Tag Archives: international

With Israel, Obama Is Walking the High Wire With His Eyes Closed

by bloksaggfdflajn Posted on April 2, 2013

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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

Barack Obama came to Israel and Palestine, saw what he wanted to see, and conquered the mainstream media with his eloquent words. US and Israeli journalists called it a dream trip, the stuff that heroic myths are made of: a charismatic world leader taking charge of the Mideast peace process. But if the president doesn’t wake up and look at the hard realities he chose to ignore, his dream of being the great peacemaker will surely crumble, as it has before.

Like most myths, this one has elements of truth. Obama did say some important things. In a speech to young Israelis, he insisted that their nation’s occupation of the West Bank is not merely bad for their country, it is downright immoral, “not fair… not just … not right.”

I’ve been decrying the immorality of the occupation for four decades, yet I must admit I never dreamed I would hear an American president, standing in Jerusalem, do the same.

Despite those words, however, Obama is no idealist. He’s a strategist. His Jerusalem speech was clearly meant to widen the gap between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the substantial center-left portion of Israeli Jews, who are open to a deal with the Palestinians and showed unexpected strength in recent elections. The growing political tensions in Israel and a weakened prime minister give the American president a potential opening to maneuver, manipulate, and perhaps even control the outcome of events.

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With Israel, Obama Is Walking the High Wire With His Eyes Closed

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Photo tour: healing the planet through agriculture

by pedzacastrzala87 Posted on April 1, 2013

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Warhammer 40,000 Altar of War: Tau Empire – Games Workshop

Altar of War missions provide all the information required to play games inspired by the battlefield tactics of the different Warhammer 40,000 armies. This book contains six brand-new missions which you can use instead of the Eternal War missions in the Warhammer 40,000 rulebook if you or your opponent has a Tau Empire army, allowing you to master the art of […]

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Codex: Tau Empire – Games Workshop

Codex: Tau Empire is your comprehensive guide to unleashing the might of the Tau upon the battlefields of the 41 st Millennium. This volume introduces the four Tau castes, the Ethereals, and their mercenary allies. This dynamic race has begun its Third Sphere Expansion, setting forth into the stars to grow the borders of their burgeoning empire and bring the […]

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The Drunken Botanist – Amy Stewart

Sake began with a grain of rice. Scotch emerged from barley, tequila from agave, rum from sugarcane, bourbon from corn. Thirsty yet? In The Drunken Botanist , Amy Stewart explores the dizzying array of herbs, flowers, trees, fruits, and fungi that humans have, through ingenuity, inspiration, and sheer desperation, contrived to transform into alcohol ov […]

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World of Warcraft: Dawn of the Aspects: Part I – Richard A. Knaak

THE AGE OF DRAGONS IS OVER. Uncertainty plagues Azeroth’s ancient guardians as they struggle to find a new purpose. This dilemma has hit Kalecgos, youngest of the former Dragon Aspects, especially hard. Having lost his great powers, how can he—or any of his kind—still make a difference in the world? The answer lies in the distant past, when savage beasts cal […]

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How to Raise the Perfect Dog – Cesar Millan & Melissa Jo Peltier

From the bestselling author and star of National Geographic Channel’s Dog Whisperer , the only resource you’ll need for raising a happy, healthy dog. For the millions of people every year who consider bringing a puppy into their lives–as well as those who have already brought a dog home–Cesar Millan, the preeminent dog behavior expert, says, “Yes, […]

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World of Warcraft: Dawn of the Aspects: Part II – Richard A. Knaak

A Simon & Schuster eBook. Simon & Schuster has a great book for every reader. […]

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The Honest Life – Jessica Alba

As a new mom, Jessica Alba wanted to create the safest, healthiest environment for her family. But she was frustrated by the lack of trustworthy information on how to live healthier and cleaner—delivered in a way that a busy mom could act on without going to extremes. In 2012, with serial entrepreneur Brian Lee and environmental advocate Christopher Gavigan, […]

