Wed, 16 May 2012 19:45:19 -0400 http://www.saltspringnews.com/ PostNuke Powered Site en-us http://www.saltspringnews.com/images/banner.gif http://www.saltspringnews.com/ webmaster@SaltSpringNews.com http://www.saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=22465 Norman Farrell recorded this gem last week. Admiral General Aladeen of the North African nation of Wadiya speaking to CBC interviewer George Stroumboulopoulos: "I commend your leaders on silencing your media. For the last 10 years, I have not even heard a single noteworthy event happening in Canada. The people in Wadiya, they are very similar to you Canadians. Their greatest strength is sitting quietly, politely obeying without question." Corporations' fearsome hold on government Rafe Mair TheTyee.ca British Columbia Canada April 30, 2012 Political times have changed mightily since I left the legislature 32 years ago. Of course one would expect change over such a long period, but I'm not talking about the coming and goings of leaders and such. I speak of a sea change. The challenge now has become the corporatization of our government and thus the corporatization of us as citizens. We are seeing our social and political takeover by unelected faceless private bureaucracies. ... The corporate power today defies belief by old farts like me. Of course we had political pressure from corporations on our back -- they felt that they had paid for our seats in cabinet and that when they wanted to do something they didn't expect to have problems with health or the environment to cause anything more than a bit of public fan dancing before they got their licenses and permits. We could and did say no. Our successors can't. ... Recognizing real radicals Norman Farrell Northern Insights British Columbia Canada May 12, 2012 Visit this page for its embedded links. ... "...Over the past few months, the environmental laws that protect our nation's extraordinary natural legacy have been gutted," [Peter] Robinson [CEO of the David Suzuki Foundation] said. "At the same time, those who want to protect it have been the targets of an unprecedented and organized effort to discredit, disenfranchise and silence their voices." The federal government included a rewrite of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act in the omnibus budget bill. ... "Madam Speaker, very deep down in the bowels of Bill C-38 is a clause that hardly anybody even noticed. It abolishes, it repeals the Fair Wages and Hours of Labour Act for federally regulated construction projects. "Why would anyone want to abolish something called the “fair wages and hours of work” act? ... "It is a striking coincidence that now, in federally regulated projects like pipelines, a contractor can now post a job as follows: “Wanted: carpenters, $10 an hour”. Nobody is going to apply. Now, by this legislation, it will be perfectly okay to do so, and working for 70 hours a week with no overtime will be perfectly okay. No Canadian is going to apply, but guess what? The government has opened the door for temporary foreign workers, with a 10-day waiting period. No fair contractor in this country will ever win another job, because the government has eliminated the Fair Wages and Hours of Labour Act by virtue of this legislation. ... Chapter from Heller's Catch-22? Norman Farrell Northern Insights British Columbia Canada May 12, 2012 Visit this page for its embedded link. A comment that speaks for itself from the article Kleptocracy - rule by thieves: "I installed a 10 kW wind turbine on my Okanagan property 3 years ago, buying into the BC government's Live Smart/Green program. Imagine my surprise--as an independent power producer--when I was ineligible for the B.C. "incentive" because the B.C. program was limited to a maximum 3 kW turbine. Yet nowhere on their snazzy website was a maximum size listed; even employees at Live Smart didn't know about it when I phoned to complain. "That's not the end of it. Turns out my 10 kW turbine was also ineligible for the Federal Eco-Energy Retrofit...are you sitting down?....because annually, seems I didn't USE enough electricity to qualify. "Then a year later, to add salt to the wound, received a call from a member of CANWEA, the Canadian Wind Energy Association, offering that I could join for $300 bucks a year. I declined, stating that CANWEA was part of the problem. How so? he asked. So I told him: "Your group's members sat on both the provincial and federal committees that helped governments set not only the rates, but also who would qualify. So, thanks a pantload for excluding the 'big little' guys like me." "Yet people today see my 10 kW spinning merrily in the breeze and ask if I am also overpaid as an Independent Power Producer. I tell them the truth: the buggers credit me EXACTLY the same kiloWatt per hour rate as they charge me to use electricity. No more! "So not all IPPs are sucking at the public trough." Privacy watchdog slams four B.C. bills Rob Shaw Times Colonist British Columbia Canada May 13, 2012 B.C.'s privacy watchdog is demanding the government change four pieces of legislation - and in one case scrap a bill altogether - because of concerns over personal privacy and government transparency. Information and Privacy Commissioner Elizabeth Denham has sent four critical letters to provincial ministers this month - the most recent on Friday afternoon - chastising them for a host of problems in their bills. It's rare for an independent watchdog such as Denham to raise so many red flags in such a short period of time, and the Opposition NDP says it is an indication of sloppy government work being rushed through the legislature in the final days of the spring session. ... Message to environmental advisory body: 'Shut the fuck up!' Karl Nerenberg rabble.ca Canada May 16, 2012 The National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy has a new report out today. That's just a couple of days day after the government revealed why it is killing the advisory body that the Progressive Conservative Mulroney government created in 1988. The reason for this killing is simply that the current Conservative government doesn't agree with many of the Roundtable’s recommendations. That motive came out in an exchange between Liberal Leader Bob Rae and Foreign Minister John Baird in Question Period on Tuesday. Rae started by enumerating a partial list of the bodies, agencies and programs the Conservatives are scrapping almost by stealth, with scarce opportunity for discussion or debate. "Under...proposed budget changes," Rae said, "The Inspector General of CSIS will be gone, the Centre for Rights and Democracy will be gone, the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy will be gone, the First Nations Statistical Institute will be gone, the Governance Institute will be gone, the National Aboriginal Health Organization will be gone, the National Council of Welfare will be gone, environmental assessment will be gutted, Parks Canada will be gutted, and old age security will be gutted..." In his response, Baird started with the stock response about the Government doing what is necessary for the economy, together with a predictable whack at Rae's record as Ontario NDP Premier. ... And so the cat was out of the bag. It's not 'the economy, stupid.' It's, as Conservative Senator Nancy Ruth famously advised an audience of NGOs: "Shut the fuck up!" ... It is worth noting that the current Roundtable President is no woolly green radical. In fact, David McLaughlin is a card-carrying member of what used to be the Conservative establishment in Canada. He worked for a Conservative government in New Brunswick, was Chief of Staff to Brian Mulroney and Executive Director of the Council of the Federation and, at the beginning of the current government’s mandate, served as Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's Chief of Staff. McLaughlin typifies a dying breed of official that has provided policy leadership in Canada for decades. These are professionals who have managed to find a sweet spot in the zone between partisan politics and public service. They have party affiliations and loyalty, but they are also ready to respect what sound evidence tells them. When the government finds the advice of even the likes of good Conservative David McLaughlin anathema, it may really be time to worry. Police chief to hold officers accountable for G20 conduct CTV News Canada May 16, 2012 ... Blair's comments came after a biting critique of police behaviour during Toronto's G20 summit in 2010 was released earlier Wednesday. The report found that officers overstepped their authority with several tactics, including unlawfully detaining protesters and violating basic civil rights. The report, issued by Ontario's police watchdog, also criticizes the level of force police used while trying to control crowds, and blasts officers for searching a number of citizens without legal justification. ... The Office of the Independent Police Review Director (OIPRD) concluded that police had infringed on the Charter rights of many citizens before the G20 weekend was through. ... Soaring tensions between officers and demonstrators at G20 events resulted in the largest mass arrest in Canadian history, said McNeilly. More than 1,118 people were arrested during the summit, according to Toronto police. However, most of those individuals were released without charge. In many cases, the report found that police exacerbated already tense situations. ... Wed, 16 May 2012 19:45:19 -0400 http://www.saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=22464 Below: Countries around the world envy Germany's economic success and look up to it as a role model. But a closer look reveals a much bleaker picture. Only a few are benefiting from the boom, while stagnant wages and precarious employment conditions are making it difficult for millions to make ends meet. The high cost of Germany's economic success Spiegel Online Germany May 4, 2012 Visit this page for its embedded and appended links. What a year it's been for carmaker Audi and its employees, a year marked by the biggest profits in company history, a bonus in the millions for its chairman and handsome bonuses for many employees -- though little to nothing for those at the very bottom of the pay scale. Technically speaking, Nadja Klöden isn't even at the very bottom of the hierarchy at Audi, which is based in Ingolstadt, near Munich. She's on the sidelines, yet also in the thick of things. The 28-year-old, who studied business management, works as a project assistant in administration. But her employer is BFFT, a service provider that organizes parts distribution among the Volkwagen Group's subsidiaries, which include Audi. That's why Klöden earns €800 ($1050) less than comparable Audi employees for the same 40-hour work week. In other words, although she contributes to the success of the company, she doesn't directly benefit from it. She receives neither an Audi-level salary nor any bonus whatsoever. Helen Kozilek is in a similar situation. The 26-year-old works full-time on the assembly line at Audi, but the carmaker doesn't pay her wages. Instead, she is paid by Tuja, a temporary-employment agency and subsidiary of the Swiss temp giant Adecco. Compared with Klöden, however, Kozilek can consider herself a higher earner. The hourly rate for temporary workers in her salary group is normally about €10. But IG Metall, Germany's leading metal workers' union, has signed a wage agreement with Adecco so that Kozilek benefits from the €16 rate negotiated by the union. Still, Kozilek doesn't receive a bonus. Franz Wolff, on the other hand, is sitting pretty. He has been working in maintenance at Audi's car painting division in Ingolstadt for the last 32 years. Wolff has a 35-hour work week and earns a gross salary of €3,300 a month, which is based on an industry-wide multi-employer agreement. Through an in-house wage agreement between the works council (the body that represents the interests of workers) and management, the 57-year-old trained auto mechanic also receives profit-sharing payments. This year, Audi will pay Wolff a bonus of €10,000. The average bonus at Audi is €8,251 -- a record. Audi values Wolff's contribution to its success -- and it provides him with a share of it. Audi CEO Rupert Stadler's salary was also probably record-breaking, climbing 73 percent last year to reach €7.6 million. One company. Four employees. Four worlds. Broken Promises "Prosperity for all" was once the credo of Ludwig Erhard, the first economics minister of postwar Germany. This promise shaped the country for decades and set it apart from many other economies. But how much is this promise still worth today? The working world is disintegrating. On the one side are managers, specialists and members of the core workforce, who benefit from the fact that well-trained workers are scarce. On the other side is the reserve pool of workers who can be used as needed and then let go -- as contract workers or through special-order contracts, part-time work or temporary jobs. Many of these people work outside the provisions of collective bargaining agreements. ... Below: German Christian Democrat Chancellor Angela Merkel will say nein to French Socialist President Francois Hollande's vision of a Europe true to its construction - less technocratic, less hostage to the market and less constrained by the financial system. This would require a betrayal of the foundations of the German miracle, and an admission that Europe's economies are controlled by a cartel of bankers. Will 'Onshela' save Europe? Pepe Escobar Asia Times Online Hong Kong Dateline May 17, 2012 History will register his plane struck by lightning on the way to Berlin, no fancy kisses, and asparagus with veal schnitzel on the menu. This is the way the eurozone ends (or begins again); not with a bang, but a ... lightning strike. Merkollande - the new European power couple drama interpreted by French Socialist President Francois Hollande and German Christian Democrat Chancellor Angela Merkel - is a go. Trillions of bytes already speculate whether former President Nicolas Sarkozy spilled the full beans about "Onshela" to Hollande - apart from the fact she fancies her glass of Bordeaux. King Sarko also had a knack for making stiff "Onshela" laugh. That may be a tall order, at least for now, for the sober and pragmatic Hollande. The good omen may be that both do not eschew irony. In the middle of such a eurozone storm, that's a mighty redeeming quality. Then there's that lightning strike on the way to Berlin. Was it Zeus sending a message that his Greeks would have to be protected - or else? Not to mention that Europe is a Greek myth (Zeus made Europa, the beautiful daughter of a Phoenician king, his lover…) So now Merkollande has to show results. There's not much they're bound to agree on - apart from the possibility of a financial transaction tax (FTT) which could yield up to 57 billion euros (US$72.5 billion) a year to battered trans-European economies, according to the European Commission (EC). Berlin is not exactly against it. But Britain, for obvious reasons, is - seeing it as curbing the City of London. The EC, applying some fancy models, has already concluded that a FTT would not be a burden on economic growth; that would represent only 0.2% in total by 2050. ... Wed, 16 May 2012 19:37:50 -0400 http://www.saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=22463 Our rule is the works of mercy. It is the way of sacrifice, worship, a sense of reverence. - Dorothy Day, founder of The Catholic Workers Movement, the first to protest in Chicago ahead of the NATO summit 'The most critical issues are not on NATO's agenda' Interview by Michael Knigge Deutsche Welle Germany May 15, 2012 On Afghanistan and missile defense NATO risks taking a wrong turn at its upcoming summit, a former US ambassador to the alliance tells DW. And, he adds, the most crucial issues didn’t even make it on the agenda. Kurt Volker served as US ambassador to NATO from 2008 to 2009. He is currently a professor of practice at Arizona State University, a senior fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at Johns Hopkins University and a senior advisor of the Atlantic Council of the United States. DW: From a NATO perspective what are the most pressing issues to be solved during the upcoming summit? Kurt Volker: I think that three issues have been set for the principal items of the agenda. That is Afghanistan, defense capabilities which is labeled as smart defense and working together with partners as NATO has been doing for some time. Those are the three issues. That being said, I am very worried about all three of them. I think that on Afghanistan what we have seen over the past two weeks is really distressing. And it's not the individual incidents per se, the shootings, or the Koran burning, the demonstrations or the green on blue attacks. What's really disturbing is that we don't seem to have any objectives, any clear goals in Afghanistan anymore. We used to talk about trying to strengthen the government, trying to defeat the drug trade, trying to build schools and provide education, defend women's rights, provide better governance. We had a long-term strategy for helping Afghanistan get onto its feet. These days all you hear about, the only thing anyone talks about is how to get out, how do we handover to the Afghan security forces, stand them up to take responsibility and get out. No other objectives are being discussed. And to me that is a very dangerous drift in why we are there and what we are doing and it creates the conditions where these incidents then become very dramatic and illustrate that we have a real problem. ... Summing it all up then, what are your expectations of the NATO summit in Chicago? I am rather concerned that NATO is not doing well on the three issues that are on the table Afghanistan, working with partners where there is nothing really new and especially defense capabilities - everybody is cutting including the United States and including the United States pulling forces out of Europe. I am concerned on those fronts. And then are the things that are not on the agenda that are the most important issues and NATO is not tackling them: Syria, Iran and where we are going in supporting transition and democratic change in the broader Middle East region. I think these are some of the most critical issues that we are facing and they are not on NATO's agenda. Below: "The Express Tribune is the first internationally affiliated newspaper in Pakistan. Partnered with The International Herald Tribune – the global edition of The New York Times – the paper caters to the modern face of Pakistan." NATO invites Pakistan to Chicago summit AFP/The Express Tribune Pakistan May 15, 2012 ISLAMABAD: NATO has invited President Asif Ali Zardari to next week’s summit in Chicago, a presidential spokesperson told AFP on Tuesday. Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen had called Zardari in the afternoon to invite him to the summit. Spokesperson to the President, Farhatullah Babar said that the invitation was unconditional and not linked to the reopening of ground lines of communication for Nato or to any other issues. Zardari said that he would consider the invitation in light of the guidelines of the Parliament and the advice of the government. He said that the decision will be communicated to Nato later. NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu said Pakistan had “an important role” to play in the future of Afghanistan, which will be the focus of the second day of the summit. “We’re working very closely with Pakistan to allow the opening of the transit line because obviously this is in everybody’s interest,” she said. ... The invitation comes a day after Foreign Minister Khar had stated that Pakistan wanted to ‘move beyond’ the Salala incident as it had made its point by keeping the Nato routes shut for almost six months. Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen had said earlier this week that Pakistan’s participation in the summit in Chicago, scheduled for May 20-21, hinges on its decision on the supply route for the alliance’s mission in Afghanistan. Both Khar and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani had made it clear on Monday that the government is ready to drop its insistence on a formal US apology over the killing of two dozen Pakistani troops in the airstrikes on border posts in Salala, Mohmand Agency. Nato supply routes have been closed for over six months in response to a US attack on a check post that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. Related: The very first NATO Chicago Summit protest yesterday lasted about 55 minutes. In the end, 8 people were arrested. Led away quietly while a small crowd sang. The protesters were from The Catholic Worker Movement. Dorothy Day co-founded The Catholic Worker Movement in 1933. She is smiling somewhere. "Chicago Guy" who blogs on Salon.com wrote in part: ... As a demonstrator read a prepared statement and others cheered, a group of 12 Chicago Police officers filed [into the building] in and stood quietly. It was the kind of quiet that brought to mind what my Dad would do to keep us in line when we were kids. He’d be quiet. He’d just watch. And whatever bad stuff we were doing would stop. Pretty quickly. Same thing with the protest. The cops just quietly watched. When the statement was read, it was time to go. I saw a protestor shake hands with a cop. The energy started draining out of the room. ... NATO summit to test both Occupy and Chicago Mark Peters and Jack Nicas Wall Street Journal USA May 15, 2012 CHICAGO—Busloads of protesters are expected to descend on the nation's third-largest city this week for a summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, posing a test for both Chicago and the national Occupy movement. President Barack Obama and leaders from dozens of other countries are scheduled to attend the NATO meetings on Sunday and Monday, the group's first summit in a U.S. city other than Washington. They are expected to discuss plans for the war in Afghanistan and to announce the completion of the first phase of a Europe-based missile-defense system. Mayor Rahm Emanuel has touted the event as a chance to spotlight Chicago for a global audience, while Occupy groups are counting on it to reignite interest in the movement after a quiet winter. The weekend will help determine if "we've got the numbers, we've got the energy and we've got the press," said Stuart Leonard, an early member of the Occupy Wall Street group who is helping to organize buses to Chicago for protesters from around the country. "We're going to learn a lot from it." The NATO conclave has presented a logistical challenge to a city not as accustomed to such major global doings as Washington or New York. In addition to members of the Secret Service, which is handling security at the venue, about 1,000 active-duty U.S. troops and 2,000 National Guard members will be on hand, mainly providing logistical support. Chicago police will be responsible for handling the protesters. he 12,500-officer department, which has been preparing for nearly a year, expects to commit about a third of its force to the event and has deputized additional officers from other states to help, said Garry McCarthy, Chicago's police superintendent. Many protesters will arrive Thursday in time for a big rally on Friday. ... NATO protesters arrested in Chicago before summit Agence France-Presse France May 15, 2012 CHICAGO — Four NATO protesters were arrested Tuesday at a rally outside a Chicago immigration court ahead of a weekend summit that will bring dozens of world leaders to the Windy City, police said. Television crews captured protesters confronting police on bicycles positioned outside the building and chanting "this is what democracy looks like." Thousands of protesters are expected to descend upon Chicago as the leaders of 50 countries gather for a NATO summit on Sunday and Monday. On Monday, eight protesters were charged with trespassing after they refused to leave the Chicago office tower which houses President Barack Obama's campaign headquarters. Fears that the protests could turn violent have put the city on edge, with some downtown businesses even telling office workers to ditch their suits and ties and dress down to avoid being hassled or targeted on the streets. Police and protest organizers have vowed that there will be no repeat of the trouble that erupted at events such as G20 summits in London and Toronto or the riots which scarred Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The decision to move the G8 summit -- set for Friday and Saturday -- from Chicago to Camp David is expected to lessen the intensity of demonstrations in Obama's adoptive home town. Top cop: Neighborhoods will also have more police during NATO Fran Spielman Chicago Sun-Times USA May 15, 2012 Left: Police Supt. Garry F. McCarthy. Photo: Rich Hein/Chicago Sun-Times espite extraordinary police resources devoted to the NATO Summit, Chicago neighborhoods will get a 15 percent increase in police protection this weekend, thanks to 12-hour shifts and the decision to cancel days off, Police Supt. Garry McCarthy said Tuesday. Normally, Chicago Police officers work three shifts or “tours,” each comprised of eight-hour shifts. Starting at midnight Friday and continuing through Monday, officers will switch to 12-hour shifts. And nobody will be allowed to take days off. “That frees up about one-third of the department to deal with the [summit]. This actually results in a 15 percent increase in the number of officers assigned in the neighborhoods,” McCarthy said. “The same officers who were doing an eight-hour tour are now going to do a 12-hour tour in the same districts they’re working in today. You’ll have the same cops on the same beats in the same neighborhoods. And we’ll have an increase of about 15 percent out in the neighborhoods. … It’s a good program. It’s gonna cost us a little bit of money. But we anticipate we’re gonna be able to maintain our enforcement efforts in the neighborhoods while maintaining safety downtown.” With 3,100 officers assigned to NATO duty, Fraternal Order of Police President Mike Shields questioned how McCarthy can possibly deliver on his promise to Chicago neighborhoods. ... Chicago braces for violence at NATO summit Andrew Stern Thomson Reuters Canada/UK May 15, 2012 CHICAGO (Reuters) - Chicago police, who have a reputation for dealing toughly with protesters, will be prepared for the worst with new riot gear, including "sound cannon", if demonstrators at the NATO summit get out of line this weekend. America's third-largest city and President Barack Obama's hometown has never hosted anything like the meeting starting on Sunday, which will draw representatives from some 50 countries, including leaders of the 28 members of the military alliance. The two-day summit is also drawing protesters from around the United States and beyond, most to protest peacefully against the NATO-led war in Afghanistan and economic inequality. Protest organizers hope thousands will turn out to demonstrate on Sunday and march to the summit site at a sprawling convention center along Lake Michigan. Police said they will be keeping a watchful eye out for anarchists bent on more provocative actions, and have ordered about $1 million worth of new riot gear, including face shields that attach to helmets and fit over gas masks. They have also ordered armor for police horses and acquired two long-range acoustic devices that can be used as "sound cannon" to disperse crowds. ... There are fears are that the meeting could descend into the chaos of the 1999 World Trade Organization negotiations in Seattle, where window-smashing protesters ran wild. Since then, protests have become a fixture at such international meetings and police have become more sophisticated at handling them. ... Chicago police got a first taste of what may come on Monday and Tuesday. On Monday, more than a hundred demonstrators tried to reach Obama's campaign office in a downtown high-rise to deliver a protest message and eight were arrested for refusing to leave. On Tuesday, four protesters were arrested on when about 100 people opposed to U.S. immigration policy and anti-war protesters, staked out a courthouse in downtown Chicago. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Obama's former chief of staff, has taken a no-nonsense approach to protests in the past, pushing for new restrictions on demonstrations and sharply raising fines for violators, although he has softened some rules after civil rights groups criticized them as draconian. ... Chicago cops’ new weapons Natasha Lennard Salon.com USA May 14, 2012 Visit this page for its embedded links. This week, Occupy Chicago welcomes allies from around the country and the world as they descend on the Windy City to protest the weekend’s NATO summit. The Chicago Police Department is ready: Not only has the city passed strict new protest ordinances, but it’s been stockpiling serious riot gear in anticipation of conflict with the protesters. According to a report from the Guardian’s Adam Gabbatt, in recent months the Chicago police have spent over $1 million on riot equipment, and are preparing to use a controversial LRAD (long-range acoustic device) — a sound cannon designed to cause extreme pain to those in its path. The Chicago Police Department is pitching the LRAD largely as a means to communicate with large crowds: “This is simply a risk management tool, as the public will receive clear information regarding public safety messages and any orders provided by police,” Chicago Police spokeswoman Melissa Stratton told the Guardian. However, during its first outing at a U.S. protest, during the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh in 2009, police blasted non-lethal sound waves from the device as a crowd deterrent. Unlike firing tear gas or swinging batons, deploying the LRAD does not create a dramatic media spectacle; indeed, videos from the Pittsburgh protests capture the LRAD emitting little more than a high-pitched siren. Those within the sound cannon’s range, however, have described immense pain and severe headaches and — in some cases — irreversible hearing damage. LRAD Corp., which produces the weapon for the military and domestic policing, said that anyone within 100m of the device’s directed sound path will experience “extreme pain,” according to Gizmodo. “In Pittsburgh, they directed the LRAD at a crowd coming up the center of a wide street, then sent tear gas canisters down the sides of the street. Tear gas is painful, but everyone ran into the tear gas to get out of the LRAD path,” one protester who attended the Pittsburgh G-20 told me, asking to remain anonymous. Chicago’s Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy has recently expressed that he believes tear gas to be an ineffective crowd control device — and based on lessons from Pittsburgh, the LRAD can produce a painful enough effect to force crowd dispersal without the dramatic media impact tear gas creates; it’s certainly a more insidious weapon. (Indeed, the Chicago police riot during the 1968 Democratic National Convention went down in infamy partly because of the excessive use of tear gas.) Norm Stamper, the former Seattle police chief who oversaw the policing of the Battle in Seattle in 1999, has learned some hard personal lessons about protest policing. Stamper resigned after his department was condemned for excessive use of force and tear gas against the ’99 World Trade Organization protesters; he has since become an outspoken critic of harsh crowd control techniques. Of the LRAD Stamper told Salon, “I’m not a fan. And it’s not just because I suffer from tinnitus. Everyone, without ear protection, is at risk for permanent hearing damage. Not worth it, as far as I’m concerned.” ... Tue, 15 May 2012 19:55:23 -0400 http://www.saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=22462 One thing that the Lebanese can usually do with some precision is predict stalemate. Their own conflict between 1975 and 1990 was one long, debilitating lesson in destructive deadlock. So when those in Beirut look toward Syria today and shake their heads, that’s because they can hear echoes of their own past predicament. ... Therefore, the diplomatic movement is mostly meaningless. As we saw in Lebanon more than three decades ago, political initiatives can take on a life of their own, and similar to the limbs of spiders continue to twitch even after death. Syrians, like the Lebanese before them, expect almost nothing from the international community. We are in a logic of chronic civil conflict in Syria, with the revolt taking on the dimension of a guerrilla war, bolstered by endemic and systemic recalcitrance in many cities and towns. How does one walk back from the precipice? - Michael Young (opinion editor of Lebanon's Daily Star), Prepare for the long haul in Syria, May 10, 2012 Urban warfare, the modern Arab scourge Rami G. Khouri Daily Star Lebanon May 12, 2012 The two consecutive massive explosions outside a Syrian security building on Thursday morning marked another awful milestone in the 14-month-old conflict in Syria. They also reflected a sad business-as-usual pattern of developments across the entire Arab world. The bombings, which killed over 55 people and wounded hundreds, are one more indicator of the worsening nature of the Syrian conflict, which continues to become more polarized, sectarian and violent. The relatively speedy evolution of the conflict from a series of peaceful demonstrations in provincial cities to large-scale violence and demonstrations in Aleppo and Damascus is an ominous sign, but its full significance is not clear. It is intriguing that these bombings, and others before them in Aleppo and Damascus, are taking place in the cities that had long been seen as somewhat outside the nationwide rebellion against the regime of President Bashar Assad and his family. This raises the usual accusations that only the regime itself could have organized the explosions, because security measures are too strong in these cities for anyone other than the regime to pull off such a feat. The other main candidate for organizing bombing is usually unnamed Salafist movements.... It is also impossible to rule out that these bombings are the work of foreign countries that want to bring down the Assad regime and are now sub-contracting such attacks to criminal groups. The fact that so many possible parties are credible culprits is one of the sad aspects of this phenomenon. It is also a grim comment on the condition of modern Arab political orders. ... Obscure jihadists enter Syrian conflict Rana Moussaoui AFP/Yahoo! News France/USA May 14, 2012 The Syrian conflict has bred the emergence of obscure jihadists carrying out bloody attacks, either acting independently or manipulated by the regime seeking to tarnish the image of its opposition, analysts say. "Al-Qaeda does not exist in Syria. But there are at present several splinter groups of jihadists who employ the same strategies," said Mathieu Guidere, a France-based analyst who specialises in the Arab and Muslim world. "We know that these are Syrians, not foreigners, and that they are very few. For now, nobody knows them -- neither Al-Qaeda nor the rebels," he added. On May 10, twin suicide bombings in Damascus killed at least 55 people and wounded 372 -- the deadliest attacks since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad's regime erupted in March 2011. Al-Nusra Front, an Islamist group unknown before the Syrian revolt, claimed responsibility for the bombings as well as previous attacks in the capital and in the northern city of Aleppo. "Law and order are also breaking down in Syria, which means that we should expect the spread of radical groups," Middle East analyst Joshua Landis writes in his blog. ... The escalation of violent attacks, reminiscent of those carried out in neighbouring Iraq and claimed by extremist groups linked to Al-Qaeda, have raised fears of an "Iraqisation" of Syria. ... Syrian rebels kill 23 soldiers, reject peace talks Jason Ditz Antiwar.com News USA May 14, 2012 Visit this page for its embedded links. The state of Syria’s month-long ceasefire is once again in serious doubt today, with rebels taking credit for a massive attack in the town of Rastan which killed at least 23 soldiers. The rebels claimed that the town of Rastan was “destroyed” in the fighting. Rebels also assassinated a top tribal elder in Deir Ezzor, along with his son. The two were killed after reportedly being warned to stop “cooperating” with the government. The ceasefire was supposed to be setting the stage for peace talks, but that too seems to be unlikely at this point, with the rebel Syrian National Council announcing today that it has decided not to take part in any of the talks, blaming the Arab League for not backing them more thoroughly. Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov warned that there didn’t seem to be much momentum on either side for negotiations, and that it was unlikely that there would ever be direct talks. Rastan, 180 km (110 miles) north of Damascus, has slipped in and out of Syrian government control during the past 14 months. Russia warns Kosovo against training Syria rebels AFP/FOCUS Information Agency France/Bulgaria May 15, 2012 New York. Russia on Monday warned Kosovo against allowing the training of Syrian opposition rebels on its territory, with its UN envoy saying it could cause international friction, AFP reports. Russian ambassador Vitaly Churkin condemned what he called "disturbing information" that Kosovo authorities had been "establishing contacts with the Syrian opposition to train insurgents" in Kosovo. Kosovo's foreign minister denied any training was planned. ... Churkin called on the European Union and United Nations which have missions in Kosovo to act to prevent a presence by Syrian rebels. Kosovo's Foreign Minister Enveer Hoxhaj told reporters that there had been "some diplomatic contacts" with the Syrian opposition. "We are supporting very much their cause," Hoxhaj said. But when asked if there would be training, he replied: "Not at all." The ethnic-Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army started fighting for independence from Serbia in 1997. President Slobodan Milosevic's strong-arm response led to a NATO bombing campaign in 1999 that ended the crackdown and brought Kosovo under UN administration until it declared its independence in 2008. Russia strongly supports Serbia in insisting that Kosovo remains a Serbian province. Ninety countries have recognized its independence, including most of the European Union and the United States. Split Syria opposition keeps chief, violence grinds on Reuters/Daily Star UK/Lebanon May15, 2012 BEIRUT: A splintered Syrian opposition voted on Tuesday to keep a secular academic exile seen as a consensus builder as its top figure to further a quest for recognition from wary big powers in its struggle to unseat President Bashar Assad. In a counter-move to rebuild credibility, Damascus said that over half of eligible voters turned out for a parliamentary election last week, part of reforms it says show Assad's intent to resolve an uprising against his autocratic rule peacefully. But violence went on heedless of an April 12 ceasefire accord brokered by U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan, with dissidents saying government forces killed two insurgents and kept up a campaign of detentions in a key oil-producing region. ... The Syrian National Council (SNC), an umbrella group of factions, has struggled to gain full international recognition as the sole legitimate face of opposition to Assad because of infighting and political incoherence in its ranks. Two people present at a ballot in Rome said Burhan Ghalioun, a sociologist long resident in France, won two-thirds of the vote, reflecting his acceptability to the several Islamist factions whose influence is dominant in the SNC. ... Noted: Anti-Assad and pro-Assad Lebanese fighting each other in northern Lebanon. Fighting with assault rifles and grenades between opponents and supporters of Syrian President Bashar Assad escalated in the northern city of Tripoli Monday, killing five people and wounding at least 10. Photo: Hussein Malla/Associated Press.More photos here. Army deploys in north Lebanon after deadly clashes Antoine Amrie Daily Star Lebanon May 15, 2012 TRIPOLI, Lebanon: Lebanese soldiers backed by armored vehicles deployed Tuesday in the northern coastal city of Tripoli to restore order after three days of clashes between the rival neighborhoods of Bab al-Tabbaneh and Jabal Mohsen that claimed the lives of three and wounded scores more. Lebanese Army troops in their hundreds scrambled to the area in the early hours of the morning and began erecting checkpoints and conducting patrols, particularly along Syria Street that runs between Bab al-Tabbaneh, whose residents oppose Assad, and Jabal Mohsen, whose residents support the Syrian leader. The street clashes between the rival neighborhoods took off Saturday night after the controversial arrest of Islamist Shadi Mawlawi, who was charged Monday with belonging to an “armed terrorist group.” At least seven people were killed in the clashes and 98 other people were wounded. ... The Lebanese Army, in a statement, said its presence in Tripoli was aimed at protecting civilians and not “clashing with them.” “It affirms that imposition of security is a national need for all Lebanese and that chaos would not be in the interest of anyone,” the statement said. “The army's presence in Tripoli is to preserve stability and not face residents or clash with them.” ... Several meetings were held Sunday and Monday between religious and political figures in Tripoli to prevent further escalation in tension. They agreed on the importance of the army’s presence in the city and the withdrawal of gunmen from the streets. Security sources told The Daily Star that Bab al-Tabbaneh and Jabal Mohsen residents are expected to return to their homes Tuesday to check on their houses that were damaged by the heavy clashes. ... Tue, 15 May 2012 13:59:16 -0400 http://www.saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=22461 Saanich-Gulf Islands MP Elizabeth May says she will put forward amendments to the budget bill at the report stage. MP wants wide-ranging bill split into separate, related items. Photo Bruce Stotesbury/timescolonist.com Bill C-38: The Environmental Destruction Act Elizabeth May TheTyee.ca British Columbia Canada May 10, 2012 Usually when the Harper Conservatives bring in a new law, there is a big roll-out. The prime minister or one of his heavy-hitters goes to a prime location, usually not Parliament Hill. A factory or a mall or a friendly backyard. Tens of thousands are routinely spent on a "branding" of the new act. There are banners and public relations firms to design the whole package. Unlike the laws I used to study in law school, laws with names that sound like statutes, Stephen Harper's proposed legislation must go through focus group testing for the most "election-ready" phrasing. For example, the omnibus crime bill which brought in mandatory minimum sentences and a plethora of moves decried by every criminologist and bar society was christened the "Safe Streets and Communities Act." And Bill C-36, an act of all of four paragraphs amending one sub-section of the Criminal Code in relation to sentencing people convicted of assault (to allow taking into account age of the victim) was given a fabulously overblown title -- "Protecting Canada's Seniors Act." 
 The launch almost always involves a media and MP opportunity to digest the laws in a "lock-up" -- an advance briefing usually including colour brochures and charts and graphs and, if not brass bands, at least a serious amount of noise. 
 Not so for Bill C-38, known as the omnibus budget bill. Sure, it did get the fabulous title: the "Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act." There all similarities to other pieces of legislation end. 
 There was no announcement. No press release for first reading. There was no lock-up. There were no schematic guides to understand the changes to the 70 laws undergoing a brutal overhaul. Like surgery without an anesthetic, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act was repealed and a whole new act brought in. While the four-paragraph seniors bill, C-36, will get its own committee hearings and full debate in the House, the 420-page Bill C-38, the omnibus budget bill, will be fast-tracked through the Finance Committee. To add injury to insult, Conservatives limited the number of days allowed for debate at second reading of C-38. Government House Leader Peter Van Loan puffed himself up to pronounce that this was a longer time for debate than other budget bills. Meanwhile the Opposition MPs are left to protest that no other budget bill in Canadian history had repealed, amended or overhauled 70 existing pieces of legislation.
