News in english
80
Follow
Scooped by Juan Carlos Hernandez onto News in english
Scoop.it!

Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Wednesday, November 28

Visit http://www.democracynow.org to watch the entire Democracy Now! independent, global news hour broadcast weekdays. This is a summary of news headlines fr...
No comment yet.
Your new post is loading...
Scooped by Juan Carlos Hernandez
Scoop.it!

Open Letter to #Nestlé by @yasminemotarjem #FoodSafety #Suisse #Ethic

Open Letter by 
Yasmine Motarjemi , Former Corporate Food Safety Manager (2000-2010), Assistant Vice President
to
Mr Peter Brabeck-Letmathe
Chairman of the Board of Directors
Nestlé, S.A
55 Avenue Nestlé
CH-1800 Vevey

"Nyon, 4th Septembre 2010
Dear Mr Chairman,
I was your Corporate Food Safety Manager from 2000 to 2010. I write to you today for two reasons: 
first, to share with you my concerns regarding a culture and management practices in Nestlé, which 
undermine food safety; and, second, to inform you of my personal experiences while attempting to
improve the situation.
I long nouris

Juan Carlos Hernandez's insight:

Open Letter by 
Yasmine Motarjemi , Former Corporate Food Safety Manager (2000-2010), Assistant Vice President
to
Mr Peter Brabeck-Letmathe
Chairman of the Board of Directors
Nestlé, S.A
55 Avenue Nestlé
CH-1800 Vevey

"Nyon, 4th Septembre 2010
Dear Mr Chairman,
I was your Corporate Food Safety Manager from 2000 to 2010. I write to you today for two reasons: 
first, to share with you my concerns regarding a culture and management practices in Nestlé, which 
undermine food safety; and, second, to inform you of my personal experiences while attempting to
improve the situation.
I long nourished the hope that you would be interested in meeting the person responsible for dealing 
with everyday problems of the Company in an area as important as the safety of Nestlé products. 
However, to my regret we have never had the opportunity to meet and discuss the food safety 
situation in the Company. As both corporate-level management of food safety and my professional 
status deteriorated to the point of being unacceptable, I was compelled to report my concerns to 
Management with the expectation that a fair evaluation of the situation would be undertaken. In 
the event, my efforts were in vain. 
Mr Chairman, I always found listening to your speeches a source of motivation and inspiration. 
Moreover, Nestlé Policies and Management Principles portray a model Company, with the most 
laudable corporate values. A glance at the Company building, offices and facilities is enough to make 
any outsider believe that this is an ideal working environment. 
However, after only a short time, I was profoundly disappointed at how people are managed, the 
discrepancies between your public statements and the private deeds of managers; between the 
Company’s policies and management principles and actual practices; and between the proclaimed 
values and the prevailing fear culture (including mobbing and intimidation) that managers nourished. 
I was particularly saddened by the growing realisation that Management was not only aware of this 
situation but that it was also fully accepted by the very people who should have been, in fact, the inhouse guardians of policy compliance.I failed to see the flawless execution of policy that you promoted in your speeches. Didn’t you state 
that the management of food quality and safety depends on the quality of management? What can 
be said about food safety management when the members of Management themselves do not 
respect Company policies and principles? 
If I dared challenge the Company’s food safety and human resource practices I can assure you that it 
was not out of disrespect. On the contrary, it was because of my loyalty to the Company, my 
colleagues and the consumers we served. It was also because for me the safety of our products and 
respect for our colleagues were non-negotiable values. Involving staff in building a better company 
unavoidably includes exposing shortcomings. But surely it is better to receive timely feedback from 
within than to be publicly embarrassed later by failures.
You have often expressed your commitment to food safety. Please allow me to share with you my 
own vision in this regard. Over and above the technical and scientific aspects, the foundation of 
good food safety management is an equitable system of people management that is based on 
professionalism, fairness, objectivity, open-mindedness, respect for staff and, most importantly, for 
their dignity. I regret to say that I failed to see this approach implemented at the Nestlé Head Office. 
My own situation is a case in point. 
On several occasions I reported – first to members of Management and then, in November 2009, to 
Mr Paul Bulcke – serious shortcomings in food safety management, the professional difficulties I 
faced, and the shameful treatment that I experienced in Nestlé. I hoped that I would be given the 
opportunity to provide a full and accurate account of events during the period 2005-2010. In 
response, my contract was terminated with no opportunity to provide details of my experience. 
Nevertheless, I am prepared to meet with you, at your convenience, to share my observations on 
practices in Nestlé and their eventual repercussions on Nestlé’s reputation and consumers. I would 
also hope to use this opportunity to identify an equitable solution for my personal difficult situation, another consequence of the past events in Nestlé" 
source : http://www.rts.ch/info/3989665.html/BINARY/Mr+CEO.pdf
more here (in french) http://www.rts.ch/info/economie/3988696-une-ex-responsable-de-la-securite-alimentaire-depose-plainte-contre-nestle.html
more again (in french) 
more (in german ) : http://www.handelszeitung.ch/unternehmen/nestle-im-keim-erstickt

No comment yet.
Scooped by Juan Carlos Hernandez
Scoop.it!

