The real perils in getting the news to us

Whilst we sit down and watch our TV news bulletin or read the latest news in a newspaper or on line, the sobering fact is that journalist's lives are very often on the line. The Columbia Review of Journalism has the facts.

With 72 journalists killed so far this year, 2012 is on pace to be the deadliest on record, the International Press Institute (IPI) announced here on Sunday.

The media freedom organization’s executive director, Alison Bethel McKenzie, choked up and struggled to speak as she addressed the group’s annual conference.

“From Somalia to Syria, the Philippines to Mexico, and Iraq to Pakistan, reporters are being brutally targeted for death in unparalleled numbers,” she said.

The most lethal year so far in the 15 that IPI has been keeping records was 2009, when 110 journalists died. Last year was the second worst, with 102 deaths.

Syria, where peaceful protests have turned into a violent civil war, has been the most dangerous country in 2012, with 20 professional and citizen reporters, both local and foreign, killed so far, according to

“It is deeply disturbing that in a year still massively impacted by the once unimaginable—the overthrow of brutal Arab regimes through people and media power—journalists are dying on the job in record numbers,” she said.

Unlike the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), which also monitors casualties, IPI counts accidental deaths, such as those of five Indonesian journalists killed when a plane crashed during a demonstration flight in May. Still, the two groups are in rough accord on the violent pace of 2012. According to CPJ, 46 journalists have died so far this year, on track to match or surpass the 97 lost lives it recorded in 2009, the highest number in the 20 years the group has kept statistics.

Two very different messages

Seen today in Croatia: No. 1: On a T-shirt - "I don't need Google......My husband knows everything". make of that what you will..... and No. 2: The please service the room type sign to hang on the door handle outside the room with not just the mundane "Please make up the room" but rather "We went out to seize the day". A great sentiment, especially on vacation.

Greed, avarice......and plain dishonesty

The fact that Barclays Bank has been fined a tremendous sum for manipulating the market may be welcome news on one level, but no less important is to reflect on what has caused the conduct in the first place. And who is going to be held accountable? Op-ed piece from The Independent putting it all into some context.

High testosterone, class privilege and a lack of morals are a dangerous combination indeed. Reading through emails sent by Barclays traders to each other bragging about manipulating the Libor rate made me cringe, because there was something deeply familiar about the macho language. "Done… for you big boy," wrote one. "Dude. I owe you big time! Come over one day after work and I'm opening a bottle of Bollinger,'" boasted another.

It was deeply familiar because I knew these people: or, rather, people like them. The homoerotic lingo, the Americanisms, the champagne; all that was missing was describing each other as "legends". Going to Oxford University was a culture shock, not because I'm a working-class hero (I'm not), but there was nonetheless a big gap between being educated at a Northern comp and having middle-class public sector worker parents, and fellow students with some of the most privileged backgrounds in Britain. Not that I should generalise about those ex-public school kids who ended up as bankers, management consultants and corporate lawyers: people vary wildly, whatever their upbringings. Others were aware of the odds that had been stacked in their favour since birth, and ended up working for charities, community organisations or state education, for example. But when I saw braying Old Harrovians and Old Paulines spraying each other with champagne in college quads, it was difficult not to be aware that I was staring at some of the country's future rulers.

Some of the antics boiled down to anti-social behaviour of the kind usually associated by the media with so-called "sink estates". I made the mistake once of leaving my room door unlocked when the rowing team was having one of its raucous dinners. One team member – who I had never even spoken to – had climbed into my bed and wet himself. As well as hedonistic, these types could engage in grotesque snobbery towards people they had never mixed with because our education system segregates people by the bank balances of their parents. I first heard the word "chav" bandied around in crisp public school accents, but as a catch-all term for those lower down the social ladder. For some, any perceived challenge to their hyper-privileged upbringings could be seen as beyond insulting. In my first few weeks at university, I suggested abolishing private education. Big mistake: it was as though I had called for the parents of the posh to be publicly executed as enemies of the revolution.

 

A large chunk of them ended up in the City, not all that long before the whole system came crashing down until the taxpayer was forced to rescue it, at incalculable cost. Big finance appealed to a number of qualities: an attraction to cut-throat competition; a love of risk and thrills; an unashamed view that wealth should be relished as an end in itself; and a lack of interest in the consequences of the individual's pursuit of money for the rest of society (a term most would probably sneer at). And it is exactly this that emerges in the Libor scandal.

A calm which cannot last

The realists know the present situation cannot last, yet the world - be it the USA and its allies or the European Union - avert their gaze from the intolerable situation which continues to exist in the West Bank and Gaza. People can take so much, and if they have nothing to lose, why not take action, whatever the consequences, to put an end to harsh repression and "living" in a totally unacceptable situation. The Economist puts things into perspective.

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, dismissed an elected government run by the Islamists of Hamas and decided to rule instead by decree, the Palestinian Authority (PA) that oversees the West Bank is being dangerously challenged from within. In Nablus, the first city where Mr Abbas chose to fill the security vacuum with his American-trained national-security battalions, turf wars have recently erupted between rival commanders, puncturing four years of calm. The walls of Jacob’s Well, a local church, a theatre and the UN office all bear the scars of recent shooting sprees. “It’s hell,” says a social worker in Balata, the city’s largest refugee camp, which suffered grievously during two previous intifadas (uprisings), in 1987-93 and 2000-05. Now people are beginning gloomily to wonder whether there will be a third intifada, this time aimed at the PA as much as at the Israelis occupying the West Bank.

For the moment Mr Abbas has the upper hand. Dispatched from Ramallah, the PA’s seat of government, his presidential guards have detained dozens of rogue security officers, some of them very senior, in Nablus and in Jenin, a smaller Palestinian city half an hour’s drive to the north, where the governor recently died of a heart attack after machinegun fire raked his house. In Jenin triumphant officers loyal to Mr Abbas patrol the streets with M-16 rifles captured from their rivals.

Climate change naysayers take note

Those who still live in their own bubble and confidently assert that climate change isn't happening, ought to sit up and take note of the raging bush fires in Colorado - and what the experts say has caused them. In a word....climate change!

“What we’re seeing is a window into what global warming really looks like,” said Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer, referring to raging wildfires in the US west, in a press briefing on Thursday. "It looks like heat, it looks like fires, it looks like this kind of environmental disaster... This provides vivid images of what we can expect to see more of in the future."

Oppenheimer, speaking alongside other scientists, argued that shorters winters with less snow, coupled with earlier Springs, and extreme summer heat -- all contributors for the fires burning in Colorado, Wyoming, and New Mexico -- were also conditions that he and his colleagues at the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted would result from carbon-induced climate change.

***

Since 1950 the number of heat waves worldwide has increased, and heat waves have become longer, according to the new report. In the most recent years, it continues, "the global area hit by extremely unusual hot summertime temperatures has increased 50-fold. Over the contiguous United States, new record high temperatures over the past decade have consistently outnumbered new record lows by a ratio of 2:1. In 2012, the ratio for the year through June 18 stands at more than 9:1. Though this ratio is not expected to remain at that level for the rest of the year, it illustrates how unusual 2012 has been, and how these types of extremes are becoming more likely."

Nora Ephron: A fitting tribute

The death of Nora Ephron, at 71, is sad. Leaving aside her perhaps initial fame as the wife of Carl Bernstein - they divorced long ago - she carved a career out for herself and in her own way created many benchmarks. She certainly brought pleasure to many. This tribute, amongst many, in The Independent

If you pieced together all the Nora Ephron lines that appeared on Twitter yesterday, you'd probably have the entire script for When Harry Met Sally. You'd certainly have a complete edition of her book I Feel Bad About My Neck. The author/scriptwriter/director, whose death was announced yesterday, was that quotable.

I need not rehearse all of them here, but I must mention the exemplary "Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim". In those 11 words is the summation of why Ephron herself was such a heroine. She turned her life experiences into witty, insightful entertainment, but almost as a side-product of just living a witty, insightful life. Ephron wasn't the first to turn her personal stuff into material – she just did it very well. Being left in a very undignified manner by one's husband and turning the episode into a hit book and film must be the very epitome of revenge being a dish best served cold (and with a fancy garnish).

She was also the master of a film style that, alas, has been watered down ever since her high water mark. When Harry Met Sally was a near-as-dammit perfect romantic comedy. It was funny, warm, surprising and it rang true (even if the zingers delivered were all the ones we'd have thought of after the argument, back home in bed). But indirectly it spawned the careers of Jennifers Aniston and Garner, Reece Witherspoon and Katherine Heigl, whose disappointingly unfunny, shrill romcoms give the genre a bad name.

