Beyonce and Jay Z’s 2013 Cuba trip declared legal

Beyonce and Jay Z’s 2013 Cuba trip declared legal

By CNN • Published on August 21, 2014



A nine-page report released on Wednesday by the Treasury Department’s Office of Inspector General states that the power couple, whose legal names are Beyonce Knowles-Carter and Shawn Carter, did not violate any U.S. sanctions laws during their visit to Cuba last year.

Their April 2013 trip, around the time of their fifth wedding anniversary, was highly criticized. It sparked discussion that the two might have engaged in tourist activities that are illegal under the U.S. embargo against Cuba. Under current law and regulation, travel to the island nation is only permitted under license.

The report states that the couple’s trip to Cuba was properly licensed by the Office of Foreign Assets Control under the “people-to-people” educational exchange program. The license was issued to a nonprofit organization that has a mission to promote education in the fields of art, architecture and the decorative arts.

There were concerns that the two might have abused the terms of the license by engaging in too many tourist activities such as a welcome dinner, a walking tour of various Cuban neighborhoods and visits to see student artwork and theater performances. But, the report concludes that all activities followed the terms of the license.

“We believe OFAC’s determination that there was no apparent violation of U.S. sanctions with respect to Jay Z and Beyonce’s trip to Cuba,” the report states.

More:
http://progresoweekly.us/beyonce-jay-zs-2013-cuba-trip-declared-legal/

Venezuela to create fingerprinting system to limit food smuggling

Venezuela to create fingerprinting system to limit food smuggling
CARACAS Thu Aug 21, 2014 10:01am EDT


Aug 21 (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro ordered the creation of a fingerprinting system in stores that sell food to limit smuggling of subsidized staple products to neighboring countries.

The system, announced late on Wednesday, is meant to ease chronic shortages of consumer products ranging from cooking oil to toilet paper by preventing shoppers from buying large quantities of the same goods.

&quot We will) create a biometric system ... in all distribution and retail systems, public and private," Maduro said during a televised broadcast in which he also created several anti-contraband commissions.

He did not say if the system would be set up in the entire country or only in border states.

Price controls and heavy subsidies allow Venezuelans to buy groceries, drive them across the border to Colombia, and resell them for a handsome profit. They have also created black markets within Venezuela in which informal vendors resell scarce products at a steep markup.

~snip~
Maduro says product shortages, which create long lines and at times leave store shelves bare, are driven by smuggling that diverts at least 40 percent of food and medicine to other countries.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/21/venezuela-food-idUSL2N0QR0QG20140821?rpc=401&feedType=RSS&feedName=rbssConsumerGoodsAndRetailNews&rpc=401

Mexico arrests 13 at water-rate protest by Mayas

Aug 21, 5:30 PM EDT

Mexico arrests 13 at water-rate protest by Mayas

By MARK STEVENSON
Associated Press

MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Police on Mexico's Caribbean coast arrested 13 activists during a demonstration by Maya Indians against water rate hikes.

The Mayas were the original inhabitants of the area, south of the resort city of Cancun. But they have been pushed into poor, dry farmland inland as resorts pop up along the coast.

Households in Felipe Carrillo Puerto, the most important remaining Indian-majority town, had long paid a flat $5.20 monthly fee for water.

But the state water authority began installing water meters last year and started charging households more for water use of over 10 cubic meters (2,640 gallons) per month per family.

More:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/L/LT_MEXICO_MAYA_DISPUTE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-08-21-17-30-27

Creationist's Noah's Ark Theme Park Gets $18 Million Tax Break, Won't Hire Gays, Atheists

by David Badash
August 19, 2014 9:01 AM

Creationist's Noah's Ark Theme Park Gets $18 Million Tax Break, Won't Hire Gays, Atheists

A Noah's Ark theme park created by famous evolution-denier Ken Ham has just received an $18 million tax break from the citizens of Kentucky, many of whom will be prohibited from being employed there.

Creationist Ken Ham has very strict standards when it comes to hiring people -- not so strict standards when it comes to accepting donations.

His Ark Encounter theme park late last month was unanimously approved for an $18 million tax break -- paid for by the citizens of Kentucky, thanks to the Kentucky Tourism Development Finance Authority -- and after many years of trying to get his second creationist-motivated museum moving, he says they have secured financing and broken ground. What Ham doesn't say much about is a reported donation worth $1 million from the leader of a certified white supremacist hate group.

"The project is slated to include a facsimile of Noah’s Ark and the Tower of Babel, and will proselytize Christian evangelicalism to patrons, an Answers in Genesis spokesman said," reports an NPR affiliate.

But Daniel Phelps, the president of the Kentucky Paleontological Society and vice president of Kentuckians for Science Education, isn't pleased. In an op-ed at the Lexington Herald-Leader, "Non-Christians need not apply," Phelps explains his concerns.

