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Worse than Nixon: The Constitution Killing Obama Administration
- Created on Saturday, 18 May 2013 16:11
- Written by Democracy Now!
Obama Worse Than Nixon? Pentagon Papers Attorney Decries AP Phone Probe, Julian Assange Persecution
The AP example is a good example of something that Obama has done but Nixon never did. So I have him presently in second place, behind Nixon and ahead of Bush II. And he’s moving up fast. And if he goes ahead against Assange, he’ll at least be even, and we’ll have to see how that prosecution, if it takes place, comes out, because maybe he’ll pass him.
ICC Opens Mavi Marmara Case
- Created on Wednesday, 15 May 2013 17:31
- Written by Creative Commons
ICC To Conduct Preliminary Examination Into Marmara Attack
by Saed Bannoura - IMEMC & Agencies
The International Criminal Court said that it initiated a preliminary investigation into the May 2010 deadly Israeli attack that targeted the Turkish MV Marmara solidarity Ship leading to the death of nine Turkish activists. humanitarian and medical supplies. The court said it needs to investigate the issue to determine whether the Israeli attack constituted war crimes, or crimes against humanity.
ICC Prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, stated on May 14 that the preliminary aims at determining whether the criteria for initiating an investigation have been met.
Bensouda said that she carefully examined all acquired information, and that she will be “making a determination that will be publicly declared in due course”.
She further stated that she met several lawyers, based in Istanbul, representing the government of the Comoros that referred to file for her office. The MV Marmara Turkish ship was registered in the Comoros Island, in the Indian Ocean, that has been a member of the ICC since 2006.
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Stealing Home: Justice Blind on Sheriffs Department Conspiracy
- Created on Wednesday, 15 May 2013 16:40
- Written by Tim King
Sheriff's Department Takes Family's Home and Contents Using a Fake Eviction
by Tim King - Salem-News.com
MT. PLEASANT, MI - Theodore Visner and Kathy Smith are having trouble getting their story out... Visner-Smith family (Family photographs provided by Ted Visner)
U.S. Navy veteran Ted Visner and his wife, Kathy Smith of Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, have been living out a nightmare. It started two and a half years ago, when the family fell victim to an apparent real estate scam by a local sheriff's department employee.
U.S. Navy veteran Ted Visner and his wife, Kathy Smith of Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, have been living out a nightmare. It started two and a half years ago, when the family fell victim to an apparent real estate scam by a local sheriff's department employee.
Ted Visner says they bought their former home on a land contract, only to learn seven months later, that the seller, Isabella County Sheriff's Dept. employee Shelly Sweet, was not making monthly payments on the house. A bank foreclosed on the property, all unbeknownst to the Visner/Smith family.
Ted Visner, who builds custom homes for a living, said, "Although we were paying Sweet every month on the purchase of the property, she had not been paying the underlying mortgage and the home fell into foreclosure." I asked Visner if he had records of those payments, he said he does, including canceled checks. You won't believe what happened next.
"On a weekend Sweet knew that we would be out of town, she offered the contents of our home to her friends and coworkers at the Isabella County Sheriff’s Department, claiming we had abandoned the home. Many took her up on her free offer deal and took over $55,000 dollars worth of our personal property."
Where Worlds Collude: The Parallel Financial Universe You'll Never Be Part Of
- Created on Wednesday, 15 May 2013 16:24
- Written by Chris Floyd
Collusion Course: Machinations of the Double-Headed Beast
Who would have thought that oil barons -- of all people! -- would be involved in dirty back-room dealings to gorge their gobs with even more swill from the trough?
The London offices of BP and Shell have been raided by European regulators investigating allegations they have "colluded" to rig oil prices for more than a decade. The European commission said its officers carried out "unannounced inspections" at several oil companies in London, the Netherlands and Norway to investigate claims they may have "colluded in reporting distorted prices to a price reporting agency [PRA] to manipulate the published prices for a number of oil and biofuel products" .. It warned: "Even small distortions of assessed prices may have a huge impact on the prices of crude oil, refined oil products and biofuels purchases and sales, potentially harming final consumers."
Of course, these manipulations of "self-policing" mechanisms for setting prices are endemic across the economic heights commanded by our most illustrious financial and industrial elites, as Matt Taibbi noted last month. And I'm sure the dastardly deeds of the oil companies in fixing prices will be dealt with just as harshly and thoroughly as the recent Libor scandal was: with a few chump-change fines that put not the slightest crimp in the criminals' operations nor impeded their ready access to the inner circles (and outer fundraisers) of government power.
