December 8, 2013

Narco Cultura Official Trailer

We know too much about Mexico's drug war and not enough. We hear about it constantly, about the 60,000 murders and the slaughter of innocents, but getting a sense of what that means on the ground — and how pervasive its cultural influence is — is harder to come by. The potent documentary "Narco Cultura" is an excellent place to start.

This dispassionate but devastating film looks at the drug wars from two very different but chillingly complementary perspectives. As directed and shot by Shaul Schwarz, an accomplished photojournalist who spent two years in this world as a still photographer before starting to film, "Narco Cultura" benefits from the access Schwarz earned through his time on the ground.

What this film does is reveal two very different societies — both exhibiting, each in its own way, unmistakable signs of collapse. What's happening on the ground in Juarez, an epicenter of killing sometimes known as the murder capital of the world, is bad enough, but how that slaughter is reflected and refracted through the lens of Mexican American popular culture is in some ways equally shocking.

Our guides to these complementary worlds are completely different. In Juarez, we are in the company of Richi Soto, a soft-spoken but dogged crime scene investigator, while in Los Angeles and on tour we hang out with Edgar Quintero. He's an ebullient twentysomething who is a rising star in the writing and performing of narcocorridos, hugely popular songs that glibly celebrate the savage killings and killers whose handiwork Soto painstakingly probes.


http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-et-mn-narco-cultura-juarzez-murders-20131206,0,6263312.story

December 8, 2013

Happy 70th birthday Mick Jagger!

Mick Jagger Turns 70 While The Rolling Stones Tours Add Up to Billions

Hard to believe The Rolling Stones lead singer is a septuagenarian. Maybe harder to believe that the band still tours after 50 years. Their current tour has grossed about $125 million, according to Anthony DeCurtis, contributing editor to Rolling Stone magazine.

The Stones tours since 1989 have grossed. I would say, at least $1.5 billion. They earn their reputation as a live band..."

And that's a big reputation. Three of their tours rank in the Top 10 grossing tours of all time -- "A Bigger Bang Tour" from 2005-2007 grossed $558 million, according to Billboard.

So The Daily Ticker's Aaron Task had to ask: Are they touring for the money? "I don't think The Rolling Stones need the money at this point," says DeCurtis. Turns out that's a lesson they learned the hard way.

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/mick-jagger-turns-70-while-rolling-stones-tours-163932947.html

December 8, 2013

Seymour M. Hersh - Whose sarin?

Barack Obama did not tell the whole story this autumn when he tried to make the case that Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack near Damascus on 21 August. In some instances, he omitted important intelligence, and in others he presented assumptions as facts. Most significant, he failed to acknowledge something known to the US intelligence community: that the Syrian army is not the only party in the country’s civil war with access to sarin, the nerve agent that a UN study concluded – without assessing responsibility – had been used in the rocket attack. In the months before the attack, the American intelligence agencies produced a series of highly classified reports, culminating in a formal Operations Order – a planning document that precedes a ground invasion – citing evidence that the al-Nusra Front, a jihadi group affiliated with al-Qaida, had mastered the mechanics of creating sarin and was capable of manufacturing it in quantity. When the attack occurred al-Nusra should have been a suspect, but the administration cherry-picked intelligence to justify a strike against Assad.

In his nationally televised speech about Syria on 10 September, Obama laid the blame for the nerve gas attack on the rebel-held suburb of Eastern Ghouta firmly on Assad’s government, and made it clear he was prepared to back up his earlier public warnings that any use of chemical weapons would cross a ‘red line’: ‘Assad’s government gassed to death over a thousand people,’ he said. ‘We know the Assad regime was responsible … And that is why, after careful deliberation, I determined that it is in the national security interests of the United States to respond to the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons through a targeted military strike.’ Obama was going to war to back up a public threat, but he was doing so without knowing for sure who did what in the early morning of 21 August.

