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Ukraine ultranationalist leader rejects Minsk peace deal, vows ‘to continue war’

RT | February 13, 2015

Ukraine’s Right Sector leader Dmitry Yarosh said his radical movement rejects the Minsk peace deal and that their paramilitary units in eastern Ukraine will continue “active fighting” according to their “own plans.”

The notorious ultranationalist leader published a statement on his Facebook page Friday, saying that his radical Right Sector movement doesn’t recognize the peace deal, signed by the so-called ‘contact group’ on Thursday and agreed upon by Ukraine, France, Germany and Russia after epic 16-hour talks.

Yarosh claimed that any agreement with the eastern militia, whom he calls “terrorists,” has no legal force.

In his statement, Yarosh claimed that that the Minsk deal is contrary to Ukraine’s constitution, so Ukrainian citizens are not obliged to abide by it. Thus if the army receives orders to cease military activity and withdraw heavy weaponry from the eastern regions, the Right Sector paramilitaries, who are also fighting there “reserve the right” to continue the war, he said.

The Right Sector paramilitary organization continues to deploy its combat and reserve units, to train and logistically support personnel, while coordinating its activities with the military command of the Ukrainian army, paramilitary units of the Defense Ministry and the Interior Ministry, he said.

The breakthrough Minsk agreement was reached on Thursday following marathon overnight negotiations between Ukraine, France, Germany and Russia, and offer hope the fighting in Eastern Ukraine may come to an end. The talks were part of a Franco-German initiative. President Francois Hollande and Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Kiev and Moscow before meeting the Russian and Ukrainian leaders at the negotiating table in Minsk.

READ MORE: Right Sector refuses to obey Ukraine’s Defense Ministry – presidential aid

February 13, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism | , , | 1 Comment

EU and Russia: No option but peace and coexistence

The BRICS Post | February 13, 2015

At the moment of writing, the ink on the second Minsk agreement has not yet dried.

On February 15, fighting is supposed to come to an end in Ukraine. What are the chances for success of this agreement and what’s in it for the EU and Russia?

Are we on the path to a new peace or to a new cold/hot war? That is the question that will be on the minds of many in the days to come.

There are too many uncertain factors to reliably predict what will happen. The EU and the US have different agendas, and one can even make a case that they have conflicting interests.

For Russia, a peaceful resolution to the conflict means ending the sanctions and facilitating closer economic cooperation with the EU.

But tighter economic relations with Russia, the natural hinterland of Europe, goes against the core of the transatlantic NATO alliance. This has been a nightmare scenario for the Washington elite since 1945.

Pointedly, neither the US nor the UK were involved in the Minsk negotiations, so for Washington all options are still on the table. Considering the warmongering majority in the US Congress, that is not a good omen for peace.

Then there is the matter of the government in Kiev. Hardly ever mentioned in the news, it is far from stable. Extremist militias who do not bother to hide their fascist ideologies have been integrated into the Ukrainian army.

Considering their behaviour on the battlefield so far, it is very doubtful that Kiev will be able to make them abide by the ceasefire conditions.

Besides the extremists in their own ranks, the Kiev government faces another problem – young Ukrainian men in the west are bitterly resisting military conscription. This is not to say that they sympathize with their compatriots in the east – they just do not want to die fighting them.

Furthermore, there is the inner political struggle for power.

While President Petro Poroshenko is more than willing to find a pragmatic solution to the conflict, his prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, however, is a fanatic Ukrainian nationalist, who is not a man of compromise.

He wants total victory and would be more then happy to replace his president.

Then there are the rebels in Eastern Ukraine, the so­-called ‘pro-­Russian separatists’.

Western media make it look like they are mere pawns in Putin’s hands, but that is hardly the case.

Nobody denies that Russia is giving them ample logistic support, but the leaders of the resistance are very unreliable. Will they accept the ceasefire? Hard to tell.

First step toward peace

Yet, despite all these challenges, history shows that worse situations have led to lasting peace.

The second Minsk agreement might just work. It is only a first step, and a peaceful long-term resolution of the conflict is still to be negotiated, but it is the only way out for the EU, Russia and Ukraine.

