The Intercept

Israel and the American Elections

2012-02-02T14:31:00.000-08:00

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Rabbi’s Followers Cast Doubts on Congressman’s Fund-Raising

2012-02-02T14:03:00.000-08:00

New York Times

By Alison Leigh Cowan and William K. Rashbaum

Representative Michael G. Grimm, a Staten Island Republican,
at a town-hall-style meeting last April.

Soon after he began running for Congress in 2009, Michael G. Grimm, a Staten Island Republican, needed to convince party leaders in Washington that he could raise enough money to become a viable candidate. Seeking help, he turned to an unlikely source: followers of an Orthodox rabbi and mystic from Israel.

Mr. Grimm, a former agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and a Roman Catholic who regularly attends Sunday Mass, traveled around the New York region with one of the rabbi’s top aides, Ofer Biton, to raise campaign money from the rabbi’s followers. In all, the Grimm campaign collected more than $500,000 from the followers, according to numerous interviews and an analysis of Mr. Grimm’s campaign records.

Ofer Biton, a former aide to
Rabbi Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto,
is said to have helped raise
money for Mr. Grimm's
2010 House campaign.

That money — more than half of the total that Mr. Grimm raised from individuals — proved instrumental in his upset of the Democratic incumbent in November 2010. Since then, Mr. Grimm has established a profile as a rising Republican star.

But now, Mr. Biton, an Israeli citizen, is being investigated by the F.B.I. and federal prosecutors in Brooklyn over accusations that he embezzled millions of dollars from the rabbi’s congregation. And an examination by The New York Times has highlighted Mr. Biton’s unusual role in the Grimm campaign — as well as questionable donations that the rabbi’s followers said Mr. Grimm had accepted.

The examination of Mr. Grimm’s fund-raising was based on more than 15 interviews with followers and associates of the rabbi, Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto, who divides his time between Israel and Manhattan, where he has a large congregation.

Mr. Grimm would not respond to questions about Mr. Biton and his campaign finances beyond issuing a general statement.

“Any suggestion that I was involved in any activities that may run afoul of the campaign finance laws is categorically false and belied by my life of public service protecting and enforcing the laws of this country,” Mr. Grimm said in the statement on Friday.

In interviews, followers of the rabbi spoke repeatedly about the close ties between Mr. Grimm and Mr. Biton.

“Grimm and Biton were together all the time during the campaign,” said one of the followers, Yossi Zaga, a real estate investor who donated $4,800, the legal limit, to Mr. Grimm at Mr. Biton’s urging. “They would drive around together to the homes and offices and ask for contributions.”

Three of the rabbi’s followers said in separate interviews that Mr. Grimm or Mr. Biton told them that the campaign would find a way to accept donations that were over the legal limit, were given in cash or were given by foreigners without green cards.

Congressional campaigns are not allowed to accept cash donations of more than $100. Foreigners without green cards are barred by law from giving to political campaigns. They are also not allowed to solicit contributions for campaigns.

One follower of the rabbi said in an interview that Mr. Grimm pressed him for $20,000. The follower said Mr. Grimm instructed him to meet him “near the F.B.I. building,” in Lower Manhattan, in summer 2010 to give the money. The follower said he handed over $5,000 in cash in an envelope to Mr. Grimm in Mr. Grimm’s car.

Within a week, the follower said, he gave Mr. Grimm a $5,000 check from a friend. Mr. Grimm then repeatedly called the follower and demanded another $10,000, the follower said.

“Every day, he used to call me, over and over,” the follower said.

The follower said he ignored the calls and did not give again.

A second follower recalled that Mr. Grimm came to his office in Manhattan to solicit a legal contribution. As he was handing over the check, the second follower said, Mr. Grimm confided in him that there were ways of working around the campaign rules.

“Grimm wanted you to supply the money, and if someone wants to give and cannot give, you have to find a friend to give it through,” the second follower recalled. “Let’s say someone is not legal to give because he’s not American. Grimm wants this guy, Joe A, to give the money to Joe B so Joe B can make the contribution to the campaign.”

A third follower said he picked up, at Mr. Biton’s behest, $25,000 for Mr. Grimm’s campaign from a single Israeli.

“I give the checks to Ofer, and he gives them to Michael,” the third follower said.

The third follower said the money donated by the Israeli was falsely listed in Mr. Grimm’s campaign disclosure records as having been given by at least five other people. The practice referred to — creating so-called straw donors — is illegal.

Rabbi Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto.

The rabbi’s followers who described what they said was questionable fund-raising by Mr. Grimm spoke only on the condition of anonymity, saying they did not want to become ensnared in the federal embezzlement inquiry into Mr. Biton.

Spokesmen for the United States attorney’s office in Brooklyn and the F.B.I. would not respond to questions about Mr. Biton.

The Times contacted Mr. Grimm’s office on Monday and supplied a list of questions about his fund-raising and Mr. Biton.

On Thursday, Mr. Grimm responded with an e-mail from his personal account.

“At first, I thought it was a joke because the allegations are so absurd and ridiculous,” Mr. Grimm wrote. “But let me be very clear, the information you received is completely false and I know is unsubstantiated, thus completely unfit to print.”

Mr. Grimm wrote that he would readily consent to be interviewed for this article. But he did not respond to further queries, and on Friday, he issued the official statement through his lawyer, reiterating that he had never violated campaign rules.

The donors interviewed by The Times said they gave money to the Grimm campaign because Mr. Biton told them that Rabbi Pinto wanted people in his congregation to do so.

The rabbi’s followers said Mr. Biton rounded up campaign money for Mr. Grimm in hopes that if Mr. Grimm won, he would help Mr. Biton obtain a green card.

It could not be determined whether Mr. Grimm did anything to help Mr. Biton with the immigration authorities.

Rabbi Pinto’s spokesman said the rabbi had met with Mr. Grimm but had not been aware at the time that Mr. Biton was raising money so aggressively for Mr. Grimm.

In a statement, Mr. Biton’s lawyer, Jeffrey A. Udell, denied that Mr. Biton had ever raised money for Mr. Grimm.

“You asked, Did he pick up checks for Grimm’s campaign, and the answer is categorically no,” Mr. Udell said.

Mr. Biton has denied allegations by the rabbi’s followers that he embezzled millions of dollars from the rabbi’s congregation, the focus of the federal inquiry.

Rabbi Pinto has built a thriving congregation since he established a branch of his movement in New York City in 2002, attracting many prominent worshipers. Some celebrities, like the basketball star LeBron James, who is not Jewish, have gone to see him.

Representative Anthony D. Weiner, a New York Democrat, met with the rabbi before he resigned from Congress. Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House majority leader, also met with him. Both men are Jewish.

A small number of the rabbi’s followers donated to the campaigns of Mr. Weiner and Mr. Cantor. But no politician has relied as extensively for campaign money upon the followers as Mr. Grimm, according to campaign finance records.

The vast majority of the followers who donated to Mr. Grimm’s 2010 campaign had never before given to a federal candidate, according to campaign records, and did not live in Mr. Grimm’s district, which includes Staten Island and part of Brooklyn.

It is not clear how Mr. Grimm met Mr. Biton, but the two men and a New York public relations executive named Ronn Torossian have often spent time together since Mr. Grimm embarked on his dark horse Congressional campaign.

“Lunch with Congressman Michael Grimm,” Mr. Torossian wrote on his Twitter account in October 2011. “He always leaves me inspired with hope in government.”

Mr. Torossian is also a subject of the federal inquiry into the embezzlement of money from the rabbi’s congregation.

Mr. Torossian’s lawyer, Gerald L. Shargel, said his client supported Mr. Grimm and gave money to his campaign but played “absolutely no role” in efforts to raise money from the rabbi’s followers.

“He absolutely denies any wrongdoing,” Mr. Shargel said, “and sees himself as a victim in this case.”

Mr. Grimm has received very few donations from Rabbi Pinto’s followers for his 2012 re-election campaign, the records show. The followers interviewed said they did not want to donate to the Grimm campaign after federal prosecutors began investigating the embezzlement accusations against Mr. Biton.

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5.6 Million Americans Have Switched Their Banks In The Last 90 Days

2012-02-02T11:55:00.000-08:00

Think Progress
Pat Garafalo

Back in November, the Occupy Wall Street movement inspired “Bank Transfer Day,” a day for Americans fed up with the actions of the nation’s biggest banks to move their money to a different institution. Initial estimates of the impact of Bank Transfer Day placed the number of accounts moved at around 600,000, but later estimates revised that downward to around 200,000

However, new estimates from Javelin Strategy and Research, a research and consulting firm, show that the original numbers were closer to the truth. Javelin found that 5.6 million people have moved their bank accounts in the last 90 days, with 610,000 citing Bank Transfer Day as their reason:

Bank Transfer Day and the Occupy Movement have received tremendous attention, and for the first time we have market research data to measure the impact on the financial services industry. Javelin’s research estimates that 5.6 million U.S. adults with a banking relationship changed providers in the past 90 days. Of those switchers, 610,000 US adults (or 11% of the 5.6 million) cited Bank Transfer Day as their reason and actually moved their accounts from a large to a small institution.

Javelin noted that this pace of account closing is three times the normal rate. While 11 percent of people moving their accounts cited Bank Transfer Day, one quarter said they moved their money because their old institution charged too many fees. Account closures at Bank of America, the nation’s second largest bank, actually jumped 20 percent in the fourth quarter of last year, potentially driven by the bank’s ill-fated decision to implement a $5 monthly fee for its debt cards.
According to the consulting firm cg42, the nation’s 10 biggest banks could lose as much as $185 billion in deposits this year due to customer defections. Of those banks, “Bank of America is the most vulnerable and could lose up to 10% of its customers and $42 billion in consumer deposits.” (HT: Business Insider)

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Iowa GOP chairman resigns following bungled caucus vote count

2012-02-02T11:47:00.000-08:00

12160

Iowa GOP chairman resigns following bungled caucus vote count By Jonathan Easley - 01/31/12 11:13 AM ET Matt Strawn, the chairman of the Republican Party of Iowa, announced in a video message on Tuesday that he will step down on Feb. 11. Strawn has been the GOP chairman for over three years and oversaw Republican gains in the House and Senate. But some were unhappy with his handling of the Iowa caucus vote count. Following the state’s first-in-the-nation caucus on Jan. 3, it appeared that Mitt Romney had edged Rick Santorum by eight votes.

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Mossad Chief Secretly Met With Top U.S. Officials Including Sitting Senators

2012-02-02T11:35:00.000-08:00

IntelHub

A clandestine Washington visit by Mossad Chief Tamir Pardo, in which he privately met with multiple Senators and other top officials, was revealed in testimony during a hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence attended by CIA director David Petraeus and Intel Chief James Clapper.

Apparently Pardo and the Senators who secretly met with him believe it imperative to met in secret to discuss Americas backing of an Israeli strike on Iran regardless of the opinion of the American people.
Israeli mainstream media giant Haaretz recently reported on these startling revelations:

Mossad chief Tamir Pardo held secret talks with top U.S. officials in recent days, cursory comments made during a public Senate hearing indicated on Tuesday.

The clandestine Washington visit was exposed during a hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which was participated by CIA Director David Petraeus, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and Dianne Feinstein, who chairs the Senate panel.

During the meeting, Feinstein asked Clapper whether or not Israel intended to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, with the top U.S. intelligence official answering that he would rather discuss the issue behind closed doors.

Feinstein then indicated that she had met Mossad chief Pardo earlier in the week in Washington, with Petraeus adding that he too met Pardo and cited what he called Israel’s growing concern over Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

During the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, US Intel Chief James Clapper also attempted to change the terrorism narrative, shifting the blame from al Qaeda to Iran.

In an article published by Kurt Nimmo for Infowars.com, this fact was outlined in detail as well as completely debunked:

“We are also concerned about Iranian plotting against U.S. or allied interests overseas. Iran’s willingness to sponsor future attacks in the United States or against our interests abroad probably will be shaped by Tehran’s evaluation of the costs it bears for the plot against the ambassador as well as Iranian leaders’ perceptions of U.S. threats against the regime,” Clapper testified.

Other alleged terrorist threats were sidelined during the hearing, including discussion of al-Qaeda, which officials claim “has been badly degraded.”

It is clear that the war drums have intensified and the probability of an attack on Iran by US and Israeli forces has increased exponentially.

Consider this – Right now a nuclear submarine is heading to the Persian Gulf and at least 100,000 US troops are ready to take part in a ground attack on Iran at any moment.

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The Girl Killed by Obama: She "never saw it coming"

2012-02-02T11:22:00.000-08:00

GRTV

Barack Obama says the drone attacks he authorises are targetted only at named people on a list of active terrorists who are a direct threat to America. The facts tell a different story.

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Arizona Election Fraud: Pima County Continues to Delay Forensic Exam of RTA Ballots

2012-02-01T09:19:00.000-08:00

Editor's Note: This crucial court case is currently experiencing a media blackout among local Tucson press. This includes the Arizona Daily Star and the Tucson Weekly. This case is a textbook example of a battle waged by the growth lobby against the will of the population. The reason why the county is using such extreme measures to stop this trial is that the plaintiff, the Libertarian Party, may conduct discovery which includes a forensic exam of the RTA ballots to demonstrate to the courts that the 2006 RTA election calling for a two billion dollar twenty-year sales tax hike was rigged.   This is the prerequisite for the courts to grant prospective relief for rigged elections.

If they felt they would be exonerated, Pima County would welcome the scrutiny. Instead, it appears that Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry is pushing his attorneys to use all conceivable tactics to delay and obstruct the procedure, which would ultimately benefit the nation as a precedent-setting court case aimed at improving election integrity.

John Brakey
AUDITAZ

Video of Court Hearing:   http://youtu.be/yGALqZGvaRs

THE INITIAL DISCLOSURE STATEMENT FILED BY PLAINTIFF ON 1/12/12 IS A GREAT COMPREHENSIVE STATEMENT OF FACTS: http://tinyurl.com/LPFiling

PROTECTING THE PURITY OF ELECTIONS

IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF
THE STATE OF ARIZONA IN AND FOR
THE COUNTY OF PIMA
CASE NO. C20085016
HEARING ON JAN 30, 2012 2:30 PM
COURT ROOM OF THE HON. KYLE BRYSON
RAW FOOTAGE RUNS 37 MIN

Defendant Pima County's Attorney Ronna Fickbohm, files and gets "emergency hearing" based on false certification to request the court to stop deposition of Pima Co’s Election Director Brad Nelson. UPDATE: DEPOSITIONS GET GREEN LIGHT FROM JUDGE TO GO FORWARD.

Plaintiff's attorneys, Bill Risner and Ralph E. Ellinwood file Motion to Strike and Sanction Pima County for misleading the Court, filed:1.27.12:   http://tinyurl.com/7krbr4c

Plaintiff also filed a motion in response to Defendant Motion for Protective Order filed 1.30.12: http://tinyurl.com/83qk3mq

Pima County is doing everything possible to stop this case from going forward including filing motion based on deception. http://tinyurl.com/7krbr4c

The case is as fundamental as it gets. What we're seeking "prospective relief" so they cannot cheat in the future. ANDREA WITTE "THE CONNECT THE DOTS LADY" has connected the dots into a 10-Point Quick Summary of The Fact pattern in this gripping saga of power and deceit. And we propose a remedy that is easy, inexpensive and doable. Link to Flyer: http://tinyurl.com/7amy6ff

Since our saga began over five years ago, more and more people across America are becoming aware of the serious security flaws in computerized voting systems. They are systems designed to cheat, and they are everywhere. As the political scene heats up with the Presidential election, all eyes will be on Tucson as ground zero for exposing these flaws in open court and proposing reasonable checks and balances in the system. We must protect the purity of elections and public confidence in election results — a cornerstone of our democracy. That's what this case is ultimately about. http://fatallyflawedelections.blogspot.com/

BACKGROUND: AUDIT-AZ, the Pima County Libertarian Party and other interested citizens of multiple parties for years have been investigating election processes in Pima County. In previous actions, the Democratic Party took the lead in winning public records lawsuits and revealing the extent of the problems, including poor security practices on "designed to cheat" systems, election results that consistently did not add up, missing or falsified paper, and election officials and staff who continuously flout the law.

AUDIT-AZ will be running the pool camera and if you can't make it to court you can watch the proceeding on our AUDITAZ's Channel on YouTube the next day: http://www.youtube.com/user/AUDITAZ/featured

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Obama Denies ‘Huge Number of Civilian Casualties’ in Drone War

2012-02-01T08:26:00.000-08:00

AntiWar
John Glaser

President Barack Obama readily confirmed the drone war in northwest Pakistan in an interview Monday, breaking with the protocol which normally demands U.S. officials not speak publicly about the classified program.
“I want to make sure people understand actually drones have not caused a huge number of civilian casualties,” President Obama said in an hour long interview hosted by Google. “For the most part, they’ve been very precise, precision strikes against against al-Qaeda and their affiliates.”

The claim mirrors previous attempts to downplay the civilian casualties of the drone war. John Brennan, President Obama’s counter-terrorism advisor, told the public back in June that zero civilian casualties have occurred as a result of U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan.