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Cesar Millan’s Short Guide to a Happy Dog – Cesar Millan

After more than 9 seasons as TV’s Dog Whisperer, Cesar Millan has a new mission: to use his unique insights about dog psychology to create stronger, happier relationships between humans and their canine companions. Both inspirational and practical, A Short Guide to a Happy Dog draws on thousands of training encounter […]

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All New Square Foot Gardening, Second Edition – Mel Bartholomew

Rapidly increasing in popularity, square foot gardening is the most practical, foolproof way to grow a home garden. That explains why author and gardening innovator Mel Bartholomew has sold more than two million books describing how to become a successful DIY square foot gardener. Now, with the publication of All New Square Foot Gardening, Second Edition , t […]

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Paracord Fusion Ties – Volume 1 – J.D. Lenzen

J.D. Lenzen is the creator of the highly acclaimed YouTube channel “Tying It All Together”, and the producer of over 200 instructional videos. He’s been formally recognized by the International Guild of Knot Tyers (IGKT) for his contributions to knotting, and is the originator of fusion knotting-innovative knots created through the merging of […]

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Photo tour: healing the planet through agriculture

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Progressive International Adjustable Bread Keeper

by Myrna Posted on March 30, 2013

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Progressive International Adjustable Bread Keeper

by Myrna Posted on March 26, 2013

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Senate gives a big, fat thumbs-up to Keystone XL

by Curtis Tangredi Posted on March 23, 2013

Senate gives a big, fat thumbs-up to Keystone XL

By Lisa Hymas

350.org

The Senate was not listening to these guys.

The vote was non-binding but all too telling. On Friday, the U.S. Senate voted 62 to 37 in favor of building the Keystone XL tar-sands pipeline, with 17 Democrats joining all Republicans. It was just an amendment to a budget plan that won’t even be going to the president’s desk, but it shows that the political class in D.C. views the pipeline very favorably — and believes voters view it very favorably too.

From The Washington Post:

The 17 Democrats who voted yes included every single possibly vulnerable incumbent facing reelection next year, from 34-year veteran [Max] Baucus [Mont.] to first-term Sen. Mark Begich (Alaska).

Perhaps more importantly, Sen. Michael Bennet (Colo.), who chairs the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, voted for the resolution. Bennet is not up for re-election until 2016, but his post requires him to raise money from the wealthy liberal community that is highly opposed to the pipeline.

Additionally, a crop of Democrats who survived difficult reelections in 2012 — Sens. Bob Casey (Pa.), Joe Donnelly (Ind.), Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.), Claire McCaskill (Mo.), Bill Nelson (Fla.) and Jon Tester (Mont.) — all supported the GOP Keystone amendment.

Did fossil-fuel money have anything to do with the vote? You be the judge:

New analysis today from Oil Change International reveals that supporters of the just-passed non-binding Keystone XL pipeline amendment received 3.5 times more in campaign contributions from fossil fuel interests than those voting “no.” In total, researchers found that supporters took an average of $499,648 from the industry before voting for the pipeline, for a staggering total of $30,978,153.

The Keystone decision still ultimately rests with President Obama, who appears to be dithering — and procrastinating like mad. From The Hill:

In meetings with Obama last week, House and Senate Republicans pressed the president for a timeline on his decision — about which Obama was vague. …

Obama has been noncommittal on Keystone. According to some Senate Republicans present at last week’s confab, the president said his decision would come by year’s end.

On top of that, the president told the GOP their claims about Keystone’s job creation prospects were exaggerated. He also suggested a good amount of the oil sands were destined for export. …

Republicans also said Obama told them last week that environmentalists’ fears of Keystone’s impact on the climate were overblown.

Climate activists at 350.org, who’ve been leading the anti-Keystone charge, plan to let senators know what they think while the lawmakers are back in their home districts for a recess over the next two weeks.