One of the reasons it might just work is precisely that the EU alone brokered it, or rather Germany and France, and not the US. That might seem contradictory given the different variables mentioned above, but it’s not. It all depends on who and what will prevail.

The real issues are still on the table – disarmament and federalization of the country. If the EU really wants it, Brussels has the financial leverage to force Kiev’s hand in accepting a new constitution granting the eastern regions meaningful autonomy.

The EU has experience with forging complex compromise solutions. After all, the EU itself is a permanent compromise.

What is really at stake is much more than just an end to an internal conflict stoked by outside forces. A resumption of violence carries with it the risk of an all out war between nuclear powers.

This is about a possible major war on European soil.

Border control

Hence, peace is the only option for Europe and Russia.

Personally, I consider one of the last paragraphs in the Minsk agreement, which focuses on control of the border, the most difficult one.

Kiev wants to regain full control of the border between the eastern provinces and Russia. This may at first appear to be a technicality, but it isn’t. Control of the border is highly symbolic, for all parties involved.

Kiev’s control of the border would impede Russia’s direct influence on the ground; for the rebels it would symbolize a partial surrender. The only party that stands to gain from this paragraph in the agreement is Kiev, which would have been delivered a highly symbolic victory.

A reasonable option would be to deploy UN troops on the border. Russia has proposed it, but apparently it was not on the negotiating table in Minsk.

While the Cold War has prevented Europe and Moscow from peaceful coexistence on their common continent, peace in Ukraine might just open up the whole Russian hinterland to the European economy.

At the end, it boils down to two options: The renewal of the old transatlantic pact with the ally overseas leading to a new Cold War (that could turn very nasty), or peace and coexistence with Russia.

February 13, 2015 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , , , , | 3 Comments

US admits 1980s aid to Israel’s H-bomb program

RT | February 13, 2015

Conceding to a federal lawsuit, the US government agreed to release a 1987 Defense Department report detailing US assistance to Israel in its development of a hydrogen bomb, which skirted international standards.

The 386-page report, “Critical Technology Assessment in Israel and NATO Nations,” likens top Israeli nuclear facilities to the Los Alamos and Oak Ridge National Laboratories that were key in the development of US nuclear weaponry.

Israelis are “developing the kind of codes which will enable them to make hydrogen bombs. That is, codes which detail fission and fusion processes on a microscopic and macroscopic level,” said the report, the release of which comes before Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s March 3 speech in front of the US Congress in which he will oppose any deal that allows Iran’s legal nuclear program to persist.

“I am struck by the degree of cooperation on specialized war making devices between Israel and the US,” Roger Mattson, a formerly of the Atomic Energy Commission’s technical staff, said of the report, according to Courthouse News.

The report’s release earlier this week was initiated by a Freedom of Information Act request made three years ago by Grant Smith, director of the Washington think tank Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy. Smith filed a lawsuit in September in order to compel the Pentagon to substantially address the request.

“It’s our basic position that in 1987 the Department of Defense discovered that Israel had a nuclear weapons program, detailed it and then has covered it up for 25 years in violation of the Symington and Glenn amendments, costing taxpayers $86 billion,” Smith said during a hearing in late 2014 before Judge Tanya Chutkan in US District Court for the District of Columbia.

Smith described in his federal court complaint how those federal laws were violated by the US in the midst of Israel’s budding nuclear program.

“The Symington Amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 prohibits most U.S. foreign aid to any country found trafficking in nuclear enrichment equipment or technology outside international safeguards,” Smith wrote.

“The Glenn Amendment of 1977 calls for an end to U.S. foreign aid to countries that import nuclear reprocessing technology.”

In November, Judge Chutkan asked government lawyers resistant to the report’s release why it had taken years for the government to prepare the report for public consumption.

“I’d like to know what is taking so long for a 386-page document. The document was located some time ago,” Chutkan said, according to Courthouse News Service.

“I’ve reviewed my share of documents in my career. It should not take that long to review that document and decide what needs to be redacted.”

The government’s representatives in the case — Special Assistant US Attorney Laura Jennings and Defense Department counsel Mark Herrington — initially said confidentiality agreements required a “line by line” review of the Defense Department’s report. They later shifted, arguing that its release is optional and not mandatory, as “diplomatic relations dictate that DoD seeks Israel’s review.”