This was an obvious lie, but the Bureau of Investigative Journalism helped prove it so in August by cataloguing their lengthy findings on civilian casualties in the drone war, counting hundreds of civilians by name who were killed in drone strikes, including at least 168 children. Investigative reporter Noor Behram, who had been on the ground in Pakistan tallying the dead, estimated that “for every 10 to 15 people killed, maybe they get one militant.”

A Washington Post article last month explained that, although the government has dismissed “reports of collateral damage and the alleged killing of innocents” by claiming that drones “result in far fewer mistakes than less sophisticated weapons,” they have yet to provide any details to support those claims.

The Post report said that the drone war in Pakistan has resulted “in an estimated 1,350 to 2,250 deaths.” But the public simply doesn’t have a good idea of how many have been killed, because “the identities…remain classified, as does the existence of the drone program itself.”

In the same Google interview, President Obama also down-played the role of U.S. drones in Iraq, saying that “the truth is we’re not engaging in a bunch of drone attacks inside Iraq. There’s some surveillance to make sure that our embassy compound is protected.”
Both Pakistan and Iraq have publicly objected to America’s use of drones flying over their skies, saying it amounts to a violation of their sovereignty.

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IRAN: DRUMS OF WAR BEATING LOUDER: U.S. Mounts Further Military Build-Up in Persian Gulf

2012-02-01T08:17:00.000-08:00

Global Research
Ben Schreiner

With the drums of war beating ever louder against Iran, the U.S. military has quickly moved to reestablish a war footing in the Persian Gulf. The preparations for a looming military confrontation thus continue apace.

According to the Washington Post (1/27), “The Pentagon is rushing to send a large floating base for commando teams to the Middle East.” As the paper reports, the USS Ponce, a 40-year old amphibious transport dock previously set for decommission, will now be converted into a special ops hub, and then likely sent to the Persian Gulf.

The Pentagon, the Post reports, is seeking to retrofit the USS Ponce on an accelerated timeline. In fact, the military has gone ahead and waived “normal procurement rules because any delay presented a ‘national security risk.’”

At the same time, the Wall Street Journal reports (1/28) the Pentagon has notified Congress that it will divert an additional $82 million to refine the Massive Ordinance Penetrator (MOP). (The MOP is a 30,000-pound “bunker-buster” bomb “specifically designed to take out the hardened fortifications built by Iran and North Korea to cloak their nuclear programs.”)

The decision to seek an upgrade in the MOP reportedly comes after a series of tests revealed that the ordinance remains incapable of destroying certain Iranian nuclear facilities, such as the enrichment site at Fordow, located near the holy city of Qom. (Fordow is buried deep within the mountainside, below 260 feet of rock and soil).

The Journal also reports that, "The decision to ask now for more money to develop the weapon was directly related to efforts by the U.S. military's Central Command to prepare military options against Iran as quickly as possible." And thus much the same as with the retrofitting of the USS Ponce, the Pentagon has decided to sidestep the normal budgetary request process in seeking additional funds for the MOP. As Journal notes, “The Pentagon deems the MOP upgrades to be a matter of some urgency.”

Meanwhile, it was also reported Friday that the joint Israel-U.S. war games—deemed Austere Challenge 12—have been rescheduled for October 2012. The games were originally scheduled for spring, but were postponed on January 15 for reasons that were unclear. But with Austere Challenge 12 now set to take place in October, U.S. military officers are scheduled to begin arriving in Israel this coming week in preparation for the largest joint operation ever conducted between the two armed forces.

These latest military maneuvers come on the heels of an announced U.S. troop build-up in the region revealed earlier this month. As the Los Angeles Times first reported (1/12), the build-up, including the stationing of 15,000 U.S. troops in Kuwait, is “intended as a quick-reaction and contingency force in case a military crisis erupts in the standoff with Tehran over its suspected nuclear weapons program.”

Yet despite the ongoing military preparations, the power elites in both Washington and Tel Aviv remain divided as to whether to go ahead with a strike against Iran. As Jim Lobe noted, this growing debate has actually led to "a number of influential members of the [U.S.] foreign policy establishment - including several prominent liberal interventionists who had supported the Iraq war - to warn against any further escalation either by the US or Israel."

This rhetorical drawback by certain segments within the power structure has also been seen in Israel. On January 18, for example, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak refused to speculate on whether Israel would unilaterally strike Iran, while also going on to state that Israel was "very far off" from even making such a decision.

Barak, however, already seems to have changed course. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Friday, the Israeli defense minister argued that the world must act quickly to stop Iran from reaching the point at which time a strike becomes ineffective. As he stated, "It seems to us to be urgent, because the Iranians are deliberately drifting into what we call an immunity zone where practically no surgical operation could block them." Very far off appears to be rapidly approaching.

Indeed, writing in the latest New York Times Magazine (1/25), Ronen Bergman argues that Israel remains poised to strike Iran. As Bergman concludes his piece: "After speaking with many senior Israeli leaders and chiefs of military and the intelligence, I have come to believe that Israel will indeed strike Iran in 2012." Of course, an Israeli strike would quickly ensnare the U.S., along with many others, in a regional, if not global, conflict.

Yet, even as all signs continue to point towards an impending war, a glimmer of hope has perhaps also begun to emerge. Organized popular resistance to yet another imperial conquest is now finally visible within the U.S. As was announced earlier this month, a "broad spectrum of U.S.-based anti-imperialist and anti-war organizations," including many Occupy movements, have called for a coordinated nationwide protests on February 4 to resist the drive to war with Iran. The protesters will demand: “No war, no sanctions, no intervention, no assassinations against Iran.”

And with the power elite in both Israel and the U.S. still debating and divided over when to launch a strike against Iran, and with the Occupy movement already active in cities across the country, a window of opportunity exists (however brief) for a powerful working class-led push back to gain traction nationally against the further expansion of U.S. militarism into Iran. In fact, the only assured hope for warding off war--establishment doves, after all, rarely prevail against their hawkish counterparts--will be for the U.S. working class to demonstrate its opposition to imperialism by taking to the streets in protest. In the end, such resistance offers the only real hope for a peaceful resolution to the present crisis.

Ben Schreiner is a freelance writer living in Salem, Oregon. He may be reached at bnschreiner@gmail.com

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Report Unloads on ATF for Mexican ‘Gunwalking’

2012-02-01T08:08:00.000-08:00

Wired

Days before Attorney General Eric Holder is once again hauled before Congress to testify for Operation Fast and Furious, a new report sheds light on whether high-ranking officials knew, or have been honest about, one of the biggest failures in Justice Department history: a disastrous plan by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to allow gunrunners to “walk” firearms into the hands of Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel.

These questions are crucial because Fast and Furious has not only become a huge political issue, it also determines who will take responsibility for allowing thousands of guns to move unimpeded into a war zone south of the U.S.-Mexico border. The gunwalking operation — an attempt to build cases by not stopping but monitoring the flow of U.S. straw-purchased weapons to Mexico’s cartels — eventually saw the ATF lose track of more than 2,000 guns, many in the hands of cartel hitmen.

Hundreds of weapons recovered at crime scenes in Mexico were later traced to Fast and Furious, including AK-47 variant rifles discovered at the scene of a Dec. 14, 2010, shootout between border bandits and a Border Patrol BORTAC tactical unit in Arizona. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was killed in the fight.

But Fast and Furious wasn’t the first operation to run guns. The report, released by House Democrats, describes the plot as “the latest in a series of fatally flawed operations run by ATF agents in Phoenix and the Arizona U.S. Attorney’s Office,” beginning with the 2006-2007′s Operation Wide Receiver. In the beginning, Phoenix-based ATF agents “went forward with plans to observe or facilitate hundreds of suspected straw firearm purchases,” according to the report. Faced with the risk of losing track of the guns, Wide Receiver was shuttered.
In two cases, named the “The Hernandez Case” and “The Medrano Case,” the ATF watched groups of conspirators cross into Mexico carrying straw-purchased guns. In “Medrano,” smugglers snuck more than 100 firearms into Mexico while under observation by the ATF.

Fast and Furious was much bigger, with greater potential rewards — and risks — for field agents, involving “a sizable network the operation of straw puchasers [the ATF] believed were trafficking military-grade assault weapons to Mexican drug cartels.” But then the operation went badly wrong. Guns disappeared, or appeared after gunfights with the Mexican military or in stash houses. Then agent Terry was shot.

Questions, however, linger over the role of senior administration officials — a sticking point for House Republicans. Late Friday, the Justice Department released e-mails between an aide to Attorney General Eric Holder and Dennis Burke, the former United States Attorney for the District of Arizona (who later resigned over the scandal), discussing Terry’s death the next morning. Two messages from headquarters (the location was redacted in the release) informed Burke of the shooting. The second e-mail, at 3:31 a.m. contained one line: “Our agent has passed away.”

“Horrible,” Burke replied at 9:09 a.m. that morning. Thirty-two minutes later, Burke e-mailed Holder aide Monty Wilkinson. “Not good,” Burke said.

“Tragic,” Wilkinson wrote back. “I’ve alerted the AG, the Acting [Deputy Attorney General], Lisa, etc.” That evening, Wilkinson sent Burke another message: “The guns found in the desert near the murder BP officer connect back to the investigation we were going to talk about — they were AK-47s purchased at a Phoenix gun store.”

But according to the Democrats’ report, Wilkinson never followed up with Holder about the link, nor did he discuss it again with Burke — which doesn’t, on its face, contradict Holder’s previous testimony that he’d only heard of the operation after the scandal became public.

“The Committee has obtained no evidence indicating that the Attorney General authorized gunwalking or that he was aware of such allegations before they became public,” said the report. “None of the 22 witnesses interviewed by the Committee claims to have spoken with the Attorney General about the specific tactics employed in Operation Fast and Furious prior to the public controversy.”

The same was not true for then-Acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson, who was reassigned after lying to investigators over whether he knew about the operation (he received regular briefings, in fact, the report says). Questions also linger for then-Deputy Director William Hoover, also sacked, and why he “failed to inform” senior Justice Department officials about his concerns with the operation.

But did Holder’s aide, Wilkinson, really ever tell Holder? As of today’s report, that’s just speculation. However, expect Holder to get grilled on this subject very soon.

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Nuclear Free Middle East: Desirable, Necessary, and Impossible

2012-01-31T19:33:00.000-08:00

Richard Falk

Dimona nuclear plant in Israel, the
country holding the largest number
of nuclear weapons in the Middle East

            Finally, there is some argumentation in the West supportive of a nuclear free zone for the Middle East. Such thinking is still treated as politically marginal, and hardly audible above the beat of the war drums. It also tends to be defensively and pragmatically phrased as in the NY Times article by Shibley Telhami and Steven Kull (I.15..2012) with full disclosure title, “Preventing a Nuclear Iran.” The article makes a prudential argument against attacking Iran based on prospects of a damaging Iranian retaliation and the inability of an attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear program at an acceptable cost. The most that could be achieved for would be a short delay in Iran’s acquisition of weaponry, and maybe not even that. An attack seems likely to create irresistible pressure in Iran to everything possible to obtain a nuclear option with a renewed sense of urgency.

            This argument is sensibly reinforced by pointing to respected public opinion surveys that show Israeli attitudes to be less war-inclined than had been generally assumed. According to a Israeli recent poll, only 43% of Israelis favoring a military strike, while 64% favored establishing a nuclear free zone (NFZ) in the region that included Israel. In effect, then, establishing a NFZ that includes Israel would seem politically feasible, although not a course of action that would be entertained by the current Tel Aviv governmental political climate. We can conclude that the silence of Washington with respect to such an alternative approach to the dispute with Iran confirms what is widely believed, namely, that the U.S. Government adheres to the official Israeli line, and is not particularly sensitive to the wishes of the Israeli public even to the extent of serving America’s own strong national interest in finding a peaceful solution to the conflict.

            A variant of NFZ thinking has recently been attributed to Saudi Prince Turki Al-Faisal, former Saudi ambassador to the United States and once the head of Saudi intelligence. He too argues that NFZ is a better alternative than the military option, which he contends should be removed from the table. Prince Turki insists that sanctions have not altered Iran’s behavior. His proposal is more complex than simply advocating a NFZ. He would favor sanctions against Iran is there is convincing evidence that it is seeking nuclear weapons, but he also supports sanctions imposed on Israel if it does not disclose openly the full extent of its nuclear weapons arsenal. His approach has several additional features: extending the scope of the undertaking to all weapons of mass destruction (WMD), that is, including biological and chemical weapons; establishing a nuclear security umbrella for the region by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council; and seeking a resolution of outstanding conflicts in the region in accordance with the Mecca Arab proposals of 2002 that calls for Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian territories and the Golan Heights occupied in 1967, as well as the political and commercial normalization of relations between Israel and the Arab world.

            Prince Turki warns that if such an arrangement is not soon put in place, and Iran proceeds with its nuclear program, other countries in the region, including Turkey, are likely to be drawn into an expensive and destabilizing nuclear arms race. In effect, as with Telhami and Kull, Prince Turki’s approach is designed to avoid worst case scenarios, but is framed mainly in relation to the future of the region rather than confined to the Israel/Iran confrontation.

It concretely urges establishing such a framework with or without Israeli support at a conference of parties to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty scheduled for later in the year in Finland. Israel, not a party to the NPT, has not indicated its willingness to attend the conference at this point. As long ago as the 1995 NPT Review Conference the Arab countries put forward a proposal to establish in the Middle East a WMD free zone, but it has never been acted upon at any subsequent session. Israel, which is not a member of the NPT, has consistently taken the position over the years that a complete peace involving the region must precede any prohibition directed at the possession of nuclear weapons.

            The NFZ or WMDFZ initiatives need to be seen in the setting established by the NPT regime. An initial observation involves Israel’s failure to become a party to the NPT coupled with its covert nuclear program that resulted in the acquisition of the weaponry with the complicity of the West as documented in Seymour Hersh’s 1991 The Samson Option. Such a pattern of behavior needs to be contrasted with that of Iran, a party to the NPT that has reported to and accepted, with some friction, inspections on its territory by the Western oriented International Atomic Energy Agency. Iran has consistently denied any ambition to acquire nuclear weapons, but has insisted on its rights under Article IV of the treaty to exercise “..its inalienable right..to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination..” Iran has been under constant threat of an attack by Israel, the target for several years of Israel’s dirty low intensity war, the target of a Congressionally funded destabilization program of the United States reinforced by a diplomacy that constantly reaffirms the relevance of the military option, and operates in a political climate that excludes consideration of Israel’s nuclear arsenal. What is surprising under these circumstances is that Iran has not freed itself from NPT obligation by exercising its option to withdraw from the treaty as it entitled to do by Article X provided only that it gives notice to other treaty parties and an explanation of its reasons for withdrawing.

            Comparing these Israeli and Iran patterns of behavior with respect to nuclear weapons, it is difficult not to conclude that it is Israel, not Iran, that should be subjected to sanctions, and pressure to participate in denuclearizing negotiations. After all, Israel acquired the weaponry secretly, has not been willing to participate in the near universal discipline to the NPT, and has engaged in aggressive wars repeatedly against its neighbors resulting in long-term occupations. It can be argued that Israel was entitled to enhance its security by remaining outside the NPT, and thus is acting within its sovereign rights. This is a coherent legalistic position, but we should all realize by now that the NPT is more a geopolitical than a legal regime, and that Iran, for instance, would be immediately subject to a punitive response if it tried to withdraw from the treaty. In other words geopolitical priorities override legal rights in the NPT setting.

         The NPT is shaped by its geopolitical nature. This is best illustrated by the utter refusal of the nuclear weapons states, above all the United States, to fulfill its obligation under Article VI “to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to the cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.” The International Court of Justice in its 1996 Advisory Opinion on The Legality of Nuclear Weapons unanimously affirmed in its findings the legal imperative embodied in Article VI: “There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament in all its aspects under strict international control.” This finding that has been completely ignored by the nuclear weapons states (who had earlier made a furious failed effort to dissuade the UN General Assembly from seeking guidance from the ICJ with respect to the legal status of nuclear weapons and the obligations of the NPT). The refusal to uphold these obligations of Article VI would certainly appear to be a material breach of the treaty that authorizes any party to regard the treaty as void. Again the international discourse on nuclear weapons is so distorted that it is a rarity to encounter criticism of its discriminatory application, its double standards as between nuclear and non-nuclear states, and its geopolitical style of selective enforcement. In this regard it should be appreciated that the threat of military attack directed at Iran resembles reliance on the so-called Bush Doctrine of preventive war that had been used to justify aggression against Iraq in 2003.

            In summary, it is of utmost importance to avoid a war in the Middle East arising from the unresolved dispute about Iran’s nuclear program. One way to do this is to seek a NFZ or a WMDFZ for the entire region that includes the participation of Israel. What has given this approach a renewed credibility for the West is that it seems the only way to avoid a lose/lose war option, that it possesses some prudential appeal to change minds in Tehran and Tel Aviv, and also to engage Washington in a less destructive and self-destructive course of action. Whether this prudential appeal is sufficiently strong to overcome the iron cage of militarism that guides policy choices in Israel and the United States remains doubtful. Thinking outside the militarist box remains a forbidden activity, partly reflecting the domestic lock on the political and moral imagination of these countries by their respective military industrial media think tank complexes.

