Jesus Malverde
Jesus Malverde's JournalIran's president Rouhani: We will never develop nuclear weapons
Source: NBC
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told NBC News on Wednesday that his administration will never develop nuclear weapons and that he has full authority to make a deal with the West on the disputed atomic program.
In Rouhani's first interview with a U.S. news outlet since his election, he spoke to NBC News National and International correspondent/anchor Ann Curry at the presidential compound in Tehran. The interview will air on NBC Nightly News at 6:30 p.m. ET.
Rouhani spoke after a slew of signs that he is cautiously open to defrosting relations with the U.S., which were in deep freeze under the isolating leadership of his predecessor, the inflammatory Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.
Elected in June with just over 50 percent of the vote, he was the only non-conservative in a field of hard-liners. In his inaugural address, he spoke of engagement with the West to end sanctions over Iran's disputed nuclear program.
Read more: http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/09/18/20561148-irans-president-rouhani-we-will-never-develop-nuclear-weapons?lite
Obama says Iran shouldn’t misinterpret U.S. response to Syria
Source: Washington Post
President Obama declared that the United States is still prepared to act militarily to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons despite the decision to pursue a diplomatic deal and not strike Syria over its alleged use of chemical weapons.
He also acknowledged his approach to the Syria crisis has been uneven, but defended it as producing the right results.
Obama spoke in an interview broadcast Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” with George Stephanopoulos,” taped Friday before the United States and Russia agreed on a plan to bring Syrian chemical weapons under international control in order to avoid military strikes.
But Obama said Iran should not interpret the diplomatic response — coming after he threatened to use strikes -- as suggesting that the United States wouldn’t attack Iran to stop the development of nuclear weapons.
“I think what the Iranians understand is that the nuclear issue is a far larger issue for us than the chemical weapons issue, that the threat.?.?. against Israel, that a nuclear Iran poses, is much closer to our core interests,” Obama said. “My suspicion is that the Iranians recognize they shouldn’t draw a lesson that we haven’t struck [Syria] to think we won’t strike Iran.”
Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-says-iran-shouldnt-misinterpret-us-response-to-syria/2013/09/15/fd6f27cc-1e05-11e3-8459-657e0c72fec8_print.html
Man falls out of helicopter in Calif. pot cleanup
A California outdoorsman who led crews of volunteers through the Sierra Nevada mountains repairing trails and cleaning up marijuana grow sites has died after falling from a helicopter, authorities said.
Shane Krogen was being lowered in a harness to a remote cleanup site in Sequoia National Forest when he fell Thursday morning, said Lt. Patrick Foy of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
"He was the last one out. He was in a harness; everyone else had used it too," said Foy, who was at the scene but did not see the fall.
The helicopter was flown by the California National Guard 129th Air Rescue Wing.
Krogen was founder and executive director of the High Sierra Trail Crew, a group that has worked with the fish and wildlife agency since 2008 and U.S. Forest Service since 1995 to remove trash and contaminants from illegal and remote marijuana gardens.
http://www.sfgate.com/news/science/article/Man-falls-out-of-helicopter-in-Calif-pot-cleanup-4812485.php
Bill to protect journalists clears Senate panel
Journalists and bloggers who report news to the public will be protected from being forced to testify about their work under a media shield bill passed by a Senate committee Thursday.
But the new legal protections will not extend to the controversial online website Wikileaks and others whose principal work involves disclosing "primary-source documents … without authorization."
Senate sponsors of the bill and a coalition of media groups that support it hailed Thursday's bipartisan Senate Judiciary Committee vote as a breakthrough.
"We're closer than we've ever been before to passing a strong and tough media shield bill," Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said. "Thanks to important bipartisan compromises, we've put together a strong bill that balances the need for national security with that of a free press."
The final hurdle for the Judiciary Committee was defining who is a journalist in the digital era.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) insisted on limiting the legal protection to "real reporters" and not, she said, a 17-year-old with his own website.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-shield-law-20130913,0,4553946.story
Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2013
Barbara Salazar Torreon
Congressional Research Service
33 pages
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R42738.pdf
This report lists hundreds of instances in which the United States has used its Armed Forces abroad in situations of military conflict or potential conflict or for other than normal peacetime purposes. It was compiled in part from various older lists and is intended primarily to provide a rough survey of past U.S. military ventures abroad, without reference to the magnitude of the given instance noted. The listing often contains references, especially from 1980 forward, to continuing military deployments, especially U.S. military participation in multinational operations associated with NATO or the United Nations. Most of these post-1980 instances are summaries based on presidential reports to Congress related to the War Powers Resolution. A comprehensive commentary regarding any of the instances listed is not undertaken here.
The instances differ greatly in number of forces, purpose, extent of hostilities, and legal authorization. Eleven times in its history the United States has formally declared war against foreign nations. These 11 U.S. war declarations encompassed 5 separate wars: the war with Great Britain declared in 1812; the war with Mexico declared in 1846; the war with Spain declared in 1898; the First World War, during which the United States declared war with Germany and with Austria-Hungary during 1917; and World War II, during which the United States declared war against Japan, Germany, and Italy in 1941, and against Bulgaria, Hungary, and Rumania in 1942.
Some of the instances were extended military engagements that might be considered undeclared wars. These include the Undeclared Naval War with France from 1798 to 1800; the First Barbary War from 1801 to 1805; the Second Barbary War of 1815; the Korean War of 1950-1953; the Vietnam War from 1964 to 1973; the Persian Gulf War of 1991; global actions against foreign terrorists after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States; and the war with Iraq in 2003. With the exception of the Korean War, all of these conflicts received congressional authorization in some form short of a formal declaration of war. Other, more recent instances often involve deployment of U.S. military forces as part of a multinational operation associated with NATO or the United Nations. For additional information, see CRS Report RS21405, U.S. Periods of War and Dates of Current Conflicts, by Barbara Salazar Torreon.