Good reason for Assange to be concerned

Whilst Ecuador deliberates whether or not to grant WikiLeaks' Julian Assange political asylum, the debate on whether Assange is really at any risk in going to Sweden continues. Informed punditry suggests that Assange would almost certainly whisked to the US - and we know what is likely to happen there should that eventuate. MediaLens has looked at the issue of Assange being where he is now and quotes one eminent lawyer's opinion.

Michael Ratner, president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights and attorney for Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, explained the risks associated with extradition to Sweden:

‘Sweden does not have bail. Now, these are on allegations of sex charges — allegations, no charges — and they’re to interrogate Julian Assange. But despite that, he would have been in prison in Sweden. At that point, our view is that there was a substantial chance that the U.S. would ask for his extradition to the United States.

‘So here you have him walking the streets in London - sure, under bail conditions - going to a jail in Sweden, where he’s in prison, almost an incommunicado prison; U.S. files extradition; he remains in prison; and the next thing that happens is whatever time it takes him to fight the extradition in Sweden, he’s taken to the United States. There’s no chance then to make political asylum application any longer. In addition, once he comes to the United States—we just hold up Bradley Manning as example one of what will happen to Julian Assange: a underground cell, essentially abuse, torture, no ability to communicate with anybody, facing certainly good chance of a life sentence, with a possibility, of course, of one of these charges being a death penalty charge…

‘So, he was in an impossible situation… This is what Julian Assange was facing: never to see the light of day again, in my view, had he gone to Sweden.’

Pursuing a dangerous policy in Yemen

One might have thought - perhaps hoped is the operative word - that the US has learnt something over the years about becoming involved with foreign States, or their leaders, or actually taking on attacking them in one form or other. Even more troubling has been the propensity of Administration after Administration to ignore informed advice from those in the know - with almost inevitable disasterous results and consquences. Now,Yemen is in America's sights And, again, informed opionion warns of going down that path and that it is downright dangerous to do so. From CommonDreams

A panel discussion organised by the National Council on US-Arab Relations on Tuesday  gathered experts to discuss the US-Yemen relationship. The message from experts, according to reporting by Inter Press Service, was that current US policy is not only short-sighted, but extremely dangerous.

A singular focus on defeating Al Qaede in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) was not only counter-productive, experts contend, but also another war in which victory will likely be impossible to claim.  Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the world, and suffering from severe drought, a food crisis, and internal conflict should be the focus of development aid and conflict resolution, was the argument, not a destination for further destabilizing military campaigns.

IPS writes that the US "security-focused approach to Yemen has been epitomised by the Obama administration’s ratcheting-up of drone strikes in Yemen over the past four months," but noted that many participating in the discussion argue that such strikes were simply making matters worse in Yemen.

Palestinian children in irons. UK to investigate

Not for the first time does MPS wonder what sort of country it is when Israel so flagrently allows what can only be described as barbaric and inhuman behaviour to be undertaken by, amongst others, its IDF. No one has seemingly challenged Israel's actions. However, perhaps it's gone a bridge too far - as The Independent reports.

The Foreign Office revealed last night that it would be challenging the Israelis over their treatment of Palestinian children after a report by a delegation of senior British lawyers revealed unconscionable practices, such as hooding and the use of leg irons.

In the first investigation of its kind, a team of nine senior legal figures examined how Palestinians as young as 12 were treated when arrested. Their shocking report Children in Military Custody details claims that youngsters are dragged from their beds in the middle of the night, have their wrists bound behind their backs, and are blindfolded and made to kneel or lie face down in military vehicles.

Children from the West Bank are held in conditions that could amount to torture, such as solitary confinement, with little or no access to their parents. They can be forced to stay awake before being verbally as well as physically abused and coerced into signing confessions they cannot read.

The team – led by Sir Stephen Sedley, a former Court of Appeal judge – heard that "every Palestinian child is treated like a potential terrorist". In a damning conclusion, the report points out repeated breaches of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which prohibits cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

On the go.....

MPS is on the move.....around Europe, then Canada and finally Hawaii. Stay tuned though, for even if not quite as regular MPS is not going to stop blogging.

Iran: Perhaps they're not that crazy....

Nicholas D Kristof, op-ed contributor to The New York Times, takes off for Iran - with his kids in tow....

"When I decided to bring two of my kids with me on a reporting trip to Iran, the consensus was that I must be insane. And that someone should call Child Protective Services!

That anxiety reflects a view that Iran is the 21st century’s Crazy Country, a menace to civilization. That view also animates the hawks who believe that only a military option can stop Iran.

Look, I have no illusions about Iran. On my last trip here, in 2004, I was detained and accused of being a spy for Mossad or the C.I.A. I’ve talked to people who have been brutally tortured. I think that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons capacity and that, if it were to deploy those weapons, this would be a huge and possibly fatal blow to global antiproliferation efforts.

But we need a dollop of humility and nuance, for Iran is a complex country where we’ve repeatedly stumbled badly. For starters, consider for a moment which nation assisted Iran the most in the last dozen years. Not Russia, not China, not India. No, it was the United States under President George W. Bush. First, we upended the Taliban in Afghanistan, Iran’s enemy to the east, and then removed the Saddam Hussein government from Iraq, Iran’s even deadlier threat to the west. Look at the Iraq-Iran relationship today, and it seems we fought a wrenching war in Iraq — and Iran won."

***

Americans think of Iran as a police state, but that overstates its control: Iranians are irrepressible. While interviewing people on a lovely Caspian Sea beach, a plainclothes policeman bustled forward. At first, I thought that the young woman I was interviewing was in trouble for criticizing the regime — but, no, her sin was rolling up her sleeves.

The policeman shouted at her. She shouted at him. Neither was intimidated. Finally, she covered her forearms a bit more, and he accepted a truce.

The confrontation was a reminder that Iran is a complex and contradictory country, in ways that don’t register at a distance. Iran imprisons more journalists than any other country, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, yet it has a vigorous Parliament and news media with clashing views (within a narrow range). Some ethnic Turks seek to secede and join Azerbaijan, but the country’s supreme leader is an ethnic Turk. Iran’s regime sometimes embraces anti-Semitism, yet Parliament has a Jewish member.

Iranians gripe about their government without worrying about being overheard, yet participants in protests are tortured, gays can be executed and the Bahai religious minority endures mind-boggling repression. Iranian women constitute almost 60 percent of university students and hold important positions in the country, yet, under a new law, a woman can’t even go skiing without a male guardian.

Continue reading, here, and also get access to a video.

Blair caught out.......yet again!

Former British PM, Tony Blair, is once again found out and shown up for the terrible so-called politician he was.     The difference here is that he committed the UK to the Iraq War - with all that involved in human and material cost.   The Guardian reveals the background in this piece "Blair blocked Cabinet from hearing legal advice on Iraq".

"MPs demanded an emergency recall of the Chilcot inquiry last night after new revelations that Tony Blair blocked the Government's most senior lawyer from explaining to Cabinet the legality of the war in Iraq.

According to the newly published full version of Alastair Campbell's diaries, the Attorney General Lord Goldsmith wanted to "put the reality" to cabinet ministers that there was a case against, as well as for, military action in March 2003. But, according to his former spin doctor, the then Prime Minister feared that the legal opinion was too "nuanced" and would allow the war's ministerial critics Robin Cook and Clare Short to say that the case had not been made.

The disclosure is significant because, while it has long been suspected that Mr Blair and his inner circle put pressure on Lord Goldsmith to change his legal advice, this is the first evidence that the PM actively blocked the Cabinet from hearing the full details of the case for war."

The state of play in US politics?

Nate Beeler, The Columbus Dispatch

What Americans think.....

Take whatever comfort you think from this piece, from Information Clearing House, detailing what the views of Americans are on a range of topics.  One ought to say that there is reason to fear what Republicans think....

"Yes, it’s apparently true: 63% of Republicans still believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. invaded it in 2003. That, according to a remarkable new survey on foreign policy attitudes of self-identified Republicans, Democrats, and independents that was noted by Dan Drezner in his blog today and released by the main researcher, Benjamin Valentino at Dartmouth College. The detailed poll (65 questions), which queried a total of 1056 respondents and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.18%, was conducted by YouGov from April 26 to May 2.

