Netanyahu orders gag on Rouhani-Obama call

Truth Nutter Yahoo does not want told to the Israelis or world.

 
The file photo shows Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (L) and US President Barack Obama at the White House.

Press TV
29 September 2013

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered his ministers and spokesmen to refrain from public discussion of the historic phone call between the Iranian and US presidents.

Following Netanyahu’s Saturday instructions, Israeli Minister of Intelligence And International Affairs Yuval Steinitz and Communications Minister Gilad Erdan, as well as Israeli Ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, canceled scheduled interviews with various TV stations, the Israeli daily Ha’aretz reported on its website.

The decision is apparently made to avoid any possible criticism of Obama or US foreign policy by official Israeli figures ahead of Netanyahu’s planned meeting with Obama at the White House on Monday.


An unnamed Israeli source said discussing Iran is the main goal of the prime minister's visit to the White House, prior to his address to the UN General Assembly.

"Netanyahu fears they're heading toward a bad agreement with Iran, and if this is the situation, he prefers there be no agreement whatsoever," the source said.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and his US counterpart, Barack Obama, held a landmark phone conversation on Friday, mostly focusing on Iran’s nuclear energy program.

Rouhani said the White House had contacted Iran's permanent envoy to the UN as he was about to head to the airport to return home from a visit to New York where he attended the 68th Session of the United Nations General Assembly.

“I stressed in the conversation that the nuclear issue is not only the issue of the [Iranian] nation’s rights as well as Iran’s development, but it is also related to Iran’s national pride,” the Iranian President told reporters upon arriving in Tehran on Saturday, adding that Obama acknowledged Tehran’s right to peaceful nuclear technology in the conversation.

The Friday telephone call was the first direct communication between an Iranian and a US president since the victory of Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979.

MRS/NN/AS

original article found here

Read More

Why Israel’s Plan to Bomb Iran is more Dangerous to Israel than Obama-Rouhani Diplomacy

Time soon for a showdown with Israel. Remove THEIR Nukes! Watch the Bully Boys fold fast then.



Informed Comment
By Juan Cole
29 September 2013

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has made no secret of his dismay that the Obama administration is entering into what look like serious negotiations with Iran over the latter’s nuclear enrichment program.

Israeli hawks such as Netanyahu want the US to bomb the Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities in Natanz near Isfahan and in Fordow near Qom. Sometimes they threaten to carry out the bombing raid themselves if the US won’t act. They regularly issue dire prediction that Iran will have a nuclear weapon in six months (Netanyahu has been making such predictions since the early 1990s).
 

But former Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak admitted that Iran has not decided to use its civilian enrichment program, which makes fuel for nuclear reactors, to also produce a bomb. Making a bomb is far, far more difficult than enriching uranium to 5% for fuel or 19.75% for medical isotopes. A bomb would require enrichment to 95% or so. Nor is it the case that just running the centrifuges longer would be sufficient to enrich to bomb grade. Technical problems have to be solved that the Iranians give no sign of having solved.

The danger of the Netanyahu bombing run is great. Such a bombing raid from 30,000 feet is highly unlikely to destroy the enrichment facilities. US generals have pointed out to Congress that in any case, Iran could fairly quickly recover from a loss of centrifuges to bombing, and just make or import more. Only by occupying Iran militarily, as was done to Iraq could the US be sure of mothballing Iran’s nuclear program.

Since the program won’t be destroyed but only somewhat damaged, such a raid will merely push Iran to rebuild the enrichment facilities. In the aftermath, the Iranian authorities could well decide to reverse their public stance and go for a bomb, since their airspace would have been violated and their sovereignty violated.

That is the real lesson of the 1981 Israeli bombing of the Osirak reactor in Iraq. The Osirak reactor was built by the French and was a light water reactor. Light water reactors either can’t be used to make a bomb at all or it would take 100 years to collect enough fissionable material from them.

So Osirak simply was not a threat to Israel. But in bombing Osirak, the Israelis threw a scare into the regime of Saddam Hussein, which tried to use magnets (a magnetatron) to enrich uranium to bomb grade in the period from the early 1980s through 1991. The UN inspectors rolled up this nuclear program after the Gulf War of 1990-1991.

It is not practicable to invade and occupy Iran, which is three times as populous as Iraq (and we all remember how well that went).

Therefore, a missile strike on Natanz and Fordow will leave much of the enrichment program intact. Since Iran is already spinning Centrifuges, it would be easy for it to throw out the UN inspectors and ramp up the program, turning it toward weaponization.

The energy of the street crowds, the fury of prominent of hardliners in the Revolutioanary Guards — all of the furor that will ensue after a bombing will make it difficult for Iran’s leadership to resist the inevitable demands that they go for broke in trying to construct a bomb.

So if what the Israeli leadership really wants is an Iran that is not actively constructing a bomb, the best way to attain that goal is negotiations.

Which is what Obama is trying to do.

original article found here

Read More

A Very Angry America

Usual story, we want it all, but no one wants to pay for it.



Canada Free Press
By Alan Caruba
29 September 2013

I have been trying to remember when there was so much anger between the Democrats and Republicans. Or maybe I should say between liberals and conservatives? Or maybe I should say between the Tea Party and the Republican Party? Or maybe I should say those who find the President of the United States a contemptible liar who has diminished a once great superpower to an object of disrespect?

There is plenty of anger to go around. The mood of the nation is one of anger from one end of the political spectrum to the other. 


What is one to make of a White House senior advisor, Dan Pfeiffer, who compared Republicans to arsonists, hostage-takers, and suicide bombers? The Majority Leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, told Republicans that “There’s no need for conversations” telling them to send over a continuing resolution without defunding ObamaCare. He has called Tea Party members of the House “anarchists.”

Meanwhile, Republicans who do not want to see the government shut down are labeled “RINOs” (Republicans in Name Only). Instead of keeping the spotlight on the Democrats who foisted ObamaCare on us, we have been watching the Republican Party tear itself apart.

As the Wall Street Journal columnist, Kimberly Strassel put it, “The tragic reality is that this vote isn’t shaping up to be all that perilous for the owners of the law. Nobody is even talking about Democrats. Nobody has put an iota of pressure on them for months. Every camera, every microphone has been trained on the GOP.”

Her colleague, Daniel Henniger, described the fratricide arising from the dispute over defunding ObamaCare, saying, “This effort has not, for some time now, been about victory. It has become as RedState’s Erick Erickson put it with his usual eloquences, about shining a light on the ‘cockroaches’ in the GOP. Ted Cruz has spent months berating his own side as ‘appeasers’ who care only about ‘being invited to all the right cocktail parties in town.”