Brazil Protests (In the Eye of the Storm Video)

Juan Cole | Uncategorized
Juan Carlos Hernandez's insight:

Brazilians in the hundreds of thousands have been protesting the high cost of city bus tickets, diversion of government funds to international projects like the world cup, and ‘poor public services, police violence and government corruption.’

No comment yet.
Scooped by Juan Carlos Hernandez
Scoop.it!

The Terror Diaspora The U.S. Military and the Unraveling of Africa By Nick Turse

The Terror Diaspora The U.S. Military and the Unraveling of Africa By Nick Turse | News in english | Scoop.it
null
Juan Carlos Hernandez's insight:

The Terror Diaspora 
The U.S. Military and the Unraveling of Africa 
By Nick Turse

No comment yet.
Scooped by Juan Carlos Hernandez
Scoop.it!

Glenn Greenwald: As Obama Makes "False" Spy Claims, Snowden Risks Life to Spark NSA Debate 2/2

http://www.democracynow.org - Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist who broke the NSA surveillance story earlier this month, joins us one day after both P...
Juan Carlos Hernandez's insight:

 Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist who broke the NSA surveillance story earlier this month, joins us one day after both President Obama and whistleblower Edward Snowden gave extensive interviews on the surveillance programs Snowden exposed and Obama is now forced to defend. Speaking to PBS, Obama distinguished his surveillance efforts from those of the Bush administration and reaffirmed his insistence that no Americans' phone calls or emails are being directly monitored without court orders. Greenwald calls Obama's statements "outright false" for omitting the warrantless spying on phone calls between Americans and callers outside the United States. 

Watch Part 1 of this discussion: http://youtu.be/1-6yRpZ7iHE

"It is true that the NSA can't deliberately target U.S. citizens for [warrantless] surveillance, but it is also the case they are frequently engaged in surveillance of exactly that kind of invasive technique involving U.S. persons," Greenwald says. After moderating Snowden's online Q&A with Guardian readers, Greenwald says of the whistleblower: "I think what you see here is a person who was very disturbed by this massive surveillance apparatus built in the U.S. that spies not only on American citizens, but the world with very little checks, very little oversight. He's making clear his intention was to inform citizens even at the expense of his own liberty or even life."
Democracy Now!, is an independent global news hour that airs weekdays on 1,100+ TV and radio stations Monday through Friday.

FOLLOW DEMOCRACY NOW! ONLINE:
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/democracynow
Twitter: @democracynow
Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/democracynow
Listen on SoundCloud: http://www.soundcloud.com/democracynow ;
Daily Email News Digest: http://www.democracynow.org/subscribe

Please consider supporting independent media by making a donation to Democracy Now! today, visithttp://www.democracynow.org/donate/YT

Catégorie
No comment yet.
Scooped by Juan Carlos Hernandez
Scoop.it!

Guantanamo Bay: Stories From Inside the World's Most Infamous Jail | Politics News | Rolling Stone

Guantanamo Bay: Stories From Inside the World's Most Infamous Jail | Politics News | Rolling Stone | News in english | Scoop.it
What it's like at the detention center where over 100 prisoners are on hunger strike
Juan Carlos Hernandez's insight:

What it's like at the detention center where over 100 prisoners are on hunger strike

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/guantanamo-bay-stories-from-inside-the-worlds-most-infamous-jail-20130617#ixzz2WYijk9WE ;
Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook

No comment yet.
Scooped by Juan Carlos Hernandez
Scoop.it!

Why the Spying Scandal Is a Serious Racial Justice Issue

Why the Spying Scandal Is a Serious Racial Justice Issue | News in english | Scoop.it
Juan Carlos Hernandez's insight:

Given the massive investment in national security after 9-11, recent news that the federal government is spying on hundreds of millions of people in the United States and around the world may not have come as a surprise. Polls suggest that a majority of Americans are shrugging their shoulders at the revelations of a government espionage effort against them. But an uncomfortable reality of the once secret scheme is the degree to which people of color are disproportionately caught up in the government’s dragnet. That’s because the routine, legal activities of blacks, Latinos and immigrants—96 percent of whom are people of color—make them targets for monitoring in a way not true for whites.

For the over 40 million foreign born immigrants living in America—more than at any point in U.S. history—the basic act of keeping in contact with friends and family abroad is all that’s required to be sucked into the Obama administration’s electronic dragnet. Disturbingly, the fact that much of this historically broad snooping program is conducted by private companies with dubious oversight makes it that much harder for communities of color to figure out exactly what’s going on and how to curb any potential abuses. 

Let’s review the key details of what’s known about these clandestine projects.

America’s intelligence services—particularly the National Security Agency, or NSA—are collecting an almost unfathomable amount of information on the phone calls, spending habits, and Internet activities of countless people in the U.S. and around the world. William Binney, a former NSA employee, estimates that the agency has collected over 20 trillion individual pieces of information on millions o

No comment yet.
Scooped by Juan Carlos Hernandez
Scoop.it!

