Election mandate in hand, Obama readies more Iran sanctions



 

Source: Russia Today

http://rt.com/news/iran-us-sanctions-drone-300/

Only days after President Obama won reelection, the US rolled out a new round of sanctions against Iran and accused it of attempting to shoot down an American drone in international airspace.

­The US State Department and Treasury announced on Thursday that the sanctions are aimed at senior Iranian officials and several related entities. US State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland said they are “responsible for the abuses carried out against their own citizens.”

The alleged abuses include the jamming of international satellite broadcasts, blocking Internet access to services like YouTube, eBay, Facebook and Gmail, and monitoring online activities to identify “users who published material insulting government officials,” a US Treasury statement said. Tehran is also accused of attacking foreign websites, shutting down newspapers in Iran and detaining journalists.

Other countries in the region, including US allies, have blocked Internet users from accessing services and materials they deemed impropriate. Turkey blocked YouTube over videos insulting its first president, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Pakistan blocked YouTube for “blasphemous web content.” The United Arab Emirates did the same, taking offense at ‘adult content’ on the video-sharing site.

The four individuals targeted by the sanctions include Tehran’s Communication and Information Technology Minister Reza Taghipour, deputy commander of the Basij militia Ali Fazli and Iranian police chief Esmail Ahmadi Moghaddam. The five entities include the country’s Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, the Press Supervisory Board and the Center to Investigate Organized Crime.

Iranian software companies AmnAfzar Gostar-e Sharif and PeykAsa – which are involved in monitoring and blocking Internet traffic – and the companies’ founder Rasool Jalili were also targeted by the sanctions.

Tehran is engaged in a campaign to curtail freedoms and “prevent the free flow of information both into and out of Iran,” Nuland said. “Countless activists, journalists, lawyers, students and artists have been detained, censured, tortured or forcibly prevented from exercising their human rights.”

The US and some of its allies have leveled increasingly harsh sanctions against Iran. The restrictions have crippled Iranian oil exports, a major source of income for the country, by targeting any organizations worldwide that buy crude from the Islamic Republic.

Western countries are pressuring Iran in a bid to force it to stop enriching uranium. They allege that Tehran is trying to stockpile the material to produce a nuclear weapon. Tehran insists that it produces enriched uranium for civilian purposes only.

­Drone debacle

­On Tuesday, the Pentagon said that Iranian warplanes shot at a US Predator drone over the Gulf region, but failed to take it down. The encounter reportedly took place on November 1, about 16 nautical miles off the Iranian coast and in international airspace.

Pentagon spokesperson George Little said that this was the fist time the Iranian military had fired on a US drone. The incident initially went undisclosed because the US military does not discuss classified surveillance missions, he explained. The attack was officially confirmed only after it was reported in the US media.

Two Iranian Sukhoi Su-25 jets intercepted the unarmed drone as it was performing a routine – but classified – patrol over Persian Gulf waters.

The aircraft shot “multiple rounds” at the Predator, and after it moved away from the Iranian border they shadowed it “for some period of time before letting it return to base,” Little said.

The American military claimed the Iranian pilots intended to shoot down the drone.

"Our working assumption is that they fired to take it down. You'll have to ask the Iranians why they engaged in this action," Little said. He did not explain why the Iranian jets failed to hit their target, as drones are incapable of performing elaborate evasive maneuvers.

He said that the American drone “was never in Iranian air space,” which begins 12 nautical miles from the country’s coastline.

In December 2011, a CIA RQ-170 Sentinel stealth done was monitoring Iranian nuclear and military facilities when it was brought down and captured in eastern Iran. The US said it malfunctioned, while Tehran claimed they had downed the aircraft. The Iranian government later published photos of the captured drone, which appeared undamaged.

“The United States has communicated to the Iranians that we will continue to conduct surveillance flights over international waters over the Arabian Gulf, consistent with longstanding practice and our commitment to the security of the region,” Little said.

Chief of Staff Brigadier General Massoud Jazayeri, the Deputy Chair of the Iranian Armed Forces, said there would be a “firm response” to any air, ground and sea aggression against Iran. He vowed to confront any foreign aircraft that violated the country’s airspace, Iranian news channel Press TV reported.

US President Barack Obama (AFP Photo / Jewel Samad) 

US-Canada “Terror Justice”: I Will Never Forget Omar Khadr

By: Nulwee

Source: Daily Kos

I’ve known about Omar Khadr since he was a boy. He’s 26, like me. At age 15, U.S. military found Khadr face-down, unconscious, under a pile of rubble in Afghanistan. When Khadr regained consciousness a week later, he was at Bagram air force base, “one of the worst places on Earth“:

Damien Corsetti, who was known as “Monster” at Bagram, based on a tattoo on his chest, and also as “The King of Torture,” described himself as “a disabled veteran suffering post traumatic stress disorder as a result of his interrogation work in both Afghanistan and Iraq,” and explained how, on seeing Khadr on July 29, 2002, just two days after his capture, he was struck by how he was an injured “child” detained in “one of the worst places on Earth.” He added, “More than anything, he looked beat up. He was a 15 year-old kid with three holes in his body, a bunch of shrapnel in his face. That was what I remember. How horrible this 15 year-old child looked.”

The well-circulated photo of Khadr at age 14, only a little younger than he was at his capture, still haunts me, not unlike the photo of the bombing victim Ali Ismael Abbas which I used to wave at Iraq Occupation protests. It has been alleged that Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen, was a child soldier, used as a pawn first by terrorists and then punished by the U.S as if he were an adult with agency.Khadr is being released to Canada after a decade long battle by civil rights groups. He will serve out his sentence in Canadian prison, with eligibility for parole in 2013.

