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U.S Ebola Response Coordinator Ron Klain: Ebola as a weapon 'unlikely'

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White House Ebola czar Ron Klain says the United States has ramped up its training and equipment to handle U.S. patients.

White House Ebola czar Ron Klain says the United States has ramped up its training and equipment to handle U.S. patients.

by Eric Bradner, CNN

Washington: White House Ebola czar Ron Klain on Tuesday downplayed the chances of Ebola being used as a biological weapon after a scare in New Zealand.

Klain said he was briefed Tuesday after a small vial supposedly sent by jihadis and containing Ebola was sent to the offices of the New Zealand Herald newspaper. The newspaper sent the vial to Australia for testing.

“Based on our best information, I think the odds are high that this turns out to be a hoax,” Klain said on CNN’s “The Lead” with Jake Tapper.

He said U.S. officials are “always watching intelligence traffic and other indicators” to see if terror groups are using Ebola or other diseases as biological weapons, but that “we’re not aware of any credible threat” and that the odds of that happening are low.

Klain touted the overall U.S. response to Ebola cases here and to the outbreak in West Africa, saying health officials have “tried to learn the lessons from Dallas,” where the first case was diagnosed in the United States, by increasing training, preparation and protective gear at health facilities nationwide.

“What we’ve shown now is that we can successfully identify and isolate an Ebola patient, we can make sure he doesn’t infect other people, we can treat him, and we can send him home safely,” he said.

When President Barack Obama tapped Klain as his Ebola response coordinator, Republican lawmakers howled that the long-time political operative — Klain served as Vice President Joe Biden’s chief of staff and helped Obama with debate preparation during his re-election campaign — isn’t a medical professional.

But Klain told Tapper on Tuesday that he isn’t serving in a role that requires a medical background.

“My role isn’t to give medical advice, it’s to coordinate this massive response that President Obama has marshaled here at home and in Africa,” Klain said.

US Commitment to Terror, Expansionism, Maintains Israel’s Illegal Wall

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by Robert Barsocchini

As seen in the below graphic from the Washington Post, essentially every country recognizes the State of Palestine, except for Western Europe and some of the places it has conquered, such as North America, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as some US “partners” that “wouldn’t want to ruffle Washington’s feathers”, including “South Pacific island nations like Kiribati and Nauru” (WaPo).

palestine-Recognition

The US has for decades used terrorism to singularly prevent Palestine from becoming a full UN member state. Likewise, without the US providing the muscle and money, Israel would not be able to continue, in defiance of the world, to occupy, colonize, ethnically cleanse, and commit terrorism and massacres against Palestine.

Without US muscle backing its terror and expansionism, Israel, despite being the strongest force in the Mid East and in possession of the “world’s best” air force and a large, rogue nuclear arsenal, would have no choice but to decolonize Palestine and remain within its own universally recognized borders, which are those that existed before June, 1967, when Israel illegally invaded and began colonizing and ethnically cleansing areas beyond those lines.

For approximately 40 years, the US has vetoed, generally alone (aside from Israel), every UN resolution demanding that Israel comply with this worldwide legal, democratic consensus.  The vote is typically 165 countries against the US and Israel, and sometimes five or six other countries (European-conquered lands and some tiny islands such as Micronesia).

Obama has continued the reign of terror and expansion, specifically rejecting, at the UN, the demand for Israel to cease even future settlement activities, let alone abandon its current illegal settlements, all war crimes. This particular resolution was brought at the 15 member Security Council, and received 100% approval aside from Obama’s isolated vote of rejection, which is enforceable only due to the US dedication to terrorism and democracy-prevention.

On the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Palestinians have tried to call attention to the wall that still exists, the illegal US-backed wall that Israel is building and using as one of its means of illegally annexing Palestinian territory. Dr. Noam Chomsky, for one, has pointed out that if the wall were about security and not illegal expansionism, it could simply be made gigantic and utterly impenetrable, and be put on Israel’s legal border, which countries are allowed to do.

Palestinians break through illegal Israeli annexation wall. Photo: RT

Dr. Norman Finkelstein has suggested that Palestinians physically break down the wall en masse, as a non-violent solution, since the highest court in the world ruled that the wall is illegal and must be deconstructed, but the USA is preventing UN member states from carrying out the legally required and universally supported task.