The result has been a GOP in meltdown while the President happily joined in on Friday calling the Tea Party members in Congress—though not by name—“extremists.”

All this has brought to mind Barry Goldwater’s declaration to the Republican Party when he accepted their nomination to run for President in 1964. “Let me remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” He lost by a landslide to the incumbent, President Lyndon B. Johnson.

I understood what Goldwater meant, but extremism has never played well in American politics. Indeed, the Constitution is constructed so that any form of extremism can be thwarted by the checks and balances that slow any rush toward ill-considered legislation. That, however, did not work when the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and imposed Obamacare on everyone.

Those who believe that, even with a Republican majority after the 2014 midterm elections, President Obama would not veto a bill to repeal Obamacare are deluding themselves.

Hating Obama is not enough. Understanding how our republic works is essential.

The Tea Party came about initially as a protest against ObamaCare and then grew as a grassroots political movement that elected a number of those it supported to the House. It is this bloc of votes that Speaker John Boehner has struggled to work with. In the Senate, Tea Party members include Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Tom Coburn, Marco Rubio, and Pat Toomey.

Obama has many faults, but he has proven himself a master manipulator. The current struggle over ObamaCare has played into his hands. That is unfortunate because what the GOP must do between now and the 2014 midterm elections is to focus on defeating those Democrats up for election who have supported Obama.

The general anger against ObamaCare will gain in momentum, but if the GOP is seen as a bunch of crazies, it will affect the outcome. That’s the way it played out in 1964.

At this writing the possibility of a government shutdown is fifty-fifty. It will be over quickly, but by then the GOP will have dealt itself a disservice.

Until the GOP secures control of the Senate, the House, and the White House, ObamaCare will remain the law of the land. That is very bad news for all Americans and the future of America. Meanwhile, it is a good idea to remember that many bad laws have been reversed and repealed.

© Alan Caruba, 2013

original article found here

Read More

Saudi Arabia "Outraged" At Obama's Peace Overtures With Syria, Iran

Middle East Politics in devious play.



Zero Hedge
By Tyler Durden
29 September 2013
 
Back in August, just after the false flag chemical weapon attack in Syria, we showed that despite all the posturing by the Obama administration (and, of course, France's belligerent, socialist leader Francois Hollande), the nation behind the entire Syrian campaign was not one of the "democratic", Western nations but none other than close neighbor Saudi Arabia, and the brain orchestrating every move of the western puppets was one Bandar bin Sultan, the nation's influential intelligence chief. We also explained the plethora of geopolitical and mostly energy-related issues that Saudi and Qatar had at stake, which they were eager to launch a regional war over, just to promote their particular set of selfish interests. A month later, in clear confirmation that this was precisely the case, the WSJ reported that the recent overtures by Obama, brilliantly checkmated by Putin, to push for a peaceful resolution with not only Syria, but suddenly Iran as well, has managed to infuriate Saudi Arabia: traditionally one of the US' closest allies in the region and the key source of crude oil to the western world.
 

From the WSJ:
 

The Obama administration's handling of overtures on Syria and Iran have outraged regional ally Saudi Arabia, which is signaling it wants to do more to boost the power of armed Sunni rebel groups on the ground in Syria as the U.S. pursues diplomacy.

Saudis fear that Syrian President Basher al-Assad will use the time afforded by U.S.- and U.N.-backed diplomacy on Syria "to impose more killing and to torture its people," Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal said Thursday night in New York, in a warning that was overshadowed by the attention paid to the weekend's first public contacts in three decades between the presidents of Iran and the U.S.

Two developments have particularly alarmed Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, another Gulf state: U.S.-backed diplomacy that is giving Mr. Assad an opportunity to surrender his chemical weapons, heading off a U.S.-military strike against the Assad regime; and warming relations between Messrs. Obama and Rouhani.

On Sept. 12, as Mr. Rouhani was tweeting some of the first Iranian overtures in decades to the West, former Saudi diplomat Turki al Faisal was telling a London defense forum that Iran's leaders should stand trial for war crimes for supporting Mr. Assad.

"The current charade of international control over Bashar's chemical arsenal would be funny if it were not so blatantly perfidious, and designed not only to give Mr. Obama an opportunity to back down, but also to help Assad butcher his people," Prince Turki said then.

Oh yes, it is the inequitable treatment of Syrian people that has outraged that paragon of humanism and civil liberties, Saudi Arabia, whose oligarchs are best known for paying billions in petrodollars to bribe their own populace in 2011 to avoid the same swift and terminal fate that befell all other regional dictators during the Arab Spring. Surely the transit of local commodities, either crude or primarily LNG under Syria, has nothing to do with Saudi outrage at the US betrayal of its national interests.

So with the main western ally out of the picture, it means Saudi Arabia will have to brave it alone.
 

The Saudi foreign minister's declaration is significant because Saudi Arabia, while one of the main suppliers of Syria's predominately Sunni opposition, up to now has heeded U.S. fears throughout the conflict that aid to Syrian rebels could strengthen armed, anti-Western Sunni factions. Shiite Muslim Iran backs Mr. Assad in the Syrian conflict, while most Sunni Muslim-ruled Gulf Arab states support the rebels fighting to overthrow Mr. Assad.

Saudi Arabia, for example, long held off on supplying Stinger-style missiles to Syrian rebels because of U.S. worries the missiles could be used against Western targets, security analysts briefed by Saudi officials say. Saudi Arabia increased pressure on the U.S. to allow arming the rebels with antiaircraft weapons this summer, as larger numbers of Hezbollah fighters entered the conflict on the side of Mr. Assad's regime.

Ironically, in now desperately trying to make it appear that Obama (and John Kerry) is a pacifist after nearly launching World War III (while simply playing a minor role in a script designed by Vladimir Putin), the Nobel peace prize winner has succeeded in alienating a key strategic ally while gaining absolutely nothing in return.
 

Saudis now feel that the Obama administration is disregarding Saudi concerns over Iran and Syria, and will respond accordingly in ignoring "U.S. interests, U.S. wishes, U.S. issues" in Syria, said Mustafa Alani, a veteran Saudi security analyst with the Geneva-based Gulf Research Center.

"They are going to be upset—we can live with that," Mr. Alani said Sunday of the Obama administration. "We are learning from our enemies now how to treat the United States."

Why with friends like these, who needs to create false flag attacks against US enemies...