Smith and the US agreed that the government would redact sections of the report on NATO countries, though the passages on Israel remain intact.

“The capability of SOREQ [Soreq Nuclear Research Center] to support SDIO [Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, or “Star Wars”] and nuclear technologies is almost an exact parallel of the capability currently existing at our National Laboratories,” said the report, written by the Institute for Defense Analysis for the Department of Defense.

“SOREQ and Dimona/Beer Sheva facilities are the equivalent of our Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge National Laboratories…[and have] the technology base required for nuclear weapons design and fabrication.”

The report’s authors Edwin Townsley and Clarence Robinson found that Israel had Category 1 capability regarding its anti-tactical ballistic missile and “Star Wars” weapons programs.

“As far as nuclear technology is concerned the Israelis are roughly where the U.S. [w]as in the fission weapon field in about 1955 to 1960,” the report said. “It should be noted that the Israelis are developing the kind of codes which will enable them to make hydrogen bombs.”

In a statement on the report’s release, Smith said Thursday, “Informal and Freedom of Information Act release of such information is rare. Under two known gag orders — punishable by imprisonment — U.S. security-cleared government agency employees and contractors may not disclose that Israel has a nuclear weapons program.”

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s planned address before the US Congress was controversially arranged by Republican leadership without consultation of congressional Democrats or the White House.

The speech will occur weeks before Netanyahu will seek reelection, and is to center around his opposition to any agreement with Iran over its [civilian] nuclear program, a deal the US — while levying heavy sanctions on Tehran — has pursued despite protests from its preeminent ally [sic] in the Middle East, Israel.

Tehran’s nuclear program is legal under the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which Israel is one of the few United Nations members that is not a signatory.

February 13, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Muslims, Murder and Media Bias

By Robert Fantina | CounterPunch | February 13, 2015

With the tragic murder of three young Muslims at Chapel Hill University, apparently by an avowed atheist, it will be interesting to see the reactions from the media, politicians and the public. Let us consider some possibilities, based on recent history.

* A new hashtag, #wearechapelhill will flood the Twittersphere, and people around the world will ‘tweet’ their solidarity with the victims.

* Thousands of people will march at Chapel Hill, all carrying placards reading ‘We are Chapel Hill’.

* World leaders will gather at Chapel Hill, far away, of course, from any of the little people, and march together as a show of solidarity against non-religious-motivated terrorism. Israeli Prime Murderer Benjamin Netanyahu will not be invited, but will show up anyway, and will push his way to the front of the crowd.

* President Barack Obama will decry this as a terrorist act, saying that while not all atheists are violent, those with violent tendencies must be stopped.

* The media will proclaim that Chapel Hill is now the frontier in the war against atheist-inspired terror.

* Atheists around the world will be the targets of harassment and violence.

Now, perhaps we can return to reality for a moment, and give this more serious consideration.

CNN, in its initial report on the crime, said this: “Police haven’t said what may have compelled the accused, Craig Stephen Hicks, to allegedly carry out the attack Tuesday evening. He turned himself in to police later in the night. But given the victims’ religion and comments the alleged shooter apparently left on a Facebook page, many social media users wondered what role, if any, the victims’ faith played.”

Preliminary, unconfirmed reports indicate that the accused gunman knew the victims, and had some conflicts with them over a parking space. Well, that seems to be a far better reason to kill a person than if he or she made a cottage industry out of insulting one’s religion. It will be interesting to see what the media does with this information, should it be confirmed. Will murderers who have twisted parts of a religion to suit their own bizarre beliefs and killed journalists who insulted their religion be seen as worse than a man who kills three people because of a parking-space dispute?

With the flames of hostility towards Muslims constantly being fanned by the government and media, with prominent right wing extremists even calling for their deaths, can this crime be surprising? Following the bombing at the Boston Marathon in 2013, the following Twitter exchange, between FOX News contributor Erik Rush and an individual named Bill Schmalfeldt occurred:

Rush: “Everybody do the National Security Ankle Grab! Let’s bring more Saudis in without screening them.”