Since the recent US/Israeli massacre against Palestine, Israel has continued its ongoing cease-fire violations, and has also announced or built thousands of new illegal settlement units in Palestine, and has illegally stolen over 4,000 more acres of Palestine (see here and here).

Note that although the Washington Post published the above map, a chief reason that the US is able to continue to illegally back Israel, and even increase illegal support for Israel as Obama has done (in defiance of the US population), is that US media never provides the full context of the situation, as Professor Edward Said pointed out (as noted by Jews for Justice in the Middle East):

It is simply extraordinary and without precedent that Israel’s history, its record — from the fact that it..is a state built on conquest, that it has invaded surrounding countries, bombed and destroyed at will, to the fact that it currently occupies Lebanese, Syrian, and Palestinian territory against international law — is simply never cited, never subjected to scrutiny in the U.S. media or in official discourse…

Edward Said in “The Progressive.” May 30, 1996

Given the full and accurate picture of how Israel has come into existence and what it does, already dwindling US public support for Israel (much of which, however, is based on religious fundamentalism) would certainly decrease, as public support for US atrocities generally decreases as information about them increases.

Robert Barsocchini is a researcher focusing on global force dynamics.  He also writes professionally for the film industry. Here is his blog.  Also see his free e-book, Whatever it Takes – Hillary Clinton’s Record of Support for War and other Depravities. Click here to follow Robert and his UK-based colleague, Dean Robinson, on Twitter.

Where are the bodies, MH17 families ask

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Flowers and mementos left by local residents at the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 are pictured near the settlement of Rozspyne in the Donetsk region in this July 19, 2014 file photo. CREDIT: REUTERS/MAXIM ZMEYEV/FILES

Flowers and mementos left by local residents at the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 are pictured near the settlement of Rozspyne in the Donetsk region in this July 19, 2014 file photo. CREDIT: REUTERS/MAXIM ZMEYEV/FILES

by Anthony Deutsch and Thomas Escritt, Reuters

Amsterdam: Daisy Oehlers and Bryce Fredriksz, a Dutch couple in their early 20s, were sitting near the left wing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 on their way to a holiday in Bali, when “high energy objects” – as officials later called them – struck the plane over eastern Ukraine.

Their bodies were torn apart and scattered across miles of the conflict zone below.

Three months later, Daisy’s cousin Robby checked into a cheap hotel in Donetsk to start searching the area for any trace of his relatives. “There was a crater from a rocket impact just next to the nose part of the aeroplane,” he said. “I found a blue suitcase. It wasn’t hers.”

Oehlers, a singer, and the relatives of as many as 50 other victims are growing increasingly frustrated by the fact that the authorities have not helped them trace loved ones lost on July 17, when the flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was shot out of the sky.

All 298 passengers and crew – two-thirds of them Dutch – were killed. The Dutch government, a leading Russian trading partner, still hesitates to call it an attack.

Attempts to recover parts of the aircraft and human remains have repeatedly been called off due to fighting on the ground. Families also say the Dutch government is not giving them enough information. One law firm has said it is preparing to sue the government for negligence over its handling of the case.

Bryce and Daisy’s relatives have Bryce’s foot and part of a bone for Daisy, but no more. Relatives of nine people on board the Boeing 777 have no remains at all. Some families are waiting for enough body parts to hold funerals.

“How much do you need?” asked Oehlers. “30 percent? 40 percent?”

He spent three days searching the site between Donetsk and Luhansk, the rebel-held eastern Ukrainian towns that have been flashpoints in the conflict, and took a TV crew to draw attention to his family’s mounting anger. He said he saw signs of bombardment on the field, where stray dogs wandered. Winter is approaching. As fighting persists, the families’ hopes diminish.

“You just wonder; what are they doing?” he said of the authorities. “If it was another country, they’d just grab their stuff and head out there. I don’t know what the spirit of Dutch politics is, but I think they are too soft.”

HELD TO ACCOUNT

The Dutch are conducting two parallel investigations: one into the cause of the crash, and a criminal inquiry – the single largest in Dutch history. There are now 100 Dutch law enforcement officials involved in that case, including 10 prosecutors, said spokesman Wim de Bruin.

But no forensic investigators have made it to the crash site. That makes the recovery of evidence nearly impossible.

Washington says it has intelligence that overwhelmingly backs the theory that the plane was shot down by a missile fired by pro-Russian separatists. Russia denies any involvement.