The U.S. defence department issued a statement Saturday referring to the five war crimes to which Khadr pleaded guilty before a military commission: murder in violation of the law of war attempted murder in violation of the law of war conspiracy providing material support for terrorism spying

There are too many ironies and outrages to catalogue in this diary entry. Khadr was still injured when the torture began. The interrogators pried open his mind and used fear to transform him:

There is much more in the affidavit – casual cruelty, whereby guards made Khadr do hard manual labor when his wounds were not healed, and, significantly, threats “to have me raped, or sent to other countries like Egypt, Syria, Jordan or Israel to be raped.” He also noted, “I would always hear people screaming, both day and night,” and explained that other prisoners were scared of his interrogator. “Most people would not talk about what had been done to them,” he declared. “This made me afraid.”Khadr also described what happened to him in Guantánamo, where, as I explained last week, he “arrived around the time that a regime of humiliation, isolation and abuse, including extreme temperature manipulation, forced nudity and sexual humiliation, had just been introduced, by reverse-engineering torture techniques, used in a military program designed to train US personnel to resist interrogation if captured, in an attempt to increase the meager flow of ‘actionable intelligence’ from the prison.”

At various points in 2003, while the use of these techniques was still widespread, Khadr stated that he was short-shackled in painful positions and left for up to ten hours in a freezing cold cell, threatened with rape and with being transferred to another country where he could be raped, and, on one particular occasion, when he had been left short-shackled in a painful position until he urinated on himself:

Military police poured pine oil on the floor and on me, and then, with me lying on my stomach and my hands and feet cuffed together behind me, the military police dragged me back and forth through the mixture of urine and pine oil on the floor. Later, I was put back in my cell, without being allowed a shower or a change of clothes. I was not given a change of clothes for two days. They did this to me again a few weeks later.

Khadr was subjected to a ‘Palestinian hanging’

The first to reveal a glimpse of the regime at Bagram was, ironically, a medic called as a witness by the prosecution. “Mr. M,” as he was identified, who testified by video link from Boston, countered Khadr’s claims that, while he was at Bagram, “five people in civilian clothes would come and change my bandages,” and that they “treated me very roughly and videotaped me while they did it,” stating that he alone changed his bandages twice a day, and that no rough treatment was involved. He did, however, note that, on one occasion, he found Khadr hooded and chained to a cage by his wrists with his arms “just above eye level,” and that when he lifted the hood, Khadr was visibly upset. The medic added, as Carol Rosenberg described it in the Miami Herald, that “he didn’t object to Khadr’s treatment, because chaining was an approved form of punishment” at Bagram, “adding that he didn’t know the reason for the punishment nor how long Khadr had been chained.”

This rather nonchalant description of “chaining” may not have shocked the medic, especially as the chains were apparently “slack enough to allow Khadr’s feet to touch the floor,” but the only reason for this was because of the severity of his wounds, as Khadr explained in his affidavit, in which he also stated that he was chained up “several times.” Otherwise, like numerous other prisoners, including Dilawar (the subject of “Taxi to the Dark Side”) and Mullah Habibullah, the two prisoners who were killed at Bagram in December 2002, he would have been fully suspended by his wrists, in a torture technique more commonly known as the “strappado” technique or “Palestinian hanging.”

Nevertheless, as Barry Coburn, Khadr’s lead lawyer, explained, the medic’s testimony provided “critically important validation” of statements in his client’s affidavit, and another of his lawyers, Kobie Flowers, added, “Had this been an American soldier in North Korea, people would be outraged. Here we have a 15-year-old individual who was nearly killed with bullets in his back who was left up there to hang as punishment.”

There’s more in the long, sad, tale of Omar Khadr. But that gives you some idea.This is a critical story and its embers have to remain hot. These are the stakes. The U.S. can choose to forget that it captured and tortured a boy for years, physically and psychologically. That it tortured many people, some Middle Eastern, some Western. I guarantee you that the price of forgetting will revisit us in the future. Or we can remember the stain on our nation, like many other countries have to each day

Notes:

Common Dreams: The Torture of Omar Khadr, a Child in Bagram and Guantánamo

https://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/05/13-8
CBC News: Omar Khadr returns to Canada September 29^th, 2012
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2012/09/29/omar-khadr-repatriation.html
Daily Kos: “I was naked in the bright light and you couldn’t see me…”
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/07/15/752236/--I-was-naked-in-the-bright-light-and-you-couldn-t-see-me

The President's kill list

Source: Press TV (US Desk)
http://www.presstv.ir/usdetail/244340.html

What is wrong with the President sitting in a room, looking at lists and portraits of people-a Somali man, a seventeen-year-old girl, an American citizen-and deciding whom to kill? That, according to long and troubling articles in both the Times and Newsweek, is a job Barack Obama has assigned himself. His aides, notably John Brennan, his counter-terrorism adviser, portray it as a matter of taking responsibility-if we are going to assassinate someone, or call in a drone strike to take out a camp in Yemen, the President should make the call-as if our only alternative were some sort of rogue operation, with generals or C.I.A. agents shooting at will. But responsibility involves accountability, which is something, in this case, that appears to be badly lacking. Obama has not taken on a burden, but instead has given the Presidency a novel power.

The "kill list" story is a reminder of how much language matters, and how dangerous it is when the plain meaning of a word is ignored. Each might include a mini-glossary: "baseball cards," for the PowerPoint slides with the biographies and faces of targets; "Terror Tuesday," meetings where targets are sorted out; "nominations" for death-marked finalists; "personality strikes" that aimed to kill a person, and "signature strikes" that went after a group of people whose names one didn't know because of the way they seemed, from pictures in the sky, to be acting. (From the Times piece, written by Jo Becker and Scott Shane: "The joke was that when the C.I.A. sees 'three guys doing jumping jacks,' the agency thinks it is a terrorist training camp, said one senior official.") Signature strikes were also known as TADS, for terrorist-attack-disruption strikes, or just as "crowd kills." Both articles explore Obama's halting efforts to confine signature strikes to Pakistan, rather than Yemen and Somalia, and how he ultimately didn't, really. This is the kind of attack that, in one incident mentioned by Daniel Klaidman in his Newsweek piece, led to "persuasive" reports of dozens of women and children dying. A lawyer who saw that on "Kill TV," the feed that let the military and lawyers watch strikes, said later, "If I were Catholic, I’d have to go to confession."