            I would conclude this commentary with three pessimistic assessments that casts a dark shadow over the regional future:

(1) an NFZ or WMDFZ for the Middle East is necessary and desirable, but it almost certainly will not placed on the political agenda of American-led diplomacy relating to the conflict;

(2) moves toward nuclear disarmament negotiations that have been legally mandated and would be beneficial for the world, and for the nuclear weapons states and their peoples, will not be made in the current atmosphere that blocks all serious initiatives to abolish nuclear weapons;

(3)   the drift toward a devastating attack on Iran will only be stopped by an urgent mobilization of anti-war forces in civil society, which seems unlikely given other preoccupations.

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All options on table against nuke-armed Iran: Panetta

2012-01-30T14:49:00.000-08:00

HurriyettDailyNews

Tehran cites positive atmosphere in the three-day long inspection tour of UN nuclear watchdog IAEA. However, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta raises stakes by reiterating Iran could produce a nuclear bomb within a year

Students from various universities in Tehran hold
pictures of Iranian scientist Ahmadi-Roshan,
as they wait for arrival of IAEA delegates at
Tehran airport.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi expressed optimism that a visit by U.N. inspectors to Iran’s nuclear facilities would produce an understanding, while U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Iran was only one year away from producing a nuclear weapon.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) team started the three-day inspection tour Jan. 29. “We are very optimistic about the mission and the outcome” of the IAEA mission, Mehr news agency quoted Salehi as saying. Salehi also said the delegation could choose to extend its stay beyond the three days originally planned if it wished. “We are very optimistic on the results of the IAEA trip. They are here for a three-day trip, and if they want, it [the mission] could be extended,” Salehi said.

“We’ve always tried to put transparency as a principle in our cooperation with IAEA,” Salehi said. “During this visit, the delegation has questions and the necessary answers will be given.”

The team is likely to visit an underground enrichment site near the holy city of Qom, 130 km south of Tehran, which is carved into a mountain as protection against possible airstrikes. Earlier this month, Iran said it had begun enrichment work at the site, which is far smaller than the country’s main uranium labs but is reported to have more advanced equipment.

All options on the table

Despite Salehi’s positive remarks, the United States defense secretary reiterated the U.S.’s concerns over Iran’s disputed nuclear program.

“The consensus is that, if they decided to do it, it would probably take them about a year to be able to produce a bomb,” Panetta said during an interview with CBS news. Panetta also highlighted Obama’s opposition to Iran’s nuclear program and said the U.S. shared common goals with Israel in its opposition to the program. “If they proceed and we get intelligence that they’re proceeding with developing a nuclear weapon then we will take whatever steps are necessary to stop it,” he added.

The visit was set to coincide with a vote in Iran’s Parliament on a bill that would require the government to immediately cut the flow of crude oil to Europe in retaliation for sanctions. Lawmakers postponed the vote Jan. 29 to further study the bill, and no date for a vote has yet been set. The draft bill is Iran’s response to an European Union decision last week to impose an embargo on Iranian oil. After the delay Iran’s Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi said the Islamic state would soon stop exporting crude to “some” countries, the state news agency IRNA reported.

Compiled from AP, AFP and Reuters stories by the Daily News staff.

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Audit: U.S. Defense Department can't account for billions for Iraq

2012-01-29T21:30:00.000-08:00

CNN

The U.S. Defense Department cannot account for about $2 billion it was given to cover Iraq-related expenses and is not providing Iraq with a complete list of U.S.-funded reconstruction projects, according to two new government audits.

The reports come from the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.
The Iraqi government in 2004 gave the Department of Defense access to about $3 billion to pay bills for certain contracts, and the department can only show what happened to about a third of that, the inspector general says in an audit published Friday.

Although the Department of Defense (DoD) had "internal processes and controls" to track payments, the "bulk of the records are missing," the report says, adding that the department is searching for them.

Other documents are missing as well, including monthly reports documenting expenses, the audit says.

"From July 2004 through December 2007, DoD should have provided 42 monthly reports. However, it can locate only the first four reports."

A letter accompanying the report is signed by Stuart Bowen, the inspector general. The audit was overseen by Glenn Furbish, assistant inspector general for audits.
In a response letter also contained in the report, Defense Under Secretary Mark Easton acknowledges "a records management issue."

The audit says it believes records management is to blame, and "has been an ongoing problem for DoD in Iraq. By all accounts, DoD established good internal processes and controls to account for and report on" the funds it was given after the Coalition Provisional Authority dissolved.

Where the records did exist, they matched other records and contained "good financial documentation supporting individual payments." Also, there is "sufficient evidence" that required monthly reports were sent to the government of Iraq, even though they can't be found, the audit said.

The audit deals with a time when Iraq's government was undergoing a transition. The Coalition Provisional Authority ran the country for 14 months from 2003 to 2004. During that time, the authority awarded numerous contracts. When it dissolved in 2004, the Iraqi government gave the U.S. Defense Department access to the $3 billion to pay bills for contracts the provisional authority had awarded.

The Defense Department letter from Easton - the department's deputy chief financial officer - thanks the inspector general's office for "the collaborative effort and professional courtesy" in a series of audits.

Separately, the inspector general's office sent a letter Sunday to the U.S. ambassador to Iraq complaining that the U.S. government is not providing Iraq with a complete list of reconstruction projects.

The U.S. criteria for selecting which projects to report to Iraq - which include only those valued at $250,000 or more - is a central part of the problem, the letter says.
The U.S. Embassy says the system is designed to help Iraq "focus its limited resources on sustainment of infrastructure and other large capital projects done through U.S. reconstruction efforts," the report notes.

The inspector general's office argues that the limited list - which is also "hampered by unreliable data and other data entry problems" - does not allow Iraq to decide where to focus its resources, and notes that the country might consider some smaller projects more important than those that are reported.

"Without more comprehensive knowledge about reconstruction projects the (Iraqi government) will not be in a position to maximize the use of its resources," the report says.
Billions of dollars in spending are not reported to Iraq under the current system, the report says.

In a response letter, Peter Bodde, assistant chief of mission for the U.S. Embassy in Iraq, says that while the current system is incomplete, "it does capture the vast majority of reconstruction projects and there is no other alternative that captures more."
He also notes that the Iraq reconstruction effort "is now in its very last stages, and all remaining capital projects will be reported through the asset transfer process."
The Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction was created in 2004 to continue oversight of Iraq reconstruction programs.

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A Call For Mass Action Against The Suppression of The Occupy Movement

2012-01-29T20:13:00.000-08:00

By Emma Kaplan

SIGN THIS CALL TO ACTION
Contact: dontsuppressows@yahoo.com

These past several months have witnessed something very different in the U.S. People from many different walks of life came together to occupy public space in nearly 1,000 cities in the U.S. They stood up to vicious police violence, they broke through the confines of “protest as usual,” and in the middle of all that, they built community. Even in the face of media attempts to ridicule, distort, and demonize these protests, their basic message began to get through. People throughout the U.S.—and even the world—took notice of and took heart from these brave and creative protesters.

The political terms of discourse began to shift; the iced-over thinking of people in the U.S. began to thaw. Standing up to the unjust brutality and arrests became a badge of honor.
People began to listen to and read the stories of some of the victims of this economic crisis, and to share their own. And most of all, as the protests spread to city after city, the fact of people occupying public space forced open debate and raised big questions among millions as to what kind of society this is, and what it should be. Why does such poverty and need exist in the face of a relative handful of people amassing obscene amounts of wealth? Why do the political institutions of society seem only to serve that handful? Why do so many youth feel they face such a bleak future? Why does the insane destruction of the environment continue to accelerate? And what is needed to overcome all this?

Those who actually wield power in this country regarded these protests, and these questions, as dangerous, and reacted accordingly. Time and again those who wield power violated their own laws and ordered police to pepper spray, beat with clubs, and shoot tear gas canisters at the heads of people who were doing nothing more than non-violently expressing their dissent and seeking community. This reached a peak in the recent coordinated and systematic attacks of the past few weeks against all the major occupations. In fact, the mayor of Oakland admitted on BBC to being part of conference calls that coordinated national strategy against the occupiers. On top of all that, and in another blatant show of illegitimate force and power, they attempted to prevent journalists and photographers from covering these acts of repression—unless they were “embedded” with the police.

To put the matter bluntly, but truly: the state planned and unleashed naked and systematic violence and repression against people attempting to exercise rights that are supposed to be legally guaranteed. This response by those who wield power in this society is utterly shameful from a moral standpoint, and thoroughly illegitimate from a legal and political one.

Now this movement faces a true crossroads. Will it be dispersed, driven into the margins, or co-opted? Or will it come back stronger? This question now poses itself, extremely sharply.

One thing is clear already: if this illegitimate wave of repression is allowed to stand… if the powers-that-be succeed in suppressing or marginalizing this new movement… if people are once again “penned in”—both literally and symbolically—things will be much worse. THIS SUPPRESSION MUST BE MASSIVELY OPPOSED, AND DEFEATED.

On the other hand, this too is true: movements grow, and can only grow, by answering repression with even greater and more powerful mobilization.
The need to act is urgent.

As a first step in the necessary response, there must be a massive political mobilization on a day, or days, very soon to say NO! to this attempt to suppress thought and expression with brutality and violence. This mobilization should most of all be in New York, where this movement started… but it should at the same time be powerfully echoed all around the country and yes, around the world. This is a call for massive demonstrations—soon—carried out in public spaces where they can have maximum impact and exposure and where the authorities cannot pen in, suppress, and otherwise attempt to marginalize these demonstrations.

These demonstrations must be large enough to show clearly that people will not tolerate that which is intolerable… that people will not adjust to that which is so manifestly unjust. Such demonstrations, along with the efforts to reach out and build them, can draw many more people from passive sympathy into active support and can awaken and inspire even millions more who have not yet been reached. Such demonstrations can powerfully answer the attempt by “the 1%” to crush and/or derail this broad movement. Thousands and thousands in the streets, acting together, can seize new initiative and change the whole political equation. The urgent questions raised by Occupy—and other urgent questions that have yet to be raised in this movement—can once more reverberate, and more powerfully than before.

The repression of the Occupy movement must not stand. Act.
Contact: dontsuppressows@yahoo.com
Signers of this Call include:
Prof. Cornel West
Gbenga Akinnagbe, actor on the HBO series “The Wire”
Carole Ashley
Fr. Luis Barrios
Renate Bridenthal, Professor of History, Brooklyn College, CUNY, retired
Elaine Brower, World Can’t Wait & Military Families Speak Out
Craig Phipps, Ombudsman, Casa Esperanza
Cynthia Carlson, artist
Nina Felshin, independent curator
Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition, NYC
Harmony Hammond
Barry Holden
Camille Hankins, Founder and Director: Win Animal Rights and No Kill New York
Ray Hill, producer/host of Ray on the Raydio Internet radio show, Houston, TX
Lee Siu Hin, National Coordinator, National Immigrant Solidarity Network
Judith Henry
Rev. Dr. James Karpen, Church of St Paul and St Andrew, New York City
Chuck Kaufman, Executive Director, Alliance for Global Justice
Rev. Earl Kooperkamp, St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, Harlem
Jim Long, artist
Waqas Malik, artist
Lydia Matthews, Dean of Academic Programs, Associate Dean of Parsons/ Professor
Ann Messner, artist
Travis Morales
Dorinda Moreno, Fuerza Mundial / FM Global / Hitec Aztec, U.S. Liaison Secretariat, International Tribunal of Conscience of Peoples in Movement/TICPM
Nick Mottern, ConsumersforPeace.org & kNOwdrones.org
National Immigrant Solidarity Network
Bradley Olson, Psychologist, Activist
Rosemary O’Neill
Lindsay O’Neill-Caffrey
The Rt. Rev. George E. Packard, Retired Bishop of the Episcopal Church for the Armed Services and Federal Ministries
Ana Ratner
Suzanne Ross, PH.D., Clinical Psychologist
David E. Rousline, Ph.D. Berkeley CA
Rev. Juan Carlos Ruiz, New Sanctuary Movement
Jayce Salloum, artist, Vancouver
Irving Sandler
Donna Schaper, Senior Minister, Judson Memorial Church
Stephen Soldz, Director, Center for Research, Evaluation, and Program Development, Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis,* Past President, Psychologists for Social Responsibility*
Bob Stein
Rev. Max Surjadinata, Area Coordinator of Friends of Sabeel North America
David Swanson, warisacrime.org
Matthew Swaye
Debra Sweet, Director, World Can’t Wait
Athena Tacha
Dennis Trainor, Jr, Writer, Producer & Host of Acronym TV
Marina Urbach, independent curator, other projects, New York
Nancy Vining Van Ness, Director, American Creative Dance
Jim Vrettos, Adjunct Professor, John Jay College of Criminal Justice*
Jen Waller
Vince Warren, Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights*
Andy Zee, Spokesperson, Revolution Books
David Zeiger, Displaced Films

*For identification purposes only

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Police confirm over 400 arrests at Occupy Oakland rally

2012-01-29T19:58:00.000-08:00

PressTV

Riot police fired tear gas and arrested more than 400 Oaklanders, as hordes of anti-Wall Street protesters tried to take over downtown buildings including City Hall, police said.

The clashes began just before 3 p.m. on Saturday when protesters marched toward the vacant Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center and began to tear down construction barricades. The Oakland police said in a statement that the crowd was ordered to disperse when protesters “began destroying construction equipment and fencing.”

Several hours later, some protesters broke into City Hall, the police said. On Sunday, Jean Quan, the mayor of Oakland toured City Hall to survey the damage to the building. Glass display cases had been smashed and graffiti was splashed on the walls, The Associated Press reported. At one point during the protest, The AP quoted Mayor Quan as saying that demonstrators, who broke into the hall burned flags they found inside, broke an electrical box and damaged art displays, including an exhibit of recycled art that had been made by children.

“I do understand that people were enraged by the brutality that they had already seen,” said Omar Yassin, 42, a member of the group's media committee.

Yassin echoed comments made by other group members that protesters found the door to City Hall ajar on Saturday evening.

The Occupy Oakland Media Committee group issued a statement on Sunday charging that officers had violated the police department's code of conduct for dealing with protesters, calling the mass arrests “illegal.”

Most of the arrests occurred late Saturday, when large groups were corralled in front of the Downtown Oakland Y.M.C.A. on Broadway.

On a livestream broadcast on the Web site oakfosho.com, dozens of protesters could be seen sitting cross-legged in the darkness in front of the Y.M.C.A. Their hands appeared to be bound behind them while officers stood watch. The protesters occasionally sang or cheered. In a statement on Sunday afternoon, the police said the marchers “invaded” the Y.M.C.A.

Caitlin Maning, 55, a film professor who is a member of the Occupy Oakland media team, said protesters had been invited into the Y.M.C.A. to escape being kettled on Broadway, but ended up being prevented from exiting through a rear door by police.

The events were part of a demonstration dubbed “Move-In Day,” a plan by protesters to take over the vacant convention center and use it as a communelike command center, according to the Web site occupyoaklandmoveinday.org.

“We were going to set up a community center,” said Benjamin Phillips, 32, a member of the Occupy Oakland media team. “It would be a place where we could house people, feed people, do all the things that we have been doing.”

In an open letter to Mayor Quan on the Move-In Day site, the group also said it was considering “blockading the airport indefinitely, occupying City Hall indefinitely” and “shutting down the Oakland ports.” Occupy protesters did briefly shut down the city's port in November.

In a statement issued before the march, Ms. Quan said that “the residents of Oakland are wearying of the constant focus and cost to our city.” On Saturday night, she added: “Once again, a violent splinter group of the Occupy movement is engaging in violent actions against Oakland. The Bay Area Occupy movement has got to stop using Oakland as their playground.”

Ms. Quan has spent her first term embattled by Occupy protesters who set up camp at the Frank H. Ogawa Plaza in October. After initially embracing the protest, she ordered the camp removed.

After a series of violent episodes, including a clash in which a Marine veteran who served in the Iraq war suffered a fractured skull when struck by a projectile in a confrontation with the police, Ms. Quan relented and permitted the protesters to return. But two weeks later, in response to fears of renewed violence, she ordered the plaza to be cleared again. NY Times

IM/

Mr. Phillips, the Occupy media team member, who said he was an Air Force veteran, spoke Saturday night from his home on Grand Avenue, where he had stopped to rinse tear-gas residue from his contact lenses. He described the scene in front of the Y.M.C.A. as “terrifying.”

“This is disgusting, because this is not the way that America is supposed to work,” he said. “You're supposed to be able to have something like freedom to assemble and air your grievances.”

“It's bizarre,” he said of the police reaction. “It's not something you expect to see in the United States, and we've seen it over and over in Oakland.”

