when the federal government is drowning in so much debt, the fact that these former presidents are willing to take such huge amounts of taxpayer money really does make them look like parasites.
So why are these former presidents getting this money?
Reid furious as GOP blocks quick Senate Export-Import vote
By Daniel Stauss
Legislation reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank hit a snag Thursday when Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) blocked an attempt by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to move to a final vote on the bill.
Reid responded by filing for cloture on the legislation, which was approved by the House on Wednesday and was expected to be dispatched quickly by the Senate. Reid’s move sets up a vote on Monday.
Reid asked for unanimous consent to approve the motion to proceed to the bill, but Kyl objected and asked for consent to include five amendments to the legislation.
Kyl also asked that the Senate require a 60-vote margin for passage for the legislation.
Conservative groups have pushed Republicans to oppose the Export-Import Bank, which they argue disrupts markets through export subsidies. Ninety-three House Republicans voted against the bill in the House.
House votes to replace Pentagon cuts mandated by debt deal
By Erik Wasson and Pete Kasperowicz
The House voted Thursday to override steep cuts to the Pentagon’s budget mandated by last summer’s debt deal and replace them with spending reductions to food stamps and other mandatory social programs.
While doomed in the Senate and opposed by the White House, the legislation, which would reduce the deficit by $243 billion, is a Republican marker for post-election budget talks with the White House.
Members approved the Sequester Replacement Reconciliation Act in a party-line 218-199 vote. As expected, the bill was supported by nearly all Republicans — only 16 opposed it, and no Democrats supported it.
Republicans voting against the bill were Reps. Justin Amash (Mich.), Roscoe Bartlett (Md.), Charlie Bass (N.H.), John Duncan (Tenn.), Mike Fitzpatrick (Pa.), Chris Gibson (N.Y.), Louie Gohmert (Texas), Jaime Herrera Beutler (Wash.), Tim Johnson (Ill.), Walter Jones (N.C.), Raul Labrador (Idaho), Steve LaTourette (Ohio), Frank LoBiondo (N.J.), Todd Platts (Pa.), Ed Whitfield (Ky.) and Frank Wolf (Va.). GOP Rep. James Sensenbrenner (Wis.) voted present.
Republicans cast the bill as a first step back toward controlling federal spending, after years of allowing spending and deficits to balloon.
“We believe the purpose of the sequester was to replace the fact that Congress isn’t governing,” House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said during the opening debate on the bill. “Well, let’s have Congress govern. That’s why we’re doing this.”
“Not only does the public want deep cuts, it wants those cuts to encompass spending in virtually every military domain — air power, sea power, ground forces, nuclear weapons, and missile defenses.”
While politicians, insiders and experts may be divided over how much the government should spend on the nation’s defense, there’s a surprising consensus among the public about what should be done: They want to cut spending far more deeply than either the Obama administration or the Republicans.
That’s according to the results of an innovative, new, nationwide survey by three nonprofit groups, the Center for Public integrity, the Program for Public Consultation and the Stimson Center. Not only does the public want deep cuts, it wants those cuts to encompass spending in virtually every military domain — air power, sea power, ground forces, nuclear weapons, and missile defenses.
According to the survey, in which respondents were told about the size of the budget as well as shown expert arguments for and against spending cuts, two-thirds of Republicans and nine in 10 Democrats supported making immediate cuts — a position at odds with the leaderships of both political parties.
The average total cut was around $103 billion, a substantial portion of the current $562 billion base defense budget, while the majority supported cutting it at least $83 billion. These amounts both exceed a threatened cut of $55 billion at the end of this year under so-called “sequestration” legislation passed in 2011, which Pentagon officials and lawmakers alike have claimed would be devastating.
“When Americans look at the amount of defense spending compared to spending on other programs, they see defense as the one that should take a substantial hit to reduce the deficit,” said Steven Kull, director of the Program for Public Consultation (PPC), and the lead developer of the survey. “Clearly the polarization that you are seeing on the floor of the Congress is not reflective of the American people.”
A broad disagreement with the Obama administration’s current spending approach — keeping the defense budget mostly level — was shared by 75 percent of men and 78 percent of women, all of whom instead backed immediate cuts. That view was also shared by at least 69 percent of every one of four age groups from 18 to 60 and older, although those aged 29 and below expressed much higher support, at 92 percent.
Disagreement with the Obama administration’s continued spending on the war in Afghanistan was particularly intense, with 85 percent of respondents expressing
support for a statement that said in part, “it is time for the Afghan people to manage their own country and for us to bring our troops home.” A majority of respondents backed an immediate cut, on average, of $38 billion in the war’s existing $88 billion budget, or around 43 percent.
Despite the public’s distance from Obama’s defense budget, the survey disclosed an even larger gap between majority views and proposals by House Republicans this week to add $3 billion for an extra naval destroyer, a new submarine, more missile defenses, and some weapons systems the Pentagon has proposed to cancel. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has similarly endorsed a significant rise in defense spending.
When it comes to military forces, respondents on average favored at least a 27 percent cut in spending on nuclear arms — the largest proportional cut of any in the survey. They also supported, on average, a 23 percent cut for ground forces, a 17 percent cut for air power and a 14 percent cut for missile defenses. Modest majorities also said they favored dumping some major individual weapons programs, including the costly F-35 jet fighter, a new long-range strategic bomber, and construction of a new aircraft carrier.
Bernanke to Dems: Congress endangers recovery by not finishing its work
By Alexander Bolton -
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke warned Senate Democrats Thursday that Congress could derail the national economy if it fails to complete work on important tax and spending issues by year’s end.
Taxes will increase by an estimated $5 trillion over the next decade if Congress does not extend expiring law by Dec. 31. The nation also faces an automatic $1.2 trillion spending cut and the expiration of the payroll tax holiday and benefits for the unemployed.
Bernanke warned Democrats at a lunch meeting that the combined effect would have severely damaging consequences for the recovering economy.
“He stressed if all these things occur, it could drive us back into a worse recession and the sooner we can resolve these issues, the more likely we are to give confidence to consumers and investors across America,” said Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.).
Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said Bernanke and his colleagues discussed a “fiscal cliff” that could put the country back into recession.
“Talking about the fiscal cliff at the end of this year, with all the tax cuts expiring, with [the spending] sequester, with unemployment insurance expiring and payroll tax cut expiring and if all those things happened that would constitute a fiscal cliff and that would have economic consequences,” said Conrad.
While the media was busy obsessing about Obama’s fundraiser they totally missed the fact hundreds of thousands of Americans are losing their unemployment benefits. In 8 states, this weekend, 230 thousand Americans will lose their unemployment benefits. Nearly 100 thousand of those workers, coming from the State of California alone. So why did the media totally ignore it?
This week Goldman Sachs put out an list of companies that get 20 percent or more of their sales from the government. the names on the list aren’t shocking, but the percentages are.
TEHRAN – The latest exploration operations at the Kish gas field, which is located in the Persian Gulf, show that it contains at least 66 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, which is a rise of 26 trillion cubic feet over previous estimates, according to an official of the National Iranian Oil Company.
And explorations are underway in the region to find new natural gas deposits, NIOC Exploration Department Director Mahmoud Mohaddess told the Mehr News Agency on Friday.
Earlier, National Drilling Company of Iran Deputy Director Mehran Makvandi said that 60,000 meters of drilling will be carried out at the Kish gas field, the Shana News Agency reported.
Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi recently said that the National Iranian Oil Company and its subsidiaries should finish drilling wells and start gas production as soon as possible.
He added that development and exploitation of the Kish gas field can boost the national economy.
Implementation of the development plan for the Kish gas field started in 2007. In addition to its 66 trillion cubic feet of in-situ gas, the field also contains about 514 million barrels of condensates.
Iran has the second largest proven gas reserves in the world after Russia.
Iran’s natural gas production capacity stands at around 554 million cubic meters per day, National Iranian Gas Company spokesman Majid Boujarzadeh said on February 5.
Boujarzadeh told the Pana News Agency that taking the gas imported from Turkmenistan into account, about 600 million cubic meters of natural gas is supplied across the country every day.
Iran exported over 7.6 billion cubic meters of natural gas during the previous Iranian calendar year, which ended on March 19, up 10.5 percent compared to the year before.
Native Firms Capture $6.8 Billion, Add 109,000 Jobs through SBA 8(a) Program
WASHINGTON – Addressing Native poverty through the SBA 8(a) program not only shifts economic activity, it stimulates the economies of some of the poorest communities in the country as it replaces welfare and/or social service spending, moves people into the labor force, and stimulates Native capital growth – especially Native human capital.
“The story is compelling, as our study clearly shows how important this program is to our Native communities,”
stated Lance Morgan, Chairman of the Native American Contractors Association.
The impact is some $6.8 billion sold to the Federal Government.
The $6.8 billion of 2011 federal contracting requires Native firms to purchase input goods and services and to hire workers, according to the Native American Contractors Association along with Taylor Policy Group, which released these findings late Tuesday afternoon.
The estimated economy wide impacts include:
109,000 jobs;
almost $6 billion in wages and benefits; and
a total GDP contribution of $9.6 billion.
“Our goal is for the study to serve as a glaring illustration of the importance and success of Native participation in the SBA 8(a) program. This study is made available not to only our membership, but also for the agencies and legislators that work with, and seek information from, Tribes, Alaska Native Corporations, and Native Hawaiian Organization when it comes to government contracting matters and concerns,”
“Spain does not want the poor to pay the cost of economic adjustment, nor does it want to limit anyone’s economic, social and cultural rights.”
An expert body of the United Nations has warned the Spanish government that the severe budget cutbacks it is applying must not undermine its commitment to upholding the economic, social and cultural rights of the country’s people.
Austerity measures imposed by the government of centre-right Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy could have “a negative and disproportionate impact on the enjoyment of those rights,” said the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR).
Committee Chairperson Ariranga Govindasamy Pillay, a native of Mauritius, said these concerns will definitely appear in the final conclusions of its review of Spain’s compliance with the provisions of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, to be released on May 18.
The Committee, made up of 18 independent experts from different regions of the world, monitors observance of the Covenant by the 160 states that have ratified it since its adoption in 1966 and its entry into force in 1976.
Two particular events mark the case of Spain, which was discussed this week, said expert Jaime Marchán of Ecuador, the Committee’s rapporteur on the report presented by Spain.
One was the elections in November last year, won by the People’s Party, which replaced the government of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) led by former prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, in power since 2004.
The second feature mentioned by Marchán was “the persistence of a very severe economic crisis whose direct negative and devastating impacts have often interfered with maintenance of basic levels of protection for economic, social and cultural rights.”
In his assessment of Spain’s compliance, the rapporteur recalled that since 2004 the country has taken measures to promote economic, social and cultural rights, adopting many of the recommendations issued by the U.N. Committee in their review of Spain that year. Marchán mentioned the action plan for development of the Roma, or gypsy, population in 2010-2012 and the new 2012-2020 strategy for integration of Roma communities.
However, lawyer Carlos Villán, president of the Spanish Society for International Human Rights Law (AEDIDH), told IPS that in his country, gypsies “continue to be victims of racism and rejection by a segment of the majority population.”
Indentured Servitude for Seniors: Social Security Garnished for Student Debts
By Ellen Brown
“The Social Security program…represents our commitment as a society to the belief that workers should not live in dread that a disability, death, or old age could leave them or their families destitute.” – President Jimmy Carter, December 20, 1977.
“[This law] assures the elderly that America will always keep the promises made in troubled times a half century ago…[The Social Security Amendments of 1983 are] a monument to the spirit of compassion and commitment that unites us as a people.”– President Ronald Reagan, April 20, 1983
So said Presidents Carter and Reagan, but that was before 1996, when Congress voted to allow federal agencies to offset portions of Social Security payments to collect debts owed to those agencies. (31 U.S.C. §3716). Now we read of horror stories like this:
I’m a 68 year old grandma of 2 young grandchildren. I went to college to upgrade my employment status in 1998 or 1999. I finished in 2000 and at that time had a student loan balance of about 3500.00.