 Some laws are the stuff of future Conservative campaigning. They are over-sold and put in the front window. Then there is the orphaned and unloved bastard child of Harper's legislative agenda. It is hidden. It is not to be placed in the front window, nor proclaimed as it should be: "Vote for the Conservative Party, tough on nature!" The good news in this is that Stephen Harper knows that his base would hate a lot of what's in C-38. That's why he is hiding it -- in a way that hides it in plain sight for anyone who is willing to dig deep and read the fine print. Here's what is in C-38 on the environment. (C-38 threatens more than environmental damage, but this should give you a sense of why I am determined to stop this bill.)
 ... Green party leader May threatens budget delay Cindy E. Harnett Times Colonist British Columbia Canada May 11, 2012 Saanich-Gulf Islands Green MP Elizabeth May is threatening to hold up a vote on the Conservatives' sweeping budget bill for days if the prime minister won't consider breaking it up into related items. May said the federal government's sweeping budget bill - which includes changes affecting everything from Old Age Pensions to oversight of the Canadian Security Intelligence Agency - would change Canada's environmental regulations, laws and policies for the worse. "I think all of us in the Opposition ranks are scandalized by the effort to hide so much within the 425-page Budget Implementation Act," May said. May has not been able to speak on second reading of Bill C-38, the Budget Implementation Act, but said she would put forward amendments at the report stage. If she receives a favourable ruling from the Speaker and has her amendments seconded by fellow MPs, she could force a vote on every amendment. "I think the Conservatives may want to rethink insisting that this whole bill go forward as an omnibus bill covering 70 acts," May said. "I will not back down," she said. "We could be there for days." ... Victoria NDP MP Denise Savoie also spoke out against the omnibus budget bill on Thursday - the 40th anniversary "of the Canadian government's introduction of a moratorium banning oil tankers from B.C.'s north and central coast" - calling on the federal government to honour the current ban and pass a legislated ban. "If the government continues to exclude British Columbians on a decision that will ultimately affect our future, they will face the most powerful, organized opposition they have ever encountered," Savoie said. The NDP and Green party both oppose the Enbridge Northern Gateway project. ... Mon, 14 May 2012 16:01:00 -0400 http://www.saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=22460 Nano drones, ethical algorithms: inside Israel’s secret plan for Its future air force Amir Mizroch Wired, Danger Room blog USA May 11, 2012 Amir Mizroch is the editor of the English edition of Israel Hayom. He lives in Tel Aviv . Visit this page for its appended related links. TEL AVIV, Israel — Nano drones that an infantryman can pull out of his pocket; helicopters piloted by robots who extract wounded soldiers from the battlefield; micro satellites on demand; large spy balloons in the upper reaches of the stratosphere; virtual training with a helmet from your office; algorithms that resolve pilots’ ethical dilemmas (so they won’t have to deal with those pesky war crimes tribunals); and farming out code to a network of high school kids. Since mid-2009, some 300 Israel Air Force officers have been brainstorming about the next steps for one of the world’s most advanced air forces, and the main pillar of Israel’s strategic power. This “IAF 2030″ project has just come to an end. Besides a standard press release issued by the military, little has been disclosed about it. Exclusive details are reported here for the first time. The task of preparing the project was given to Major Nimrod Segev, head of the IAF’s long-term planning department. Segev divided his 300 officers into nine teams: Advanced Information Technology, Vast Data, Space, Cyber, Environment, Intelligence, Human Factor, Organizational Behavior, and a ‘Red Team,’ to challenge the other eight’s assumptions. The participants were asked to think ahead — far ahead — something that doesn’t come easy in the military culture here, where long-term planning is almost unheard of. What changes would it have to make in weapons systems, platforms, technology, manpower, and organizational behavior to meet potential new threats? What new planes, guidance systems, and technology would they want? Let loose, the officers were told. Don’t worry about the how and the how much; just let your imaginations go. The air force even brought in Israel’s number one dreamer — President Shimon Peres — to fire their imaginations with a pep talk. The vast majority of the “IAF 2030″ document is classified. The interview with Segev at the IAF’s headquarters in Tel Aviv — nicknamed the “Canary” — was conducted with a security officer present. No questions about the Red Team were answered. ... US drones spy on Americans - ‘incidentally’ RT Russia May 12, 2012 Photo: Staff Sgt. James L. Harper Jr./USAF/AFP A leaked US Air Force document stipulates a drone that happens to capture surveillance images of Americans may store them for a period of 90 days. The paper appears to justify spying on citizens, as long as it is “incidental.” The document accepts that the Air Force may not record information non-consensually; however it does state “collected imagery may incidentally include US persons or private property without consent.” The report, dated April 23 was discovered by Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists and has been put online. Data that is accidentally recorded may be stored for a period of 90 days by the Pentagon while it is analyzed to see if the subjects are legitimate targets for state surveillance. The Pentagon may also disseminate this data among other government organizations if it sees fit. “Even though information may not be collectible, it may be retained for the length of time necessary to transfer it to another DoD entity or government agency to whose function it pertains,” states the document. In addition, it justifies the gathering of data on domestic targets in certain circumstances. According to the paper, these include surveillance of natural disasters, environmental studies, system testing and training, and counterintelligence and security-related vulnerability assessments. The document seems to spell bad news for civil liberties, considering the US government passed a bill in February allocating $63 billion to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). If the bill is signed into law it will effectively allow the FAA to fill US skies with drones, a massive 30,000 predicted to be operational in US airspace by 2020. ... Business growing for 2 Calif. drone-makers G.W. Schulz Center for Investigative Reporting, California Watch USA May 11, 2012 Visit this page for its embedded links and video (6:43). A pair of defense firms based in California that specialize in manufacturing pilotless aircraft, also known as drones, are considered rising stars among contractors for the Department of Homeland Security, according to an annual list compiled by trade publishers. San Diego-based General Atomics Aeronautical Systems has already supplied nine pricey Predator drones to the Department of Homeland Security, but a fleet totaling 24 “unmanned aerial vehicles” is in the works. The company has now built 530 overall, said a company official, many of them used abroad by the U.S. military as part of the global war on terror. Congress in February ordered federal regulators to move faster in establishing guidelines for the broader use of drones over U.S. skies, and clearer rules are required by the year 2015. Public debate over their usefulness and privacy implications has been occurring ever since. The attention means vast new opportunities for General Atomics and another company headquartered in Monrovia, Calif., called AeroVironment, that builds much smaller “mini-drones,” which fit a growing demand by emergency responders, firefighters and law enforcement agencies. Local officials want the aircraft and live video provided by them for everything from visualizing disaster areas to sizing up suspects prior to tactical raids. ... Police may deploy spy drones Tom Hyland The Sunday Age Australia May 13, 2012 Illustration: Matt Golding Victoria Police is considering introducing unmanned drone aircraft to assist in operations, following the lead of US authorities who from tomorrow will begin using them for surveillance, searches and car chases. The move has alarmed civil liberties advocates, who say the technology could be used to spy on individuals. Victoria Police has confirmed it is assessing so-called unmanned aerial systems (UAS) for "potential operational use". But in a written response to questions from The Sunday Age, a Victoria Police spokeswoman did not spell out what kind of operations. Nor did she reveal how far police plans had advanced. It is, however, the most explicit statement so far on Victoria Police's interest in acquiring high-tech, remote-controlled drones that can be fitted with high-definition cameras and sensors - and, in some larger versions, weapons. Other agencies, including Queensland police and arms of the Australian Federal Police, are also interested in acquiring drones. ... Peter Hill, a director of V-Tol Aerospace, a Brisbane firm that builds the Warrigal UAS being tested for use by surf lifesavers, agreed privacy concerns had to be addressed. "It's a grey area," Mr Hill said. "I think it comes down to common sense, but it's definitely an area that needs to be ticked off." But Peggy MacTavish, executive director of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems Australia, an industry-backed body, played down concerns. "The technology for intruding on privacy already exists," she said. "Check out Google Earth, Google Maps, conventional aviation - this sort of activity had been going on for years. It's not reasonable to focus on this [UAS] industry, she said. ... Mon, 14 May 2012 15:22:27 -0400 http://www.saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=22459 Did the White House direct the police crackdown on Occupy? Dave Lindorff CounterPunch USA May 14, 2012 A new trove of heavily redacted documents provided by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) on behalf of filmmaker Michael Moore and the National Lawyers Guild makes it increasingly evident that there was and is a nationally coordinated campaign to disrupt and crush the Occupy Movement. The new documents, which PCJF National Director Mara Verheyden-Hilliard insists “are likely only a subset of responsive materials,” in the possession of federal law enforcement agencies, only “scratch the surface of a mass intelligence network including Fusion Centers, saturated with ‘anti-terrorism’ funding, that mobilizes thousands of local and federal officers and agents to investigate and monitor the social justice movement.” Nonetheless, blacked-out and limited though they are, she says they offer clues to the extent of the government’s concern about and focus on the wave of occupations that spread across the country beginning with last September’s Occupy Wall Street action in New York City. The latest documents, reveal “intense involvement” by the DHS’s so-called National Operations Center (NOC). In its own literature, the DHS describes the NOC as “the primary national-level hub for domestic situational awareness, common operational picture, information fusion, information sharing, communications, and coordination pertaining to the prevention of terrorist attacks and domestic incident management.” The DHS says that the NOC is “the primary conduit for the White House Situation Room” and that it also “facilitates information sharing and operational coordination with other federal, state, local, tribal, non-governmental operation centers and the private sector.” A better description for a fascist police state network could not be written. Remember, this vast yet centralized operation — what Verheyden-Hilliard describes as “a vast, tentacled, national intelligence and domestic spying network that the U.S. government operates against its own people” — was in this case deployed not against some terrorist organization or even mob or drug cartel, but rather against a loose-knit band of protesters, all conscientiously and publicly committed to nonviolence, who were exercising their Constitutionally-protected right to gather in public places and to speak out against the crimes and abuses of the corporate elite and the politicians who are bought and paid by that elite. ... Related: A comment appended to the CBC report below says: "1,100 Innocent people arrested for the "crime" of exercising their democratic rights, thrown into a dog pen, strip-searched, humiliated -- only to have all charges subsequently dropped. Yeah, model policing -- if your model is a fascist state, that is." G20 report clears RCMP but raises questions over 'kettling' CBC News Canada May 14, 2012 A protester sprawled on the ground looks back to see a line of police officers in riot gear during G20 demonstrations in Toronto in June 2010. In a report released Monday, the RCMP watchdog investigating the conduct of Mounties during the G8 and G20 summits in 2010 found they on balance did a pretty good job of policing. Photo: Adrien Veczan/Canadian Press The RCMP's watchdog says an investigation into the conduct of Mounties during the G8 and G20 summits in Ontario in 2010 has found they "on balance" did "a pretty good job" of policing. In an interview with CBC News, Ian McPhail, vice-chair and interim chair of the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP (CPC), said despite media reports "which looked a little alarming," the RCMP protected foreign visitors and secured the summit areas. Although the report covers RCMP conduct for both the G8 in Huntsville and the G20 in Toronto, the complaints focused on the G20. "There were no credible threats against any foreign visitor and there was no security breach within their area of jurisdiction," said the watchdog. The commission found the RCMP planning to be "robust and thorough," and found no indication that it was guided by anything other than "legitimate security concerns." The commission also saw no indication that RCMP undercover agents or event monitors acted "inappropriately" or as "agents provocateurs." ... RCMP abandoned policy when it participated in G20 ‘kettling’, report says Josh Visser National Post Canada May 14, 2012 This page links to the full report. The RCMP abandoned its policy of allowing protesters to peacefully disperse when it assisted the municipal Toronto police force in three “kettling” incidents during the G20 summit in June 2010, a watchdog report says. RCMP officers on the ground during the summit expressed concerns about using the “kettling” tactic — forcibly boxing in protesters — but relented because they were officially under the command of other police forces. However, the report from the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP, says the national force acted in a “reasonable and appropriate” fashion during the violence-marred summit. The long-awaited report nearly completely exonerates the RCMP’s actions during the summit, for which more than two dozen complaints were filed, including one by the Civil Liberties Association as the summit featured the largest mass arrest in Canadian history. The report also says undercover RCMP officers did not act out of line or as provocateurs during the summit. ... During the demonstrations, two undercover Toronta City policemen were arrested by the RCMP. That raises the question were they agents provocateur or were the RCMP arresting law-abiding protestors willy nilly? A report from Ontario’s Office of the Independent Police Review Director on the actions of provincial and municipal police officers during the G20 is expected soon. The committee preparing that report has received nearly 300 individual complaints. An independent civilian review of the policing of the G20 called by the Toronto Police Services Board is ongoing. Noted: New May Day graphic novel retells old stories of struggle The Graphic History Collective rabble.ca Canada April 26, 2012 May Day: A Graphic History of Protest by Robin Folvik, Sean Carleton, Mark Leier, Sam Bradd and Trevor Mckilligan. Published by Between The Lines, 2012 $6.95 An announcement of spring, dancing around a pole, crowning a queen, fertility rituals, assorted festivities -- joyful community celebrations of the month of May can be traced back through the ages. May Day or International Workers' Day -- another way of observing the first day of May throughout the world -- is not quite as old, and has been more contentious. As political economist Leo Panitch argues, for the last one hundred years, "May Day has symbolized the common struggles of workers around the globe." The day, with its own themes of renewal and change, represents a history of protest. Canadians and U.S. citizens are familiar with the celebration of Labour Day on the first Monday in September as a labourers' holiday, a day that usually marks the end of summer vacations and the beginning of a new school year. But the history of May Day is somewhat more obscure. As Panitch points out, the claiming of May 1 as a day for political protest grew out of the particular nature of working-class activism of Europe and North America in the late 19th century. ,,, Now, using the creative and accessible medium of a comic book, May Day: A Graphic History of Protest, aims to bring these and other important stories of May Day to life, paying particular attention to the Canadian dimensions. In these pages, then, we seek to tell the rousing story of how, for over one hundred years, workers in Canada have used May Day to mark an important day for working-class celebration and activism. To contribute to the deep and rich history of May Day, the Graphic History Collective offers this comic in hopes that you will be inspired to help reclaim May Day for yourself and your community and keep its fighting tradition alive. In addition, by completing this project we seek to add to the writings on Canadian labour history as well as to the growing field of political graphic novels. ... The BBC reported yesterday on Europe-wide protests: ...protests [took place] in Spain and across the world as part of a global day of action, some of them staged by the Occupy movement: In London, hundreds of protesters gathered outside St Paul's Cathedral, where a protest camp was removed in February, and a A number of people were arrested Smaller protests, numbering in the hundreds, have taken place in the Portuguese capital Lisbon and in Germany's financial centre, Frankfurt About 1,000 marchers converged in Tel Aviv to protest about the cost of living, with marches also reported in other Israeli cities Meanwhile, in the latest attack on symbols of Italy's austerity policies, a tax office has been firebombed in the city of Livorno. No-one was hurt. 'Los Indignados' of Spain are credited with spawning the global 'Occupy' movements. Spain's indignados mark anniversary with protests - in pictures guardian.co.uk UK May 13, 2012 Thirteen pictures. Demonstrations have taken place across Spain on the first anniversary of the indignado movement, which has been protesting against political corruption, government austerity measures, the economic crisis as well as high unemployment. Protesters flood Spanish cities in spite of curfew Fiona Govan in Madrid Irish Independent Éire May 14, 2012 Right: Protesters attend a protest marking the one year anniversary of Spain's Indignados (Indignant) movement in Madrid's Puerta del Sol, May 12, 2012. Photo: Reuters Spain's prime minister defended harsh austerity measures as tens of thousands of demonstrators flooded into plazas across the crisis-hit nation over the weekend, defying a police crackdown on public protest. Conservative leader Mariano Rajoy, who took office in December, insisted that the deeply unpopular cuts in public spending were "necessary" given Spain's dire economic situation where one in four Spaniards are unemployed. "We are doing what is needed and that means taking difficult decisions," Mr Rajoy said at a political rally in the Basque country yesterday morning. His comments will give little reassurance to the estimated 100,000 demonstrators who marched through streets across Spain on Saturday to mark the first anniversary of the birth of the 'Indignado movement'. A core group of protesters was determined to rebuild the makeshift camps that appeared in the squares of cities across Spain last May, most notably in Madrid's Puerta del Sol. But huge numbers of riot police surrounded the central square to prevent any camp being set up, and a curfew was imposed in the square between midnight and 10am, a move seen as "a return to the dark days of Franco" by some on the street. After many hours of peaceful protest on Saturday which saw some 30,000 people cram into the Madrid square, including families and young children, the police finally moved in.... Guy Hedgecoe of the BBC writes from Madrid: There was a festive atmosphere around Madrid as protesters marched from different neighbourhoods into the centre of the city. They were mainly young people but pensioners and families also took part, converging in Puerta del Sol, Madrid's best known square. There was singing and chanting and, on a hot spring day, lots of playful costumes. But what they are protesting against is very serious. "Los indignados", or the "outraged", feel the economic crisis has been woefully mismanaged. In the past they have been criticised for failing to offer concrete proposals. But they believe Spain's current economic woes give them renewed momentum. Unemployment is more than 24%, the economy has fallen back into recession and this week the government nationalised the country's fourth largest bank. "Los indignados" are deeply opposed to the conservative government's austerity programme, but they are also going to spend the coming days debating how to make Spain's economic and political leaders more accountable. Breaking news 12:15 PDT: Quebec’s Education Minister Line Beauchamp resigns amid student crisis Joe Rayment National Post Canada May 14, 2012 QUEBEC — Quebec’s education minister and deputy premier has resigned from politics. Education Minister Line Beauchamp says she is not resigning