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Read more: Where Worlds Collude: The Parallel Financial Universe You'll Never Be Part Of
Too Cool to Rule: Post Mortem on NDP's Fatally Flawed Campaign
- Created on Wednesday, 15 May 2013 16:20
- Written by Damien Gillis
It's the Economy, Stupid NDP
The annals of contemporary political history make one thing clear: Elections are invariably won and lost on a single issue - and that issue is most often the economy. To borrow a slogan coined by Bill Clinton's enigmatic campaign strategist, James Carville, "It's the economy, stupid." You can win issues two through ten, but if you screw up the first one, you're toast.
The NDP lost this election for three reasons - all of which relate back to that one central point:
- 1. Despite compelling evidence in their favour, the NDP failed to destroy the Liberals' economic credibility;
- 2. Mr. Dix failed to understand the difference between being fair and being nice;
- 3. Unlike their opponents, the NDP have no sense of storytelling, no simple narrative arc to which they can attach their myriad policy points.
Plainly put, the NDP and leader Adrian Dix lost this election by running a terrible campaign. The out-to-lunch polls and the mainstream media that allowed Clark a free pass on the Liberals' true economic record didn't help matters, but this was Dix's to lose, and lose he did.
Grim Tales for Modern Tots: "Where Do Drones Come from Daddy?"
- Created on Tuesday, 14 May 2013 18:01
- Written by William A. Cook
“Daddy, what is a Drone?” A Bedtime Story
by William A. Cook
The question jolted him out of his lethargy as he suddenly sat upright in the soft chair he had slumped into when she came for “her time with Daddy.” It had the ring of a catechism question; “What is God, Daddy?” How does one answer that without a torrent of other questions cascading from this innocent mouth one after another? His first impulse was to ignore it; his second, to discombobulate the response with obfuscation, to deflect the question with words she could not understand; his third, to respond directly to her question, to speak the truth knowing that she would not comprehend the intricacies of the policies that legalize the use of drones.
He remembered the story of Hawthorne’s good Dr. Grim who had to address a similar question when Little Ned asked him, “Whence came I here and why?” Indeed, the good doctor answered honestly, truthfully, bluntly, and, dare we say it, wisely.
“Whence did you come? Whence did any of us come? Out of the darkness and mystery, out of nothingness; out of a kingdom of shadows; out of dust, mud, clay, I think, and to return to it again. Out of a former state of being, whence we have brought a good many shadowy revelations, purporting that it was not a very pleasant one. Out of a former life, of which the present one is hell.
And why are you come? Faith, Ned, he must be a wiser man than Doctor Grim who can tell you why you or any other mortal came hither; only one thing I am well aware of, ---it was not to be happy. To toil and moil and hope and fear; and to love in a shadowy, doubtful sort of way, and to hate in bitter earnest, ---that is what you came for.”
“Daddy, what is a Drone?” she asked again, noticing his sudden reaction and his hesitancy.
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The Third Reich's Refugee in America
- Created on Tuesday, 14 May 2013 17:11
- Written by Finian Cunningham
US Driven By Nazi War Machine
by Finian Cunningham
The annual VE Day - victory in Europe - celebrations held this month see, as usual, Western governments indulging in self-glory and moral superiority for their supposed defeat of German fascism. However, the official history books do not tell of the secret pact that Western governments and Washington in particular formed with the remnants of the Nazi war machine.The absorption of Nazi military practice and intelligence into the CIA and other Western organizations at the end of the Second World War had fateful and far-reaching pernicious consequences - consequences that are becoming more and more manifest today, as US-led wars of aggression rage around the world.
If we want to understand why US-led wars of aggression, covert and overt, are plaguing the planet, from Iraq, Afghanistan, to Libya, Syria and Iran, we can gain much insight into today’s problems by going back to events at the end of the Second World War.
Within days of Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender to the Allies - 68 years ago this week - the Western powers of the United States and Britain were already drawing the battle lines for their next war - against the Soviet Union.
On 22 May 1945, the Third Reich’s chief of intelligence on the Eastern Front, Major General Reinhard Gehlen, surrendered himself to the American military near his Bavarian hideout. The Americans quickly realized the scoop. Gehlen had been Hitler’s “spy master” during Nazi Germany’s war on the Soviet Union, in charge of running agents, death squads and compiling data on Soviet and Red Army infrastructure.
If we want to understand why US-led wars of aggression, covert and overt, are plaguing the planet, from Iraq, Afghanistan, to Libya, Syria and Iran, we can gain much insight into today’s problems by going back to events at the end of the Second World War.
Within days of Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender to the Allies - 68 years ago this week - the Western powers of the United States and Britain were already drawing the battle lines for their next war - against the Soviet Union.
On 22 May 1945, the Third Reich’s chief of intelligence on the Eastern Front, Major General Reinhard Gehlen, surrendered himself to the American military near his Bavarian hideout. The Americans quickly realized the scoop. Gehlen had been Hitler’s “spy master” during Nazi Germany’s war on the Soviet Union, in charge of running agents, death squads and compiling data on Soviet and Red Army infrastructure.