Could not find a job and had to request forbearance to carry me. Over the years I forgot about the loan, dealt with poor health, had brain surgery in 2006 and the collection agents decided to collect for the loan in 2008.
At no time during the 6-7 year gap did anyone remind me or let me know that I could make a minimum payment on the loan. Now that I am on Social Security (have been since I was 62), they have decided to garnishee my SS check to the tune of 15%.
I have not been employed since 2004 and have the two dependents . . . . I don’t dispute that I owed them the $3500.00 but am wondering why they let it build up to somewhere around $17,000/20,000 before they attempted to collect.
Her debt went from $3500 to over $17,000 in 10 years! How could that be?
It seems that Congress has removed nearly every consumer protection from student loans, including not only standard bankruptcy protections, statutes of limitations, and truth in lending requirements, but protection from usury (excessive interest). Lenders can vary the interest rates, and some borrowers are reporting rates as high as 18-20%. At 20%, debt doubles in just 3-1/2 years; and in 7 years, it quadruples. Congress has also given lenders draconian collection powers to extort not just the original principal and interest on student loans but huge sums in penalties, fees, and collection costs.
U.S. taxpayers now pay nearly half a trillion dollars annually to finance our federal debt. The cumulative figure comes to $8.2 trillion paid in interest just in the last 24 years. By financing the debt itself rather than paying interest to private parties, the government could divert what it would have paid in interest into tuition, jobs, infrastructure and social services, allowing us to keep the social contract while at the same time stimulating the economy.
The majority of these debts are being imposed on young people, who have a potential 40 years of gainful employment ahead of them to pay the debt off. But a sizeable chunk of U.S. student loan debt is held by senior citizens, many of whom are not only unemployed but unemployable. According to the New York Federal Reserve, two million U.S. seniors age 60 and over have student loan debt, on which they owe a collective $36.5 billion; and 11.2 percent of this debt is in default. Almost a third of all student loan debt is held by people aged 40 and over, and 4.2% is held by people over the age of 60. The total student debt is now over $1 trillion, more even than credit card debt. The sum is unsustainable and threatens to be the next debt tsunami.
LONDON (Reuters) – Banks are quietly readying themselves to start trading a new Greek currency. Some banks never erased the drachma from their systems after Greece adopted the euro more than a decade ago and would be ready at the flick of a switch if its debt problems forced it to bring back national banknotes and coins.
From the end of the Soviet Union – which spawned currencies such as the Estonian Kroon and the Kazakh Tenge – to the introduction of the euro, they have had plenty of practice in preparing their systems to cope with change.
Planning behind the scenes has been underway since Europe’s debt crisis erupted in Greece in 2009, said U.S.-based Hartmut Grossman of ICS Risk Advisors who works with Wall Street banks.
“A lot of the firms, particularly in Europe and also here, have been looking at that for a long time,” said Grossman, who added that the latest Greek political crisis had brought matters “to a little bit of a head”.
“But there really has been contingency planning at all of the financial institutions for that to happen … Greece leaving the euro zone is not a new idea,” he said.
The EU says it wants Greece to stay in the common currency, and opinion polls show Greeks want to keep it. But they also voted last Sunday for parties opposed to a bailout with the EU and IMF, throwing Greece’s future in the bloc back into doubt.
The elections threw into doubt the EU/IMF aid package that came at the price of harsh austerity measures, and was reached only after much haggling between banks and politicians over a 100 billion euro debt reduction.
While the deal averted financial market catastrophe by allowing Greece to continue repaying its reduced debts, any future problems could be yet more troublesome, even if Athens managed the process in a more or less orderly fashion.
A Greek departure from the euro would create legal and practical problems for the banks which would dwarf the relatively straightforward technical job of dealing in a new currency.
The 2 Billion Dollar Loss By JP Morgan Is Just A Preview Of The Coming Collapse Of The Derivatives Market
When news broke of a 2 billion dollar trading loss by JP Morgan, much of the financial world was absolutely stunned. But the truth is that this is just the beginning. This is just a very small preview of what is going to happen when we see the collapse of the worldwide derivatives market. When most Americans think of Wall Street, they think of a bunch of stuffy bankers trading stocks and bonds. But over the past couple of decades it has evolved into much more than that. Today, Wall Street is the biggest casino in the entire world. When the “too big to fail” banks make good bets, they can make a lot of money. When they make bad bets, they can lose a lot of money, and that is exactly what just happened to JP Morgan. Their Chief Investment Office made a series of trades which turned out horribly, and it resulted in a loss of over 2 billion dollars over the past 40 days. But 2 billion dollars is small potatoes compared to the vast size of the global derivatives market. It has been estimated that the the notional value of all the derivatives in the world is somewhere between 600 trillion dollars and 1.5 quadrillion dollars. Nobody really knows the real amount, but when this derivatives bubble finally bursts there is not going to be nearly enough money on the entire planet to fix things.
Sadly, a lot of mainstream news reports are not even using the word “derivatives” when they discuss what just happened at JP Morgan. This morning I listened carefully as one reporter described the 2 billion dollar loss as simply a “bad bet”.
And perhaps that is easier for the American people to understand. JP Morgan made a series of really bad bets and during a conference call last night CEO Jamie Dimon admitted that the strategy was “flawed, complex, poorly reviewed, poorly executed and poorly monitored”.
The funny thing is that JP Morgan is considered to be much more “risk averse” than most other major Wall Street financial institutions are.
So if this kind of stuff is happening at JP Morgan, then what in the world is going on at some of these other places?
The Transportation Security Administration has frisked toddlers and put kids on the no fly list in America. Many Americans feel the TSA is obsolete and feel their tax money could be better spent on other things. One blogger was able to sneak items through the body scanners that are supposed to protect Americans from another terror attack. Anthony Randazzo, director of economic research at the Reason Foundation, joins us for more.
Britain said Thursday that it was in talks with other European Union members about possibly easing a provision of their Iran oil embargo, set to begin in less than two months, that could cause harmful and unintended side effects because it bans Europe-based insurers from covering any ships that carry Iranian oil anywhere in the world.
Such an easing would most likely be welcomed by Iran as well as non-European buyers of Iranian oil, and it could reduce a potential cause of spiking oil prices. Most of Iran’s estimated 2.2 million barrels of daily oil production goes to Asia.
Concern about the impact of the insurance provision has grown since the European Union announced the embargo early this year, part of a coordinated Western campaign to penalize Iran over its uranium enrichment program.
Most big maritime insurers and underwriters are based in Europe, and other buyers of Iranian oil are finding it increasingly difficult to buy the required liability insurance needed to ship it as the embargo’s July 1 enforcement date looms.
The provision has also been criticized as hastily conceived by many in the insurance industry, notably the associations of shipowners and charterers who pool resources to provide coverage. They are known as P&I clubs, for protection and indemnity.
Even China, Iran’s biggest customer, signaled last month that it might be forced to curtail purchases partly because of the insurance problem. Reports in the insurance trade press said the China P&I Club would suspend doing business with tankers carrying Iranian oil. Japan has already done so.
There had been speculation that Britain, an epicenter of maritime insurance services and home to the International Group of P&I Clubs, a trade group, would seek to delay the insurance ban in consultation with other European Union members, which are scheduled to review the embargo’s provisions this month. Reuters, quoting unidentified diplomats, reported Wednesday that the British would seek a six-month postponement.
Britain’s Foreign Office said in a statement on Thursday that it was “committed to a two-track approach of engagement and increasing pressure on Iran through far-reaching sanctions.” The statement also said that the European Union was reviewing aspects of the insurance provision “to ensure that the pressure on Iran is maximized, while avoiding any undesired impacts elsewhere.”
“We are in discussions with several E.U. member states on this,” it said.
Iran had no immediate comment, but Iranian officials have confidently predicted that the European Union embargo would fail, undermined by divisions within Europe and by the demand for its oil elsewhere.
The development came as Iran and the so-called P5-plus-1 countries — the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany — are preparing for a second round of negotiations over Iran’s uranium enrichment activities in Baghdad on May 23. Iranian officials have said they expect a gesture of good faith — like an easing of the sanctions — as the talks progress.
The United States military has called for a review of all its training classes after receiving criticism for a course taught to senior officers that allegedly encouraged war against Islam.
The controversial class presented slides that accused dozens of Islamic groups, many widely recognised as mainstream advocacy groups, of infiltrating the US media, education system, government and military.
One slide titled “The Muslim Brotherhood and Violence” showed a photo of an al-Qaeda beheading, erroneously conflating the two groups.
Through the slides and other presentations, the course created a picture of a US government co-opted by subversive Muslim elements.
Al Jazeera’s Josh Rushing reports from Washington.
WINDOW ROCK, ARIZONA – The Navajo Nation has lost yet another Code Talker.
Navajo Code Talker Samuel Tso
Samuel Tso, 89, of Lukachukai, Arizona, passed away Wednesday evening with family members beside him at San Juan Regional Medical Center in Farmington, New Mexico.
Navajo Nation President Ben Shelly has ordered the Navajo Nation flag to be flown at half staff beginning at today, May 10, through sundown May 14, to honor Code Talker Tso for his service to the Navajo Nation and his country in World War II.
“The Navajo Nation has lost another Code Talker and that saddens my heart. The Code Talkers have brought great pride to our Nation and the loss of Samuel Tso saddens not only myself, his loss saddens the Navajo Nation. On behalf of the First Lady, the Vice President, and the Navajo people, we offer our prayers, condolences and words of encouragement to the Tso family. Samuel Tso was a true Navajo warrior,”
Art imitates life they say, and every now and then life imitates art.
Which is only slightly terrifying when the art being imitated is a Call of Duty title and the real-world entity doing the imitating is the Pentagon.
A fictional drone from a videogame that hasn’t even been released yet has inspired a US DoD office to consider pursuing the same drone in real life, Brookings Institute 21st Century Defense Initiative director and all-around drones guru Peter Singer tells Innovation News Daily.
Thousands of Mauritanians declare readiness to kick out President Aziz, devastating bombings hit the Syrian capital as the blame game continues, Algeria holds parliamentary elections amid voter apathy, and more.
Today’s headlines in full:
Thousands of Mauritanians declare readiness to kick out President Aziz
Al-Alam, Iran
Devastating bombings hit Syrian capital as the blame game continues
New TV, Lebanon
Algeria holds parliamentary elections amid voter apathy
BBC Arabic, UK
Relatives of Palestinian hunger strikers slam Red Cross for ‘negative’ role
Al Jazeera, Qatar
Bahrain postpones retrial of medics jailed for treating protestors
Press TV, Iran
International community, especially US, turning blind eye to Bahrain
Press TV, Iran
Netanyahu’s last-minute Kadima deal sparks protests across Israel
IBA, Israel
Moody’s downgrades rating for Israel’s banking system
IBA, Israel
Israeli settlers burn hundreds of olive trees in West Bank
Palestine TV, Ramallah
Image: Al-Alam
Mosaic is a Peabody Award-winning daily compilation of television news reports from the Middle East, including Egypt, Lebanon, Israel, Syria, the Palestinian Authority, Iraq and Iran. Watch more Mosaic at http://www.linktv.org/mosaic
Deerfield employees can earn $100 for reporting crimes
A group of about 70 landscapers and garbage truck drivers got training from the Broward Sheriff’s Office this week so they know what to look for. Another group of about 35 will train next week.
BSO calls the program Operation B.O.L.O. When an employee reports something suspicious, on-duty BSO deputies will drive to the scene. If the information leads to an arrest, the employee gets a reward of up to $100.
“We’re targeting employees out and about throughout the day, who can be an extra set of eyes and ears,” said BSO Deerfield Police Chief Pete Sudler. “There’s no doubt while they’re out there, things are going on around them they’re not trained to spot yet.”
The program is the first of its kind in South Florida, Sudler said, though there are similar programs in Illinois, Texas and in Central Florida. He’s never heard of a city paying employees for good information, though.