because of the vandalism and pressure related to the student strike. She made the bombshell announcement at a news conference with Premier Jean Charest. Beauchamp will give up her Montreal-area seat. Mon, 14 May 2012 15:19:27 -0400 http://www.saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=22458 Below: GabrieL Kolko is the leading historian of modern warfare. He is the author of the classic Century of War: Politics, Conflicts and Society Since 1914, Another Century of War? and The Age of War: the US Confronts the World and After Socialism. He has also written an excellent history of the Vietnam War, Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, the US and the Modern Historical Experience. His latest book is World in Crisis. Kolko is an emeritus professor of history, York University, Toronto, Canada. The steering wheel is stuck: Why America is doomed to one disaster after another GabrieL Kolko CounterPunch USA May 14, 2012 Both Europe and the United States confront great crises; while they are different in certain regards they have important similarities too. America’s crisis is both military and economic; they are interrelated because America has a huge deficit, in large part because it has the chimerical ambition to be the world’s dominating military power, which costs it immense sums of money, which its deficit spending largely funds. At the same time it has lost most of its major conflicts militarily, politically—or both. Europe is at the threshold of crucial economic decisions, and they also have grave political implications, whose effects are likely to last for many years. In essence, in Europe the question is whether or not German power or domination of the continental economy will be revived under the guise of pan-Europeanism. The United States has been on the wrong track in terms of what it can attain. It still regards itself as having abilities which the events of the past century–wars, political crisis, and the like— have shown are beyond its or any country’s– power to control. America is having a very hard time being a “normal” nation that recognizes the limits and nature of its power. It is spending immense sums of money to be able to attain goals beyond its capacity. The German government under Angela Merkel is using pan-European methods to resurrect German power, but in ways that is developing important resistance. In their own ways both the United States and most of Europe are at important turning points—and they will affect each other Those who are critical of the existing world, whether the United States or elsewhere, have ample reason to be pessimistic: rightist, chauvinist forces are becoming stronger both politically and ideologically in the U. S, the Netherlands, France. At the same time, in France, Greece, Serbia, Italy, and elsewhere, German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s draconian economic austerity program, for a balanced government budget and other conservative nostrums for Europe, has cost the centrist parties who support her crucial votes in elections in France, Greece, and the United Kingdom’s local elections at the beginning of May. Ms. Merkel’s austerity ideas, and the so-called technocrats in Italy and elsewhere who supported them, are now on the defensive. Europe’s electorate is in the process of rejecting them and the European Union may collapse. If it does the American economy is especially going to be affected. Ms. Merkel’s austerity program ignored its effects on the average citizen of Europe; it was hurting them (intentionally) often disastrously, in the form of unemployment, lower standards of living, longer hours and working years for those who still have jobs—and the first time they could vote they did so in a way that made the technocrats’ diktats irrelevant. She was very likely to be rejected at the polls, and was! But as of this time, events at the polls have not dented her ideas on how Europe’s economy should evolve. She has remained consistent but she or the new French President, Francois Hollande, must bend, at least a bit, or else the euro zone will fall apart. Time will tell who flinches first, but neither might and then the future will be inevitable. Europe may be thrown into chaos; it may patch up its differences for a while, but sooner or later it is likely to fall apart economically. ... The notion of a European economic bloc, with a common economic program, is more and more politically difficult to sustain in the face of the varied political forces that oppose it. It is more likely than ever to collapse amidst social protests, rising unemployment and the negative social effects of the quant, old-fashioned conservative nostrums it proposes. Those in power have as much reason to be pessimistic, and many of them have been for a long time. The U.S.. fights wars–almost compulsively. Grandiose visions of American power in the world leads them to intervene in places all over the globe, but so far it has lost many of its adventures, including full-scale wars, like Vietnam, and has virtually bankrupted the United States in the process. There is no correlation between expenditures, firepower or numerical superiority of manpower or materiel. The result is that growing numbers in the Defense establishment are increasingly frustrated with a very expensive system that fails to deliver the results promised. People on the Left are not the only ones who are disappointed or believe the future looks dismal. The system is not working as it’s supposed to. It simply doesn’t function as those in power hoped it would, and they have infinitely more resources at their command than Leftists. Their failure is more interesting; they have power but cannot attain their goals, and there are many reasons for it. Moreover, they are increasingly acknowledging this. ... Both Europe and the United States are in crisis. For the sake of space I do not focus so much on America’s economic problems, save that its vast military spending is the main cause of its colossal deficit. ... The European crisis is both economic and political. And the Germans are trying to use their economic power to resurrect the traditional political power they had before Germany lost two European wars.. They will fail, probably, because the Merkel Government hurts not only Greeks, Spaniards, and other citizens of European nations but also Germans.... Related: Below: Paul Craig Roberts has had careers in scholarship and academia, journalism, public service, and business. He is chairman of The Institute for Political Economy. President Reagan appointed Dr. Roberts Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and he was confirmed in office by the U.S. Senate. (Roberts was awarded the Treasury Department’s Meritorious Service Award for “his outstanding contributions to the formulation of United States economic policy.”) After leaving the Treasury, he served as a consultant to the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Department of Commerce. In June 2011, Roberts was selected as one of the 10 Most Influential People in the Alternative Media (2011): 10. Dr. Paul Craig Roberts: Paul Craig Roberts is one of the most respected columnists in the alternative media. His syndicated articles can be seen on many leading alternative news websites.... Roberts scores huge points in the credibility department having been the former head of policy at the Department of Treasury under Reagan, and the editor of the Wall Street Journal -- among a long list of other accolades. His research is impeccable and his vision of how the world really operates is second to none. He knows why and when the global chess pieces are moving, and has the incredible talent to communicate difficult concepts to the general public. He has written several books including The Tyranny of Good Intentions, and How the Economy was Lost. His many interviews can be seen on Russia Today and Prison Planet TV. Roberts is also a recent contributor to Gerald Celente's esteemed Trends Journal. There is no one better at reporting the reality of geo-political events and the workings of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve. Does 'The West' have a future? Paul Craig Roberts Institute for Political Economy USA May 10, 2012 Living in America is becoming very difficult for anyone with a moral conscience, a sense of justice, or a lick of intelligence. Consider: ... What does this bring to mind? Anyone of my generation or any science fiction aficionado immediately thinks of Robert Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters. Written in 1951 but set in our time, Earth is invaded by small creatures that attach to the human body and take over the person. The humans become the puppets of their masters. Large areas of America succumb to the invaders before the morons in Washington understand that the invasion is real and not a conspiracy theory. On clothed humans, the creatures cannot be detected, and the edict goes out that anyone clothed is a suspect. Everyone must go about naked. Women are not even allowed to carry purses in their hand, because the creature can be in the purse attached to the woman’s hand. ... If you believe in murdering your opponents, not debating with them, dispossessing the powerless, creating a fictional world based on lies and paying the corporate media to uphold the lies and fictional world, you are part of what the rest of the world perceives as “The West.” Let me back off from being too hard on The West. The French and Greek peoples have shown in the recent elections that they are unplugging from the Matrix and understand that they, the 99%, are being put by their elites in a position to be the sacrificial lambs for the mistakes of the 1% mega-rich, who compete with one another in terms of how many billions of dollars or euros, how many yachts, collections of exotic cars, and exotic Playboy and Penthouse centerfolds they have as personal possessions. The central banks of the West–the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, and the UK bank–are totally committed to the prosperity of the mega-rich. No one else counts. Marx and Lenin never had a target as exists today. Yet, the left-wing is today so feeble and brainwashed that it does not exist as even a minor countervailing power. The American left-wing has even accepted the absurd official account of 9/11 and of Osama bin Laden’s murder in Pakistan by Navy Seals. A movement so devoid of mental and emotional strength is useless. It might as well not exist. People without valid information are helpless, and that is where Western peoples are. The new tyranny is arising in the West, not in Russia and China. The danger to humanity is in the nuclear button briefcase in the Oval Office and in the brainwashed and militant Amerikan population, the most totally disinformed and ignorant people on earth. Noted: Ron Paul Oklahoma and Arizona delegate wins fly in the face of the GOP establishment Seamus Light Poicymic USA May 14, 2012 Visit this page for its embedded links. The Romney campaign is running scared. Establishment Republicans have resorted to tactics ranging from the breaking of convention rules, to shutting down of events, and even acts of violence. Last weekend saw Republican conventions in Arizona and Oklahoma. These party gatherings were preceded by a string of Ron Paul victories in states such as Iowa, Nevada, Maine, Louisiana, and Massachusetts, as well as revelations that, in fact, no delegates are truly bound. Sensing this threat to establishment candidate Mitt Romney’s election, local GOP committeemen fell back on whatever tricks they could in order to keep Ron Paul supporters from influencing state conventions. In Arizona, the state where Josh Romney was booed for pushing his father’s approved slate, the proceedings had begun relatively peacefully, but quickly deteriorated once Romney supporters began realizing how many Paulistas were in attendance. First, the convention’s leaders attempted to confuse voters by yo-yoing them back and forth between convention halls and the main floor. In that time, several cases of ballot stuffing were reported, as well as physical assaults on two Ron Paul delegates; but it was not enough. The meeting’s establishment-backed chairman panicked, and shut down the convention, adjourning it without a vote. Abandoning his own meeting, and promising an election by mail, the chairman left the (majority) Paul audience to elect a new chairman. This group was eventually reconvened outside, in the parking lot of Grand Canyon College, where a symbolic convention continued. Apparently, Ron Paul walked away with 11 of the 18 available district caucus votes, but the official results of Arizona remain a mystery. In Oklahoma, the attacks were much more overt. ... Keeping the country short of water is now government – and EU – policy Christopher Booker The Telegraph UK May 12, 2012 When I returned last week to a grey, cold, rainswept Heathrow, after a brief visit to Australia on rather sad family business, I naturally wanted to know what had been going on while I was away. It hardly said much for our democracy that Boris Johnson should have owed his “triumphant” re-election as Mayor to the support of just 16.8 per cent of those Londoners eligible to vote – while Labour owed its “victory” in council elections to just 12 per cent of the potential voters. The Greek and French election results heralded another sharp downward lurch in the slow-motion collapse of the euro. ... As big a story as any, however, was the ongoing drama of our “wettest-ever drought” as, despite record recent rainfall, we are told that hosepipe bans are still unlikely to be lifted because we don’t have enough water to go round. And here, it turns out, there is a startling twist to the tale. The great water shambles, as we know, centres on two major failings of national policy. One is the water companies’ failure to plug the leaks that are costing us nearly as much water every two years as is contained in all our reservoirs. The other is their failure to add to that reservoir capacity, which has barely increased in the 20 years since water was privatised, despite our 10 per cent growth in population. ... Astonishingly, it now emerges, it has become quite deliberate government policy to keep Britain short of water. And the explanation for this baffling volte-face lies in a “Communication” issued in 2007 by the European Commission (COM (2007) 414 Final) “addressing the challenge of water scarcity and droughts in the European Union”. Mon, 14 May 2012 15:14:51 -0400 http://www.saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=22457 JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon is a clear and present danger to world banking systems David Olive Toronto Star Ontario Canada May 11, 2012 J.P. Morgan Chase chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon is the architect of the culture behind Morgan's shock trading loss of at least $2 billion from a failed hedging strategy that knocked financial stocks across the globe on Friday, David Olive writes. Photo: Keith Bedford/Reuters We have to hope at this moment that JP Morgan Chase & Co. (JPM), America’s biggest financial institution, is a rogue bank. And that the massive, almost deliberate incompetence in putting the global financial system at risk less than four years after the epic 2008 world banking meltdown is not widespread throughout the system, from Frankfurt to Tokyo to London. The staggering $2 billion that JPM acknowledged late yesterday it will lose on an epic trading mistake is not the act of a rogue trader. The losses, which JPM acknowledges will grow to $3 billion and perhaps more as revelations continue, are instead the system-threatening mistake of about a dozen JPM bankers – notwithstanding JPM’s effort to pin the blame on a larger-than-life London trader known as “the whale” for his outsized risk taking. The bet that went horribly wrong for JPM, which has led the U.S. banking lobby’s noisy opposition to banking reforms post-meltdown, was conceived and botched by a sophisticated, computer-modeled system put in place by CEO Jamie Dimon, a career dealmaker and architect of unwieldy financial conglomerates who has no business running a straightforward bank. ... And make no mistake, Dimon, 56, is the architect of this disaster. Dimon is America’s most celebrated banker – at least in banking circles. His sobriquet is the “king of Wall Street,” and U.S. President Barack Obama prematurely declared that “Jamie is my favourite banker.” Heady with that acclaim and his own considerable self-approval, Dimon constructed a high-risk trading strategy for JPM which we can only hope will not have exploded yesterday with the impact of a cluster bomb, wreaking havoc far and wide. Bloomberg reported in April JPM was amassing risk that might become an exploding cigar. Dimon, in short, has created an imprudent culture of “eat what you kill” at JPM. ... Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase CEO, finds himself with black mark Pallavi Gogoi Huffington Post USA/Canada May 12, 2012 NEW YORK — The reputation that Jamie Dimon honed for decades on Wall Street has been severely damaged in a matter of days. In the 1980s and 1990s, he was the protege of banking industry legend Sanford Weill. In the early 2000s, he took over Bank One, an institution few believed was fixable, and restored it to a profit. And in 2008 and 2009, at JPMorgan Chase, Dimon built a fortress strong enough to stay profitable during the financial crisis. His zeal for cost-cutting and perceived mastery of risk did more than keep JPMorgan strong enough to bail out two failing competitors, Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual. It gave him a kind of street cred during the post-crisis years, when he lashed out at regulators who sought to rein in banks, and Occupy Wall Street protesters who raged against them. Now all that is on the line. ... Dimon "staked so much of his reputation on creating this perception of being the ultimate, infallible risk manager," said Simon Johnson, a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund who is now a professor at MIT. "And along comes this huge mistake." ... His admission of the mistake this week left some analysts asking whether his grip is slipping, and the bank's more than $2 trillion in assets have become too big for him to manage. More likely, some other analysts said, it is a statement about how, three and a half years after the crisis, banks still conduct impossibly complex trades that are difficult to track. "If even Jamie gets it wrong managing a $2 trillion bank, what does it say about banks where management is far inferior?" said Mike Mayo, a bank analyst at the brokerage CLSA and author of the book Exile on Wall Street. ... "It puts egg on our face, and we deserve any criticism we get," Dimon said at a hastily convened conference call with investors to reveal the losses. ... Jamie Dimon: Trading losses are not life-threatening Katie Little CNBC USA May 13, 2012 Although JPMorgan Chase suffered a trading loss of at least $2 billion due to a failed hedging strategy, it will not be life threatening to the bank, CEO Jamie Dimon said in an interview aired Sunday. “This is a stupid thing that we should never have done but we’re still going to earn a lot of money this quarter so it isn’t like the company is jeopardized,” he said in an interview with NBC’s “Meet with Press.” “We hurt ourselves and our credibility, yes — and that you’ve got to fully expect and pay the price for that.” ... In the company’s earnings call just a few weeks ago, Dimon dismissed reports that a trader had amassed a large position that prompted hedge funds to bet against the “London Whale” as a “complete tempest in a teapot.” “So first of all, I was dead wrong when I said that,” Dimon said about his previous remarks. “I obviously didn’t know because I never would have said that. And one of the reasons we came public was because we wanted to say, 'You know what, we told you something that was completely wrong a mere four weeks ago.'” In hindsight, Dimon said the bank took “far too much risk” in how it managed its securities portfolio. “The strategy we had was badly vetted,” he added. “It was badly monitored. It should never have happened.” ... Related: Elizabeth Warren: Jamie Dimon should resign from New York Fed board Mollie Reilly Huffington Post USA/Canada May 13, 2012 Includes embedded links and a two videos. Elizabeth Warren called on JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon to resign from his post on the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's board, citing the need for "responsibility and accountability" in the financial industry. Dimon, who disclosed a $2 billion loss by the banking giant last week, should "send a signal to the American people that Wall Street bankers get it and to show that they understand the need for responsibility and accountability," Warren said in a statement following Dimon's Sunday appearance on "Meet the Press." During that interview, Dimon said he "absolutely" believed that the enormous loss would give regulators more ammunition against the banks. Warren latched onto that comment, stating that Dimon's place on the board of directors gave him the power to advise the New York Fed on "management oversight and policy," creating what the Massachusetts Democrat feels is a clear conflict of interest. "We need to stop the cycle of bankers taking on risky activities, getting bailed out by the taxpayers, then using their army of lobbyists to water down regulations," Warren said. "We need a tough cop on the beat so that no one steals your purse on Main Street or your pension on Wall Street." Warren, an outspoken advocate of banking reform who oversaw the Troubled Asset Relief Program and helped create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is running in a closely-watched Senate race against incumbent Scott Brown, a Republican. She has stressed her role as a consumer advocate throughout the campaign. ... JPMorgan investment chief out Charles Riley CNNMoney USA May 14, 2012 JPMorgan is the USA's largest bank by assets. NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- JPMorgan Chase announced Monday that Ina Drew, the firm's chief investment officer, has left the bank after revelations of a $2 billion loss sustained over the past six weeks. A statement issued by the company said Drew made the decision to retire, a move that was widely expected after the company disclosed the unit she managed had suffered a major loss. The group had been