03/30/13

Permalink Obama betrays America yet again by signing the 'Monsanto Protection Act' into law

Now Obama has signed the "Monsanto Protection Act" into law, stabbing America in the heart yet again and proving that no matter how convincing politicians appear on the campaign trail, they are still sociopathic liars in the end. The Monsanto Protection Act, part of the HR 933 continuing resolution, allows Monsanto to override U.S. federal courts on the issue of planting experimental genetically engineered crops all across the country. Even if those experimental crops are found to be extremely dangerous or to cause a runaway crop plague, the U.S. government now has no judicial power to stop them from being planted and harvested. As ibtimes.com reports, the bill "effectively bars federal courts from being able to halt the sale or planting of GMO or GE crops and seeds, no matter what health consequences from the consumption of these products may come to light in the future."

Russia Today: Obama signs 'Monsanto Protection Act' written by Monsanto-sponsored senator


Permalink Fusion center director: We don’t spy on Americans, just anti-government Americans

Law enforcement intelligence-processing fusion centers have long come under attack for spying on Americans. The Arkansas director wanted to clarify the truth: centers only spies on some Americans – those who appear to be a threat to the government. - In trying to clear up the ‘misconceptions’ about the conduct of fusion centers, Arkansas State Fusion Center Director Richard Davis simply confirmed Americans’ fears: the center does in fact spy on Americans – but only on those who are suspected to be ‘anti-government’. “The misconceptions are that we are conducting spying operations on US citizens, which is of course not a fact. That is absolutely not what we do,” he told the NWA Homepage, which supports KNWA-TV and Fox 24. After claiming that his office ‘absolutely’ does not spy on Americans, he proceeded to explain that this does not apply to those who could be interpreted as a ‘threat’ to national security. Davis said his office places its focus on international plots, “domestic terrorism and certain groups that are anti-government. We want to kind of take a look at that and receive that information.

Jason Ditz: FBI 'Routinely' Tracks People's Cellphones Without Warrants
JoshuaPundit: Feds Admit Warrantless Cellphone Tracking ‘Very Common’


Permalink Iraq, Afghan Wars To Cost US $6 Trillion

The US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will cost American taxpayers $4 trillion to $6 trillion in the long run, according to a new study by the Harvard University. - The report that was released on Thursday has taken into account the medical care of injured war veterans and expensive repairs to US military force worn out by over a decade of fighting, The Washington Post reported. Linda J. Bilmes, a public policy professor, wrote in the report, “As a consequence of these wartime spending choices, the United States will face constraints in funding investments in personnel and diplomacy, research and development and new military initiatives.” “The legacy of decisions taken during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars will dominate future federal budgets for decades to come,” Bilmes noted.

McClatchy: Iraqi oil: Once seen as U.S. boon, now it’s mostly China’s


Permalink WARNING: "Final" Psy-Op Vs. Syria Begins

Out of time, out of legitimacy, and out of options, the West is attempting once again to prop up its faltering terrorist proxies with another psychological operation aimed at breaking the will of the Syrian people, despite the West's multiplying tactical and political shortcomings. It began with a suspicious CBS News/AP report titled, "AP: "Master plan" underway to help Syria rebels take Damascus with U.S.-approved airlifts of heavy weapons," which claims to divulge a "covert" plan by the West to flood Syria's northern and southern borders with increased weapons and fighters for a "final" push to take the capital.

Tony Cartalucci: Syrian Conflict: The Price of Defying the West


Permalink Turkish security forces seize firearms cache on Syrian border

Turkish officials say the country’s security forces have seized a huge firearms cache near the border with Syria. - The officials said the weapons were found in a warehouse in a village on the edge of the Turkish town of Akcakale, Reuters reported on Friday. The cache -- destined for Syria -- included more than 5,000 shotguns and rifles, starting pistols, gunstocks and 10,000 cartridges. The 35-year-old depot owner has reportedly been detained.