More disturbing than childish names for brutal things are the absurd meanings ascribed to more sober terms. The key ones are "civilians and combatants," and "due process."

How do you minimize civilian casualties in a conflict? Ask a military planner or human-rights organization or just a sensible person and each might come up with a list of tactics, plans, litmus tests. And there were apparently elements of that in the White House's conversations. But ask a sophist or, as it happens, the C.I.A., and you might get this suggestion: change the definition. As the Times described it, Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.

In other words, if we thought that you were someone we should kill, and we did kill you, and you look to be the right age to be cast as an extra in a spy movie, you were guilty. Does that mean that, if a house is hit and the bodies of a father, mother, teen-age boy, and middle-school-aged girl are found entangled with each other, two are combatants and two are civilians?

These words are important because of the argument that we have to act to protect ourselves: there is a terrorist on a screen; hit him now. But how are we deciding who a terrorist is? In some cases, we don’t even know the names of people we're killing, in countries where we are not actually at war. In others, we do know their names, and don't care who dies with them. (In one strike, in which the identity of the man was known, according to the Times, Obama made a deliberate decision to kill his wife and in-laws along with him).

The method we have built, over a couple of hundred years, for sorting out questions of guilt and innocence and probable cause, is due process. And that may be the most degraded phrase of all.

The Obama Administration has sought and killed American citizens, notably Anwar al-Awlaki. As the Times noted, "The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel prepared a lengthy memo justifying that extraordinary step, asserting that while the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process applied, it could be satisfied by internal deliberations in the executive branch." In other words, it's due process if the President thinks about it. One wonders how low the standard for "internal deliberations" are-if it might be enough if Obama mulled it over while walking his dog. And if an American whom the President decides is a threat can be assassinated in Yemen, where Awlaki was hit, why not in London, or Toronto, or Los Angeles? (Awlaki's teen-age son, an American citizen who had not been accused of anything, died in a separate strike).

These are not far-fetched concerns. The Times quoted Michael Hayden, who served as the director of the C.I.A. under George Bush:

"This program rests on the personal legitimacy of the president, and that's not sustainable," Mr. Hayden said. "I have lived the life of someone taking action on the basis of secret O.L.C. memos, and it ain't a good life. Democracies do not make war on the basis of legal memos locked in a D.O.J. safe."

As Jane Mayer has written in The New Yorker, drone strikes, as opposed to ground troops, bring with them a comforting illusion of distance. Picturing Obama going through the lists in a bright office in Washington shows where that daydream leads, and how deceptive it can be. A drone-based conflict may, in the short run, keep some troops from harm, but it may also take the debate about war and peace out of the public sphere and into what is, in political terms, a much darker space.

Brennan and other officials interviewed by the Times and Newsweek said that Obama had enormous faith in himself. It would be more responsible, though, if he had less-if he thought that he was no better than any other President we've had or ever will. The point isn't just the task, or burden, he takes on, but the machine he has built for his successors to use.

Perhaps, just to suggest a range, he could picture each of the Republican contenders from this past season being walked through the process, told how it works, shown some of those video clips with tiny people and big explosions, and taking it for a test drive. Never mind whether Obama, in particular, sighs or loses sleep or tosses a coin when he chooses a target: What would it mean for a bad, or craven, or simply carelessly accommodating President to do so? In the end we are not really being asked to trust Obama, or his niceness, but the office of the Presidency. Do we?

New Obama Executive Order Seizes U.S. Infrastructure and Citizens for Military Preparedness

Source: Global Research
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=29835

In a stunning move, on March 16, 2012, Barack Obama signed an Executive Order stating that the President and his specifically designated Secretaries now have the authority to commandeer all domestic U.S. resources including food and water. The EO also states that the President and his Secretaries have the authority to seize all transportation, energy, and infrastructure inside the United States as well as forcibly induct/draft American citizens into the military. The EO also contains a vague reference in regards to harnessing American citizens to fulfill “labor requirements” for the purposes of national defense.

Not only that, but the authority claimed inside the EO does not only apply to National Emergencies and times of war. It also applies in peacetime.

The National Defense Resources Preparedness Executive Order exploits the “authority” granted to the President in the Defense Production Act of 1950 in order to assert that virtually every means of human survival is now available for confiscation and control by the President via his and his Secretaries’ whim.

The unconstitutionality of the overwhelming majority of Executive Orders is well established, as well as the illegality of denying citizens their basic Constitutional and human rights, even in the event of a legitimate national emergency. Likewise, it should also be pointed out that, like Obama’s recent Libyan adventure and the foregone conclusion of a Syrian intervention, there is no mention of Congress beyond a minor role of keeping the allegedly co-equal branch of government informed on contextually meaningless developments.

As was mentioned above, the scope of the EO is virtually all-encompassing. For instance, in “Section 201 – Priorities and Allocations Authorities,” the EO explains that the authority for the actions described in the opening paragraph rests with the President but is now delegated to the various Secretaries of the U.S. Federal Government. The list of delegations and the responsibility of the Secretaries as provided in this section are as follows:

(1) the Secretary of Agriculture with respect to food resources, food resource facilities, livestock resources, veterinary resources, plant health resources, and the domestic distribution of farm equipment and commercial fertilizer;

(2) the Secretary of Energy with respect to all forms of energy;

(3) the Secretary of Health and Human Services with respect to health resources;

(4) the Secretary of Transportation with respect to all forms of civil transportation;

(5) the Secretary of Defense with respect to water resources; and

(6) the Secretary of Commerce with respect to all other materials, services, and facilities, including construction materials.

One need only to read the “Definitions” section of the EO in order to clearly see that terms such as “food resources” is an umbrella that includes literally every form of food and food-related product that could in any way be beneficial to human survival.