making trades designed to hedge against risk, but had amassed a large position in credit-default swaps that began to sour. One of the highest paid women in the financial industry, Drew made $15.5 million in 2010. She has spent more than 30 years at JPMorgan. "Despite our recent losses in the CIO, Ina's vast contributions to our company should not be overshadowed by these events," CEO Jamie Dimon said in a statement. ... Mon, 14 May 2012 15:12:53 -0400 http://www.saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=22456 Murray Polner wrote No Victory Parades: The Return of the Vietnam Veteran and most recently co-authored Disarmed and Dangerous, a biography of Dan and Phil Berrigan, and with Thomas Wood Jr. wrote and edited We Who Dared Say No To War. He served in the U.S. army. Mother’s Day, 2012, and we’re still at war Murray Polner LewRockwell.com USA May 12, 2012 After the carnage of World War II the members of the now defunct Victory Chapter of American Gold Star Mothers in St. Petersburg, Florida, knew better than most what is was like to lose their sons, daughters and husbands in war. "We’d rather not talk about it," said Ceil Rindfuss whose son was killed in WWII. She told the St. Petersburg Times in 1960, "It’s a terrible scar that never heals. We hope there will never be another war so no other mothers will have to go through this ordeal." But as a result of the invasion of Iraq, too many now mourn family members lost to war. Few Americans know that Mother’s Day was initially suggested by two peace-minded mothers, Julia Ward Howe, a 19th century anti-slavery activist and suffragette, and Anna Reeves Jarvis, mother of eleven, who influenced Howe and had asked her fellow Appalachian townspeople, badly polarized by the Civil War, to remain neutral and help nurse the wounded troops of both sides. While neither lived to see an official Mother’s Day, it was eventually designated as a national holiday by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914, a president whose armies invaded Mexico, brought the U.S. into World War I and whose administration carried out brutal punishments against opponents of the World War I and the draft, such as Eugene V. Debs. It was Wilson who once declared that, "A war of service is a thing in which it is a proud thing to die" – a sentiment by someone who had never served in the military and which reminds me of Charles Edward Montague’s classic putdown of living room heroes, "War hath no fury like a non-combatant." ... More recently, many may no longer remember Lenore Breslauer, a mother of two children, who helped establish Another Mother for Peace during the Vietnam War. By the end of the sixties the group had 450,000 members and sympathizers, inspired by its ingenious and telling theme: "War is not healthy for children and other living beings." Years later, the message was not lost on three mothers on Long Island, N.Y., with the first name of Carol who initiated Mothers and Others Against War in 1979 to protest against Jimmy Carter’s resurrection of draft registration. They stayed on to battle against Ronald Reagan’s military intervention in El Salvador and Nicaragua. What these mothers and others recognized quite clearly was that war and the draft helped kill and grievously wound hundreds of thousands of troops and millions of civilians in places like Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and who knows where else. On this Mother’s Day we could use more of the anger and dissenting spirit of countless numbers of women and mothers who have condemned male-created and dominated wars. In Russia, mothers joined together and protested using their drafted sons as cannon fodder wars in Afghanistan and Chechnya. In Argentina and Chile, mothers and grandmothers protested the murders and disappearances of their children by the neo-fascist barbarians who ran their nations in the late seventies and early eighties. And in our country the anti-war movement has often been led by women, demonstrating, in essence, against "those who think that War is a glorious golden thing…invoking Honor and Praise and Valor and Love of Country" – as a bitter Roland Leighton, a British combat soldier of WWI, wrote long ago to his fiancée, the British antiwar writer Vera Brittain. Unhappily on this Mother’s Day, peace seems further away then ever. Even so, my hope is that more and more American mothers and all other women who have remained silent will continue to work against our now and future wars and the ever-present possibility of drafting their young. Do we still need to glorify war and military service? Do we need yet another war memorial to the dead in Washington? Do we need more war widows and mothers grieving for the rest of their lives over their dead husbands and wives, children and grandchildren? Do we really need to continue disseminating the myth that an idealistic America always fights for freedom and democracy no matter the cost or cause? ... Jim comment: Every nation needs a 'warrior class'. But their duty should be to spend their courage and use their skills to defend the nation, not to wage aggressive and/or preemptive wars against other nations. Sun, 13 May 2012 01:25:09 -0400 http://www.saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=22455 Probably best known as the author of the words to "America the Beautiful", Katharine Lee Bates was a prolific poet and a professor of English and head of the English department at Wellesley, where she had been a student in its earliest years. Bates original poem was entiltled "America. A Poem for July 4". Bates' poem was a prayer for the nation, a prayer for the nation's future. See our post from January 6, 2012 Reflecting on "America. A Poem for July 4" (1893). Katherine Lee Bates is the author of the following poem "Glory". At the crowded gangway they kissed good-bye. He had half a mind to scold her. An officer's mother and not keep dry The epaulet on his shoulder. He had forgotten mother and fame, His mind in a blood-mist floated, But when reeling back from carnage they came, One told him: 'You are promoted!' His friend smiled up from the wet red sand, The look was afar, eternal, But he tried to salute with his shattered hand: 'Room now for another colonel!' Again he raged in that lurid hell Where the country he loved had thrown him. 'You are promoted!' shrieked a shell. His mother would not have known him. Sun, 13 May 2012 01:22:25 -0400 http://www.saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=22454 Intro: Two British NATO troops were killed by two men in Afghan police uniforms in southern Afghanistan Saturday, in what has become a near daily occurrence of Afghans shooting their Western Axis trainers. See Men in Afghan uniforms kill 2 more NATO soldiers. NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) is investigating the incident and a spokesman claimed the Afghan men might have been insurgents dressed in Afghan police uniforms as opposed to actual trainees who shot at their supposed allies. The savagery of war and the battle for the human soul Salt Spring News British Columbia Canada December 15, 2007 Four links. We introduced them thus: May 30, 2006 we posted an item that contained nine links. The savagery of war: Anti-occupation fighters force US to send more troops to Iraq & My Lai . . . Haditha, does the end justify the means?. We commented at the time: Revenge for the killing of a fellow Marine is no reason to kill innocent, defenseless Iraqi women and children; nor is frustration, even when insurgents are at times fed and sheltered by civilians in the area, or when complicity is suspected. Criminal reprisal as an answer to physical and/or mental strain is just unacceptable behavior in human beings, much less in soldiers. When soldiers get to a point where they are apt to crack, they should be kept in their barracks or sent home. Just what role does the military leadership play in all this? Commanders, doctors and chaplains . . . aren’t they all gravely derelict? Item: Below: Shades of 'Tiger Force' in Vietnam, 1967. On a patrol in Afghanistan, house searches become demolition parties. “Cows: Taliban food. Sheep: Taliban food. Donkeys: Taliban transportation. Kill everything.” Neil Shea, traveling with U.S. troops, gives insights into the recent massacre of women and children in Kandahar which the US and its allies publicly insist was enacted by one rogue soldier. Of the essay that appears below, Shea says of it on his website (and provides the embedded links): I invite you to listen to a conversation I had recently about my latest work with Dick Gordon on his radio program, "The Story". There has been a lot of interest in this essay, written for The American Scholar, about time I spent with U.S. troops who appeared to be on the edge of committing serious crimes. The piece was published just before the massacre in Kandahar, and in the days following many readers and journalists have asked me to comment on the killings, and on the pressures building over U.S. troops. The timing of the essay and the killings is sadly coincidental, but at least there is now a good discussion taking place on the web, and, to a limited extent in newspapers and on television, about what we ask our troops to do and what the price for that can be. Afghanistan: A gathering menace Neil Shea The American Scholar USA Sprng 2012 Photo: Neil Shea The soldiers around me were barely visible, but I could smell them. They had not washed for days, and a sharp musk of sweat and sleeplessness, tobacco and chemically mummified food, wove through the fields and orchards. It was after midnight, moonless, the stars brilliant but unhelpful. The soldiers wore night-vision goggles, but I did not, so I stumbled after their scent along the remote edge of a fading war, envisioning things I could not see. Up ahead, in the stream of black shapes, were the American soldiers I had come to fear. They were men who enjoyed demolishing Afghan houses, men who shot dogs in the face. The pair who had embraced like lovers, one tenderly drawing the blade of his knife along the pale, smooth skin of his friend’s throat. There was a guy who’d let the others tie his legs open and mock-rape him, and there were several men who had boasted of plans to murder their ex-wives and former girlfriends. We paused in the darkness. A line of Afghan soldiers shuffled past, also nearly blind without night-vision equipment. They moved into position for the coming raid, clumsy as boxcars, trailing their own earthy stink. I thought back to what an American Army sergeant had told me hours earlier. “This is where I come to do fucked-up things.” His face had been clear and smooth, his smile almost shy. It was a statement of happy expectation, as though Afghanistan were a playground. He was the de facto leader of a platoon I will call Destroyer, and although he is a real person, not a composite, I have heard his words in many variations, from many American combat troops. But he and some of his men were the first I had met who seemed very near to committing the dumb and vicious acts that we call war crimes. ... Since 2006 I have written off and on about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Nearly all of my work in those countries has been done embedded with NATO, mostly American military units. Many times I have watched soldiers or Marines, driven by boredom or fear, behave selfishly and meanly, even illegally, in minor ways. In a few searing moments I have wondered what would come next, what the men would do to prisoners or civilians or suspected insurgents. And I have wondered how to describe these moments without reporting melodramatic minutiae or betraying the men who allowed me in. ... Neil Shea grew up near Boston and worked as a wilderness guide before becoming a writer. He is an editor-at-large for the Virginia Quarterly Review and a regular contributor to National Geographic Magazine. He has also written for The American Scholar, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic Monthly, The Christian Science Monitor, and Inversion Magazine, among others. From 2004 to 2008 he was a staff writer for National Geographic; before joining the magazine he was a reporter for the Providence Journal. He has worked in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Europe, and elsewhere. Neil’s writing has been recognized nationally; most recently with gold and silver Lowell Thomas Awards for his stories on Ethiopia and Cuba, and an award for environmental reporting from the Society of Environmental Journalists. He has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award and the Overseas Press Club Award. He has also taught college writing courses and has been invited to speak about his work to students at the University of Virginia, Furman University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Visit his website at Sun, 13 May 2012 01:20:37 -0400 http://www.saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=22453 Click on a headline below to go to that news item Friday, May 11,2012 Living Locavore brew: Tapping into beer’s agricultural roots National News Harperland dispatches: Choose which traits of fascism these two reports display Commentary Harpeland dispatches 2: Quebec student protest; temporary foreign workers now 30% of labor force; climate change and the corporate scramble for the Arctic World News Fukushima a ticking time-bomb? & Japanese government effectively nationalizes utility company responsible in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami World News Another stupidity: Western Axis officials slam Syria after deadly bombing Thursday, May 10,2012 Commentary US Vice-President Biden gives Israel ‘go ahead’ to bomb Iran World News Arab Sping update: US foreign policy bearing bitter fruit in Bahrain Commentary Captain Eric H. May's top ten false flag terror targets World News Afpak dispatches: Iran queries Obama's pact with Karzai & Doubts fly as US envoy to Pakistan quits World News Vladimir Putin's apparent snub of next week's G8 summit creates a buzz in Western Axis press; BRICS nation president says his absence a mere technicality Wednesday, May 9,2012 Environment Related to Fukishima? Polar bear, seal and walrus illness and death in Beaufort Sea; radioactive kelp off North America's west coast; itching, hair loss and other adverse effects reported by Alaska Airlines flight attendents Social Ideas A democracy lesson to the world from Iceland Commentary North American civil liberties watch: Chicago NATO summit security—ordinary or extraordinary? World News Syrian dispatches: Once calm Israeli-occupied Golan Heights becoming agitated; Assad controlling outside fighting forces but Syrian civil awakening moving him to a more open regime World News Libyan rebels, Ukraine haggling over a plane and prisoners & Heading into elections Libya remains unstable World News Indonesian enigma: Elements of mystery in the disappearance of Russian Superjet-100 Tuesday, May 8,2012 World News Dispatches from the African campaign Commentary Syria and the fable of the hamster and the bear: 'No biting the [Russian] bear's sensitive parts' Commentary Fareed Zakaria: U.S. has made war on terror a war without end Commentary Inside the Zeitgeist: Debunking the myths in our war stories and debuking the debuker Commentary Debunking the Western Axis missile-defense myth Monday, May 7,2012 Commentary Fascism anyone? It is, after all, these days, smothering us in most areas of our lives. Maybe that is why there is a rising anger in the civic sector of Western Axis countries Civil Society Popular anger rising in Europe; in Quebec Commentary Change Europe can believe in? Whither the Eurozone Sunday, May 6,2012 Commentary Frye's anatomy: What, then, of the life of his beautiful, cloistered mind? Dissecting Northrup Frye Commentary Did 'highbrows' kill culture?: A commentary on post-WWII American popular culture Commentary Radical shift: Where's David Horowitz? Sat, 12 May 2012 03:00:07 -0400 http://www.saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=22452 Right: Becky Julseth, co-owner Salt Spring Island Ales (Gulf Islands Brewing Ltd). Favorite Beer Memory: The moment I convinced my husband that we should buy his uncle's Brewery. Becky dove into the beer business in 2008 when she and her husband Neil took over the tiny, but award-winning 'Gulf Islands Brewing', located at the site of a spring, in a small barn on Salt Spring Island, BC. At only 30, Becky is both co-owner and co-conspirator in a mission to advance the "cottage" brewery movement in Canada and beyond. She now works hard to tell the story of good beer, made in small batches with locally-sourced ingredients. Becky championed the plantation of an organic estate hops field on beautiful Salt Spring Island, adjacent to the brewery. By connecting production from farm to cup, she aspires to produce beers that embody the flavor and character of the island. Gulf Islands Brewing presents Salt Spring Island Ales This is the home page of Salt Spring's brewery. From deep in our mountain spring comes the cleanest, freshest water for our Salt Spring Island Ales. Piped straight from the spring into the brew house, this gorgeous water is combined with natural ingredients to create a lineup of distinctly Island-made ales. Whenever possible, we source local ingredients such as our own island-grown hops, honey and heather. Our highly flavourful beers pair wonderfully with good food and are the perfect accompaniment to locally-sourced gastronomic fare. Brewed and bottled entirely by hand, our beer is made in small batches using traditional, unhurried methods. Our beer is fresh and unpasteurized. No preservatives, no chemicals, just purely delicious beer. Locavore brew: Tapping into beer’s agricultural roots Brie Mazurek Grist USA May 7, 2012 Brewing a truly local beer is fraught with challenges when it comes to hops and barley malt. A version of this piece originally appeared in the CUESA Newsletter. Visit this page for its embedded links. Wendell Berry has said that eating is an agricultural act, but what about drinking beer? A thirst for fermented beverages may have inspired the world’s first farmers to plant crops some 13,000 years ago, yet today beer is rarely part of the larger conversation about where our food comes from. In California, a handful of local craft brewers are starting to tap into that primitive connection. Taking up the motto “Beer is agriculture,” Almanac Beer Co. works directly with farmers in the greater Bay Area to source specialty ingredients for their seasonal brews. “For most people, beer is what shows up in the bottle or can,” says Almanac brewer Damian Fagan. “We’re trying to create a foundation that beer is rooted deeply in agriculture.” ... While the term terroir is usually reserved for fine wines, Almanac has found creative ways to “infuse a sense of time and place in each brew,” as Friedman says, by integrating fresh produce into the mash. Since last summer, Almanac has collaborated with Sebastopol Berry Farm, Twin Girls Farm, Hamada Farms, Marshall’s Farm Natural Honey, and most recently, Heirloom Organic Gardens. For each of their beers, made in small batches and released seasonally, Friedman and Fagan meet with the farmer, tour their farm, and feature it prominently on the bottle’s label and Almanac’s website. Like the Farmer’s Almanac, each brew serves as a record of the season. ... Related: Molsons, Moosehead, Sapporo are buying big into small craft beer. Here’s why Josh Rubin Toronto Star Ontario Canada May 10, 2012 As he stands in front of a gleaming new bar, with copper brewing kettles behind him, Ian Freedman has a hard time not smiling. “We’re pretty excited about this,” said Freedman. “This” would be the new headquarters for Six Pints, the Canadian craft beer division of Molson Coors, created last year after the company’s purchase of Vancouver-based Granville Island Brewing was finalized. Also part of the Six Pints portfolio is venerable Ontario craft brewery Creemore Springs, which Molson purchased in 2005. The headquarters, on the site of the former Duggan’s brewpub on Victoria street in downtown Toronto, includes standard corporate offices, but also a small brewery, retail space (including tasting bar), and an event space. Small-scale, craft brew is one of the only growth segments in the beer industry. In 1981, Canadians drank an average of 99.69 litres of beer per year. In 2011, we chugged a whole lot less — 80.3 litres per person. (Meanwhile, wine’s share of the alcohol market has been rising steadily.) Those trends are mirrored in other “mature” markets such as the U.S. and U.K. Going against those big-picture trends, however, is craft beer’s rise. At the LCBO, sales of Ontario craft beer have posted double-digit increases in both value and volume for the past decade. “I think our beer customers are becoming much more adventurous. . . . I think we’re going to see the momentum continue,” said Chris Robertson, the LCBO’s director of spirits and beer. In the last five years alone, sales in the LCBO’s seasonal beer program have gone up 200 per cent. Those listings include craft breweries from around the continent, as well as imported beers that could fairly be called craft. It’s the same trend in the U.S., where craft beer is on the verge of cracking 10 per cent market share. “It’s the fastest growing segment in the beer business, and one that the big brewers feel they’ve least participated in,” said Freedman. While Six Pints may be the most visible example in Canada of a big brewer taking on a craft flavour, it’s not the only one. Guelph-based Sleeman and Quebec’s highly-touted Unibroue are owned by Japan’s Sapporo. In Ontario, Moosehead owns Hop City Brewing, based in Brampton. “We’re in this for the long haul. This is not a fad,” said Andrew Oland, president and CEO of Moosehead, which originally got into the craft game for broader business reasons. When Moosehead bought tiny Niagara Falls Brewing in 2004, it was to comply with regulations that make it easier for a company to bring beer into Ontario if they have a brewery here. It took them a few years to realize it could be a lot more than just a regulatory toe-hold. In 2007, Niagara Falls Brewing was moved to Brampton. In 2009, they changed their name to Hop City, and launched a number of new brands, including their flagship Barking Squirrel Lager. While he wouldn’t say if Moosehead is considering buying other small craft brewers on their own merits, Oland expects more big breweries to snap up smaller independents. “It wouldn’t surprise me at all if