Russia Today: 'Phoenix jihadist's' dad claims son worked in Syria for CIA
PressTV: So-called Free Syrian Army is a group of terrorists: IHCR


Permalink Krediterlass: Zyperns Banken sollen Politikern Millionen geschenkt haben

Wie konnte Zyperns Bankensektor scheitern und das Land an den Abgrund bringen? Eine jetzt veröffentlichte Liste nährt einen brisanten Verdacht. Demnach erhielten Politiker und mit ihnen verbandelte Unternehmen Kredite in Millionenhöhe - und mussten sie nur zum Teil oder gar nicht zurückzahlen. Zyperns Zukunft ist ungewiss. Zwar erhält das Land am Rande der Staatspleite nun Milliardenhilfe aus dem Ausland. Im Gegenzug aber muss es seinen Bankensektor drastisch verkleinern, der bislang wichtigste Wachstumsbringer des Landes droht damit wegzufallen.


03/29/13

Permalink Russia warns against military activity near North Korea

Russia said on Friday that heightened military activity near North Korea was slipping into a "vicious cycle" that could get out of control, implicitly criticizing US bomber flights that followed threats from Pyongyang. Foreign minister Sergei Lavrov suggested that North Korea should also cool down, calling on "all sides not to flex their military muscle" and avoid the danger of a belligerent response.

"We are concerned that alongside the adequate, collective reaction of the UN Security Council, unilateral action is being taken around North Korea that is increasing military activity," foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said. "The situation could simply get out of control, it is slipping toward the spiral of a vicious cycle," he said when asked about tensions on the Korean Peninsula at a joint news conference after talks with his Ukrainian counterpart.

NK-News.org: U.S. Flies B-2 Stealth Bombers Over South Korea
Associated Press: Mass rally in Pyongyang in support of Kim Jong Un
John Glaser: US Sends Nuclear-Capable B-2 Stealth Bombers to Intimidate North Korea
Jason Ditz: North Korea: Rockets on ‘Standby’ as US Bombers Take Flight


Permalink 'Underwear bomber' was working for the CIA

Bomber involved in plot to attack US-bound jet was working as an informer with Saudi intelligence and the CIA, it has emerged. - A would-be "underwear bomber" involved in a plot to attack a US-based jet was in fact working as an undercover informer with Saudi intelligence and the CIA, it has emerged. The revelation is the latest twist in an increasingly bizarre story about the disruption of an apparent attempt by al-Qaida to strike at a high-profile American target using a sophisticated device hidden in the clothing of an attacker. The plot, which the White House said on Monday had involved the seizing of an underwear bomb by authorities in the Middle East sometime in the last 10 days, had caused alarm throughout the US. It has also been linked to a suspected US drone strike in Yemen where two Yemeni members of al-Qaida were killed by a missile attack on their car on Sunday, one of them a senior militant, Fahd Mohammed Ahmed al-Quso.


Permalink ‘Gitmo guards try to end hunger strike by making conditions worse’ - Video

Guards at the Guantanamo detention facility are attempting to end the ongoing hunger strike by making conditions for detainees more difficult, including lowering temperatures at the camp, Cindy Panuco, a lawyer for one of the prisoners told RT. The longest hunger strike at the US prison in Guantanamo Bay began almost two months ago, and there is no sign the crisis will be resolved. Some of the inmates protesting over their mistreatment at the jail are reportedly close to death. To find out more about the situation, RT spoke with Cindy Panuco, a lawyer for one of the detainees who is currently at Camp Delta, Guantanamo Bay.


Permalink EU selling bailout deal at too high a price: Cypriot FM

Cyprus says the economic burden that the European Union seeks to impose on the country for a bailout deal is “too high,” leading to “enormous difficulties” for the Cypriots. - “Europe is pretending to help us but the price to pay is too high: nothing less than the brutal destruction of our economic model which will cause enormous, long term difficulties for the Cypriot people,” said Cypriot Foreign Minister Ioannis Kasoulides in an interview with the French financial daily Les Echos published on Wednesday.

