India’s Common Man Party set for historic win in Delhi
The BRICS Post | February 10, 2015
![AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal with supporters on February 10, 2015 [PTI]](https://i0.wp.com/thebricspost.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/aa_650_1423498485_020915095328.jpg)
AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal with supporters on February 10, 2015 [PTI]
Indian anti-graft party Aam Admi (Common Man) is set for a massive landslide victory in the Assembly elections of the national capital. Arvind Kejriwal, who was briefly chief minister of Delhi last year, is leading his Aam Admi party to a majority win as early leads show they are ahead in 63 out of 70 seats in the Delhi Assembly.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s defeat in Delhi would be the first major setback for the party since winning power. Latest results show Modi’s party is ahead in six seats.
“This may be a historic day! The juggernaut likely to halt. David likely to overcome Goliath,” tweeted AAP member and senior leader Yogendra Yadav on Tuesday morning.
The Congress party, which was in power in the Delhi for 15 years until 2013, is trailing at the third spot.
Millions of residents in India’s capital queued up on Saturday to cast their votes in the city polls that were expected to provide an indication of how Indians perceive the work of the new government and the “pro-reform” Indian Prime Minister Modi.
In recent weeks, an army of AAP volunteers has trudged through the alleys of the city’s poorest neighbourhoods to try to tap a deep vein of dissatisfaction that has gripped New Delhi residents, particularly over a soaring cost of living.
AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal is likely to be sworn in as Chief Minister of Delhi on 14 February.
Boycott Hamas, brand Hezbollah terrorists, don’t trust Iran…
By Stuart Littlewood | Intifada-Palestine | February 10, 2015
Every general election brings with it the irksome task of reading the manifestos of the political parties. Now the Board of Deputies of British Jews have launched their very own “Jewish Manifesto”. The 40-page document is intended to persuade policy-makers and politicians to promote key aspects of Jewish life in Britain and do some big favours for the abhorrent Zionist regime in Tel Aviv
“It will form the centrepiece of the Board’s drive to ensure that all the political parties take the concerns of Britain’s 300,000-strong Jewish community into account when setting out their own proposals for government.”
Favours we are asked to do for the Rogue State
At the heart of the Manifesto is a list of “policy asks”, some of which attempt to demonise Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran and portray them as Britain’s enemies as well as Israel’s.
Others aim to perpetuate Israeli dominance in the Holy Land at the Palestinians’ expense, like this one from the ‘Ten Commitments’:
- “Advocate for a permanent, comprehensive solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, resulting in a secure Israel alongside a viable Palestinian state.”
The Board of Deputies explicitly state that the UK Jewish community is committed to equality for Israel and the Palestinians, yet here they want us to press for a “secure” Israel with Palestine only “viable”. And that has become the mantra among Israel’s stooges in the West. We know what it will mean on the ground, and it’s despicable. Why should the Palestinians, whose land it is, live in permanent fear and subjugation, defenceless among the shredded and disconnected remnants of their territory and not even in control of their borders? Let’s turn it round so we have “a secure Palestine alongside a viable Israeli state”. How do the Board of Deputies like the sound of that?
Here are a few more Manifesto gems…
- They want restitution for private property the Nazis stole during the Holocaust leaving many survivors living in dire poverty and without a legacy for the descendants.
This is a very cruel injustice. But what about all the land, homes, other property, infrastructure and natural resources the Jewish State confiscated from the Palestinians during the Nakba and continued to seize ever since? When will that be returned? According to the UN, last year alone Israel demolished the homes of 1,177 Palestinians in Jerusalem and West Bank (never mind the countless thousands of homes they reduced to rubble in Gaza).
They don’t like to see Israel boycotted.
- “We urge resistance of calls for boycotts of Israel. By their very nature, such measures attribute blame to only one side of the conflict, and through this stigmatisation they perpetuate a one-sided narrative.”
At the same time they want our help in boycotting Palestinians.
- The Manifesto urges the British government “to refuse to engage with Hamas politicians, officials or supporters until the movement agrees to recognise Israel, abide by previous diplomatic agreements, and desists from terrorist attacks”.
Are the Board of Deputies aware that Israel refuses to recognise the Palestinian State, has failed to honour previous agreements and never ceases its terrorist attacks? Are they also aware that the UK does not list Hamas’s political wing as a proscribed organisation, only its military wing – the Izz al-Din al-Qassem brigades.
The boycott of Israel simply calls for non-violent measures that “should be maintained until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law by:
1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall
2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and
3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.”
There’s nothing controversial. The same is required of Israel by international and humanitarian law.
Other bizarre “asks” include these:
- The Manifesto wants us to “promote awareness of the acute threats to Israeli and regional security, and encourage further security cooperation between the UK and Israel”.
Many experts conclude that the main threat to Middle East peace is Israel itself. It would be foolish to be drawn into closer co-operation. Our already slavish support for Israel (and indeed its protector, the US) undermines our own security, puts UK citizens in harm’s way and blackens our reputation. It is hard to see how this is in our national interest.