Lisa Hymas is senior editor at Grist. You can follow her on

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Senate gives a big, fat thumbs-up to Keystone XL

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Sneaky House Bill Would Gut Financial Reform

by Curtis Tangredi Posted on March 21, 2013

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A bipartisan group of four representatives introduced a sneaky little bill Wednesday that would dismantle an huge chunk of the historic financial reform laws enacted after the financial crisis.

The Swap Jurisdiction Certainty Act, introduced by Reps. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.), Mike Conaway (R-Tex.), John Carney (D-Del.), and David Scott (D-Ga.), all of whom sit on the House Financial Services Committee, would allow big banks to shift risky activities to foreign subsidiaries in order to avoid US regulations. Part of the landmark 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform act requires that derivatives—financial products whose value is based on things like currency exchange rates and crop prices—be traded in public marketplaces, instead of in private. The new bill would exempt foreign companies from these US derivatives rules, which sounds reasonable; the law purportedly just affects other countries. But what it would mean is that huge US-based banks that operate internationally could just do their paperwork through their international arms to avoid regs, effectively gutting the section of Dodd-Frank that gave federal regulators the authority for the first time to regulate derivatives such as the credit default swaps that helped cause the 2007 bank failures.

The Commodities Futures Trading Commission and Securities and Exchange Commission were supposed to have finalized the Dodd-Frank derivatives laws into regulations a long time ago, but those governing international trading are still pending. The agencies are supposedly close to final rules now—SEC chair Elise Walter said earlier this year that finalizing these rules was a top priority at the agency. But until they’re finalized, the rules are still vulnerable to tweaking, or gutting, by crafty lawmakers (or crafty industry folk).

Carney has defended his bill as consumer-friendly and bank-friendly all at once: “Congress and regulators must ensure that we’re protecting American consumers, ending future bailouts and maintaining American competitiveness in an increasingly global economy,” he said in a press release. Garrett was more straightforward about what the bill would do. “Our job creators—millions being crushed by overly burdensome Washington rules and regulations—deserve to be on a fair, level playing field with the international community,” he said.

But last year, when Congress introduced a similar bill, financial reform advocates slammed it. Americans for Financial Reform, a group of national and state organizations that push for common sense financial reforms, wrote an open letter to representatives in May 2012:

The legislation “would create an overwhelming temptation to move swaps business overseas, indeed to the foreign jurisdictions where regulation was most lax compared to the U.S. In addition to seriously undermining the basic transparency and accountability requirements in the US, such a ‘race to the bottom’ would be a serious blow to the entire international effort to make derivatives markets safer.

Walter has said the derivative rules were the “critical linchpin” of Dodd-Frank because of the “global nature of the market.”

Indeed, says Dennis Kelleher, president and CEO of the Wall St. watchdog group Better Markets. “The CFTC proposed very strong cross border guidance,” he told Mother Jones. “Even if the CFTC gets all of the other rules correct—if they don’t get the cross border rules right, then all their other work doesn’t matter.”

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Sneaky House Bill Would Gut Financial Reform

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The Pentagon Is Spending $1 Billion to Protect America From North Korea’s Nonexistent Long-Range Nuclear Missiles

by DenaeTina858 Posted on March 19, 2013

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Last week, US defense secretary Chuck Hagel announced something superficially alarming: Due to the recent tough talk coming out of Pyongyang, the Pentagon has announced a nearly $1 billion project to improve America’s defenses against a potential nuclear attack launched by North Korea. The boost in mainland missile defense will increase the number of ground-based interceptors in California and Alaska to 44 from 30 over the next four years. Part of this plan will involve resurrecting a missile field at Fort Greely, Alaska. “We will be able to add protection against missiles from Iran sooner while also proving protection against the threat from North Korea,” Hagel said during Friday’s Pentagon briefing.

The move comes on the heels of the North Korean government amping up its threats against the US: Along with conducting a third (suspected) nuclear test in seven years and declaring an end to the armistice with South Korea, the regime threatened to nuke American soil amid new UN sanctions. “The White House has been captured in the view of our long-range missile, and the capital of war is within the range of our atomic bomb,” or so goes the narration in a propaganda video post to the North Korean government’s YouTube page on Monday. The video includes a poorly produced animated sequence of the White House and Capitol dome exploding.