More:
http://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/creationist_s_noah_s_ark_theme_park_gets_18_million_tax_break_won_t_hire_gays_atheists

The US War Culture Has Come Home to Roost

August 20, 2014
From Fallujah to Ferguson

The US War Culture Has Come Home to Roost

by GILBERT MERCIER


Police violence in the United States should not surprise anyone. In Ferguson, Missouri, we have witnessed the use against US citizens of Iraq-tested war technologies. On August 17, 2014, a police force using armored vehicles and military tactics fired rubber bullets and tear gas canisters at peaceful protesters who had been demanding justice against Darren Wilson, a killer cop who took the life of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager. According to an autopsy, Michael Brown was shot six times, including twice in the head; one of the bullets that penetrated his head came from above him, which could indicate an “execution style” for the killing attributed to Wilson. A return to violent tactics rather than the community policing promised by the authorities to the people of Ferguson, and a decision by Governor Jay Nixon to call up the National Guard were very much part of an escalation.

For decades and all over the world, the US has worked to spread ”freedom and democracy” via warfare. As long as this was being done in the towns of Vietnam, Afghanistan or Iraq, ordinary Americans often applauded the endeavor, lured by the disinformation, but mostly they ignored the crimes being committed in their names, because these were not in their own backyard. As the streets of Ferguson look more and more like those of Fallujah, it is impossible to dismiss that the US’ best exports, warfare and civilian repression, have come home to roost. When the war machine runs out of places to occupy abroad, it mutates into an occupying force at home, starting in Black or Latino neighborhoods, and it manifests itself as police violence, curfews and a state of emergency. This is what happens when the military-industrial complex becomes the cornerstone of an economy.

The US economy is a war economy. Together with fostering warfare aboard, a climate of insecurity at home has become a necessary business model for the growth of the war and security business. Between 2001 and 2014, US military spending has more than doubled to exceed the staggering level of $700 billion dollars a year. This represents about 20 percent of the overall federal budget despite not including retirement and medical care for veterans, which represent an additional 3.5 percent of the budget. Furthermore, this 23.5 percent of the budget per year does not include emergency and supplemental bills for the specific wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, nor does it include moneys for the vast domestic “security” apparatus that comprises the Department of Homeland Security, FBI counter-terrorism or NSA intelligence gathering.

To give a sense of the gargantuan size represented by a more than $700 billion expenditure on defense per year, consider the fact that the US spends more on its military per year than on benefits for federal retirees, transportation infrastructure, education, and scientific research combined. Or if you prefer, consider the fact that the US spends more on its military budget per year than the military expenditures of China, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, Japan, India, Saudi Arabia, Germany, Italy, South Korea, Australia and Canada combined.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/08/20/the-us-war-culture-has-come-home-to-roost/

How the Pentagon Militarized the US Police Force

August 20, 2014
Overkill

How the Pentagon Militarized the US Police Force

by BENJAMIN DANGL


“Have no doubt, police in the United States are militarizing, and in many communities, particularly those of color, the message is being received loud and clear: ‘You are the enemy,’” writes Tom Nolan, who worked for 27 years in the Boston Police Department. “Many communities now look upon police as an occupying army, their streets more reminiscent of Baghdad or Kabul than a city in America.”

This is no coincidence; much of the equipment used by police forces on the streets of America today is in fact directly from the US military.

From a weaponization bonanza enabled by a little-known Pentagon program, to an escalation in SWAT team deployments, the militarization of the US police force poses an increasing threat to the American public, as recently exhibited in Ferguson, Missouri.

Behind this militarization is the Pentagon’s “1033 program,” created in the National Defense Authorization Act for 1997, which enables the Defense Department to provide surplus military equipment at a highly reduced cost to local police departments. The program was expanded after 9/11, and has led to the distribution of $4.2 billion in equipment. Police departments across the country now utilize some 500 military aircraft, 93,763 assault weapons and 432 Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected military vehicles – which cost around $700,000 new, and are being sold to police departments for as low as $2,800.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/08/20/how-the-pentagon-militarized-the-us-police-force/

The Man Who Ran Contra Propaganda for Reagan Is Guatemala’s New DC Lobbyist

The Man Who Ran Contra Propaganda for Reagan Is Guatemala’s New DC Lobbyist
—By Ian Gordon
| Tue Aug. 19, 2014 2:45 PM EDT


[font size=1]
Roberto Candia/AP [/font]

In late July, with child migrants still surging across the US-Mexico border, President Obama met with Central American leaders to discuss a response to the crisis. Not satisfied with Obama's plans, Guatemalan president Otto Pérez Molina took his agenda to the media, writing a Guardian op-ed criticizing the United States for the lasting legacy of both the Cold War and the drug war in his country.

Around the same time, Guatemala hired a lobbyist to help push its interests in Washington, DC. Given Pérez Molina's sharp criticism of the United States' history in the region, his choice—former Reagan official and noted Cold War propagandist Otto Reich—was a shocker.