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Gold Reserves Now A National Security Issue For The World's Governments

2012-01-29T12:17:00.000-08:00

WorldofWallStreet
Monty High

I've been feeling that the "India buys Iran's oil with gold" story (e.g. click here) was quite important for understanding the world geopolitical situation and for gold investing, but I wasn't sure exactly how. Just last night the reasoning to support the feeling came to me.
Let's review the major, recent geopolitical gold-related news stories:

Libya's Ghadafi pays his mercenaries with gold as he attempts to fend off the Bankster Empire attack masquerading as an Air Campaign to protect citizens from slaughter.
Venezuela's Chavez demands the return of Venezuela's gold from London. He realizes that Venezuela is definitely on the Bankster's list of "regimes that need changing".
Iran relies on gold to maintain international trade using gold as the Bankster Empire cuts it off from the dollar system and escalates its increasingly violent (bombs, assinations, etc.) campaign for regime change.
India relies on gold to maintain its supply of Iranian oil.
China and Russian, still not under the control of the Bankster Empire, eschew dollars for gold, beefing up their gold reserves as fast as they can without driving the price of gold too high, too fast.

Gold is what a nation (regime) relies on should the Bankster Empire turn against that nation.

The first thing the Bankster Empire does when its turning the screws on a regime is to freeze its assets. After that comes the kind of things happening to Iran (funding and supplying internal opponents, preventing them from doing trade by locking them out of the banking system, assinations, bombings, etc.). Throughout, gold reserves held within that nation allow the nation to continue to function and trade with other nations.

So, to any nation that is not fully integrated into the Bankster Empire (a non-aligned nation), gold reserves aren't a nice investment, they are an integral part of National Security (survival). As we know in the USA, national security trumps all other political priorities.

Here's my quick estimate of those nations which constitute the core of the Bankster Empire (dark green) and those nations that are clearly either close allies or vassals of the Empire (light green). Dark yellow constitutes those nations which are clearly outside of the control of the Bankster Empire with light yellow nations constituting those that I deem to be mostly outside of Bankster Empire control. Countries which are white are countries that I just don't know enough about to categorize. Please leave me a comment if you think I have a country misclassified.

As a result of the pattern formed from the Libya, Venezuela, Iran, China, Russia (all non-aligned), I'm expecting that every nation in the world (beginning with the non-aligned nations, but continuing to fully aligned nations like Germany) are going to making the accumulation a significant, no-kidding physical gold bullion reserve located on their own soil as a matter of national security, a top priority.

This major geopolitical shift is an unexpected consequence of the Banker Empire's squeezing of the Iranians that has enormous long-term bullish implications for the price of gold.

It seems Saddam Hussein's decision to sell oil in something other than the US dollar (Euros) was the final straw that drove the Bankster Empire to attack Iraq. I think that the Bankster Empire is not at all amused by the Iranian Gold For Oil deal and that they will be escalating their attack on Iran. Jim Rickards and Ron Paul are right. In my view, sanctions are a prelude to war and war with Iran is already underway and that will become more apparent as time goes by. That seems bullish for oil and gold for the short and medium-term.
MontyHigh, www.worldofwallstreet.us

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Apple hit by boycott call over worker abuses in China

2012-01-29T12:06:00.000-08:00

The Guardian
Paul Harris

US writers attack conditions at Foxconn plant and call for consumers to act

Apple, the computer giant whose sleek products have become a mainstay of modern life, is dealing with a public relations disaster and the threat of calls for a boycott of its iPhones and iPads.

The company's public image took a dive after revelations about working conditions in the factories of some of its network of Chinese suppliers. The allegations, reported at length in the New York Times, build on previous concerns about abuses at firms that Apple uses to make its bestselling computers and phones. Now the dreaded word "boycott" has started to appear in media coverage of its activities.

"Should consumers boycott Apple?" asked a column in the Los Angeles Times as it recounted details of the bad PR fallout.

The influential Daily Beast and Newsweek technology writer Dan Lyons wrote a scathing piece. "It's barbaric," he said, before saying to his readership: "Ultimately the blame lies not with Apple and other electronics companies – but with us, the consumers. And ultimately we are the ones who must demand change."

Forbes magazine columnist Peter Cohan also got in on the act. "If you add up all the workers who have died to build your iPhone or iPad, the number is shockingly high," he began an article that also toyed with the idea of a boycott in its headline.

The New York Times's revelations, which centred on the Foxconn plant in southern China that has repeatedly been the subject of accusations of worker mistreatment, have caused a major stir in the US. Although such allegations have been made before in numerous news outlets, and in a controversial one-man show by playwright Mike Daisey, this time they have struck a chord.

The newspaper detailed allegations that workers at Foxconn suffered in conditions that resembled a modern version of bonded labour, working obscenely long shifts in unhealthy conditions with few of the labour rights that workers in the west would take for granted. It also mentioned disturbing events elsewhere in China among supplier firms, such as explosions at iPad factories that killed a total of four people and another incident in which 137 workers were injured after cleaning iPhone screens with a poisonous chemical.

Apple has come out fighting, which is no surprise given the remarkable success that the company has seen in recent years.

Through the iPod, iPhone and now the iPad tablet computer, Apple has revolutionised lifestyles across the world and built up a cult of worshippers. It has also generated billions of dollars in profits, in part due to the cheapness of Chinese labour.

But much of the firm's success rests on its reputation for "cool" among hip urban professionals and a generally positive corporate image. Stories of worker abuse at Chinese firms are a direct threat to that winning combination.

In a lengthy email sent to Apple staff, chief executive Tim Cook met the allegations head-on. "We care about every worker in our worldwide supply chain. Any accident is deeply troubling, and any issue with working conditions is cause for concern," Cook said. He went on to slam critics of the company. "Any suggestion that we don't care is patently false and offensive to us… accusations like these are contrary to our values."

Earlier this month Apple took the unusual step of releasing a list of all the firms in its worldwide supply chain as part of its 2011 audit of human rights conditions at factories where it has partnerships.

However, the company's own list made for grim reading. It revealed that a staggering 62% of the 229 facilities that it was involved with were not in compliance with Apple's 60-hour maximum working week policy. Almost a third had problem with hazardous waste.
Cook insisted in his email that Apple did not turn a blind eye to conditions in its supplier network. But he did warn that the firm was likely to discover more problems. "We will continue to dig deeper, and we will undoubtedly find more issues," he said.

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The Truth Behind the Coming "Regime Change" in Syria

2012-01-29T11:54:00.000-08:00

Global Research
Shamus Cooke

After meeting again to decide Syria's fate, the Arab League again decided to extend its "monitoring mission" in Syria. However, some Arab League nations under U.S. diplomatic control are clamoring for blood. These countries — virtual sock puppets of U.S. foreign policy — want to declare the Arab League monitoring mission "a failure,” so that military intervention — in the form of a no fly zone — can be used for regime change.

The United States appears to be using a strategy in Syria that it has perfected over the years, having succeeded most recently in Libya: arming small paramilitary groups loyal to U.S. interests that claim to speak for the local population; these militants then attack the targeted government the U.S. would like to see overthrown — including terrorist bombings — and when the attacked government defends itself, the U.S. cries "genocide" or "mass murder,” while calling for foreign military intervention.

This is the strategy that the U.S. is using to channel the Arab Spring into the bloody dead end of foreign military intervention.

For example, the U.S. media and government are fanatically giving the impression that, in Syria, the local population would like foreign militarily intervention to overthrow their authoritarian president, Bashar Assad. But facts are stubborn things.

After spinning these lies, The New York Times was forced to admit, in several articles, that there have been massive rallies in Syria in support of the Syrian government. These rallies are larger than any pro-government demonstration that the U.S. government could hope to organize for itself. The New York Times reports:

"The turnout [at least tens of thousands — see picture in link] in Sabaa Bahrat Square in Damascus, the [Syrian] capital, once again underlined the degree of backing that Mr. Assad and his leadership still enjoy among many Syrians, nearly seven months into the popular uprising. That support is especially pronounced in cities like Damascus and Aleppo, the country’s two largest." (January 13, 2012).

The New York Times is forced to admit that the two largest cities — in a small country — support the government (or at least oppose foreign military intervention).

This was further confirmed by a poll funded by the anti-Syrian Qatar Foundation, preformed by the Doha Debates:

"According to the latest opinion poll commissioned by The Doha Debates, Syrians are more supportive of their president with 55% not wanting him to resign." (January 2, 2012).

If people in Syria do not want foreign intervention — a likely reason that so many attended pro-Assad demonstrations — what about the so-called Free Syrian Army, which the United States has given immense credibility to and which claims to speak for the Syrian people?

The Free Syrian Army — like its Libyan counterpart — appears to be yet another Made-in-the-USA militant group, by route of its ally Turkey, a fact alluded to by the pro U.S.-establishment magazine, Foreign Affairs:

"Why does the Syrian [government] military not rocket their [Free Syrian Army] position or launch a large-scale assault? The FSA fighters are positioned about a mile from the Turkish border, near enough to escape across if the situation turned dire."
The article also quotes a Free Syrian Army member who states: "Every [Free Syrian Army] group in Turkey has its own job," Sayeed said. "[The Turks] gave us our freedom to move." (December 8, 2011).

The article also mentions that the Free Syrian Army is calling for a "no fly zone" over certain regions of Syria, which would destroy the Syrian government military; the possible starting locations of this no fly zone are on the Syrian borders of either Turkey, Jordan, or Iraq — all three are either strong U.S. allies or client states.

A “no fly zone” is the new euphemism that means the U.S. and its European military junior partners in NATO will intervene to use their advanced fighter jets to destroy the Syrian military, as happened in Libya. In Libya the no fly zone evolved into a “no drive zone” and eventually a “no survival” zone for anything resembling the Syrian military — or anybody who armed himself in defense of the Libyan government.

As in Syria, Libya's largest city, Tripoli, never had large anti-government demonstrations. The anti-Libyan government/pro-U.S. paramilitary group that attacked Libyan forces was so tiny that it took months to take power after 10,000 NATO bombing sorties (bombing missions) that destroyed large portions of Libya's infrastructure, as documented by the independent Human Rights Investigations.

It's totally unimaginable that any large section of Syrian society would invite a NATO-backed no fly zone, i.e. war, into Syria. The examples of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya are too glaring for any Middle Eastern nation not to notice. For the Free Syrian Army to demand a NATO invasion of Syria is enough to label the FSA a U.S. puppet group striving for political power, deserving to be condemned.

This strategy of using a proxy army to undermine an anti-U.S. government has a grisly past. This strategy is celebrated in the book Charlie Wilson's War, which tells the true story of the U.S. government sending weapons and cash to Islamic extremists to wage a terrorist campaign against the Afghan government, which was an ally of the Soviet Union at the time. The attacks eventually led to the Afghan government asking for Soviet military re-enforcements, whose presence in Afghanistan created a degree of popular support for the extremists who eventually became known as the Taliban.

The same scenario also played itself out in Kosovo, where the tiny, U.S.-backed Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) began a terrorist campaign against the government of Yugoslavia, intending to separate Kosovo into an independent nation. When the Yugoslav government attempted to defend itself from the KLA — while imitating its violent tactics — the U.S. and other western governments labeled it genocide, and invaded Yugoslavia, calling it a "humanitarian invasion.” To this day the U.S. is one of few nations that recognizes Kosovo as an independent nation while Kosovo faithfully serves the interests of the United States.

The same proxy war strategy — by the U.S. and other European powers — played a crucial role in numerous wars throughout Africa, which culminated in the massive Congo War that killed over five million people, as French journalist Gerard Prunier describes in his book, Africa's World War.

In Syria history is repeating itself, and some non-U.S. allies are very aware of it. The New York Times reports:

"[Russia's Foreign Minister] said that foreign governments [the U.S., Turkey, etc.] were arming ‘militants and extremists’ in Syria."

The Foreign minister also gave an accurate description of U.S. foreign policy towards Iran:

"Mr. Lavrov offered a similarly grave message about the possibility of a military strike against Iran, which he said would be a “catastrophe.” He said sanctions now being proposed against Tehran were “intended to have a smothering effect on the Iranian economy and the Iranian population, probably in the hopes of provoking discontent.” (January 19, 2012).

Most ominously, the Russian Foreign Minister said that U.S. foreign policy in Syria and Iran could lead to a "very big war,” i.e., a war that becomes regional or even international in scope, as other powers intervene to uphold their interests in the region.

Russia has offered a way to avoid war in Syria and is pursuing it through the UN Security Council; it is the same path being pursued by the pro-U.S. government in Yemen: maintaining the current government in power until elections are called. Unfortunately, Yemen is an ally of the U.S. and Syria is not — the U.S. and its allies are blocking the same approach in Syria in order to pursue war.

The Syrian government opposition bloc inside of Syria, the National Coordination Committee, opposes foreign military intervention. A leader of the NCC is Hassan Abdul Azim, who wisely states;

“We refuse on principle any type of military foreign intervention because it threatens the freedom of our country,” (January 19, 2012).

This is very likely the prevailing opinion inside of Syria, since the threat of no fly zones will result in the same mass bombings experienced by the citizens of Tripoli in Libya. The fake Syrian opposition outside of the country, The Syrian National Council, is yet another U.S. puppet — now allied with the Free Syrian Army — begging for a military invasion of Syria in order to "liberate" it. Of course the western media tells only the perspective of the pro-U.S. Syrian National Council.

The U.S. has proven on multiple occasions that military solutions solve nothing, having torn asunder the social fabric of Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Libya. The working people of Syria and Iran do not desire "help" from the U.S. government and its allies to prevent bloodshed. The working people of these countries could liberate themselves from their authoritarian governments, as did the Tunisians and Egyptians, which is precisely the point: the U.S. is intervening militarily to re-gain control over a region that slipped out of its hands during the Arab Spring. This military approach serves to push the working people of the targeted country into the hands of their government while creating a humanitarian catastrophe for the invaded nation. The working people of the United States have no interest in aggressive war and have a responsibility to learn about U.S. government propaganda so that they can demand its end in the streets.

Shamus Cooke is a social worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action ( www.workerscompass.org )

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/13/world/middleeast/syrians-rally-in-support-of-assad.html
http://www.thedohadebates.com/news/item/index.asp?n=14312
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/12/08/syria_free_army_rebels?page=0,3
http://humanrightsinvestigations.org/tag/nato-bombing/
http://www.smh.com.au/world/russia-warns-west-it-risks-war-over-syria-iran-20120119-1q8ei.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/19/world/europe/russia-warns-against-support-for-arab-uprisings.html?_r=3&ref=world
http://rt.com/news/syria-protests-russia-dialogue-149/

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Changes in DSM-5 Autism Definition Could Negatively Impact Millions

2012-01-28T15:16:00.000-08:00

Salem-News

"The autism community strongly recommends that the proposed DSM-5 autism spectrum disorder diagnostic criteria be revisited with these concerns in mind," - Sallie Bernard, President of SafeMinds

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) - Proposed changes to the diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum disorders in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – 5 (DSM-5) will potentially disrupt appropriate and necessary services to hundreds of thousands of individuals in the US, hamper the ability to track the numbers of people with autism, and interfere with efforts to establish biological causes of autism.

“The proposed criteria make it significantly more difficult to qualify for an autism spectrum diagnosis and they completely eliminate the categories of PDD-NOS and Asperger’s Disorder,” stated Wendy Fournier, National Autism Association President. “In a well-intentioned desire to improve the specificity of an ASD diagnosis, the new criteria may, in fact, go too far and create unintended consequences. It is critically important that any diagnosis address all the symptoms of an individual and allow them the supports they need.”

The new criteria, rationale and previous criteria are available at: http://www.dsm5.org/ProposedRevisions/Pages/proposedrevision.aspx?rid=94

Currently, the federal government is spending millions of dollars to track prevalence of ASDs in 11 states; the 2000 birth cohort is due out this year. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) requires schools to report the number of students with autism annually. Both sets of data have shown dramatic increases in autism spectrum disorders. One in 110 children in the US is now affected by autism compared to one in 10,000 in the early 1980’s. By significantly changing the criteria for diagnosis, the new DSM-5 will impair the ability of public health officials to compare future rates of autism spectrum disorders to past rates, since the definition will have changed. Accurate projections of trends in autism rates are critical to planning educational interventions, Medicaid and adult services.

"By analogy, if the medical community chose to only count melanoma in the future instead of all types of skin cancer, it would look like skin cancer rates had gone down, even though other types were still present and needed treatment,” said Ginger Taylor, Canary Party Executive Director.

In addition, incidence and prevalence are critically important to investigating environmental causes of autism. “Toxic exposures to the general population change over time and having good consistent epidemiology allows researchers to judge the likelihood of a toxin being involved in autism,” stated Eric Uram, SafeMinds Executive Director. “The APA’s new criteria should add a specific mechanism to map the old diagnoses onto the new ones in order to allow researchers to compare new and old datasets. We also would like to see the APA address the issue of regressive autism by including age of onset as part of the criteria. The etiologies of infantile vs. regressive autism may be entirely different, but the new criteria do not distinguish them in any way.”

A primary concern for parents is the likelihood that many children on the autism spectrum may not be diagnosed under the new criteria, thereby depriving them of appropriate early intervention and treatment.

“Even in the states that have passed autism insurance legislation, the tightening of the criteria for autism may exclude children who need treatment with Applied Behavior Analysis,” said Mary Holland, Managing Director of the Elizabeth Birt Center for Autism Law and Advocacy.