Here’s what’s crazy about all this: The Pentagon is spending $1 billion on a gesture. Virtually no one in the US government actually believes that North Korea (or Iran, for that matter) is close to having the ability to hit any part of the United States with nuclear missiles. It is also unclear how close North Korea is to being able to convert their tested nuclear devices to function as warheads. (Click here to get an idea of the state of the supposed North Korean missile threat just last year.)

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The Pentagon Is Spending $1 Billion to Protect America From North Korea’s Nonexistent Long-Range Nuclear Missiles

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Conservatives Outraged About Mountaintop Removal in Tennessee… By Chinese Company

by RubinkJoseph Posted on March 19, 2013

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What’s it take to get conservatives in Tennessee fired up about blowing up mountains? China, apparently.

On Tuesday, the Tennessee Conservative Union, which bills itself as the state’s “largest and oldest conservative group,” started running anti-mountaintop removal coal mining ads on television throughout the state. Their complaint? The Chinese company Guizhou Guochuang Energy Holding Group announced last year that it is acquiring Triple H Coal Mining, which does mountaintop removal. The Tennessee Conservative Union ad warns that they will become “the first state in our great nation to permit the red Chinese to destroy our mountains and take our coal.”

“We’re proud that Tennessee is a red state,” the ad concludes. “But just how red are we willing to go?”

The ad comes off as anti-China, but it also offers a critique of mountaintop removal coal mining in general, which is the big news here. The ad comes just a day before committees in both the state Senate and House are expected to vote on the Scenic Vistas Protection Act, a bill activists have been trying to get passed in the state for six years. The measure would make it illegal to blow up mountaintops to mine coal. Supporters are taking TCU’s support for the bill as a sign that it might gain more traction this year.

“The Tennessee Conservative Union is 100% pro-Coal, but our organization does not support destroying our mountain heritage,” TCU Chairman Lloyd Daugherty said in a statement Tuesday. “Mountaintop removal mining kills jobs because it takes fewer workers to blow up a mountain.”

JW Randolph, Tennessee director of Appalachian Voices, a group that has been working to pass the anti-mountaintop removal law, welcomed the ad. “We don’t care if you’re from Bristol or Beijing, blowing up the oldest mountains in America for a few tons of coal is a bad idea,” he said.

Here’s TCU’s ad:

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Conservatives Outraged About Mountaintop Removal in Tennessee… By Chinese Company

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NRA Targets UN Arms Trade Treaty, Again

by pwdt8w4 Posted on March 18, 2013

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The United Nations kicked off the first of nine days of final debate today in New York on the Arms Trade Treaty, an international pact seeking to regulate the $70 billion market in conventional weapons. Due to the unsupported belief that its largely unenforceable regulations would violate Americans’ Second Amendment rights, the treaty has once again found itself in the sights of gun-rights groups, including the National Rifle Association.

In reality, the Arms Trade Treaty, first discussed in 2006 and rejected by the Bush administration, is aimed at halting the cross-border flow of weapons into the hands of terrorists and soldiers in war-torn nations. That market is mostly unregulated now, and weapons advertised at international arms bazaars like the one in Abu Dhabi in February commonly find their way to conflict zones abroad. The treaty would take aim at weapons including tanks and missile launchers but also “small arms,” which the NRA claims could lead to a domestic crackdown on civilian-model AK-47s and other assault weapons.

The notion that the treaty would attack gun-owners’ constitutional rights ties into a popular right-wing conspiracy theory, embraced by the likes of Rand Paul, that it would lead to “full-scale gun CONFISCATION” and place lawful gun owners in an Orwellian international database. However, as the Washington Post reported, the treaty “lacks real enforcement mechanisms, but activists said it could be used to name and shame arms exporters who violate its terms.”