It covers quite a broad range of topics and regions, but I was predictably most interested in the questions about the Middle East, particularly Israel. There was only one question (Q46) which dealt directly with Iran; to wit, “if Iran produces a nuclear weapon, how likely do you think it is that Iran would use its nuclear weapon against Israel.” Overall, 69% of respondents said it was either “very likely” (42.2%) or “somewhat likely” (26.9%) — a rather dramatic demonstration of how effective Israel and the Israel lobby have been in shaping public opinion here, given that U.S. and Israeli experts generally agree that such an attack, while possible, would be highly unlikely. An impressive 64.5% of Republicans–or slightly more than the percentage who believe Iraq had WMD — consider such an attack “very likely”; 24% “somewhat likely.” The comparable figures for Democrats are 30.5% and 31.5%, respectively.

A rather surprising finding came in response to a question (Q50) that explicitly linked U.S. support for Israel with terrorist attacks against the United States:

How strongly do you agree or disagree with the the following statement? ‘Current U.S. military, economic and political support for Israel angers many Muslims and makes terrorist attacks against the United States more likely.

About one quarter of all respondents — including both Democrats and Republicans — “strongly agreed” with that statement. More remarkable: another 41.3% of Republicans said they agreed “somewhat” with the proposition. That was more than the 37 percent of Democrats who took that position. Altogether 63% of respondents either “strongly” or “somewhat” agreed that such linkage exists.

There’s also a lot of interesting data about attitudes toward military intervention, including with respect to Syria, and toward Washington’s European and East Asian allies which you should explore on your own.

If that finding should cause some heartburn over at AIPAC headquarters, I’m sure they were reassured by other findings, although it’s clear that Republicans are considerably more committed to Israel than Democrats or independents.

Asked what is “America’s most important foreign ally” (Q21) three of ten (30.4%) Republicans cited Israel, second only to Great Britain (47%); only 12% of Democrats identified Israel, although it still placed third on their list behind Great Britain (50.6%) and Canada (16%). Independents also rated Israel (17.5%) second behind Great Britain (47%). Even more remarkably, when asked (Q20) to identify with which, in a list of countries, Washington has a “formal treaty that pledges the United States to help defend,” Israel was the most frequently cited by Democrats (52.2%), Republicans (64.7%), and independents (56.2%). Despite the presence on the list of NATO allies, Israel was the only country that was cited by majorities in each political category.

Respondents were also asked (Q49) how strongly they agreed or disagreed with the proposition, “The United States depends on the support of Israel to protect vital U.S. interests in the Middle East.” Altogether, a 52% percent majority said they either agreed “strongly” (17.5%) or “somewhat” (34.8%). But there were significant differences between Democrats and independents on the one hand (about 47% agreement) and Republicans on the other (71% agreement).

Asked whether they thought that pro-Israel lobby groups have” either “too much,” “too little,” or “about the right amount of” influence (Q52), 28.1% of all respondents opted for “too much.” There was also a significant partisan gap on this question: nearly 38% of Democrats and 35% of independents said “too much”, while only 13.5% of Republicans agreed. Indeed, 26.4% of Republicans said “too little”, compared to only 7% of Democrats and 10% of independents. More than a third of all respondents said they didn’t know. Another question worth a look asked whether the respondent’s elected representatives were “much more” or “somewhat more” favorable towards Israel than I am” with predictable results (Q51).

The “why do they hate us” question was also posed, as respondents were asked which statements come closest to their view about terrorism: “Terrorists attack the United State mostly because they hate America’s values” or “Terrorists attack the United States mostly because they hate America’s foreign policies.” Predictably, nearly 71% of Republicans chose the former; only 21.3%, the latter. Among Democrats, a plurality of 44.4% chose the latter, while independents were roughly evenly split."

Definitely #1 truthdigger

The timing could not be more appropriate.....as Julian Assange awaits a decision whether he will be allowed asylum in Ecuador.     truthdig has, this week, chosen Assange as its Truthdigger of the Week.

"Few people have so fully devoted their lives to exposing abuses of power as WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange.

As the newsstands, Internet columns and blogs have chronicled, Assange has been camping out in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since Tuesday in an effort to gain political asylum and avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faces sex crime allegations. If he loses that bid, he could eventually be extradited to the United States, where it’s a virtual certainty that officials would prosecute him for his work with WikiLeaks. Through that organization, Assange has published thousands of sensitive U.S. government documents.

On the basis of one such document, it is understood that the Justice Department already has a sealed indictment on Assange. Experts assume the government would prosecute him in accordance with the 1917 Espionage Act, which equates interference with government operations with support of America’s enemies. Over the past decade, U.S. officials have made it clear that anyone who can even be suspected of having a connection to terrorism is an enemy of the United States. In the eyes of the government, Assange may as well have ordered the deaths of American civilians or soldiers himself, even though no evidence has been produced to support the claim that the work WikiLeaks does has harmed Americans.

Given that the U.S. Justice Department has become what constitutional lawyer and Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald calls a travesty of law, Assange has every reason to fear extradition to the States. Assange’s attorney, Michael Ratner, confirms what seems obvious: The treatment given to accused WikiLeaks informant Bradley Manning—an extended, isolated imprisonment that a U.N. investigation deemed “cruel, inhuman and degrading”—is what Assange could expect as well. And as Greenwald writes: “The Obama administration’s unprecedented obsession with persecuting whistle-blowers and preventing transparency—what even generally supportive liberal magazines call ‘Obama’s war on whistle-blowers’—makes those concerns all the more valid.”

Even though Assange has broken no international law in seeking asylum from Ecuador, some, including New Statesman columnist David Allen Green, have portrayed him as a fugitive on the run. Assange has inspired the hatred of many since he first became internationally known in 2010. Much of that animosity has come from journalists and news organizations that have failed to do what Assange has done so spectacularly in the short time WikiLeaks has been operating: make people and organizations who do bad things in secret think twice about doing them at all, because someone devoted to truth and transparency might expose them.

The writers, editors and publishers at Truthdig are not among Assange’s detractors. We honor him for putting himself at great risk to reveal what governments and corporations are up to. Julian Assange is our Truthdigger of the Week."

An effective BDS

The Israelis, and its rabid supporters, hate BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) being ever-widely imposed around the world against products manufactured in the West Bank - and sold as Israeli products - or companies seen to be complicit in Israeli's illegal actions.    The concept emanates from the effective anti-apartheid BDS against the then South African Government many years back.   

BDS is non-violent whilst at the same time highlighting Israeli's actions.     The latest victim of BDS is Caterpillar.

"Pension fund giant TIAA-CREF has removed Caterpillar, Inc. from its Social Choice Funds portfolio. As of May 1, 2012, financial data posted on TIAA-CREF’s website valued Social Choice Funds shares in Caterpillar at $72,943,861. Today it is zero.
 
“We applaud this decision,” said Rabbi Alissa Wise, Director of Campaigns at Jewish Voice for Peace and National Coordinator of the We Divest Campaign. "It’s long past time that TIAA-CREF began living up to its motto of ‘Financial Services for the Greater Good’ when it comes to the people of Israel and Palestine.”

Since 2010, We Divest has been urging TIAA-CREF to drop Caterpillar and other companies profiting from and facilitating Israel’s 45-year-old military occupation and colonization of the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip.

“By selling weaponized bulldozers to Israel, Caterpillar is complicit in Israel’s systematic violations of Palestinian human rights,” said Rabbi Wise. “We’re glad to see that the socially responsible investment community appears to be recognizing this and is starting to take appropriate action.”

Caterpillar has come under increasing criticism from human rights organizations in recent years for continuing to supply bulldozers to Israel, which uses them to demolish Palestinian civilian homes and destroy crops and agricultural land in the occupied territories, and to build illegal, Jewish-only settlements on Palestinian land.

In the coming weeks, many will be watching the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly taking place in Pittsburgh, where church commissioners will vote on a motion to divest from Caterpillar and two other companies, Motorola Solutions and Hewlett-Packard, that remain in TIAA-CREF’s Social Choice Funds.

Last month, Friends Fiduciary, a Quaker institution, divested $900,000 worth of shares in Caterpillar stating: “We are uncomfortable defending our position on this stock.”

Rio+20 draft text is 283 paragraphs of fluff

The headline to the piece (above), by George Monbiot, in The Guardian says it all....

"In 1992, world leaders signed up to something called "sustainability". Few of them were clear about what it meant; I suspect that many of them had no idea. Perhaps as a result, it did not take long for this concept to mutate into something subtly different: "sustainable development". Then it made a short jump to another term: "sustainable growth". And now, in the 2012 Rio+20 text that world leaders are about to adopt, it has subtly mutated once more: into "sustained growth".