Many Dutch also believe the plane was downed by rebels using missiles provided by Moscow. But their leaders, mindful of the country’s heavy reliance on Russian energy, have never assigned blame. Prime Minister Mark Rutte has called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to assert his influence over the rebels.

Pieter Omtzigt, legislator with the opposition Christian Democratic Appeal party and a member of the foreign affairs committee, says the government is not being open enough.

He submitted a list of 43 questions about the disaster, of which he said 29 went unanswered, including one about Russian and Ukrainian cooperation and whether crash investigators had access to key U.S. intelligence.

“On all these questions, we haven’t had an answer,” he told Reuters in an interview. “I want to see full proof – if you kill 298 people you have to be held accountable.”

“COME GET ME!”

The challenges facing the Dutch investigators are extreme.

The closest comparison is the bombing of Pan Am flight 103, over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, which killed 254 people. The investigation, conducted in peacetime Scotland, took three years, during which 4 million pieces of evidence were recovered from a crash site spanning 2,000 sq km (770 sq miles). It took a decade to go to trial.

“We searched rivers, lochs and reservoirs and recovered many personal effects, pieces of aircraft and debris, as well as other much more difficult ‘recoveries’ I’d rather not go into here,” said one police diver involved in the search.

Even then, the trial of two Libyan intelligence agents, at a specially constituted Scottish court in a disused Dutch military base, secured only one conviction. To this day, many relatives are convinced that the man eventually convicted was innocent.

In the Netherlands, Rutte is under growing pressure: his popularity has dropped since the MH17 crash.

Silene Fredriksz, Bryce’s 51-year-old mother, said she is having difficulty sleeping. “It is simply taking too long,” she said. “I hear him call: ‘come get me!'”

(Edited by Sara Ledwith)

Egypt draft law to restrict media coverage of the military

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egypt-press-freedom

by Al-Akhbar

Egypt is drafting a law tightening restrictions on media coverage of the armed forces, government and judicial sources said, alarming journalists who believe this move will sound the death knell for freedom of the press.

One source played down any threat to freedoms won after the 2011 overthrow of former president Hosni Mubarak, saying legislation under discussion would restrict only reporting that endangers “national security” as Egypt fights Islamist militants.

However, journalists and activists fear that if implemented, the law would end general coverage of the military which, as the main pillar of the Egyptian state, wields major political and economic influence.

A law in effect for decades already bans reporting on the military without permission, but a text of the new draft leaked to local media would increase curbs and penalties.

Before Mubarak’s fall, Egyptian media ran only official statements on the army, but after the uprising the ban was not fully enforced and criticism of the military became widespread.

The draft has not been officially released, but a text that appeared in the pro-government El-Watan newspaper last week suggests it will ban publication of “any news, information, statistics, statements or documents related to the armed forces, their formations, movements… operations or plans” without written permission from army general command.

Anyone who breaks the law would face up to five years in jail and a fine of 10,000 to 50,000 Egyptian pounds ($1,398 to $6,990.50), rising to prison without parole and a fine of 100,000-200,000 pounds ($13,981-27,962) in times of war or emergency rule.

That wording would cripple reporters in a country where the military has provided most presidents since Gamal Abdel Nasser and his Free Officers overthrew the monarchy in 1952. The army also controls businesses from bottled water to washing machine makers, and supervises infrastructure projects including an expansion of the Suez Canal.

The government has not publicly commented on the leaked draft but three sources said the law was being discussed by Egypt’s Council of State, a judicial body that advises the government and drafts legislation.

“I see the law as very bad and an assault on press freedom,” said Amer Tammam, a journalist at the state-owned Egyptian Al-Akhbar newspaper. “The defense ministry carries out economic projects… If I publish a report on corruption in any of these projects do I get jailed for five years? If I publish a report about a fight at a petrol station that belongs to the army do I also go to jail?”

The proposed law adds fire to the flame

A source said the changes had been prompted by violence in the Sinai Peninsula where the army is battling militants.

“First, it is a draft. It is still being discussed by the Council of State so no one knows what it will say,” said the source, declining to be named as he was not authorized to speak.

“But the aim is not to ban anyone from writing about the military in general. Nowhere in the world are journalists allowed to write about military movements or operations without checking that it does not undermine security or expose troops.”