At the end of the day, however, Saudi knows that it can not jeopardize
its key customer relationships and certainly not the Petrodollar, so
while it is worried about the religious and political implications of
what a failure in Syria means, there is little it can actually do on its
own.

Sunni-dominated Gulf Arab governments, especially Saudi Arabia, deeply fear that Shiite Muslim-ruled Iran wants to use Shia populations in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and Yemen to destabilize Gulf Arab governments and try to throw the regional balance of power toward Iran.

Saudi Arabia wants the U.S. and Iran to improve relations for the sake of Middle East stability, but no longer trusts the Obama administration to look out for Saudi Arabia's fears of perceived Iranian expansionism, said Mr. Alani, the analyst with the Gulf Research Center.

In truth, Saudi and other Gulf Arab countries have little leverage to advance their aims in any U.S.-Iran diplomacy, Gulf security analysts said. Beyond revving up support for rebels in Syria, Saudis have only a few other means, such as directing more of their arms or energy deals to Asia, said Michael Stephens, researcher at the Royal United Services Institute think tank in Qatar.

"They feel a little bit powerless in all this," Mr. Stephens said. "The fact that this process is going on…it directly affects them and they have no say in it."

But while Saudi Arabia, tremendous diplomatic manipulator that it is, will behave rationally, it is far less certain what Israel will do and how it will respond to the sudden and very much unexpected US detente in the middle-east: an unpalatable peaceful outcome to the two nations, and one where Israel and Saudi bellicose interests are very much aligned.

original article found here

Read More

UK becomes first state to admit to offensive cyber attack capability

What a naive TWOLLOCK for a Government Minister to go public like this! NEVER give way away your strengths. IDIOT OF A MAN!



Financial Times
By James Blitz
29 September 2013

A declaration by Britain that it is developing the capability to carry out offensive cyber attacks against other nations has triggered criticism and astonishment among security experts.

Philip Hammond, defence secretary, said ahead of the Conservative party conference in Manchester that the UK was “developing a full spectrum military cyber capability, including a strike capability”. It was the first time any country has made such a sensitive statement in public.


In recent years, defence officials and experts across the globe have assumed that a number of advanced military powers – most notably the US, Israel, Russia, China and the UK – have developed the ability to destroy or sabotage other nations’ internet infrastructure as part of military planning and covert operations.

But while the US has hinted in off-the-record briefings that it possesses such capability, no state has declared up front that it is developing the power to strike at national foes in cyber space.

“Why make plans for a cyber-strike force public now?” said Thomas Rid, reader in the department of war studies at King’s College London. “Such aggressive statements can be counter-productive. Other actors will want to react in kind, making everybody less secure.”

Mr Hammond’s plans include employing hundreds of computer experts as reservists in the armed forces. He believes it is no longer sufficient just to build defences against cyber attacks, and that an offensive capability is needed to strike back against enemies and put cyber alongside land, sea, air and space as a mainstream military activity.

Although the US is widely known to have launched the “Stuxnet worm” that attempted to sabotage the Iranian nuclear programme several years ago, US officials have been careful not to state on the record that they carried out the attack.

Defence experts warned the UK’s public declaration could make it harder to argue against the use by China and Russia of cyber offensive capabilities to carry out espionage against western states.

Shashank Joshi of the Royal United Services Institute, a think-tank, thought Mr Hammond’s declaration a “highly unusual step” and meant “the UK may risk losing the moral high ground,” but it needed to be viewed in context.

“It is coming on the eve of a political conference, so it may be a kind of political dog whistle,” he said. “It says to the party: I may be gutting our army but I’m spending a lot of money on this other area that is the future of warfare.”

But another leading analyst said the timing of the declaration – against the background of controversy over leaks by Edward Snowden, the former US National Security Agency contractor – was strange.

“We’re living through a period where the security services and GCHQ [the government listening post] are under huge pressure regarding allegations of their surveillance of citizens in the US and Europe,” said the analyst.

“That has given China a chance to defend itself against arguments that Beijing is conducting massive cyber espionage against the west. It doesn’t really make sense for the British [Ministry of Defence] to come out and make a statement like this and give the Chinese yet more ammunition. I wonder how GCHQ and the Foreign Office view this.” 

original article found here

Read More

Convoy 2013: Truckers Roar to D.C. with Impeachment Movement

It's good to see, in a nation neutered by ignorance and indifference to their plight, that the spirit and flame of freedom can still be ignited by the Truckers saying No More! Enough! Patriots have to start somewhere. America must be recovered and heads banged together to unblock stupidity. Take it BACK! 

• 'The goal is to wake up the sleeping giant, the people of America'

WND
By Micheal Carl
29 September 2013

In less than two weeks, thousands of truckers will descend on Washington, D.C., driving their big-rigs and calling for the restoration of a constitutional republic – but now their plan has taken a new twist: Their friends and families will simultaneously join other Americans rallying on overpasses across the nation for Obama’s impeachment.

The Truckers’ Ride for the Constitution movement has a new ally in their protest against what organizers say is corruption in government and a trashing of the Constitution. The group is teaming up with Overpasses for Obama’s Impeachment to line the routes into Washington with flags during the Oct. 11-13 event.

Both Houses of Congress are tentatively scheduled to be in session Oct. 11.


Truckers Ride for the Constitution leader and organizer Zeeda Andrews, a country singer and former truck driver, said Overpasses Founder James Neighbors reached out to her, suggesting the two groups form an alliance. Neighbors said the partnership is a “natural” merger for a common cause.

“Thousands of truckers have seen us across America,” he said. “We’ve gotten emails from them, thanking us for waking them up. The biker ride in D.C. happened. Then, the next thing you know, the trucker thing did, and we got even more emails from truckers across the country, thanking us.”

He added, “We are going to be out on the overpasses and at truck stops, encouraging the truckers to head to D.C., to join in with the others. They, in exchange, are encouraging their families who are at home to join us on the overpasses.”

Read the details of Obama’s actions and how they don’t align with the Constitution, in “Impeachable Offenses,” by Aaron Klein and Brenda J. Elliott.

Facebook tries to shut truckers down

On Sept. 22, Facebook removed the truckers’ Facebook page, “Truckers to Shutdown America,” which had accumulated 86,000 “likes” within days of its launch.

“Political opponents attacked the Truckers to Shutdown America page within days, and they exploited a little known (to the public) feature on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter called ‘community standards’ flagging, which allows them to instantaneously shut down an account on these social media platforms,” the truckers group explained in a press release.

“[A]n administrator of the page offended someone by saying, ‘God bless you, and God bless America.”

Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif.