- The Manifesto says the world must ensure “no backsliding towards an Iranian military nuclear capability… it is vital that Iran knows that there is a credible military option to end its pursuit of nuclear weapons if diplomacy should fail”.
The Zionist regime is reckoned to have up to 400 nuclear warheads. It has signed but not ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. It has not signed the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. It has signed but not ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention. In short, Israel is the neighbour from Hell.
These endless attempts to drive a wedge between Britain and Iran are tiresome. Israel would love to launch a war against Iran if support from the US and its EU lackeys was assured. Iran has no nuclear weapons and poses no threat to the UK. What’s more, our Iranian friends are menaced by an unrestrained nuclear-armed Israeli regime on their doorstep. UN Security Council resolution 487, in 1981, called on Israel “urgently to place its nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards”. Israel has defied it for 34 years. In 2009, the IAEA called on Israel to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty and open its nuclear facilities to inspection. Israel still refuses while Iran has complied.
- “Years of disingenuity and obfuscation from the Iranian authorities should not be naively forgotten.”
So says the Manifesto, oblivious to the staggering hypocrisy.
The “violent nature” of Hezbollah
For a long time Israel has planned to annex Lebanon’s Litani River. Hezbollah (the ‘party of God’) was formed in response to the Israelis’ 1982 invasion and occupation. An international commission concluded that Israel’s aggression was contrary to international law, the government of Israel had no valid reasons for invading Lebanon and Israel was directly or indirectly responsible for the massacres in Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, declared an act of genocide by the UN General Assembly.
So Hezbollah came into being for very good reasons. Israel began overflying Lebanese territory in 2000 after its troops vacated parts of southern Lebanon they had occupied since 1978. These flights are a constant provocation. In 2006 Israel launched another invasion and received a bloody nose from Hezbollah. The conflict killed over six thousand people and severely damaged Lebanese infrastructure. Much of Southern Lebanon was left uninhabitable due to unexploded Israeli cluster bombs.
The Jewish Manifesto talks of Hezbollah’s “violent nature” but in the circumstances how valid is this next “ask”?
- It wants Hezbollah in its entirety designated as a terrorist organisation, and asks the UK to take the lead in getting the whole EU to proscribe Hezbollah’s political wing.
Lebanon’s Cabinet has confirmed Hezbollah as an armed organisation with the right to “liberate or recover occupied lands”. Israel routinely breaches UN Resolution 1701 by crossing the Blue Line or violating Lebanese airspace and still occupies the Shebaa Farms area. Hezbollah is hardly going to disband with Israel next door always poised to grab what isn’t theirs.
Why should the UK take on another of Israel’s enemies and try to weaken Lebanon’s defence against the Zionist predator?
In case we forget, the US defines terrorism as an activity that
(i) involves a violent act or an act dangerous to human life, property, or infrastructure; and
(ii) appears to be intended
- to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
- to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or
- to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, kidnapping, or hostage-taking.
Anyone spring immediately to mind?
- The Manifesto also asks Britain to maintain an expenditure of 0.7% of GNP on overseas development.
So that so we continue to subsidise the Zionists’ never-ending occupation of Palestine?
- It urges us to “support efforts to remember and understand the Holocaust and strive to prevent any future genocide”.
Most ordinary people in the UK (though not necessarily our politicians) have taken on-board the lessons of the Holocaust and don’t need constant reminding. How about the Israeli regime?
The ‘Israel problem’ a Jewish family matter
Finally, this ‘hot potato’:
- July 2014 was the worst month for anti-semitism on record, presumably on account of another murderous assault on Gaza by the Israeli military. “A robust political and policing response is required when criticism of the policies of a government spills over in to hatred, intimidation or violence against a religious or ethnic group” ..
Prime Minister Cameron’s Holocaust Commission Report says: “The Community Security Trust, an organisation that looks after the safety and security needs of the Jewish community, recorded more than 1,000 incidents last year, making 2014 the worst year on record.”
Do Jewish leaders in the UK need reminding that Muslims and Christians in the Holy Land have suffered a high tide of hatred, intimidation, violence and worse for decades under Israel’s brutal occupation?
We’re told that anti-semitism is often bound up with perceptions of the political and military decisions of the Israeli government, and that Israel represents a fundamental component of Jewish identity. In that case, one would have thought, Israel’s appalling conduct – and damage to reputation – is something the global Jewish family would wish to deal with themselves. Wise heads have warned long enough that Jews worldwide will pay the price for Israel’s crimes. Many Jews, to their great credit, have taken heed and faced up to the moral challenge, and are now fiercely critical of the Israeli regime’s behaviour.
For example, over 400 rabbis from Israel, the USA, Canada, Britain and other countries have just signed a call to Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu to stop the practice of home demolitions. “Every year, hundreds of Palestinian homes are demolished due to discriminatory administrative plans created and implemented by the Israel military without significant Palestinian influence. Palestinians are very rarely allowed to build, even on their own land.”