The program is funded by BSO’s Law Enforcement Trust Fund, which is made up of funds seized during investigations. By Florida law, the trust fund must be spent on special programs or crime prevention and can’t be used to defray normal operating costs for a police department.
An initial allocation of $5,000 will cover the program for now. How quickly that money disappears will measure the program’s effectiveness, Sudler said.
Arrests in crimes including burglaries, robberies and drug deals will bank employees the full $100. Lesser crimes and tips that less directly lead to an arrest would pay a little less, with the payment determined on a case-by-case basis.
[In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit, for research and/or educational purposes. This constitutes 'FAIR USE' of any such copyrighted material.]
Vatican Bank Account Closed At JP Morgan, Image May Be Hurt
By Philip Pullella and Lisa Jucca
VATICAN CITY/MILAN, March 19 (Reuters) – JP Morgan Chase is closing the Vatican bank’s account with an Italian branch of the U.S. banking giant because of concerns about a lack of transparency at the Holy See’s financial institution, Italian newspapers reported.
Bernanke said American banks’ exposure to stresses in Europe’s banking sector remained a “concern,” despite U.S. firms’ moves to allocate offsetting capital.
In his full remarks, Bernanke details those actions.
Fed earned $77 billion last year, 2nd-highest ever
By Steve Goldstein
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The Federal Reserve and its district banks said Tuesday it earned $77.4 billion last year, down from $81.7 billion in 2010 but the second-highest level in the central bank’s history. The bumper earnings allowed the Fed to distribute $75.4 billion to the U.S. Treasury, also the second-highest level ever. The earnings was derived primarily from $83.6 billion in interest income on securities acquired through open market operations, from Treasury securities, federal agency and government-sponsored enterprise mortgage-backed securities, and GSE debt securities. The Fed repeated that it doesn’t expect to record a loss on any of its emergency loan programs. On its portfolio of assets, unrealized losses totaled $4.3 billion, which the Fed attributed to “instrument-specific credit risk” on commercial and residential mortgage loans; the Fed earned $428 million on the securities it did sell.
As Sweden Goes, So Goes the World: The Beginning of the End of Cash
There are many, many things to dislike about analog money. Cash and coins are unwieldy. They’re heavy. They’re dirty. They leave no automatic record of the financial transactions that are made with them.
Here in the U.S., despite Square and PayPal and other services that would seem to herald the end of cash, bills and coins still represent 7 percent of our total economy. In Sweden, however — which ranked first in this year’s Global Information Technology Report from the World Economic Forum — cash is scarcer. And it’s becoming, the AP reports, scarcer still. While Sweden was the first European country to introduce bank notes in 1661, it’s now come farther than any other country in the attempt to eradicate them. In most Swedish cities, the AP notes,
U.S. War Game Sees Perils of Israeli Strike Against Iran
WASHINGTON — A classified war simulation held this month to assess the repercussions of an Israeli attack on Iran forecasts that the strike would lead to a wider regional war, which could draw in the United States and leave hundreds of Americans dead, according to American officials.
The officials said the so-called war game was not designed as a rehearsal for American military action — and they emphasized that the exercise’s results were not the only possible outcome of a real-world conflict
By KIRIT RADIA (@KiritRadia_ABC) and RYM MOMTAZ
MOSCOW, Russia, March 19, 2012
A Russian military unit has arrived in Syria, according to Russian news reports, a development that a United Nations Security Council source told ABC News was “a bomb” certain to have serious repercussions.
Russia, one of President Bashar al-Assad’s strongest allies despite international condemnation of the government’s violent crackdown on the country’s uprising, has repeatedly blocked the United Nations Security Council’s attempts to halt the violence, accusing the U.S. and its allies of trying to start another war.
The Pirate Bay to Fly ‘Server Drones’ to Avoid Law Enforcement
One of the world’s largest BitTorrent sites is going to put servers on GPS-controlled aircraft drones in order to evade authorities who are looking to shut the site down
By Jason Koebler
The world’s largest and most resilient BitTorrent site plans to redefine “cloud computing” with a plan to move at least some of its servers onto unmanned drones miles above Sweden.
In a Sunday blog post, The Pirate Bay announced new “Low Orbit Server Stations” that will house the site’s servers and files on unmanned, GPS-controlled, aircraft drones.
Why is President Obama Keeping Yemeni Journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye in Prison? 1 of 2
Uploaded by democracynow on Mar 15, 2012
democracynow.org – The Obama administration is facing scrutiny for its role in the imprisonment of a Yemeni journalist who exposed how the United States was behind a 2009 bombing in Yemen that killed 14 women and 21 children. In January 2011, a Yemeni state security court gave the journalist, Abdulelah Haider Shaye, a five-year jail sentence on terrorism-related charges following a disputed trial that was condemned by several human rights and press freedom groups. Within a month of Shaye’s sentencing, then-Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh announced he was going to pardon the journalist. But Saleh changed his mind after a phone call from President Obama. Thirteen months later, Shaye remains behind bars. We speak to Mohamed Abdel Dayem of the Committee to Protect Journalists and award-winning investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill.
Watch Part 2 of 2:
“Abdulelah Haider Shaye [is] a brave journalist who just happened to be on the wrong side of history in the eyes of the U.S.,” Scahill says. “His crime seems to be interviewing the wrong people and having the audacity to publish the other side of the story.”
Activism
As Occupy Arrestees Arraigned, Iris Scans Affect Bail
The first of the more than 70 Occupy Wall Street protesters arrested Saturday afternoon and evening were arraigned yesterday in Manhattan Criminal Court.
Exhausted by a night and day in jail and shaken by the violence of the police response to Occupy Wall Street’s six-month anniversary celebration, many burst into tears of relief when they were finally released to the friendly welcome of the movement’s Jail Support team
“Peace envoy” sits on board with traitors, meddlers, and warmongers.
By Tony Cartalucci
BlacklistedNews.com
“U.N.-Arab League envoy” Kofi Annan has claimed over the last several weeks to be backing “peace efforts” in Syria to end the conflict which has lasted over a year now. In reality, it has been revealed that his function is to simply buy time for a collapsing militant front and the creation of NATO-occupied “safe havens” from which further destabilization and “coercive action” can be conducted against the Syrian government.
This has been confirmed by Fortune 500-funded, US foreign-policy think-tank, Brookings Institution which has blueprinted designs for regime change in Libya as well as both Syria and Iran. In their latest report, “Assessing Options for Regime Change” it is stated:
NH Woman Sued For Planting Flowers In Her Front Yard
By Jim Armstrong, WBZ-TV
PORTSMOUTH, N.H. (CBS) – Kimberly Bois’ tiny front yard garden isn’t much to look at right now. But in a few weeks, it’ll be in full bloom, and every blossom will cost her dearly.
Even though she says her builder gave her permission to do a little planting, the current condo board now says she’s in violation.
They’re charging the Portsmouth, New Hampshire homeowner $50 a day for being so petal pushy. That fine has reached close to $6,000, plus the board’s legal fees.
Schumer bill would create ‘passenger advocates’ to help with TSA disputes
By Pete Kasperowicz
Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) said Friday that they would soon introduce legislation to create “passenger advocates” to help people who may be “inappropriately treated” by Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers.
This article may be freely reproduced in its entirety provided a link is provided back to the original BIN story. This Executive Order was posted on the WhiteHouse.gov web site on Friday, March 16, 2012, under the name National Defense Resources Preparedness. In a nutshell, it’s the…
RFID Chip Implants – Hidden Secret In Obamacare – Coming 3/23/13
CONTRIBUTOR: John Rolls.
Polidics.com Reporting News the Main Media Refuses to Touch… by Mr. Carrington – May 26, 2011 On Sunday March 21, 2010 the Senate Healthcare bill HR3200 was passed and signed into law the following Tuesday. Like I said before, there are a legion of horrible and just plain evil aspects to this bill…
Spanish town plans to pay debts by growing marijuana
RASQUERA, Spain (Reuters) – A small town in northeastern Spain, believes it has found a novel way to pay of its debt: cultivating cannabis.
Tucked in the hills of one of Spain’s most picturesque regions, the Catalonian village of Rasquera has agreed to rent out land to grow marijuana, an enterprise the local authorities say will allow them to pay off their 1.3 million euro (1 million pound) debt in two years.
These videos illustrate the correlation between increasing costs of food and worldwide food riots, especially from 2000 until the present day. Both prices and riots peaked in 2008 and 2011 after a brief drop in 2009. This month, NECSI is publishing the results of its food prices update, in which the institute extends its food price model to January 2012, entering no modifications to the model and continuing to use its dynamics.
Defiant North Korea says rocket launch to go ahead
(Reuters) – North Korea on Sunday rejected criticism of its planned long-range missile launch which threatens to upset its only major benefactor, China, and put relations with the United States back in the freezer just as they seemed to be starting to thaw.
Report: US sent detainees to Afghan prisons known for torture despite moratorium
A report released Saturday by two rights groups says the U.S. sent some detainees to Afghan prisons where torture was found despite an announced moratorium on such moves. The report by the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission and the New York-based Open Society Institute suggests that Afghanistan’s international allies are still failing to ensure that people captured on the battlefield are treated humanely despite a massive reform program in recent months.
Latest terrorist attack in Damascus illustrates illegitimacy of both Syria’s rebels & the UN/NATO backing them.
By Tony Cartalucci
A twin terrorist bombing in the Syrian capital of Damascus, allegedly targeting government buildings, ripped through a Christian neighborhood killing an estimated 27, mostly civilians. A third bomb exploded, killing only the driver of the car it was placed in, in what was apparently an attempted triple suicide bombing. CBS News reports (1) that after other similar attacks, U.S. officials suggest Al Qaeda terrorists “may be” amongst the Syrian rebels.
Panetta Confirms US Involvement in Potential Israeli War on Iran ‘Obviously’ the US Would Take Action
Confirming what has always been the implicit way in which the US is going to get sucked into its next major war, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta confirmed that the US would definitely involve itself in a war on Iran if Israel decided to launch one.
Lawmakers will push forward with legislation targeting a worldwide banking cooperative despite its decision to stop doing business with some Iranian banks.
Tensions over Syria could slow legislation to normalize Russia, U.S. trade relations
By Vicki Needham
Rising tensions between the United States and Russia over the violence in Syria could slow legislation to expand trade relations between the two nations.
By Rod Nordland, Alissa J. Rubin and Matthew Rosenberg
Ever since the Koran-burning episode on Feb. 20, the relationship between the United States and President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan has lurched from one crisis to another.
During official visit to China, foreign minister says ‘united international front’ can convince Tehran to abandon nuclear ambitions
“If, god forbid, a war with breaks out with Iran, it will be a nightmare. Everyone will be involved, including the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia,” Avigdor Lieberman told the Yedioth Ahronoth daily during an official visit to China.
Honeybee die-offs linked to insecticide, study says
A newly published study draws a stronger link between mass die-offs of honeybees and an insecticide widely used on corn. The study sheds more light on the worrisome phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder. Bees play a critical role in the pollination of crops, and thus a threat to bee colonies can potentially affect entire ecosystems. The latest study, conducted by Italian researchers at the University of Padova and published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, focuses on a class of pesticides known as neonicotinoids.
Scores of Occupy Wall Street protesters were arrested on Saturday night as police officers swept Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan and closed it. Dozens of demonstrators sat down and locked arms as officers moved in about 11:30 p.m. The operation occurred after hundreds of people had gathered in the financial district to observe the founding of Occupy Wall Street six months ago… At one point, a woman who appeared to be suffering from seizures flopped on the ground in handcuffs as bystanders shouted for the police to remove the cuffs and provide medical attention.
Protesters chanted and cheered down Wall Street to mark six months of the Occupy movement, ending the day with a police confrontation and numerous arrests at the park where the demonstrations against economic inequality began. Police declared Zuccotti Park closed Saturday night, and more than 100 officers swept through the excited crowd. At least one person was injured during the sweep, police said.