“Our organizations advocate that the criteria should err on the side of over-diagnosing rather than under-diagnosing since no harm is likely from providing educational services to a young child, but great potential can be lost by not providing treatment.” Early intensive treatment improves outcomes for children with autism, making it highly cost-effective for tax-payers when compared to providing adult services.

"The autism community strongly recommends that the proposed DSM-5 autism spectrum disorder diagnostic criteria be revisited with these concerns in mind," concludes Sallie Bernard, President of SafeMinds. “These issues are too important to remain unresolved.”

For more complete documentation of community concerns and questions, please visit www.safeminds.org. If your organization would like to sign onto these concerns, please contact weisman@safeminds.org.

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Obama administration using loophole to quietly sell arms package to Bahrain

2012-01-28T14:43:00.000-08:00

Foreign Policy

President Barack Obama's administration has been delaying its planned $53 million arms sale to Bahrain due to human rights concerns and congressional opposition, but this week administration officials told several congressional offices that they will move forward with a new and different package of arms sales -- without any formal notification to the public.

The congressional offices that led the charge to oppose the original Bahrain arms sales package are upset that the State Department has decided to move forward with the new package. The opposition to Bahrain arms sales is led by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA), and also includes Senate Foreign Relations Middle East and North Africa Subcommittee chairman Robert Casey (D-PA), Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin (D-IL), and Sens. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Benjamin Cardin (D-MD), and Marco Rubio (R-FL).

Wyden and Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) have each introduced a resolution in their respective chambers to prevent the U.S. government from going through with the original sale, which would have included 44 armored, high-mobility Humvees and over 300 advanced missiles.

The State Department has not released details of the new sale, and Congress has not been notified through the regular process, which requires posting the information on the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) website. The State Department simply briefed a few congressional offices and is going ahead with the new sale, arguing it didn't meet the threshold that would require more formal notifications and a public explanation.

At today's State Department press briefing, The Cable asked spokeswoman Victoria Nuland about the new sale. She acknowledged the new package but didn't have any details handy.

Our congressional sources said that State is using a legal loophole to avoid formally notifying Congress and the public about the new arms sale. The administration can sell anything to anyone without formal notification if the sale is under $1 million. If the total package is over $1 million, State can treat each item as an individual sale, creating multiple sales of less than $1 million and avoiding the burden of notification, which would allow Congress to object and possibly block the deal.

We're further told that State is keeping the exact items in the sale secret, but is claiming they are for Bahrain's "external defense" and therefore couldn't be used against protesters. Of course, that's the same argument that State made about the first arms package, which was undercut by videos showing the Bahraini military using Humvees to suppress civilian protesters.

Regardless, congressional opponents to Bahrain arms sales are planning to fight back. Wyden is circulating a letter now to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stating that Bahrain's government continues to commit human rights violations and should not be rewarded with U.S. arms sales.

"The Bahraini government has shown little progress in improving their human rights record over the last few months and in some ways, their record has gotten worse," Wyden told The Cable on Friday. "Protesters are still being hurt and killed, midnight arrests are still happening and the government continues to deny access to human rights monitors. The kingdom of Bahrain has not shown a true good faith effort to improve human rights in their country and the U.S. should not be rewarding them as if they have."

"Supplying arms to a regime that continues to persecute its citizens is not in the best interest of the United States," Wyden said. "When the government of Bahrain shows that it respects the human rights of its citizens it will become more stable and a better ally in the region; only then should arms sales from the U.S. resume."

That point was echoed by McGovern, who pledged to oppose any arms sales to Bahrain.

"The government of Bahrain continues to perpetrate serious human rights abuses and to deny independent monitors access to the country," McGovern told The Cable. "Until Bahrain takes more substantial and lasting steps to protect the rights of its own citizens, the United States should not reward its government with any military sales."

A State Department official declined to give specifics of the new arms package to The Cable but said that Bahrain was moving in the right direction.

"We have seen some important initial steps from the Bahraini government in implementing the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry's recommendations, but more needs to be done," the official said. "We urge the government of Bahrain to take action on the full range of recommendations that we believe will help lay the foundation for longer-term reform and reconciliation."

Cherif Bassiouni, the chair of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry that investigated the government crackdown on protests in 2011, recently said in an interview that the administration is not doing enough to pressure the Bahrain regime. "There is merit in naming and shaming and embarrassing, in pushing, in enlisting public opinion, domestic and international. This is not the style of Secretary Clinton or President Obama, and I'm not sure they are necessarily doing the right choice," he said.
Cole Bockenfeld, director of advocacy for the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED), told The Cable on Friday that the new sale will be perceived by both the government of Bahrain and those in the opposition as a green light for the government to continue its repression.

"In the broader picture of the Arab Spring, this further erodes the credibility of U.S. rhetoric about democracy and human rights in the region," he said. "Rewarding regimes that repress peaceful dissent with arms sales simply does not square with the administration's rhetoric. The administration can no longer afford to endorse the status quo in Bahrain."
Maryam al-Khawaja, the head of the foreign relations office at the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, told The Cable on Friday that the sale of U.S. arms to the Bahraini regime sends the wrong message to the people of Bahrain, and the region in general.

"This message of ‘business as usual' will only strengthen the regime's belief that there will continue to be lack of consequences to their human rights violations internationally," she said. "At a time when the United States is already being criticized for practicing double standards when it comes to the so-called Arab spring, to the protesters in Bahrain, the U.S. selling any arms to the government of Bahrain is exactly like Russia selling arms to Syria. Bahrain has become the United States' test on how serious they are about standing against human rights violations, and they are failing miserably."

UPDATE: Late Friday evening, the State Department sent out a lenghty statement on the arms sales:

We are maintaining a pause on most security assistance for Bahrain pending further progress on reform.

During the last two weeks, representatives from the State Department and Department of Defense briefed appropriate Congressional staff on our intention to release some previously notified equipment needed for Bahrain's external defense and support of Fifth Fleet operations. This includes spare parts and maintenance of equipment. None of these items can be used against protestors.

This isn't a new sale nor are we using a legal loophole. The items that we briefed to Congress were notified and cleared by the Hill previously or are not large enough to require Congressional notification. In fact, we've gone above and beyond what is legally or customarily required by consulting with Congressional staff on items that do not require Congressional notification.

We have and will continue to use our security assistance to reinforce reforms in Bahrain. We have seen some important initial steps from the Bahraini government in implementing the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry's (BICI) recommendations, but more needs to be done. We urge the government of Bahrain to take action on the full range of recommendations that we believe will help lay the foundation for longer-term reform and reconciliation.

We will continue to consult extensively with Congress on this policy.

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Banks legally immune in return for $20 billion relief to homeowners

2012-01-28T10:44:00.000-08:00

Common Dreams

In last night's State of the Union speech President Obama announced the creation of a committee to investigate "the abusive lending and packaging of risky mortgages."
All across the US, Occupy protestors have been "reclaiming" foreclosed homes and boarded up properties in what some are calling a "tactical shift" in the movement which has targeted the inequality in the distribution of wealth in the US. The 'investigation' announcement came just as a bank-friendly 'settlement' is about to be announced by the state attorney generals. Reports of the settlement talks, the 'too-big-to-fail' banks -- Bank of America, Wells Fargo & Co, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Citigroup and Ally Financial Inc -- would provide $20 billion to $25 billion of 'relief' to homeowners in exchange for being exempted from lawsuits for improper foreclosures and abuses in mortgage loans.

The findings of the new 'investigation' would come after the settlement gives the banks a get-out-of-jail-free card.

Matt Taibbi wrote on the proposed settlement: "The current proposed deal is a huge giveaway to the banks, a major shafting to most of the investors, and would probably give homeowners either next to nothing or some cosmetic reward, i.e. a little bit of principal forgiveness, counseling, etc. If the Obama administration was serious about helping actual human beings through this settlement, then it would be fighting for homeowners to get the same bailout the banks would get. If the banks are getting a trillion or more dollars of legal immunity, why shouldn’t homeowners get that much debt forgiveness? Or, half that much? A quarter?"

Democratic state attorneys general and Obama administration officials met on Monday in Chicago to discuss the terms of the settlement. An announcement on the deal is expected any day.

President Obama last night:

"And tonight, I am asking my Attorney General to create a special unit of federal prosecutors and leading state attorneys general to expand our investigations into the abusive lending and packaging of risky mortgages that led to the housing crisis. This new unit will hold accountable those who broke the law, speed assistance to homeowners, and help turn the page on an era of recklessness that hurt so many Americans. "

* * *

Bloomberg News reports:

Obama Will Create Unit to Investigate Mortgage Misconduct After Protests

President Barack Obama said he will create a mortgage crisis unit that includes federal and state officials to investigate wrongdoing by banks related to real estate lending. [...]

“This new unit will hold accountable those who broke the law, speed assistance to homeowners, and help turn the page on an era of recklessness that hurt so many Americans,” Obama said in the speech.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman will co-chair the unit along with officials from the Department of Justice, Securities and Exchange Commission and Internal Revenue Service.

* * *

Yves Smith writes at nakedcapitalism:

Is Schneiderman Selling Out? Joins Federal Committee That Looks Designed to Undermine AGs Against Mortgage Settlement Deal

[...] So get this: this is a committee that will “investigate.” The co-chair, Lanny Breuer, along with DoJ chief Eric Holder, hail from white shoe Washington law firm Covington & Burling, which has deep ties to the financial services industry. Even if they did not work directly for clients in the mortgage business, they come from a firm known for its deep political and regulatory connections (for instance: Gene Ludwig, the Covington partner I engaged for some complicated regulatory work when I was at Sumitomo Bank, later became head of the OCC). We’ve written at length on how the OCC is such a shameless tout for the banking industry that it cannot properly be called a regulator. Similarly, the SEC has been virtually absent from the mortgage beat, no doubt because its enforcement chief, Robert Khuzami, was general counsel to the fixed income department at Deutsche Bank. That area included the trading operation under Greg Lippmann who we have described as Patient Zero of so called mezz CDOs, or to the layperson, toxic mortgage paper that kept the subprime bubble going well beyond its sell date. And we don’t need to say much about the DoJ. It has been missing in action during this entire Administration.

Neil Barofsky, former prosecutor and head of SIGTARP, doesn’t buy the logic of this committee either:

A lot of soi-disant liberal groups have fallen in line with Obama messaging, which was the plan (I already have the predictable congratulatory Move On e-mail in my inbox). Let’s get real. The wee problem is that this committee looks like yet another bit of theater for the Administration to pretend, yet again, that it is Doing Something, while scoring a twofer by getting Schneiderman, who has been a pretty effective opponent, hobbled.

If you wanted a real investigation, you get a real independent investigator, with a real budget and staffing, and turn him loose. [...]

Put it another way: one thing that would convince me that this committee was serious was if the settlement pact was put on hold until the investigation were completed. The fact that the settlement push is in high gear is yet more proof that this committee is yet another bit of regulatory/enforcement theater, just like the Foreclosure Task Force, or the servicer consent decrees (confirmed as an embarrassment via the use of badly conflicted “consultants”), or the current OCC investigation into foreclosure abuses, which excludes all sorts of injuries inflicted upon homeowners, most notably servicer fees abuses and misapplication of payments. [...]

It would be better if I were proven wrong, but this looks to be yet another clever Obama gambit to neutralize his opposition. With all the same key actors in place – Geithner, Walsh, Holder – there is no reason to believe the Administration has had a change of heart until there is compelling evidence otherwise.

* * *

Kai Wright writing at Colorlines:

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman

The question remains whether Schneiderman’s unit will be window dressing for a get-out-of-jail-free settlement with banks that are currently facing heat from state attorneys general over fraudulent foreclosures.

Here’s the reaction from the New Bottom Line, a relatively new coalition of homeowner advocates and community groups that had been making this very demand loudly for years:

President Obama has heard the calls of the 99% and announced a full, federal investigation into the fraudulent activities of big banks…. We will continue to make sure that this investigation uncovers the truth about the activities of the big banks. And in order to provide real and meaningful relief to millions of homeowners, the end result must be at least $300 billion in principal reduction and restitution for those who have lost their homes, especially targeted at the most hard hit communities. This will reset the housing market and the economy.

* * *

David Dayen at Firedoglake:

The unit will be co-chaired by Eric Schneiderman, the New York Attorney General who bravely waged an often lonely battle to stop a misguided settlement on foreclosure fraud. But “co-chair” is the operative word here, and it suggests that the entire maneuver was created to grease the wheels for the pre-arranged settlement, while turning this investigatory arm into nothing so much as regulatory theater. [...]

This is a classic Obama move, putting a threat or a rival inside the tent. It happened with Elizabeth Warren and David Petraeus and Jon Huntsman, and it’s happening again. It divides the coalition against a weak settlement, which will at the least shut down state and federal prosecutions on foreclosure fraud and servicing issues. It puts hopes in yet another investigation, one with little chance for success... I’d really like to be wrong about this. But this just reads like a gambit, a fix, a charade.

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The Crisis of Education in America: "How to Become a Serf" A society in which people exist for the sake of companies is a society enslaved

2012-01-28T10:08:00.000-08:00

Global Research
John Kozy

How to Become a Serf

Man is a pathetic creature; a brute trying to be god but traveling in the wrong direction.

Educational systems now train workers to fulfill the needs of companies. A society in which people exist for the sake of companies is a society enslaved. But there's a deep problem with the notion that education should equal vocational training. To paraphrase a very famous and renowned person, man does not live by work alone. Indeed, the knowledge and skills needed to earn a living in a capitalist industrial economy are of little use in human relationships, and human relationships are the core of everyone's life. Schools devoted to vocational training provide no venue for teaching cultural differences, for trying to understand the person who lives next door or in another country. Value systems are never evaluated; alternatives are never considered. As a result, although we all live on the same planet, we do not live together. At best, we only live side by side. At worst, we live to kill each other. Education as vocational training reduces everything to ideology, our devotion to which causes us to reject the stark reality that stares us in the face, because our ideologies color the realities we see and people never get wiser than those of previous generations. People have become nothing but the monkeys of hurdy gurdy grinders, tethered to grinders' organs with tin cups in hands to be filled for the benefit of the grinders. And this is the species we refer to as sapient. What a delusion!

For many years, I have been troubled by what I saw as the results of what passes for education in America and perhaps elsewhere too. Why is it, do you suppose, that one generation does not seem to get any smarter than the previous one? Oh, it may know more of this or that, but what it "knows" does not translate into smarts. In other words, why don't people ever seem to get wiser? Why do they repeat the same mistakes over and over?

For centuries, an education was thought to be comprised of considerably more than one providing the skills and requirements needed to carry on a trade or profession. For instance, consider this passage:

"Education is not the same as training. Plato made the distinction between techne (skill) and episteme (knowledge). Becoming an educated person goes beyond the acquisition of a technical skill. It requires an understanding of one’s place in the world—cultural as well as natural—in pursuit of a productive and meaningful life. And it requires historical perspective so that one does not just live, as Edmund Burke said, like 'the flies of a summer,' born one day and gone the next, but as part of that 'social contract' that binds our generation to those who have come before and to those who are yet to be born.

An education that achieves those goals must include the study of what Matthew Arnold called 'the best that has been known and said.' It must comprehend the whole—the human world and its history, our own culture and those very different from ours. . . ."

This idea of an educated person was often summarized in the phrases, a Renaissance man, and un homme du monde. But these expressions are hardly heard any more. Educated people no longer exist. We are nothing but the monkeys of hurdy gurdy grinders, tethered to grinders' organs with tin cups in hands to be filled for the benefit of the grinders.

"Governor Rick Snyder wants to tie retraining programs to companies' needs . . . and encourage more Michigan residents to earn math and science degrees under an initiative aimed at making workers more competitive in the global marketplace."

The hurdy gurdy grinder's monkey exists for the sake of the organ grinder; Governor Snyder wants Michigan's residents to educate themselves for the sake of companies. Workers are to fulfill companies' needs rather than vice versa. President Obama has said similar things.

But there's something wrong, something terribly wrong, with this picture. A society in which people exist for the sake of some non-human entity is a society enslaved. And this picture gets even more horrid with the realization that workers are expected to pay to acquire the required skills. Students are being asked to pay for the privilege of becoming serfs.

Living things in the natural world exist as ends in themselves. Everything they do is done for their own benefit or the benefit of their offspring. Horses in the wild do not acquire skills in order to perform tasks that benefit other horses. When a human being acquires a horse and trains it to perform a skill for the person's benefit, the person provides for all the natural needs of his horse. Horses don't come begging to be trained to be ridden. What kind of perversion is the requirement that people should beg to be trained to be serfs?

But neither a hurdy gurdy grinder's monkey or a riding horse are educated; they are trained. There is no such thing as a Renaissance monkey!

Education in America, and perhaps other places too, is as fractured as shattered glass. The federal agency called the Department of Education's only power is the ability to cajole schools mainly by offering them money. There are public and private schools, and the public ones are governed by local school boards, the members of which are not even required to be able to read or write. State school boards exist to have some influence over local boards, but again, the power of the states is limited. Education in America is a local affair. The people on these school boards are the ones that control what is and how it is taught. For instance, creationism is often given equal standing with evolution. Students are often required to engage in practices that are clearly unconstitutional. All of this is done to suit the views of school board members, not society or even students.