This term crops up 16 times in the document, where it is used interchangeably with sustainability and sustainable development. But if sustainability means anything, it is surely the opposite of sustained growth. Sustained growth on a finite planet is the essence of unsustainability."

****

"As a result, the draft document, which seems set to become the final document, takes us precisely nowhere: 190 governments have spent 20 years bracing themselves to "acknowledge", "recognise" and express "deep concern" about the world's environmental crises, but not to do anything about them.

This paragraph from the declaration sums up the problem for me:

"We recognise that the planet Earth and its ecosystems are our home and that Mother Earth is a common expression in a number of countries and regions and we note that some countries recognise the rights of nature in the context of the promotion of sustainable development. We are convinced that in order to achieve a just balance among the economic, social and environment needs of present and future generations, it is necessary to promote harmony with nature."
It sounds lovely, doesn't it? It could be illustrated with rainbows and psychedelic unicorns and stuck on the door of your toilet. But without any proposed means of implementation, it might just as well be deployed for a different function in the same room.

The declaration is remarkable for its absence of figures, dates and targets. It is as stuffed with meaningless platitudes as an advertisement for payday loans, but without the necessary menace. There is nothing to work with here, no programme, no sense of urgency or call for concrete action beyond the inadequate measures already agreed in previous flaccid declarations. Its tone and contents would be better suited to a retirement homily than a response to a complex of escalating global crises.

The draft and probably final declaration is 283 paragraphs of fluff."

Grrrr! Those drat emails.....

It is near-enough impossible to avoid the iniquitous email.    Like it or not we are living with an "invasion" into our space and onto our time.    

"People keep claiming that email will die, that some new technology will replace it. But it lives on. And on. And on.

Sure, email can be a great thing. But it can steal our lives if we let it. From killing our personal time to screwing up our work patterns, here are some of the ways email can really mess us up.

1. Kills Work/Personal Time Balance

StrategyOne, a market research firm, asked Americans how they feel about the balance of work and home life. Turns out that 89 percent of poll respondents were unhappy with the balance, and 54 percent called it a “significant” problem.

Work is dominating our lives even when we're not actually in the office. Job insecurity and the fear of not being perceived as performing chains us to our inbox, even if we work remotely.

Many of us live in a work culture where we feel we have to respond to emails at all hours. No matter that we might be involved in offline work or activities that should command our full attention. Or—perish the thought -- engaging in personal time. Email follows us into the car, to the dinner table and even to the loo. (No kidding. See: “Checking Email in the Bathroom? You’re Far From Alone.”)

I've been on dates where no matter how special the occasion, my date has pulled out his iPhone and checked his email. I have a “three strikes you're out rule” on that one. First, I ask you to stop. Second time, I give you a warning. Third time I’m gone. If somebody is driving me, they get one warning. And yet I am perceived as strangely intolerant of what many consider normal behavior.

When we scratch out a few vacation days, instead of the declarative “I am on vacation, and will respond to your email when I return,” we post the timid “I will only check email infrequently,” or the semi-plausible “I will have limited access to email.”


Keep reading this piece from AlterNet here.

Continuing: The outrage of Gitmo and the US Supreme Court

"Of the 800 men and boys held at Guantanamo since 2002, 169 remain. Of those prisoners, 87 have had their release approved by military review boards established during the Bush administration, and later by the Guantanamo Review Task Force established by President Obama in 2009. Yet they continue to languish in the prison camp."

The travesty of any concept of justice, let alone any fairness or common decency, continues as a blight on the supposed rule of law in America.

Read this piece "Hope Dies at Guantanamo" from CounterPunch and marvel at how the US continues to assert that it has a decent judicial system - and that a so-called liberal President presides over it all.

"The tragic case of Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif hit a dead end when the US Supreme Court issued an order refusing to hear his case last week. Latif, a Yemeni man, has been imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay since January 2002, after being detained while traveling to seek medical treatment.

Latif had suffered serious head injuries as the result of a car accident in 1994, and the Yemeni government paid for him to receive treatment in Jordan at that time. But his medical problems persisted, and in 1999 Yemen’s Ministry of Public Health recommended that Latif undergo tests, therapy and surgical procedures at his own expense. Unable to afford it, Latif said he left Yemen in 2001 with the help of a charitable worker to seek free medical treatment in Pakistan. When he was picked up in Afghanistan — on his way to Pakistan — and transferred to US custody in December 2001, Latif had his medical records with him.

After a kangaroo court proceeding, a Combatant Status Review Tribunal at Guantanamo declared Latif to be an “enemy combatant.” He was not allowed to attend the hearing, nor was he permitted to see the evidence against him. Instead of a lawyer, he was given a “Personal Representative” — a military officer who did not represent Latif’s interests."

Bizarre.....and 1984 at its best

Shake your head time!  

From Abby Zimet at CommonDreams:

"Surveillance experts at the National Security Agency won’t tell two members of the Senate’s intelligence oversight committee how many Americans' emails and phone calls they're poking into without a warrant as part of its sweeping counterterrorism powers because such a review "would itself violate the privacy of U.S. persons” - and besides, figuring that out is “beyond the capacity” of the NSA. Think Orwell's doublethiink.

"Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."

Funding the Enemy

Let it not be said that we haven't been told.   This piece, from truthdig, discusses a new book, "Funding The Enemy" - a book detailing the vast sums of money being spent in Afghanistan and Iraq, the corruption there, the waste of of money, etc. etc.

"Three years into the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan, Sen. Judd Gregg offered an unusual pronouncement on that year’s congressional budget negotiations. “This cannot afford to be a guns and butter term,” he told The Wall Street Journal, invoking the traditional trade-off between military and domestic spending priorities. “You’ve got to cut the butter.”

If Gregg’s prescription sounded harsh, the reality was even more dispiriting. In addition to its huge outlays on guns, the U.S. government was coating the entire country of Afghanistan in butter. For a decade now, we’ve spent $120 billion annually to occupy a nation whose GDP was less than one-tenth of that figure. Much of the funding has supported the military, of course, but a great deal of it was allocated for roads, schools, dams and hospitals—the very projects Gregg wished to cut here. A substantial fraction of that money never made it to Afghanistan as such. Large firms won fat contracts and subcontracted them to smaller firms, which subcontracted them to lesser companies in a cascade of skim. What dollars did arrive in Afghanistan funded low-quality construction and no maintenance. The occupation’s other big winners were Afghan kleptocrats, warlords and drug barons, who were busily presiding over a resurgent opium trade.

“It’s the perfect war,” one U.S. intelligence officer told author Douglas A. Wissing. “Everyone is making money.”

That irony wasn’t lost on our true enemy. As early as 2002, al-Qaida spokesman Abu-Ubayd al-Qurashi made a similar point. “Anyone who follows the news from Afghanistan will see how the different factions are playing with the Americans,” he noted. Those groups clearly intended “to prolong the flow of dollars as long as possible and are trying to strengthen their own interests without cooperating seriously in the American crusade.” His thumbnail description fits the facts surprisingly well.

This floridly dysfunctional system is the subject of Wissing’s remarkable book, “Funding the Enemy: How U.S. Taxpayers Bankroll the Taliban.” Drawing on a wide range of sources and adding his own firsthand reporting, Wissing describes how ousting the Taliban led to one of the most protracted and fruitless efforts in U.S. foreign policy history. If you’re wondering how $31 billion of U.S. taxpayer money could be lost to fraud and waste in Afghanistan and Iraq, this book is for you.

We haven’t aided the Afghan economy; we are the economy. Our very presence there has disfigured normal commerce and created perverse incentives. As Wissing notes, senior Afghan officials earn $150 a month while a nongovernmental organization driver earns $1,000. How long before those officials supplement their incomes with gifts (bakhsheesh) or become drivers? The full absurdity of the arrangement was revealed in miniature when Afghan farmers refused to clear their own canals unless we paid them.

Profiteering and corruption are common during wartime, but the situation in Afghanistan is appalling even by those standards. Outrageously, the Taliban itself has been a major beneficiary of our boodle. The shadow government was the only enemy in sight after al- Qaida evacuated in December 2001. A U.S. military office noted that 10 to 20 percent of funds from all international contracts in Afghanistan wound up with the Taliban. The Taliban even skims U.S. payments to families of Afghan civilians killed accidentally."