A British teenager has been arrested and is expected to appear in a UK court after he posted about the injustice of the occupation of Afghanistan on his Facebook page. Following the deaths of six UK soldiers in Afghanistan earlier this month, Azhar Ahmed from Ravensthorpe left his comment on the social networking site in order to indicate the hypocrisy of praising the UK soldiers, while thousands of Afghan civilians killed at the hand of Western troops who have occupied the country for over ten years claiming to protect the civilians.
State department seeking to turn social media users into global government spies
By J. D. Heyes,
(NaturalNews) In an ongoing effort to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons in these unstable times, a top State Department official has proposed using social media as a way to keep track of the world’s most destructive devices. Rose Gottemoeller, acting Undersecretary of State for Arms Control, sees the concept as just another way to keep atomic bombs out of the hands of terrorists and under the control of responsible governments and regimes. As such, Gottmoeller says she wants ordinary…
Government takes 92-year-old woman’s money after believing she died
A 92-year-old woman from Port Angeles, Washington revealed Friday afternoon that she had lost thousands of dollars due to her bank and the government believing she was dead, according to KOMO-TV.?
Exposed: Lobbyist Who Helped Kill California Pot Legalization Ballot Measure is Getting Rich Off Drug War
Ethan A. Huff, News Report:
After the Obama Administration enacted its American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, Lovell reportedly got busy sending notices to police agencies alerting them about “important opportunities” to generate more federal grants. These opportunities included $2.2 million in funding for implementing a “Marijuana Suppression Program,” and more than $7.5 million for a “Campaign Against Marijuana Planting” program.
Federal Regulator is Using Seriously Flawed Study to Deny Homeowners Mortgage Aid
Pat Garofalo, News Report:
Goodman cited several problems with the study, including that it did not factor in bank incentives from the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) and underestimated the number of homeowners severely underwater by not using city level housing data. She said that it the study was done correctly, “it will be clear that forgiveness is the better solution for the bulk of the two-thirds of their book of business without mortgage insurance.”
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to run for Australian Senate
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is planning to run for election to the Australian Senate. Mr Assange, an Australian citizen, is on bail awaiting a British court decision on his appeal against extradition to Sweden on sexual assault allegations. He strongly denies the claims, saying they are politically motivated and linked to the activities of WikiLeaks, which has published thousands of confidential documents on the internet. The whistle-blowing website said it appeared that Mr Assange’s current legal situation did not rule him out of running for Australia’s upper house.
Is America preparing for an unprecedented crisis reminiscent of WWII?
by The Extinction Protocol
March 19, 2012 – WASHINGTON – The following excerpt is from a Executive Order signed by U.S. President Obama on March 16, 2012. The Executive Order coordinates and mobilizes all national resources, technological and industrial, under Federal auspicies in the event of a national emergency. This sounds like a major preparatory step before a crisis eerily reminiscent of WWII. An excerpt from the document reads: “The United States must have an industrial and technological base capable of meeting national defense requirements and capable of contributing to the technological superiority of its national defense equipment in peacetime and in times of national emergency. The domestic industrial and technological base is the foundation for national defense preparedness. The authorities provided in the Act shall be used to strengthen this base and to ensure it is capable of responding to the national defense needs of the United States. Each resource department shall act, as necessary and appropriate, upon requests for special priorities assistance, as defined by section 801(l) of this order, in a time frame consistent with the urgency of the need at hand. This is to help foster cooperation between the defense and commercial sectors for research and development and for acquisition of materials, services, components, and equipment to enhance industrial base efficiency and responsiveness. In situations where there are competing program requirements for limited resources, the resource department shall consult with the Secretary who made the required determination under section 202 of this order. Such Secretary shall coordinate with and identify for the resource department which program requirements to prioritize on the basis of operational urgency. In situations involving more than one Secretary making such a required determination under section 202 of this order, the Secretaries shall coordinate with and identify for the resource department which program requirements should receive priority on the basis of operational urgency.” –The White House
The Hill: McKeon wants to stop sequestration—and previous Pentagon budget cuts
By Carlo Munoz and Jeremy Herb
The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said Wednesday he wants to reverse $487 billion in cuts to the Pentagon’s budget that were included in last summer’s deal to raise the debt ceiling.
The Hill: State lawmakers blast House GOP’s medical malpractice reform bill
By Julian Pecquet
The nation’s leading advocacy group for state lawmakers wrote to House leaders on Wednesday to share their “strong, bipartisan opposition” to federal medical malpractice reform because it would infringe upon states’ rights.
Selling Out Pays
When a Congressman Becomes a Lobbyist, He Gets a 1,452% Raise (on Average)
By Lee Fang
What’s the best way to “buy” a member of Congress? Secretly promise them a million dollars or more in pay if they come to work for you after they leave office.
UN panel approves sidelined report praising Gaddafi’s human rights record :
A United Nations panel has adopted a report praising the human rights record of the former government of deposed Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, a year after it was sidelined amid international objection.
Greece will have to slash a further 5.5 percent of GDP in government spending in 2013 and 2014 to meet agreed fiscal targets underpinning the second international bailout for Athens, a European Commission report said.
In a story that should be getting lots of attention, American Banker has released an excellent and disturbing exposé of J.P. Morgan Chase’s credit card services division, relying on multiple current and former Chase employees.
11 Reasons Why America Would Be A Better Place Without Goldman Sachs
Would America be a better place without Goldman Sachs? Of course it would. The “vampire squid” of Wall Street does not care about the future of America. Sadly, Goldman Sachs apparently does not even care much about their own clients. What Goldman Sachs is all about is making as much money as humanly possible. In the end, there is nothing wrong with making money, but there are constructive ways to make money and there are destructive ways to make money. Unfortunately, Goldman Sachs seems to find the destructive path almost irresistible. Greg Smith, the head of the U.S. equity derivatives business for Goldman Sachs in Europe, the Middle East and Africa made headlines all over the world on Wednesday when he resigned publicly from Goldman Sachs in a scorching editorial in the New York Times. Smith said that he could “honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it”.
Greece on the breadline: HIV and malaria make a comeback
Jon Henley finds a medical aid organisation trying to plug the gaps as the health service nears breakdown
The savage cuts to Greece’s health service budget have led to a sharp rise in HIV/Aids and malaria in the beleaguered nation, said a leading aid organisation on Thursday.
The incidence of HIV/Aids among intravenous drug users in central Athens soared by 1,250% in the first 10 months of 2011 compared with the same period the previous year, according to the head of Médecins sans Frontières Greece, while malaria is becoming endemic in the south for the first time since the rule of the colonels, which ended in the 1970s.
Israeli strike on Iran could mean $6-per-gallon gas
By Ben Geman
An Israeli military strike against Iranian nuclear enrichment sites would spike gas prices to between $5 and $6 per gallon, according to market analysts.
This would be well beyond the record highs hit in 2008, when nationwide average retail prices hit $4.11-per-gallon, analysts say.
“I think you will see $5 and $6 dollar a gallon gas,” said Andrew Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates.
5 Principles for Money and Banking in a New World System
Eric Blair Activist Post
Increasing numbers of global citizens are becoming aware that the monetary system and international cartel of banks are rotten to the core and represent the root cause of all economic disparity to mankind.
With foreign entities wary of mortgage-backed securities, buyers are focusing on individual homes — a welcome occurrence in regions suffering from a glut of properties on the market.
The term “zombie banks” refers to banks that refuse to lend to the private sector. They are run by fearful bankers who do not trust other bankers. They do not trust many potential borrowers. According to legend, zombies survive by eating the brains of their victims. It seems to me that zombie bankers must be limiting their diet to brains of other bankers and investment fund managers.
Making 9 Million Jobless ‘Vanish’: How The U.S. Government Manipulates Unemployment Statistics
When we look at broad measures of jobs and population, then the beginning of 2012 was one of the worst months in US history, with a total of 2.3 million people losing jobs or leaving the workforce in a single month. Yet, the official unemployment rate showed a decline from 8.5% to 8.3% in January – and was such cheering news that it set off a stock rally.
How can there be such a stark contrast between the cheerful surface and an underlying reality that is getting worse?
Wall Street retreats after rally, but Apple up again
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The S&P 500 broke a five-day streak of gains on Wednesday as investors found little reason to extend a rally that took the benchmark index to four-year highs.
“Historically, one of the most problematic features of a neoliberal economy has been the sharp rise in precarious employment, as employers have unwaveringly pursued strategies that ‘flexibilize’ work and destabilize the very concept of job security. Precarious labor in this sense refers to forms of work typically marked by temporary contracts, limited or no social benefits and statutory guarantees, high degrees of job insecurity, low job tenure, sub-standard wages, and high risks of occupational injury and disease.”
13 Reasons Goldman’s Quitting Exec May Have a Point
Cora Currier, News Report:
“An executive at Goldman Sachs left the firm today with a bang, penning a New York Times op-ed accusing the company of increasingly putting profits ahead of clients. Greg Smith started as an intern 12 years ago and last headed a derivatives department. Not surprisingly, Goldman quickly and strongly disagreed with his take.”
Kony 2012, US War Crimes, Coltan & Depleted Uranium make “Invisible Children”
Uploaded by chatzefratz on Mar 12, 2012
When Americans talk about helping children, then things get real scary; depleted uranium in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Irak, Libya and soon in Uganda – Agent Orange in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Wrecked children, babies, offspring and human genetics for hundreds of thousands of years – all this while Americans sing about love, showing half naked ladies and their pharaonic signs and symbols. Watch “The Pharaoh Show” from user giureh for total understanding.
Suicide attack at Camp Bastion today looking like more pro war propaganda…
US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta is feared to have been the target of a suicide attack at Camp Bastion today.
Australian ‘special forces gathering intelligence in Africa’
The Sydney Morning Herald said 4 Squadron of the elite Special Air Service (SAS) had mounted dozens of clandestine operations in places such as Zimbabwe, Nigeria and Kenya in a role normally carried out by spies.
“We may never know what drove a U.S. Army staff sergeant to head out into the Afghan night and allegedly murder at least 16 civilians in their homes, among them nine children and three women. The massacre near Belambai, in Kandahar, Afghanistan, has shocked the world and intensified the calls for an end to the longest war in U.S. history. The attack has been called tragic, which it surely is. But when Afghans attack U.S. forces, they are called “terrorists.”
Taliban Suspend Talks with U.S.; Karzai Calls for Faster Transition
Ali Safi, News Report:
“The Taliban said Thursday that they had suspended negotiations with the United States and Afghan President Hamid Karzai called on international troops to withdraw from villages in the latest apparent fallout from a U.S. soldier’s alleged murder of 16 Afghan villagers.”
Netanyahu is Preparing Israeli Public Opinion for a War on Iran
By Aluf Benn
Haaretz’s editor-in-chief says that what looks like a preparation for war, acts like a preparation for war, and quacks like a preparation for war, is a preparation for war.
Cold-blooded Murder
Targeted Killings: US and Israeli Specialties
By Stephen Lendman
International law permits justifiable self-defense. Targeted killings are prohibited, especially premeditated ones like America and Israel repeatedly commit for reasons other than claimed.
Why is President Obama Keeping Yemeni Journalist in Prison?
By Democracy Now!
The Obama administration is facing scrutiny for its role in the imprisonment of a Yemeni journalist who exposed how the United States was behind a 2009 bombing in Yemen that killed 14 women and 21 children.
Pakistan has told the White House it no longer will permit U.S. drones to use its airspace to attack militants and collect intelligence on al-Qaeda and other groups, according to officials involved in the talks.
Netanyahu warns: Israel has defied U.S. wishes before:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday told the Knesset that Tehran was behind the recent rocket barrages from the Gaza Strip and ratcheted up his rhetoric regarding a possible military strike on Iran, broadly hinting that Israel might act even without American approval
“The attack will be mounted before the end of this year. Israel is blackmailing [U.S. President Barack] Obama by confronting him with a dilemma: either he supports the war option or will lose the support [of the U.S. Jews],” a high-ranking official of the Russian Foreign Ministry told the newspaper ahead of the U.N. Security Council meeting on Syria on Monday.