He cited a list of what appeared to be hard-won evidence of Assad’s culpability: ‘In the days leading up to August 21st, we know that Assad’s chemical weapons personnel prepared for an attack near an area where they mix sarin gas. They distributed gas masks to their troops. Then they fired rockets from a regime-controlled area into 11 neighbourhoods that the regime has been trying to wipe clear of opposition forces.’ Obama’s certainty was echoed at the time by Denis McDonough, his chief of staff, who told the New York Times: ‘No one with whom I’ve spoken doubts the intelligence’ directly linking Assad and his regime to the sarin attacks.

But in recent interviews with intelligence and military officers and consultants past and present, I found intense concern, and on occasion anger, over what was repeatedly seen as the deliberate manipulation of intelligence. One high-level intelligence officer, in an email to a colleague, called the administration’s assurances of Assad’s responsibility a ‘ruse’. The attack ‘was not the result of the current regime’, he wrote. A former senior intelligence official told me that the Obama administration had altered the available information – in terms of its timing and sequence – to enable the president and his advisers to make intelligence retrieved days after the attack look as if it had been picked up and analysed in real time, as the attack was happening. The distortion, he said, reminded him of the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, when the Johnson administration reversed the sequence of National Security Agency intercepts to justify one of the early bombings of North Vietnam. The same official said there was immense frustration inside the military and intelligence bureaucracy: ‘The guys are throwing their hands in the air and saying, “How can we help this guy” – Obama – “when he and his cronies in the White House make up the intelligence as they go along?”’

http://www.lrb.co.uk/2013/12/08/seymour-m-hersh/whose-sarin

December 8, 2013

Libya: Did Nato Intervene in Libya Just to Get Rid of Gaddafi?

We can't let a long-time leader in Africa be killed on the street like a dog and not reflect on it,' he says. To him, there is no doubt that Gaddafi was a dangerous human being and that the Gaddafi regime was a political dictatorship. 'He even called his own people "rats".'

Yet, at the same time, Libyans benefited from free health care and free education; fuel was almost free as well and housing was heavily subsidised.

The country had one of the highest per capita incomes in the world and was second only to Mauritius on the Human Development Index for Africa - all things that were left unsaid during the campaign to topple his regime.

Pondi says it is clear that the aim of the Nato intervention, sanctioned by United Nations Resolution 1973, was primarily to get rid of Gaddafi and not to save the lives of civilians. 'As soon as Gaddafi was dead, that was the end of the Nato intervention, even though violence was still ongoing. Civilians were still being killed,' he says.

Today, Libya is increasingly chaotic and violent, with more than 1 700 militias operating in various parts of the country - some better armed than the police and the army.

snip

Gaddafi's demise has been tragic for Africa in other ways as well. Libya provided 15% of the budget of the AU (as did Egypt, Algeria, Nigeria and South Africa).

Now both Libya and Egypt's contributions have fallen away and the AU has to rely on European Union funds for much of its programme budget.

http://allafrica.com/stories/201311251257.html?viewall=1

December 8, 2013

Magnitude-4.5 earthquake rattles Central Oklahoma

An earthquake Saturday afternoon that shook the Oklahoma City area likely was one of the largest recorded in the state's history, an Oklahoma Geological Survey seismologist said

The quake occurred at 12:10 p.m. about four miles northwest of Jones, just east of Arcadia Lake, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It was felt in cities including Norman, Edmond, Oklahoma City and Guthrie.

The U.S. Geological Survey said it occurred about 5 miles deep. It was recorded as a magnitude-4.5 earthquake.

The Oklahoma Geological Survey measured it as a stronger, magnitude-4.8 quake

http://newsok.com/magnitude-4.5-earthquake-rattles-central-oklahoma/article/3912440

The word fracking is not found in the article.

December 8, 2013

HIV 'Cure' Fails In First 2 Patients

Sad news from the front of the fight against AIDS: Two HIV-positive people who underwent bone marrow transplants and were thought to be functionally cured have tested positive for the virus again.

HIV virus lives in and kills white blood cells. These blood cells are created in the bone marrow, so researchers were hopeful that they could cure the disease by wiping out the infected patient's bone marrow and replacing it with donor marrow that wasn't infected with the virus. This is a procedure frequently performed to treat blood cancers, so doctors are pretty comfortable with the risks, though complications can be lethal.