According to the group, radio talk-host Pete Santelli, of “The Pete Santelli Show,” has indicated that he “intends to take legal action against YouTube and Twitter on behalf of all truckers, their supporters, as well as other members of the public who are similarly harmed by these unconstitutional ‘community standards.’”

While the truckers’ group says it has made numerous attempts to appeal Facebook’s decision, the page remains unpublished.

Now the group is planning a special delivery to Facebook’s corporate headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., on the same day of the Washington, D.C., convoy.

“Ride for the Constitution will now organize a convoy to Facebook corporate headquarters … to coincide with the ride to Washington, D.C.,” the group explained. “We fully intend to arrive on corporate America’s doorstep with our original ‘community standards’ guideline in hand – the U.S. Constitution.”

The truckers also launched their website, RideForTheConstitution.org, and created a second Facebook page called, “Truckers Ride for the Constitution.”

‘Wake up the sleeping giant’
 
What do they intend to accomplish with a convoy into Washington and nationwide rallies on overpasses?

Neighbors explained, “The goal is to wake up the sleeping giant, the people of America.”

Truckers co-organizer Benn Pam said the rally will be quite a patriotic scene.

“I think it’s great,” he said. “There are going to be thousands of trucks on the highways, flying flags. There are all of those people who are in the Overpasses campaign flying flags. Between the two groups, we may be covering a good part of the national highway network.”

Andrews said more organizations are expected to join the rally, and she has “two other huge groups that will give me a conformation.”
 
But this event isn’t just another political rally. The joint venture has clear objectives. Neighbors said one goal is to pressure Congress to begin the impeachment process.

“In doing so, the people can force Congress to act to begin by removing Obama from office,” he explained.

He said his group will also protest “RINOs and progressive Democrats” before the 2014 midterm elections.

Andrews said she believes connecting with the Overpasses group will help achieve her group’s aims.

“We both want to see an end to the unconstitutional laws in this country,” she said.

By joining forces, she said, both groups will get more publicity and video footage of the event.

However, the group’s short-term goal is to see a three-day cessation of business. Organizers are asking Americans to pre-purchase food and other necessities before Oct. 11 to send a message to Congress.

“We want to see the dollar stop circulating for three days,” Andrews said. “What we also want to see is deregulation for the truckers and our Constitution restored. We want to get rid of unconstitutional laws like the National Defense Authorization Act and the Patriot Act.”

Andrews also said she has a list of grievances she plans to present to every member of Congress before the trucks leave Washington.

Time to rally, contact lawmakers
 
Overpasses for Obama’s Impeachment national coordinator and co-founder Rick Halle said he’s hopeful that the event will get Congress to remember its commitment to the Constitution.

“The ultimate result would be for our representatives to start taking their oath to protect and defend the Constitution seriously,” he said. “At the very least, we will get the message out to others who believe, as we do, that government corruption is rampant and that they are not alone.”

However, Halle admitted that Congress will only feel pressure if enough people rally in the streets and make their voices heard by calling their lawmakers.

“We believe that we will also wake some people up so they start paying attention,” he said. “If enough people wake up and start contacting their representatives, then we believe that they will have no choice but to take notice.”

Some critics in the trucking industry have taken to Facebook to condemn the upcoming protest.

American Trucking Associations spokesman Sean McNally said his group opposes Andrews’ activities.

“The American Trucking Associations is not a sponsor of this ‘strike’ nor do we endorse or condone the activities of these few individuals,” McNally said. “ATA and the vast majority of America’s truck drivers will continue to deliver the nation’s most essential goods unabated even while we continue to work through whatever policy disagreements we have with Congress and the administration.”

But Andrews is undeterred.

She said, “I have the truckers that I need.”

original article found here

Read More

America to Become the Next Poland?

Population c320M. It appears though that c300M are lax minded Morons. Pity the poor 20M carrying them. Of which YOU are one of the carriers, and need a break.



Jutia Group
By Profit Confidential
27 September 2013

I want to share with my readers a chart that I find very interesting. The chart below (courtesy of our research group) compares the number of Americans on food stamps since the so-called recovery began in the S&P 500.

As you can see for yourself, they are following the same trajectory! Our research shows that since late 2009, for every one-percent increase in food stamps usage in the U.S., the S&P 500 increased two percent!


Yes, food stamps usage has skyrocketed in this country. In October of 2009, there were 37.67 million Americans using some form of food stamps. In June of this year, that number reached 47.76 million people! (Source: United Stated Department of Agriculture web site, last accessed September 26, 2013.) This is an increase of more than 10 million Americans using food stamps in just four years.



During the same time, the S&P 500 has increased from around the 1,000 level to above 1,600—an increase of more than 55%.

This is very troublesome. And it’s a black-and-white example of how the rich (those buying stocks) are getting richer in this country, while the poor (those who can’t afford to buy stocks) are getting poorer.

An average American would think we should not be seeing the poor getting poorer when our government is spending rigorously and our central bank is printing $85.0 billion a month in new money—all in the name of economic growth. After all, doesn’t economic growth mean the standard of living improves for everyone?

The reality is simple: the Fed’s action of aggressively creating trillions of dollars in new paper money is helping the rich to a much larger degree than it is helping the average American Joe.

And in the next few weeks, we’ll hear that Congress has increased the government’s debt ceiling for the 79th time since 1960.

What’s next is the big question: how does the U.S. plan to deal with its national debt, with the mountain of debt growing trillions of dollars bigger and the “money in the system” growing by billions of dollars each month?

This month, the government of Poland confiscated half of the private pension funds in the country to pay for its national debt. (Source: Reuters, September 4, 2013.) Through this technique, the government will be taking bond holdings from the pensions, and leaving them with stocks. Why would a country do that? Well, to borrow even more.

The madness goes on.

original article found here

Read More

Seymour Hersh on Obama, NSA and the 'pathetic' American media

His fellow journalists should take encouragement, however the true journalists today are in the alternative media and put in countless hours for pennies or for free to bring truth to the public.

Today they are the hope and pride of journalism. And we owe them immeasurable thanks for having the guts to do what the mainstream media fails to do.

Is it any wonder that audiences are declining for mainstream media?

Seymour Hersh exposed the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam war, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. Photograph: Wally McNamee/Corbis

• Pulitzer Prize winner explains how to fix journalism, saying press should 'fire 90% of editors and promote ones you can't control'

The Guardian
27 September 2013

Seymour Hersh has got some extreme ideas on how to fix journalism – close down the news bureaus of NBC and ABC, sack 90% of editors in publishing and get back to the fundamental job of journalists which, he says, is to be an outsider.