In 2011 and 2012, the NRA joined Larry Pratt’s conspiratorial Gun Owners of America in lobbying for a House resolution that would “express the sense of the Congress that the United States should not adopt any treaty that poses a threat to national sovereignty or abridges any rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution, such as the right to keep and bear arms.” The bill died in committee. But pressure from the gun lobby led the Obama administration to abandon talks last July on a draft of Arms Trade Treaty. Major players in the global arms trade including China and Russia also objected to the draft’s language.

In February, the American Bar Association’s Center for Human Rights concluded that the Arms Trade Treaty “would not require new domestic regulations of firearms” nor compromise the Second Amendment (PDF). In a statement last Friday, Secretary of State John Kerry said the administration “will not support any treaty that would be inconsistent with U.S. law and the rights of American citizens under our Constitution.”

But such reassurances are unlikely to convince the NRA and its allies.

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NRA Targets UN Arms Trade Treaty, Again

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New law aims to make eating lions illegal, because right now it’s totally not

by kastijoo8753 Posted on March 13, 2013

New law aims to make eating lions illegal, because right now it’s totally not

By Susie Cagle

When Mufasa gave Simba that speech about the circle of life, he maybe should have included an extra warning about becoming lion jerky for some hungry folks in the U.S. Because apparently that is a thing.

Illinois Rep. Luis Arroyo wants to make eating lions illegal in his state, and the proposal is a lot more controversial than you might think. If passed, the Lion Meat Act would make it “”unlawful for any person to slaughter a lion or for any person to possess, breed, import or export from this State, buy, or sell lions for the purpose of slaughter.” Right now, eating lion is legal nationwide.

safaripartners

Burgers? Tacos? Snack sticks? Really?

For a ban on eating a threatened species, Arroyo’s proposal is garnering a lot of criticism — and not just from the guy who runs the weird-meat store, though he’s certainly the most annoyed. Richard Czimer of Czimer’s Game & Seafood, Inc. (mm mm lion snack sticks and bear bacon!) told National Geographic that the ban is “trying to curtail a choice.” Of Arroyo: “He’s discriminating against all my customers and everybody who wants to try something new,” said Czimer, who was only able to buy two lousy lions last year.

Czimer, who was jailed for six months in 2003 for buying and selling illegal tiger and leopard meat, is mostly but not entirely alone in his love for lion, which also enjoys a bit of market share in Arizona. Other critics of the Lion Meat Act seem to be bothered by the big-government overreach of preventing people from eating threatened species. From Take Part:

“Most people would never even conceive of eating lion meat,” said Kristina Rasmussen, vice president of the Illinois Policy Institue. “If this is a problem—and I’m not convinced that it is—surely it can be solved by civil action and community consensus and open debate. Do we have to rush in with a law, especially when we have so many other problems right in front of our face?”

Yeah, ‘cuz when did laws ever make things better? More from NatGeo:

“[E]ating carnivores is mostly not a good idea,” argued Luke Hunter, president of Panthera, a U.S. based wild-cat conservation group …

For one, carnivore populations worldwide are dwindling—the African lion is listed as threatened by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, and is endangered in certain West African countries.

Though wild lions aren’t killed for food, there’s concern that weak or poorly regulated laws regarding the ownership, breeding, and trade of captive big cats in the U.S.—in particular tigers—could fuel the black market for big-cat parts, Will Gartshore, senior program officer for U.S. Government Relations at WWF, said in an email.

So, sorry: Legal or not, big cats aren’t the best burger choice. But if you’re interested in some other adventurous meat-eating, BuyExoticMeats.com is currently having a sale on its “Exotic Meat Club” monthly package. October is the “Manager’s Special”! Yum, cross your fingers for some big cats!

If you were skeeved out by the idea of horse meat — which is harder to get in the U.S. than lion — do not click on that link. And if you care about the environment, or still have a special place in your heart for baby Simba (who doesn’t?), might I recommend a black bean patty, or an invasive species?

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for

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New law aims to make eating lions illegal, because right now it’s totally not

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