N.S.A. Leaker Denies Giving Secrets to China

N.S.A. Leaker Denies Giving Secrets to China | News in english | Scoop.it
In an online question-and-answer session, Edward J. Snowden said that he had not given any classified materials to the government of China, calling such speculation “a predictable smear.”
Juan Carlos Hernandez's insight:
By CHARLIE SAVAGE and SCOTT SHANE 

WASHINGTON — Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who has confessed to disclosing troves of highly classified documents detailing American surveillance at home and abroad, said Monday that he had not given any classified materials to the government of China.

No comment yet.
Scooped by Juan Carlos Hernandez
Scoop.it!

The Deeper Meaning of Mass Spying in America

Juan Carlos Hernandez's insight:

The vast majority of Americans are becoming aware that fear instilled at home serves the interest of waging imperial wars abroad;

No comment yet.
Scooped by Juan Carlos Hernandez
Scoop.it!

Nine Reasons You Should Care About NSA’s PRISM Surveillance

Nine Reasons You Should Care About NSA’s PRISM Surveillance | News in english | Scoop.it
Juan Carlos Hernandez's insight:

By Sean Rintel

June 17, 2013 "Information Clearing House -  In the wake of former CIA employee Edward Snowden’s revelations of the PRISM NSA mass surveillance, people are once again asking why the general public should care if they’ve got nothing to hide.

“Nothing to hide” hides a lot behind an absolutist gloss. It puts the focus on the individual rather than on the real problem of a society-wide loss of data control at many levels.

Is this a fair question? Not really. Below, I give nine reasons why we must care – regardless of our innocent intentions.

1) Presumption of guilt

Mass surveillance and data retention overturn the foundation of the modern legal system: the presumption of innocence. Not only is the presumption lost for gathering evidence, it also weakens the effect of that presumption throughout the rest of the legal process.

If there is a normalisation in the public consciousness that there is a weakened presumption of innocence, we have compromised the effectiveness of our legal system.

2) The loss of personal data control

Mass surveillance circumvents our right to personal data control, also known as informational self-determination. As the late Professor of Public Law Alan F. Westin put it in his 1970 book, Privacy and Freedom:

The right of the individual to decide what information about himself [sic] should be communicated to others and under what circumstances.

We have envelopes for our letters

No comment yet.
Scooped by Juan Carlos Hernandez
Scoop.it!

President of International War Crimes Tribunal May Have Worked to Shield Israelis From Prosecution

Juan Carlos Hernandez's insight:
By Alison Weir The New York Times reports that an Israeli diplomat turned U.S. citizen - and now president of the war crimes tribunal at the Hague - has been pressuring the court to acquit officials accused of war crimes.
No comment yet.
Scooped by Juan Carlos Hernandez
Scoop.it!

Former French Foreign Minister: The War against Syria was Planned Two years before “The Arab Spring”

Juan Carlos Hernandez's insight:

 In an interview with the French TV station LCP, former French minister for Foreign Affairs Roland Dumas said:

‘’ I’m going to tell you something. I was in England two years before the violence in Syria on other business. I met with top British officials, who confessed to me that they were preparing something in Syria.

This was in Britain not in America. Britain was organizing an invasion of rebels into Syria. They even asked me, although I was no longer minister for foreign affairs, if I would like to participate.

Naturally, I refused, I said I’m French, that doesn’t interest me.’’

Dumas went on give the audience a quick lesson on the real reason for the war that has now claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people.

‘’This operation goes way back. It was prepared, preconceived and planned… in the region it is important to know that this Syrian regime has a very anti-Israeli stance.

Consequently, everything that moves in the region- and I have this from the former Israeli prime minister who told me ‘we’ll try to get on with our neighbours but those who don’t agree with us will be destroyed.

It’s a type of politics, a view of history, why not after all. But one should know about it.’’

Dumas is a retired French foreign minister who is obliged to use discretion when revealing secrets which could affect French foreign policy. That is why he made the statement ‘I am French, that doesn’t interest me’.  He could not reveal France’s role in the British plan as he would be exposing himself to prosecution for revealing state secrets.

There have been many disinformation agents in the British and French press, many of them well known ‘leftist’ war correspondents and commentators, who have tried to pretend that Israel secretly supports Assad.  Those who make such arguments are either stupid, ignorant or deliberate disinformation agents of NATO and Israel.

Israel’s support for Al Qaeda militants in Syria has even been admitted by the mainstream press. For example, Germany’s Die Welt newspaper published a report on June 12th on Israel’s medical treatment of the Al Qaeda fighters.

Israel planned this war of annihilation years ago in accordance with the Yinon Plan, which advocates balkanization of all states that pose a threat to Israel. The Zionist entity is using Britain and France to goad the reluctant Obama administration into sending more American troops to their death in Syria on behalf of Tel Aviv.