'Baseworld' Bleeding America Dry
- Created on Tuesday, 14 May 2013 16:56
- Written by Tom Engelhardt
Where Has All the Money Gone? How Contractors Raked in $385 Billion to Build and Support Bases Abroad since 2001
Outside the United States, the Pentagon controls a collection of military bases unprecedented in history. With U.S. troops gone from Iraq and the withdrawal from Afghanistan underway, it’s easy to forget that we probably still have about 1,000 military bases in other peoples' lands. This giant collection of bases receives remarkably little media attention, costs a fortune, and even when cost cutting is the subject du jour, it still seems to get a free ride.With so much money pouring into the Pentagon’s base world, the question is: Who’s benefiting?
Some of the money clearly pays for things like salaries, health care, and other benefits for around one million military and Defense Department personnel and their families overseas. But after an extensive examination of government spending data and contracts, I estimate that the Pentagon has dispersed around $385 billion to private companies for work done outside the U.S. since late 2001, mainly in that baseworld.
That’s nearly double the entire State Department budget over the same period, and because Pentagon and government accounting practices are so poor, the true total may be significantly higher.
Falk Listening In Lebanon
- Created on Monday, 13 May 2013 20:34
- Written by Franklin Lamb
Professor Falk Graces Lebanon and Gets an Earful
by Franklin Lamb - in Damascus
The United Nations Special Rapporteur for Palestine, Professor Richard Falk, came to Lebanon last week on an unofficial visit to survey opinion while fact finding the condition in Palestinian refugee’s camps. It was the Professors first visit to Lebanon since the fateful summer of 1982. Back then, en route by sea to Beirut, which was under Israeli siege and blockade, Falk was Vice-Chair of the Sean McBride Commission of Inquiry into Israeli crimes against Lebanon.
Mid-way between Cyprus and Lebanon, the Zionist navy, in a blatant act of piracy on the high seas, intercepted, boarded and commandeered the vessel. Eventually, under reported American pressure via US Envoy Morris Draper’s telephoned profanity to Tel Aviv, the pirates allowed Falk’s delegation to disembark at the port of Jounieh, just north of Beirut. Draper, who like so many US diplomats, claims he finally “saw the light after retiring”, told this observer that “I never swore so much in my life as I did at those SOBS during that summer of 1982 and after I learned the details of Ariel Sharon’s choreography of the Sabra-Shatila massacre!” Ambassador Draper added, “The world will never know the extent of Israeli crimes committed against Lebanon and its refugees until Washington threatens to cut off all aid until Tel Aviv opens up its archives on this period.”
Professor Falk, as he mentioned during several events here, including a first-rate conference on the status of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and their struggle for the most elementary civil rights to work and to own a home, organized by the Institute of Palestine Studies, came to Lebanon not to offer counsel to Lebanon’s sects or even to the Palestinians. (The IPS, (http://www.palestine-studies.org) founded in 1969, is considered by this observer and many others, as the most reliable and authoritative source of information on Palestinian affairs and the Arab-Israel conflict.)
Falk came to listen and to learn. He did both. He listened intently to each speaker, scribing hurried notes regarding the current conditions of Palestinian refugee, including education and health status, in Lebanon’s 12 camps and two dozen “gatherings,” reports that were presented by several academics and NGO’s based here.
Accessory to Genocide: Rios Montt's Friends in High Places
- Created on Monday, 13 May 2013 19:04
- Written by Robert Parry
Ronald Reagan: Accessory to Genocide
by Robert Parry - ConsortiumNews
The conviction of former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt on charges of genocide against Mayan villagers in the 1980s has a special meaning for Americans who idolize Ronald Reagan. It means that their hero was an accessory to one of the most grievous crimes that can be committed against humanity.
The courage of the Guatemalan people and the integrity of their legal system to exact some accountability on a still-influential political figure also put U.S. democracy to shame. For decades now, Americans have tolerated human rights crimes by U.S. presidents who face little or no accountability. Usually, the history isn’t even compiled honestly.
The conviction of former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt on charges of genocide against Mayan villagers in the 1980s has a special meaning for Americans who idolize Ronald Reagan. It means that their hero was an accessory to one of the most grievous crimes that can be committed against humanity.The courage of the Guatemalan people and the integrity of their legal system to exact some accountability on a still-influential political figure also put U.S. democracy to shame. For decades now, Americans have tolerated human rights crimes by U.S. presidents who face little or no accountability. Usually, the history isn’t even compiled honestly.