That’s leadership.
San Francisco Public Defender Files Complaint After Wrongful Arrest, Police Chief Apologizes
By Andrew Meyer | PINAC | February 10, 2015
Two weeks ago, the story and video of a San Francisco public defender arrested for protecting her client’s Fifth Amendment rights went viral.
After deputy public defender Jami Tillotson blocked police from talking to her client and demanding he pose for photos, San Francisco Police Sergeant Brian Stansbury told Tillotson, “If you continue with this, I will arrest you for resisting arrest.”
Tillotson said, “Please do,” and Stansbury proceeded to wrongfully arrest a deputy public defender.
Now Tillotson has filed a complaint against the six SFPD officers that arrested her. An excerpt of her statement is below.
Jami Tillotson’s complaint
Following Tillotson’s “unreasonably rough” arrest, she was led to a “secure zone” inside the Hall of Justice, as a newly released video shows an officer telling a man recording Tillotson’s arrest that he must turn off his camera because they’re in a “secure zone.” That video is below.
The video of Tillotson’s arrest was seen 1.4 million times on YouTube and the charge against her has been dropped. Police Chief Greg Suhn gave a half-hearted public apology during a meeting of San Francisco’s Police Commission as he attempted to defend Sgt. Brian Stansbury’s behavior.
“While I appreciate Chief Suhr’s apology, I am concerned that he continues to support Sgt. Brian Stansbury’s actions,” Tillotson said in a statement. “My client, a young African American man, was left without the benefit of advice of counsel. The right to counsel is not a formality. It is a shield that protects ordinary people against intimidation, bullying, and overreach by law enforcement.” Tillotson has not commented on whether she would file suit against the SFPD.
Arab American Students Killed by Racist Terrorist in North Carolina
Investigations Reveal Sinister Motive in Terror Attack
Shooting Victims: Deah Barakat, Yusor Abu Salha, and Razan Abu Salha / Abu Salha Family
By Alexandra Halaby | IMEMC & Agencies | February 11, 2015
Three Arab American students were shot to death Tuesday night inside their apartment near Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The three are suspected victims of a terrorist attack.
On Tuesday evening Chapel Hill police say that three people were shot to death at a condominium complex located just east of the University of North Carolina campus. A man has been arrested in these gruesome slayings.
Chapel Hill police told local news outlets that Craig Stephen Hicks, aged 46, was arrested and has been charged with three counts of first degree murder. The suspect is being held at the Durham County Jail as of Wednesday morning.
Police responded to a report of gunshots in the evening of Tuesday, February 10th. Upon entering the home they found three people who were pronounced dead at the scene.
The dead have been identified as Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, of Chapel Hill; his wife, Yusor Mohammed Abu Salha, 21, of Chapel Hill; and Yusor’s sister, Razan Mohammad Abu Salha, aged 19, of Raleigh, North Carolina.
Sources close to the investigation tell IMEMC that all three had been shot in the head.
46-year-old, Craig Stephens Hicks, is in custody suspected of these killings.
Hicks described himself on Facebook updates as an atheist and regularly posted images and texts condemning many religions, Islam among them.
Shock has swept the small community of Chapel Hill, as many neighbors and friends have called the slain family some of the nicest people one could ever know.
An American football and basketball fan, Syrian-born American, Deah Barakat, was a dental student at the University of North Carolina and volunteered with a charity providing emergency dental care to children in Palestine.
Deah regularly updated his Twitter account, and wrote in January: “It’s so freaking sad to hear people saying we should ‘kill Jews’ or ‘kill Palestinians’. As if that’s going to solve anything.”
It has been learned from family members of Barakat that he and Palestinian student, Yusor Abu Salha, were married less than two months ago, in late December. Yusor was planning to enroll in dental school at the university shortly before her death.
Razan, a student also from Palestine and the third murder victim, who was Yusor’s sister and lived with the couple, ran a popular blog detailing her interests in photography and art.
Razan Abu Salha had started a degree at North Carolina State University last summer, where she studied Architectural and Environmental Design.
In a painful turn, last night police in Chapel Hill were forced to turn family members away from the crime scene causing confusion, hurt, and anger.
Many in the Arab American and American Muslim communities are identifying this murder as a hate crime. Based on the alleged murderer’s own social media content, it would appear that his disdain for non-whites and those that are religious could play some part into the motive for these killings.
Yusor and Razan Abu Salha come from a prominent Palestinian family and all of Palestine are mourning their tragic deaths today.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation’s largest civil advocacy group for Muslims, called on law enforcement officials Wednesday to address speculation about a motive for the killings.
“Based on the brutal nature of this crime, the past anti-religion statements of the alleged perpetrator, the religious attire of two of the victims and the rising anti-Muslim rhetoric in American society, we urge state and federal law enforcement authorities to quickly address speculation of a possible bias motive in this case,” CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad said in a statement. “Our heartfelt condolences go to the families and loved ones of the victims and to the local community.”