Iran was effectively cut off from global commerce on Thursday, when the company that handles financial transactions said it was severing ties with many Iranian banks
Iran food stockpiling grows as grain ships near port: -
Vessels carrying at least 360,000 tonnes of grain are lined up to unload in Iran, Reuters shipping data showed on Thursday, a sign that Tehran is succeeding in stockpiling food to blunt the impact of tougher Western sanctions.
No sanctions on US wheat?
Iran makes second US wheat purchase-USDA:
A weekly export sales report released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Thursday showed that Iran has bought an additional 60,000 tonnes of U.S. wheat.
U.S. May Sanction India Over Level of Iran-Oil Imports:
India has failed to reduce its purchases of Iranian oil, and if it doesn’t do so, President Barack Obama may be forced to impose sanctions on one of Asia’s most important nations, Obama administration officials said yesterday.
Millions of Syrian government supporters dashed through streets and main squares nationwide, to stage rallies in support of embattled President Bashar al-Assad on Thursday, according to Xinhua.
Reclaiming the Commons: Taking Human Lessons in the Era of H.R. 347, Corporatism and Perpetual War
Phil Rockstroh, Op-Ed:
“With increasing velocity, since the advent of the post-Second World War national security state, then gaining speed with the incessant search and destroy mission waged on the U.S. Constitution known as the War on Drugs, and kicking into a runaway trajectory in the post Sept. 11, 2001 era — the increase in totalitarian impulses, among both the general population and corporate and governmental elite of the nation, has proceeded at an alarming rate.”
US Government Admits It Has Seized Hundreds Of Domains Registered Outside The US
from the this-has-been-happening-for-a-while dept
After the US seized Bodog.com, we pointed to a writeup by EasyDNS that has created quite a stir, claiming that this was the first time that the US had seized a domain that was registered through a non-US registrar by going straight to the register (in this case VeriSign). But as we pointed out, that’s simply untrue. Back in 2010 we wrote about how most of the federal government’s domain seizures went directly to the register.
Broken Padlock Icon Researchers at the University of Michigan have reported that it took them only a short time to break through the security functions of a pilot project for online voting in Washington, D.C. “Within 48 hours of the system going live, we had gained near complete control of the election server”, the researchers wrote in a paperPDF that has now been released. “We successfully changed every vote and revealed almost every secret ballot.” The hack was only discovered after about two business days – and most likely only because the intruders left a visible trail on purpose.
KONY 2012: Merchandising and Branding Support for US Military Intervention in Central Africa
Edward Bernays believed that society could not be trusted to make rational and informed decisions on their own, and that guiding public opinion was essential within a democratic society. Bernays founded the Council on Public Relations and his 1928 book, Propaganda cites the methodology used in the application of effective emotional communication. He discovered that such communication is capable of manipulating the unconscious in an effort to produce a desired effect –
In ‘highly unusual’ move, Marines asked to disarm before Leon Panetta speech
In a highly unusual move, around 200 U.S. Marines were asked to leave their weapons outside the tent where U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta was set to speak during his trip to Afghanistan on Wednesday.
Automated License Plate Recognition currently being used in Central Florida.
Both The Market and Government Are Irrational
By Paul Craig Roberts
Those dependent on Social Security and Medicare are finding that these programs are being blamed for budget deficits caused by multi-trillion dollar wars of choice.
Four female U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers in Detroit are being sued by three Canadian women who allege they were sexually fondled at the border.
Afghanistan massacre by U.S. sergeant reveals epidemic of psychiatric drugging of soldiers
By Mike Adams,
(NaturalNews) The recent massacre of 16 civilians in Afghanistan by a rampaging U.S. military sergeant has something in common with nearly every school shooting in the USA — something the mainstream media typically refuses to report: These shooters frequently have a history of psychiatric drug “treatment” by psychiatrists. Psychiatric drugs are now being routinely used across the U.S. military, where violent suicides have skyrocketed to levels never before seen in human history. 18 veterans commit…
GOP Promises of Lower Gas Costs Belied by Dwindling Supply of World’s Oil
Amy Goodman, Video Report:
“Looking at rising fuel costs, one of the major issues raised by the Republican contenders in the 2012 presidential campaign. Since the beginning of the year, the average of price of a gallon of regular gasoline has jumped 16 percent to more than $3.80. Earlier this week, President Obama partially blamed his Republican rivals, saying one reason for the increase is rumors of war with Iran.”
Donors to conservative super PAC masked by nonprofit
Super PACs are the perceived demons of the 2012 campaign. But a shadowy sideshow that’s gone largely unnoticed is the set of nonprofits affiliated with them, which often provide money to the cash cows — and they don’t have to publicly disclose their donors. Case in point: FreedomWorks for America.
The New York Times: Delegate system gives small states outsize clout at convention
By Michael Cooper
Both Democrats and Republicans have long used formulas that award a state’s delegates based not just on population, but also on party loyalty in previous elections.
France’s Upcoming Election Means Euro Devaluation—and a Pop In Gold
On May 6, France is holding its second round of Presidential elections, where the Socialist François Hollande is fully expected to win.
I’m pretty sure two things will happen immediately following the election: The first is, Carla Bruni will leave Nicolas Sarkozy (because everyone knows that a professional courtesan never stays when the going gets tough for her patron).
Commentary: Gambling-addicted banks need a Betty Ford Center
By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch
SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) — Yes, Wall Street will crash. Has to. They’re gambling addicts. Dodged the bullet in 2008. But learned nothing. Now killing reforms. Teamed up with the Super Rich, CEOs, lobbyists, and crony politicians. It’s only a matter of time.
Yes, they’ll crash, again. No matter how anemic the recovery. No matter how much more debt they pile on taxpayers. No matter who’s president. Crash.
The Betty Ford Center, Rancho Mirage, Calif.
How do I know Wall Street will hit bottom? First off, most American know somebody who’s trapped in addictive behavior. I got a front-row seat years ago as a professional helping a few hundred addicts, alcoholics and gamblers getting help from the Betty Ford Center and others like it.
Conservatives are betting that a President Obama can’t succeed in talking straight about gas prices the way Candidate Obama did. First, they are exaggerating the price spike itself, saying that under Obama’s presidency, prices have jumped from $1.83 to $3.70 per gallon. That is technically true, but remember, in the summer of 2008 gas was over $4 a gallon. Prices briefly plummeted below $2 per gallon right before Obama’s inauguration because there was this little cataclysmic global economic meltdown that shattered consumer demand.
Citigroup was one of four large US banks that flunked stress tests aimed at seeing how they would hold up in a new economic crisis, Federal Reserve data showed Tuesday.
Three others — Ally, Suntrust and MetLife — also failed the tests, while 15 other large bank holding companies passed the exercise, the Fed said.
KUWAIT (Reuters) – Top exporter Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf producers say surging oil markets are beyond their control and prices could spike higher unless tensions between the West and Iran subside.
Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi and OPEC Secretary General Abdullah al-Badri are expected to focus on high oil prices in their addresses to the International Energy Forum gathering of oil ministers and executives on Wednesday, several OPEC sources said.
It is quite right to be worried and hesitant about entering a war with Iran. War, as recent events in Iraq and Afghanistan show, is a dangerous, bloody, often dirty mess in which things go wrong, civilians are killed inadvertently, your own side loses people, and goals are not necessarily achieved.
Sometimes war is necessary. That was clearly true in Afghanistan in 2001 but less clear regarding Iraq in 2003. What are the goals? How are they to be gained? In what way can a war be brought to an end? How is victory defined? These are all serious issues.
The current round of fighting between Israel and Palestinian terror groups could prompt Israel to launch a ground operation in the Gaza Strip, a senior IDF official said Monday.
Russia says it won’t stop selling weapons to Syria
MOSCOW: Russia has no intention of curtailing military cooperation with Syria despite calls from the West to stop arming President Bashar Assad’s regime, a senior Russian government official said Tuesday.
Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov said Russia will abide by existing contracts to deliver weapons to Syria despite Assad’s yearlong crackdown on the opposition, during which the UN says over 7,500 people have been killed.
Gaza has been pounded for a second day by Israel’s air strength. In the worst bombing raid in the region for almost a year at least 15 militants have been killed on the Gaza side. Israel has said the air strikes are in retaliation to the firing of more than 100 rockets from the Palestinian side.
At least 30 people have been killed and a dozen injured in an attack by US assassination drones in southern Somalia, Press TV reports. The unmanned aircraft fired several missiles at al-Shabab positions in the Dayniile district of south Mogadishu on Tuesday. Sheik Ibrahim Jaabar, a senior al-Shabab official, confirmed the attack, saying the aerial strike caused major damage to the group’s positions.
Hague to be sued for aiding US drone attacks in Pakistan
A rights group and a law firm are set to take legal action against British Foreign Secretary William Hague over his alleged the contribution of intelligence in assisting US assassination drone strikes in Pakistan. The London-based charity Reprieve and the law firm Leigh Day & Co. confirmed on Monday that they will issue formal proceedings at the High Court on behalf of Noor Khan, a Pakistani man whose father was killed by a US strike. The law firm says it has credible evidence that Hague oversaw a policy of passing British intelligence to American forces planning attacks in Pakistan. Lawyers claim that civilian staff at Britain’s electronic listening agency (GCHQ) could be liable as “secondary parties to murder” as they provided “locational intelligence” to the CIA in directing its drone attacks.
“Oil prices are now higher than they have ever been—except for a few frenzied moments before the global economic meltdown of 2008. Many immediate factors are contributing to this surge, including Iran’s threats to block oil shipping in the Persian Gulf, fears of a new Middle Eastern war and turmoil in energy-rich Nigeria. Some of these pressures could ease in the months ahead, providing temporary relief at the gas pump. But the principal cause of higher prices—a fundamental shift in the structure of the oil industry—cannot be reversed, and so oil prices are destined to remain high for a long time to come.”
Senate Rejects Plan to Open Arctic Refuge to Drilling
Sean Cockerham, News Report:
“The Senate on Tuesday resoundingly rejected a sweeping measure to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and other protected areas to oil drilling, as well as to approve construction of the Keystone pipeline project. Tuesday’s vote was the first time in four years that the Senate has voted on a measure including ANWR drilling, and it failed miserably. The proposal needed 60 votes to pass; it only received 41 votes in favor, with 57 senators against.”
Why Pennsylvania’s Act 13 May Be the Nation’s Worst Corporate Giveaway
Suvendrini Kakuchi, News Report:
“It’s absolutely crushing of local self-government,” said Ben Price, project director for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, which has helped a handful of local communities-including the city of Pittsburgh-adopt community rights ordinances that elevate the rights of nature and people to block the drilling. “The state has surrendered over 2,000 municipalities to the industry. It’s a complete capitulation of the rights of the people and their right to self-government. They are handing it over to the industry to let them govern us. It is the corporate state. That is how we look at it.”
When oil started gushing into the Gulf of Mexico in late April 2010, friends asked George Haller whether he was tracking its movement. That’s because the McGill engineering professor has been working for years on ways to better understand patterns in the seemingly chaotic motion of oceans and air. Meanwhile, colleagues of Josefina Olascoaga in Miami were asking the geophysicist a similar questio ..
Toxic acid release again draws federal investigators
Again drawn by a leak of toxic hydrofluoric acid, federal investigators are back at a Texas oil refinery they examined three years ago. A Center investigation last year found that 50 refineries use the acid despite the availability of safer alternatives.
Think Locally, Occupy Globally: Our Fight Is The World’s – And Vice Versa
Richard (RJ) Eskow, Op-Ed:
We’ve known for a long time that local protest movements carry an international message. The people here in South Africa gave hope and inspiration to the entire world during their own struggle for political freedom. Then, as now, genuine change seemed like an impossible dream. The apartheid regime had enormous wealth and was backed by some of the world’s most powerful corporate interests. The greatest governments in the world, including our own, were more than willing to ignore the regime’s worst human rights abuses in order to benefit from its trade.