Schmalfeldt: “Sweet God are you ALREADY BLAMING MUSLIMS?”

Rush: “@bloodonthemike. Yes, they’re evil. Let’s kill them all.”

Another FOX News political analyst, if such a term can reasonably be applied to a FOX News employee, Andrea Tantaros had these pearls of wisdom to say in August of 2014: “If you study the history of Islam. Our ship captains were getting murdered. The French had to tip us off. I mean these were the days of Thomas Jefferson. They’ve been doing the same thing. This isn’t a surprise. You can’t solve it with a dialogue. You can’t solve it with a summit. You solve it with a bullet to the head. It’s the only thing these people understand. And all we’ve heard from this president is a case to heap praise on this religion, as if to appease them.”

Well, one assumes Ms. Tantaros is gratified that three Muslims from Chapel Hill each did, indeed, receive a bullet to the head. Three down, only 1.8 billion to go.

Prejudice against and corresponding fear of Muslims is nothing new. USA Today reported in 2013 that “Many widely believed Muslims were behind the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, until American militiaman Timothy McVeigh was convicted of the crime.” And following the shootings at Charlie Hebdo, violence against Muslims around the world spiked.

It is still, as is said, early days in the investigation and reporting of this crime. Perhaps it will be seen as just another U.S. campus shooting, so common now as to be hardly newsworthy. Perhaps the religion of the victims and the atheism of the alleged perpetrator will be ignored; after all, when a parking space is at stake, all other considerations pale.

So while the media is to able to paint all Muslims with the same brush as a few extremists in Paris, when Muslims are murder victims, it is merely coincidence. When a Muslim stands on one side of a gun, he and all Muslims are terrorists. When on the other side, they are merely individuals who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It will be interesting to see who is asked to apologize for this crime; perhaps there will be calls for all atheists to do so, although this is, of course, highly unlikely. Atheism is a respected concept in the west, and we all know that atheists, unlike Muslims, are individuals capable of independent thought. It will also be interesting to see how right wing journalists and so-called ministers respond; they are quick to condemn Islam with every invented opportunity, and since they are no fans of atheism, they will have to engage in some interesting verbal gymnastics to condemn atheism without somehow expressing sympathy for Muslims.

It may be some time, if ever, before the motivation for this savage crime is known. But if stories from the lives of the three victims, who by all accounts appear to have been compassionate, promising young people, can be publicized, perhaps prejudices against Muslims can be somewhat reduced, thus giving the deaths of these three young people some meaning.

Robert Fantina’s latest book is Empire, Racism and Genocide: a History of US Foreign Policy (Red Pill Press).

February 13, 2015 Posted by | Islamophobia, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | 1 Comment

The Obama Administration’s 2 Faces on Releasing Evidence of U.S. Prisoner Abuse

By Josh Bell | ACLU | February 13, 2015

There is too often a gap between the Obama administration’s words and deeds when it comes to transparency on national security issues. Take, for example, whether the government should release information about the abuse of prisoners in U.S. custody.

In a decade-old Freedom of Information Lawsuit the ACLU is still fighting, the administration recently told the court that it can’t release some 2,000 photos showing prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib and other military detention facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan. The reason, the government says, is because the pictures could be inflammatory and lead to attacks against U.S. interests abroad.

But in December, when asked about the possibility of violence in response to the release of the Senate report on the CIA’s torture program, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest had this to say:

[W]e believe so strongly in the value of actually following through on the release of this report, that it says something critically important about our values as a country, and that even though it may pose some risk to the security situation at diplomatic facilities around the globe – we can take prudent steps to protect those facilities, and that it is critically important – again, consistent with the values of this country – for the declassified version of the summary of this report to be released.

The president himself took a similar stand when talking about Sony’s decision to pull “The Interview” from theaters in the face of threats:

I think they made a mistake. . . We can’t start changing our patterns of behavior any more than we stop going to a football game because there might be the possibility of a terrorist attack, any more than Boston didn’t run its marathon this year because of the possibility that somebody might try to cause harm. So let’s not get into that way of doing business.