there were more, especially in the U.S. Sometimes it’s easier to buy than to build, and some folks are looking to cash out,” said Oland. ... Fri, 11 May 2012 19:39:17 -0400 http://www.saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=22451 Use this as your guide. Fascism anyone?. Laurence Britt's analysis lists the fourteen common threads that link all fascist regimes in recognizable patterns of national behavior and abuse of power. These basic characteristics are more prevalent and intense in some regimes than in others, but they all share at least some level of similarity. RCMP spied on B.C. natives protesting pipeline plan, documents show Martin Lukacs and Tim Groves Toronto Star Ontario Canada May 10, 2012 Chief Na'Moks of the Wet'suwet'en Nation, left, Chief Martin Louie of Nadleh Whut'en, centre, and Chief Jackie Thomas of the Saik'uz nation attend Enbridge's annual shareholders meeting in Toronto on Wednesday. Photo: Mark Blinch/Reuters The RCMP has been spying on a group of British Columbia First Nations whose vocal opposition to Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline has taken them to the company’s annual shareholders meeting in Toronto, according to documents obtained through an access-to-information request. The documents show that a provincial RCMP unit has been closely tracking the potential for “acts of protest and civil disobedience” by the Yinka Dene Alliance, a coalition of northern B.C. First Nations who have been at the centre of resistance to Enbridge’s $5.5 billion pipeline proposal. Their territory covers a quarter of the route of the pipeline, which would carry more than 500,000 barrels of oilsands crude from Alberta through pristine territory to Kitimat, B.C., for export by supertanker to Asia and other markets. The revelations add ammunition to critics who have charged that the Harper government is waging a campaign to demonize legitimate opponents of resource developments like the Northern Gateway, by labelling them as radicals or including them in Canada’s “counter-terrorism” strategy. ... Enbridge declined to comment about whether it has been exchanging information with the RCMP. The monthly intelligence reports note that the oil company “will experience increasingly intense protest activity due to the environmental sensitivity of the Northern Gateway path, combined with the fact that the territory has never been ceded to the Crown by First Nations in B.C.” The pipeline would cross more than 700 rivers and streams, whose abundance of fish has spawned an economy integral to the region, and three vital watersheds: the Mackenzie, the Fraser and the Skeena. More than 100 First Nations have banned an Enbridge pipeline from their territories, declaring “we will not allow our fish, animals, plants, people and ways of life to be placed at risk.” An intelligence report notes that the Yinka Dene Alliance will show an “increasing propensity and likelihood of utilizing blockades and confrontation to deter industry from accessing disputed territory.” ... As previously reported in the Star, a national RCMP surveillance program monitoring First Nations that ran between 2007 and 2010 shared similar intelligence reports about First Nations with the private sector, including energy companies. ... From the annals of diplomacy: Stephen Harper fires a Cannon at the Parisians David J. Climenhaga Alberta Diary Alberta Canada May 11, 2012 If you didn’t think Prime Minister Stephen Harper really despised social democrats, then consider for a moment this factoid from yesterday’s news columns: Only two days after Socialist François Hollande was elected president of France, Mr. Harper named Lawrence Cannon Canada’s ambassador to Paris. Indeed, it’s possible that Mr. Cannon will be on the job in the City of Light by the time M. Hollande takes power on May 15. Canadians will remember Mr. Cannon as the prime minister’s sometime Quebec lieutenant and the man who hilariously lectured the now-departed government of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak for letting his thugs beat protesters in the streets of Cairo six months after law-ignoring Canadian police beat protesters in the streets of Toronto. The difference, presumably, was that Mr. Cannon reckoned the Canadian protesters deserved it. Mind you, detecting irony was never a strong suit of Canada’s Conservatives as a class, even before the humourless Mr. Harper took over as the party’s Great Helmsman, and it certainly doesn’t seem to be among the former foreign affairs minister’s repertoire of party tricks. Mr. Cannon, also the former MP for the Quebec riding of Pontiac, is apparently being rewarded by the PM for managing to get his butt kicked out of office by a hitherto-unknown karate black belt from the NDP’s Quebec wing. ... As Alberta Diary observed at the time, mindful of the fact that up until then Prime Minister Harper had been unequivocally promising Canadians our troops would leave Afghanistan lock, stock and barrel by 2011, a year that has now passed with Canadian boots still on the ground in that benighted country, “‘Canada’s end date of March 2014’ is not firm. We will be pressured, as Mr. Cannon acknowledged, and our prime minister will fold like a tent.” Since then, of course, Mr. Harper has folded precisely as predicted. Now the firm 2014 withdrawal date Mr. Cannon was so determined about is fading too.... Well, never mind that. The bilingual Mr. Cannon is off to Paris, where he can presumably lecture Mr. Hollande on the need to leave French troops in Afghanistan. The French president-elect vowed on the campaign trail to get the French army the heck out of the rapidly unraveling Afghan war – a promise to voters that unlike his Canadian counterparts he is presumably committed to keeping despite growing pressure from the Americans and their Canadian sidekicks. ... Fri, 11 May 2012 19:36:58 -0400 http://www.saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=22450 Quebec students send a message against austerity Linda McQuaig Toronto Star Ontario Canada May 7, 2012 Quebec students hold signs that say 'For sale: Our education' during a protest against tuition hikes in downtown Montreal. (March 22, 2012). Photo: Christinne Muschi/Reuters No wonder those Quebec student protestors have been spooking the English Canadian establishment. If they get their way, the same ideas could catch on here, leaving the best-laid plans for austerity in tatters. What seems to particularly gall some English Canadian commentators is the fact that the Quebec students — who reached a tentative deal with the province on the weekend after a three-month strike — have been protesting tuition hikes that would still leave them with the lowest tuition in the country. Why can’t these spoiled brats be grateful, and go back to watching video games and keeping up with the Kardashians like normal, well-adjusted North American youth? It’s that old problem about Quebec. Somehow people there manage to shake a bit loose from the rigid corporate-imposed mindset that has gripped North America in recent decades, convincing us that we as a society must cut back on things — like university education and old age pensions — that were somehow affordable in days when our society was a lot less rich. The Quebec students, more attuned to the outside world, have figured out that this self-denial has more to do with dogma than with some new reality allegedly necessitated by the global economy. ... Temporary foreign workers and the labour market Jim Stanford The Progressive Economics Forum Canada May 7, 2012 Further to recent commentary regarding the Harper government’s dramatic expansion of the Temporary Foreign Worker (TWF) program, consider this shocking factoid: Even before the expansion of the program envisioned in the current omnibus “budget” bill, temporary foreign workers (who do not have the same rights as other Canadian workers, and whose presence here depends entirely on keeping their employers happy) already accounted for almost 30% of all net new paid jobs created in Canada between 2007 and 2011. ... The TFW program, therefore, is is not a marginal activity; this represents the core of labour market strategy by employers and this obliging government. TFW guest workers are not working primarily on farms or in the oil sands; they are working anywhere in the country (over one-third of them in Ontario) that employers complain they can’t find workers to do the right job at the right price. That, after all, is the essence of the “labour extraction problem” that is at the core of capitalist labour relations (read Chapter 8 of Economics for Everyone for a crach course). Hence, this initiative by Harper & Co. is aimed at relaxing a fundamental constraint on class relations in our whole labour market, and in that regard represents a very important (and dangerous) shift in the balance of power in our society. ... Climate change and the corporate scramble for the Arctic Krystalline Kraus rabble.ca May 11, 2012 This is the second of a two-part feature examining the impact of climate change on the Arctic. Part I examined the uses of the colonial imagination of the Arctic. Visit this page for its embedded links. Many of the winter months of 2012 were among the warmest on record. The warming of our winters is an unsettling trend. For example, in the Arctic Report Card, researchers concluded that in 2008, "Autumn temperatures in the Arctic are at record levels, the Arctic Ocean is getting warmer and less salty as sea ice melts and reindeer herds appear to be declining." In 2010, the same group of scientists concluded that a return to previous Arctic conditions was unlikely. And as our planet continues to warm up, we should be growing more terrified - for our planet and yes, selfishly, ourselves. As the world gets warmer, our ice and frozen earth begin to melt. While this may benefit countries and corporations interested in profiting off of Arctic resource extraction, the harm to Mother Earth and the Indigenous peoples of the Arctic cannot be undone. ... Despite these warnings, the warming of the planet is seen by some as good for the global business. With the increasing rise in global temperatures, new Arctic passages through the numerous islands are opening up for the first time, and the warming earth could potentially make resource extraction of minerals, oil and natural gas more accessible. In a March 27, 2012 article published in the Arctic Institute - Centre for Circumpolar Studies, Andreas Østhagen writes, "As long as there are commercial opportunities in the Arctic, local communities, governments, and companies will take advantage of them. Subsequently the question of relevance is not if oil and gas activity will take place, but rather how it will take place." To countries such as the United States, Russia, Canada, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark, and resource-based corporations, the economic worth of the Arctic increases as the temperature rises. The reaction from nations with a stake in the circumpolar region of the world differs from North America to Europe. ... Fri, 11 May 2012 19:35:32 -0400 http://www.saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=22449 The worst yet to come? Why nuclear experts are calling Fukushima a ticking time-bomb Brad Jacobson AlterNet USA May 4, 2012 More than a year after the triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, the Japanese government, Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) present similar assurances of the site's current state: challenges remain but everything is under control. The worst is over. But nuclear waste experts say the Japanese are literally playing with fire in the way nuclear spent fuel continues to be stored onsite, especially in reactor 4, which contains the most irradiated fuel -- 10 times the deadly cesium-137 released during the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident. These experts also charge that the NRC is letting this threat fester because acknowledging it would call into question safety at dozens of identically designed nuclear power plants around the U.S., which contain exceedingly higher volumes of spent fuel in similar elevated pools outside of reinforced containment. ... Japan bails out plant that caused worst-ever nuclear accident Guardian/Raw Story UK/USA May 9, 2012 Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), the company at the centre of Japan’s worst-ever nuclear accident, has been saved from collapse after the government in effect nationalised the firm by agreeing to inject 1 trillion yen ($12.5bn) in fresh capital. Japan’s biggest utility has received at least 3.5tn yen in state support since three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant went into meltdown after being hit by a powerful tsunami on 11 March last year. The trade and industry minister, Yukio Edano, said the capital injection was needed to ensure the utility company could continue to supply electricity to 45 million people, including residents of Tokyo. “Without the state funds, [Tepco] cannot provide a stable supply of electricity and pay for compensation and decommissioning costs,” Edano said after approving what amounts to a state takeover of the firm. The total cost of the disaster, which last weekend led to the closure of the country’s last working nuclear reactor, is estimated at $100bn. Tepco faces compensation claims totalling 5tn yen from the tens of thousands of people who have been driven from their homes by radiation leaks. The task of decontaminating the area affected by radiation and decommissioning the plant is expected to take decades. ... Fri, 11 May 2012 19:34:21 -0400 http://www.saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=22448 Intro: The Syrian debacle: Dispatches Salt Spring News British Columbia Canada April 10, 2012 Four links. We introduced them thus: A Takfiri (from the Arabic word تكفيري) is a Muslim who practices Takfir, which means to accuse others of apostasy or of being an infidel. The term Takfir derives from the word kafir (impiety) and is described as when "...one who is, or claims to be, a Muslim is declared impure." Takfiris have been classified by some commentators as violent offshoots of the Salafi movement, yet while Salafism is seen as a form of 'fundamentalist Islam', it is not an inherently violent movement and does not condone terrorism. Takfiris, on the other hand, condone acts of violence as legitimate methods of achieving religious or political goals. Items: At least 70 killed in Damascus bombings Jason Ditz Antiwar.com News USA May 10, 2012 Visit this page for its embedded links. A pair of powerful car bombs were detonated outside of a key intelligence compound tore the front off the building and caused havoc on the highway nearby, killing at least 70 people, including a large number of civilians, and wounded 372 others. It was the largest single attack against the Assad regime since protests began in March 2011. No group has yet claimed responsibility, but state media blamed Saudi-backed terrorist factions for the strike. The Free Syrian Army denied any role. There are a number of different terrorist factions operating within Syria on behalf of the rebels, including al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), which has reportedly sent large numbers of fighters across the border at the behest of Ayman al-Zawahiri. Early UN statements were careful not to blame the rebels for the large number of civilian deaths, saying only that “it is not going to solve any problems.” The US State Department issued a demand that the Syrian government immediately stop all violence in the country. Who is responsible for the deadly Damascus blasts? Patrick Martin Globe and Mail Canada May 10, 2012 JERUSALEM— More than 50 people are dead and some 370 wounded in Damascus after a pair of massive bombs exploded during the morning rush hour near a military intelligence building in the Syrian capital. Videos and Syrian state TV show the collapsed front of the building and some 20 burned out vehicles, part of the enormous devastation that was wrought. Then comes the question: Who was responsible? Fingers point first to the opposition movement whose year-long uprising has grown increasingly from peaceful protest to violent insurrection. This is the view of the scores of demonstrators who quickly come to the site of Thursday’s blasts eager to show that they, the people, reject the opposition’s efforts to topple the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. They point fingers at the leaders of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, Islamic monarchies that have championed the opposition against the Assad regime and may well be arming it. Such a conclusion seems too convenient, too obvious, too counter to the nature of the opposition, so many people point instead to the government itself, said to be carrying out these attacks so as to tar the opposition. This tactic is especially effective, the opposition argues, when done with UN personnel and a sprinkling of international media monitoring the country as they are now. No way would the government kill so many of its own people. It must have been the opposition who want both to strike fear in the population and to lay blame on the government. But perhaps it was the government who thought people would reason this way, so that the opposition would get double the blame... and on and on it goes. In the past, groups that claim to be inspired by al-Qaeda have said they carried out some of the bombing attacks that began in December. It is noteworthy that bombings such as these do closely resemble the scale and technique of bombings carried out in Baghdad in the campaign by anti-Shia movements such as al-Qaeda of Mesopotamia. Many from that group and related movements are believed to have made their way to the fighting in Syria, in aid of the out-gunned opposition. At least one bombing was claimed by a little-known organization called Jabhat al-Nusra (Protection Front for the Syrian People) suggesting that new actors may be trying to produce a state of anarchy, presumably for the benefit of whoever will emerge most powerful. ... Syria, allies see foreign backing behind terror attacks Jason Ditz Antiwar.com News USA May 10, 2012 Visit this page for its embedded links. Today’s Damascus bombing, the deadliest yet of Syria’s nascent civil war, has sparked a new flurry of concern about the growing role of terrorism in fighting the Assad regime, with government officials and foreign allies alleging “foreign backing” for the attacks. There’s not much secret that Western and Gulf nations have been cheerfully backing the rebels, hoping to secure favor with a new regime. With al-Qaeda and other al-Qaeda styled organizations ratcheting up their own participation, it is inevitable to question where these interests intersect. ... Western officials slam Syria after deadly bombing Jason Ditz Antiwar.com News USA May 10, 2012 Visit this page for its embedded links. A massive bombing tears through the capital city of a major nation, destroying a massive government building and killing scores of innocent civilians nearby. Hundreds of others are wounded, some gravely. Virtually anywhere else on the planet, such a bombing would create a wellspring of sympathy for the attacked nation. Today, in Syria, it was anything but, as Western officials issued the obligatory statements condemning the attacks, and spent most of their time condemning the regime. “As Kofi Annan made clear to the UN Security Council earlier this week, the onus is on the Syrian authorities to implement a full ceasefire,” insisted British Foreign Secretary William Hague, while the US State Department started its own statement by calling the bombing “unjustifiable” and went on to praise the “legitimate Syrian opposition” while saying that the Syrian government had “created the conditions” to get itself bombed. The State Department went on to hint that they were considering going to the UN Security Council for “further action” against the Assad regime. French officials, who have been pushing for an invasion of Syria, also insisted that the regime “bears all the responsibility” for the bombing. Fri, 11 May 2012 19:33:17 -0400 http://www.saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=22447 Hmmm? Does Biden think Obama might replace him with Hilary Clinton in Obama's next term, the better to place the plutocrats' darling to run for president in 2016? Biden to Israel: Bomb away! Nima Shirazi Desertpeace Israel 9, 2012 Visit this page for its embedded links. Speaking to an international assembly of 1,600 conservative rabbis in Atlanta today, self-proclaimed Zionist Joe Biden said that Israel still had time to attack Iran if it so chooses.”The window has not closed in terms of the Israelis if they choose to act on their own militarily,” the Vice President told the congregation. “I would not contract out my security to anybody, even a loyal, loyal, loyal friend like the United States.” This is not the first time Biden has made such a comment. During an appearance on the ABC‘s “This Week,” Biden told George Stephanopoulos, “Look, we cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do when they make a determination — if they make a determination — that they’re existentially threatened and their survival is threatened by another country.” Biden comments were immediately walked back by the Obama campaign. The claim that Iran somehow poses an “existential threat” to Israel is of course a long-running propaganda line often employed to fear-monger about Iran’s nuclear energy program. This view, however, is not shared by numerous Israeli officials including former IDF chief of staff Dan Halutz, former Mossad head Ephraim Halevy, and current Mossad head Tamir Pardo. Even Israel’s hawkish Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who is leading the push toward an Israeli attack on Iran, said in 2009, “I am not among those who believe Iran is an existential issue for Israel. Israel is strong, I don’t see anyone who could pose an existential threat.” Still, Biden declared, “We will prevent Iran from acquiring a nuke by whatever means necessary, period.” A strong claim, to be sure, but one that rings a bit silly considering that according to the United States, the IAEA, and Israel – Iran isn’t building nuclear weapons. The Jewish Telegraph Agency reports that, during his speech today, the “vice president also called efforts to delegitimize Israel ‘the most significant assault’ on Israel since its independence.” In