Google has also made headlines recently regarding its new privacy policy, which Consumer Watchdog reports is a blatant misnomer, and actually describes the new invasive ways Google wants to gather information about individuals internet usage. Many of these techniques include methods for circumventing the privacy policies of Internet browsers such as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer or Apple’s Safari, which is used on iPhones and iPads around the country
Teenager arrested for comments made on Facebook page
A teenager has been arrested for allegedly making comments on Facebook about the deaths of six British soldiers in Afghanistan last week.
According to Sky News, Azhar Ahmed of Ravensthorpe (19) posted comments on his profile page, criticizing the level of attention British soldiers who died in a bomb blast received, compared to that received by Afghan civilians killed in the war.
A Vatican spokesman on Tuesday downplayed the impact of the hack on the Vatican Radio database, saying the hackers had gained access to an old server “shortly after 2pm” on Monday. Anonymous claimed to have hacked Vatican Radio in protest against the Vatican Radio… in a Pastebin post on Monday. AnonOps Communications, a recognised mouthpiece of the hacktivist collective, published a link to the Pastebin post on Tuesday. Comments on the post called for alleged LulzSec members arrested last week by the FBI and international law enforcement to be freed.
World famous Dr Russell Blaylock gives real advise on how we can protect ourselves from radiation, and a sober assessment of how our governments go for “covering up” the reality.
Misc
Speaking Truth About Power
Jim Hightower, Op-Ed:
A willingness to speak truth to power is an essential civic virtue for the well-being of a democratic-republic. Davis became a whistleblower, daring even to call out Gen. David Petraeus, the former top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, who now heads the CIA. Last year, Petraeus had told Congress that the Afghan Taliban’s momentum had been “arrested,” that our progress there was “significant,” and that the mission was “on the right azimuth,” to succeed.
Fed To Take Propaganda To The Schoolroom: Will Teach Grade 8-12 Students About Constitutionality Of… The Fed
Back in September we noted a peculiar RFP by the Fed which sought to become a secret ‘big brother’ to the social media world, and to “monitor billions of conversations and generate text analytics based on predefined criteria.” The Fed’s desired product should be able to “determine the sentiment of a speaker or writer with respect to some topic or document”… “The solution must be able to gather data from the primary social media platforms – Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Forums and YouTube. It should also be able to aggregate data from various media outlets such as: CNN, WSJ, Factiva etc.” Most importantly, the “Listening Platform” should be able to “Handle crisis situations, Continuously monitor conversations, and Identify and reach out to key bloggers and influencers.”
FBI Urges Coffee Shops To Report Cash-Paying Customers To Authorities
Use of paper money is a terrorist trait — if you don’t want to be considered suspect, the government commands you to use corporate-issued debit and credit cards, rather than its own currency. Via Boing Boing:
According to a set of guidelines sent out by the FBI as part of its Communities Against Terror program, ordinary citizens need to be on the lookout for suspicious characters who follow patterns of behavior of a covert operative.
Classified documents contradict FBI on post-9/11 probe of Saudis, ex-senator says
By Anthony Summers and Dan Christensen
Special to msnbc.com
Former Florida Sen. Bob Graham, who co-chaired Congress’ Joint Inquiry into the 9/11 terrorist attacks, has seen two classified FBI documents that he says are at odds with the bureau’s public statements that there was no connection between the hijackers and Saudis then living in Sarasota, Fla.
“There are significant inconsistencies between the public statements of the FBI in September and what I read in the classified documents,” Graham said.
Broken Promises: Pensions All Over America Are Being Savagely Cut Or Are Vanishing Completely
How would you feel if you worked for a state or local government for 20 or 30 years only to have your pension slashed dramatically or taken away entirely? Well, this exact scenario is playing out from coast to coast and in the years ahead millions of elderly Americans are going to be affected by broken promises and vanishing pensions.
Bringing Down the Empire: Challenging the Institutions of Domination
“Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.” – Victor Hugo
We have come to the point in our history of our species where an increasing amount of people are asking questions, seeking answers, taking action, and waking up to the realities of our world, to the systems, ideas, institutions and individuals who have dominated, oppressed, controlled, and ensnared humanity in their grip of absolute control. As the resistance to these ideas, institutions, and individuals grows and continues toward taking action – locally, nationally, regionally, and globally – it is now more important than ever for the discussion and understanding of our system to grow in accord. Action must be taken, and is being taken, but information must inform action. Without a more comprehensive, global and expansive understanding of our world, those who resist this system will become increasingly divided, more easily co-opted, and have their efforts often undermined.
We Take Care of Our Own: Eric Holder and the End of Rights
Historians of the future, if they are not imprisoned for saying so, will trace the end of America’s democratic experiment to the fearful days immediately after 9/11, what Bruce Springsteen called the days of the empty sky, when frightened, small men named Bush and Cheney made the first decisions to abandon the Constitution in the name of freedom and created a new version of the security state with the Patriot Act, Guantanamo, secret prisons and sanctioned torture by the U.S. government. They proceeded carefully, making sure that lawyers in their employ sanctioned each dark act, much as kings in old Europe used the church to justify their own actions.
“On Tuesday, Texas financier Robert Allen Stanford was convicted in a Houston federal court on 13 out of 14 criminal counts of fraud…. But what most of this week’s stories failed to mention was the large amount of his clients’ cash that was spent on campaign contributions, greasing the corrupt nexus of money and politics for personal gain. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were given to candidates, Barack Obama, John McCain, John Boehner and Harry Reid; including Ponzi Payoffs; as well as national fundraising committees for the Republican and Democratic parties.”
Confusion Surrounds Federal Review of Southern Leg of Keystone XL
Lisa Song, InsideClimate News:
“TransCanada’s decision last week to build the southern half of the rejected Keystone XL has raised a tricky question about who will regulate the project review … The process could be stickier at the federal level. The U.S. State Department was the lead agency on the original Keystone XL because it crossed an international boundary. But so far, no agency has stepped forward to take responsibility for the Gulf Coast Project.”
“Unless Ron Paul somehow wins the nomination, it looks as if a vote for the Republican presidential candidate this fall will be a vote for war with Iran. No other conclusion can be drawn from parsing the candidates’ public remarks. Paul, of course, is basically an isolationist who believes it is none of our business if Iran wants to build nuclear weapons…. But Paul has about as much chance of winning the GOP nomination as I do.”
No Apocalypse Yet
Will Putin do what the oligarchs fear?
By ISRAEL SHAMIR
If he wants to survive politically, he will have to implement the national agenda, confront the oligarchs, curb the creative class, provide support to those who supported him.
US President Barack Obama signed his name to H.R. 347 on Thursday, officially making it a federal offense to cause a disturbance at certain political events – essentially criminalizing protest in the States.
‘War on Terror is War on Liberty’
Farage demands that the UK break treaty with US
By Nigel Farage: EU MP
“No British court has ever been allowed to examine the evidence against Mr Tappin and I believe this Treaty, signed in the wake of the September 11 attacks, needs to be amended and the British government needs to stand up for its own people.
Not so fast. Those that are publicly declaring that an economic recovery has arrived are ignoring a whole host of numbers that indicate that the U.S. economy is in absolutely horrendous shape. The truth is that the health of an economy should not be measured by how well the stock market is doing. Rather, the truth health of an economy should be evaluated by looking at numbers for things like jobs, housing, poverty and debt. Some of the latest economic statistics indicate that unemployment is getting a little bit worse, that the housing market continues to deteriorate, that poverty in America continues to soar and that our debt problem is worse than ever.
TEXT-Moody’s: Greek sovereign credit rating remains at C
Moody’s Investors Service says that it considers Greece
to have defaulted per Moody’s default definitions further to the conclusion of an exchange of EUR177 billion of Greece’s debt that is governed by Greek law for bonds issued by the Greek government, GDP-linked securities, European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) notes. Foreign-law bonds are eligible for the same offer, and Moody’s expects a similar debt exchange to proceed with these bondholders, as well as the holders of state-owned enterprise debt that has been guaranteed by the state, in the coming weeks. The respective securities will enter our default statistics at the tender expiration date, which is was Thursday 8 March for the Greek law bonds and is currently expected to be 23 March for foreign law bonds. Greece’s government bond rating remains unchanged at C, the lowest rating on Moody’s rating scale.
Wall Street up on jobs data, brushes off Greek default
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Stocks advanced on Friday as investors brushed off the technical default by Greece and focused instead on another strong monthly jobs report.
Trading was choppy in late afternoon trade after the International Swaps and Derivatives Association said Greece has triggered an insurance payment on credit default contracts.
Investors took the Greek news largely in stride because the event was widely expected. Still, it is a declaration of default following the biggest sovereign debt-restructuring deal in history, and the specter of trouble in other euro-zone countries remains.
Bernanke Is Giving Us the Recovery He Wants, Not the Recovery We Need
With the latest round of monetary stimulus, the Federal Reserve is boldly going where it has already been. Big, big news from the Federal Reserve. They are considering doing something they are already doing, but calling it something else.
This “new” operation, carried out under the rather gross-sounding moniker of “sterilized quantitative easing,” is just another way to reduce long-term interest rates. The specifics aren’t terribly important — although if you want all the gory details about bond-buying and reverse repos, check out Jon Hilsenrath — but the result should be identical to the so-called “Operation Twist” the Fed did last fall.
UPDATE 6-Oil up on jobs data even as dollar rallies
By Robert Gibbons
NEW YORK, March 9 (Reuters) – Oil prices rose a third straight day on Friday as data showing rising U.S. employment countered any pressure from a stronger dollar and faded euphoria after Greece’s debt swap deal.
U.S. nonfarm payrolls rose by 227,000 in February, above expectations and marking the third straight month that gains topped 200,000, though the unemployment rate held at a three-year low of 8.3 percent.
PRECIOUS-Gold turns higher on US jobs data, oil gains
By Frank Tang and Amanda Cooper
NEW YORK/LONDON, March 9 (Reuters) – Gold rose above
$1,700 an ounce in heavy trade on Friday, reversing early sharp losses as the metal took heart from gains in crude oil and U.S. equities’ after an encouraging U.S. nonfarm payrolls report.
Bullion, which has taken to following riskier assets, rose in the face of a dollar rally and fading hopes of further U.S. monetary stimulus after U.S. employment grew strongly for a third straight month.
Also lifting the metal was Greece’s averting an immediate default after its bond swap offer to private creditors. Technical buying also helped after prices rebounded off its key 200-day moving average.
Public-Sector Banks: From Black Sheep to Global Leaders
Once the black sheep of high finance, government owned banks can reassure depositors about the safety of their savings and can help maintain a focus on productive investment in a world in which effective financial regulation remains more of an aspiration than a reality.
“As the one percent reap 93 percent of the income gains from the recovery, we’re rapidly returning to pre-New Deal levels of inequality … It’s important to remember that a series of choices were made during the New Deal to react to runaway inequality, including changes to progressive taxation, financial regulation, monetary policy, labor unionization, and the provisioning of public goods and guaranteed social insurance. A battle will be fought over the next decade on all these fronts.”
Jeffrey Sachs’ Reform Candidacy for World Bank President
Staff, Center for Economic and Policy Research:
“Economist and health expert Jeffrey Sachs’ reported candidacy for World Bank president is welcome news for the two-and-a-half billion people around the world living in poverty, Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) Co-Director Mark Weisbrot said today. ‘If Sachs were to get the job, he would be the first World Bank president with this kind of experience and knowledge of economic development … All of the others have been bankers, politicians, or political appointees.’”
For the first time in a year, China recorded a trade deficit of 31.48 billion U.S. dollars in February, as import growth far outpaced exports.
Exports rose 18.4 percent from a year earlier to 114.47 billion U.S. dollars in February, while imports were up 39.6 percent to 145.96 billion U.S. dollars, customs data showed Saturday.
The fast trade expansion was fueled by the lower comparative base for last February, when the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday cut working days from the month and skewed trade data, the General Administration of Customs (GAC) said. The week-long holiday fell in January this year.
After seasonal adjustments, the annual growth of exports slowed to 4 percent in February while that of imports was cut down to 9.4 percent.