Of all the aggressor states against Syria, Israel has been the quietest from the start. That is because Laurent Fabius, Francois Holland, William Hague and David Cameron are doing their bidding by attempting to drag Israel’s American Leviathan into another ruinous war so that Israel can get control of the Middle East’s energy reserves, eventually replacing the United States as the ruling state in the world. It has also been necessary for Tel Aviv to remain silent so as not to expose their role in the ‘revolutions’, given the fact that the Jihadist fanatics don’t realize they are fighting for Israel.

This is the ideology of Zionism which cares no more for Jews than it does for its perceived enemies.   The Jewish colony is determined to become a ruling state in the Middle East in the insane delusion that this will enable it to replace the United States as a global hegemon, once the US collapses fighting Israel’s wars.

Israeli Prime Minister once told American talk show host Bill Maher that the reason why Israel always wins short conflicts, while the United States gets bogged down in endless wars. ‘’ The secret is that we have America’’, he said.

But Israel is itself slowly collapsing. If one excludes the enslaved Palestinian population, the Jewish state still has the highest level of poverty in the developed world with more and more Jews choosing to leave the ‘promised’ land, a garrison state led by mad men, an anti-Semitic entity threatening to engulf the world in war and destruction. Israel cares no more about its own working class Jews than any other ethnic community.

In fact, if the Likudnik crooks running the Israeli colony get their way, working class Israelis will be among the first to pay as they are conscripted to fight terrorists created by their own government. With orthodox Jews protesting in the streets of New York against Israel and Haredi Jewish minority opposing Israel’s rampant militarism, Zionism is coming under increased attack from Jewish religious authorities and non-Zionist Jews both inside and outside of the occupied territories.

This is not the first time that Roland Dumas has spoken out against wars of aggression waged by successive French regimes. In 2011 he revealed that he had been asked by the United States when he was foreign minister in the Mitterrand administration to organize the bombing of Libya. On that occasion the French refused to cooperate.  Dumas, a lawyer by profession, offered to defend Colonel Gaddafi, at the International Criminal Court in the event of his arrest by Nato.

Dumas was also vocal in condemning France’s brutal neo-colonial bombing of the Ivory Coast earlier in 2011, were death squads and terrorists similar to those later deployed in Libya and Syria were unleashed upon the Ivoirian population in order to install a IMF puppet dictator Alassane Quattara in power. Gbagbo was described as one of the greatest African leaders of the past 20 years by Jean Ziegler, sociologist and former member of the Advisory Committee of the UN Human Rights Council.

Gbagbo had plans to nationalize banks and wrest control of the country’s currency from the colonial finance institutions in Paris. He also wanted to roll back many of the worst effects of IMF restructuring by nationalizing industries and creating a functioning, universal free health service. All of this threatened the interests of French corporations in the former French colony. So, the Parisian oligarchy went to work to find a suitable replacement as caretaker of their Ivoirian colony.

They sent in armed terrorist gangs, or ‘rebel’s in the doublespeak of imperialism, who murdered all before them while the French media blamed president Gbagbo for the violence that ensued. Gbagbo and Gaddafi had opposed Africom, the Pentagon’s plan to recolonize Africa. That was another reason for the  2011 bombing of their two African countries.

The formula is always the same. Imperialism backs ‘rebels’, whenever its interests are threatened by regimes that love their country more than foreign corporations.  One should not forgot that during the Spanish Civil War of 1936, General Franco and his cronies were also ‘rebels’ and they, like their counterparts in Libya in 2011, were bombed to power by foreign powers, replacing a progressive, republican administration with fascism.

There are pro-Israeli fanatics in France who have used the analogy of the Spanish Civil War as justification for intervention in Libya and Syria. The pseudo-philosopher Henry Bernard Levy is one of them.  Of course, the ignoramus Levy doesn’t realize that the reason France, England and the USA did not officially intervene in the Spanish Civil War is because they were covertly helping the ‘rebels’ from the start. They enabled arms shipments to the Francoist ‘rebels’ while preventing arms deliveries to the Spanish government, who, like Syria today, were helped by Moscow. Anyone who has studied the Spanish Civil War knows that all the imperialist countries wanted Franco as a bulwark against communism.

There is nothing imperialism loves more than a rebel without a cause. What imperialism hates, however, are revolutionaries. That is why the ‘rebels’ which imperialism sends into other countries to colonize them on behalf of foreign banks and corporations, have to be marketed as ‘revolutionaries’ in order to assure the support of the Monty Python brigade of petty-bourgeois, ‘ leftist’ dupes such as Democracy Now! and their ilk.

Dumas is not the only top French official to denounce the New World Order.  Former French ambassador to Syria Michel Raimbaud wrote a book in 2012  entitled ‘Le Soudan dans tous les états’, where he revealed how Israel planned and instigated a civil war in South Sudan in order to balkanize a country led by a pro-Palestinian government. He also exposed the pro-Israeli media groups and ‘human rights’ NGOS who created the ‘humanitarian’ narrative calling for military intervention by the United States in the conflict.

The subject was covered extensively by African investigative journalist Charles Onana in his 2009 book, Al-Bashir & Darfour LA CONTRE ENQUÊTE.