an effort to burnish the Obama administration’s Zionist credentials, Biden insisted, “At every point in our Administration, at every juncture, we have stood up for the legitimacy of the state of Israel.” For Biden, it seems, Israel’s war crime light is still green…even if its armistice line isn’t. In the strangest comment of the day, though, Biden spoke of internal Iranian politics: ... Regarding the Obama administration’s pro-Israel efforts, Biden told the crowd of rabbis, “I’m proud of our record. No president since Harry Truman has done more for Israel’s physical security than Barack Obama.” Evoking Truman is a bold move, though not necessarily a good one. Yes, it is true that the only person in history to authorize a nuclear attack on a civilian population (twice) that resulted in calculated, deliberate mass murder dismissed the advice of his own State Department officials when he recognized the nascent State of Israel on May 14, 1948, just eleven minutes after it declared itself a nation. In November 1945, Truman reportedly told a gathering of U.S. diplomats who were urging a more balanced American approach to the looming Palestine issue, “I’m sorry, gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism. I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents.” Of course, there were hundreds of thousands of citizens of Arab descent living in the U.S. at the time, but since they were not as well organized or funded as their Zionist counterparts, from a political standpoint they might as well not have existed at all. The same goes for Biden, his boss, and the U.S. Congress now. ... In a diary entry written on July 21, 1947, Truman reacted harshly to demands made of him that day by his Treasury Secretary and staunch Zionist Henry Morganthau, Jr. regarding Jewish refugees from Europe settling in Palestine. Truman wrote, “He’d no business, whatever to call me. The Jews have no sense of proportion nor do they have any judgement on world affairs.” He continued, “The Jews, I find are very, very selfish. They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as D[isplaced] P[ersons] as long as the Jews get special treatment. Yet when they have power, physical, financial or political neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the under dog. Put an underdog on top and it makes no difference whether his name is Russian, Jewish, Negro, Management, Labor, Mormon, Baptist he goes haywire. I’ve found very, very few who remember their past condition when prosperity comes. ... Jim comment: Very true, Harry. But we know, or should know, that not all Jews are Zionists, only the powerful ones. Most Jews are decent people—as least as decent as we Christian and Muslim Abrahamic kin, if not more decent in some areas of everyday living. Thu, 10 May 2012 22:17:57 -0400 http://www.saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=22446 Bahrain vows harsher crackdown John Glaser Antiwar.com News USA May 8, 2012 And, lest we forget, 17,000 Saudi troops and Saudi armor were called in to quell the initial popular uprising. Visit this page for its embedded links. Bahrain vowed on Tuesday to intensify its security crackdown on anti-government protests after the Sunni regime terminated negotiations on addressing the political grievances fueling the popular upheaval. Bahraini media have reported a new security plan to “restore order” to the beleaguered Gulf state, which will probably include more repression. Authorities have recently detained a leading activist and warned a top Shi’ite cleric to stop alleged incitement to violence. With the support for the United States, the Bahraini dictatorship, which hosts the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, has responded to largely peaceful, pro-democracy protest movement with brutal tactics like shooting at crowds with live rounds, systematic torture and beatings, ubiquitous tear gas shot into residential areas, arbitrary arrests and show trials, clamping down on free press, and more. Bahraini government spokesman Sheikh Abdulaziz bin Mubarak Al Khalifa told Reuters: “Because of the escalation in violence, we are looking into the perpetrators and people who use print, broadcast and social media to encourage illegal protest and violence around the country.” “If applying the law means tougher action, then so be it,” he added. What “tougher action” means is yet to be determined, but reliable U.S. money and weapons to the repressive Middle Eastern dictatorship is likely to continue regardless. Bahrain delays medics' retrial until June Associated Press/Newsday USA May 10, 2012 MANAMA, Bahrain - (AP) -- A Bahraini defense lawyer says the retrial of 20 medical professionals on allegations of aiding the Gulf kingdom's uprising has been adjourned for a month. The doctors and nurses had been sentenced to prison terms of between five and 15 years by a now-disbanded security tribunal, which was set up by the Sunni monarchy as part of crackdowns against Shiite-led protests that began 15 months ago. In March, a retrial began in civilian court but was immediately postponed. Lawyer Jalila al-Sayed says the court Thursday delayed proceedings again until June 14. A retrial also is under way for a group of 21 activists, including a rights defender on hunger strike for three months. Bahrain activists burn tyres, demand women's release Andrew Hammond, Reuters India Thomson Reuters Canada/UK May 10, 2012 DUBAI(Reuters) - Bahraini opposition activists said they blocked roads with burning tyres on Thursday to demand the release of women prisoners, many of them locked up during more than a year of protests against the island kingdom's rulers. Bahrain's interior ministry blamed "vandals" for the road blockages which stopped traffic in the capital Manama. "Legal measures were taken and the situation was returned to normal," the ministry said in a statement on Twitter, without going into further detail. The government this week announced stiffer measures against illegal protests, but demonstrations have continued. ... The United States, whose Fifth Fleet is based in Manama, has been muted in its criticism of Bahrain since the uprising began. It has called for restraint from both the opposition and the government. Crown Prince Salman thanked U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Washington on Wednesday for U.S. support during the crisis, the state news agency BNA said. Below: Following the sport's moral low in the gloom of Bahrain, the Spanish Grand Prix this weekend brings F1 much-needed relief. After Bahrain, F1 is in a better place amid the sunshine of Barcelona Paul Weaver in Barcelona guardian.co.uk, The Sports Blog UK May 10, 2012 Formula One, suddenly, is bathed in Catalan sunshine. It is back to what it does best: racing cars. The sport has returned to its European heartland. This weekend the engines will scream at its track in Barcelona, a benchmark for a car's all-round ability, which is why the teams come here in pre-season. And in two weeks we will be in Monaco, the glittering jewel in the crown of the whole shebang, the annual celebration of a sport that knows how to push the yacht out. For a short time, at least, we can take a deep breath and put the awfulness of Bahrain to one side. It was easy to take the high ground in Bahrain, because Formula One had decided to occupy the moral low ground. The sport should not have been anywhere near the place last month. It was plain wrong. Black and white. No intermediate greys. And those who said different were, mostly, not there at the time. The argument that F1 had a contract to fulfil is a specious one. The obligation to see out a contract, even more than patriotism, is a last refuge. It is more honourable to walk away from a rotten contract than to "honour" it. The sport should never be allowed to forget what it did in Bahrain last month. It should be reminded at regular intervals of the self-inflicted damage it sustained. ... Thu, 10 May 2012 19:10:00 -0400 http://www.saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=22445 Intro: Reports: Russia is massing troops on Iran's northern border and waiting for a Western Axis attack; USS ENTERPRISE, the legend, awaits on station Salt Spring News British Columbia Canada April 10, 2012 Nine links. Here's one of those links and our comment: CNN: U.S. sends loaded warship to Iran! "Ready if Obama orders military action..." CNN's hardworking and dutiful pair, Wolf Blitzer and Barbara Starr, on the movement of a fully-complemented USS Enterprise "close nearby" to Iran. Video report (3:02). We are keeping an eye on the USS Enterprise as she and her warships join the strike group headed by the USS Abraham Lincoln. Commissioned in November 1961, the 'Big E'— the Grande Ol' Dame of the active US Navy—is scheduled to be deactivated on December 1, 2012. According to the U.S Navy, this is her final deployment. We're keeping an eye on the Enterprise because her 'sacrifice' would be the catalyst that would arouse the American people in support of a large war beginning in the region. Others have shared the same suspicious fear as well. Here's one we just found today. False flag carrier Enterprise now in place Zen Gardner The Intel Hub USA April 9, 2012 Includes a video "USS Enterprise false flag!!" (2:37) Would the US military really sacrifice its own to start a war with Iran? Would the US really be complicit in attacks on its own citizens to get into lucrative wars and gain access to precious natural resources? If this sounds outlandish to you all you have to do is read. And read. The USS Enterprise that just arrived in the Persian Gulf, nicknamed the “Big E”, is scheduled to be decommissioned after this last tour of duty. A very expensive endeavor, especially since this was the very first nuclear powered vessel. It’s reminiscent of the old warships left in Pearl Harbor as the newer ones left just prior to the attacks, or the ultra-expensive asbestos removal scheduled for the Twin Towers before their timely demise. They like to kill many birds with one carefully planned stone if you haven’t noticed. They also need something spectacular to jar public opinion and an aircraft carrier can sustain a lot of very visible, dramatic damage without sinking to once again shock the dumbed-down American sheeple. It will also be reminiscent of WW2 which brings up all that subconscious war programming. What’s With the Ships? It seems there’s a propensity for attacking ships to get us into wars. The Spanish-American war began with the sinking of the Maine which turned out not to have been attacked by the Spanish. The Lusitania was deliberately sent into German waters where it was blown up to get the US into WW1. Pearl Harbor was a deliberately provoked and allowed event for WW2, and then the non-existent Gulf of Tonkin incident started the Vietnam conflagration. ... And then there are the mind-boggling military security operations for the upcoming Chicago NATO Summit and the London 2012 Summer Olympic Games. We have linked to those as well. All of the above serves to introduce the following report. Its author, Captain Eric H. May, is a former Army NCO and officer, with specialties in WMD warfare, military intelligence and public affairs. He was also an NBC editorial writer, whose essays and articles have been published widely, from Military Intelligence Magazine to The Wall Street Journal. After the invasion of Iraq, he self-mobilized on a mission of conscience to expose the Battle of Baghdad Cover-up (BOBCUP), joining other veterans to form Ghost Troop. Since 2004 they have operated to prevent the next 9/11 (9/11-2B). Item: MAY MEMO: Top ten false flag terror targets Captain Eric H. May, Ghost Troop CO Veterans Today USA May 7, 2012 Visit this page for its embedded links. False flags are a standard stratagem, particularly in democracies, in which it’s necessary to create consensus before waging war. Prior to the Spanish-American War in 1898, the explosion of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor propelled the American people into an imperial affray — much as 9/11 did a century later, instigating invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Half a dozen headlines describe our situation, in which a false flag attack, blamed on Iran, may well pull us into our third post-9/11 Mid East war: ... After précising the six stories, May goes on to present his listing of The 10 most endangered false flag targets in the world: ... I submit this list of the top false flag targets to both official investigators and concerned citizen, and I’m ready and able to respond to official or media inquiries. It is the product of my many years in Army Intelligence, coupled with my last eight years of counter-terror analysis and operations. In 2003 I formed Ghost Troop, a cyber militia unit, from a collection of geopolitical and geostrategic experts.... Related? There has been much discussion recently about the Obama administration’s “pivot” from the Greater Middle East to Asia: the 250 Marines sent to Darwin, Australia, the littoral combat ships for Singapore, the support for Burmese “democracy,” war games in the Philippines (and a drone strike there as well), and so on. The U.S. is definitely going offshore in Asian waters, or put another way, after a decade-long hiatus-cum-debacle on the Eurasian continent, the Great Game v. China is back on. While true, however, the importance of this policy change has been exaggerated. At the moment, as it happens, the greatest game isn’t in Asia at all; it’s in the Persian Gulf where, off the coast of Iran and in bases around the region, the U.S. is engaged in a staggering build-up of naval and air power. Most people would have little idea that this was even going on, since it rarely makes its way into the mainstream and even less often onto front pages or into the headlines. The Washington Times, for instance, has been alone in reporting that, for the U.S. military, “war planning for Iran is now the most pressing scenario.” It adds that the “U.S. Central Command believes it can destroy or significantly degrade Iran’s conventional armed forces in about three weeks using air and sea strikes.” Most of the time, however, you have to be a genuine news jockey or read specialist sites to notice the scale of what’s going on, even though the build-up in the Gulf is little short of monumental and evidently not close to finished. It’s not just the two aircraft carrier task forces now there, but (as the invaluable Danger Room website has reported) the doubling of minesweepers stationed in Bahrain, as well as the addition of minesweeping helicopters and coastal patrol boats that are being retrofitted with Gattling guns and missiles. Throw in new advanced torpedoes for Gulf waters and mini-drone subs; add in newly outfitted units of F-22s and F-15s heading for bases in the Gulf to make up “the world’s most powerful air-to-air fighting team.” And don’t forget the major CIA drone surveillance program already in operation over Iran (and undoubtedly still being bolstered). And then, of course, you would have to add in what we don’t know about, including — you can be sure — the strengthening of special operations activities in the region. ... Tom Englehardt, "Tomgram: Michael Klare, Oil Wars on the Horizon", May 10, 2012. That link also contains a Michael Klare essay that concludes "The seeds of energy conflicts and war sprouting in so many places simultaneously suggest that we are entering a new period in which key state actors will be more inclined to employ force -- or the threat of force -- to gain control over valuable deposits of oil and natural gas. In other words, we’re now on a planet heading into energy overdrive." In ‘total war’ on Islam, Mecca becomes another Hiroshima, U.S. military officers taught Paul Woodward War in Context USA May 10, 2012 Visit this page for its embedded links. Over five years ago, I reported that in the Pentagon, several senior officers and defense executives have confided: “There may come a time when we have to kill millions of Muslims.” I was told this by Dr. Michael Vlahos, who has served in the United States Navy and the CIA and is now on the faculty of the U.S. Naval War College. He reiterated this a few months later in The American Conservative: I have had many “Defense World” conversations that have ended with: “the time may come when we will have to kill millions of Muslims,” or, “history shows that to win over a people you have to kill at least 10 percent of them, like the Romans” (for comparison, we killed or contributed to the death of about five percent of Japan from 1944-46, while Russia has killed at least eight percent of the Chechen people). Or consider the implications of “Freeper” talk-backs to an article of mine in The American Conservative: “History shows that wars only end with a totally defeated enemy otherwise they go on … Either Islam or us will quit in total destruction.” Noah Shachtman and Spencer Ackerman now report for Wired Magazine’s Danger Room: The U.S. military taught its future leaders that a “total war” against the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims would be necessary to protect America from Islamic terrorists, according to documents obtained by Danger Room. Among the options considered for that conflict: using the lessons of “Hiroshima” to wipe out whole cities at once, targeting the “civilian population wherever necessary.” ... For the better part of the last decade, a small cabal of self-anointed counterterrorism experts has been working its way through the U.S. military, intelligence and law enforcement communities, trying to convince whoever it could that America’s real terrorist enemy wasn’t al-Qaida — but the Islamic faith itself. In his course, [Army Lt. Col. Matthew A.] Dooley brought in these anti-Muslim demagogues as guest lecturers. And he took their argument to its final, ugly conclusion. “We have now come to understand that there is no such thing as ‘moderate Islam,’” Dooley noted in a July 2011 presentation (.pdf), which concluded with a suggested manifesto to America’s enemies. “It is therefore time for the United States to make our true intentions clear. This barbaric ideology will no longer be tolerated. Islam must change or we will facilitate its self-destruction.” ... Here's an update to the above item on military thinking and curricula. Top U.S. officer: Stop this ‘total war’ on Islam talk Spencer Ackerman Wired, Danger Room blog USA May 10, 2012 America’s top military officer condemned in the strongest possible terms a Defense Department course that taught troops to prep for a “total war” on Islam using “Hiroshima”-style tactics. “It was totally objectionable, against our values and it wasn’t academically sound,” Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at a Pentagon press conference on Thursday. The instructor responsible for the course, Army Lt. Col. Matthew A. Dooley, is “no longer in a teaching status,” Dempsey added — but he is still employed at the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Va. ... Dempsey and his deputy for military education, Marine Lt. Gen. George Flynn, pulled the plug on the course last month. The general said he was “quite thankful” for an unnamed military officer who brought word of the anti-Islam material to his attention. Dempsey and his staff launched an investigation into “what motivated that elective to being part of the curriculum,” as he put it on Thursday, and the general also sent a letter to the heads of every military service and regional command instructing them to jettison any similar material, as per a White House directive issued last fall. The inquiry, conducted by Army Maj. Gen. Frederick Rudesheim, is scheduled to conclude on May 24. Any disciplinary action against Dooley; the college’s commandant, Maj. Gen. Joseph Ward; or any other officer is contingent on its findings. ... The military is hardly alone in dealing with anti-Islam instructional material passing itself off as responsible counterterrorism. Over the years, hundreds of documents claiming “mainstream” Muslims are “violent” have made their way into FBI curricula, alongside internal claims that agents working on counterterrorism cases could “bend or suspend the law.” ... Thu, 10 May 2012 14:41:36 -0400 http://www.saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=22444 Below: Things were going well for Hamid Karzai when Barack Obama visited Kabul for the signing of a security pact that both presidents are gambling on to pass tough opposition in Afghanistan. But Karzai was made to look an incompetent leader after international forces killed children in an air strike and Iran set a collision course by querying the implications of the deal. Iran queries Obama's pact with Karzai M K Bhadrakumar Asia Time Online Hong Kong Dateline May 11, 2012 Washington gave Afghan President Hamid Karzai over 18 months to bring himself to agree to the United States-Afghanistan strategic partnership agreement, but hardly a fortnight to get the document ratified by his parliament. Karzai's motivation to get the job done is not in doubt, since his own political future hinges on his dexterity to persuade Afghan parliamentarians to endorse the pact. And only after parliament's endorsement can US President Barack Obama submit the document to the US Congress. The pact is intended to be the highlight of the summit meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Chicago on May 21. Just about 10 days left, and Karzai is under enormous pressure. The popular feeling among Afghans about the pact is a great "unknown unknown", to borrow the words of former US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Afghan officials announced in April that they had endorsed a final draft of the strategic partnership agreement that will make certain the US commitment in the country for at least 10 years after the 2014 withdrawal of foreign troops deadline and the transition of security to local forces. Few other details were given. The Taliban may have helped matters a bit. Their spectacular attacks in Kabul and other places recently created an overall awareness about the fragile security situation and Karzai's best hope is that the people will appreciate that for the foreseeable future, Western military backing becomes critical for the survival of the Afghan state. Karzai is risking that this new "awareness" subsumes the popular feelings against foreign occupation of their country. Things were going rather well for Karzai for the first three days since US President Barack Obama came to Kabul on May 1 to sign the pact. It all seemed a done thing that he would navigate the US-Afghan pact through parliament and start packing his bags for the journey to Chicago and commence a new chapter in his political career. But then, destiny struck on May 4. A dozen or so Afghan civilians, including five children, were killed on that fateful Friday evening when NATO-led forces carried out two separate air strikes in the southern province of Helmand. NATO repeated the crime two days later with a second air strike in the northwestern province of Badghis. Karzai's office admitted that NATO also struck in Logar and Kapisa provinces in eastern Afghanistan in the weekend, killing dozens of civilians. Karzai promptly went into damage-control mode by calling in the US commander, General John Allen, and the US ambassador to Afghanistan, Ryan Crocker. ... Karzai is so uneasy that he even took the extraordinary step recently of stopping a visit to Kabul by prominent US congressman Dama Rohrabacher, who is a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, to meet Afghan opposition leaders. Rohrabacher was denied a visa and prevented from boarding a flight from Dubai to Kabul. "[US Secretary of State] Hillary [Clinton] was very clear that this came from Karzai," Rohrabacher later said. Rohrabacher has supported the demand of the Afghan opposition (belonging to the erstwhile Northern Alliance) that Karzai should share power with parliament. ... But Karzai still has a few tricks in his pocket. On Saturday, he struck at Iran. Afghan security forces nabbed the Kabul bureau chief of Iran's semi-official Fars news agency, Abdulvahed Hakimi, and took him to an undisclosed destination. It was a provocative move and inconceivable without clearance from a high level in the Kabul set-up. Media leaks have since made out that Hakimi is charged with spying. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty soon began flashing reports in Dari and Pashtu about Afghan security having cracked a spy ring allegedly working for Iran. Unsurprisingly, Karzai has opted for a huge diversionary tactic to turn attention away from the NATO air strike by whipping up Afghan nationalism. Meanwhile, the Karzai government also leveled allegations that the Iranian ambassador in Kabul, Abolfazi Zohrehvand, tried to influence Afghan parliamentarians to oppose the US-Afghan pact. On Tuesday, the ambassador was summoned to the Afghan Foreign Ministry. Simultaneously, a media campaign has begun, alleging that Tehran proposes to expel Afghan refugees living in Iran as a mark of displeasure against the Kabul government over the security pact. This is a highly emotive issue within Afghanistan with high potential to incite anti-Iran sentiments. ... Tehran furiously protested that it had been a generous host for more than two million Afghan refugees for over two decades with little help from the international community and has always been of the opinion that their repatriation could only take place with the "establishment of sustainable peace and security" within Afghanistan. But the damage is done. Meanwhile, Tehran has broken its silence over the US-Afghan pact. On Saturday, in a strong statement, the Iranian Foreign Ministry warned against the deployment of US troops in Afghanistan. ... Below: An alleged meeting with Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, one of America's most wanted men, appears to be the principal (but not the only) reason for the premature exit of Cameron Munter, the United States ambassador to Pakistan. The career diplomat abruptly quit his job last week, hours after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared Saeed responsible for the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai. Amir Mir is a senior Pakistani journalist and the author of several books on the subject of militant Islam and terrorism. Doubts fly as US envoy to Pakistan quits Amir Mir Asia Time Online Hong Kong Dateline May 11, 2012 ISLAMABAD - United States ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter's alleged meeting with one of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation's most wanted men - Jamaat-ul-Daawa (JuD) amir Professor Hafiz Mohammad Saeed - seems to be the principal reason for his premature exit from Islamabad, after having served just over 18 months since his appointment in October 2010. Munter, a career diplomat, abruptly quit his job last week, hardly 24 hours after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared Saeed responsible for the 26/11 Mumbai carnage and announced that the US was prepared to work with India to bring the JuD amir to justice. The November 2008 attacks were 11 coordinated shooting and bombing incidents across Mumbai by terrorists who allegedly came from Pakistan. The three-day rampage cost 166 lives, including six Americans, with at least 308 people injured. Munter's decision to quit the ambassadorship prematurely has been confirmed by Mark Stroh, an embassy spokesman, who said, "He will be leaving this summer at the conclusion of his two years in the job. The ambassador had been weighing the option of continuing for a third year, but decided against it." No replacement has been named. However, well-placed diplomatic officials in the federal capital claim that Munter's decision has more to do with behind-the-scenes developments that took place in Islamabad following the April 1, 2012, decision of the Barack Obama administration to put a price of US$10 million on information and evidence leading to the arrest and conviction of the JuD's Saeed. Saeed is also the founder of the pro-Kashmir proscribed jihadi organization Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT). The bounty was announced for his alleged role in the Mumbai attacks. Just hours after the US State Department announced the bounty, Saeed appeared on Pakistan's Geo TV. He said he was a free man - living in Pakistan - and was ready to speak with US officials at any time. While some high-ups in the Pakistani Foreign Office claim that Munter has taken the decision to quit on his own for not being kept in the loop by the US State Department, there are those in diplomatic circles who maintain that the envoy is being made to resign by his seniors because of his seemingly soft line over Saeed's bounty issue, which has not gone down well with the Obama administration. According to a report in the Indian Express, Munter had informed Washington that an apology "was in order" after a cross-border North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) air strike killed 24 Pakistani soldiers last year, but his advice was overruled by the Pentagon. "Pakistan's insistence on an apology for the NATO attack has emerged as a key irritant in moves to reset its relationship with the US after a year of crises that took ties to a new low," the paper reported. However, the instant cause of Munter's exit is believed to be his clandestine meeting with Saeed that took place in Islamabad almost a month ago, after the US announced the bounty. ... Thu, 10 May 2012 12:31:15 -0400 http://www.saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=22443 Russia's President Vladimir Putin, far left and Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov speak with army officers during Victory Day parade at the Red Square in Moscow on Wednesday. Photo: STR/AFP/Getty Images. Victory Day marked the 67th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany. During WWII, 27 million Soviets died. The VE Day parade held on Red Square involved the traditional pass-in-review by 14,000 personnel and over 100 pieces of military hardware, including Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missile launchers, S-400 Triumph air defense systems, Pantsir S-1 air defense systems, Iskander-M missile launchers, BTR-80 armored personnel carriers, and T-90 main battle tanks. The motorized column stretched for over one and a half kilometers. The parade was reviewed by Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov and addressed by President Vladimir Putin. Putin spoke of glory, triumph and grief, reminding Russian citizens of their capacity for suffering and sacrifice. During the course of his remarks, Putin said “Russia is implementing a policy of strengthening security in the world. We have a great moral right to persist in our stance, in so much as it was our country that took upon itself the main thrust of Nazism and met the enemy with heroic resistance, determining the course of the war.” Putin to pass on Camp David G8 summit, sends Medvedev RT Russia May 10, 2012 ... "In a telephone conversation with US President Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin informed his American counterpart that, unfortunately, he will be unable to participate in the G8 summit, as the formation of the Russian government structure and personal appointments will obviously not be completed by May 18-19, when the summit is to be held," the presidential press service said. Putin sees it as impossible to travel abroad at this time, the statement said. The President notified the US leader that Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev will represent Russia at the G8 meeting. The American side has received this information with understanding," the statement said. Acting presidential aide Arkadiy Dvorkovich said that the reason behind Putin’s decision not to attend the international event was purely technical. ... Dvorkovich also mentioned that Medvedev had enough expertise to represent Russia at the summit. "Dmitry Medvedev has served as the Russian president for four years, he has dealt with all these issues, so there will be no problems here,” the aide said. The official also called the suggestion that Putin was afraid of questions about observation of Human Rights “idle talks that have no connection with reality. I do not think that Putin is afraid of anything connected with politics,” he added. During the course of their telephone conversation, the Russian and American leaders agreed to hold a broad bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Los Cabos, Mexico, on June 18-19. Camp David, located in the US state of Maryland just 100 kilometers (62 miles) from Washington, D.C., was converted into a presidential retreat by Franklin Roosevelt in 1942. The retreat is technically a military installation and is closed to the public. Putin to miss G8 conference Deutsche Welle Germany May 10, 2012 Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced he will skip the upcoming G8 summit in the US as he will be busy forming a new government after his inauguration. Both countries say the act is not a snub of Barack Obama. ... Putin's visit to the United States has come at a tense time between the two nations. The US is currently pressing ahead with a European missile shield despite Russian complaints. The new US ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, also recently criticized Russia's treatment of protesters. According to Maria Lipman of the Carnegie Moscow Center think tank, the reason given, of forming the government "is hardly convincing and the fact that Prime Minister Medevdev is going instead only enforces this impression for me". She also noted that the demands of forming a government did not appear to be holding back French President-elect Francois Hollande, who only takes office on May 15. ... Russia President Putin will miss G8 Camp David summit BBC News UK May 10, 2012 ... The US is hosting the G8 summit of seven of the world's most industrialised nations, and Russia, at Camp David on 18-19 May. It was widely expected that President Putin would use the event to mark his return to the world stage, says the BBC's Daniel Sandford, in Moscow. It is not clear whether his decision not to attend is a deliberate snub to the US, following criticism of the Russian election process. It also highlights growing tensions between the two nations over the US missile defence plans in eastern Europe, our correspondent adds. Putin to skip meeting with Obama, G8 Nataliya Vasilyeva Associated Press/Toronto Star USA/Canada May 10, 2012 MOSCOW—Russia’s President Vladimir Putin will skip a planned visit to the United States this month for a key global summit and a much-anticipated meeting with President Barack Obama, the Kremlin confirmed Thursday, as he faced pressure from protests and opposition criticism at home. ... The Kremlin said that Obama expressed “understanding” for Putin’s cancellation, and the two are now due to meet at another global summit in Mexico in mid-June. Putin took power this week, returning after four years to a post he had previously held for two terms. He made sharp criticism of the United States a central theme in his election, but it is not clear whether he will pull back from Medvedev’s efforts at co-operation with the U.S. in several areas. Interviewed on Thursday by the Ekho Moskvy radio station, Putin’s aide Arkady Dvorkovich rejected suggestions that Putin is avoiding the U.S. visit because of potential questions about human rights violations in Russia. “I don’t think that Putin is scared of anything linked to politics,” Dvorkovich said. “This is laughable. These are just idle thoughts that have nothing to do with reality.” Putin’s inauguration on Monday was marred by violence at an opposition rally the day before when protesters tried to move to another, unsanctioned, location. Police dispersed the rally and detained hundreds. Since Sunday, hundreds of protesters have been staging flash mobs across the city with police breaking up and regularly detaining many of them. Two key leaders of this “people’s stroll”, Alexei Navalny and Sergei Udaltsov, were sentenced to 15 days in jail on Wednesday for disobeying police orders. Separately, many opposition groups have decried Putin’s decision to provide a logistics facility in central Russia to NATO as a betrayal of national interests. The facility in Ulyanovsk is to support the U.S.-led mission in Afghanistan. Russia does not border on Afghanistan. But the two countries are separated only by former Soviet Central Asian republics that have porous borders with Russia and Afghanistan. Putin is also facing criticism for Russia’s impending membership in the World Trade Organization. Hailed by some as a long-awaited achievement, the WTO membership have caused concerns in Russia that the country’s new trade status will hurt heavily subsidized industries, including agriculture. Thu, 10 May 2012 11:53:46 -0400 http://www.saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=22442 Polar bears show signs of mysterious illness Annie Feidt alaskapublic.org Alaska USA April 6, 2012 Polar bears with Alopecia and skin lesions in the Beaufort Sea. March 21, 2012. Photo courtesy USGS Anchorage - Biologists have found Polar Bears in the Beaufort Sea with hair loss and skin lesions. Those are the same symptoms that have sickened ice seals and walruses in the arctic since last summer and led the federal government to declare the incident an unusual mortality event. Scientists are just beginning an investigation into whether polar bears are suffering from the same thing. “The first day we observed it was on March 21st and we had three captures and two of them had Alopecia, which is the skin loss and so it was like, ‘oh that’s interesting.’ Then we started picking it up on other animals in later march so it was like, this is more than normal.” So far, the field scientists have found hair loss on nine of the 33 bears they’ve captured. The bears have skin lesions on their head, neck and ears. Degange says they have found polar bears with similar symptoms since 1999, but the number of effected bears makes this year unusual: “The bears appear to be healthy otherwise. We haven’t seen any dead bears, so its not a mortality event as far as we know. But the fact that its occurring at the same time as this unexplained mortality event with seals certainly raises the interest level.” The biologists collected blood and tissues from the affected bears to try to figure out if the symptoms are related to the mysterious illness that has been found in ice seals and walruses. Dozens of seals have died from the disease, but no walrus deaths are attributed to it. Scientists don’t know yet if the walrus and seals are suffering from the same thing. Although the veterinary pathologist who has done most of the necropsies on the animals say the lesions look very similar under the microscope. Julie Speegle is a spokesperson for the National Marine Fisheries Service. She says its been a difficult case: ... Degange says out of four polar bears biologists captured yesterday, three had skin lesions and hair loss. The crew is now moving farther west along the Beaufort Sea coast- near Prudhoe Bay so they’ll have a chance to see if the illness is as widespread in that area. Radiation from Japan found in kelp off U.S. West Coast Agence France-Presse/The Raw Story France/USA April 9, 2012 LOS ANGELES — Radioactive iodine was found in kelp off the US West Coast following last year’s earthquake-triggered Fukushima Daiichi nuclear meltdown, according to a new study. It was already known that radioactive iodine 131 (131-I), carried in the atmosphere, made it across the Pacific within days of the March 11, 2011 tsunami disaster, albeit in minuscule amounts. But marine biologists at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) discovered the radioactive isotope in ocean kelp, which is “one of the strongest plant accumulators of iodine,” within a month of the accident. “We measured significant, although most likely non-harmful levels of radioactive iodine in tissue of the giant kelp Macrocystis pyrifera,” said Steven L. Manley, author of the study with Christopher G. Lowe “Although it is probably not harmful for humans because it was relatively low levels, it may have affected certain fish that graze on the tissue because fish have a thyroid system that utilizes iodine.” ... Flight attendants fall ill after wearing 'toxic' uniforms which 'make their HAIR fall out' Daily Mail UK May 4, 2012 Painful: 280 attendants have complained about their new uniforms causing itching, hair loss and other adverse side effects. Visit this page for its embedded links and video. Hundreds of Alaska Airlines flight attendants say their new uniforms are making them ill. The attendants have complained that the outfits, which may be contaminated with a toxic chemical, have caused itching, hair loss and other unpleasant reactions. In a letter to the company’s president, union leaders representing Alaska Airlines employees demanded that the uniforms are changed. The Association of Flight Attendants says that 280 flight stewards - roughly one in 10 of the total workforce - have suffered from the side effects since the new uniforms were introduced last year. One of the flight attendants told KING5 on Thursday night, 'I’ve never had a uniform like this. I broke out this week. I broke out on my back first, then on my legs.’ An airline spokesman said that two alternative uniforms have been provided to those employees who have suffered any outbreaks. Andy Schneider, Alaska Airlines vice president of inflight services, said in a statement to KING5 that tests on the uniforms had been carried out in three different laboratories but that the source of the problem had not been discovered. The statement read: 'The safety of Alaska Airlines employees is paramount, and we’ve been working closely with our people and the two unions that represent them to resolve this issue.’ ... Wed, 09 May 2012 19:40:44 -0400 http://www.saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=22441 Auld Acquaintance supports Scottish Independence. It takes the position that "The Icelandic people have been able to show that there is a way to beat the system and has given a democracy lesson to the world." A lesson from Iceland Auld Acquaintance Scotland May 9, 2012 ... ICELAND. No news from Iceland?… why? How come we hear everything that happens in Egypt but no news about what’s happening in Iceland: … In Iceland, the people has made the government resign, the primary banks have been nationalized, it was decided to not pay the debt that these created with Great Britain and Holland due to their bad financial politics and a public assembly has been created to rewrite the constitution. And all of this in a peaceful way. A whole revolution against the powers that have created the current global crisis. This is why there hasn’t been any publicity during the last two years: What would happen if the rest of the EU citizens took this as an example? What would happen if the US citizens took this as an example. ... So in summary of the Icelandic revolution: -resignation of the whole government -nationalization of the bank. -referendum so that the people can decide over the economic decisions. -incarcerating the responsible parties -rewriting of the constitution by its people Have we been informed of this through the media? ... Below: A comment appended to the above post: Angus McLellan says: May 9, 2012 at 5:01 pm Charles, we may have too much government but we definitely have too little representation as has been pointed out by Lesley Riddoch, the Jimmy Reid Foundation and others. I lived in Belgium for a decade and I can confirm that it is hardly a poster child for how to do government. But Belgium is fairly typical of European countries where local governent is concerned. Its 10 million people elect councillors in 589 municipalities, a number to which we should probably add the 9 districts of the giant Antwerp municipality for a total of 598 councils, on top of which there are about a dozen large provinces. If Scotland had proportionately as many councils we’d have 300 (three hundred!), ten times today’s number. By coincidence, the place I grew up in Scotland has roughly as many people living in it as does the last place I lived in Belgium. In Scotland that’s one ward in a council, represented by three councillors. In Belgium that was a council all on its own with 25 councillors. So where did it all go wrong? That’s easy. The centralisers on the Wheatley Commission, which set out the framework for the unlamented regions and districts introduced in 1973, got it wrong. The dissenting minority, who wanted much smaller districts – around 150 of them – were probably on a better path. I’d like to blame Labour, but it was Heath’s government that implemented the proposals. Perhaps the best solution, in hindsight, would have been to tweak the existing system. But that would never have done in the 1960s. Wed, 09 May 2012 18:36:45 -0400