June 6, 2015

Pentagon chief says new action needed on Russia over Ukraine

Source: Reuters

The United States needs to take new steps to respond to the Ukraine conflict because economic sanctions and other Western actions have failed to get Russian President Vladimir Putin to reverse course, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Friday.

Carter, speaking after conferring with U.S. officials in Europe, said the Pentagon was watching the Ukraine situation very closely and was concerned about "further things happening" after the worst upsurge in fighting in months.

On Thursday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg accused Moscow of sending sophisticated new weapons to Russian-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine, including artillery and anti-aircraft systems.

Carter called three dozen top U.S. officials to a session in Stuttgart, Germany, to discuss the effectiveness of Western sanctions against Russia and evaluate whether U.S. and NATO military exercises had reassured NATO allies and partners.

Read more: https://ca.news.yahoo.com/pentagon-chief-says-action-needed-russia-over-ukraine-220049855.html

June 5, 2015

US report claiming Saudi Arabia financed 9/11 attack 'redacted by Bush'

Source: Telegraph UK

An American senator has claimed that a secret official report blaming Saudi Arabia for financing the 9/11 attacks was redacted by George W Bush.

Bob Graham, former chairman of the US Senate Intelligence Committee, said that the report shows Saudi Arabia was the "principle financier" of the attacks. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, but previous investigations failed to find a link between the country and the terrorist attack, which killed 2,996 people.

Mr Graham told The Times that a 28-page chapter of the 2002 Senate report, entitled Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 2001, had been withheld to protect the country. Now retired, he is campaigning for its release.

The Times reported that the pages are thought to deal with Nawaf al-Hamzi and Khalid al-Mihdar, two Saudis who helped hijack the plane that was flown in to the Pentagon. They were said to have been in touch with a man who was in contact with the Saudi Arabian embassy in Washington. The embassy has, however, denied that he was a spy.

Read more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/september-11-attacks/11653706/US-report-claiming-Saudi-Arabia-financed-911-attack-redacted-by-Bush.html

June 5, 2015

90 Pounds Of Cocaine Found On Cargo Ship Owned By Anti-Drug Senator’s Family (Senator McConnell)

A cargo ship connected to Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell was recently stopped and searched before departing from Colombia. During the search, Colombian Coast Guard agents seized roughly 90 pounds of cocaine.

The drugs were found on the Ping May, which is a vessel operated by the Foremost Maritime Corporation, a company owned by Mitch McConnell’s in-laws, the Chao family. This connection is not only relevant because of the family connection, but also because the Chao family has often made large donations to McConnell’s campaigns.

In fact, the Chao family has been funding McConnell since the late 1980s. Years later, in 1993, McConnell married Elaine Chao and secured the Chao family as one of his primary sources for investments.

A gift worth somewhere between 5 and 25 million dollars from the Chao Family made McConnel one of the richest senators in the country in 2008.

The Foremost Maritime Corporation is currently operating 16 dry bulk cargo ships, most of which are currently still in service.

What makes this case even more interesting is that McConnell is well known as a staunch prohibitionist. In 1996, McConnell sponsored “The Enhanced Marijuana Penalties Act”, a bill designed to increase the mandatory minimum sentencing for people caught with marijuana.


Read more at http://thefreethoughtproject.com/90-pounds-cocaine-cargo-ship-owned-anti-drug-senators-family/#9yiSMF1vACS7pgDf.99

June 5, 2015

Criminal Charges Against Agents Reveal Staggering Corruption in the Silk Road Investigation

Two of the law enforcement agents involved in the tangled multi-agency investigation into the Silk Road have been charged by the Department of Justice for stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars (at the very least) in bitcoin. The criminal complaint against former DEA agent Carl Mark Force IV and former Secret Service agent Shaun Bridges alleges money laundering, wire fraud, theft of government property, and more. But more shockingly, it tells the story of a sprawling case tainted by an unbelievable web of corruption. A state’s witness took the fall for an agent’s theft, thus becoming the target for a murder-for-hire—a murder that was then faked by the same agent. The Silk Road case was compromised again and again as Force and Bridges allegedly took every opportunity to embezzle and steal money. With so much bitcoin on their hands, the two had to coax various bitcoin and payments companies to help convert their ill-gotten gains to dollars. When companies resisted, investigations were launched, subpoenas were issued, and civil forfeitures were sought in retaliation.