Under the current U.S. Federal guidelines of what defines terror, this crime targeting Palestinian women wearing traditional modesty covering while one of the women’s husbands attempted to defend the women from the attack does seem very much like a terrorist attack, one source told IMEMC Wednesday, speaking under conditioning of anonymity.
Obama Announces New Privacy Rules for the World. World Not Impressed.
By Rainey Reitman | EFF | February 10, 2015
President Obama recently announced slight changes to NSA data collection practices. The recent tweaks mean two new privacy protections for those that U.S. law considers foreigners (in this case, people who are outside of the United States borders who are neither U.S. citizens nor legal U.S. residents).
Perhaps you’re thinking Obama is using his executive authority to stop the mass surveillance of all Internet traffic of people worldwide? Nope, not quite. The new protections are:
- If the U.S. government collects information about a foreigner, it will consider the privacy ramifications before disseminating that information, such as to other governments;1 and
- If the U.S. government collects information on innocent foreigners not connected to any crime or investigation and the information has no national security value, it will dispose of that information after five years.2
That’s right, the world’s personal information will only be retained for five short years. And that’s if the U.S. government decides you’re not under suspicion.
David Medine, the chairman of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, has said that “There’s no country on the planet that has gone this far to improve the treatment of non-citizens in government surveillance.”
That’s certainly laudable. However, a critic might also note that there’s no country on earth extending such enormous resources into surveilling all the people on the planet, so the United States has more room for “improvement” than most countries. (That’s certainly what President Obama implied when he spoke of his country’s “unique” capabilities in his speech defending the new rules.)
We wondered if people worldwide would be excited about these new privacy protections, and so we reached out to a few of our global partners to solicit their feedback.
Here’s what they thought of Obama’s protections for the privacy rights on non-US citizens:
“This decision is not only a confirmation of the disregard the United States has for its international human rights obligations, but given the fact that the US is treating our privacy worse than our own governments, it sends a terrible message for human rights defenders fighting against unchecked surveillance in our own country,” said Luis Fernando García, a lawyer at Network for Digital Rights in Mexico.
“Deleting is no comfort at all because it can never be confirmed,” said Professor K.S. Park of Korea University Law School, “Korea also allows warrantless wiretapping of overseas people for national security purposes. The United States should not set a bad precedent for the whole world to follow.”
And Carolina Botero, a Colombian researcher and blogger with Fundacion Karisma, said, “Mass surveillance is unacceptable in democratic societies because of the threat it poses to human rights. Obama’s reforms to NSA practices fail to address this situation for his citizens and continue the obnoxious violation of the privacy rights of foreigners. A data retention period of 5 years is a clear example of an illegal measure that can be seen abroad as justification for similar laws in other countries.”
If Obama wants to make good on his promise to uphold the privacy of innocent people outside the United States, he’s going to have to do better than this.
And he should start by ending mass surveillance under Executive Order 12333, the primary legal authority for mass surveillance of people outside U.S. borders. Sign our petition and tell Obama to rein in mass spying of people worldwide.
- 1. The exact language from IC on the Record is: “All agency policies implementing PPD-28 now explicitly require that information about a person may not be disseminated solely because he or she is a non-U.S. person and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has issued a revised directive to all Intelligence Community elements to reflect this requirement. Intelligence Community personnel are now specifically required to consider the privacy interests of non-U.S. persons when drafting and disseminating intelligence reports.”
- 2. IC on the Record explains: “We have imposed new limitations on the retention of personal information about non-U.S. persons. Before PPD-28, Intelligence Community elements had disparate restrictions on how long information about non-U.S. persons could be retained. PPD-28 changes these retention practices in significant ways to afford strengthen privacy protections. Now Intelligence Community elements must delete non-U.S. person information collected through SIGINT five years after collection unless the information has been determined to be relevant to, among other things, an authorized foreign intelligence requirement, or if the Director of National Intelligence determines, after considering the views of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence Civil Liberties Protection Officer and agency privacy and civil liberties officials, that continued retention is in the interest of national security.”
Former CIA chief controls most of the media in Serbia – report
in NEWS | February 8, 2015
American Fund “KKR investment”, headed by former CIA chief General David Petraeus, from October 2013 until this day, in less than a year and a half, has put under its control a significant part of Serbian media, internet portal Vaseljenska reported.
Americans first bought SBB, the largest cable television network in Serbia, then became the owner of “Grand production” through which they exercise control over “Prva TV”, then they founded CNN outlet “TV N1″, bought shares of the internet portal of the Serbian daily Blic, and more recently, as some sources claim, in the greatest secrecy they bought one Belgrade daily.
The fact is that Americans can, over the largest cable operator “SBB” and their media, control the flow of information in Serbia and are in a position to fully create public opinion in Serbia.