There are many more retired French officials who are speaking out about the ruinous policies of this French government, including the former head of French domestic intelligence Yves Bonnet. There have also been reports of dissent in the French armed forces and intelligence apparatus.

After the assassination of Colonel Gaddafi in October 2011, the former French ambassador to Libya Christian Graeff told French radio station France Culture that it was responsible for the diffusion of lies and war propaganda on behalf of Nato throughout the war.  Graeff also warned the broadcasters that such disinformation could only work on the minds of serfs but not in a country of free minds.

The power of the Israeli lobby in France is a subject rarely discussed in polite circles. In France there is a law against questioning or denial of the holocaust. However, denial of the Korean holocaust, Guatemalan holocaust, Palestinian holocaust, Indonesian holocaust and the dozens of other US/Israeli supported genocides is not only perfectly legal but is the respectable norm.

The same lobby which introduced the Loi Gayssot in 1990, effectively ending freedom of expression in France, would also like to ban any independent investigations of genocides whose narratives they have written, such as the Rwanda genocide, where Israel played a key role in supporting the ‘rebels’ led by Paul Kagame, who invaded Rwanda from Uganda from 1991 to 1994, leading to the genocide of both Tutus and Tutsis. Many serious scholars have written about the Rwandan genocide, which the Israel lobby repeatedly uses as a case study to justify ‘humanitarian’ intervention by Western powers.  The Zionist thought police would like to see such authors prosecuted for ‘negating’ imperialism’s disgusting lies on African conflicts.

Now, the Israeli Lobby is forcing the (their) French government to prosecute twitter messages which the lobby deems ‘anti-Semitic’. This is one further step towards the creation of a totalitarian state where any criticism of imperialism, foreign wars, racism, oppression, perhaps eventually capitalism itself could fall under the rubric of ‘anti-Semitism’.

These people are sick, and those who cow down to them are sicker. Perhaps the etymology of sickness, a word cognate with the German Sicherheit (security) according to dictionary.com, is not a coincidence. For what is particularly sick about our society is the cult of security,  endless surveillance, ubiquitous cameras, the cult of the all seeing eye, the prurient gaze as part of the incessant discourse on terrorism by those who specialize in the training of the very terrorists they claim to be protecting us from.  Whether or not the words security and sickness are linguistically related, they are certainly cognate in a philosophical sense.

Roland Dumas and others like him should be highly commended for having to guts to say what so many others are too morally corrupt, too weak and cowardly to admit.

As the French government and its media agencies drum up hysteria for war on Syria, Roland Dumas, now in the twilight of his years, is warning people of the consequences of not understanding where Israel is leading  the world. Will enough people heed the warning?

No comment yet.
Scooped by Juan Carlos Hernandez
Scoop.it!

Arij: Israel's absentee property law is the greatest plunder of all time

Arij: Israel's absentee property law is the greatest plunder of all time | News in english | Scoop.it
"Settling" constitutes a warcime according to international law and ICC statute. Even under US' own military legislations' Law resources below this article [ PIC 17/06/2013 - 06:19 PM ] OCCUPIED JE...
Juan Carlos Hernandez's insight:

Settling” constitutes a warcime according to international law and ICC statute. Even under US’ own military legislations’
Law resources below this article

No comment yet.
Scooped by Juan Carlos Hernandez
Scoop.it!

Financial war propaganda suppresses youth

Watch the full episode on Tuesday! In this episode of the Keiser Report, Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert report from Belfast on location at the G8 and anti-G8 m...
Juan Carlos Hernandez's insight:

In this episode of the Keiser Report, Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert report from Belfast on location at the G8 and anti-G8 meetings. They juxtapose the protests in China where thousands wait in line to buy gold to protect against G8-style inflationary policies to the less effective protests in Belfast where placards are waved in 'free speech zones;' while, in Westminster, secret proposals are drafted by Rothschilds to retroactively raise interest rates on $40 billion in outstanding student loan debts. The plan is suggested in order to make the debt more attractive to private investors. In the second half, Max talks to independent journalist, Luke Rudkowski, about fake shopfronts in Belfast meant to disguise the true state of the economy and about the few protesters demanding communism and socialism when that's part of the reason our financial and economic systems have collapsed.

No comment yet.
Scooped by Juan Carlos Hernandez
Scoop.it!

BuzzFeed Reporter Michael Hastings Dies In Car Crash At Age 33

BuzzFeed Reporter Michael Hastings Dies In Car Crash At Age 33 | News in english | Scoop.it
Journalist Michael Hastings died in a car crash in Los Angeles early Tuesday at the age of 33, according to a statement from his employer, BuzzFeed.
Juan Carlos Hernandez's insight:

Journalist Michael Hastings died in a car crash in Los Angeles early Tuesday at the age of 33, according to a statement from his employer, BuzzFeed.

Hastings, who was also a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, is perhaps best known for his candid Rolling Stone interview with General Stanley McChrystal, then the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, that eventually led to McChrystal being relieved of his command.