Journalists worry that what harms “national security” is open to interpretation and the law will expose them to arrest and military trial if they misjudge the red lines. They say it gives the army scope to eliminate criticism.

“The draft law uses loose phrasing… and will… open the door to fear among journalists that they will be pursued by the military,” said another journalist, declining to be named.

The 2011 uprising led to the election of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Mursi as president. Mursi was ousted last year by then-army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, after protests against Mursi’s rule. Sisi went on to win a presidential vote in May.

Since Sisi came to power, Egyptian media have largely reverted to the self-censorship they practiced before 2011.

After an attack that killed 33 security personnel in Sinai last month, Egyptian newspaper editors issued a statement promising not to publish reports that would undermine the army.

On Wednesday, seven Egyptian non-governmental organizations announced that they would not participate in the UN’s Universal Periodic Review, which all 193 UN countries must undergo every four years, saying they feared anyone who spoke against the Cairo authorities would face persecution back home.

Moreover, Cairo has set a November 10 deadline for all NGOs to register with the government, in a move activists warn will deal a death blow to the country’s civil society.

“Civil society is on the verge of disappearing,” warned Philippe Dam of Human Rights Watch.

In late October, Sisi approved of a military decree, similar to martial law implemented at the time of ousted Mubarak, to expand military power under the pretext of “ensuring stability.”

Sisi’s critics are likely to see such a step as the latest move to clamp down on dissent by a government that also issued a strict new law curbing protests.

Ending martial law throughout the country, which gives the authorities wide-ranging policing powers, was one of the demands of the popular uprising.

As Sisi’s government continues to tighten its military grip on the country, the UN’s top human rights body took Egypt to task Wednesday for a litany of rights abuses, including its crackdown on supporters of ousted Mursi, journalists and activists.

The participant countries and rights groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, condemned Sisi’s government and urged the council to order an international probe into the crackdown, mass arrests and unfair trials.

(Reuters, AFP, Anadolu, Al-Akhbar)

The U.S. launches another dumb war in the Middle East. Why hitting ISIS will just make matters worse

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For most of this century, we’ve been fighting wars to enhance our security, and each time, we find ourselves with more enemies and less security.

Kobani strike

by Steve Chapman, Reason

War, it’s been said, is God’s way of teaching Americans geography. Maybe we do learn how to locate the countries we invade or bomb on a map. But recent experience indicates how much we don’t know about those societies and how slow we are at learning.

The United States is still involved in a 13-year-old war in Afghanistan, and President Barack Obama has undertaken a new one against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, just three years after he withdrew the last of our troops from Iraq. The administration is also carrying on a drone missile campaign—which looks eerily like war from the receiving end—in Pakistan and Yemen.

Yet the republic has just concluded an election campaign that gave almost no attention to what the United States government is doing, or should be doing, in these places. For the most part, the topic was discussed in only the vaguest terms, but often it was simply absent. No country in history has ever done so much fighting in so many places with so little interest from its own citizens.

Nor do the people in power who make these ambitious commitments necessarily have a clue where they will lead. Over and over, things turn out in ways that come as a complete and thoroughly unwelcome surprise.

No one could have imagined in October 2001, when we went into Afghanistan to crush the Taliban and al-Qaida, that we would still be there 13 years later and so would they. Nor did we realize that our crucial supposed ally in the fight, Pakistan, would prove not merely unhelpful but downright hostile.

As New York Times correspondent Carlotta Gall documented in her book “The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan, 2001-2014,” the government of Pakistan was actively helping our foes while reaping $23 billion in aid from Washington. U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke eventually realized, “We may be fighting the wrong enemy in the wrong country.”

Unexpected? Of course. But it’s the sort of thing that happens when governments act with slivers of knowledge and mountains of hubris, relying on bright visions and brute force. That’s how we stormed into Iraq and won a swift military victory—which we proceeded to squander by disbanding the Iraqi military and banning former members of Saddam Hussein’s party from the new government.

Both decisions sounded sensible—but only because our leaders were so ignorant of Iraq that they had no idea what the effects would be. In practice, we managed to turn huge numbers of Iraqis against us and spawn an insurgency that would kill thousands of our troops. We also inadvertently rained blessings on our longtime enemy to the east. The U.S. fought a war against Iraq, and the winner was Iran.