If you've forgotten about the Reich, check out this 2001 profile from The American Prospect, this 2002 New Yorker piece, or his National Security Archive page. Highlights of his Latin American misadventures include:

◾Running the Reagan-era Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America and the Caribbean (OPD), which, as historian Greg Grandin wrote in Empire's Workshop, "was officially charged with implementing a 'new, nontraditional' approach to 'defining the terms of the public discussion on Central American policy.'" What it actually did was work to ensure US support of the Nicaraguan Contras in their offensive against the Sandinistas.

◾Overseeing OPD's "white propaganda" program, which placed pro-Contra op-eds in the mainstream media without acknowledging their links to the Reagan administration.

◾Confronting and intimidating those journalists Reich believed were sympathetic with the Sandinistas or the Salvadoran rebels. This included a memorable trip to the NPR office in DC—Reich referred to NPR as "Moscow on the Potomac"—during which he alerted reporters that OPD was listening to and transcribing their Central American reporting.

◾Helping write the Helms-Burton Act (which tightened the Cuban embargo) as well as lobbying for Bacardi to eliminate Cuban trademark rights so the rum maker could pilfer Cuba's official Havana Club brand. (Reich is Cuban American and staunchly anti-Castro.)

Mexico's ruling party proposes cutting seats from Congress

Mexico's ruling party proposes cutting seats from Congress
MEXICO CITY Wed Aug 20, 2014 5:48pm EDT


(Reuters) - Mexico's ruling party on Wednesday proposed holding a referendum next year to reduce the size of Congress, which could strengthen its own hand and streamline legislative decision-making.

Mexico's Congress is made up of the lower house with 500 members and a Senate with 128 members. Both houses have a minority of lawmakers elected through proportional representation and the rest by a relative majority, in which the candidate with the most votes wins

The idea is to slash the number of lower house legislators elected by proportional representation to 100 from 200, said Cesar Camacho, the head of President Enrique Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). "We think there are too many (lawmakers). This would reduce public spending, make agreements easier and make Congress more efficient," Camacho told a news conference.

Pena Nieto proposed reducing the number of lower house deputies to 400 from 500 during his 2012 election campaign.

More:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/20/us-mexico-congress-idUSKBN0GK2BU20140820?rpc=401&feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews&rpc=401

'Machete' espionage campaign targets orgs in Venezuela, Ecuador

August 20, 2014
'Machete' espionage campaign targets orgs in Venezuela, Ecuador

An attack campaign, dubbed “Machete,” has primarily targeted Spanish speaking victims in Venezuela, Ecuador and Colombia, security firm Kaspersky revealed.

In a Wednesday blog post, researchers said they discovered the threat when a client found unknown malware on their machine after a trip. Kaspersky eventually found that the malware (detected as Trojan-Spy.Python.Ragua.) was being used to further cyber espionage attacks through keystroke logging, audio and screenshot capturing, file stealing and other surveillance capabilities.

The campaign, which dates back to 2010, was “renewed with an improved infrastructure in 2012,” Kaspersky revealed, as may still be active. The threat has been spread via drive-by download and spear phishing emails containing PowerPoint presentation attachments.

Attackers targeted high-profile organizations, such as intelligence services, government institutions and military in Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Cuba, Spain and Russia (where an embassy for one of the named countries was targeted).

http://www.scmagazine.com/machete-espionage-campaign-targets-orgs-in-venezuela-ecuador/article/367252/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+SCMagazineNews+%28SC+Magazine+News%29

(Short article, no more at link.)

Pope eyes fast beatification for Salvador's Romero

Pope eyes fast beatification for Salvador's Romero
By NICOLE WINFIELD
Associated Press August 18, 2014 Updated 2 hours ago

ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE — Pope Francis opened the way Monday to a quick beatification for Oscar Romero, saying there are no more doctrinal problems blocking the process for the slain Salvadoran archbishop who is one of the heroes of the liberation theology movement in Latin America.

Romero, the archbishop of San Salvador, was gunned down in 1980 while celebrating Mass. He had spoken out against repression by the Salvadoran army at the beginning of the country's 1980-1992 civil war between the right-wing government and leftist rebels.

~snip~

The congregation launched a crackdown on liberation theology under then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, fearing what was deemed as Marxists excesses. The movement holds the view that Jesus' teachings imbue followers with a duty to fight for social and economic justice.

~snip~
Traditionally, the church has restricted the martyr designation to people who were killed out of hatred for the Catholic faith. Francis said he wanted theologians to study whether those who were killed because of their actions doing God's work could also be considered martyrs. "What I would like is that they clarify when there's a martyrdom for hatred of the faith — for confessing the faith — as well as for doing the work for the other that Jesus commands," Francis said.

Questions over that distinction have been at the root of the theological debate over whether Romero was killed by El Salvador's right-wing death squads for professing the faith or because of his political activism in support of the poor.

More:
http://www.centredaily.com/2014/08/18/4310636/pope-eyes-fast-beatification-for.html#storylink=cpy