Life in America on Two Dollars a Day
Or Why American Poverty Will Soon Match That of the Third World
By CanSpeccy
The latest poverty statistics that show the number of American families with an income of less than two dollars per person per day more than doubled between 1996 and 201.
China is reportedly to begin extending loans in yuan to BRICS countries in another step towards internationalizing the national currency and diversifying from the US dollar.
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Set to Default on $5.27 Million GO Bond Payments:
The city, carrying a debt load of more than five times its general-fund budget, will miss $5.27 million in bond payments due March 15 on $51.5 million of bonds issued in 1997.
The Kazakhstan Massacre: Killing Hope to Benefit US Geopolitical Interests
Steve Horn and Allen Ruff, Truthout: “December 16, 2011, should have been, at minimum, a fairly bright day for the people of Kazakhstan marking the country’s Independence Day and 20th birthday. But rather than being a moment of celebration, it became a day of brutal repression and death, a bloody scene in the regional center of Zhanaozen paralleling those that occurred at the hands of US-supported dictatorial regimes during the uprisings now commonly referred to as the Arab Spring.”
(Reuters) – Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is battling al Qaeda-backed “terrorists” including at least 15,000 foreign fighters who will seize towns across Syria if government troops withdraw, a Russian diplomat said on Thursday.
After a Decade, Afghan Forces Don’t Trust Americans
Jon Stephenson and Ali Safi, McClatchy Newspapers:
“Afghan soldiers and police say the recent burning of Qurans by U.S. personnel has seriously undermined their trust in their American counterparts, suggesting that the decade-long campaign to win hearts and minds has not only failed but also threatens the Obama administration’s exit strategy. ‘We are tired of the Americans here,’ said Mohammad Aziz, 20, a Kabul police officer. ‘We don’t want them to stay because they keep insulting our religion.’”
Obama has partially left his delusions about Iran: Leader
TEHRAN – Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei says that U.S. President Barack Obama has partially left his delusions about Iran.
The Leader made the remarks during a meeting with the members of the Assembly of Experts in Tehran on Thursday.
“Two days ago, we heard that the U.S. president said, ‘We do not think of war against Iran.’ Well, this is good. This is a logical remark. This is an exit from delusion. In addition, he said, ‘We will bring the Iranian people to their knees through sanctions.’ This is a delusion. The exit from delusion in the first part is good, but remaining in delusion in the second part will harm them. When one’s calculations are based on delusion, it is obvious that the planning he makes based on those calculations will end in failure,” Ayatollah Khamenei stated.
The Bloody Road to Damascus
The Triple Alliance’s War on a Sovereign State
By James Petras
There is clear and overwhelming evidence that the uprising to overthrow President Assad of Syria is a violent, power grab led by foreign-supported fighters.
Weapons Financed By US Kill Unarmed Palestinians and U.S. Citizens.
By David Elkins
“U.S. weapons provided to Israel at taxpayer expense make the U.S. complicit in Israel’s human rights abuses of Palestinians living under Israel’s 44-year military occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip”
Russia threatens to veto U.S. resolution on Syria:
Russia will not support a new U.S.-drafted resolution on Syria because it fails to urge both the government and the rebels to halt violence, said a top Russian diplomat.
As Qatar called in Cairo for the dispatch of Arab and international peacekeeping troops to Syria, Juppe joined his counterparts in saying that for the EU “military action is not on the agenda.”
US officials: Loyal army, inner circle back Assad:
Despite the Obama administration’s predictions that the Syrian government’s days are numbered, recent U.S. intelligence reports suggest President Bashar Assad commands a formidable army that is unlikely to turn on him, an inner circle that has stayed loyal and an elite class that still supports his rule.
Controversy surrounds CNN footage from Syrian activist:
Video footage broadcast by CNN purporting to depict Syrian government violence was staged by the journalist reporting on camera, recent reports have claimed.
If Iran attacked it will launch 11,000 missiles at Israel, US: envoy:
Tehran’s ambassador to Lebanon says Iran has prepared itself to launch about 11,000 missiles at Israel and U.S. bases in the region if they do a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, the Lebanese media reported.
The Problem With the Environment Is Not Too Many People
Eleanor J. Bader, Truthout:
“We’ve all heard the claim repeatedly: humans pollute, so if we just reduce the number of people – both the number being born and the number immigrating from point A to point B – the despoiling will cease and Eden will be restored. If only it could be so simple…. ‘Too Many People?’ is a clear and convincing challenge to the idea of population control as political necessity.”
Fracking Likely Caused Series of Ohio Quakes, Officials Say
Michael Muskal and Neela Banerjee , News Report:
Ohio’s Department of Natural Resources issued new regulations for transporting and disposing of brine wastewater, a fracking byproduct, making for the nation’s toughest disposal regulations, state officials said. Though the quake damage was minor – the largest was a 4.0 magnitude – environmental groups questioned whether the state’s safety rules were strong enough to protect the area from disasters they attributed to hydraulic fracturing.
New York Times CEO Robinson’s Exit Compensation Package Tops $23 Million
Janet Robinson, the New York Times Co. chief executive officer who was pushed out in December, received an exit package, including stock options and retirement benefits, of $23.7 million.
Robinson gets pension and supplemental retirement income valued at $11.4 million, performance awards of $5.39 million, restricted stock units worth $1.07 million and stock options worth $694,164, according to the company’s proxy statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission today. She will also earn $4.5 million in consulting fees for this year.
Thomas Drake on life inside the National Security Agency and the price of truth telling
Thomas Drake, the whistle-blower whom the Obama administration tried and failed to prosecute for leaking information about waste, fraud and abuse at the National Security Agency, now works at an Apple store in Maryland. In an interview with Salon, Drake laughed about the time he confronted Attorney General Eric Holder at his store while Holder perused the gadgetry on display with his security detail around him. When Drake started asking Holder questions about his case, America’s chief law enforcement officer turned and fled the store.
(Reuters) – Tens of thousands of Bahrainis demonstrated on Friday to demand democratic reforms, stepping up pressure on the U.S.-allied government with the biggest protest yet in a year of unrest.
From insurance companies lording over our health care to global conglomerates taking control of our water, corporate giants wield more and more influence over our lives and our environment. So how do we fight back? How do we take on corporate power and actually win? The Democracy Center recently published a new citizen’s resource that looks up close at the strategies that people and communities are using worldwide to successfully tackle corporate giants.
Bahraini forces kill 21-year-old protester in capital Manama:
Activists say the protester, named Fadhel Mirza, was killed on Saturday when regime forces attacked a group of demonstrators struggling to reach Pearl Square.
With their emails, Stratfor appears to advocate for a world where polluters and murderers, circumvent accountability by obtaining information to pre-empt – and in the process destroy – their opposition.
The Crime of Truth:
Obama’s Persecution of the Peacemaker
By Chris Floyd
Bradley Manning will spend the rest of his life in a federal prison for the unforgiveable crime of telling the truth to people who don’t want to hear it.
In Person: Former Reagan aide Stockman fears another collapse
David Stockman, former wunderkind of the Reagan revolution, is now an advocate for higher taxes, a critic of the work that made him rich and a scared investor who doesn’t own a single stock for fear of another financial crisis.
Asian stock markets fell Monday as tough talk by President Barack Obama over Iran’s nuclear program and uncertainty over Greece’s ability to clear the next hurdle in its debt reduction plan unnerved investors.
Israel delivers ultimatum to Barack Obama on Iran’s nuclear plans
At Monday’s meeting between Benjamin Netanyahu and Barack Obama the Israeli prime minister will deliver a stark warning, reports Adrian Blomfield in Jerusalem
TEHRAN – The latest exploration operations at the Kish gas field, which is located in the Persian Gulf, show that it contains at least 66 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, which is a rise of 26 trillion cubic feet over previous estimates, according to an official of the National Iranian Oil Company.
Navajo Code Talker Samuel Tso
Politics, Legislation and Economy News – Thursday March 15th, 2012
Politics and Legislation
GOP Promises of Lower Gas Costs Belied by Dwindling Supply of World’s Oil
Amy Goodman, Video Report:
“Looking at rising fuel costs, one of the major issues raised by the Republican contenders in the 2012 presidential campaign. Since the beginning of the year, the average of price of a gallon of regular gasoline has jumped 16 percent to more than $3.80. Earlier this week, President Obama partially blamed his Republican rivals, saying one reason for the increase is rumors of war with Iran.”
http://www.nationofchange.org/gop-promises-lower-gas-costs-belied-dwindling-supply-world-s-oil-1331743269
Donors to conservative super PAC masked by nonprofit
Super PACs are the perceived demons of the 2012 campaign. But a shadowy sideshow that’s gone largely unnoticed is the set of nonprofits affiliated with them, which often provide money to the cash cows — and they don’t have to publicly disclose their donors. Case in point: FreedomWorks for America.
http://www.iwatchnews.org/2012/03/11/8360/donors-conservative-super-pac-masked-nonprofit
The New York Times: Delegate system gives small states outsize clout at convention
By Michael Cooper
Both Democrats and Republicans have long used formulas that award a state’s delegates based not just on population, but also on party loyalty in previous elections.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/us/politics/delegate-system-gives-small-states-clout-at-convention.html?_r=2&ref=politics
France’s Upcoming Election Means Euro Devaluation—and a Pop In Gold
On May 6, France is holding its second round of Presidential elections, where the Socialist François Hollande is fully expected to win.
I’m pretty sure two things will happen immediately following the election: The first is, Carla Bruni will leave Nicolas Sarkozy (because everyone knows that a professional courtesan never stays when the going gets tough for her patron).
http://gonzalolira.blogspot.com/2012/03/frances-upcoming-election-means-euro.html
Economy
10 reasons Wall Street will hit bottom, crash
Commentary: Gambling-addicted banks need a Betty Ford Center
By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch
SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) — Yes, Wall Street will crash. Has to. They’re gambling addicts. Dodged the bullet in 2008. But learned nothing. Now killing reforms. Teamed up with the Super Rich, CEOs, lobbyists, and crony politicians. It’s only a matter of time.
Yes, they’ll crash, again. No matter how anemic the recovery. No matter how much more debt they pile on taxpayers. No matter who’s president. Crash.
The Betty Ford Center, Rancho Mirage, Calif.
How do I know Wall Street will hit bottom? First off, most American know somebody who’s trapped in addictive behavior. I got a front-row seat years ago as a professional helping a few hundred addicts, alcoholics and gamblers getting help from the Betty Ford Center and others like it.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/10-reasons-wall-street-will-hit-bottom-crash-2012-03-13?pagenumber=1
The Truth About Gas Prices
Bill Scher, Op-Ed:
Conservatives are betting that a President Obama can’t succeed in talking straight about gas prices the way Candidate Obama did. First, they are exaggerating the price spike itself, saying that under Obama’s presidency, prices have jumped from $1.83 to $3.70 per gallon. That is technically true, but remember, in the summer of 2008 gas was over $4 a gallon. Prices briefly plummeted below $2 per gallon right before Obama’s inauguration because there was this little cataclysmic global economic meltdown that shattered consumer demand.
http://www.nationofchange.org/truth-about-gas-prices-1331731751
Four large US banks fail stress tests
Citigroup was one of four large US banks that flunked stress tests aimed at seeing how they would hold up in a new economic crisis, Federal Reserve data showed Tuesday.
Three others — Ally, Suntrust and MetLife — also failed the tests, while 15 other large bank holding companies passed the exercise, the Fed said.
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/citi-ally-suntrust-metlife-fail-stress-tests-205649742.html
Oil price spike on Iran is beyond control: OPEC
KUWAIT (Reuters) – Top exporter Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf producers say surging oil markets are beyond their control and prices could spike higher unless tensions between the West and Iran subside.
Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi and OPEC Secretary General Abdullah al-Badri are expected to focus on high oil prices in their addresses to the International Energy Forum gathering of oil ministers and executives on Wednesday, several OPEC sources said.
http://www.tehrantimes.com/economy-and-business/96366-oil-price-spike-on-iran-is-beyond-control-opec-
Wars and Rumors of War
What A War With Iran Really Means: Proceed
By Barry Rubin
It is quite right to be worried and hesitant about entering a war with Iran. War, as recent events in Iraq and Afghanistan show, is a dangerous, bloody, often dirty mess in which things go wrong, civilians are killed inadvertently, your own side loses people, and goals are not necessarily achieved.