Stephen Lendman: Cyprus Postmortems: Part II
Michael Snyder: Cyprus-Style “Bail-Ins” Are Proposed In The New 2013 Canadian Government Budget!
Ellen Brown: It Can Happen Here: The Confiscation Scheme Planned for US and UK Depositors


Permalink US food stamp use swells to a record 47.8 million

A record number of Americans are using food stamps, known today as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Despite official proclamations that the recession has ended and an economic recovery is underway, families are turning to SNAP benefits in record numbers. The working poor comprise a growing number of food stamp recipients, and about half of those receiving benefits are children. Enrollment in the food stamp program has increased by 70 percent since 2008, to a record 47.8 million people as of December 2012, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. The biggest factor driving the increase is the stagnating job market and a rising poverty rate. This means that a staggering 15 percent of the US population receives food stamp benefits, nearly double the rate of 1975.


Permalink CIA Drug Money Plot to Overthrow Ecuador's President Correa

WikiLeaks Central presents an exclusive interview with Chilean journalist Patricio Mery, who claims the CIA has been actively plotting to destabilise or even assassinate Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa, after US anger over decisions such as the granting of political asylum to Julian Assange and the termination of the US lease on a military base in Manta. Mery claims the CIA is running an Iran-Contra style drug operation in Chile, trafficking “about 200 kilos of cocaine per month” from Bolivia in order to fund anti-Correa operations. Early last year, Italian police discovered 40 kilos of cocaine in Ecuador’s diplomatic mail. Mery alleges senior Chilean officials were involved, and he has a dossier of proof for the Ecuadorian government.

Press Core/SOTT: CIA Targeted Assassinations by Induced Heart Attack and Cancer


Permalink 'Robo-reporter' computer program raises questions about future of journalists

Journalist Ken Schwencke has occasionally awakened in the morning to find his byline atop a news story he didn’t write.

No, it’s not that his employer, The Los Angeles Times, is accidentally putting his name atop other writers’ articles.

Instead, it’s a reflection that Schwencke, digital editor at the respected U.S. newspaper, wrote an algorithm — that then wrote the story for him. Instead of personally composing the pieces, Schwencke developed a set of step-by-step instructions that can take a stream of data — this particular algorithm works with earthquake statistics, since he lives in California — compile the data into a pre-determined structure, then format it for publication.

His fingers never have to touch a keyboard; he doesn’t have to look at a computer screen. He can be sleeping soundly when the story writes itself. [Video][Source]


Permalink Evidence Shows Syrian Rebels Behind Chemical Attack

Reports of a chemical weapon attack in Syria’s Aleppo Province last week provoked leaders and politicians, particularly in the West, to advocate more fiercely for the overthrow of the Assad regime, despite the vague details surrounding the attack. Current data seem to suggest, however, that it was not government forces behind the attack, but rebel forces. AntiWar.com reports:

The attack, intelligence sources appear to agree, was launched by rebel fighters and not government forces. Since the victims were overwhelmingly the Syrian military, this was not a huge shock, but is important to reiterate.

Likewise, the Assad forces called upon the United Nations to launch an investigation into the attack. Evidence also indicates that the attack involved lachrymatory agents, not nerve agents, and that the deaths were caused by suffocating on chlorine-based gas injected into the warhead. The significance of this information, as noted by AntiWar.com is that “it is not the sort of weapon Syria has in its arsenal, rather it is a lower-tech solution.”

Shamus Cooke: How Obama Chose War Over Peace in Syria
Jason Ditz: Recent Arms Influx Preparing Rebels to Attack Damascus


Permalink Spanish party [correctly] dismisses Holocaust remembrance as ‘Israeli propaganda’

Spanish Jews accused politicians in Galicia of blocking a resolution for commemorating the Holocaust because they oppose Israel. The speakers of the leftist AGE party and the nationalist BNG party in the parliament of Galicia -- an autonomous region in northern Spain -- vetoed a draft resolution commemorating the victims of the Holocaust, preventing it from going to a vote, according to the Federation of Jewish Communities (FCJE) in Spain.