That being said, “Section 601 – Secretary of Labor” delegates special responsibilities to the Secretary of Labor as it involves not just materials citizens will need for survival, but the actual citizens themselves.

Obviously, the ability of the U.S. government to induct and draft citizens into the military against their will is, although a clear violation of their rights, not an issue considered shocking by its nature of having been invoked so many times in the past. Logically, this “authority” is provided for in this section.

However, what may be shocking is the fact that Section 601 also provides for the mobilization of “labor” for purposes of the national defense. Although some subsections read that evaluations are to be made regarding the “effect and demand of labor utilization,” the implication is that “labor” (meaning American workers) will be considered yet one more resource to be seized for the purposes of “national defense.” The EO reads,

Sec. 601. Secretary of Labor. (a) The Secretary of Labor, in coordination with the Secretary of Defense and the heads of other agencies, as deemed appropriate by the Secretary of Labor, shall:

(1) collect and maintain data necessary to make a continuing appraisal of the Nation's workforce needs for purposes of national defense;

(2) upon request by the Director of Selective Service, and in coordination with the Secretary of Defense, assist the Director of Selective Service in development of policies regulating the induction and deferment of persons for duty in the armed services;

(3) upon request from the head of an agency with authority under this order, consult with that agency with respect to: (i) the effect of contemplated actions on labor demand and utilization; (ii) the relation of labor demand to materials and facilities requirements; and (iii) such other matters as will assist in making the exercise of priority and allocations functions consistent with effective utilization and distribution of labor;

Notice that the language of the EO does not state “in the event of a national emergency.” Instead, we are given the term “purposes of national defense.” This is because the “authorities” assumed by the President have been assumed not just for arbitrary declarations of “national emergency” but for peacetime as well. Indeed, the EO states this much directly when it says,

The head of each agency engaged in procurement for the national defense is delegated the authority of the President under section 107(b)(1) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2077(b)(1), to take appropriate action to ensure that critical components, critical technology items, essential materials, and industrial resources are available from reliable sources when needed to meet defense requirements during peacetime, graduated mobilization, and national emergency.

Presidential Executive Orders have long been used illegally by Presidents of every political shade and have often been used destroy the rights of American citizens. Although history has often come to judge these orders as both immoral and unconstitutional, the fact is that the victims of the orders suffered no less because of the retroactive judgment of their progeny. It is for this reason that we must immediately condemn and resist such obvious usurpation as is currently being attempted by the U.S. government.

Nevertheless, some have no doubt begun to wonder why the President has signed such an order. Not only that, but why did he sign the order now? Is it because of the looming war with Iran or the Third World War that will likely result from such a conflict? Is it because of the ticking time bomb called the economy that is only one jittery move or trade deal away from total disintegration? Is it because of a growing sense of hatred of their government amongst the general public? Is there a coming natural disaster of which we are unaware? Are there plans for martial law?

Whatever the reason for the recent announcement of Obama’s new Executive Order, there is one thing we do know for sure - “It wouldn’t happen here” has been the swan song of almost every victim of democide in modern human history.

Executive Order – National Defense Resources Preparedness
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/03/16/executive-order-national-defense-resources-preparedness

Cameron in hysterical delight over US stance on Malvinas

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/231955.html

British Prime Minister David Cameron has expressed hysterical delight by his repeated use of the phrase ‘status quo’ in comments, which followed the US President Barak Obama’s saying Washington was content with the status quo in Las Malvinas.

“The US position is that they support the status quo, they don't argue against the status quo and that is very welcome. They are content with the status quo, they are not challenging the status quo,” said Cameron at Ground Zero in New York.

Cameron’s delight came after the two leaders met in Washington running a show of reassuring their commitment to the so-called ‘Special Relationship.’

This way, British officials could believe “that Britain is still Great Britain, still punching above its weight and playing Greece to America’s Rome, endlessly re-living the glory days when much of the world did our bidding,” as described by writer and journalist Matthew Carr.

Cameron’s hysterical delight is not unexpected considering concerns raised earlier by British officials over why the US remained silent on the issue of Malvinas islands and did not take sides with Britain.

Last month, Nile Gardiner, an aide to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, said the US did not understand “the difference between Great Britain and Argentina” after US Acting Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roberta Jacobson said Britain and Argentina were equal partners in the eyes of the US.

Gardiner also expressed worries over why the US “fails to express any support whatsoever for the UK, and remains silent” on the issue of Las Malvinas.

“Our position remains the same. This is a problem between two of our partners. We do not want to change our position,” Jacobson said on Las Malvinas in an interview in Peru last month.

Cameron has claimed that the US president has taken a U-turn saying Obama has reassured him that the US was content with the status quo.

Given the bigger picture that the US and Britain have tried to run a show of their commitment to the ‘Special Relationship’ and that prior to the meeting of the two leaders several reports said that they would discuss imposing further sanctions on Iran and supporting Syria’s armed rebels, Matthew Carr poses a question.

“Some might ask, for example, where America and Britain have acquired the right to decide what happens in Syria, Iran, Somalia or anywhere else,” asked Carr.

Obama keeps Libya sanctions in place for another year

US President Barack Obama

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/228305.html

US President Barack Obama has told Congress that the sanctions his administration imposed on Libya last year will be extended for another year, White House officials said.

Obama informed Congress on Thursday that the national emergency order allowing sanctions against Libya will continue, noting that Washington was concerned by ongoing threats posed to US interests by the family of Libya's slain dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

“The situation in Libya continues to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States,” Obama said in a letter to congressional leaders.

“We need to protect against this threat and the diversion of assets or other abuse by certain members of Gaddafi’s family and other former regime officials," he said.

"Therefore, I have determined that it is necessary to continue the national emergency with respect to Libya," he wrote.

Obama declared the national emergency over Libya on February 25, 2011, citing threats to US national security and foreign policy posed by Gaddafi and his government in their "extreme measures" against the people of Libya.