Assange has everything to fear from the Americans

Julian Assange, of WikiLeaks fame, has taken refuge in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London and sought asylum in Ecuador.    Having lost his last avenue of appeal in the UK is he justified fleeing Great Britain before being extradicted to Sweden?     Glenn Greenwald addresses the issue in a piece in The Guardian....

"If one asks current or former WikiLeaks associates what their greatest fear is, almost none cites prosecution by their own country. Most trust their own nation's justice system to recognize that they have committed no crime. The primary fear is being turned over to the US. That is the crucial context for understanding Julian Assange's 16-month fight to avoid extradition to Sweden, a fight that led him to seek asylum, Tuesday, in the London Embassy of Ecuador.

The evidence that the US seeks to prosecute and extradite Assange is substantial. There is no question that the Obama justice department has convened an active grand jury to investigate whether WikiLeaks violated the draconian Espionage Act of 1917. Key senators from President Obama's party, including Senate intelligence committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, have publicly called for his prosecution under that statute. A leaked email from the security firm Stratfor – hardly a dispositive source, but still probative – indicated that a sealed indictment has already been obtained against him. Prominent American figures in both parties have demanded Assange's lifelong imprisonment, called him a terrorist, and even advocated his assassination.

For several reasons, Assange has long feared that the US would be able to coerce Sweden into handing him over far more easily than if he were in Britain. For one, smaller countries such as Sweden are generally more susceptible to American pressure and bullying.

For another, that country has a disturbing history of lawlessly handing over suspects to the US. A 2006 UN ruling found Sweden in violation of the global ban on torture for helping the CIA render two suspected terrorists to Egypt, where they were brutally tortured (both individuals, asylum-seekers in Sweden, were ultimately found to be innocent of any connection to terrorism and received a monetary settlement from the Swedish government).

Perhaps most disturbingly of all, Swedish law permits extreme levels of secrecy in judicial proceedings and oppressive pre-trial conditions, enabling any Swedish-US transactions concerning Assange to be conducted beyond public scrutiny. Ironically, even the US State Department condemned Sweden's "restrictive conditions for prisoners held in pretrial custody", including severe restrictions on their communications with the outside world.

Assange's fear of ending up in the clutches of the US is plainly rational and well-grounded. One need only look at the treatment over the last decade of foreign nationals accused of harming American national security to know that's true; such individuals are still routinely imprisoned for lengthy periods without any charges or due process. Or consider the treatment of Bradley Manning, accused of leaking to WikiLeaks: a formal UN investigation found that his pre-trial conditions of severe solitary confinement were "cruel, inhuman and degrading", and he now faces capital charges of aiding al-Qaida. The Obama administration's unprecedented obsession with persecuting whistleblowers and preventing transparency – what even generally supportive, liberal magazines call "Obama's war on whistleblowers" – makes those concerns all the more valid."

Chilling...when the State goes rogue

When invoking "terrorism" to do whatever it thinks appropriate, the State's actions can be both chilling and more than troubling.     Read this searing piece "When Your Father Is Accused of Terrorism" on The Nation with grave concern....

"My father, Sami Al-Arian, a professor at the University of South Florida, was indicted on fifty-three counts of supporting the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which had been designated by the government as a terrorist group. The conspiracy case, which involved three other Palestinian men, was based largely on my father’s charitable contributions, associations, speeches and other First Amendment–protected activities. Prosecutors would introduce as evidence books my father owned, magazines he edited, conferences he organized and, particularly bizarre, a dream one of his co-defendants had about him. My father faced multiple life sentences plus 225 years if convicted. The charges against him included conspiracy to kill and maim persons abroad, yet prosecutors freely admitted that my father had no connection to any violence."

****

"My father’s trial lasted six months. Prosecutors presented seventy-five witnesses, including nearly two dozen from Israel. Their testimony centered on attacks that even the US government acknowledged my father had nothing to do with. The prosecutors also introduced 400 phone calls out of nearly half a million that the FBI had recorded over a decade of relentless, indiscriminate surveillance of my family. My father’s attorneys did not call a single witness: their defense was the First Amendment."

****

"Since then, attorneys have appealed the case based on a number of questionable occurrences during the trial, including the judge’s decision to allow testimony from an anonymous Israeli intelligence agent, introduced to jurors simply as Avi, who claimed that he could “smell” Hamas. It marked the first time in US legal history that an expert witness was allowed to testify under a concealed identity. In another highly unusual move, prosecutors unveiled a list of more than 300 unindicted co-conspirators involved in the case. Such identities are normally kept secret under the Justice Department’s guidelines. Many Muslim community leaders and the majority of American Muslim institutions were on the list, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a civil liberties advocacy group. Soon after, the FBI cut off its outreach dialogue with the group, hampering its own investigations."

It's business as usual in Egypt

As things stand at the moment the Arab Spring in Egypt seems to have come to a spluttering halt.    The military, cronies of the Mubarak - remember, he whom the West, the USA in particular looked on as an ally and poured aid-money into the country - are back in power.  Veteran Middle East journalist and reporter Robert Fisk puts into perspective.....

"Today's military played an equally shrewd but different game: they insisted Mubarak go on trial – bread and circuses for the masses, dramatic sentences to keep their minds off the future – while realigning the old Mubarakites to preserve their own privileges.

The ex-elected head of the judges' club in Egypt, Zakaria Abdul-Aziz, has rightly pointed out that even if Mubarak was put on trial, the January-February 2011 killing went on for days, "and they [the generals] did not order anyone to stop it. The Ministry of Interior is not the only place that should be cleansed. The judiciary needs that."

It was Mubarak's senior judges who permitted the deposed dictator's last Prime Minister, Ahmed Shafik, to stand in this weekend's run-off for President. As Omar Ashour, an academic in both Exeter and Doha, has observed, "when protesters stormed the State Security Investigations [SSI] headquarters and other governorates in March 2011, torture rooms and equipment were found in every building".

And what happened to the lads who ran these vicious institutions for Mubarak, clad alternatively in French-designed suits or uniforms dripping with epaulettes? They got off scot-free. Here are some names for The Independent's readers to stick in their files: Hassan Abdul-Rahman, head of the SSI; Ahmed Ramzi, head of Central Security Forces (CSF); Adly Fayyed, head of "Public Security"; Ossama Youssef, head of the Giza Security Directorate; Ismail al-Shaer, boss of the Cairo Security Directorate – "shaer", by the way, means "poet" – and Omar Faramawy, who ran the 6 October Security Directorate.

I will not use the words "culture of impunity" – as Omar Ashour does without irony – but the acquittal of the above gentlemen means that Mubarak's 300,000-strong SSI and CSF thugs are still in business. It is impossible to believe the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces – still running Egypt and commanded by Mubarak's old mate Field Marshal Tantawi – was unaware of the implications of this extraordinary state of affairs. If Mubarak represented Faruk, and his sons Gamal and Alaa the future leaders of the royal family, then the 2011 Egyptian revolution represented 1952 without the king's exile and with a shadow monarchy still in power."

Muslims in Europe

Many Governments in Europe have banned women from wearing the niqab.      Meanwhile, going by the way the media reports things, Muslims in Europe pose a threat in many countries.    But is that right?  And what is the threat?    As this piece "Europe: Hotbed of Islamophobic Extremism" in The Nation so clearly shows perhaps the threat is the other way round.

"The response of Europe’s political class to the presence of Muslim minorities can be described most generously as a moral panic, and most accurately as a repressive legislative and rhetorical onslaught. A number of states from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean have gone to extraordinary lengths to ban what women can wear, what people can say, and where and how they can worship. Disproportionate in scale and disingenuous in conception, these laws—whatever their stated intent—were not about tackling any serious threat of Islamic extremism. Switzerland passed a referendum in 2009 outlawing the building of minarets; the country has four. In Denmark the same year, a call for a burqa ban prompted a study revealing that just three women wore it, while only 150 to 200 wore the niqab, a third of whom were Danish converts. “The burqa and the niqab do not have their place in the Danish society,” insisted Danish Premier Lars Rasmussen a year later. That’s true, but then they never really did.

Nor could these laws be about helping isolated communities that are culturally incapable of integration. A Gallup poll in 2009 showed that British Muslims were more likely to identify as British than British people as a whole. A Pew Research Center survey in 2006 showed that the principal concerns of Muslims in France, Germany and Spain were unemployment and Islamic extremism.