Permalink French President Hollande pledges austerity, war in prime time TV interview

In an hour-long France2 television interview last night, French President François Hollande sought to outline his policies amid rising popular anger with his government. Hollande’s interview aimed to reassure the ruling class that his Socialist Party (PS) government would continue with its wars and social cuts in defiance of public opinion. Though his speech largely focused on the economy, he did not raise the main event in European economic life this month: the European Union (EU) bailout imposed upon Cyprus with the support of the Hollande government. This is because any honest portrayal of EU policy in Cyprus would explode the lie that the European bourgeoisie wants jobs and economic growth. In fact, their policy is aimed at intensifying the exploitation of the working class amid a ruthless war among competing sections of finance capital.


Permalink Weekly Report On Israeli Human Rights Violations in Occupied Palestine

Israeli violations of international law and international humanitarian law in the oPt continued during the reporting period 21 – 27 March 2013

During the reporting period, the Israeli forces wounded 4 protestors, including a Norwegian human rights defender and member of the board of directors of Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center, in the West Bank. In the Gaza Strip, the Israeli forces continued to fire at the Palestinian fishing boats in order to minimize the allowed fishing area to 3 nautical miles instead of 6 nautical miles.
During the reporting period, the Israeli forces continued to systematically use excessive force against peaceful protests organized by Palestinians and Israeli and international activists against the construction of the annexation wall and settlement activities in the West Bank and other protests in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike in the Israeli jails. As a result, dozens of protesters suffered from tear gas inhalation and other sustained bruises.
In the Gaza Strip, the Israeli forces continued to chase the Palestinian fishermen in the sea. PCHR's fieldworkers documented 4 shooting incidents on Palestinian fishing boats that were sailing 3 nautical miles off al-Waha resort, northwest of Beit Lahia in the north of the Gaza Strip. As a result of the attacks, the fishermen were obliged to flee back to the shore fearing of being wounded or arrested. However, neither casualties nor material damage were reported.


03/28/13

Permalink NATO Night Raid Kills Four Afghan Children

Defense Ministry Insists Everyone Slain Was 'Taliban'. - Local police are confirming that a NATO-led night raid against the Logar Province left at least five civilians, including four children dead, and a number of others wounded. Logar official Rais Seddiq confirmed that two of the slain civilians were killed immediately, and that three others died of their wounds in the hospital. The confirmation sparked an angry reaction from the Afghan Defense Ministry.


Permalink Plight of Guantanamo hunger strikers deepens

The plight of hunger strikers at the US’s notorious Guantanamo detention facility has been deepening as the prison authorities refuse to supply the inmates with drinking water and keep them in “extremely frigid” cells. A group of lawyers stated in an emergency motion filed with a federal court in Washington that the Gitmo guards had refused to provide drinking water to hunger strikers and kept camp temperature “extremely frigid” to break the strike. The lawyers also said the lack of drinkable water had led to medical conditions affecting the kidneys, urinary system and the stomach of the prisoners on strike. Over a hundred of Guantanamo inmates have been on a hunger strike since early February. They are demanding an end to their indefinite detention. More than 160 inmates have been kept at Guantanamo without charge since early 2000s.

Jason Ditz: US Denying Guantanamo Detainees Water
PressTV: Red Cross sends delegation to Guantanamo prison a week early
Russia Today: Gitmo military attorney: ‘The fact that my client still happens to be breathing is mostly trivial’


Permalink Facial recognition and GPS tracking: TrapWire company conducting even more surveillance

An internationally-spread Orwellian surveillance system uncovered by RT has been linked to a software company that collects the GPS coordinates of cell phone users in over 100 major cities. - The discovery of the TrapWire risk mitigation program last year and its ability to match human faces caught on camera against massive databases of intelligence led to an outcry from privacy advocates around the world. Now once again the burgeoning preponderance of Big Brother is being put into perspective. In late 2011, members of the loose-knit hacktivist group Anonymous pilfered data from the servers of private intelligence firm Stratfor that were in turn handed over to the whistleblower website WikiLeaks for dissemination. When internal emails alluding to a service called TrapWire surfaced in the leak, an investigation uncovered a program that, according to the company’s founder, “can collect information about people and vehicles that is more accurate than facial recognition.”