National emergency regulations authorize the US president to impose sanctions on foreign countries.

Sanctions imposed on overseas Libyan assets by the United Nations, the United States, and other nations have unwound slowly since Gaddafi’s death last year. However, releasing the assets is both politically and legally complicated, because the frozen funds include investments and property owned by private individuals.

Obama blames rising gas prices on West’s tension with Iran

US President Barack Obama speaks on energy and the economy following a tour of the Industrial Assessment Center at the University of Miami, Florida, on February 23, 2012.

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/228343.html

US President Barack Obama has defended his energy policies, blaming rising gas prices on a mix of factors, mainly the Western rows over Iran’s nuclear program.

Obama hit back at Republican attacks on his energy policies and blamed tensions with Iran as the main reason behind rising gas prices.

“Just like last year, the biggest thing that's causing the price of oil to rise right now is instability in the Middle East -- this time in Iran,” Obama said Thursday in a visit to the University of Miami.

He also said that other factors including Wall Street speculations as well as hot demand from China, India and other emerging economies have also contributed to mounting gas prices.

"When uncertainty increases, speculative trading on Wall Street can drive up prices even more. So there are short-term factors at work here," Obama said.

"Over the long term, the biggest reason oil prices will rise is growing demand in countries like China, India, and Brazil," he added.

Republicans have made rising gas prices one of their main attack lines against Obama as there is less than nine months before the presidential election.

The US gasoline prices have jumped nearly 9 cents in the past week to an average of USD 3.61 a gallon and are expected to go even higher.

US crude prices have also jumped 9 percent this year, nearing USD 108 a barrel on Thursday, the highest level since May, 2011.

This comes after Iran’s Oil Ministry has announced that it had cut oil exports to British and French firms.

Iran also hinted at the possibility of a halt in oil exports to certain other European countries.

The move came in retaliation for a decision by EU foreign ministers on January 23 to stop oil imports from Iran, freeze the assets of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) within EU states and ban selling diamonds, gold, and other precious metals to Tehran.

The United States, Israel and their European allies accuse Tehran of pursuing military objectives in its nuclear program and have used this pretext to push for international and unilateral sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

Iran has rejected the Western publicity that Tehran’s nuclear program may be diverted to military objectives and insisted that as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the IAEA, it is entitled to pursue nuclear technology for its numerous civilian uses and benefits.

18 statistics that prove that the economy has not improved since Barack Obama became president

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/usdetail/227771.html

Has the economy improved since Barack Obama became the president of the United States? Of course not. Despite what you may be hearing in the mainstream media, the truth is that when you compare the U.S. economy on the day that Barack Obama was inaugurated to the U.S. economy today, there is really no comparison. The unemployment crisis is worse than it was then, home values have fallen, the cost of health insurance is up, the cost of gas is way up, the number of Americans living in poverty has soared and the size of our national debt has absolutely exploded. Anyone that believes that things are better than they were when Barack Obama was elected is simply being delusional. Yes, things have stabilized somewhat and our economy is not in free fall mode at this point. But don't be fooled. This bubble of false hope will be short-lived. The problems we are seeing develop in Europe will erupt into another full-fledged global financial crisis and economic conditions in the United States will get even worse. When that happens, what possible "economic solutions" will Barack Obama have for us? We never even came close to recovering from the last great financial crisis, and now something potentially even worse is staring us in the face. This is not a great time to have a total lack of leadership in Washington.

The following are 18 statistics that prove that the economy has not improved since Barack Obama became the president of the United States....

1] Today there are 88 million working age Americans that are not employed and that are not looking for employment. That is an all-time record high.

2] When Barack Obama was elected, the percentage of unemployed Americans that had been out of work for more than 52 weeks was less than 15%. Today, it is above 30%.

3] There are 1.2 million fewer jobs in America today than there were when Barack Obama was inaugurated.

4] When Barack Obama first took office, the number of "long-term unemployed workers" in the United States was approximately 2.6 million. Today, that number is sitting at 5.6 million.

5] The average duration of unemployment in the United States is hovering close to an all-time record high.

6] During the Obama administration, worker health insurance costs have risen by 23 percent.

7] Since Barack Obama has been president, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States has increased by 90 percent.

8] Since Barack Obama has been president, home values in the United States have declined by another 13 percent.

9] Under Barack Obama, new home sales in the U.S. set a brand new all-time record low in 2009, they set a brand new all-time record low again in 2010, and they set a brand new all-time record low once again during 2011.

10] Since Barack Obama took office, the number of Americans living in poverty has risen by more than 6 million.

11] Since Barack Obama entered the White House, the number of Americans on food stamps has increased from 32 million to 46 million.

12] The amount of money that the federal government gives directly to Americans has increased by 32 percent since Barack Obama entered the White House.

13] According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the percentage of Americans living in "extreme poverty" is now sitting at an all-time high.

14] When Barack Obama first took office, an ounce of gold was going for about $850. Today an ounce of gold costs more than $1700 an ounce.

15] Since Barack Obama became president, the size of the U.S. national debt has increased by 44 percent.

16] During Barack Obama's first two years in office, the U.S. government added more to the U.S. national debt than the first 100 U.S. Congresses combined.

17] During the Obama administration, the U.S. government has accumulated more debt than it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that Bill Clinton took office.

18] The U.S. national debt has been increasing by an average of more than 4 billion dollars per day since the beginning of the Obama administration.

Oh, but Barack Obama is promising that things will be much better very soon. Barack Obama is pledging that 2 million more jobs will be added to the economy in 2012.

Do you believe him?

Congress certainly seems to think that things will be getting better. Congress has reduced the maximum amount of time that the unemployed can receive unemployment benefits to 73 weeks. That change will go into effect later this year.

But there are still millions of very talented Americans that cannot find work after years of looking.

So what are they supposed to do?

A recent Business Insider article featured the story of Helen Hatat, a woman from southern California that has been unemployed since 2009....