The war on Islamic State is even more rife with uncertainty, because so many of its enemies are our enemies. If we do damage to it, we are indirectly strengthening the mullahs in Tehran, al-Qaida and Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. We’re also bolstering the irresponsible Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad whose persecution of Sunnis gave rise to the group.

The Wall Street Journal reports that by hitting Islamic State targets in Syria, we helped al-Qaida units to defeat the “moderate” Syrian rebels we have helped in their fight against Assad. Meanwhile, our NATO ally Turkey balks at assisting us. Why? Because those fighting on “our” side include Kurdish groups allied with separatists it has been fighting for 30 years.

For that matter, the U.S. air war is the best recruiting tool the Islamic State ever had. Already, a confidential UN Security Council report recently noted, some 15,000 foreigners have poured into the region to join it and other extremist groups.

“Numbers since 2010 are now many times the size of the cumulative numbers of foreign terrorist fighters between 1990 and 2010—and are growing,” it said, according to The Guardian. As usual, we’re creating jihadis faster than we kill them. Chances are excellent that we are also sowing an array of unforeseen problems that will haunt us for years to come.

For most of this century, we’ve been fighting wars to enhance our security, and each time, we find ourselves with more enemies and less security. By now it should be clear that is not a coincidence. If the war on Islamic State solves nothing or makes things worse, we will be unhappy, but we shouldn’t be surprised.

Steve Chapman is a columnist and editorial writer for the Chicago Tribune.

80 percent Catalans vote for independence from Spain

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catalonia-independence-vote-spain

by RT

An overwhelming majority of Catalans have said “yes” to independence and secession from the central Spanish government in Madrid in a highly-anticipated but symbolic referendum poll on Sunday.

Some 80.72 percent voted to form a state independent of Spain, Joana Ortega, vice president Catalonia said shortly after midnight, with over two million Catalans reportedly turning out for the unofficial referendum. Ortega could not immediately give an official turnout rate since there was no formal electoral roll for some 5.4 million registered Catalan voters.

Voters were given two questions to answer, “Do you want Catalonia to be a state?” was the first and in the case of a positive response, voters were asked: “Do you want Catalonia to be an independent state?”

“Yes-no” response obtained 10.11 percent; “no-no” 4.55 percent; and blank votes accounted for 0.56 percent, with 88.44 percent of the votes counted.

President of Catalonia, Artur Mas, called the symbolic vote on independence “a complete success” with “clearly more than two million people” participating despite the veto imposed by Madrid.

“Let no one forget, especially the Spanish government, that Catalonia has once again shown that it wants to govern itself,” he said at a hearing in Barcelona after the vote. It is “a giant step in our legitimate aspiration to peacefully and freely decide our future.”

A message clearly not understood in Madrid, where the Minister of Justice, Rafael Catala, on behalf of the Spanish government, defined the vote as “political propaganda organized by pro-independence forces.”

After Spain’s High Court ruled the independence referendum proposed by Catalan leader Artur Mas unconstitutional last month, the Madrid government has also issued a ban on the informal poll, forbidding Catalans from making any public show of support for independence.

In response to Catala’s statement, Mas said he feels bad for the people in central government who missed “a golden opportunity to understand the message of Catalan will,” recalling the examples of referendums held recently in Scotland as well as Quebec province of Canada in 1995.

Earlier, the Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, stated the vote “will not have any effect.”

But that did not stop some 41,000 volunteers from organizing the election with over 1,300 polling centers set up for the historic vote.

In the meantime, Mas said his government will push for an official referendum.

“We deserve the right to vote in a definitive referendum and this is something that maybe is understood in Madrid, but if it is not understood in Madrid our will is to go on with this process,” he said after casting his ballot.

As for Madrid, Catala said, that the central government would evaluate the facts of Sunday’s vote and decide whether or not to begin legal proceedings against the regional government.

Historically Catalonia, which already enjoys significant autonomy from Madrid, has been one of Spain’s better-off regions and the local population has resented having to send their taxes to the capital to help support poorer areas of the country. However, the area of 7.5 million people is currently €57.1 billion euros ($78.5 billion) in debt, which is the most of any of Spain’s 17 autonomous regions.

Catalonia, which accounts for one-fifth of Spain’s economic output, has had no problem in attracting foreign investment, which grew by 31.5 percent in 2013 according to figures from Spain’s economy ministry.