By contrast, a Guatemalan court on Friday found Rios Montt guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity and sentenced the 86-year-old ex-dictator to 80 years in prison. After the ruling, when Rios Montt rose and tried to walk out of the courtroom, Judge Yasmin Barrios shouted at him to stay put and then had security officers take him into custody.
Yet, while Guatemalans demonstrate the strength to face a dark chapter of their history, the American people remain mostly oblivious to Reagan’s central role in tens of thousands of political murders across Central America in the 1980s, including some 100,000 dead in Guatemala slaughtered by Rios Montt and other military dictators.
Indeed, Ronald Reagan – by aiding, abetting, encouraging and covering up widespread human rights crimes in El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua as well as Guatemala – bears greater responsibility for Central America’s horrors than does Rios Montt in his bloody 17-month rule. Reagan supported Guatemala’s brutal repression both before and after Rios Montt held power, as well as during.
Despite that history, more honors have been bestowed on Reagan than any recent president. Americans have allowed the naming of scores of government facilities in Reagan’s honor, including Washington National Airport where Reagan’s name elbowed aside that of George Washington, who led the War of Independence, oversaw the drafting of the U.S. Constitution and served as the nation’s first president.
So, as America’s former reputation as a beacon for human rights becomes a bad joke to the rest of the world, it is unthinkable within the U.S. political/media structure that Reagan would get posthumously criticized for the barbarity that he promoted. No one of importance would dare suggest that his name be stripped from National Airport and his statue removed from near the airport entrance.
But the evidence is overwhelming that the 40th president of the United States was guilty as an accessory to genocide and a wide range of other war crimes, including torture, rape, terrorism and narcotics trafficking. [See Robert Parry's Lost History.]
Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Alexandra Morton, Jon Elmer, Janine Bandcroft May 13, 2013
- Created on Sunday, 12 May 2013 17:08
- Written by Chris Cook
This Week on GR
by C. L. Cook - Gorilla Radio
With BC's provincial election less than 24 hours away, there's one issue that we can cover without fear of trespassing on media elections gag orders. Neither of the two parties likely to lead the next government oppose open-pen fish farming in the province.Despite mountains of evidence suggesting the folly of concentrated feed lots for fish; the obvious ill effects on the fish bred in cramped captivity; dubious health benefit claims of a human diet including these drugged and unnaturally sustained creatures; proven dangers pathogens from these operations pose to wild fish; the standing on its head of the precautionary principle required to keep this industry afloat, with the many known and suspected negative effects it represents, the BC Liberals and BC New Democratic Party both essentially support business as usual.
It's all so much of more of the same for BC-based scientist and wild salmon crusader Alexandra Morton, who last week, along with Ecojustice filed a best practices law suit against salmon farming giant Marine Harvest and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, (DFO) for the alleged "transfer of diseased farmed Atlantic salmon into waters shared by wild fish."
As disturbing as the ramifications of Marine Harvest's willful, and possibly illegal, endangering of wild salmon in this manner are, (not to mention the apparent lackadaisical policing of its own policies by the Department of Oceans and Fisheries appear to be in this case, and others) more so is what this case reveals about another frightening virus, joining the already devastating and universally feared ISA virus afflicting farmed salmon stock, and its possible release into the wild.
Alexandra Morton back in court in the first half.
And; this May 15th marks Nakba Day for those within occupied Palestine, and the millions more comprising the Palestinian diaspora. Nakba Day's modern manifestation commemorates the day after Israel's 1948 declaration of independence.
Jon Elmer is a Canadian writer and photojournalist specializing in the Middle East and Canadian foreign and military policy. He has lived in and reported from Occupied Palestine for the better part of the last decade, based primarily in Jenin, Bethlehem and Gaza City. Jon's also reported from more than a dozen countries from the middle east, to Nepal, Western Sahara, the Basque country and right here in Canada. His articles and photographs are featured in the Journal of Palestine Studies, Le Monde diplomatique, The Progressive, Al Jazeera English among others. He is also a contributor, with Anthony Fenton to the book, 'Empire's Ally: Canada in Afghanistan.'
Jon Elmer and marking time passed in Occupied Palestine in the second half.
And, Victoria Street Newz publisher and CFUV Radio broadcaster Janine Bandcroft will join us at the bottom of the hour to bring us up to speed with some of what's good to do in and around our city in the coming week. But first, Alexandra Morton and keeping PRV in its cage.
Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, airing live every Monday, 5-6pm Pacific Time. In Victoria at 101.9FM, and on the internet at: http://cfuv.uvic.ca. He also serves as a contributing editor to the web news site, http://www.pacificfreepress.com. Check out the GR blog at: http://gorillaradioblog.blogspot.ca/
Add a comment Read more: Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Alexandra Morton, Jon Elmer, Janine Bandcroft May 13, 2013
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