The majority of the instances listed prior to World War II were brief Marine or Navy actions to protect U.S. citizens or promote U.S. interests. A number were actions against pirates or bandits. Covert actions, disaster relief, and routine alliance stationing and training exercises are not included here, nor are the Civil and Revolutionary Wars and the continual use of U.S. military units in the exploration, settlement, and pacification of the western part of the United States.
Agricultural technology use growing in California
Ted Batkin knows there might not be enough workers this year to pick California's signature orange crop due to an ongoing shortage of migrant farm laborers.
That's why he's working on a robot.
It will have arms, hands and even eyes, and do the harvesting work of four to eight people, depending on its speed. Besides citrus, the robot - it still doesn't have an official name - can be used for apples, pears, peaches and other stone fruit.
"It's a game changer," said Batkin, the former president of the Citrus Research Board. "We'll no longer be dependent on human labor for harvesting."
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Agricultural-technology-use-growing-in-California-4796028.php#photo-5149727
The Case Against Larry Summers
The Federal Reserve chairman wields such enormous power, with so little accountability, that he or she is said to be the second-most-powerful person in government after the president. Decisions are habitually made in secret. The job requires a person of great personal tact, subtlety, and self-control. It requires someone who knows how to build consensus at the highest levels for the right kind of policies—someone who possesses the maturity and character to admit error and shift course when needed.
But, according to numerous accounts from those who have worked with him, Summers has often displayed the opposite attributes during his long career. Behind the scenes, he has used his power, combined with intellectual arrogance, to bully opponents into silence, even when they have been proved right. He has refused to allow his dissenters a voice at the table and adopted a policy of never admitting errors.
And Summers has made a lot of errors in the past 20 years, despite the eminence of his research. As a government official, he helped author a series of ultimately disastrous or wrongheaded policies, from his big deregulatory moves as a Clinton administration apparatchik to his too-tepid response to the Great Recession as Obama's chief economic adviser. Summers pushed a stimulus that was too meek, and, along with his chief ally, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, he helped to ensure that millions of desperate mortgage-holders would stay underwater by failing to support a "cramdown" that would have allowed federal bankruptcy judges to have banks reduce mortgage balances, cut interest rates, and lengthen the terms of loans. At the same time, he supported every bailout of financial firms. All of this has left the economy still in the doldrums, five years after Lehman Brothers' 2008 collapse, and hurt the middle class. Yet in no instance has Summers ever been known to publicly acknowledge a mistake.
Wielded by a Fed chairman, those personal traits and policy attitudes are a potentially combustible mix at a time when the Federal Reserve has become, more than ever, the most powerful economic institution on earth, and when re-regulation of the global financial system is substantially in the hands of the Fed. The man whom Summers once considered a model chairman, Alan Greenspan, offers an example of the dangers of being too certain of one's views without much accountability. Back in 1994, Congress instructed the Fed to police unfair and deceptive practices related to mortgage loans. But because the chairman believed in minimal regulation, no rules were ever written; Greenspan quietly slapped down efforts by governors such as Ed Gramlich to warn him; and the Fed did little to intervene in the emerging subprime fraud.
There is no question about Summers's intellect and experience. But would he have the character, temperament, and maturity to listen to a naysayer enough to admit error and reverse course in the next crisis? His history suggests otherwise.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/case-against-larry-summers-150800434.html
Syria says it ratified treaty banning use of chemical weapons
Source: Jerusalem Post
Syria became a full member of the global anti-chemical weapons treaty on Thursday, the country's UN envoy said, a move that the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad had promised as part of a deal to avoid US air strikes.
Several UN diplomats and a UN official, however, told Reuters on condition of anonymity that it was not yet clear that Syria had fulfilled all the conditions for legal accession to the treaty.
"I think there are a few more steps they have to take (before Syria is a signatory) but that's why we're studying the document," a UN official said.
Syria was one of only seven countries not to have joined the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention, which commits members to destroying their stockpiles.
"Legally speaking Syria has become, starting today, a full member of the (chemical weapons) convention," Syrian UN Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari told reporters in New York after submitting relevant documents to the United Nations.
Read more: http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Syria-says-it-ratified-treaty-banning-use-of-chemical-weapons-326057
American Jihadi - Abu Mansoor Al-Amriki
Current TV documentary on the American Omar Hammami/ Abu Mansoor Al-Amriki killed today.
American Jihadist Is Believed Killed by Ex-Allies in Somalia
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014592990
Richmond to move forward with eminent domain plan
Richmond’s City Council voted 4-3 early Wednesday morning to continue exploring the use of eminent domain for underwater mortgages, after a lengthy and contentious meeting packed with residents who expressed strong feelings for and against the controversial idea.
“Leadership depends on taking risks,” said Mayor Gayle McLaughlin, who proposed the successful measure to set up a Joint Powers Authority with other interested cities as a next step forward in the city’s “Richmond CARES” attempt to cut principal on underwater mortgages.
More than 300 community members, many wearing T-shirts to proclaim their position — yellow for supporters, red for opponents — cheered, booed and applauded as council members and dozens of speakers discussed invoking eminent domain to seize and restructure underwater home loans as a way to prevent foreclosures.
“Richmond and its residents have been badly harmed by this housing crisis,” McLaughlin said. “The banks have been unwilling or unable to fix this situation so the city is stepping in to provide a fix.”
http://blog.sfgate.com/ontheblock/2013/09/11/richmond-to-move-forward-with-eminent-domain-plan/
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Name: Jesus MalverdeGender: Male
Hometown: SF
Current location: Japan
Member since: Fri May 17, 2013, 11:44 PM
Number of posts: 10,274