Sometimes war is necessary. That was clearly true in Afghanistan in 2001 but less clear regarding Iraq in 2003. What are the goals? How are they to be gained? In what way can a war be brought to an end? How is victory defined? These are all serious issues.
http://beforeitsnews.com/story/1885/416/NL/What_A_War_With_Iran_Really_Means:_Proceed.html
IDF official: Army ready for ground op in Gaza
The current round of fighting between Israel and Palestinian terror groups could prompt Israel to launch a ground operation in the Gaza Strip, a senior IDF official said Monday.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4201983,00.html
Russia says it won’t stop selling weapons to Syria
MOSCOW: Russia has no intention of curtailing military cooperation with Syria despite calls from the West to stop arming President Bashar Assad’s regime, a senior Russian government official said Tuesday.
Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov said Russia will abide by existing contracts to deliver weapons to Syria despite Assad’s yearlong crackdown on the opposition, during which the UN says over 7,500 people have been killed.
http://arabnews.com/middleeast/article587163.ece
Israel sends air force into Gaza
Gaza has been pounded for a second day by Israel’s air strength. In the worst bombing raid in the region for almost a year at least 15 militants have been killed on the Gaza side. Israel has said the air strikes are in retaliation to the firing of more than 100 rockets from the Palestinian side.
http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=204108507
US terror drones kill 30 in southern Somalia
At least 30 people have been killed and a dozen injured in an attack by US assassination drones in southern Somalia, Press TV reports. The unmanned aircraft fired several missiles at al-Shabab positions in the Dayniile district of south Mogadishu on Tuesday. Sheik Ibrahim Jaabar, a senior al-Shabab official, confirmed the attack, saying the aerial strike caused major damage to the group’s positions.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/231562.html
Hague to be sued for aiding US drone attacks in Pakistan
A rights group and a law firm are set to take legal action against British Foreign Secretary William Hague over his alleged the contribution of intelligence in assisting US assassination drone strikes in Pakistan. The London-based charity Reprieve and the law firm Leigh Day & Co. confirmed on Monday that they will issue formal proceedings at the High Court on behalf of Noor Khan, a Pakistani man whose father was killed by a US strike. The law firm says it has credible evidence that Hague oversaw a policy of passing British intelligence to American forces planning attacks in Pakistan. Lawyers claim that civilian staff at Britain’s electronic listening agency (GCHQ) could be liable as “secondary parties to murder” as they provided “locational intelligence” to the CIA in directing its drone attacks.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/231297.html
Environmental
Our New ‘Tough Oil’ World
Michael T. Klare, Op-Ed:
“Oil prices are now higher than they have ever been—except for a few frenzied moments before the global economic meltdown of 2008. Many immediate factors are contributing to this surge, including Iran’s threats to block oil shipping in the Persian Gulf, fears of a new Middle Eastern war and turmoil in energy-rich Nigeria. Some of these pressures could ease in the months ahead, providing temporary relief at the gas pump. But the principal cause of higher prices—a fundamental shift in the structure of the oil industry—cannot be reversed, and so oil prices are destined to remain high for a long time to come.”
http://www.nationofchange.org/our-new-tough-oil-world-1331732593
Senate Rejects Plan to Open Arctic Refuge to Drilling
Sean Cockerham, News Report:
“The Senate on Tuesday resoundingly rejected a sweeping measure to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and other protected areas to oil drilling, as well as to approve construction of the Keystone pipeline project. Tuesday’s vote was the first time in four years that the Senate has voted on a measure including ANWR drilling, and it failed miserably. The proposal needed 60 votes to pass; it only received 41 votes in favor, with 57 senators against.”
http://www.nationofchange.org/senate-rejects-plan-open-arctic-refuge-drilling-1331733615
Why Pennsylvania’s Act 13 May Be the Nation’s Worst Corporate Giveaway
Suvendrini Kakuchi, News Report:
“It’s absolutely crushing of local self-government,” said Ben Price, project director for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, which has helped a handful of local communities-including the city of Pittsburgh-adopt community rights ordinances that elevate the rights of nature and people to block the drilling. “The state has surrendered over 2,000 municipalities to the industry. It’s a complete capitulation of the rights of the people and their right to self-government. They are handing it over to the industry to let them govern us. It is the corporate state. That is how we look at it.”
http://www.nationofchange.org/why-pennsylvania-s-act-13-may-be-nation-s-worst-corporate-giveaway-1331733276
The shape of things to come
Miami FL (SPX)
When oil started gushing into the Gulf of Mexico in late April 2010, friends asked George Haller whether he was tracking its movement. That’s because the McGill engineering professor has been working for years on ways to better understand patterns in the seemingly chaotic motion of oceans and air. Meanwhile, colleagues of Josefina Olascoaga in Miami were asking the geophysicist a similar questio ..
http://www.energy-daily.com/reports/The_shape_of_things_to_come_999.html
Toxic acid release again draws federal investigators
Again drawn by a leak of toxic hydrofluoric acid, federal investigators are back at a Texas oil refinery they examined three years ago. A Center investigation last year found that 50 refineries use the acid despite the availability of safer alternatives.
http://www.iwatchnews.org/2012/03/08/8354/toxic-acid-release-again-draws-federal-investigators
Activism
Think Locally, Occupy Globally: Our Fight Is The World’s – And Vice Versa
Richard (RJ) Eskow, Op-Ed:
We’ve known for a long time that local protest movements carry an international message. The people here in South Africa gave hope and inspiration to the entire world during their own struggle for political freedom. Then, as now, genuine change seemed like an impossible dream. The apartheid regime had enormous wealth and was backed by some of the world’s most powerful corporate interests. The greatest governments in the world, including our own, were more than willing to ignore the regime’s worst human rights abuses in order to benefit from its trade.
http://www.nationofchange.org/think-locally-occupy-globally-our-fight-world-s-and-vice-versa-1331741531
Cyber Space
Google’s New ‘Spy’ Policy
Robert Jain, News Report:
Google has also made headlines recently regarding its new privacy policy, which Consumer Watchdog reports is a blatant misnomer, and actually describes the new invasive ways Google wants to gather information about individuals internet usage. Many of these techniques include methods for circumventing the privacy policies of Internet browsers such as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer or Apple’s Safari, which is used on iPhones and iPads around the country
http://www.nationofchange.org/google-s-new-spy-policy-1331740571
Teenager arrested for comments made on Facebook page
A teenager has been arrested for allegedly making comments on Facebook about the deaths of six British soldiers in Afghanistan last week.
According to Sky News, Azhar Ahmed of Ravensthorpe (19) posted comments on his profile page, criticizing the level of attention British soldiers who died in a bomb blast received, compared to that received by Afghan civilians killed in the war.
http://digitaljournal.com/article/321102#ixzz1pAiCFNlL
US wins the extradition of Richard O’Dwyer over UK-based website
Sheffield – A 23-year old UK student is to be extradited to the USA to face trial for operating a UK-based website linking to copyright materials.
http://digitaljournal.com/#ixzz1pAizxCzz
Vatican confirms second Anonymous hack
A Vatican spokesman on Tuesday downplayed the impact of the hack on the Vatican Radio database, saying the hackers had gained access to an old server “shortly after 2pm” on Monday. Anonymous claimed to have hacked Vatican Radio in protest against the Vatican Radio… in a Pastebin post on Monday. AnonOps Communications, a recognised mouthpiece of the hacktivist collective, published a link to the Pastebin post on Tuesday. Comments on the post called for alleged LulzSec members arrested last week by the FBI and international law enforcement to be freed.
http://www.zdnet.co.uk/blogs/security-bullet-in-10000166/vatican-confirms-second-anonymous-hack-10025615/
Radiation
Rense & Dr Blaylock – Radiation What We CAN Do
Uploaded by JRense on Apr 24, 2011
World famous Dr Russell Blaylock gives real advise on how we can protect ourselves from radiation, and a sober assessment of how our governments go for “covering up” the reality.
Misc
Speaking Truth About Power
Jim Hightower, Op-Ed:
A willingness to speak truth to power is an essential civic virtue for the well-being of a democratic-republic. Davis became a whistleblower, daring even to call out Gen. David Petraeus, the former top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, who now heads the CIA. Last year, Petraeus had told Congress that the Afghan Taliban’s momentum had been “arrested,” that our progress there was “significant,” and that the mission was “on the right azimuth,” to succeed.
http://www.nationofchange.org/speaking-truth-about-power-1331730900
Fed To Take Propaganda To The Schoolroom: Will Teach Grade 8-12 Students About Constitutionality Of… The Fed
Back in September we noted a peculiar RFP by the Fed which sought to become a secret ‘big brother’ to the social media world, and to “monitor billions of conversations and generate text analytics based on predefined criteria.” The Fed’s desired product should be able to “determine the sentiment of a speaker or writer with respect to some topic or document”… “The solution must be able to gather data from the primary social media platforms – Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Forums and YouTube. It should also be able to aggregate data from various media outlets such as: CNN, WSJ, Factiva etc.” Most importantly, the “Listening Platform” should be able to “Handle crisis situations, Continuously monitor conversations, and Identify and reach out to key bloggers and influencers.”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/fed-take-propaganda-schoolroom-will-teach-k-8-12-students-about-constitutionality-fed
FBI Urges Coffee Shops To Report Cash-Paying Customers To Authorities
Use of paper money is a terrorist trait — if you don’t want to be considered suspect, the government commands you to use corporate-issued debit and credit cards, rather than its own currency. Via Boing Boing:
According to a set of guidelines sent out by the FBI as part of its Communities Against Terror program, ordinary citizens need to be on the lookout for suspicious characters who follow patterns of behavior of a covert operative.
http://www.disinfo.com/2012/03/fbi-urges-coffee-shops-to-report-cash-paying-customers-to-authorities/
Classified documents contradict FBI on post-9/11 probe of Saudis, ex-senator says
By Anthony Summers and Dan Christensen
Special to msnbc.com
Former Florida Sen. Bob Graham, who co-chaired Congress’ Joint Inquiry into the 9/11 terrorist attacks, has seen two classified FBI documents that he says are at odds with the bureau’s public statements that there was no connection between the hijackers and Saudis then living in Sarasota, Fla.
“There are significant inconsistencies between the public statements of the FBI in September and what I read in the classified documents,” Graham said.
http://openchannel.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/13/10656262-classified-documents-contradict-fbi-on-post-911-probe-of-saudis-ex-senator-says
Broken Promises: Pensions All Over America Are Being Savagely Cut Or Are Vanishing Completely
How would you feel if you worked for a state or local government for 20 or 30 years only to have your pension slashed dramatically or taken away entirely? Well, this exact scenario is playing out from coast to coast and in the years ahead millions of elderly Americans are going to be affected by broken promises and vanishing pensions.
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/broken-promises-pensions-all-over-america-are-being-savagely-cut-or-are-vanishing-completely
Bringing Down the Empire: Challenging the Institutions of Domination
“Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.” – Victor Hugo
We have come to the point in our history of our species where an increasing amount of people are asking questions, seeking answers, taking action, and waking up to the realities of our world, to the systems, ideas, institutions and individuals who have dominated, oppressed, controlled, and ensnared humanity in their grip of absolute control. As the resistance to these ideas, institutions, and individuals grows and continues toward taking action – locally, nationally, regionally, and globally – it is now more important than ever for the discussion and understanding of our system to grow in accord. Action must be taken, and is being taken, but information must inform action. Without a more comprehensive, global and expansive understanding of our world, those who resist this system will become increasingly divided, more easily co-opted, and have their efforts often undermined.
http://www.blacklistednews.com/Bringing_Down_the_Empire%3A_Challenging_the_Institutions_of_Domination/18434/0/0/0/Y/M.html