The investigation into Force and Bridges began around May 2014, nearly a year after the arrest of Ross Ulbricht. Ulbricht was convicted this February of operating the Silk Road marketplace under the moniker “the Dread Pirate Roberts.” The criminal complaint alleges that Force and Bridges not only managed to siphon off bitcoins into their personal accounts while conducting undercover operations on the Silk Road, but Force also adopted a series of different personas on the Silk Road that switched off between extorting Ulbricht/DPR and selling him information from inside the federal investigation. Under the handles “Nob” and “French Maid,” Force sold DPR information that he had supposedly acquired from a corrupt government agent, while under the handle “Death from Above,” he used information from inside the investigation to extort DPR for bitcoins.

Between 2012 and 2013, while Force was investigating the Silk Road, he deposited into his bank account about three times the amount of money he was making on his government salary. He also paid off the mortgage on his house, repaid a $22,000 government loan, wired $235,000 to an offshore account in Panama, and invested tens of thousands of dollars in real estate and stocks.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahjeong/2015/03/31/force-and-bridges/

June 5, 2015

Orange says it plans to terminate contract with brand partner in Israel

Source: Guardian UK

The French telecoms giant Orange has indicated that it intends to terminate its relationship with the Israeli company that licenses its brand in the country – and would end the relationship “tomorrow” if it could.

The comments – made by the company’s CEO, Stephane Richard – have emerged amid a sharp push back by the Israeli government against growing calls for an international boycott of Israel over its continuing occupation of Palestinian territories.

They were angrily condemned by the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, who called on the French government to “distance itself publicly from the miserable statement and the miserable action of a company that is partially owned by the government of France.”

Although Orange only licenses its name to the Israeli company Partner, the threat – if carried through – will be seen as a major success for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement which has been campaigning on the issue in both France and Egypt.


Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/04/orange-says-it-plans-to-terminate-contract-with-brand-partner-in-israel

June 5, 2015

Bernie Sanders can’t win: Why the press loves to hate underdogs

ON THE EVE OF THE 1948 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, Newsweek asked the 50 reporters on President Truman’s campaign train to forecast the winner. To a man they went the way the Chicago Tribune infamously would on election night: “Dewey defeats Truman.” Lay historians will recall that not only did Truman defeat Dewey—he clobbered him. Sorting out how the media got it so wrong, The New York Times’ James Reston concluded that he and his brethren had been a lot like the aloof Governor Dewey himself, who was said to be the only man who could strut sitting down. Dewey played well with plutocrats and publishers. “[J]ust as he was too isolated with other politicians,” Reston wrote, “so we were too isolated with other reporters; and we, too, were far too impressed by the tidy statistics of the polls.”

This was true, but it fell to A. J. Liebling, the nonpareil of The New Yorker, to pick out the crucial vice that Reston and similarly minded colleagues overlooked. “A great wave of contrition hit the Washington newspaper world in the days immediately following the joyous catastrophe,” Liebling wrote, “and men swore that they would go out and dig for the real truths of politics as they never had dug before. But few publishers encouraged them in their good resolutions, and most of them are back again running errands designed to bolster their bosses’ new illusions.” Bad as insiderism, arrogance, and poll-worship were, Liebling knew the real peril was that those sins usually furthered the bosses’ agenda. It is one reason Liebling’s most memorable bon mot is also his most eternal: “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.”

Those of a Lieblingian turn of mind could not have been surprised by the reception Bernie Sanders got last month when he entered the race for the Democratic nomination for the presidency. Sanders, of course, is Vermont’s junior senator, barber’s worst nightmare, and IKEA socialist (he favors the term “democratic socialist,” as in the Scandinavian variant), who quaintly maintains that people and the planet are more important than profit. Not long ago such beliefs fell well within the waters of the main stream where politicians swam, but the current has since been rerouted, and Sanders now paddles hard against the left bank. For not going with the flow, and for challenging Hillary Clinton, the big fish many elites have tagged as their own, Sanders’s entry into the race was greeted with story after story whose message—stated or understated, depending on the decorum of the messenger—was “This crank can’t win.”

The trouble with this consensus is the paucity of evidence to support it. “This crank actually could win” is nearer the mark. But having settled on a prophecy, the media went about covering Sanders so as to fulfill it. The Times, for example, buried his announcement on page A21, even though every other candidate who had declared before then had been put on the front page above the fold. Sanders’s straight-news story didn’t even crack 700 words, compared to the 1,100 to 1,500 that Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and Hillary Clinton got. As for the content, the Times’ reporters declared high in Sanders’s piece that he was a long shot for the Democratic nomination and that Clinton was all but a lock. None of the Republican entrants got the long-shot treatment, even though Paul, Rubio, and Cruz were generally polling fifth, seventh, and eighth among Republicans before they announced.

http://www.cjr.org/analysis/bernie_sanders_underdog.php

June 5, 2015

Congressman John K. Delaney, what the hell are you talking about?