He is also the author of two books about America's wars: The Operators, detailing the flaws of the U.S. military operation in Afghanistan, and I Lost My Love In Baghdad, about his experiences as a war correspondent in Iraq during his mid-twenties.

Hastings joined BuzzFeed in April 2012 to cover the presidential election.

"We are shocked and devastated by the news that Michael Hastings is gone,"BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith said in a statement. "Michael was a great, fearless journalist with an incredible instinct for the story, and a gift for finding ways to make his readers care about anything he covered from wars to politicians. He wrote stories that would otherwise have gone unwritten, and without him there are great stories that will go untold. Michael was also a wonderful, generous colleague and a joy to work with. Our thoughts are with Elise and and the rest of his family and we are going to miss him."

No comment yet.
Scooped by Juan Carlos Hernandez
Scoop.it!

Why Cheney is the Traitor, and Why we Can’t Believe Obama on Safeguards (The Ultimate Clip of Gov’t Lies)

Juan Cole | Domestic Surveillance, Iraq War
Juan Carlos Hernandez's insight:

Dick Cheney on Monday called NSA leaker Edward Snowden a traitor, and Snowden shot back that given Cheney’s own lies about Iraq, it is an honor for any American to be accused of treason by the former vice president.

On Monday evening, Barack Obama came on Charlie Rose and insisted that the NSA would never misuse the telephone records it collects on all Americans because it would be illegal and that there are safeguards against that sort of thing. Obama did not say why he thinks the government has a right to see your telephone records given that you haven’t done anything wrong and the 4th Amendment hasn’t been abrogated. For the first time in his presidency, I felt as though Obama were looking me in the eyes and lying to me a la Cheney. I don’t know what his ulterior motives are in this, but that he has some seems obvious.

So for those who have forgotten, or for the youngsters who’ve come to consciousness since 2008, let us just review the lies of Dick Cheney and his colleagues in the Bush administration that cost so many American and Iraqi lives, and let us just contemplate whether we really just want to trust Obama that the US government wouldn’t act in illegal ways.

No comment yet.
Scooped by Juan Carlos Hernandez
Scoop.it!

Qatar, Middle East 'Market Maker' - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East

Qatar, Middle East 'Market Maker' - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East | News in english | Scoop.it
Qatar is modeling its foreign policy on a dream to become the Belgium of a Muslim Brotherhood league of states.
Juan Carlos Hernandez's insight:

To understand Qatar is to understand angst. The leadership in Qatar’s first order of business, after Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani deposed his father to take the throne in 1995, was to ensure its sovereignty both domestically and internationally. After many years of following the Saudi narrative, the new emir decided to pursue a different set of policies that would ensure the recognition of this new chapter. To complicate matters further, Qatar’s main gas field was one it had to share with Iran, a country that didn’t always see eye-to-eye with Saudi Arabia, to say the least. Qatar was stuck between a rock and a hard place. It had to pursue bold and radical tactics to ensure its survival. Like many city-states with indefensible borders and a negligible defense force facing existential threats, Qatar decided to become indispensable to everyone.

A



Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/06/qatar-foreign-policy-muslim-brotherhood.html?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=7537#ixzz2WbxYWmRb

No comment yet.
Scooped by Juan Carlos Hernandez
Scoop.it!

Is Naomi Wolf working for the NSA? » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

Is Naomi Wolf working for the NSA? » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names | News in english | Scoop.it
Is Naomi Wolf working for the NSA?
Juan Carlos Hernandez's insight:
by DAVE LINDORFF

I hate to do this, but I feel obligated to share, as the story unfolds, my creeping concern that the writer Naomi Wolf is not whom she purports to be, and that her motive in writing an article on her public Facebook page speculating about whether National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden might actually be still working for the NSA, could be to support the government’s effort to destroy him.

After all, with Snowden under vicious attack by both the government and the corporate media, being wrongly accused of treason, or portrayed as a drop-out slacker, a narcissist, a loser hoping to gain fame and even a “cross-dressing” weirdo, what defender of liberty would pile on with publication of a work of absolutely fact-free speculation as to whether he might also be a kind of “double agent” put out there by the NSA in order to discourage real potential whistleblowers from even considering leaking information about government spying on Americans.

Because that is exactly what Wolf has done on her website (the first clause at the opening of this article is a direct quote from the lead in Wolf’s Facebook piece, but with her name substituted for Snowden’s).

What basis does she offer for her wild-eyed speculation that Snowden is perhaps “not who he purports to be”?

Well, first of all she notes darkly that US spy agencies “create false identities, build fake companies, influence real media with fake stories, cr

No comment yet.
Scooped by Juan Carlos Hernandez
Scoop.it!

Dubai: Solar-Powered Teardrop Building to Suck Water from Air

Dubai: Solar-Powered Teardrop Building to Suck Water from Air | News in english | Scoop.it
Juan Cole | UAE
Scooped by Juan Carlos Hernandez
Scoop.it!