It doesn't take much to fire up Hersh, the investigative journalist who has been the nemesis of US presidents since the 1960s and who was once described by the Republican party as "the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist".

He is angry about the timidity of journalists in America, their failure to challenge the White House and be an unpopular messenger of truth.


Don't even get him started on the New York Times which, he says, spends "so much more time carrying water for Obama than I ever thought they would" – or the death of Osama bin Laden. "Nothing's been done about that story, it's one big lie, not one word of it is true," he says of the dramatic US Navy Seals raid in 2011.

Hersh is writing a book about national security and has devoted a chapter to the bin Laden killing. He says a recent report put out by an "independent" Pakistani commission about life in the Abottabad compound in which Bin Laden was holed up would not stand up to scrutiny. "The Pakistanis put out a report, don't get me going on it. Let's put it this way, it was done with considerable American input. It's a bullshit report," he says hinting of revelations to come in his book.

The Obama administration lies systematically, he claims, yet none of the leviathans of American media, the TV networks or big print titles, challenge him.

"It's pathetic, they are more than obsequious, they are afraid to pick on this guy [Obama]," he declares in an interview with the Guardian.

"It used to be when you were in a situation when something very dramatic happened, the president and the minions around the president had control of the narrative, you would pretty much know they would do the best they could to tell the story straight. Now that doesn't happen any more. Now they take advantage of something like that and they work out how to re-elect the president.

He isn't even sure if the recent revelations about the depth and breadth of surveillance by the National Security Agency will have a lasting effect.
Snowden changed the debate on surveillance

He is certain that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden "changed the whole nature of the debate" about surveillance. Hersh says he and other journalists had written about surveillance, but Snowden was significant because he provided documentary evidence – although he is sceptical about whether the revelations will change the US government's policy.

"Duncan Campbell [the British investigative journalist who broke the Zircon cover-up story], James Bamford [US journalist] and Julian Assange and me and the New Yorker, we've all written the notion there's constant surveillance, but he [Snowden] produced a document and that changed the whole nature of the debate, it's real now," Hersh says.

"Editors love documents. Chicken-shit editors who wouldn't touch stories like that, they love documents, so he changed the whole ball game," he adds, before qualifying his remarks.

"But I don't know if it's going to mean anything in the long [run] because the polls I see in America – the president can still say to voters 'al-Qaida, al-Qaida' and the public will vote two to one for this kind of surveillance, which is so idiotic," he says.

Holding court to a packed audience at City University in London's summer school on investigative journalism, 76-year-old Hersh is on full throttle, a whirlwind of amazing stories of how journalism used to be; how he exposed the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, how he got the Abu Ghraib pictures of American soldiers brutalising Iraqi prisoners, and what he thinks of Edward Snowden.
Hope of redemption

Despite his concern about the timidity of journalism he believes the trade still offers hope of redemption.

"I have this sort of heuristic view that journalism, we possibly offer hope because the world is clearly run by total nincompoops more than ever … Not that journalism is always wonderful, it's not, but at least we offer some way out, some integrity."

His story of how he uncovered the My Lai atrocity is one of old-fashioned shoe-leather journalism and doggedness. Back in 1969, he got a tip about a 26-year-old platoon leader, William Calley, who had been charged by the army with alleged mass murder.

Instead of picking up the phone to a press officer, he got into his car and started looking for him in the army camp of Fort Benning in Georgia, where he heard he had been detained. From door to door he searched the vast compound, sometimes blagging his way, marching up to the reception, slamming his fist on the table and shouting: "Sergeant, I want Calley out now."

Eventually his efforts paid off with his first story appearing in the St Louis Post-Despatch, which was then syndicated across America and eventually earned him the Pulitzer Prize. "I did five stories. I charged $100 for the first, by the end the [New York] Times were paying $5,000."

He was hired by the New York Times to follow up the Watergate scandal and ended up hounding Nixon over Cambodia. Almost 30 years later, Hersh made global headlines all over again with his exposure of the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
Put in the hours

For students of journalism his message is put the miles and the hours in. He knew about Abu Ghraib five months before he could write about it, having been tipped off by a senior Iraqi army officer who risked his own life by coming out of Baghdad to Damascus to tell him how prisoners had been writing to their families asking them to come and kill them because they had been "despoiled".

"I went five months looking for a document, because without a document, there's nothing there, it doesn't go anywhere."

Hersh returns to US president Barack Obama. He has said before that the confidence of the US press to challenge the US government collapsed post 9/11, but he is adamant that Obama is worse than Bush.

"Do you think Obama's been judged by any rational standards? Has Guantanamo closed? Is a war over? Is anyone paying any attention to Iraq? Is he seriously talking about going into Syria? We are not doing so well in the 80 wars we are in right now, what the hell does he want to go into another one for. What's going on [with journalists]?" he asks.

He says investigative journalism in the US is being killed by the crisis of confidence, lack of resources and a misguided notion of what the job entails.

"Too much of it seems to me is looking for prizes. It's journalism looking for the Pulitzer Prize," he adds. "It's a packaged journalism, so you pick a target like – I don't mean to diminish because anyone who does it works hard – but are railway crossings safe and stuff like that, that's a serious issue but there are other issues too.

"Like killing people, how does [Obama] get away with the drone programme, why aren't we doing more? How does he justify it? What's the intelligence? Why don't we find out how good or bad this policy is? Why do newspapers constantly cite the two or three groups that monitor drone killings. Why don't we do our own work?

"Our job is to find out ourselves, our job is not just to say – here's a debate' our job is to go beyond the debate and find out who's right and who's wrong about issues. That doesn't happen enough. It costs money, it costs time, it jeopardises, it raises risks. There are some people – the New York Times still has investigative journalists but they do much more of carrying water for the president than I ever thought they would … it's like you don't dare be an outsider any more."

He says in some ways President George Bush's administration was easier to write about. "The Bush era, I felt it was much easier to be critical than it is [of] Obama. Much more difficult in the Obama era," he said.

Asked what the solution is Hersh warms to his theme that most editors are pusillanimous and should be fired.

"I'll tell you the solution, get rid of 90% of the editors that now exist and start promoting editors that you can't control," he says. I saw it in the New York Times, I see people who get promoted are the ones on the desk who are more amenable to the publisher and what the senior editors want and the trouble makers don't get promoted. Start promoting better people who look you in the eye and say 'I don't care what you say'.

Nor does he understand why the Washington Post held back on the Snowden files until it learned the Guardian was about to publish.