Congressman John K. Delaney, what the hell are you talking about?

In a recent Washington Post op-ed piece, headlined, “The last thing America needs? A left-wing version of the Tea Party,” the Democratic congressman from Maryland scolds progressives and expresses his worry “about where some of the loudest voices in the room could take the Democratic Party.”

He writes, “Rejecting a trade agreement with Asia, expanding entitlement programs that crowd out other priorities and a desire to relitigate the financial crisis are becoming dominant positions among Democrats. Although these subjects may make for good partisan talking points, they do not provide the building blocks for a positive and bold agenda to create jobs and improve the lives of Americans.”

Rep. Delaney even implies that a freewheeling, open discussion of “these subjects” could lead to the election of a Republican president.

Good grief, John. A trade agreement that favors multinational corporations over working people? Cutting “entitlement programs” such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, worker’s compensation? Letting Wall Street off the hook for crashing the economy and costing millions of Americans their jobs and homes? These are Republican policies, bought and paid for by plutocrats. If Democrats simply mimic them, there would be no need to bother with voting for a Republican president; we could cancel the election and put the billions saved in campaign contributions straight into the Clinton Foundation.

The progressive agenda isn’t “left wing.” (Can anyone using the term even define what “left wing” means anymore?) The progressive agenda is America’s story — from ending slavery to ending segregation to establishing a woman’s right to vote to Social Security, the right to organize, and the fight for fair pay and against income inequality. Strip those from our history and you might as well contract America out to the US Chamber of Commerce the National Association of Manufacturers, and Karl Rove, Inc.

http://billmoyers.com/2015/06/03/turn-left-main-street/

June 5, 2015

US envoy: ISIS fight may last 'generation or more'

President Obama’s envoy to the global coalition fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) predicted on Wednesday that defeating the terrorist group could take a generation or more.

Retired Marine Gen. John Allen added that his assessment was based on the zealotry of ISIS’s ideology, according to The Times of Israel.
“This will be a long campaign,” Allen said at the U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Doha, Qatar.

“Defeating Daesh’s ideology will likely take a generation or more,” he said, using the Arabic name for ISIS, according to the Times.

http://thehill.com/policy/defense/243896-us-envoy-isis-fight-may-last-generation-or-more

June 5, 2015

Obama and his GOP allies launch big effort to win trade fight in the House

President Obama opened an intense final round of lobbying to win support for his sweeping Pacific Rim trade accord ahead of a crucial vote in the House as soon as next week, expressing confidence that he will overcome deepening skepticism among fellow Democrats.

The push from the president included direct calls to lawmakers, interviews with television stations in key states and plans to bring several Democrats aboard Air Force One with him to a summit in Germany this weekend. Obama is asking them to support legislation, approved by the Senate last month, that would grant him fast-track authority to complete the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a 12-nation pact that the president has called central to his second-term agenda.

In a sign of how high the stakes have become, the White House was coordinating its efforts with House Republican leaders, who are in rare agreement with Obama and are canvassing for as many votes as possible from their caucus to ensure a buffer if the president is unable to win much support from his party.

Their challenge remains daunting, though. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Thursday promised no more than 18 votes from the 188 House Democrats — well below the two dozen or so that the administration has been seeking. That would mean Republicans would have to deliver at least 200 votes in favor of the bill.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-and-his-gop-allies-launch-big-effort-to-win-trade-fight-in-the-house/2015/06/04/d77c1316-0ac8-11e5-a7ad-b430fc1d3f5c_story.html

June 5, 2015

Fracking Has Had No ‘Widespread’ Impact on Drinking Water, EPA Finds

Fracking isn’t causing widespread damage to the nation’s drinking water, the Obama administration said in a long-awaited report released Thursday.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency—after a four-year study that is the U.S. government’s most comprehensive examination of the issue to date—concluded that hydraulic fracturing, as being carried out by industry and regulated by states, isn’t having “widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water.”

However, the EPA said there were a small number of contaminated drinking wells and highlighted potential vulnerabilities, including the disposal of wastewater and construction of durable wells.

The report was issued nearly a decade since fracking began helping unlock vast reserves of oil and natural gas across the U.S. It also bolsters the position staked out by the energy industry and its supporters: that fracking can be carried out safely.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/fracking-has-had-no-widespread-impact-on-drinking-water-epa-finds-1433433850