As Internet portal Vaseljenska found out, “KKR investment” will in the next few months formally take over control of the daily newspapers in whose operations they have already pumped substantial financial resources.
“Although in this case we could possibly be talking about inappropriate concentration or even monopoly, Americans made the deal on taking over the newspaper. They are, in fact, convinced that no one in the [Serbian] government will be allowed to prohibit purchasing of another media …”, says a source for daily Informer.
Coincidentally or not, last year Serbia changed the law on information and enabled an owner to have both the electronic and print media, which had previously been forbidden to ensure media pluralism.
The Ministry of Culture and Information did not want to comment on findings, but only briefly said that “as of February 13 begins registration of a media under the new rules.”
Before he became head of “KKR investment”, David Petraeus was the director of the CIA, from September 2011 to November 2012. Prior to that, he served as a commander of international forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Violent Intolerance – U.S. Style
By Robert Fantina | Aletho News | February 10, 2015
There is an old cliché that says if one is not concerned about current conditions in the world, one is not paying attention. While this writer generally attempts to avoid tired clichés, this one certainly seems applicable today.
There sometimes comes a time when white is seen as black, and black as white, and much of society accepts this unquestioningly. One thinks of the fabled emperor, parading down the street in clothes that only intelligent people could see, when he was, in fact, naked. Yet those around him, wanting to appear intelligent, fawned all over him, proclaiming the beauty of his non-existent clothes.
Today, the extreme right wing has millions of followers who have been convinced that all Muslims are terrorists, intent on destroying the United States and killing all Christians. This group also believes that the growing acceptance of marriage equality will bring down the wrath of an angry, intolerant God upon society. They cling to the twisted, inexplicable belief that government-provided health care is an unspeakable evil. These and other bizarre and dangerous beliefs are accepted without question when proclaimed by entertainment shows masquerading as news programs, or by sobbing televangelists demanding money to save America.
Can we possibly step back and take a critical look at just these few issues, to try, probably with little success, to understand why they cause so much anger and hostility?
- Islam and terrorism. A nation with a long tradition of prejudice, subtle or blatant, against anyone who is not white, seems to find it difficult to break out of that outdated stereotype. People who have grown up seeing mainly whites in their neighborhoods, schools and churches, without exposure to anyone who might speak a different language or have differing religious traditions, can be fearful of the unknown. Certainly when one is taught from childhood that the ‘American Way’, whatever that is, is superior to everything else, anyone who strays from the narrow traditions of that concept must be inferior, and probably dangerous.And what is shown on the news? Stories of people who adhere to some twisted offshoot of Islam, and use that philosophy to commit crimes, are sensationalized. The killing of several people at the offices of the magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris spawned international pseudo-solidarity with the victims, creating a brand new hashtag for all the world to enjoy. Yet on the same day that that tragedy occurred, at least 50 Muslims, including children as young as 18 months and adults as old as seventy, were slaughtered by so-called Christian militias in the Central African Republic, yet most news stations didn’t see any reason to report on that incident. After all, that happened in Africa, a mostly black nation, so one expects them to go around killing each other. No news there; just more dead black Muslims. Perhaps, just perhaps, if the people who are so fearful of anyone who wears a hijab or a kufeyah were to actually meet a Muslim, and spend a few hours with him or her, perhaps over dinner, they might begin to question what they hear on FOX news. If they were to see such people dropping their children off at school, doing yard work at their home, grocery shopping in the very same store that caters to the local white population, there might begin to be a glimmer of a belief that they are not so different after all, and that that hijab or kufeyah actually represents a religious belief or cultural tradition, and is not in fact hiding a bomb.
- Marriage equality. The reactions to this among the right-wing are so extreme that volumes could be written attempting to counteract them. However, this writer will attempt to summarize these ideas with a few salient points. First, same-sex marriage has been legal in Canada, where this writer now resides, for years. Amazing as it may seem, life goes on. People go to work and school, have children, grow up, retire, travel, shop and do all the things that people in nations where same-sex marriage is not legal do. Canada has elections, elected officials meet to debate and pass laws, and the fact that marriage equality is the law of the land doesn’t impact any of those activities. No one is forced to marry anyone they don’t want to marry; no church is forced to perform a wedding ceremony if it violates their doctrines.Secondly, since most Christians focus on the New Testament, which records the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, where this angry, vengeful God comes from is a mystery to this writer. As a Christian familiar with both the Old and New Testaments, he is certainly aware of the angry God depicted in the Old Testament. Yet we are told that, with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, all things became new. And nowhere did Jesus Christ condemn any sinner with the exception of the hypocrites (rightwing ministers and newscasters, please take note). He embraced society’s outcasts, and invited everyone to come unto him. As mentioned, this writer is quite familiar with scripture, and he knows of no situation in which Jesus Christ threatened to send plagues if a nation approved same-sex marriage.
- Health care. Will it bore the reader if this writer brings up this topic yet again? Have we not all grown tired of it? There does not seem to be any logical reason for the peculiar belief that health care is a bad thing. Nor is there any evidence to support the concept that there is only so much health care out there, and if more people get it, some of those who already have it will somehow have less.