Finally, these laws couldn’t be about some broader demographic “threat” that Muslims pose to the continent. A Pew study, published in January 2011, forecast the number of Muslims in Europe’s population increasing from 6 percent in 2010 to 8 percent in 2030. There’s a higher proportion of Asians in New Jersey than Muslims in France, the country with the highest concentration in Western Europe.

So what is really driving these laws? In no small part, they’re about seeking to contain one of the most oppressed groups in Europe—one that’s been radicalized by war and occupation abroad, and unemployment, poverty and poor education at home. During a period of economic crisis, this means stepping up efforts to assimilate Muslims into a mythically unified national culture, even as they’re excluded from economic advancement, political influence and social inclusion. Popular anxiety about neoliberal globalization in general and antipathy to Brussels in particular needs scapegoats. Arjun Appadurai, in his book Fear of Small Numbers, writes: “Minorities are the flash point for a series of uncertainties that mediate between everyday life and its fast-shifting global backdrop…. This uncertainty, exacerbated by the inability of many states to secure national economic sovereignty in the era of globalization, can translate into a lack of tolerance of any sort of collective stranger.”

Be alarmed!

Credited to Mr Fish at Harper's Magazine

How many weddings later?......

Pause to reflect as you read this excellent piece "How Many Weddings Does the U.S. Have to Bomb Before We Realize Our Destructive Ways?" on TomDispatch.   The US seems to weddings and funerals in Pakistan and Afghanistan with regular monotony - killing many and mostly in error.   Nary much is done about such actions.    Tom Engelhardt rightly asks how the US would react if the same happened on American soil.

"But just over a week ago, an analogous “incident” did happen in Afghanistan and it passed largely unnoticed here.  A group of Taliban insurgents reportedly entered a house in a village in Logar Province, south of Kabul, where a wedding ceremony either was or would be in progress.  American and Afghan forces surrounded the house, where 18 members of a single extended family had gathered for the celebration.  When firing broke out (or a grenade was thrown) and both U.S. and Afghan troops were reportedly wounded, they did indeed call in a jet, which dropped a 500-pound bomb, obliterating the residence and everyone inside, including up to nine children.

"This was neither an unheard of mistake, nor an aberration in America’s Afghan War.  In late December 2001, according to reports, a B-52 and two B-1B bombers, using precision-guided weapons, wiped out 110 out of 112 wedding revelers in a small Afghan village.  Over the decade-plus that followed, American air power, piloted and drone, has been wiping out Afghans (Pakistanis and, until relatively recently, Iraqis) in a similar fashion -- usually in or near their homes, sometimes in striking numbers, always on the assumption that there are bad guys among them.

For more than a decade, incident after incident, any one of which, in the U.S., would have shaken Americans to their core, led to “investigations”  that went nowhere, punishments to no one, rare apologies, and on occasion, the offering of modest “solatium” payments to grieving survivors and relatives.  For such events, of course, 24/7 coverage, like future memorials, was out of the question.

Cumulatively, they indicate one thing: that, for Americans, the value of an Afghan life (or more often Afghan lives) obliterated in the backlands of the planet, thousands of miles from home, is next to nil and of no meaning whatsoever.  Such deaths are just so much unavoidable “collateral damage” from the American way of war -- from the post-9/11 approach we have agreed is crucial to make ourselves “safe” from terrorists.

By now, Afghans (and Pakistanis in tribal areas across the border) surely know the rules of the road of the American war: there is no sanctity in public or private rites.  While funerals have been hit repeatedly and at least one baby-naming ceremony was taken out as well, weddings have been the rites of choice for obliteration for reasons the U.S. Air Force has, as far as we know, never taken a moment to consider, no less explain.  This website counted five weddings blown away (one in Iraq and four in Afghanistan) by mid-2008, and another from that year not reported until 2009.  The latest incident is at least the seventh that has managed, however modestly, to make the news here, but there is no way of knowing what other damage to wedding parties in rural Afghanistan has gone uncounted.
 

Imagine the uproar in this country if a jet took out a wedding party.  Just consider the attention given every time some mad gunman shoots up a post office, a college campus, or simply an off-campus party, if you want to get an idea.  You might think then that, given the U.S. record of wedding carnage in Afghanistan, which undoubtedly represents some kind of modern wedding-crasher record, there might have been a front-page story, or simply a story, somewhere, anywhere, indicating the repetitive nature of such events."

Elite Club helps itself

Who said that it doesn't help to be an insider and well-connected?

"Following the 2008 financial collapse, at least 18 former and current directors from Federal Reserve Banks worked in banks and corporations that got over $4 trillion in low-interest loans from the Federal Reserve - that is, they bailed out themselves. The findings of the Government Accountability Office report were released for the first time by the tireless Sen. Bernie Sanders.

“This report reveals the inherent conflicts of interest that exist at the Federal Reserve. At a time when small businesses could not get affordable loans to create jobs, the Fed was providing trillions in secret loans to some of the largest banks and corporations in America that were well represented on the boards of the Federal Reserve Banks. These conflicts must end.”

Obama's prof comes out swinging

From The Huffington Post:

"One of President Barack Obama's former professors appears to have turned against him, according to a recent YouTube video.

"President Obama must be defeated in the coming election," Roberto Unger, a longtime professor at Harvard Law School who taught Obama, said in a video posted on May 22. "He has failed to advance the progressive cause in the United States."

Unger said that Obama must lose the election in order for "the voice of democratic prophecy to speak once again in American life."

He acknowledged that if a Republican wins the presidency, "there will be a cost ... in judicial and administrative appointments." But he said that "the risk of military adventurism" would be no worse under a Republican than under Obama, and that "the Democratic Party proposes no new direction."

The plight of a people cut off from the world

A new documentary featuring two Al-Jazeera journalists, The World Around Us, who were inside Gaza during Israel’s onslaught in late 2008 and early 2009. They witnessed the horrors and won’t let the world forget.

And then there is this.....

"A report released today, the fifth anniversary of the blockade of Gaza, from the charities Save the Children and Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) describes how Gaza's water supply is heavily polluted by fertilizer and human waste, and states that nearly all of the water in Gaza is "unfit for drinking."

Gaza's broken sewage system, severely destroyed in Operation Cast Lead, has lead to open cesspits and waste-caused nitrate pollution.  The high levels of nitrates in the water, ten times the safe levels established by WHO, have been linked to anemia and some cancers, and are wreaking health havoc heavily upon children and pregnant women in Gaza, the reports details.

"The blockade is a blight on the lives of Gaza's civilians. It is shocking to see so many children struggling to live a fulfilled and healthy life -- unable to play in safe areas and forced to drink dirty and dangerous water that is making them sick," said Aimee Shalan, MAP's Director of Advocacy and Communications."

The countries in which it is best to be a woman

Interesting piece from the IHT on the results of a survey of which is the best country in the world for women.....

"India, a country best-known for its rising economic might, is the worst place to be a woman among the world’s biggest economies, and Canada the best, according to a survey of experts published Wednesday.

The Group of 20 survey by TrustLaw, a legal news service of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, found that a combination of infanticide, child marriage and slavery left India at the bottom of the ranking, lagging even Saudi Arabia, where women are still not allowed to drive and only gained the vote in 2011.

The poll of 370 gender experts also held some surprises, finding that Canada’s policy mix giving women access to health care and opportunities and protecting them against violence made it more egalitarian than some European nations and the United States.

Canada and the United States may share a border, a language and much cultural affinity, but if women face broadly similar situations in terms of education and economic opportunity in the two countries, they are far apart in the area of gender equality, the experts said.

Last month, a report by Save the Children suggested that America is one of the worst places to be a mother among rich countries
Poor access to health care and a highly polarizing debate about reproductive rights in the United States were two factors that kept America out of the top five, ranking it sixth in the poll, after Canada, Germany, Britain, Australia and France, the survey found.

“Canada leads the pack with its promotion of women’s access and opportunities across various sectors of society, including education, economic participation and health care,” Sarah Degnan Kambou, president of the International Center for Research on Women in Washington, which took part in the survey, told TrustLaw.

The survey assesses gender equality in the G20 countries in six categories: quality of health, freedom from violence, participation in politics, workplace opportunities, access to resources and freedom from trafficking and slavery.

It is the latest of several studies that reflect poorly on the situation of women in the United States, the world’s largest economy.

Last month a report by Save the Children suggested that America is one of the worst places to be a mother among rich countries, pointing to what it said were one of the highest maternal mortality rates and worst breastfeeding environments among developed countries.