"I Voted For Change": Over 20 Arrested as KXL Protests Target Obama

"I Voted For Change": Over 20 Arrested as KXL Protests Target Obama | News in english | Scoop.it
Juan Carlos Hernandez's insight:

Over 20 anti-Keystone protesters were arrested Monday morning for blockading the doors to a Chicago federal building as part of newly launched call to action that declares "if you don't act, I will."

No comment yet.
Scooped by Juan Carlos Hernandez
Scoop.it!

Obama Defends Authorization of Surveillance Programs and talks about Syria

Obama Defends Authorization of Surveillance Programs and talks about Syria | News in english | Scoop.it
In an interview with Charlie Rose, President Obama rejected the suggestion that his policies were basically a warmed-over version of those of the last White House.
Juan Carlos Hernandez's insight:

In an interview with Charlie Rose, President Obama rejected the suggestion that his policies were basically a warmed-over version of those of the last White House and talks about Syria

No comment yet.
Scooped by Juan Carlos Hernandez
Scoop.it!

David Brooks, Tom Friedman, Bill Keller Wish Edward Snowden Had Just Followed Orders

Juan Carlos Hernandez's insight:

What a contrast between big-name journalists craven enough to toss the Fourth Amendment overboard and whistleblowers courageous enough to risk their lives for civil liberties.

No comment yet.
Scooped by Juan Carlos Hernandez
Scoop.it!

Washington Is Insane

Juan Carlos Hernandez's insight:

Washington Is Insane

By Paul Craig Roberts

June 17, 2013 "Information Clearing House - In the 21st century the two hundred year-old propaganda that the American people control their government has been completely shattered. Both the Bush and Obama regimes have made it unmistakenly clear that the American people don’t even influence, much less control, the government. As far as Washington is concerned, the people are nothing but chaff in the wind.

Polls demonstrate that 65% of the US population opposes US intervention in Syria. Despite this clear indication of the people’s will, the Obama regime is ramping up a propaganda case for more arming of Washington’s mercenaries sent to overthrow the secular Syrian government and for a “no-fly zone” over Syria, which, if Libya is the example, means US or NATO aircraft attacking the Syrian army on the ground, thus serving as the air force of Washington’s imported mercenaries, euphemistically called “the Syrian rebels.”

Washington declared some time ago that the “red line” that would bring Syria under Washington’s military attack was the Assad government’s use of chemical weapons of mass destruction against Washington’s mercenaries. Once this announcement was made, everyone with a brain immediately knew that Washington would fabricate false intelligence that Assad had used chemical weapons, just as Washington presented to the United Nations the intentional lie via Secretary of State Colin Powell that Saddam Hussein in Iraq had dangerous weapons of mass destruction. Remember National Security Advisor Condi Rice’s image of a “mushroom cloud over American cities?” Propagandistic lies were Washington’s orders of the day.

And they still are. Now Washington has fabricated the false intelligence, and president obama has announced it with a straight face, that Syria’s Assad has used sarin gas on several occasions and that between 100 and 150 “of his own people,” a euphemism for the US supplied foreign mercenaries, have been killed by the weapon of mass destruction.

Think about that for a minute. As unfortunate as is any death from war, is 100-150 deaths “mass destruction?”  According to low-ball estimates, the US-sponsored foreign mercenary invasion of Syria has cost 93,000 lives, of which 150 deaths amounts to 0.0016. 

In other words, 92,850 of the deaths did not cross the “red line.”  But 150 did, allegedly.

Yes, I know. Washington’s position makes no sense. But when has it ever made any sense?

Let’s stretch our minds just a tiny bit farther. Assad knows about Washington’s “red line.” It has been repeated over and over in order to create in the minds of the distracted American public that there is a real, valid reason for attacking Syria. Why would Assad use the proscribed weapons of mass destruction in order to kill a measly 100-150 mercenaries when his army is mopping up the US mercenaries without the use of gas and when Assad knows that the use of gas brings in the US military against him?

As the Russian government made clear, Washington’s accusation is not believable. No informed person could possibly believe it. No doubt, many Americans wearing patriotism on their sleeves will fall for Washington’s latest lie, but no one else in the world will. Even Washington’s NATO puppets calling for attacking Syria know that the justification for the attack is a lie. For the NATO puppets, Washington’s money overwhelms integrity, for which the rewards are low.

The Russians certainly know that Washington is lying. The Russian Foreign Minister Larov said: “The [Assad] government, as the opposition is saying openly, is enjoying military success on the ground. The [Assad] regime isn’t driven to the wall. What sense is there for the regime to use chemical arms--especially in such small amounts.” 

Larov is a relatively civilized person in the role of Russia’s main diplomat. However, other Russian officials can be more pointed in their dismissal of Washington’s latest blatant lies. Yury Ushakov, an aide to Russian President Putin said: “The Americans tried to present us with information on the use of chemical weapons by the [Assad] regime, but frankly we thought that it was not convincing. We wouldn’t like to invoke references to [the infamous lies of] Secretary of State Powell [at the UN alleging Iraqi WMD], but the facts don’t look convincing in our eyes.” Aleksey Pushkov, the chairman of the Russian Duma’s Foreign Affairs Committee, cut to the chase. “The data about Assad’s use of chemical weapons is fabricated by the same facility that made up the lies about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. Obama is walking George W. Bush’s path.”