Permalink ‘This isn’t going to stop with Cyprus’

The Cyprus liquidity crisis will only lead to violence, Wide Awake News founder Charlie McGrath has told RT. The journalist warns that the Cyprus solution may serve as a model as the wider EU deals with the financial crisis.

Michael Snyder: The Global Elite Are Very Clearly Telling Us That They Plan To Raid Our Bank Accounts - So exactly how did the big banks in Cyprus get into so much trouble? Well, they have been doing exactly what hundreds of other large banks all over the U.S. and Europe have been doing. They have been gambling with our money. In particular, the big banks in Cyprus made huge bets on Greek sovereign debt which ended up failing. But what happened in Cyprus is just the tip of the iceberg. All over the planet major financial institutions are being incredibly reckless with client money. They are leveraged to the hilt and they have transformed the global financial system into a gigantic casino. If they win on their bets, they become fabulously wealthy. If they lose on their bets, they know that the politicians won't let the banks fail. They know that they will get bailed out one way or another. And who pays? We do.

Stefanos Evripidou/Cyprus Mail: Limits now in place for re-opening of banks - text of decree included


Permalink Ecuador to auction off more than 3 MILLION hectares of pristine Amazonian rainforest to Chinese oil companies

Ecuador plans to auction off more than three million hectares of pristine Amazonian rainforest to Chinese oil companies, angering indigenous groups and underlining the global environmental toll of China's insatiable thirst for energy. On Monday morning a group of Ecuadorean politicians pitched bidding contracts to representatives of Chinese oil companies at a Hilton hotel in central Beijing, on the fourth leg of a roadshow to publicise the bidding process. Previous meetings in Ecuador's capital, Quito, and in Houston and Paris were each confronted with protests by indigenous groups. Attending the roadshow were black-suited representatives from oil companies including China Petrochemical and China National Offshore Oil. "Ecuador is willing to establish a relationship of mutual benefit – a win-win relationship," said Ecuador's ambassador to China in opening remarks.


Permalink The Big BRICS: China Finds Its Place

As Xi arrives in Durban, the BRICS summit will announce the formation of a BRICS Development Bank with a $50 billion capital chest (China has a surplus of $3.31 trillion, a vault that will be likely be recycled through this kind of bank). But there are grave doubts about the model of the investment, coming in to promote resource extraction rather than social development. There is worry too that the new BRICS Bank, which is likely to be housed in Shanghai, will be a well-capitalized Southern version of the World Bank rather than the kind of development bank envisaged by BancoSur (before its radicalism was tempered by the Brazilian government – as pointed by Oscar Ugarteche and Eric Toussaint). The kind of regimes that now control the BRICS process are constrained by their own class projects – they favor neo-liberal policies as long as these do not discriminatorily favor the North.


Permalink BRICS Group Voices Opposition to Militarization of Crisis in Syria

DURBAN, (SANA) – The leaders of the BRICS member countries affirmed their rejection of the militarization of the crisis in Syria, stressing the need for the Geneva Statement to form the basis for settling this crisis. - In a statement issued on Wednesday at the conclusion of the BRICS summit which was held in Durban in South Africa, BRICS leaders voiced deep concern over the deteriorating security and humanitarian situation in Syria, denouncing the repeated and increasing violations of human rights and international law due to ongoing violence.

SANA: President al-Assad Calls upon BRIC S to Contribute to Halting Violence in Syria
Bloomberg: BRICS Nations Plan New Bank to Bypass World Bank, IMF


Permalink Swedish scientist to lead UN chemical weapons probe in Syria

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has named Swedish scientist Åke Sellström as the head of the mission tasked with probing the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria. The fact-finding team was set up at the request of the Syrian government. Damascus has accused foreign-backed militants of using chemical weapons against civilians near the northern city of Aleppo. Syrian media say dozens of people have been killed and nearly 140 more injured in the chemical attack.


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