In our FOIA lawsuit, the district court and the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals both held, in 2005 and 2008 respectively, that the photos must be released. In 2009, President Obama announced that his administration wouldn’t appeal to the Supreme Court, but then Congress enacted a law that carved out an exception to the FOIA. It gave the secretary of defense the authority to withhold abuse photos for three years if he certified that their disclosure would jeopardize national security. Defense Secretary Robert Gates did just that in 2009, and his successor, Leon Panetta, issued a blanket recertification for the entire collection of photographs in 2012.

The ACLU challenged the mass recertification as insufficient, and last August U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein agreed with us, ruling that the defense secretary has to review each photo individually and give a reason for keeping it secret. The government pushed back, arguing that its process was in fact acceptable.

At a hearing last week, Judge Hellerstein told the government that his view had not changed, saying:

The government is not allowing itself to account. I think that’s a mistake… [As] a judge of the court and the government, under laws I feel it’s the obligation of the secretary of defense to certify each picture in terms of its likelihood or not to endanger American lives and why.

The judge asked the government how it would like to proceed, giving two options: The government could propose ways to comply with the August ruling, or it could say that the defense secretary does not want to certify the photos individually, in which case the judge would rule for the ACLU and the government could appeal. The government’s response – coming in a letter to the court Wednesday – was to do neither of those things. Instead, it asked for clarification of what the government must do to comply with the judge’s August ruling.

During last week’s hearing, the judge warned the government about its use of delay tactics in this case:

[T]he consequence of what the government is doing is a sophisticated ability to obtain a very substantial delay. . . You appeal. By the time you get to the appeal, maybe two years go by – the issue is not easy – it may be longer. The downside for you is that you can always produce and disclose. And realistically, postponing the day of reckoning of something that is considered to be sensitive is itself a victory, because it postpones an unpleasant decision to a succeeding generation.

And yet now we have another delay tactic from the government (we made this point in a letter to the court today). The American public has a right to know what took place in the U.S. military detention centers, and the photos are essential to that right. Covering them up won’t change what happened, and it certainly won’t help stop more abuse from happening in the future.

February 13, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture | , , | Leave a comment

Alabama cop assaults, paralyses Indian grandfather

By Cassandra Rules | The Free Thought Project | February 13, 2015

Madison, AL – Madison police officer Eric Parker is facing charges of third-degree assault after brutally attacking a 57-year-old man who could not understand the officer’s instructions due to a language barrier. and was left hospitalized on the morning of Friday, February 6.The run in with Parker left this innocent man hospitalized on the morning of Friday, February 6.

The Indian citizen, Sureshbhai Patel, had just come to the United States about a week prior to the incident to help his son, Chirag Patel, and his wife care for their new baby. Sureshbhai Patel was staying with them at their new house in Madison so Chirag could pursue his master’s degree in electrical engineering. Each morning, the grandfather would take a walk, which apparently threatened one of the neighbors.

The neighbor called the police and described the gentleman as, “a skinny black guy, he’s got a toboggan on, he’s really skinny.” The Zimmerman-like neighbor told the operator that he was following him, as he was supposed to be on his way to work. However, he was apparently so threatened with this peaceful grandfather out taking a morning stroll, that he didn’t want to leave his wife home alone.

Eric Parker and his trainee Andrew Slaughter arrived at the scene around 8 am. What happened next, left this innocent man paralyzed.  The attack was caught on dash cam.

“Where you heading?”

“Where?”

“I can’t understand you, sir.”

“Where’s your address?”

“Do you have any ID?”

“India?”

“Do you live here.”

“Sir, sir, come here.”

“Do not jerk away from me again, or I will put you on the ground. Do you understand?”

This unjustified harassment escalates at this point, just as another patrol car pulls up to the scene. Parker throws him to the ground withholding his arms behind his back, leaving him unable to break his fall.

After throwing the man to the ground, the officers begin trying to get him up. They were seemingly baffled that someone who does not speak English would not obey commands they could not understand.

“He don’t speak a lick of English.”

“I tried to pat him down but he tried to walk away from me.”

“I don’t know what his problem is but he won’t listen.”

“He was trying to walk away.”

Patel was left temporarily paralyzed and hospitalized with fused vertebrae, all because he could not understand what the officers were saying to him. The man had simply been out for a walk and had committed absolutely no crime.