If Hersh was in charge of US Media Inc, his scorched earth policy wouldn't stop with newspapers.

"I would close down the news bureaus of the networks and let's start all over, tabula rasa. The majors, NBCs, ABCs, they won't like this – just do something different, do something that gets people mad at you, that's what we're supposed to be doing," he says.

Hersh is currently on a break from reporting, working on a book which undoubtedly will make for uncomfortable reading for both Bush and Obama.

"The republic's in trouble, we lie about everything, lying has become the staple." And he implores journalists to do something about it.

original article found here

Read More

Sunday Humor: Full Body Scans at Airports

CATSA disclosed the following Airport Screening Results
 

December 2012 Statistics On Airport Full Body Screening From CATSA :
Terrorists Discovered	0
Transvestites	133
Hernias	1,485
Hemorrhoid Cases	3,172
Enlarged Prostates	8,249
Breast Implants	59,350
Natural Blondes	3

It was also discovered that 1,222 politicians had no balls.

Thought you'd like to know.

Read More

US shutdown looms amid political rifts over health law

•  The US Congress remains deadlocked over the funding bill

BBC News
29 September 2013
 
The US government has less than 48 hours to avert a shutdown of government services amid political divisions over President Obama's healthcare law.

On Sunday, the Republican-run House of Representatives voted to pull the law's funding, raising chances of a shutdown.

The government needs to agree a new policy-wide spending bill before the US fiscal year ends at midnight on Monday.


If it fails, non-essential federal services face closure, with employees sidelined or left working without pay.

Early on Sunday, the House passed an amended version of the Senate spending bill that removed funding from the healthcare law.

US Senate Majority leader Harry Reid has vowed that his Democrat-led chamber will reject the Republican bill.

But with the Senate not due to meet again until Monday afternoon, it will have just hours to pass a stand-alone bill free of any measures that undermine the law.

In a statement, Senator Reid said that "after weeks of futile political games from Republicans, we are still at square one".

He added that Republican efforts to change the bill - that would delay the healthcare law for a year and repeal a tax on medical devices - were pointless.

Speaking for the president, White House spokesman Jay Carney said: "Any member of the Republican Party who votes for this bill is voting for a shutdown." The president, he said, would also veto the Republican bill.

However, House Republicans went ahead with the changes, ignoring the veto threat and passing the bill in a late-night session by 231 votes to 192.

The Senate is controlled by Mr Obama's Democratic party, while the Republicans hold the majority in the House of Representatives.

"House and Senate like two locomotives barreling toward one another ... in slow motion," tweeted Republican Representative Scott Rigell. 

'Acting responsibly'

The looming shutdown, which would be the first for 17 years, is one of two fiscal crises facing the US government.

On 17 October, the US treasury department's authority to borrow money to fund its debt obligations expires unless Congress approves a rise in the so-called debt ceiling.

On Friday, President Obama urged House Republicans to pass the Senate's stopgap budget bill and to extend the debt limit, and demanded they not threaten to "burn the house down because you haven't gotten 100% of your way".

Mr Obama said if the nation were to default on its debt, it would have a "profound destabilising effect" on the world economy.

"Voting for the treasury to pay its bills is not a concession to me," he said. "No-one gets to hurt our economy... just because there are a couple of laws [they] don't like."

He described the healthcare law as "a done deal" and said the Republican-backed repeal effort was "not going to happen".

Mr Obama said the Senate had "acted responsibly" in passing the budget measure and that now it was up to Republicans in the House of Representatives "to do the same". 

Civilian cuts

If the government does shut down on 1 October, as many as a third of its 2.1 million employees are expected to stop work - with no guarantee of back pay once the deadlock is resolved.

National parks and Washington's Smithsonian museums would close, pension and veterans' benefit cheques would be delayed, and visa and passport applications would be stymied.

Programmes deemed essential, such as air traffic control and food inspections, would continue.

The defence department has advised employees that uniformed members of the military will continue on "normal duty status", but "large numbers" of civilian workers will be told to stay home.

original article found here

Read More

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov claims Syrian sarin gas was homemade

This looks an ever greater Foreign Policy Fiasco. Thank God the Brits voted down their own Prime Minister and averted the need for a WRONG War!



B Swann
Posted by Joshua Cook
27 September 2013
 
Bashar Assad’s alleged gassing of Syrian citizens was the main argument in support of American intervention in the situation. It has consequently been the main source of controversy and most discussed example of the US’s total outsider status and lack of understanding of the country’s situation. The Western world simply does not know which side of the conflict used the gas.

Now, Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, is saying that a study of the August 21 Damascus gas attack – the event which raised the question of foreign intervention – conducted by the Russian government shows that the gas was homemade. This would indicate that the gas was used by the rebels, rather than the Syrian government which has stockpiles of the chemical weapon.


Samples of the gas were compared to homemade gas used in a similar incident in Aleppo in March, and, according to Lavrov, matched though the concentration was higher in the August attack. Other evidence of rebel guilt was gleaned from news articles in which rebel fighters described being handed strange weapons they didn’t know how to operate.

Homemade sarin gas can be distinguished from industrially manufactured versions of the product by the lack of stabilizers present in the mix. Without stabilizers, the substance has a very short shelf life – a few months for the purest versions, and weeks for others – and cannot be stored in aluminum casings. According to Russian officials, the gas used has no stabilizers present. This necessarily means that the gas was recently produced, though Assad has over 1,000 tons of the substance stockpiled, and French officials have had them in their sights for over 25 years.

The study took place at the request of the Syrian government, which Russia has staunchly backed since the beginning of the conflict. The Syrian government had also requested that the UN investigate the Aleppo incident, but the UN did not respond to the request. Syria’s current government is an important Russian ally in the Middle East, providing the country with a warm-water Naval port. The presence of Saudi-backed Al Qaida and Chechen rebels in the opposition, though, has solidified Russian support of Assad.

Lavrov presented his findings to the UN and to John Kerry, though he emphasized Russia’s continued support of the bilateral plan to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles. Russia will not support any action which could lead to the authorization of military force in the country, however. A UN resolution adopted Thursday is legally binding but provides no means of automatic enforcement.

Lavrov’s evidence does show that rebel use of the gas is a serious possibility, and perfectly illustrates the prudence with which America and other countries should approach the situation in Syria.