British spies are free to target lawyers and journalists

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Photo: Barry Batchelor/AP

Photo: Barry Batchelor/AP

by Ryan Gallagher, The Intercept

British spies have been granted the authority to secretly eavesdrop on legally privileged attorney-client communications, according to newly released documents.

On Thursday, a series of previously classified policies confirmed for the first time that the U.K.’s top surveillance agency Government Communications Headquarters (pictured above) has advised its employees: “You may in principle target the communications of lawyers.”

The U.K.’s other major security and intelligence agencies—MI5 and MI6—have adopted similar policies, the documents show. The guidelines also appear to permit surveillance of journalists and others deemed to work in “sensitive professions” handling confidential information.

The documents were made public as a result of a legal case brought against the British government by Libyan families who allege that they were subjected to extraordinary rendition and torture in a joint British-American operation that took place in 2004. After revelations about mass surveillance from National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden last year, the families launched another case alleging that their communications with lawyers at human rights group Reprieve may have been spied on by the government, hindering their ability to receive a fair trial.

In a statement on Thursday, Reprieve’s legal director Cori Crider said that the new disclosures raised “troubling implications for the whole British justice system” and questioned how frequently the government had used its spy powers for unfair advantage in court.

“It’s now clear the intelligence agencies have been eavesdropping on lawyer-client conversations for years,” Crider said. “Today’s question is not whether, but how much, they have rigged the game in their favor in the ongoing court case over torture.”

Rachel Logan, a legal adviser at rights group Amnesty International, said that spying on lawyers affords the U.K. government an “unfair advantage akin to playing poker in a hall of mirrors.”

“It could mean, amazingly, that the government uses information they have got from snooping on you, against you, in a case you have brought,” Logan said. “This clearly violates an age-old principle of English law set down in the 16th century—that the correspondence between a person and their lawyer is confidential.”

In the U.S., the NSA has also been caught spying on lawyers. Earlier this year, the agency was forced to reassure attorneys that it “will continue to afford appropriate protection to privileged attorney-client communications acquired during its lawful foreign intelligence mission in accordance with privacy procedures required by Congress, approved by the Attorney General, and, as appropriate, reviewed by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.”

In the U.K., the oversight of intelligence agencies is undoubtedly far more lax.

According to the documents released Thursday, in at least one case legally privileged material that was covertly intercepted by a British agency may have been used to the government’s advantage in legal cases. One passage notes that security service MI5 identified an instance in which there was potential for “tainting” a legal case after secretly intercepted privileged material apparently ended up in the hands of its lawyers.

The policies state that the targeting of lawyers “must give careful consideration to necessity and proportionality,” but the GCHQ policy document adds that each individual analyst working at the agency is “responsible for the legality” of their targeting, suggesting that a large degree of personal judgement is involved in the process. Notably, there is no judicial oversight of eavesdropping conducted by GCHQ or other British security agencies; their surveillance operations are signed off by a senior politician in government, usually the Foreign or Home Secretary.

The categories that allow the agencies to spy on lawyers or others working with “confidential” material, such as journalists, are extremely broad. One policy document from GCHQ notes:

If you wish the target the communications of a lawyer or other legal professional or other communications that are likely to result in the interception of confidential information you must:

Have reasonable grounds to believe that they are participating in or planning activity that is against the interests of national security, the economic well-being of the UK or which in itself constitutes a serious crime.

In practice, this could mean that any lawyer or an investigative journalist working on a case or story involving state secrets could be targeted on the basis that they are perceived to be working against the vaguely defined national security interests of the government. Any journalists or lawyers working on the Snowden leaks, for instance, are a prime example of potential targets under this rationale. The U.K. government has already accused anyone working to publish stories based on the Snowden documents of being engaged in terrorism—and could feasibly use this as justification to spy on their correspondence.

GCHQ declined to comment for this post, referring a request from The Intercept to the government’s Home Office. A Home Office spokesperson said: “We do not comment on ongoing legal proceedings.”

Feed the poor, go to jail

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Photo: eideard.com

Photo: eideard.com

by Subhash Gatade

Whether serving food to the homeless is a crime?

Ask Arnold Arbott, known as Chef Arbott, a 90 year old man from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, who along-with two other members of a Church charity faces potential jail term for at least six months for the same ‘offence’. In fact his name finds prominent mention in the police records in the past week for breaking the new city ordinance which has come into effect recently which characterises his act as breach of law, according to reports.