“This is broad daylight, walking down the street. There is nothing suspicious about Mr. Patel other than he has brown skin,” Hank Sherrod, the family’s attorney told AL.com.

By Monday, the police were in damage control, seemingly victim blaming Patel and implying he had been looking in garage windows. Something that never occurred.

“They didn’t do that on Monday,” said Sherrod. “On Monday they were trying to blame Mr. Patel. On Monday they were minimizing this. I’m glad they apparently are starting to do the right thing. But why weren’t they doing this on Monday? With those videos.”

Thankfully, on Thursday, the police had seemingly come to their senses, apologized to the family and arrested Parker. The FBI is also conducting an inquiry as to whether there were any federal violations. Parker has been released on a $1,000 bond.

Below is the entire uncut interaction caught on the officer’s dash cam.

February 13, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | | 1 Comment

Kiev MPs try to fool US senator with ‘proof’ of Russian tanks in Ukraine

RT |February 13, 2015

MPs in Kiev hoodwinked a US senator, presenting his office with photos of columns of Russian military hardware allegedly roaming Ukrainian territory. The photos turned out to have been taken during the conflict in South Ossetia back in 2008.

The photos were “presented to the Armed Services Committee from a delegation from Ukraine in December,” Senator Jim Inhofe’s communications director Donelle Harder told The Washington Free Beacon.

The Americans planned to publish the photos with credits to the Ukrainian MPs, and “they were fine with that,” the spokesperson said.

Yet, after thorough checking, images of the Russian convoys turned out to have been taken years ago, in 2008, during Russia’s conflict with Georgia.

“We are currently making calls to our sources,” Harder said.

“The Ukrainian parliament members who gave us these photos in print form as if it came directly from a camera really did themselves a disservice,” Senator Inhofe said in a statement.

“I was furious to learn one of the photos provided now appears to be falsified from an AP photo taken in 2008,” the lawmaker wrote.

At the same time the revealed forgery “doesn’t change the fact that there is plenty of evidence Russia has made advances into the country with T-72 tanks and that pro-Russian separatists have been killing Ukrainians in cold blood,” the US senator maintains.

February 13, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Poroshenko After Minsk Talks: Donbas Autonomy, Federalization Not an Option

Sputnik News | February 12, 2015

Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko has flatly rejected the idea of granting a broad autonomy to the eastern Donbas region, and of making Ukraine a federation.

“Ukraine was, is and will remain a unitary state. Federalization is not an option,” President Poroshenko wrote on his Facebook page in the immediate wake of the four-sided talks on ending the yearlong conflict, which wrapped up in Minsk on Thursday.

The leaders of Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany met for 16 hours trying to thrash out a peace roadmap that would ease tensions in Ukraine’s war-torn east.

After the talks it was announced that before this year is out Ukraine would change its constitution to include a clause on decentralization and a special status for the Donbas region.

On Wednesday President Poroshenko said the proposed decentralization program his government was working on had absolutely nothing to do with making Ukraine a federative state.

February 13, 2015 Posted by | Aletho News | | 1 Comment

Cleared Londoner Shaker Aamer marks 13 years in Guantanamo without charge or trial

Reprieve | February 13, 2015

Saturday, February 14th, marks 13 years since the arrival of British resident Shaker Aamer at Guantanamo Bay, where he has been held without charge or trial ever since.

Mr Aamer, a father of four from London, has been cleared for release under both the Bush and Obama administrations, in a process which requires six government agencies to confirm that he poses no threat. However, he remains imprisoned in Guantanamo, despite repeated requests by the UK Government that he be returned to his family in South London.

Mr Aamer’s plight was most recently raised by David Cameron during talks at the White House in January, leading a spokesperson for President Obama to say the US would ‘prioritise’ his case. However, concerns about a lack of progress have been raised after Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel – whose signature acts as the final authorisation to release prisoners from Guantanamo – reportedly said that Mr Aamer’s file was not ‘on his desk’.

Today also marks the birthday of Mr Aamer’s youngest son, Faris, who was born on the day Mr Aamer was brought to Guantanamo Bay, and whom he has never been allowed to meet.