Teachers are certified by subject matter. Perfectly good mathematics teachers may not be able to write literate essays. English teachers are not required to understand even elementary algebra. The schools do not employ hommes de monde. And what is true in the primary and secondary schools is also true in colleges and universities. Les spécialistes rule the classroom. Trained monkeys all!

Now vocational training works, of course, if people know what industries need workers and if workers want those jobs. But often, especially in times of crisis, this knowledge doesn't exist. Yet there's a deeper problem with the notion that education should equal vocational training. To paraphrase a very famous and renowned person, man does not live by work alone. Indeed, the knowledge and skills needed to earn a living in a capitalist industrial economy are of little use in human relationships, and human relationships are the core of everyone's life.

Although the United States is often referred to as a multicultural melting pot, most highly developed nations today have multicultural populations. Different cultures embody different values. Those values often clash and erupt in violent behavior. If people understood these cultural differences, these clashes could be ameliorated. But schools devoted to vocational training provide no venue for teaching cultural differences, for trying to understand the person who lives next door or in another country. Various value systems are never evaluated, and alternatives are never considered. As a result, although we all live on the same planet, we do not live together. At best, we only live side by side. At worst, we live to kill each other.

Education as vocational training reduces everything to ideology. Religion is an ideology and no one ever questions a person's right to her/his own. Economics, although often touted as a science, is an ideology. Part of free marked economic theory is the belief that when an established industry falters and declines, some new industry will come forth and employ the newly unemployed. But nothing in economics can compel that to happen. This belief is akin to the belief in a Second Coming. It is purely ideological. Even science has become an ideology. People believe, for instance, that science will discover solutions to all of our problems. But again, there is nothing in science that compels that. It is perfectly possible that, as human beings destroy their environment, science will be unable to correct the damage and that life on this planet will perish. Worse, ideologies contribute to human stupidity; our devotion to them causes us to reject the stark realities that stare us in the face. (See here and here.)

So what is required if we are to make one generation smarter than the previous one? We need to educate Renaissance men who comprehend the whole human world, its history, our own culture, and those very different from ours. Vocational training will never produce such people.

John F. Kennedy was glorified when he said, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country." Shouldn't he have been vilified? Do countries exist to benefit their peoples or do their peoples exist to benefit their countries? What good is a country that requires the sacrifice of its people?

Since the Enlightenment, it is generally agreed that legitimate governments are those that govern with the consent of their peoples. Does anyone really believe that people would consent to living in a nation that made it clear that the lives of most citizens would be fated to live for the benefit of the few who control the nation's institutions? Isn't that exactly what slavery is?

Analytical thinking, even when valid, can lead people down invalid roads, because analysis alone tends to overly simplify questions. When used to answer the question, What must be done to put unemployed people to work?, it leads to attempts to make education equivalent to vocational training. But when put into practice, it results in people who lack the ability to understand their value systems and evaluate them properly. They end up being hurdy gurdy monkeys or, as Arnold put it, the flies of a summer, born one day and gone the next. If a nation's institutions do not exist to benefit its citizens, the institutions, not the people, are faulty.

In Classical Greece it was known that the unexamined human life is not worth living. Vocational training never presents people with opportunities to examine one's life; so people end up relying entirely on ideologies which have no intellectual basis and are often absurdly false, but "falsehoods are not only evil in themselves, they infect the soul with evil."

If human beings wish to endure, their ideologies must be subjected to serious criticism; otherwise, no generation will ever be smarter than its predecessors and continuing to refer to ourselves as sapient is a sheer delusion.

John Kozy is a retired professor of philosophy and logic who writes on social, political, and economic issues. After serving in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, he spent 20 years as a university professor and another 20 years working as a writer. He has published a textbook in formal logic commercially, in academic journals and a small number of commercial magazines, and has written a number of guest editorials for newspapers. His on-line pieces can be found on http://www.jkozy.com/ and he can be emailed from that site's homepage.

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Israeli Mossad agents posed as CIA spies to recruit terrorists to fight against Iran'

2012-01-27T09:39:00.000-08:00

Haaretz
Barak Ravid

Foreign Policy magazine cites CIA memos from 2007-2008 that the Mossad recruited members of Jundallah terror group to fight against Tehran; U.S. was reportedly furious with Israel and moved to limit joint intelligence programs.

Israeli Mossad agents posed as CIA officers in order to recruit members of a Pakistani terror group to carry out assassinations and attacks against the regime in Iran, Foreign Policy revealed on Friday, quoting U.S. intelligence memos.

Foreign Policy's Mark Perry reported that the Mossad operation was carried out in 2007-2008, behind the back of the U.S. government, and infuriated then U.S. President George W. Bush.

Perry quotes a number of American intelligence officials and claims that the Mossad agents used American dollars and U.S. passports to pose as CIA spies to try to recruit members of Jundallah, a Pakistan-based Sunni extremist organization that has carried out a series of attacks in Iran and assassinations of government officials.

According to the report, Israel's recruitment attempts took place mostly in London, right under the nose of U.S. intelligence officials.

"It's amazing what the Israelis thought they could get away with," Foreign Policy quoted an

Former U.S. President George W. Bush
and former Prime Minsiter Ehud Olmert.

intelligence officer as saying. "Their recruitment activities were nearly in the open. They apparently didn't give a damn what we thought."

According to a currently serving U.S. intelligence officer, Perry reports, when Bush was briefed on the information he "went absolutely ballistic."

"The report sparked White House concerns that Israel's program was putting Americans at risk," the intelligence officer told Perry. "There's no question that the U.S. has cooperated with Israel in intelligence-gathering operations against the Iranians, but this was different. No matter what anyone thinks, we're not in the business of assassinating Iranian officials or killing Iranian civilians."

The intelligence officer said that the Bush administration continued to deal with the affair until the end of his term. He noted that Israel's operation jeopardized the U.S. administration's fragile relationship with Pakistan, which was under immense pressure from Iran to crack down on Jundallah.

According to the intelligence officer, a senior administration official vowed to "take the gloves off" with Israel, but ultimately the U.S. did nothing.

"In the end it was just easier to do nothing than to, you know, rock the boat," the intelligence officer said.

Apparently, the Mossad operation caused a fiery debate among Bush's national security team and it was only resolved when U.S. President Barack Obama drastically scaled back joint U.S.-Israel intelligence programs targeting Iran, Perry quotes several serving and retired officers as saying.

The U.S. State Department has vehemently denied any ties to Jundallah and many U.S. intelligence officials remained angry with Israel over the 2007-2008 operation.

"Israel is supposed to be working with us, not against us," Foreign Policy quoted an intelligence officer as saying. "If they want to shed blood, it would help a lot if it was their blood and not ours. You know, they're supposed to be a strategic asset. Well, guess what? There are a lot of people now, important people, who just don't think that's true."

The CIA, the White House, and the Mossad failed to respond to the Foreign Policy report by the time it went to press.

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USS Enterprise False Flag

2012-01-27T09:22:00.000-08:00

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The Dukes of Hazzard star who could destroy Newt Gingrich ... again

2012-01-27T08:59:00.000-08:00

Guardian
Ed Pilkington

The actor at the centre of Newt's mid-90s tax scandal watches the former speaker's resurrection with amazement and disgust

As Newt Gingrich fights to save his political life, locked in a potentially decisive battle in the final days of the Florida primary with his bitter rival Mitt Romney, one man is following the struggle with peculiarly intense and personal interest.

Ben Jones is best known by millions of Americans as the actor who played "Crazy" Cooter Davenport, the truck driving mechanic in the hit 1980s TV series, The Dukes of Hazzard. But in politics, Jones is credited with having helped destroy Newt Gingrich's Congressional career by leveling accusations of financial improprieties at him, which ultimately led to his resignation from the speakership.

Jones has watched the improbable resurrection of Gingrich as a presidential contender almost two decades later with a mixture of bemusement and disgust. "It's astonishing to me that this has come back around. It testifies to the fact that Mr Gingrich cannot be destroyed by conventional weapons – he is the abominable Newt Man."

Ben Jones

Jones sounded the alarm about Gingrich's dodgy practices in September 1994 at a time when he was locked in his own bitter electoral battle with the speaker over a Congressional seat in Georgia. Jones, who by then had served two terms in Congress as a Democratic member having turned to politics after Dukes of Hazzard went off the air, presented the House ethics committee with 450 pages of documents that proved to be incendiary.

They revealed that Gingrich had used charitable donations that were tax-deductible to fund his own political ambitions to launch a conservative revolution in America – a violation of the law that does not allow political activities to be written off against tax.

Over the next three years, his activities were investigated by the ethics committee which discovered that Gingrich had not only committed the tax violation but had misled the committee about what he had done – thus bringing discredit on the House.

The result was a historic $300,000 fine and reprimand by Congress. The blow to Gingrich's standing proved terminal – he failed to be returned by fellow Republicans as Speaker and would quit Congress in 1998.

Jones still has a box of papers relating to the Gingrich ethics investigation gathering dust in his garage. The events of the past few weeks – with Gingrich making a surprise surge to win the South Carolina primary, only to be bombarded with accusations about his unethical past in Florida – has brought the memory of 1994 flooding back.

"It was there in black and white. The documents showed that what he had done was a tax dodge – it was chicanery and it was illegal under tax law."

Jones, 70, thinks that despite the passage of so much time, the contents of that box are still highly relevant. "It shows that what he did was wrong. And it exemplifies the way that he operated then, and operates still."

Romney appears to agree with Jones. Over the past week he has pounded his adversary relentlessly with negative attack ads in Florida, demanding that Gingrich release the full records and transcripts of the ethics investigation against him.

Others have picked up the cry. The ethics watchdog CREW has also applied for the release of the records under freedom of information rules.
Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic minority leader in the House who sat on the ethics committee during the ethics investigations, has further stoked the fire by suggesting that "there is something I know" about Gingrich that will mean he will never become president.

Pelosi has refused to disclose what she knows.

Gingrich has tried to protect himself from the renewed attacks by claiming he only agreed to admit his guilt over the tax violations in order to get rid of the investigation which was, in any case, a partisan Democratic putsch against him. But that is not borne out by the historical facts as Gingrich, a historian by training, should recognise.

The ethics committee that voted by 7 to 1 to reprimand and fine him was evenly divided between the two main parties. The ensuing Congressional vote supporting the committee's decision was 395 to 28, with 196 Republicans voting to censure him.

The records also clearly show that Gingrich had engaged in tax dodging. He had set up a college course at Kennesaw State College in Georgia that he claimed was purely educational and thus eligible for tax deductions.

But the ethics committee's final report shows that far from being academic in nature, the course was funded through his political action committee, GOPAC, and devised as a means of forwarding his plan to take over Congress and radically shift American politics to the right.

He called the course, on which he invested which spent $1.2m in tax-deductible funds, "Renewing American Civilization". Leaflets and notes he produced to promote it in 1994 carried overt political messages such as "the welfare state has failed" and "American civilisation cannot survive with 12-year-olds having babies".

Gingrich hoped to reach an army of 200,000 Republican volunteers by televising his seminars. "Our overall goal," he wrote, "is to develop a blueprint for renewing America by replacing the welfare state, recruit, discover, arouse and network together 200,000 activists including candidates for elected office at all levels, and win a sweeping victory" in Congress.

After the ethics committee launched its investigation, Gingrich sent several letters insisting that he had no political motives behind the course. The committee later castigated him for making "inaccurate, incomplete and unreliable" statements, for which he was forced to apologise, admitting through his lawyer that his letters had been "glaringly inconsistent".

Jones says that when he hears the details of Gingrich's sharp practices all over again, it reminds him of how dangerous he is as a politician. "He is a partisan, and a demogogue. For him, Democrats really are the enemy and he would go to extreme lengths to fight them."

The idea that Gingrich has a serious chance of running against Obama for the presidency fills Jones with horror, he says. "First of all, what I uncovered proved he was a liar and a master of political BS. It also shows you that he is relentless in the pursuit of his political ambitions and that under President Gingrich America would lurch far to the right and be subject to his eccentric whims."

After he lost to Gingrich in 1994, Jones returned to an acting career. So it's fair to say that Gingrich put an end to his political career as much as he has damaged Gingrich's.

But Jones, who now lives in Virginia, sees himself as the ultimate victor. "I lost the battle back then. But I'm winning the war," he says.

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NYPD found promoting Islamophobia

2012-01-27T08:50:00.000-08:00

PressTV

Gary Anthony Ramsey

This week it was revealed that more than a thousand New York police officers were shown the controversial film called “The third Jihad” while taking anti- terrorism training classes.

Talat Hamdani lost her son Muhammad during the 9-11 attacks. She says she is outraged it was shown to New York public servants who are suppose to protect her rights.

Fear of Muslims in America continues to threaten worshipers of Islam who have been subjected to a number of recent attacks.

Representatives from dozens of Muslim and non-Muslim groups gathered at City Hall to demand the resignation of New York City Police Commissioner.

Ray Kelly and his deputy of public information Paul Browne. Both men at first denied the film was shown then later backtracked on their comments.

The Third Jihad is a 71-minute documentary that claims that much of the Islamic leadership in the US is preaching what they call "Jihad" to its followers. Kelly even gives a 14-second interview in the movie.

The movie was produced by the non-profit Clarion group which has ties to Aish HaTorah - an Israeli organization that opposes any territorial concessions on the West Bank. Documents reveal that more than 14 hundred police officers have seen this film.

The controversy comes as the NYPD has been challenged in court for placing spies and provocateurs in Mosques and community centers. It also happens as the US congress is once again set to hold hearings on the radicalization of Islam - proceedings that many have labeled as racist and inflammatory.

Kelly issued his regrets late Wednesday saying quote “I offer my apologies to members of the Muslim community, in particular, who would find the film inflammatory and it's airing on department property, though unauthorized, to be inappropriate.

The department claims a sergeant placed the film in a display loop that flashed on the walls of the training facility.

Through a number of statements, the NYPD has insisted that its officers are trained to protect all of the citizens of New York regardless of race or religion. But Muslim Americans say that is hard to believe especially if a matter of policy, those officer are shown films that depict them as radical and terrorists that deserve neither protection or respect .

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No Need to Panic About Global Warming

2012-01-27T08:45:00.000-08:00

Wall Street Journal

Editor's Note: The following has been signed by the 16 scientists listed at the end of the article:

A candidate for public office in any contemporary democracy may have to consider what, if anything, to do about "global warming." Candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed.

In September, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever, a supporter of President Obama in the last election, publicly resigned from the American Physical Society (APS) with a letter that begins: "I did not renew [my membership] because I cannot live with the [APS policy] statement: 'The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth's physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.' In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?"

In spite of a multidecade international campaign to enforce the message that increasing amounts of the "pollutant" carbon dioxide will destroy civilization, large numbers of scientists, many very prominent, share the opinions of Dr. Giaever. And the number of scientific "heretics" is growing with each passing year. The reason is a collection of stubborn scientific facts.

Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 "Climategate" email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't." But the warming is only missing if one believes computer models where so-called feedbacks involving water vapor and clouds greatly amplify the small effect of CO2.

The lack of warming for more than a decade—indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections—suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause. Faced with this embarrassment, those promoting alarm have shifted their drumbeat from warming to weather extremes, to enable anything unusual that happens in our chaotic climate to be ascribed to CO2.

The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas, exhaled at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere's life cycle. Plants do so much better with more CO2 that greenhouse operators often increase the CO2 concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth. This is no surprise since plants and animals evolved when CO2 concentrations were about 10 times larger than they are today. Better plant varieties, chemical fertilizers and agricultural management contributed to the great increase in agricultural yields of the past century, but part of the increase almost certainly came from additional CO2 in the atmosphere.

Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted—or worse. They have good reason to worry. In 2003, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of the journal Climate Research, dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with the politically incorrect (but factually correct) conclusion that the recent warming is not unusual in the context of climate changes over the past thousand years. The international warming establishment quickly mounted a determined campaign to have Dr. de Freitas removed from his editorial job and fired from his university position. Fortunately, Dr. de Freitas was able to keep his university jobThis is not the way science is supposed to work, but we have seen it before—for example, in the frightening period when Trofim Lysenko hijacked biology in the Soviet Union. Soviet biologists who revealed that they believed in genes, which Lysenko maintained were a bourgeois fiction, were fired from their jobs. Many were sent to the gulag and some were condemned to deaWhy is there so much passion about global warming, and why has the issue become so vexing that the American Physical Society, from which Dr. Giaever resigned a few months ago, refused the seemingly reasonable request by many of its members to remove the word "incontrovertible" from its description of a scientific issue? There are several reasons, but a good place to start is the old question "cui bono?" Or the modern updatSpeaking for many scientists and engineers who have looked carefully and independently at the science of climate, we have a message to any candidate for public office: There is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to "decarbonize" the world's economy. Even if one accepts the inflated climate forecasts of the IPCC, aggressive greenhouse-gas control policies are not justified economically.