But, one might say, isn’t this unnecessary and intrusive government involvement in the personal lives of individuals? Well, no, it isn’t. Since the death panels that Sarah Palin was so concerned about, and that some members of the right wing continue to warn of, don’t now and never did exist, and since personal health care decisions are still left up to the individual and his/her physician, there is nothing intrusive here. However, while we are on the topic of intrusive government involvement in the personal lives of individuals, how does regulating the use of birth control not qualify? Also, is not governing who one can and cannot marry somewhat intrusive?
In 1960, Senator John Kennedy of Massachusetts, a Roman Catholic was the Democratic nominee for president. His religion was controversial, but he was elected. In 1984, New York Representative Geraldine Ferraro was the unsuccessful Democratic vice-presidential nominee, the first woman to run for that office for a major party. In 2006, Keith Ellison became the first Muslim elected to the House of Representatives. In 2008, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, an African-American won the presidential election, despite his race. In 2012, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, a Mormon, was the unsuccessful standard-bearer for the Republican Party.
For four of the five people mentioned above, there was much talk about how historic their candidacy was, how the nation had obviously evolved and thrown off early prejudices, since it was able to elect a Catholic and an African-American, and nominate a woman and a Mormon. Yet Mr. Ellison’s election was not heralded with the same lofty words, especially when he chose to take the oath of office with his hand on a copy of the Qur’an rather than the Bible. Conservative columnist Dennis Prager, who took great umbrage, said this: “America, not Keith Ellison, decides what book a Congressman takes his oath on.” No, Mr. Prager, that choice is left to the individual taking the oath of office. And Representative Virgil Goode (R-VA) had this dark warning to issue, saying that Mr. Ellison’s use of the Qur’an was a threat to “… the values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America… [and] if American citizens don’t wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Qur’an.” So it seems that those prejudices weren’t jettisoned quite as successfully as one might like to think. Right wing comments following the 2012 presidential election also reflect this fact. FOX News demi-god Bill O’Reilly proclaimed in despair that “It’s not a traditional American anymore”. The racist ‘tweets’ that filled the Internet following the election also clearly demonstrate that racism is alive and well in the U.S.
So here we are in 2015. The anger, hostility and violence that were perpetrated against African Americans fifty years ago have now been directed towards Muslims. Right wing commentators decry the fact that Muslims have equal rights, proclaiming that the Constitution was meant for Christians only. A new movie, glorifying a serial killer whose victims were mostly Muslim, is a box-office smash. The U.S. government continues to support and finance apartheid Israel, allowing the further savage victimization of its mostly Muslim victims.
While we shake our heads in awe and disgust that U.S. citizens a generation ago were lynching African-Americans for sport, with crowds watching gleefully, future generations will question our current actions. Scenes of Israelis picnicking while watching the slaughter of Palestinians in 2014 will be hung beside photos of angry whites screaming at young black girls walking into newly-integrated schools in the U.S. south in the early 1960s, both indicating the racism and barbarism of an earlier, primitive age. Yet this is the age we are living in, and the one we have some control over. It is beyond time to act, to fight the ignorance that breeds violence, and the strident voices that fan the deadly flames of intolerance. This is not work for someone else to do; there is, unfortunately, no one else to do it.
Obama the War President
By Dave Lindorff | This Can’t Be Happening! | February 6, 2015
The Nobel Peace Laureate President Barack Obama, the guy who once campaigned claiming one US war — the one against Iraq — was a “bad” one, and the other — against Afghanistan — was a “good” one, turns out to be a man who, once anointed commander-in-chief, can’t seem to find a war he doesn’t consider to be a “good” idea.
Obama turned out, on taking office, to have a hard time saying good-bye to the occupation of Iraq, only leaving when he was forced out by an Iraqi government that refused to continue giving US forces legal immunity for killing Iraqi civilians. In Afghanistan, he decided to copy the same “surge” — a massive increase in targeted assassinations and violence — that he had once condemned in Iraq. Then he stepped up drone-launched rocket attacks and bombings in seven other countries.
More recently he has begun an air war against Syria (okay, he says it’s against the so-called Islamic State, but the whole world, with the exception of a lot of ill-informed US citizens, knows it’s ultimately against the Syrian government), and now his Secretary of Defense (sic) Ashton Carter and his Secretary of State John Kerry are pushing for sending heavy arms and, inevitably, US “advisors” to Ukraine to escalate US involvement in the civil war there. What makes that latest war particularly dangerous is that all the while, Peace Laureate Obama makes it clear that the “enemy” is Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russian military.
Never mind that it is the US that originally orchestrated and encouraged the fascist coup that overthrew the elected government of Ukraine, setting in motion a huge pogrom against ethnic Russians in the east of that country and provoking the current armed conflict, and never mind that Russian concern about the Ukraine stems from a decades long history of the US pushing NATO ever closer to Russia’s western border, with Ukraine kind of the last straw.