Commenting, Clive Stafford Smith, Director of legal charity Reprieve, which represents Mr Aamer said: “President Obama’s claim that he will ‘prioritise’ Shaker’s case rings rather hollow, since he is the most powerful person in the world and is perfectly able to put Shaker on a plane to London and his long-suffering family within 24 hours. Eight hundred years ago the Magna Carta assured us that to nobody will we ‘deny or delay justice’. Thirteen years in a military prison without charge or trial is an affront to the most basic standards of justice. The Prime Minister needs to tell Shaker’s children when their father is coming home.”

February 13, 2015 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , | 1 Comment

Big Sugar’s scandalous sweetheart deal with public health experts exposed

RT | February 12, 2015

British public health experts issuing guidance on obesity receive hundreds of thousands of pounds from the sugar industry, an investigation has found.

Funding from companies including Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Nestlé has flowed into scientific research bodies such as the UK’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN) and the Medical Research Council (MRC) for over a decade.

Scientists whose work was at least partly funded and sometimes fully funded by the sugar industry include Professor Susan Jebb, the government’s obesity tsar.

Leading scientists blamed the government’s funding cuts for forcing researchers into the arms of Big Sugar, while one doctor told RT the findings were “disturbing.”

The report comes at a time when medical experts say daily guidelines on sugar intake are misleading, with the average Briton consuming two to three times the World Health Organization’s (WHO) recommended limit.

According to the BMJ’s investigation, one government-funded organization, the MRC’s Human Nutrition Research unit in Cambridge, received an average of £250,000 a year for the past decade from Big Sugar.

Other scientists received consultancy fees from Boots, Coca-Cola, Mars, Cereal Partners UK and Unilever. They have also sat on advisory boards for Coca-Cola, the Food and Drink Federation and the Institute of Grocery Distributors, the report claims.

Nutrition scientist Susan Jebb, who is the UK government’s adviser on obesity, received £1.37 million in industry funding between 2004 and 2015, according to the investigation.

This money came from food and retail companies including Cereal Partners UK, which operates under the Nestlé brand, Rank Hovis McDougal, Sainsbury’s, Coca-Cola’s Beverage Institute for Health and Wellbeing and Unilever.

In a statement published via the Science Media Centre, Jebb rejected the BMJ’s investigation.

“It refers to a series of studies in which I was involved which included funding from industry. None of these involve research into the effects of sugar on health,” she said.

“I have received no personal remuneration from any of these projects. All have been conducted according to all the MRC governance arrangements for working with industry and the industry involvement has been declared.”

Dr Aseem Malholtra, a cardiologist and Science Director at the medically led Action on Sugar, told RT the findings were “disturbing.”

“I think it’s quite disturbing. I think the public would be appalled that the people advising them on what they eat are receiving money from the food industry.”

“We know that biased funding for research is one of the root causes of problems within healthcare at the moment. Whether it’s food industry funding or pharmaceutical funding.”

Malholtra said the average UK citizen consumes 2-3 times the WHO’s recommended sugar intake.

“The labeling of sugar remains extremely misleading. The guidelines’ daily amount doesn’t distinguish between added sugars and what’s intrinsic to the product,” he said.

“The current sugar labeling suggests one could consume 22 teaspoons of sugar a day as part of your daily amount. The WHO advice is for 6 teaspoons per day.”

“My question is: what are the scientists doing turning a blind eye?”

Former SACN chair Alan Jackson blamed the government’s research funding cuts for pushing scientist towards industry money.

Universities are estimated to have lost over £460 million in government research funding between 2009-10 and 2012-13, a financial burden which has seen them turn to business for over £2 billion over the past decade.

Jackson said scientists were encouraged by the government to develop a “mixed portfolio of support” for their research which explicitly included help from industry.

“So most, if not all, researchers will have some form of industry support and funding and hence have potential conflicts of interest,” he told the BMJ.

“By the very nature of its complex roots and wide interdisciplinary engagement nutrition has particular vulnerabilities in this regard, but it is by no means unique to nutrition.”

READ MORE: Child obesity looms large, with 1/3 of European teenagers overweight

February 13, 2015 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Economics | , , , | Leave a comment