She lost her job in public relationships in 2009 after more than 20 years of working in the entertainment industry, the Southern California resident said.

"When you don't have a job, you don't find a job, and when you don't have a job, you don't find a home," she said.

At first she tried moving into a homeless shelter, but left because they treated her "like garbage." Eventually she found a friend she could stay with, but this arrangement won't last forever.

"I've found you lose most of your friends, you know. If you have money people love you. If you don't have any money people hate you. They treat you like you are contagious."

As government finances get tight, things are going to get really tough for women like her.

When evaluating the health of the American economy, the key is not to focus on the short-term economic numbers. Sometimes they go up and sometimes they do down.

Instead, the key is to look at the long-term balance sheet numbers. When you do that, it quickly becomes apparent how appalling our economic decline has been.

The size of federal government debt is exploding, state and local governments all over the country are drowning in debt, our collective national wealth is decreasing and our ability to produce new wealth is also being reduced as our economic infrastructure is systematically gutted.

Of course all of the blame should not go to Obama. The truth is that the Federal Reserve has much more power over the economy than Obama does. But the American people are constantly told that the Federal Reserve is "not political" and that we should not criticize the Fed.

So it is kind of ridiculous that presidents are judged by the performance of the economy. Yes, Bush, Clinton, Bush and Obama have all greatly contributed to the mess that we are in, but they are not solely responsible for it.

In the end, however, the outcome of the next presidential election will probably be very heavily influenced by how the U.S. economy performs during the rest of 2012.

Sadly, as our economy declines it is bringing out the worst in many Americans. For example, "sugar daddy" websites are absolutely exploding in popularity. Young women that are hungry for cash are selling their "services" to sick older men who are willing to finance the lifestyles of these desperate young women in exchange for "companionship".

The following comes from a recent article in The Independent ....

In America's booming online dating market, few sectors are hotter than so-called "sugar daddy" sites, which help rich men to make "arrangements" with attractive and financially needy younger women. Between them, these specialist sites now account for 10 percent of the entire industry. That's no small beans, given that in the US the online dating business now generates profits estimated at $700m ($442m) per year and, according to the polling firm GlobeSpan, has helped just over one in five Americans to find their life partner.

As the economy gets even worse, millions upon millions of Americans are going to become extremely desperate and will do things for money that they never dreamed that they would do.

That is a very frightening thing.

America is changing, and not for the better.

You better get ready for what is ahead, because Barack Obama is not going to save you.

Barack Obama: Let's steal 150m dollars an hour from our children

Source: Press TV (US Desk)
http://www.presstv.ir/usdetail/226583.html

Do you think that someone could steal 150 million dollars and get away with it? Well, the truth is that such a theft is taking place every single hour of every single day. The federal government is stealing 150 million dollars an hour from our children and our grandchildren and Barack Obama thinks that is a good thing. The new Obama budget projects a $1.33 trillion federal budget deficit for the 2012 fiscal year. That is significantly higher than the $1.15 trillion that the Congressional Budget Office was projecting because it includes a whole bunch of stimulus spending that the Obama administration plans to do. So let's do a little math.

When you divide $1.33 trillion by 365 days, you get 3.6438356 billion dollars. So on average, the United States will be adding more than 3.6 billion dollars to the national debt every single day during fiscal 2012. And when you divide $3.6438356 billion by 24 hours, you get 151.8 million dollars. So on average, the U.S. national debt will be going up by more than 151 million dollars every single hour during fiscal 2012 if Obama has his way. This is a theft from our children and our grandchildren that is so vast that it is almost unimaginable.

The 2012 budget deficit that the Obama administration is projecting would be equivalent to approximately 8.5 percent of GDP. We simply cannot afford to be running these kinds of outrageous budget deficits year after year.

At the moment, the U.S. national debt is sitting at a grand total of $15,355,838,921,022.16. That is an amount that is so large that it is hard to even put into words.

At this point our national debt is greater than 100% of our national GDP. We are on the road to national financial disaster and yet our politicians keep piling up debt at a rate that is absolutely mind blowing.

The Obama administration is projecting that budget deficits will go down "in the future", but that is what our politicians always do. They always promise that the budget picture will improve "down the road", but that never actually happens.

According to the Bush administration, we were supposed to be swimming in huge budget surpluses by now.

So how did that work out?

Our politicians always promise to cut spending, but it never actually comes to pass. We are always told that cutting spending would be too damaging to the economy "right now" but that they will definitely start cutting things later on.

For example, just check out this recent quote from White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew....

"The time for austerity is not today," Lew told NBC News "Meet the Press." "If we were to put in austerity measures right now, it would take the economy in the wrong way."

They always put budget cuts off for another day. They never want to do anything that could hurt the economy right now and threaten their chances in the next election.

The Republicans were the same way. Vice President Dick Cheney once famously said "deficits don't matter", and the Bush administration ran up horrific budget deficits.

Both political parties have let us down horribly.

Both political parties have voted over and over to steal gigantic mountains of money from our children and our grandchildren.

But our founders never intended for this to be the case. In fact, Thomas Jefferson once stated that if he could add just one more amendment to the U.S. Constitution it would be a complete ban on all borrowing by the federal government...

I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government to the genuine principles of its Constitution; I mean an additional article, taking from the federal government the power of borrowing.

Thomas Jefferson believed that it was fundamentally immoral for one generation to run up debts which must be paid back by future generations. Basically, he believed that such debts represented theft on a grand scale ....

And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.

But that is what we are doing today. We are borrowing gigantic mountains of money which we expect our children and our grandchildren to pay back.

We have come to think of this as "normal", but the truth is that this theft is absolutely disgusting and if future generations get the chance they will curse us for what we have done to them.

Somewhere along the way, we seem to have lost all common sense when it comes to government spending.

The truth is that all of this does not have to be complicated. The following is what Clint Eastwood recently said about our budget problems....