A recent study of a wide variety of policy options by Yale economist William Nordhaus showed that nearly the highest benefit-to-cost ratio is achieved for a policy that allows 50 more years of economic growth unimpeded by greenhouse gas controls. This would be especially beneficial to the less-developed parts of the world that would like to share some of the same advantages of material well-being, health and life expectancy that the fully developed parts of the world enjoy now. Many other policy responses would have a negative return on investment. And it is likely that more CO2 and the modest warming that may come with it will be an overall benefit to the planet.

If elected officials feel compelled to "do something" about climate, we recommend supporting the excellent scientists who are increasing our understanding of climate with well-designed instruments on satellites, in the oceans and on land, and in the analysis of observational data. The better we understand climate, the better we can cope with its ever-changing nature, which has complicated human life throughout history. However, much of the huge private and government investment in climate is badly in need of critical review.

Every candidate should support rational measures to protect and improve our environment, but it makes no sense at all to back expensive programs that divert resources from real needs and are based on alarming but untenable claims of "incontrovertible" evidence.
Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris; J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting; Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University; Roger Cohen, fellow, American Physical Society; Edward David, member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences; William Happer, professor of physics, Princeton; Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.; William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT; James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University; Rodney Nichols, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences; Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne; Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator; Nir Shaviv, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service; Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva.

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Insight: Top Justice officials connected to mortgage banks

2012-01-26T10:32:00.000-08:00

Reuters
Scott J. Paltrow

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder (R) chats with Assistant Attorney General
in the criminal division of the Justice Department Lanny Breuer before
their testimony on the second day of the Financial Crisis Inquiry
Commission hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington January 14, 2010.

(Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Lanny Breuer, head of the Justice Department's criminal division, were partners for years at a Washington law firm that represented a Who's Who of big banks and other companies at the center of alleged foreclosure fraud, a Reuters inquiry shows.

The firm, Covington & Burling, is one of Washington's biggest white shoe law firms. Law professors and other federal ethics experts said that federal conflict of interest rules required Holder and Breuer to recuse themselves from any Justice Department decisions relating to law firm clients they personally had done work for.

Both the Justice Department and Covington declined to say if either official had personally worked on matters for the big mortgage industry clients. Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said Holder and Breuer had complied fully with conflict of interest regulations, but she declined to say if they had recused themselves from any matters related to the former clients.

Reuters reported in December that under Holder and Breuer, the Justice Department hasn't brought any criminal cases against big banks or other companies involved in mortgage servicing, even though copious evidence has surfaced of apparent criminal violations in foreclosure cases.

The evidence, including records from federal and state courts and local clerks' offices around the country, shows widespread forgery, perjury, obstruction of justice, and illegal foreclosures on the homes of thousands of active-duty military personnel.

In recent weeks the Justice Department has come under renewed pressure from members of Congress, state and local officials and homeowners' lawyers to open a wide-ranging criminal investigation of mortgage servicers, the biggest of which have been Covington clients. So far Justice officials haven't responded publicly to any of the requests.

While Holder and Breuer were partners at Covington, the firm's clients included the four largest U.S. banks - Bank of America, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo & Co - as well as at least one other bank that is among the 10 largest mortgage servicers.

DEFENDER OF FREDDIE

Servicers perform routine mortgage maintenance tasks, including filing foreclosures, on behalf of mortgage owners, usually groups of investors who bought mortgage-backed securities.
Covington represented Freddie Mac, one of the nation's biggest issuers of mortgage backed securities, in enforcement investigations by federal financial regulators.

A particular concern by those pressing for an investigation is Covington's involvement with Virginia-based MERS Corp, which runs a vast computerized registry of mortgages. Little known before the mortgage crisis hit, MERS, which stands for Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, has been at the center of complaints about false or erroneous mortgage documents.

Court records show that Covington, in the late 1990s, provided legal opinion letters needed to create MERS on behalf of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase and several other large banks. It was meant to speed up registration and transfers of mortgages. By 2010, MERS claimed to own about half of all mortgages in the U.S. -- roughly 60 million loans.

But evidence in numerous state and federal court cases around the country has shown that MERS authorized thousands of bank employees to sign their names as MERS officials. The banks allegedly drew up fake mortgage assignments, making it appear falsely that they had standing to file foreclosures, and then had their own employees sign the documents as MERS "vice presidents" or "assistant secretaries."

Covington in 2004 also wrote a crucial opinion letter commissioned by MERS, providing legal justification for its electronic registry. MERS spokeswoman Karmela Lejarde declined to comment on Covington legal work done for MERS.

It isn't known to what extent if any Covington has continued to represent the banks and other mortgage firms since Holder and Breuer left. Covington declined to respond to questions from Reuters. A Covington spokeswoman said the firm had no comment.

Several lawyers for homeowners have said that even if Holder and Breuer haven't violated any ethics rules, their ties to Covington create an impression of bias toward the firms' clients, especially in the absence of any prosecutions by the Justice Department.

O. Max Gardner III, a lawyer who trains other attorneys to represent homeowners in bankruptcy court foreclosure actions, said he attributes the Justice Department's reluctance to prosecute the banks or their executives to the Obama White House's view that it might harm the economy.

But he said that the background of Holder and Breuer at Covington -- and their failure to act on foreclosure fraud or publicly recuse themselves -- "doesn't pass the smell test."

Federal ethics regulations generally require new government officials to recuse themselves for one year from involvement in matters involving clients they personally had represented at their former law firms.

President Obama imposed additional restrictions on appointees that essentially extended the ban to two years. For Holder, that ban would have expired in February 2011, and in April for Breuer. Rules also require officials to avoid creating the appearance of a conflict.

Schmaler, the Justice Department spokeswoman, said in an e-mail that "The Attorney General and Assistant Attorney General Breuer have conformed with all financial, legal and ethical obligations under law as well as additional ethical standards set by the Obama Administration."

She said they "routinely consult" the department's ethics officials for guidance. Without offering specifics, Schmaler said they "have recused themselves from matters as required by the law."

Senior government officials often move to big Washington law firms, and lawyers from those firms often move into government posts. But records show that in recent years the traffic between the Justice Department and Covington & Burling has been particularly heavy. In 2010, Holder's deputy chief of staff, John Garland, returned to Covington, as did Steven Fagell, who was Breuer's deputy chief of staff in the criminal division.

The firm has on its web site a page listing its attorneys who are former federal government officials. Covington lists 22 from the Justice Department, and 12 from U.S. Attorneys offices, the Justice Department's local federal prosecutors' offices around the country.

As Reuters reported in 2011, public records show large numbers of mortgage promissory notes with apparently forged endorsements that were submitted as evidence to courts.

There also is evidence of almost routine manufacturing of false mortgage assignments, documents that transfer ownership of mortgages between banks or to groups of investors. In foreclosure actions in courts mortgage assignments are required to show that a bank has the legal right to foreclose.
In an interview in late 2011, Raymond Brescia, a visiting professor at Yale Law School who has written about foreclosure practices said, "I think it's difficult to find a fraud of this size on the U.S. court system in U.S. history."

Holder has resisted calls for a criminal investigation since October 2010, when evidence of widespread "robo-signing" first surfaced. That involved mortgage servicer employees falsely signing and swearing to massive numbers of affidavits and other foreclosure documents that they had never read or checked for accuracy.

Recent calls for a wide-ranging criminal investigation of the mortgage servicing industry have come from members of Congress, including Senator Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., state officials, and county clerks. In recent months clerks from around the country have examined mortgage and foreclosure records filed with them and reported finding high percentages of apparently fraudulent documents.
On Wednesday, John O'Brien Jr., register of deeds in Salem, Mass., announced that he had sent 31,897 allegedly fraudulent foreclosure-related documents to Holder. O'Brien said he asked for a criminal investigation of servicers and their law firms that had filed the documents because they "show a pattern of fraud," forgery and false notarizations.

(Reporting By Scot J. Paltrow, editing by Blake Morrison)

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PREPARING FOR THE NEXT CONQUEST: What does Libya tell us about Intervention in Syria and Iran?

2012-01-26T09:55:00.000-08:00

Global Research
Richard Lightbown

Debkafile reported on 17 January that an imminent joint Israeli-US exercise had been cancelled by Israel’s prime minister, and not by the US as widely supposed. Convinced that Iran has made the decision to become a nuclear power Mr Netanyahu is preparing for possible unilateral attacks on Iranian nuclear sites.

British press reports say agents from the CIA and MI6 are operating within Syria while British and French Special Forces are training members of the Free Syrian Army in Turkey. Pravda has claimed that NATO snipers who fought in Libya have been sent to Syria.

As regional war threatens drastic and unforeseen consequences in the Middle East some commentators claim that humanitarian benefits justify Western intervention in repressive states. This claim is worth considering in the context of the events that have befallen Libya.

No one should be under any illusions about the intentions of Western governments in Libya following their activities throughout the 42 years of Muammar Qadafi’s rule. During this time there were 39 coup attempts inspired by US, British and French agencies, most of which were centred on Benghazi and the province of Cyrenaica. Many involved an attempt at assassination, as did the US fighter-bomber attack on Tripoli in 1986 in which eight of the 18 aircraft flying from Britain specifically targeted Col Qadafi’s private residence.

Qadafi’s overthrow began as an uprising in Benghazi which followed a Facebook call, from London on 17 February 2011, to commemorate the 2005 massacre at Abu Salim prison. In response to the ensuing fighting the UN Security Council unanimously approved resolution 1970 on 26 February. Calling for an end to all violence, it required all member states to apply an arms embargo which also prohibited the provision of technical assistance, training, finance and all other assistance related to military activities. It soon became clear that British forces were in breach of the resolution when six members of the SAS were taken prisoner by rebels in Benghazi on 4 March. What the troop was trying to achieve, and what went wrong with the operation has never been revealed.

Following reports of civilian massacres by Libyan aircraft the Security Council responded by approving resolution 1973 on 17 March 2011, although this time one-third of the fifteen members abstained. (The claims concerning civilian massacres were later refuted by Amnesty International, along with allegations that the Libyan regime had been employing foreign mercenaries.) This called for an immediate cease-fire and for all sides to seek a solution to the crisis while requiring them to protect civilians. Responding to a call from the Arab League it authorised the enforcement of a no-fly zone.

A US-drafted amendment allowed for “all necessary measures [to protect Libyan civilians] under threat of attack”. The American Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, promptly claimed that this allowed for arming the rebels under the terms of the resolution. Jose Cabral, the chair of the Sanctions Committee, disagreed and declared that “the resolution [1973] imposes a full embargo on arms.” The US and NATO however had no interest in legal formalities and large quantities of arms were subsequently supplied to the rebels from Qatar via the Egyptian border. France also in shipped some supplies direct, while NATO Special Forces supplied training and expertise.

On the following day and in response to resolution 1973, the Libyan Foreign Minister announced an immediate ceasefire and a stoppage of all military operations against rebel forces. The next day, 19 March, French aircraft carried out an airstrike which was followed by the launch of 110 Tomahawk missiles by US and British warships against air defences in Tripoli and Misrata. Thus only two days after its approval, the Security Council resolution was rendered a sham by NATO forces which placed civilian lives unnecessarily at risk when they ignored the offer of an immediate cease-fire and refused to seek a solution to the crisis. All subsequent calls for a ceasefire by the Libyan government were summarily dismissed by either the rebels or NATO. By 29 March the Russian Foreign Minister was moved to comment “We consider that intervention by the coalition in what is essentially an internal civil war is not sanctioned by the UN Security Council resolution."
Apart from coverage of the murder of Muammar Qadafi and his contemptuous secret burial there has been little mainstream reportage of the results arising from this international banditry. Even casualty figures are vague. (NATO does not do casualty figures: they have still to produce accurate figures for the number of civilians killed during the bombing of Kosovo in 1999. Sorting out the carnage is always someone else’s responsibility.) The lowest estimate of casualties came from the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) which claimed in September that "between 50-100 civilians had perished from air strikes in the six months of the campaign". Considering even the National Transitional Council has estimated 30,000 dead and 50,000 injured, RUSI’s claim is an insult to intelligence. One of the highest estimates has come from Thomas Mountain, who used the NATO figure of 9,658 strike sorties flown to estimate that 30,000 tons of explosives were used, and by allowing two deaths per ton arrived at a death toll of 60,000.

Failing any details from the perpetrators themselves some of the vocal supporters for this war might have provided details on their behalf. Brian Whitaker of the Guardian has written extensively on the subject, and like a barrack room lawyer picked over the Security Council resolutions to claim that NATO forces on the ground were legal. (Jose Cabral’s statement was not amongst the information he considered.) However Mr Whitaker’s personal website al-Bab, stopped writing about the Libyan war in August, and has therefore not covered the devastation left in the wake of the bombardment. The veteran peace campaigner Uri Avnery also supported the war (and proposed a similar intervention in Syria) suggesting that opponents of the action were driven by a hatred of the US and NATO rather than any concern for the people of Libya. He added that he was “ready to support even the devil, if that is necessary to put an end to this kind of atrocities”. For the people of Sirte this might sound bitterly ironic, particularly since Mr Avnery has not returned to the subject to write about their once prosperous city that now resembles war-torn Stalingrad or Fallujah. Uri Avnery wondered whether opponents of the NATO operation were really concerned for the well-being of the Libyan people. Bassam Haddad, writing on the Jadaliyya website, had similar concerns about criticism of the Syrian regime, while expressing his desire to see an end to the abuse of human rights in Syria. But Prof Haddad is under no illusion about the duplicity and self-interest driving foreign interference, and appears to draw an opposing conclusion:

“... the actors that are amassed to benefit from the fall of the Syrian regime are, in the final analysis, no less problematic than the Syrian regime itself. In sum, these actors are certainly more violent, discriminatory, and anti-democratic in terms of their collective and/or individual long-term vision for the region.”

But if one did need to have an object to hate, then the calculating planners of the Libyan rape, who appear indifferent to all the misery they have caused, would make as good an object as any. Prior to the bombing, Libya had the best health care and the best education in Africa, free of charge. Essential food staples were heavily subsidised, while fuel was plentiful and cheap. Having bombed to kingdom come schools, hospitals, electricity and water supplies, oil installations, men, women, children, black Africans and Arabs, the planes and warships have departed. Reports of the use of depleted uranium and cluster bombs suggest that they will have left some areas dangerously polluted as well as poverty stricken. An occupation army is now preparing to arrive: according to former US Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, 12,000 US troops in Malta are about to move into Libya, while trigger-happy NATO troops already occupy the petroleum platforms and ports.

There have been victory speeches from Nicholas Sarkozy (who received Col Gaddafi as a guest of honour in France only two years ago), David Cameron (who visited Egypt peddling British arms immediately after the fall of Hosni Mubarak) and Barak Obama. (What greater irony could befall those who were conquered, injured or even killed, at the behest of a peace prize laureate? What greater folly could the Nobel Prize committee have concocted?)

And still the misery continues. The entire 31,000 population of Tawergha are said to have fled their homes during the war and it is not clear how many have returned. IRIN has reported that the delivery of emergency humanitarian aid has been hindered by a lack of funding, despite the fact that NATO countries control over $100billion worth of frozen assets belonging to the people of Libya. In mid-December International Crisis Group reported that more than 125,000 Libyans now carry arms, while estimates on the number of militias range from between 100 to 300. Rivalry exists among the different bands which issue their own identity cards, apply their own investigation techniques and issue arrest warrants (and reportedly in Misrata continue to kill black Libyans). Feuding is commonplace. Meanwhile senior officials who defected from the former regime (possibly after payoffs from NATO) expect to retain positions in the new leadership.

It must be acknowledged that Qadafi the tyrant is dead. In a perfect world he most certainly would have faced trial in the International Criminal Court, following even worse criminals such as George W Bush and Tony Blair. In this context it should not be forgotten that the crimes of Barak Obama, which include greatly expanding the drone attacks on civilian areas in Pakistan, might have earned the death penalty at Nuremburg. In our imperfect world Col Qadafi brought stability and prosperity to Libya along with considerable benefits to other parts of Africa. No less an eminence than Nelson Mandela paid homage to this. Above all, Qadafi’s nefarious crimes do not justify the savage assault that has befallen his people.

With the re-colonisation of Libya completed, NATO and its allies are looking for the next conquest. In this they are being encouraged once again by some sincere peace activists. These people would be well advised to do the arithmetic. In eight months between 30 and 60 thousand Libyans are believed to have been killed. By contrast in eleven months the estimated death toll in Syria is between five and seven thousand. In addition Syrian buildings and infrastructure appear to remain largely intact and there is no danger from the remains of depleted uranium or cluster bombs.

At the present time amidst the chaos and the mayhem it is still Syrian citizens who control Syrian assets. This is not the case in Libya, where NATO troops control the nation’s desirable assets, and the imminent arrival of US occupation troops, according to evidence from Iraq and Afghanistan, is to be feared rather than welcomed.

The jokers in the pack this time are Russia and China who, duped and angered by NATO’s shameful misuse of resolution 1973 and excluded from future trading deals in Libya, are more minded to apply a proactive stance on behalf of Syria and Iran. This is likely to mean support for the existing repressive regimes, such as the shipload of munitions that Russia recently sent to Syria. The problem is that outside interference reduces the opportunities for internal compromises that could herald new freedoms.