Here in America no one will ever hear straight talk like this from the US presstitutes.

Orwellian double-speak is now the language of the United States government. Secretary of State john kerry condemned Assad for harming “peace talks” while the US arms its Syrian mercenaries. 

Washington’s double-speak is now obvious to the world. Not only Assad, but also the Russians, Chinese, Iranians, and every US puppet state which includes all of NATO and Japan, are fully aware that Washington is again lying through its teeth. The Russians, Chinese, and Iranians are trying to avoid confrontation with Washington, as war with the modern nuclear weapons would destroy all life on planet earth. What is striking is that despite 24/7 brainwashing by the presstitutes, a large majority of the American population opposes obama’s war on Syria.

This is good news. It means more Americans are developing the ability to think independently of the lies Washington feeds to them.

What the neocon nazis, the bush/obama regime, and the presstitute media have made
clear is that Washington is going to push its agenda of world hegemony to the point of
starting World War III, which, of course, means the end of life on earth.

Russia and China, either one of which can destroy the United States, have learned that the US government is a liar and cannot be trusted. The Libyan “no-fly” policy to which Russia and China agreed turned out to be a NATO air attack on the Libyan army so that the CIA-sponsored mercenaries could prevail. 

Russia and China, having learned their lesson, are protesting Washington’s assault on Syria that Washington pretends is a “civil war.” If Syria falls, Russia and China know that Iran is next.

Iran is Russia’s underbelly, and for China Iran is 20% of its energy imports. Both Russian and Chinese governments know that after Iran falls, they are next. There is no other explanation for Washington surrounding Russia with missile bases and surrounding China with naval and air bases. 

Both Russia and China are now preparing for the war that they see as inevitable. Washington’s crazed, demented drive for world hegemony is bringing unsuspecting Americans up against two countries with hydrogen bombs whose combined population is five times the US population. In such a conflict everyone dies. 

Considering the utterly insane government ruling in Washington, if human life exists in 2020, it will be a miracle. All the worry about future Medicare and Social Security deficits is meaningless. There will be no one here to collect the benefits.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. His latest book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West is now available.

No comment yet.
Scooped by Juan Carlos Hernandez
Scoop.it!

Gilad Atzmon: The Israeli Lab and the Palestinian Guinea Pigs

Juan Carlos Hernandez's insight:

By Gilad Atzmon

June 17, 2013 "Information Clearing House -  "The Lab" is a new groundbreaking Israeli documentary film that redefines our entire understanding of the Jewish State, its aims, its identity and its global destructive role. I honestly believe that this film is the deepest and most important commentary on Israel.

In ‘The Lab’, Director Yotam Feldman exposes the Israeli military industry and its operation, he interviews some major protagonists within Israel’s ‘security’ trade. He elaborates on the role of the industry within the Israeli society and economy - in the last few years Israeli security exports reached an unprecedented level of $7 billion a year. A full 20% of Israeli exports are military or military related. Approximately 150.000 families in Israel are dependent on that industry. Israel is now the fourth biggest military exporter.

No comment yet.
Scooped by Juan Carlos Hernandez
Scoop.it!

CorpWatch : Edward Snowden and the National Security Industrial Complex

CorpWatch : Edward Snowden and the National Security Industrial Complex | News in english | Scoop.it
Juan Carlos Hernandez's insight:

Military contractor Booz Allen Hamilton is in the news over two of its former employees: Edward Snowden, the whistleblower, and James Clapper, U.S. intelligence czar. A review of Booz Allen's own high level conflicts of interest and shoddy work suggests that Congress should target the company, not the messenger.

No comment yet.
Scooped by Juan Carlos Hernandez
Scoop.it!

Brazil Bedlam: Largest-in-decades protests sweep country

Mass protests continued throughout Brazil on Monday, with hundreds of thousands of demonstrators converging in Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, the...
Juan Carlos Hernandez's insight:

Mass protests continued throughout Brazil on Monday, with hundreds of thousands of demonstrators converging in Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, the capital of Brasilia and other cities. Protests initially began last week following a government announcement of an increase in public transportation costs, which brought out students and young workers and led to more than 250 arrests. READ MORE: http://on.rt.com/m0gce2

No comment yet.
Scooped by Juan Carlos Hernandez
Scoop.it!

Snowden: Truth is coming, US draconian responses build better whistleblowers

The threat of imprisonment or murder will not stop the truth from coming out, Edward Snowden, the whistleblower who blew the lid on the massive National Secu...
Juan Carlos Hernandez's insight:

The threat of imprisonment or murder will not stop the truth from coming out, Edward Snowden, the whistleblower who blew the lid on the massive National Security Agency surveillance program, told the Guardian in a live Q&A - FULL STORY: http://on.rt.com/g2o3u

No comment yet.