"It's such a basic thing," Eastwood said. "Your parents always tell you when you don't have a dollar in your pocket, you don't spend two dollars. And that's kind of a basic philosophy of life."

Doesn't that make sense?

So why are we being so stupid?

When Ronald Reagan was elected, the U.S. national debt was less than 1 trillion dollars.

We are absolutely drowning in debt, and yet the Obama administration wants even more spending.

Some of his plans for "extra spending" during fiscal 2012 were detailed in an article posted on CNBC ....

For more immediate job programs, the White House will urge $350 billion in short-term job spending, as well as a six-year transportation and infrastructure program that would cost $476 billion. He will ask for $60 billion to refurbish at least 35,000 schools and help state and local governments hire and retain teachers, firefighters and police officers.

This is insanity.

Thanks to all of this debt, a national financial nightmare is an inevitability at this point. As I have written about previously, if the U.S. government stops spending so much money we are doomed, and if the U.S. government continues spending so much money we are doomed.

The problem that we are now facing was once beautifully described by Ludwig Von Mises when he made the following statement ....

There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion.

The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.

We are rapidly reaching the "final and total catastrophe" once described by Ludwig Von Mises.

We inherited the greatest economic machine in the history of the world from our forefathers, and we will be known as the generation that totally destroyed it.

Future generations will inherit a collapsed economy and the biggest debt in the history of the world.

But we all prance around like we are the smartest people that have ever existed on the face of the earth.

The rest of the world is laughing at us.

So why don't some honest politicians step forward and tell the American people that we need to stop spending so much money?

Well, first of all there are very few honest politicians on the national level.

Secondly, most of the money that our government spends is money that is taken from the pockets of some Americans and transferred into the pockets of other Americans. Large segments of our population have become absolutely addicted to getting government checks, and it would be political suicide for any politician to propose significant cuts to those checks.

Well over 50 percent of the federal budget is spent on social programs that put dollars directly into the pockets of the American people…

…The American people tend to love politicians that feed their addiction to government money....

If we keep going into so much debt, how long can our system possibly continue functioning?

Well, as we have seen in Greece, a government debt spiral will keep on going until the day that it simply stops working anymore.

A day of reckoning is coming. We don't know if it will be this year or next year or several years from now.

But it is coming.

Our politicians should be doing something about it, but they continue to spend money like tomorrow will never come.

What we are doing to our children and our grandchildren is absolutely immoral.

How in the world can we steal 150 million dollars an hour from them?

We are literally stealing the future from those that will come after us.

Do you think that they will thank us for that?

Judge threatened to drop charges in Obama Citizenship case

Source: William J. Wagener & Orly Taitz

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBKDI6T4V7w

The proof is available to download…Please share it and get informed! The US Government has threatened the judge in the case. Even though there is now an appeal in process, the information was admitted into evidence and can be picked up by anyone in any State to charge Obama. This is not over by a long shot! Anyone interested can go to Orly Taitz website for more information on what to do and how to proceed.

Orly Taitz - Official Website
http://www.orlytaitzesq.com/

No ruling in ‘Birther' challenge till after Feb 5th, 2012

Source:

http://www.ajc.com/news/georgia-politics-elections/no-ruling-in-birther-1318374.html

Russia threatens NATO with nukes

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/161778.html

The Russian president has called on NATO to clarify Moscow's role in a European missile system, warning if no agreement is reached, Russia will be forced to deploy “offensive” nuclear weapons.

"So this is not a joking matter. We expect from our NATO partners a direct and unambiguous answer," Dmitry Medvedev said during a meeting with Russia's NATO envoy Dmitry Rogozin.

"In either case, we are either together with NATO, or we separately find an adequate response to the existing problem," he said.

Under former US President George W. Bush the United States proposed a plan to deploy a missile system in Poland and the Czech Republic -- a plan which was fiercely opposed to by Russia. Moscow said it would deem such a deployment a threat to its sovereignty and would properly respond to it.

US President Barack Obama later scrapped the plan proposing Russia to join the missile system.

Russia and NATO agreed to cooperate on a joint missile system plan in Europe during a NATO-Russia Council meeting in Lisbon in November last year.

The parties agreed to formulate terms for cooperation on the missile system by June 2011.

"Either we agree to certain principles with NATO, or we fail to agree, and then in the future we are forced to adopt an entire series of unpleasant decisions concerning the deployment of an offensive nuclear missile group," Medvedev was quoted by AFP as saying.

US losing elite support in Afghan war

US troops in Afghanistan


Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=137206§ionid=3510203


The Obama administration has lost support of Washington's political elite for the war in Afghanistan, a senior political analyst has told Press TV.

“The political support in the elite has essentially dried up and there is really little chance that it could be successful in the future” said historian and investigative journalist Gareth Porter in an interview with Press TV.

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Sunday Washington would keep a large number of its troops in Afghanistan despite President Barack Obama's 2011 deadline for starting troop withdrawal.

The remarks echoed those of Vice President Joe Biden, who had earlier hinted that the number of American troops to be withdrawn from Afghanistan in 2011 would be as few as 2,000.

Porter further said, "[Former president of the council on foreign relations] Richard Haass and [former deputy security advisor] Robert Blackwell have written articles stating that Washington should withdraw from southern Afghanistan and hand it to the Taliban and say “that the game is over, more or less."

“There could be enough political support to carry out a successful strategy, even one which is reformed to recast as it was in Iraq in 2007,” Porter said.

With 66 fatalities, July set the record as the deadliest month for American forces stationed in Afghanistan since the start of the war in 2001.

The rising number of casualties has increased opposition to the Afghan war in the US and other European states

Russia Warns US About Missile Shield

Source: PressTV

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin warned on Tuesday that Moscow will pursue plans for new weapons to counter the US missile defense system, and added that the US plans are holding up a new nuclear disarmament treaty.

In response, the US State Department, in a statement issued the same day, rejected Moscow's concerns, saying the two issues were completely separate and discussions would continue separately.