According to World Health Organization statistics used in Save The Children’s 2012 Mother’s Index, the lifetime risk of a woman in the United States to die from a pregnancy-related or birth-related cause stands at 1 in 2,100. Only three other countries categorized as “more developed nations” by Save the Children, rank lower: Albania, Moldova and Russia.

“On most of the health indicators, whether it’s maternal mortality, child mortality or life expectancy, the U.S. does much worse than you would expect,” said Patrick Watt, global campaign and advocacy director for Save the Children. “The U.S. spends a lot on health as a percentage of G.D.P. but is very inefficient in translating that into health gains.”

The TrustLaw survey was conducted in 19 G20 nations. It did not include the European Union, which is a member of the G20 but whose 27 member-states have greatly varied gender policies.

The other members of the G20 are Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey and the United States."

HOW THEY RANK

1. Canada
2. Germany
3. Britain
4. Australia
5. France
6. United States
7. Japan
8. Italy
9. Argentina
10. South Korea
11. Brazil
12. Turkey
13. Russia
14. China
15. Mexico
16. South Africa
17. Indonesia
18. Saudi Arabia
19. India

She used the word XXXX....and got banned from speaking

Wowserism at its very best......and a State of the USA which evidently hasn't grown up yet!

"Michigan state Rep. Lisa Brown (D) has been blocked from speaking on the House floor in an apparent attempt to punish her for using the word "vagina" on Wednesday during a debate on legislation on reproductive rights.
 
Speaking out against anti-abortion bills on the floor, Brown said “I’m flattered that you’re all so interested in my vagina,” she said on the House floor. 'But no means no.'"

“I was either banned for being Jewish and rightfully pointing out that HB 5711 was forcing contradictory religious beliefs upon me and my religion,” Rep. Brown said in a Thursday press conference. “Or is it because I used the word ‘vagina,’ which is an anatomically, medically correct term?”

Rep. Barb Byrum was also banned from speaking."

Hopes for Arab Spring met with uncertainy and desperation

It seems only a while back that the so-called Arab Spring sprung into life.  It was early last year actually.  And hope abounded!      Now, there is much to give rise to concern that, as this piece from AlterNet, describes it, there is much uncertainty and desperation in the air.

"The "Awakening" is taking a turn, very different to the excitement and promise with which it was hailed at the outset. Sired from an initial, broad popular impulse, it is becoming increasingly understood, and feared, as a nascent counter-revolutionary "cultural revolution" - a re-culturation of the region in the direction of a prescriptive canon that is emptying out those early high expectations, and which makes a mockery of the West's continuing characterization of it as somehow a project of reform and democracy.

Instead of yielding hope, its subsequent metamorphosis now gives rise to a mood of uncertainty and desperation - particularly among what are increasingly termed "'the minorities" - the non-Sunnis, in other words. This chill of apprehension takes its grip from certain Gulf States' fervor for the restitution of a Sunni regional primacy - even, perhaps, of hegemony - to be attained through fanning rising Sunni militancy [1] and Salafist acculturation.

At least seven Middle Eastern states are now beset by bitter, and increasingly violent, power struggles; states such as Lebanon, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain and Yemen are dismantling. Western states no longer trouble to conceal their aim of regime change in Syria, following Libya and the "non-regime-change" change in Yemen.

The region already exists in a state of low intensity war: Saudi Arabia and Qatar, bolstered by Turkey and the West, seem ready to stop at nothing to violently overthrow a fellow Arab head of state, President Bashar al-Assad - and to do whatever they can to hurt Iran."

Gaza: A devastating toll

Ma'an News Agency reports on a UN Report relating to deaths and injuries in Gaza.  The facts ought give us all a jolt.   And yet again, the toll on the ordinary people in Gaza highlights at least two things.  The complicity of foreign governments in turning away from doing anything about the situation of the Gazans and the outrageous actions of the Israelis.

"Israeli forces have killed nearly 2,300 Palestinians and injured 7,700 in Gaza over the last five years, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Thursday.

Some 27 percent of the fatalities in Gaza were women and children, the UN agency said in a report highlighting the effects of Israel's blockade.

The land, sea and air blockade of Gaza entered its sixth year on Thursday.

Under the blockade, exports have dropped to less than 3 percent of 2006 levels.

"The continued ban on the transfer of goods from Gaza to its traditional markets in the West Bank and Israel, along with the severe restrictions on access to agricultural land and fishing waters, prevents sustainable growth and perpetuates the high levels of unemployment,
food insecurity and aid dependency," UNOCHA said.

Israel's naval blockade has undermined the livelihood of 35,000 fishermen, and farmers have lost around 75,000 tons of produce each year due to Israeli restrictions along Gaza's land border, it added.

Meanwhile, Israeli restrictions on imports have led to the growth of the smuggling trade. At least 172 Palestinians have been killed working in tunnels under Gaza's border with Egypt, the report said."

The real kiss of death!

Credited to Daryl Cagle, MSNBC.com

Amazon = Stranglehold

A graphic depiction of the stranglehold Amazon has......  What to do?   Buy local!

The GOP, the Democrats, Israel and ethics

Philip Giraldi is the executive director of the Council for the National Interest and a recognized authority on international security and counter terrorism issues.

In a piece on The Passionate Attachment, Giraldi provides an analysis of who is who in the GOP and Democrats in the US Congress and Senate and their unyielding commitment to anything Israel-related.    Even a prospective Senate candidate for the Democrats - with a significant question of ethics hanging over her head - is also an unquestioning supporter of Israel.    

"It is ironic that the hard core supporters of Israel among the neoconservatives are hoping for a Republican victory in the fall even though the party that has passionate Israel firsters most deeply embedded continues to be the Democrats. To be sure, Eric Cantor, Republican majority leader in the House and the only Jewish congressman from the GOP, has done some heavy lifting for Benjamin Netanyahu, including advising the Israeli Prime Minister that congress would protect him in any conflict with President Barack Obama. Republican from Florida Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who is descended from Sephardic Jews, has also burnished her pro-Israel credentials as chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee while other Republicans from the Bible belt reflexively praise Israel as, one assumes, a tenet of their faith.

But the breadth and depth of outspoken advocates of Israel in the Democratic Party goes far beyond anything the Republicans can muster. Thirteen Jewish Senators are all Democrats as are 26 of the 27 Jewish members of the House. The Democratic National Committee is headed by Debbie Wasserman-Schultz while Steny Hoyer, who is not Jewish, is Minority Whip in the House of Representatives and an outspoken passionate supporter of Israel. Other frequent sponsors of resolutions favoring Israel and condemning Iran and the Palestinians include Howard Berman, Steve Israel, Steve Rothman, Jan Schakowsky, Brad Sherman, Benjamin Cardin, Carl Levin, Frank Lautenberg, Charles Schumer and Joe Lieberman. The late Tom Lantos, often referred to as Israel’s congressman, was also a Democrat. Many of Israel’s friends have characteristically sought and attained powerful positions on committees that deal with foreign and defense policies to enable them to directly influence legislation favorable to Israel.

One would think that more pro-Israel muscle wouldn’t be needed in congress, but yet another prominent Israeli firster is now being groomed for bigger things. Congresswoman Shelley Berkley is being promoted by the Democratic Party leadership to make a run for a Senate seat from the State of Nevada currently held by Republican Dean Heller. Berkley’s support of anything and everything Israel does is notable even by congressional standards. She is co-chair of the Israel Allies Caucus (part of the International Israel Allies Caucus Foundation) and has been described by the Jewish media as “one of the most hawkish pro-Israel voices in the US House.” She has co-sponsored six resolutions relating to Israel including one “recognizing Israel’s right to defend itself against attacks from Gaza” and has been blistering in her condemnation of the several Gaza relief flotillas, which she evidently sees as boatloads of terrorists.
 

Berkley is also not shy about supporting other special interests. She is currently under investigation by the House Ethics Committee (an oxymoron if there ever was one) because she allegedly used her influence to block the closure of a kidney transplant facility in Las Vegas, where her doctor husband works. Given that lack of separation between her personal interest and her responsibility as a congresswoman one might have thought that she should have recused herself from the issue, though the scandal is unfortunately probably insufficient to derail her senatorial bid.

Unlike in some other recent congressional races in Illinois and New Jersey where Israel was a focal point, Berkley will no doubt campaign on local issues in Nevada because raising the ethnic card could prove risky. Heller is a Mormon in a state that has many of his co-religionists. But it should be assumed that if Berkley is elected to the Senate her advocacy of Israel and its policies will be a hallmark of her time in office, just as it has been during her time in the House of Representatives."