Two patients from Boston got bone marrow transplants to treat their blood cancer three and five years earlier. After the procedure, they were kept on drugs, and the doctors have been monitoring their blood virus levels ever since. In 2012 they announced their first results, that the patients were still free of the HIV virus years after the transplant.

To really test the "cure" though, the patients were taken off anti-HIV drugs.

Bad news struck just months after they were taken off the drugs: The virus came back. The virus was either at too low of a level to be detected while the patients were on drugs, or it could have been hiding out somewhere other than blood cells (where they normally look) in a dormant state that couldn't be detected.

http://www.sfgate.com/technology/businessinsider/article/HIV-Cure-Fails-In-First-2-Patients-5042391.php

December 8, 2013

Nelson Mandela was on the US Terror watch list until 2008.

Nelson Mandela removed from US terror list

George W Bush signed the bill in time for the Nobel Peace Prize winner's 90th birthday on July 18. Ronald Reagan had originally placed the ANC on the list in the 1980s .

"Today the United States moved closer at last to removing the great shame of dishonoring this great leader by including him on our government's terror watch list," Senator John Kerry said after the bill was approved.

When a similar bill passed the House of Representatives last month, Barbara Lee, a California Democrat who co-sponsored it, said she was "especially pleased we are taking this important step to finally right this inexcusable wrong."

In April, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged a Senate committee to remove the restrictions on the ANC party, calling it a "rather embarrassing matter that I still have to waive in my own counterpart, the foreign minister of South Africa, not to mention the great leader Nelson Mandela."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/southafrica/2233256/Nelson-Mandela-removed-from-US-terror-list.html

December 8, 2013

Syria conflict: Foreign jihadists 'use Turkey safe houses'

Source: BBC

Foreign jihadist fighters are using safe houses in southern Turkey to cross into Syria to fight against government forces, the BBC has learnt.

A man running one such house near the border town of Reyhanli said more than 150 people - including up to 20 Britons - had used it in the past three months.

The route through Turkey used by al-Qaeda-linked foreign jihadists is now becoming increasingly organised.

Opposition activists say jihadists are destroying the Syrian revolution.


Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-25274886

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One such fighter from France told our correspondent that "there are thousands of us, literally from every corner of the world".

"And we are all al-Qaeda," he added.

December 7, 2013

134 roosters put down in Calif cock-fighting probe

Authorities in Southern California have killed 134 roosters that were discovered in the small town of Oasis during an investigation into a cockfighting ring.

The Desert Sun reported Friday (http://mydesert.co/IRXo2L) that Riverside County sheriff's deputies also uncovered about 10 boxes of blades used in cockfighting, a cockfighting ring and a large trophy.

John Welsh, a spokesman for the county's Department of Animal Services, says the birds were located after someone called in a report of animal cruelty.

The owner was not arrested but could face $3,000 in fines and citations.

http://www.sfgate.com/news/crime/article/134-roosters-put-down-in-Calif-cock-fighting-probe-5044128.php

December 7, 2013

Obama speaking at the SABAN Forum, says US commitment to Israel's security 'sacrosanct'

Source: Jerusalem Post

US President hails efficacy of sanctions against Iran but says a diplomatic resolution of nuclear issue must be tested; on Israeli-Palestinian peace says could be restricted to W. Bank and Gaza could follow.

At the SABAN Forum in Washington D.C. US President Barack Obama said that it is in US national security interest to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.

Obama said that a diplomatic resolution of the nuclear issue needed to be tested.

Obama said that if Iran shows that it is not abiding by the accord accord, we can tighten sanctions. "My goal as US president is prevent Iran from nuclear weapons," he said.

Obama said the US was still watching how Iran acts in the region, and its commitment to Israel's security is "sacrosanct."

Hailing the efficacy of the sanctions on Iran, Obama said that "for the first time in over a decade we have halted advances in Iran's nuclear program." He added that in the nuclear facilities of Fordow and Natanz the Iranians, "have to stop adding additional centrifuges. We've also said that they have to roll back 20% enrichment to zero."

Read more: http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/WATCH-Obama-speaking-at-the-SABAN-Forum-in-Washington-DC-334266