Anyone looking objectively at the warmaking and war-promotion of this administration would have to conclude that President Obama is one of the most bellicose Chief Executives in the history of the United States.
If you don’t believe me, just look at the US military budget President Obama has proposed for FY2016. At $585.3 billion, it would if approved by Congress represent an increase in spending of $24.9 billion, or about 4%, over the 2015 budget, and that is despite a decline in what, since the Bush/Cheney years, has euphemistically been called Overseas Contingency Operations spending, or spending on actual wars. The proposed OCO budget for 2016 in this “peace” president’s budget is “just” $50.9 billion, down about $13.3 billion from 2015 thanks to what the president, in one whopper offered during his State of the Union address, called the “end of combat” in Afghanistan (that war is actually continuing, with some 12,000 US troops expected to remain stationed in that country indefinitely).
The thing about OCO funding is that it is really not predictive of anything. It could soar way beyond that $50.9-billion level, for example, in a flash if the US follows through and escalates the war in Ukraine — especially if Russian troops are drawn directly into that conflict and the US responds by upping its own involvement.
In fact, the OCO part of the budget has been used by the Pentagon and the administration over the last few years to get around the constraints of an ongoing Congressional “sequestration” requirement that cuts so-called discretionary spending, both military and non-military. Congress, ever mindful and solicitous of the country’s imperial ambitions, provided an exemption for ongoing military conflicts, and the Pentagon has since been deceptively slipping all kinds of other spending under the OCO heading now ever since the loophole was created.
But the Obama administration’s warmongering stance, in terms of the budget, isn’t told just by looking at the official Pentagon budget. There is much more spending that is really all about war. Not included in that $585.3 billion figure is $70.2 billion in discretionary spending for Veterans Affairs (that’s in addition to $90 billion in mandated spending). This is money to pay for the damages of the nation’s warmaking — the injured or ailing veterans who served or are now serving in the nation’s armed forces. Then there’s the intelligence agencies’ budgets — the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, the DIA, the DEA, the ATF and Homeland Security, etc. — most of which is really part of part of the war machine, thanks to the so-called “War on Terror,” which has re-defined the US itself as part of a global war zone. While much of that intelligence budget is concealed from the public on the spurious grounds of “national security,” it is known to exceed $100 billion a year. Add to that the $24-billion share of the Department of Energy budget that is weapons and war related, and you have a real military budget for 2016 of $707 billion. That’s out of a $1.2 trillion total discretionary spending budget (the rest of the $4 trillion proposed 2016 budget is called mandatory because it is debt repayment or spending on mandated things like Social Security and Medicare, which are funded by dedicated payroll taxes, not income taxes and other federal taxes, and which are promised to recipients like retirees and the sick.
What this means is that when you look closely, some 59% of the entire discretionary budget of the federal government – things that are funded each year by money that Congress has to appropriate — is being spent on the military. Given that the total amount of taxes collected by the federal government (income, corporate profits, exist, inheritance, etc.) also comes in at about $1.2 trillion, we’re saying that taxpayers this coming year will be pouring not just $707 billion, but 59 cents of every tax dollar in to war, planning for war, or paying for war. But it’s actually worse than that because actually the US government operates at a deficit, and doesn’t ever finance its wars on a pay-as-you-go basis. Instead, it borrows the money and then pays interest on that debt. Every year that interest comes to about $240 billion, and roughly half that is for borrowing to pay for past wars and past and current military spending. So add $120 billion to the $707 total and it become $827 billion.
In other words, it’s really 68.9% of every tax dollar you pay this April 15 that’s going to pay for America’s wars and its obsession with militarism.
No wonder our schools and universities, our parks, our roads, our once-vaunted global scientific leadership, our environment, our health and safety, our family budgets and even our life expectancy, have been going to hell! The only thing that’s really getting funded in this country is war.
By the way, the reason you may not have realized how much you are paying for war out of your taxes is that the government, and the corporate media, carefully avoid letting you know. They do this by sleight of hand. You see, they never really break out just the “discretionary” budget, or point out the parts of the budget that are outside the Pentagon but that are still really military-related, like spending on nuclear weapons and weapons development, nuclear research and cleanup, decommissioning of nuclear processing plants, and of course veterans affairs and benefits. They also do it by lumping the huge outlays for Social Security benefits and Medicare into the overall spending budget, though actually those benefits are funded not by income taxes but by a Trust fund of some $1.7 trillion that was created over the years by specially-dedicated payroll taxes separately paid by workers and their employers over the working life of each person. Adding those items into the national budget, while leaving out things like spending on veterans, nukes and war debt, appears to reduce military spending to a much less troubling 6.8% of the budget.
But it’s a fraud.
If we want to revitalize the US, the only way to do it is to end militarism and war, and to generously fund human needs.