Joshua Cook from BenSwann.com asked Congressman Jeff Duncan (SC, R) if the evidence regarding Assad using chemical weapons on Aug. 21st was a “slam dunk?” Congressman Jeff Duncan’s spokesperson Allen Klump told him, “the Congressman has seen evidence that the chemical weapons used in Syria came from Assad. However, that doesn’t change the Congressman’s position that there are no good guys in this situation, and that we do not need to be involved militarily in Syria.”

original article found here

Read More

No. 2 US nuclear commander suspended amid probe

And we wonder what the real truth is ?? You just have know gambling would have prevented him from attaining the job in the first place. How did Obama, Clinton and the Bushes clear vetting?



Press TV
28 September 2013
 
The Naval Criminal Investigation Command has suspended the No. 2 officer at the US military command in charge of all nuclear war-fighting forces, officials said Saturday.

Air Force Gen. Robert Kehler, who heads US Strategic Command, suspended the deputy commander, Navy Vice Adm. Tim Giardina, from his duties more than three weeks ago but it was not publicly announced, according to the Associated Press.

The suspension of a high-ranking officer at US Strategic Command is highly unusual, AP said.


Giardina is still assigned to the command but is prohibited from performing duties related to nuclear weapons and other work requiring a security clearance, according to the command’s top spokeswoman, Navy Capt. Pamela Kunze.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, two senior US officials familiar with the investigation said it is related to gambling issues.

According to studies by the Department of Defense, between 5 percent and 9 percent of US military personnel have experienced a gambling-related problem in their lifetime, and about 2 percent fit the classification for pathological gambling problems.

That is higher than the national average of just under 1 percent, according to John Kindt, a University of Illinois business professor who has studied gambling in the military.

original article found here

Read More

NSA uses metadata 'to create sophisticated graphs' of US citizens’ social connections

If you had any doubt about how far they go, the illusion should be shattered after reading this.

The pointed question is why the need exists for such pervasive surveillance and why is this allowed on the citizens of the world who have no history of wrong doing?

When everyone is under surveillance, then everyone is a suspect real or imagined without regard for citizenship. And that is fundamental failure in a free society that should be a beacon of respect for the rights of people and not a suppressor society. If it is allowed to continue, then what is the difference between the heavy surveillance in China vs the US? Other, than it seems the US imagines it has the right to do this to everyone beyond their borders. This is why the world is turning it's back on America and why American foreign policy is falling apart all over the world, as countries say no. Regrettably Americans are and will continue to pay for such folly until they take back their country and their freedom from the state.



RT
28 September 2013

The US National Security Agency has been exploiting US citizens' personal information drawn from its large collection of metadata to create complex graphs of social connections for foreign intelligence purposes, the latest Snowden leaks have revealed.

Documents obtained by the New York Times from the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden say that the practice has been going on since November 2010, after restrictions prohibiting the agency from working with US citizens’ data were “lifted” by NSA officials.


The NSA was then authorized to conduct “large-scale graph analysis on very large sets of communications metadata without having to check foreignness” of the e-mail addresses, phone numbers or any other identifiers, the documents reportedly said.

The policy shift was intended to help the agency “discover and track” connections between intelligence targets overseas and people in the US, a January 2011 NSA memorandum cited in the documents explained.

According to the report, the agency has been allowed to “enrich” their communications data with materials obtained from public, commercial and other sources while preparing the graphs. Such sources reportedly include Facebook profiles, bank codes, insurance information, passenger manifests, voter registration rolls and GPS location information, as well as property records and unspecified tax data.

The sophisticated graphs provide the agents with direct and indirect “contact chains” between an unspecified number of Americans and people or organizations overseas that are of foreign intelligence interest, the report says.

Not only do they identify the list of possible associates, but also note their locations at certain times, their traveling companions and other personal information, it adds.

The documents provided no information on the results of the NSA surveillance. According to the NYT, the agency’s officials declined to say how many Americans have been caught up in the effort.

The NSA has denied it abuses its practice of vast data collection, which includes the private information of the US citizens, with the agency’s spokeswoman saying that “all of NSA’s work has a foreign intelligence purpose” and that “all data queries must include a foreign intelligence justification.”

In justifying the warrantless analysis of metadata on US soil, the spokeswoman referred to a 1979 Supreme Court ruling saying that Americans could have no expectation of privacy about what numbers they had called.

When asked whether the NSA collects Americans’ locations based on cell phone signals data, the agency’s director Keith B. Alexander on Thursday told a Senate Intelligence Committee that the agency was not doing so as part of the the Patriot Act, but added that a fuller response would be classified.

While the agents are said to be allowed to analyze the metadata, but not the contents of the calls or e-mails, the experts argue that this information alone is enough to produce a portrait of a person based on his contacts, as well as to pick up some sensitive details of an individuals's private life.

“Metadata can be very revealing. Knowing things like the number someone just dialed or the location of the person’s cellphone is going to allow to assemble a picture of what someone is up to. It’s the digital equivalent of tailing a suspect,” Orin S. Kerr, a law professor at George Washington University, told the NYT. The leaked documents, which are said to provide a rare window into what the NSA actually does with the information it gathers, and how it unlocks “as many secrets about individuals as possible,” are the latest revelations obtained via former CIA employee and NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

In the US, Snowden is wanted on espionage charges for leaking classified documents that focused on the massive electronic surveillance by the US government and its foreign allies which collaborated with the NSA.

Snowden was granted temporary asylum in Russia on August 1 after being stuck in a transit zone of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport for more than a month. He is now staying in an undisclosed location, with reports saying he has done some travel and already speaks some Russian. 

original article found here 

Read More

NSA employee spied on nine women without detection, internal file shows

The DIRT keeps coming.

You cannot stop human behavior, the good, the bad, and the ugly which is why this should never be allowed in the first place.

General Keith Alexander said abuse of the NSA's powerful monitoring tools were 'with very rare exception' unintentional mistakes. Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images

• Twelve cases of unauthorised surveillance documented in letter from NSA's inspector general to senator Chuck Grassley

The Guardian
By Paul Lewis
27 September 2013

A National Security Agency employee was able to secretly intercept the phone calls of nine foreign women for six years without ever being detected by his managers, the agency's internal watchdog has revealed.

The unauthorised abuse of the NSA's surveillance tools only came to light after one of the women, who happened to be a US government employee, told a colleague that she suspected the man – with whom she was having a sexual relationship – was listening to her calls.


The case is among 12 documented in a letter from the NSA's inspector general to a leading member of Congress, who asked for a breakdown of cases in which the agency's powerful surveillance apparatus was deliberately abused by staff. One relates to a member of the US military who, on the first day he gained access to the surveillance system, used it to spy on six email addresses belonging to former girlfriends.