Russia and the US have still not drafted a successor to the Cold War-era Start I treaty, which expired on December 5.

Russia believes any US missile shield is a threat — and one it has now vowed to counter.

Analysts say Moscow wants a clause in the new treaty that would limit the scale of any US defense shield, BBC reported late on Tuesday.

The US has shelved plans for missile defense stations in Central Europe but still intends to use a sea-based system.

The State Department statement added that Washington and Moscow's joint position recognizing the inter-relationship between defensive and offensive weapons systems had not changed.

An Open Letter to President Obama from Michael Moore

Dear President Obama,

Do you really want to be the new "war president"? If you go to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you are the new war president. Pure and simple. And with that you will do the worst possible thing you could do -- destroy the hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you. With just one speech tomorrow night you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics. You will teach them what they've always heard is true -- that all politicians are alike. I simply can't believe you're about to do what they say you are going to do. Please say it isn't so.

It is not your job to do what the generals tell you to do. We are a civilian-run government. WE tell the Joint Chiefs what to do, not the other way around. That's the way General Washington insisted it must be. That's what President Truman told General MacArthur when MacArthur wanted to invade China. "You're fired!," said Truman, and that was that. And you should have fired Gen. McChrystal when he went to the press to preempt you, telling the press what YOU had to do. Let me be blunt: We love our kids in the armed services, but we f*#&in' hate these generals, from Westmoreland in Vietnam to, yes, even Colin Powell for lying to the UN with his made-up drawings of WMD (he has since sought redemption).

So now you feel backed into a corner. 30 years ago this past Thursday (Thanksgiving) the Soviet generals had a cool idea -- "Let's invade Afghanistan!" Well, that turned out to be the final nail in the USSR coffin.

There's a reason they don't call Afghanistan the "Garden State" (though they probably should, seeing how the corrupt President Karzai, whom we back, has his brother in the heroin trade raising poppies). Afghanistan's nickname is the "Graveyard of Empires." If you don't believe it, give the British a call. I'd have you call Genghis Khan but I lost his number. I do have Gorbachev's number though. It's + 41 22 789 1662. I'm sure he could give you an earful about the historic blunder you're about to commit.

With our economic collapse still in full swing and our precious young men and women being sacrificed on the altar of arrogance and greed, the breakdown of this great civilization we call America will head, full throttle, into oblivion if you become the "war president." Empires never think the end is near, until the end is here. Empires think that more evil will force the heathens to toe the line -- and yet it never works. The heathens usually tear them to shreds.

Choose carefully, President Obama. You of all people know that it doesn't have to be this way. You still have a few hours to listen to your heart, and your own clear thinking. You know that nothing good can come from sending more troops halfway around the world to a place neither you nor they understand, to achieve an objective that neither you nor they understand, in a country that does not want us there. You can feel it in your bones.

I know you know that there are LESS than a hundred al-Qaeda left in Afghanistan! A hundred thousand troops trying to crush a hundred guys living in caves? Are you serious? Have you drunk Bush's Kool-Aid? I refuse to believe it.

Your potential decision to expand the war (while saying that you're doing it so you can "end the war") will do more to set your legacy in stone than any of the great things you've said and done in your first year. One more throwing a bone from you to the Republicans and the coalition of the hopeful and the hopeless may be gone -- and this nation will be back in the hands of the haters quicker than you can shout "tea bag!"

Choose carefully, Mr. President. Your corporate backers are going to abandon you as soon as it is clear you are a one-term president and that the nation will be safely back in the hands of the usual idiots who do their bidding. That could be Wednesday morning.

We the people still love you. We the people still have a sliver of hope. But we the people can't take it anymore. We can't take your caving in, over and over, when we elected you by a big, wide margin of millions to get in there and get the job done. What part of "landslide victory" don't you understand?

Don't be deceived into thinking that sending a few more troops into Afghanistan will make a difference, or earn you the respect of the haters. They will not stop until this country is torn asunder and every last dollar is extracted from the poor and soon-to-be poor. You could send a million troops over there and the crazy Right still wouldn't be happy. You would still be the victim of their incessant venom on hate radio and television because no matter what you do, you can't change the one thing about yourself that sends them over the edge.

The haters were not the ones who elected you, and they can't be won over by abandoning the rest of us.

President Obama, it's time to come home. Ask your neighbors in Chicago and the parents of the young men and women doing the fighting and dying if they want more billions and more troops sent to Afghanistan. Do you think they will say, "No, we don't need health care, we don't need jobs, we don't need homes. You go on ahead, Mr. President, and send our wealth and our sons and daughters overseas, 'cause we don't need them, either."

What would Martin Luther King, Jr. do? What would your grandmother do? Not send more poor people to kill other poor people who pose no threat to them, that's what they'd do. Not spend billions and trillions to wage war while American children are sleeping on the streets and standing in bread lines.

All of us that voted and prayed for you and cried the night of your victory have endured an Orwellian hell of eight years of crimes committed in our name: torture, rendition, suspension of the bill of rights, invading nations who had not attacked us, blowing up neighborhoods that Saddam "might" be in (but never was), slaughtering wedding parties in Afghanistan. We watched as hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were slaughtered and tens of thousands of our brave young men and women were killed, maimed, or endured mental anguish -- the full terror of which we scarcely know.

When we elected you we didn't expect miracles. We didn't even expect much change. But we expected some. We thought you would stop the madness. Stop the killing. Stop the insane idea that men with guns can reorganize a nation that doesn't even function as a nation and never, ever has.

Stop, stop, stop! For the sake of the lives of young Americans and Afghan civilians, stop. For the sake of your presidency, hope, and the future of our nation, stop. For God's sake, stop.

Tonight we still have hope.

Tomorrow, we shall see. The ball is in your court. You DON'T have to do this. You can be a profile in courage. You can be your mother's son.

We're counting on you.

Yours,
Michael Moore