To do that, we need a real peace president and a peace congress, not the Nobel Laureate warmonger we have now in the White House, and the bi-partisan war chorus we have in the Congress.
So Far this Year, All Identified Cop Killers, Were Also Cops
By Jay Syrmopoulos | The Free Thought Project | February 9, 2015
Nocona, Texas – An officer responding to a domestic disturbance at a North Texas residence, shot and killed off-duty sheriff’s deputy Larry Hostetter, 41, shortly after midnight.
Police were tight-lipped about the incident other than to say that the Texas Rangers are leading the investigation.
In a news conference Monday morning, Sheriff Paul Cunningham said Hostetter was a good person, had been a law enforcement officer since 2000 and that being a sheriff’s deputy was everything to him, according to NBC 5.
Cunningham added that Hostetter, of Fredericksburg, was married and had three children.
“We just want to give our condolences and sympathies to everybody involved,” Cunningham said.
This is not the first time in recent weeks where we have seen that thin blue line injuring its own.
At the end of January, we reported on a Yonkers police officer who shot a suicidal officer from another precinct, claiming he feared for his safety.
Earlier in the January we also reported on an undercover Albuquerque police officer who was shot by another officer during a drug bust over $60 worth of meth. The media called it a “tragic accident” while, in reality, it was another example of police shooting someone who poses no threat to them.
In another tragic incident, John Ballard Gorman was shot and killed by fellow officer during a training exercise in Tunica, MS last month. The officer who shot Gorman failed to switch out his weapon for a training weapon and fired a real round into his fellow officer, killing him.
While 116 citizens have been killed at the hands of law enforcement thus far this year, the only shooting deaths of officers this year have all been attributed to fellow officers. Over the weekend in Dallas an officer was killed in a murder-suicide but the shooter has not been identified.
The recent chorus from cops, that blue lives matter seems to ring hollow, as it isn’t officers that are being gunned down in the streets on a daily basis by citizens.
Judging from the incidents that have transpired so far this year, it seems the greatest deadly threat to blue lives, is other blue lives.
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From the Archives
Is Israel to blame for the Iraq War?
American Goy | March 10, 2008
I am so tired of this old canard that “Israel had nothing to do with USA’s war with Iraq – in fact, it officially advised America against it”.
Bullshit. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Ceasefire for all or for none: Iran shuts Hormuz over Lebanon attacks
- Strait of Hormuz is Iran’s ‘nuclear weapon’ that forced US retreat: Medvedev
- Energy crisis will last for months – Kremlin envoy
- Europe’s quiet role in the war on Iran
- Forty days that shook the Empire: How Iran turned the tables on US and prevailed
- Netanyahu unilaterally declares Lebanon outside of ceasefire deal
- Israeli leaders: ‘Not a single goal’ achieved in war with Iran
- What on earth just happened? Trump, Iran, and the unlikely ceasefire
- Alberta Bill Would Fine Political Deepfakes $10,000 Without Satire Exemptions
- Iran declares ‘historic victory’ over US, says enemy forced to accept its proposal
- If Americans Knew
- NY Times reports how Netanyahu took the US into Iran War
- A sigh of relief over Iran, but Gaza and Lebanon in dire straits – Daily Update
- Thousands dead and neighborhoods razed to the ground: Aid agencies fear southern Lebanon is becoming the new Gaza
- The war the US is fighting for Israel could cost trillions
- ‘Cigarette Burns, Nail Wounds’: Toddler Tortured in Gaza to Coerce Father
- Trump Says US Sent ‘a Lot of Guns’ to Protesters in Iran
- Israeli forces destroy 17 UN peacekeeper cameras in south Lebanon
- US-Israeli strikes ‘completely destroy’ synagogue in Tehran
- Archbishop for US Military Says Iran War Is Unjust Under Catholic Teaching
- Iranian leaders’ Open Letters to the American People
- No Tricks Zone
- An Inconvenient Tree: Uncovered In Alps… Europe Much Warmer Than Today 6000 Years Ago
- New Study Reports A 60% Slowdown In Greenland’s Ice Loss Rate In The Last Decade
- Low Intensity Tornado Wrecks Major Solar Farm, Creating A Potential Toxic Dump
- New Study Finds Warming Saves Lives…Cold Temperatures 12 Times More Deadly Than Excess Heat
- German Science Blog Accuses PIK Climate Institute Of Hallucinating Climate Tipping Points
- Devastating Assessment Of Comirnaty Vaccine By Former Senior Pfizer Europe Toxicologist
- New Study: CO2 Is ‘Effectively Negligible’ As An Explanatory Climate Change Factor Since 2000
- Former Pfizer Toxicologist Dr. Helmut Sterz Tells Bundestag Hearing Pfizer Vaccine Should Have Never Been Approved
- Energy Expert: Germany’s Nuclear Phaseout Was A “500 Billion Euro Mistake”
- New Research: South Australia’s Mid-Holocene Sea Surface Temperatures Were 4°C Warmer Than Today
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