The letter, from Dr George Ellard, only lists cases that were investigated and later "substantiated" by his office. But it raises the possibility that there are many more cases that go undetected. In a quarter of the cases, the NSA only found out about the misconduct after the employee confessed.

It also reveals limited disciplinary action taken against NSA staff found to have abused the system. In seven cases, individuals guilty of abusing their powers resigned or retired before disciplinary action could be taken. Two civilian employees kept their jobs – and, it appears, their security clearance – and escaped with only a written warning after they were found to have conducted unauthorised interceptions.

The abuses – technically breaches of the law – did not result in a single prosecution, even though more than half of the cases were referred to the Department of Justice. The DoJ did not respond to a request for information about why no charges were brought.

The NSA's director, Gen Keith Alexander, referred to the 12 cases in testimony to a congressional hearing on Thursday. He told senators on the intelligence committee that abuse of the NSA's powerful monitoring tools were "with very rare exception" unintentional mistakes.

"The press claimed evidence of thousands of privacy violations. This is false and misleading," he said.

"According to NSA's independent inspector general, there have been only 12 substantiated case of willful violation over 10 years. Essentially, one per year."

He added: "Today, NSA has a privacy compliance program any leader of a large, complex organization would be proud of."

However, the small number cases depicted in the inspector general's letter, which was published by Republican senator Chuck Grassley, could betray a far larger number that NSA managers never uncovered.

One of the cases emerged in 2011 ,when an NSA employee based abroad admitted during a lie-detector case that he had obtained details about his girlfriend's telephone calls "out of curiosity". He retired last year.

In a similar case, from 2005, an NSA employee admitted to obtaining his partner's phone data to determine whether she was "involved" with any foreign government officials. In a third, a female NSA employee said she listened to calls on an unknown foreign telephone number she discovered stored on his cell phone, suspecting he "had been unfaithful".

In another case, from two years ago, which was only discovered during an investigation another matter, a woman employee of the agency confessed that she had obtained information about the phone of "her foreign-national boyfriend and other foreign nationals". She later told investigators she often used the NSA's surveillance tools to investigate the phone numbers of people she met socially, to ensure they were "not shady characters".

The case of the male NSA employee who spied on nine women occurred between 1998 and 2003. The letter states that the member of staff twice collected communications of an American, and "tasked nine telephone numbers of female foreign nationals, without a valid foreign intelligence purpose, and listened to collected phone conversations".

original article found here

Read More

Morales: Obama can invade any country for US energy needs

World opinion on a role. America does NOT Rule the world and WILL be stopped from Buccaneering by an ever more angry group of nations. 
 


RT
27 September 2013

In his dramatic speech in New York, Bolivian President Evo Morales called for the UN to be moved out of the US and for Barack Obama to be tried for crimes against humanity. Speaking to RT, Morales explained his controversial proposals.

In his most controversial demand, Morales said that Obama should face an international trial with human rights watchdogs among the judges. The Bolivian president accused his US counterpart of instigating conflicts in the Middle East to make the region more volatile and to increase the US’s grip on the natural resources it abounds in. He gave Libya as an example of a country where “they arranged for the president to be killed, and they usurped Libya’s oil.”

“Now they are funding the rebels that fight against presidents who don’t support capitalism or imperialism,” Morales told Eva Golinger of RT’s Spanish sister channel, Actualidad. “And where a coup d’état is impossible, they seek to divide the people in order to weaken the nation – a provocation designed to trigger an intervention by peacekeeping forces, NATO, the UN Security Council. But the intervention itself is meant to get hold of oil resources and gain geopolitical control, rather than enforce respect for human rights.”

The US also operates in the same imperialist way outside the Middle East, Morales argued. At the General Assembly Obama said that the US “is prepared to use all elements of our power, including military force, to secure these core interests” in the Middle East. Among the core interests, he mentioned “the free flow of energy from the region to the world.” Morales said that Obama’s statement should make any country possessing natural resources worried.

“I think that statement poses a threat to all countries that have energy sources, especially gas and oil,” Morales said. “But mostly those countries that sell gas and oil to the US. It is a direct threat. I am planning to meet with President Maduro and analyze the issue. I understand that this is a direct threat to Venezuela, because in order to secure his country’s energy needs, Obama can invade any country.”

Washington’s relations with Latin America deteriorated this summer, following the grounding of Evo Morales’s plane in Vienna. President Morales was on his way home from Moscow when several EU countries closed their airspace to his jet, on the suspicion that former NSA contractor Edward Snowden – wanted in the US on espionage charges – was on board. Bolivia laid the blame for the plane’s grounding on the US.

Relations with the US were further aggravated after Latin American countries learned they were being extensively spied upon by the NSA.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff devoted her UN General Assembly speech to condemning the US surveillance, calling NSA practices a “breach of international law.”

And Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro skipped his appearance at the UN altogether, citing plans for “provocations” against him.

Maduro’s decision to break his UN General Assembly appointment came after Venezuela’s foreign minister, Elias Jaua, told the media that the US had denied a plane carrying President Maduro entrance into its airspace. The plane was on the way to China and Washington later allowed it to pass, arguing that the delay was caused by an improperly-filed overflight request from Venezuela.

Morales said he did not believe the incident was coincidental, but was indicative of the US’s discrimination against Latin American diplomats.

“I talked about this with the media before, after Bolivian Vice President Álvaro García Linera was not allowed on board an American Airlines flight to the US. Other Bolivian ministers had to go through a similar ordeal; they were also asked to take off their jackets and shoes. This is what happened to ministers, the official representatives of their country. I got a US visa allowing me to stay for six to seven days, which is the short period of time absolutely necessary for me to participate in the General Assembly session. Blackmail over visas, violations of the ministers’ rights, air piracy – all of that raises security concerns.”

What could prevent all this, according to Morales, is moving the UN headquarters out from the US to a politically neutral country. Or if that is unachievable, the Bolivian president wants at least the venue for the annual meeting to rotate among various countries.

“The venue could be different every year, in Europe, Africa, Asia, South America and so on. As for European countries, the UN headquarters could be moved, for example, to Switzerland – a neutral state that can guarantee security. I’ve visited it a number of times to attend events related to human rights and indigenous population rights. In Switzerland, the president can just go outside and take a stroll with his wife, unconcerned about security threats. I found it surprising. Another option could be Austria, also a neutral country, according to its Constitution. The UN has several offices there. Brazil and Argentina are viable options as well. I believe that if it’s impossible to move the UN headquarters to a different country, the summit should be held in a different venue every year, but not in the United States, where we don’t feel safe.”

original article found here

Read More