During the twentieth century both Syria and Libya experienced the brutal repression and racism of European colonialism, while Iran was invaded by British Empire forces a few years before Anglo-American meddling imposed a brutal puppet regime. For Libya a parallel experience has now returned. For Syria and Iran the same fate awaits the unwary and the unprepared. The dark shadow of colonial occupation has made an unexpected and unwelcome return.

Richard Lightbown is a researcher and writer who has volunteered with Viva Palestina, International Solidarity Movement, Golan for Development,and as a forester with Voluntary Service Overseas.

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Libya militias torturing detainees: Report

2012-01-26T09:50:00.000-08:00

AFP

TRIPOLI — Libyan's regular army and array of militias have been torturing loyalists of slain dictator Moamer Kadhafi, several of whom have been killed in custody, human rights groups charged on Thursday.

Amnesty International said that despite promises, Libya's new rulers have made "no progress to stop the use of torture", as Doctors Without Borders suspended its work in the third-largest city Misrata over similar claims.

Their accusations come after a top UN official raised concerns that militias composed of former rebels who helped topple Kadhafi were posing an increasing security risk as they repeatedly clashed with each other.
"Several detainees have died after being subjected to torture in Libya in recent weeks and months amid widespread torture and ill-treatment of suspected pro-Kadhafi fighters and loyalists," London-based Amnesty said in a statement.

It said its delegates met detainees held in Tripoli, in Misrata and in smaller towns such as Ghariyan who showed visible signs of torture inflicted in recent days and weeks.

"The torture is being carried out by officially recognised military and security entities, as well by a multitude of armed militias operating outside any legal framework," it said.

Donatella Rouvera, senior adviser at Amnesty, said in the statement that it was "horrifying to find that there has been no progress to stop the use of torture".

"We are not aware of any proper investigations into cases of torture," she said.

Detainees told Amnesty they had been beaten for hours with whips, cables, plastic hoses, metal chains, bars, wooden sticks and given electric shocks with live wires.

The watchdog said the detainees, both Libyans and foreigners from sub-Saharan Africa, were tortured soon after they were seized by militias in officially recognised detention centres in places like Misrata.

Misrata withstood a devastating siege by Kadhafi's forces during last year's uprising. Its fighters later unleashed a fierce attack on the dictator's hometown of Sirte, where he was killed on October 20.

"Several detainees have died in the custody of armed militias in and around Tripoli and Misrata in circumstances that suggest torture," Amnesty added.
Rouvera said the issue was aggravated as the police and judiciary remained "dysfunctional" cross Libya.

Libyan Justice Minister Ali H'mida Ashur neither confirmed nor denied the allegations, but told AFP that "when such complaints reach the general prosecutor or the military prosecutor, necessary action will be taken."

He said the authorities have set up a committee to monitor jails across the country and acknowledged that some prisons were under the control of militias.

Doctors Without Borders said it has suspended its work in Misrata where detainees are "being tortured and denied urgent medical care."
It said its doctors were increasingly confronted with patients who suffered injuries caused by "torture" during questioning.

"The interrogations were held outside the detention centres," it said.
Its general director Christopher Stokes said some officials have sought to exploit and obstruct its work in Misrata.

"Patients were brought to us in the middle of interrogation for medical care, in order to make them fit for further interrogation. This is unacceptable," he said.

"Our role is to provide medical care to war casualties and sick detainees, not to repeatedly treat the same patients between torture sessions."

On Wednesday, the UN special representative in Libya, Ian Martin, expressed concern about the militias which he said were not under the control of the interim government.

Speaking to the UN Security Council, Martin said fighting in the Libyan town of Bani Walid this week -- at one stage blamed on Kadhafi loyalists -- had been caused by a clash between local people and a revolutionary brigade unit.

"Although authorities have successfully contained these and other more minor incidents that continue to take place across the country on a regular basis, there is the ever present possibility that similar outbreaks of violence could escalate," he said.

Libya's new authorities are struggling to integrate tens of thousands of militiamen into the army and police.

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U.N. rights chief: Guantonamo a Clear Breach of International Law

2012-01-25T12:09:00.000-08:00

(AP) GENEVA - The U.N. human rights chief says the U.S. government must close the Guantanamo Bay prison as President Barack Obama promised a year ago.

Navi Pillay, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, says "the facility continues to exist and individuals remain arbitrarily detained — indefinitely — in clear breach of international law."

Obama pledged to shutter the U.S. Naval Base prison in Cuba in his annual address to Congress last year.

Pillay said Monday — ahead of Obama's next annual speech Tuesday — that she is deeply disappointed the U.S. government "has instead entrenched a system of arbitrary detention."

Pillay said she also is "disturbed at the failure to ensure accountability for serious human rights violations, including torture, that took place."

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Department of Justice Misdirection on Cloud Computing and Privacy

2012-01-25T12:04:00.000-08:00

Electronic Frontier Foundation
Cindy Cohn and Katitza Rodriguez

Does using cloud computing services based in the United States create a risk of US law enforcement access to people's data? The US Department of Justice (DOJ) seems to be trying to placate international concern by saying one thing in international fora; but it says something quite different in the US courts.

On January 18, a senior Justice Department official tried to reassure companies and people around the world that hosting their data in the United States creates no increased privacy risk for them from the US government. Deputy Assistant Attorney General Bruce Swartz noted: "Cloud computing has important advantages to consumers (but) doesn't present any issues that have not always been present. Certainly not regarding Internet service issues, but even before that."

Apparently, the DOJ is reacting to decisions by foreign entities to drop US-based services due to concerns about US government access, including British company BAE dropping Microsoft Office 365 and the Dutch government 's hesitation about allowing its contractors to use US-based cloud services. In the past, Denmark and Canada have also voiced their concerns about the level of protection the United States can provide to their citizens’ data. EU public tenders of cloud services are also avoiding US cloud services for the same reasons. European -based companies, which have to comply with EU data protection law, see this opportunity as a competitive advantage, as do Australian cloud services.

Yet the DOJ's reassurances ring hollow. While the DOJ may spin its position one way to try to appease foreign audiences, its actual position is quite clear where it really matters: in US courts when it is trying to access subscriber information held by US-based cloud computing services. Indeed, the DOJ's position in its court filings is that very little, if any, privacy protection is available against US government access to the records of users of US-based cloud computing services.

EFF’s recent high -profile case involving DOJ access to Twitter customer records as part of the Wikileaks investigation demonstrates this. There, the DOJ has been unequivocal that cloud users have no right to challenge government access to the tremendous amount of "non-content" information held by these systems -- their location, their contacts, their communications patterns and more. In November 2011, the court agreed, holding that the Twitter users could not challenge the request for their information under the Stored Communications Act or under the constitution, chiefly on the grounds that having "given" their IP address and other information to Twitter in the US, they had no further privacy interest[1]. The DOJ also stated that it has strong doubts about whether foreign users of US-based cloud services had any constitutional privacy rights at all.

In fact, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Swartz doesn't really say anything different. He says only that the issues predate the Internet. But that's no answer. The truth is that the Internet has made it much, much easier for companies and individuals to use services based in the United States for very sensitive activities. Before the Internet it was highly unlikely that a US company hosted personal conversations between loved ones in Germany, reports from medical providers in Israel, or sensitive business dealings like potential bids on a government project in the Netherlands. And with that ease comes a treasure trove of information now available to the DOJ about foreigners who use those services (and about Americans, too).

Perhaps the most disingenuous comment came when Swartz said, “the US government is as committed to privacy and civil liberties as much as or more so than any nation on the planet.” The reality is that other nations have adopted comprehensive data protection regulations that forbid companies to transfer their customers’ data to a third country without the customers’ consent, or if the country does not provide an adequate level of protection; the United States is considered to have a lower level of protection.[2]

In the end, no amount of spin aimed at international audiences can hide the underlying facts. The US government believes that when you use a US-based cloud service, you have no ability to prevent the government from having access without a warrant under either the Stored Communications Act or the constitution. Lawyers call this the "third party problem" and we were heartened earlier this week when Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor strongly criticized the position that the government has been taking in cases across the US.

Until this problem is fixed, US DOJ officials' reassurances about the privacy protections of US cloud computing services should be met with strong skepticism, both internationally and here at home.

-----------------------------------------

[1] Technically, the court, at the urging of the DOJ, accomplished this in two steps: First, it decided that there was no statutory standing under the Stored Communications Act. Second, it found that there was no constitutional claim because there was no "reasonable expectation of privacy" in the Twitter users' information. And as to foriegners specifically, those "non-nationals, non-citizen, non-residents of the US" that the DOJ official is trying to convince to use cloud computing, the DOJ indicated in its Twitter briefs (on February 1, 2011, footnote 4) that it believed that no constitutional protections should ever reach them.

[2] General data protection laws are no longer a European phenomenon. A study done by Graham Greenleaf shows that there are now 29 legal frameworks that protect privacy outside Europe, 78 national data privacy laws in total.

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Japan 'had Tokyo evacuation plan'

2012-01-25T09:34:00.000-08:00

Daily Telegraph

JAPAN feared that tens of millions would be evacuated in a secret worst-case scenario report after Fukushima.

The Japanese government's worst-case scenario at the height of the nuclear crisis last year warned that tens of millions of people, including Tokyo residents, might need to leave their homes, according to a report obtained by The Associated Press. But fearing widespread panic, officials kept the report secret.

The recent emergence of the 15-page internal document may add to complaints in Japan that the government withheld too much information about the world's worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl.
It also casts doubt about whether the government was sufficiently prepared to cope with what could have been an evacuation of unprecedented scale.

The report was submitted to then-Prime Minister Naoto Kan and his top advisers on March 25, two weeks after the earthquake and tsunami devastated the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, causing three reactors to melt down and generating hydrogen explosions that blew away protective structures.
Workers ultimately were able to bring the reactors under control, but at the time, it was unclear whether emergency measures would succeed.

Mr Kan commissioned the report, compiled by the Japan Atomic Energy Commission, to examine what options the government had if those efforts failed.

Authorities evacuated 59,000 residents within 20 kilometres of the Fukushima plant, and thousands more were evacuated from other towns later. The report said there was a chance far larger evacuations could be needed.

The report looked at several ways the crisis could escalate - explosions inside the reactors, complete meltdowns, and the structural failure of cooling pools used for spent nuclear fuel.

It said that each contingency was possible at the time it was written, and could force all workers to flee the vicinity, meaning the situation at the plant would unfold on its own, unmitigated.

Using matter-of-fact language, diagrams and charts, the report said that if meltdowns spiral out of control, radiation levels could soar.

In that case, it said evacuation orders should be issued for residents within a 170-kilometre radius of the plant and "voluntary" evacuations should be offered for everyone living within 250 kilometres.
That area that would have included Tokyo and its suburbs, with a population of 35 million people, and other major cities such as Sendai, with a million people, and Fukushima city with 290,000 people.
The report further warned that contaminated areas might not be safe for "several decades."

"We cannot rule out further developments that may lead to an unpredictable situation at Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, where there has been an accident, and this report outlines a summary of that unpredictable situation," says the document, written by Shunsuke Kondo, head of the commission, which oversees nuclear policy.

After Mr Kan received the report, he and other Japanese officials publicly insisted that there was no need to prepare for wider-scale evacuations.

The government continues to refuse to make the document public. The AP obtained it yesterday through a government source, who insisted on anonymity because the document was still categorised as internal.

Goshi Hosono, the Cabinet minister in charge of the nuclear crisis, implicitly acknowledged the document's existence earlier this month, but said the government had felt no need to make it public.
"It was a scenario based on hypothesis, and even in the event of such a development, we were told that residents would have enough time to evacuate," said Mr Hosono.

"We were concerned about the possibility of causing excessive and unnecessary worry if we went ahead and made it public," he said.

"That's why we decided not to disclose it."

A Japanese government nuclear policy official, Masato Nakamura, said yesterday that he stood behind Mr Hosono's decisions on the document.

"It was all his decisions," he said. "We do not disclose all administrative documents."

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Fast and Furious: Issa Issues Subpoena for AZ U.S. Attorney, Patrick J. Cunningham

2012-01-25T09:30:00.000-08:00

Nice Deb

AWR Hawkins, Big Government reports:

I just received an email from Congressman Darrel Issa’s office, containing a copy of a letter that was just sent Patrick J. Cunningham, Chief of the Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona. The letter announces that Cunningham has just been subpoenaed for “repeated refusals to testify voluntarily” before the House Oversight Committee, concerning accusations that he relayed inaccurate and misleading information to the Justice Department in preparation for its initial response to Congress.

Go to Big Government to see the copy of the letter. Cunningham is required to appear before the House Oversight Committee on January 24.
Eric Holder is set to testify on Feb 4:

WASHINGTON, D.C. – House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa today announced that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has been scheduled to testify on February 2 about the Department of Justice’s knowledge of, and response to, gunwalking that occurred in Operation Fast and Furious. The Attorney General will be asked to address management deficiencies within the Department that occurred both during and after the conclusion of Operation Fast and Furious. This will include the Department’s steadfast refusal to disclose information following the February 4, 2011 letter to Senator Grassley, which the Department has withdrawn because it contained false information denying allegations made by whistleblowers about Operation Fast and Furious. The committee’s investigation has found documentation that numerous members of the Justice Department knew the letter to Congress contained false information both before it was sent and later withdrawn.

“The Department of Justice’s conduct in the investigation of Operation Fast and Furious has been nothing short of shameful,” said Chairman Issa. “From its initial denials that nothing improper occurred, to efforts to silence whistleblowers who wanted to tell Congress what really happened, to its continuing refusal to discuss or share documents related to this cover-up, the Justice Department has fought tooth and nail to hide the full truth about what occurred and what senior officials knew. Attorney General Holder must explain or reverse course on decisions that appear to put the careers of political appointees ahead of the need for accountability and the Department’s integrity.”

UPDATE:
John Hinderaker: Holder’s United Front on Fast and Furious Crumbles:

In an ominous development for the Obama administration, Patrick Cunningham, chief of the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona, has told the House Oversight Committee that he will assert his privilege against self-incrimination rather than testify before the committee next week.
**
… it would seem to be a bright line rule that any time a high-ranking official of the Department of Justice pleads the Fifth, a major scandal is under way.

But is some kind of fix in?

Sipsey Street Irregulars: FINALLY. Fifth Amendment Time in the Gunwalker Scandal. FOX breaks the story I knew was coming yesterday: “Federal official in Arizona to plead the fifth and not answer questions on ‘furious’” But, is the fix in? Issa staff reported to have witheld information from Grassley. “The roach motel of press inquiries.”

It is complex because this event comes at what may be a critical juncture in the investigation which some are interpreting as a reluctance on the part of the Issa committee to fully explore the many leads they have already developed because of their political sensitivity.
“I won’t say that the fix is in, but the Committee seems to be buying into the ‘Made-in-Phoenix’ line pushed by the White House,” said one source with inside knowledge of the investigator’s work. This seems to be reflected in the subpoena letter from Issa to Cunningham. From the Politico story linked above:

“Senior Justice Department officials have recently told the Committee that you relayed inaccurate and misleading information to the Department in preparation for its initial response to Congress,” wrote Issa. “These officials told us that even after Congress began investigating Fast and Furious, you continued to insist that no unacceptable tactics were used.”
The White House is happy for Issa to go after Cunningham for this is consistent with their denial that the White House had anything to do with gunwalking. Indeed, from the evidence above it would seem that the White House has determined Cunningham to be one of the designated sacrificial goats to that end.

Bob Owens:

Sure. Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler, Deputy Attorney General David W. Ogden, Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich, ATF Director Kenneth E. Melson, Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Administrator Michele Leonhart, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Robert Mueller, U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota/Chair of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee/Acting ATF Director B. Todd Jones, top federal prosecutors in the southwest and White House staffers were all aware of Operation Fast and Furious. So let’s blame it all on the one guy in Arizona.

Stay tuned…

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Former police chief: LAPD coordinated with CIA on terrorism

2012-01-25T09:22:00.000-08:00

Raw Story
Eric W. Dolan

Former New York City Police Commissioner and Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton said Tuesday that it was important for local police agencies to exchange and coordinate information with the CIA regarding terrorism.

“In dealing with information intelligence as it relates to terrorism, the CIA has a lot of information that is appropriate for use by American police forces,” he said.

He noted that most terrorists were homegrown, not foreigners.

“So what you really do need is a cohesive exchange of information — always within the law,” Bratton added. “And if you recall the law actually helped to create the 9/11 incident, when the law prohibited the CIA and the FBI from exchanging information.”

It was recently revealed that the New York Police Department may have illegally collaborated with the CIA to establish a domestic intelligence program. The CIA is allowed to provide local law enforcement with “specialized equipment, technical knowledge or assistance of expert personnel,” but only if the agency’s general counsel approves of the arrangement.

Bratton said that the LAPD had coordinated with the CIA as well.

“We had interactions with the CIA in the sense of meeting with them from time to time, certainly, just in order to make them aware of our capabilities and our needs,” he explained. “There is nothing that precludes that.”
Watch video, courtesy of Current TV, below:

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