Talking to a newsperson he said:

“These are the poorest of the poor. They have nothing. They don’t have a roof over their head. And who could turn them away?”

Report published in ‘Independent’ tells us that he has been a campaigner of sorts who had sued the City of Fort Laurderdale when he was banned from feeding the homeless on the beach. (1999) and the court vindicated his stand and declared that the rule was against the constitution.

It may be mentioned here that starting in about 2006; several cities began arresting, fining, and otherwise oppressing private individuals and non-profits that feed the homeless and less fortunate.

Las Vegas happened to be the first city which banned feeding the homeless (2006) under the ostensible reason that ‘..[g]iving food to people already in the public park violated statutes requiring permits for gatherings of 25 or more people. “When the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Nevada took issue with this interpretation of permit laws, the City took a more direct approach: “it explicitly outlawed the sharing of food with anyone who looked poor.” Another reason given by the city Mayor to enact such a regulation was to “push all homeless feedings indoors where it would be safer” but according to civil liberty activists it was not to protect the health of the homeless but “to protect city’s image in a tourist area”.

Coming back to Fort Lauderdale, Florida the new regulations – which has come into effect or is planned to in Seattle, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Dallas, and Philadelphia – ‘[r]equire groups to be at least 500 feet away from residential properties and food sites are restricted to one per city block, but charities have criticised the rules as forms of implementing social cleansing.’

It is possible that the international coverage which this case has attracted may deter the law authorities there to send Chef Arbott and his colleagues to jail, but the pertinent question remains how the state itself is keen not only to criminalise the destitute, the homeless, vulnerable sections of our society but also all those people who are genuinely concerned about their plight and want to do something about it.

For example, sometime back one heard of members of a group of women called ‘Women’s Institute’ were stopped from distributing flyers for a charity show. According to another report, Liza Day, 68 who was part of the group was confronted by a council litter warden, who warned her that ‘it was illegal to hand out the charity adverts.’ They were asked to ‘secure a licence from the council to legally hand flyers to passers-by.’ It was for the first time in six years they were told that they must not hand out flyers.

Question arises why the powers that be are keen that ordinary people’s concern towards plight of fellow human beings or their zeal to engage in voluntary action to do something about it is contained under a rubric of law, regulations, talk of order etc. Why they are worried about any unleashing of such concern?

Such disciplining of ordinary people helps establish the hegemony of the ruling classes and their ideas and helps defang any possible resistance to it. People are told that rules are sacrosanct and should be followed because they are in the broader interest of the society and they rarely learn to question the basis of rules themselves.

Look at the question of corporate tax dodgers and the treatment they receive at the hands of establishment.

Interestingly just when the news about Chef Arbott’s possible prosecution hit the headlines, reports of an investigation done by a consortium of Investigative Journalists which has collaborated with reporters from more than 25 countries became public. It found that more than 340 multinational corporations have avoided paying billions of dollars in taxes by obtaining secret deals in Luxembourg. The journalists obtained nearly 28,000 pages of confidential documents which reveal that some of the world’s largest companies, including Pepsi, IKEA, AIG, Coach and Deutsche Bank, have channelled hundreds of billions of dollars through Luxembourg — a small country in Western Europe known as a “magical fairyland” for corporate tax dodgers. Some firms have secured effective tax rates of less than 1 percent.

In a write-up in Daily News, Juan Gonzalez describes how

‘[o]ver the past decade, multinational companies have funnelled more than $2 trillion in profits out of the U.S. and parked it overseas. Much of it is labelled “deferred taxes” and invested to make more money. They keep it overseas to evade paying our 35% federal corporate tax. Meanwhile, they’re lobbying fiercely in Washington for a huge one-year tax reduction to only 5% before they’ll agree to repatriate their money.’ He further adds that ‘Pfizer alone saved $11 billion with it, then turned around and reduced its workforce by more than 40,000, according to David Cay Johnston, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who routinely exposes corporate tax abuses.’