Europe at a critical, and potentially dangerous, crossroad

Let it not be said that we haven't been warned.       Europe is in dire trouble on a number of levels.....and that ignores the possible disintegration of the European Union.    There is a more basic "fight" underway where certain countries, such as Greece and Spain, should go down along the path of austerity across the board.   

Spiegel On Line International has a sobering piece "This Time, Europe Really Is on the Brink".    As the piece points out, we ignore history at our peril.

"What is the situation today? Europe's periphery is in depression. According to the IMF, gross domestic product will contract this year by 4.7 percent in Greece and 3.3 percent in Portugal. Unemployment is 24 percent in Spain, 22 percent in Greece and 15 percent in Portugal. Public debt already exceeds 100 percent of GDP in Greece, Ireland, Italy and Portugal. These countries, along with Spain, are now effectively shut out of the bond market.

Now comes the banking crisis. We have warned for more than three years that continental Europe needed to clean up its banks' woeful balance sheets. Next to nothing was done. In the meanwhile, a silent run on the banks of the euro zone periphery has been underway for two years now: cross-border, interbank and wholesale funding has rolled off and been substituted with ECB financing; and "smart money" -- large uninsured deposits of high net worth individuals -- has quietly exited Greek and other "Club Med" banks.

But now the public is finally losing faith and the silent run may spread to smaller insured deposits. Indeed, if Greece were to exit, a deposit freeze would occur and euro deposits would be converted into new drachmas: so a euro in a Greek bank really is not equivalent to a euro in a German bank. Greeks have withdrawn more than €700 million ($875 million) from their banks in the past month.

More worryingly, there was also a surge of withdrawals from some Spanish banks last month. On a recent visit to Barcelona, one of us was repeatedly asked if it was safe to leave money in a Spanish bank. This kind of process is potentially explosive. What today is a leisurely "bank jog" could easily become a sprint for the exits. Indeed, a full run on other PIIGS banks would be impossible to avoid in the event of a Greek exit. Rational people would ask: Who is next?

In the meantime, the credit crunch in the euro-zone banks on the periphery remains severe as banks -- unable to achieve the new 9 percent capital targets by raising private capital -- are selling assets and contracting credit, thus making the euro-zone recession more severe. Fragmentation and balkanization of banking in the euro zone, together with domestication of public debt, is now well underway.

The process of political fragmentation is also speeding up. In the last Greek elections, seven in 10 voters cast their ballots for smaller parties opposed to the austerity program imposed on Greece in return for two EU-led bailouts. Established parties are also losing out to splinter parties in Italy, where the comedian Beppe Grillo's Five Star Movement has just won control of the city of Parma, and in Germany, where a maverick party called the Pirates is all the rage. Less frivolous populists now have substantial support in France, the Netherlands and Norway. This trend is ominous."

Giving multinational free rein care of Obama

truthdig reports on the revelation of secret free-trade negotiations with a number of Pacific nations.    All things aside, the secrecy of what has now been revealed again highlights why the likes of WikiLeaks are a necessity to "protect" the rest of us from politicians, their spin doctors and the vast bureaucracies around the world.

"A document from President Obama’s free trade negotiations that was leaked Wednesday morning revealed an administration proposal to allow multinational corporations doing business in the United States to police themselves via an international tribunal staffed by lawyers on the companies’ payroll. The scheme obliterates a 2008 promise by Obama to do just the opposite."

The Huffington Post:

"The newly leaked document is one of the most controversial of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact. It addresses a broad sweep of regulations governing international investment and reveals the Obama administration’s advocacy for policies that environmental activists, financial reform advocates and labor unions have long rejected for eroding key protections currently in domestic laws.

Under the agreement currently being advocated by the Obama administration, American corporations would continue to be subject to domestic laws and regulations on the environment, banking and other issues. But foreign corporations operating within the U.S. would be permitted to appeal key American legal or regulatory rulings to an international tribunal. That international tribunal would be granted the power to overrule American law and impose trade sanctions on the United States for failing to abide by its rulings.

The terms run contrary to campaign promises issued by Obama and the Democratic Party during the 2008 campaign.

“We will not negotiate bilateral trade agreements that stop the government from protecting the environment, food safety, or the health of its citizens; give greater rights to foreign investors than to U.S. investors; require the privatization of our vital public services; or prevent developing country governments from adopting humanitarian licensing policies to improve access to life-saving medications,” reads the campaign document."

Confirmation of what you always knew....or suspected

You are likely to readily agree with the various matters detailed by Professor Juan Cole on his blog, Informed Comment.

"There are so many open secrets in our corporatocracy. But precisely because they are the open secrets of powerful multi-billion-dollar concerns with phalanxes of attorneys, which after all themselves own most “news” media, they are the secrets that dare not say their name.

But every once in a while, some evidence for these secrets is proffered to the public, perhaps because the corporation involved has been embroiled in a major (known) scandal and so is too weak to prevent it any more. So here are today’s “You always knew it, but…” revelations:

10. You always knew it, but yesterday former British prime minister John Major admitted that billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch came to his office and threatened him that if he did not change his foreign policy, Murdoch’s corporations “would not be able to support” him. Major confesses to having been overly frightened by the prospect of bad publicity. Murdoch’s Fox Cable News likewise works by intimidation and fear tactics.

9. Even though corporation profits as a percentage of our gross domestic product are at a high for the post-War II period, workers have seen little benefit, since CEO compensation is is now 350 times that of the the average worker, up from 50 times in the period from 1960-1985.

8. You always knew it, but now WHO has officially announced that diesel fumes cause lung cancer.

7. Romney wants to remake Obamacare so that millions of Americans with pre-existing conditions will be excluded from it.

6. The UN peace-keeping head has now pronounced whatever is going on in Syria to be ‘a civil war.’

5. Criminalizing ever more drugs is getting in the way of bio-medical research.

4. Stealth Republican-enacted state laws supposedly intended to prevent voter fraud don’t actually work.

3. Too much dependence on natural gas will cause carbon emissions to sky-rocket, according to the International Energy Agency

2. Even congressmen are having to use strong-arm tactics to find out how many Americans are being spied on by the government.

1. Economic inequality is leading the US to the brink, according to a Nobelist in economics."

US Congress effectively sanctions war on Iran

Perhaps someone at the US Congress ought to have told its members that urging war on a member of the UN is a breach of the UN's Charter.    Mere trifle, as America is troubled by all sorts of economic strife, here we have a resolution resoundly passed by Congress in effect sanctioning war on Iran.    From Foreign Policy in Focus.....

"In another resolution apparently designed to prepare for war against Iran, the U.S. House of Representatives, in an overwhelmingly bipartisan 401–11 vote, has passed a resolution (HR 568) urging the president to oppose any policy toward Iran “that would rely on containment as an option in response to the Iranian nuclear threat.”

With its earlier decision to pass a bill that effectively sought to ban any negotiations between the United States and Iran, a huge bipartisan majority of Congress has essentially told the president that nothing short of war or the threat of war is an acceptable policy. Indeed, the rush to pass this bill appears to have been designed to undermine the ongoing international negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program. According to Iranian-American analyst Jamal Abdi, a prominent critic of both the Iranian regime and U.S. policy, the motivation for the resolution may be to “poison those talks by signaling to Iran that the President is weak, domestically isolated, and unable to deliver at the negotiating table because a hawkish Congress will overrule him.”

President Obama’s “red line” on Iran — the point at which his administration would consider taking military action against the country — has been the reactionary regime’s actual procurement of nuclear weapons. The language of this resolution, however, significantly lowers the bar by declaring it unacceptable for Iran simply to have “nuclear weapons capability” — not necessarily any actual weapons or an active nuclear weapons program. Some members of Congress have argued that since Iranians have the expertise and technological capacity to develop nuclear weapons, they already have “nuclear weapons capability.” The hawkish Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) has argued that "everybody will determine for themselves what [capability] means."

****

"Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell, noted how "this resolution reads like the same sheet of music that got us into the Iraq war, and could be the precursor for a war with Iran. It's effectively a thinly-disguised effort to bless war."

As the liberal Zionist group Americans for Peace Now observed, the legislation suggests that “unless sanctions imminently result in Iran voluntarily shutting down its entire nuclear program (and somehow deleting the nuclear know-how from the brains of its scientists), military force will be the only option available to the Obama Administration and will be inevitable in the near term.”