Anybody can gather from her/his experience that none of these corporate tax dodgers would ever be punished for their act unless and until ordinary people in the United States of America are able to raise their voice unitedly. Possibility is that – thanks to the Republican dominance in both houses of the Congress – they would be granted amnesty. Ten years back the then federal government had granted such a bonanza under President George W. Bush

One can see for oneself that if you dodge taxes i.e. ‘steal’ monies which are meant to go for the government coffers, then forget prosecution, you will be rewarded but if you try to go the Chef Arbott way, helping those very people who are living on the margins of society because of the structural inequalities, you would be sent to jail.

Welcome to USA, the strongest democracy in the world.

Critics slam U.S Military's 'Disturbing' praise for Israel's Gaza offensive

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‘It is very disturbing and shameful that U.S. military commanders believe that what Israel did in Gaza is something to be applauded,’ says Ramah Kudaimi of US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation

A Palestinian child sits above the ruins of his ruined home, and looks at thousands of homes destroyed because of the war on Gaza. © 2014 Pacific Press

A Palestinian child sits above the ruins of his ruined home, and looks at thousands of homes destroyed because of the war on Gaza. © 2014 Pacific Press

by Common Dreams

Critics say it is “shameful” that a high-ranking U.S. military official suggested the Pentagon can learn lessons from Israel’s 50-day attack on Gaza this summer.

According the Jerusalem Post, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey made statements Thursday praising the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) for taking “extraordinary lengths to limit collateral damage and civilian casualties” during Operation Protective Edge.

Dempsey told an audience at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs: “We sent a team of senior officers and non-commissioned officers over to work with the IDF to get the lessons from that particular operation in Gaza.” He referred to the group of officers as the “lessons learned team.”

But Ramah Kudaimi of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation said Israel’s tactics should not be replicated.

“It is very disturbing and shameful that U.S. military commanders believe that what Israel did in Gaza is something to be applauded,” Kudaimi told Common Dreams. “Five hundred dead children does not seem to be evidence that Israel was trying to not kill civilians. The seven-year siege on Gaza is not a policy to avoid civilian suffering.”

Israel’s recent seven-week military assault on Gaza killed at least 2,194 Palestinians, at least 75 percent of them civilians and over 500 of them children.

“At least 80 percent of the 100,000 Palestinian homes damaged or destroyed were refugee homes,” the United Nations Relief and Works Agency reports.

The offensive damaged or destroyed over half of Gaza’s hospitals and health centers at a time when more than 11,000 were wounded, a UNRWA and World Health Organization joint investigation found.

Israel struck six UN schools sheltering Palestinians, including in cases where exact coordinates of the shelters were formally submitted by UNRWA to the Isreali military. These strikes alone killed at least 47 people and wounded hundreds.

Furthermore, Israel has been accused of potential war crimes by Amnesty International and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay.

“It is very despicable that the U.S. continues to white-wash Israeli crimes while funding them through military aid,” said Kudaimi. “Dempsey’s statements are not shocking. Anyone who follows U.S. military policy, knows they too have problematic definitions of protecting civilians.”

World ominously close to nuclear war: Noam Chomsky

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Philosopher Noam Chomsky is professor of the MIT Institute of Linguistics (Emeritus). (Photo: teleSUR/file)

Philosopher Noam Chomsky is professor of the MIT Institute of Linguistics (Emeritus). (Photo: teleSUR/file)

by RT

The world has come ominously close to a nuclear war in the past and it could happen again as Russia and the West have slipped back into what seems like another Cold War, world-renowned scholar Noam Chomsky tells RT’s Sophie&Co.

Once NATO has expanded its borders all the way to reach Russia, its mission has very much changed since it was initially established, Chomsky said. Now, its aim is to take control of global energy systems rather than maintaining intergovernmental military balance.

The world has never been closer to a nuclear war that could wipe out all of its initiators, and the threat is no longer a thing of history, according to Chomsky.

“The worst-case scenario, of course, would be a nuclear war, which would be terrible. Both states that initiate it will be wiped out by the consequences. That’s the worst-case. And it’s come ominously close several times in the past, dramatically close. And it could happen again, but not planned, but just by the accidental interactions that take place – that has almost happened,” Chomsky told Sophie Shevardnadze.

The overall situation of international instability was worsened by US involvement in the Middle Eastern affairs and damaging regional conflicts, Chomsky says, comparing its actions in Iraq to a hit with a “sledgehammer.”

Chomsky went on to discuss with RT the former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden, and the US’ ever-expanding global spying that are having a dangerous impact on the domestic population and is inspiring other governments worldwide to do the same.

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