CHRISTIAN NEWS FROM RAY
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EARLY MORNING EDITION Wednesday, February 19, 2014
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DEATH, BLOOD, AND DESTRUCTION TODAY IN KIEV
Tuesday was the deadliest day of political unrest in the past several months in Ukraine. Tuesday’s violence followed what seemed like a rare breakthrough. Protesters pulled back Sunday from Kiev’s City Hall and unlocked streets in the city center after the government said it would drop charges against those arrested in the political unrest. Then everything fell apart today.
The speaker of parliament’s refusal to allow amendments that would limit the president’s powers and restore the constitution to what it was in 2004 angered many in the opposition. The government’s prosecutor general, meanwhile, accused the opposition of breaking “the truce” and setting the stage for the crackdown.
“For the sake of pursuing their own political interests, they neglected all previously reached agreements and put lives and the peace of millions of Kiev residents under threat,” said Viktor Pshonka, Ukraine’s prosecutor general.
Whoever was to blame, there was no dispute today was the deadliest day — by far.
Ukranian riot police charged protesters occupying a square in central Kiev early Wednesday, following hours of street battles that left at least 25 people dead and hundreds injured in the deadliest day of the nearly 3-month-old political crisis that has paralyzed Ukraine’s capital.
Police armed with water cannons were gaining ground in Independence Square, but protestors managed to find protection behind a burning barricade of tires and wood and hurled Molotov cocktails at security forces trying to put out the flames, Reuters reported.
At least 25, including several police officers and protesters, were reported dead in the violence by early this morning, with hundreds more injured, the Associated Press reported.
Thousands of protesters had filled Independence Square just hours before, sensing that Ukraine’s political standoff was reaching a critical turning point after the deadliest violence yet in nearly three months of protests that have paralyzed the capital and the nation. Opposition leader Vitali Klitschko urged the protesters to defend the camp. “We will not go anywhere from here,” Klitschko told the crowd, speaking from a stage in the square as fires burned around him, releasing huge plumes of smoke into the night sky. “This is an island of freedom and we will defend it,” he said. Many heeded his call.
“This looks like a war against one’s own people,” said Dmytro Shulko, 35, who was heading toward the camp armed with a fire bomb. “But we will defend ourselves.”
In Washington, Vice President Joe Biden phoned Ukraine president Viktor Yanukovych Tuesday and urged him to to pull back forces and address the protesters’ “legitimate grievances.” A State Department spokesman said Secretary of State John Kerry shared Biden’s “grave concerns,” adding, “Ukraine’s deep divisions will not be healed by spilling more innocent blood.”
The State Department also issued a travel alert for U.S, citizens in Ukraine late Tuesday, saying, “The situation in Ukraine is unpredictable and could change quickly. Further violent clashes between police and protesters in (Kiev) and other cities are possible.”
Shortly before midnight, Klitschko headed to Yanukovych’s office to try to resolve the crisis. He returned to the square early Wednesday without reaching any agreement on ending the violence. Klitschko told reporters that he had asked the president to stop the police action to clear the square and prevent further deaths, but Yanukovych’s only proposal was that the demonstrators have to go home and stop the protests.
“I am very unhappy because there was no discussion,” Klitschko said. “They don’t want to listen.” Still, Klitschko urged the protesters and police to stop the escalation of violence. He said opposition leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk was trying to arrange for more negotiations with Yanukovych later Wednesday.
In a statement published online early Wednesday, Yanukovych said that he had already made several attempts to compromise, but that opposition leaders “crossed a line when they called people to arms.”
Yanukovych said opposition leaders had to “draw a boundary between themselves and radical forces,” or else “acknowledge that they are supporting radicals. Then the conversation … will already be of a different kind.”
Clashes raged for several hours outside the parliament building, where opposition lawmaker Lesya Orobets told Reuters that three demonstrators were killed and taken to a nearby officers’ club used as a medical center. More than 100 people were injured, she said. “Three bodies of our supporters are in the building. Another seven are close to dying (because of wounds),” she said on her Facebook page. Two more bodies were lying in front of a Metro station on the side of the square, a photographer told Reuters.
Earlier in the day, protesters attacked police lines and set fires outside parliament, accused Yanukovych’s government of ignoring their demands once again. As darkness fell, law enforcement agencies vowed to bring order to the streets and shut down subway stations in the capital. Thousands of protesters streamed to the square to defend the camp, where Orthodox priests prayed for peace.
Earlier on Tuesday, the State Security Service, in a joint statement with the interior ministry, gave protesters a 6 p.m. (1600 GMT) deadline to end street disorder or face “tough measures,” Reuters reported. “If by 6 p.m. the disturbances have not ended, we will be obliged to restore order by all means envisaged by law,” the statement said
The clashes dimmed hopes for an imminent solution to the political crisis and fueled tensions that began soaring following new steps by Russia and the European Union to gain influence over this former Soviet republic.
U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey R. Payatt called for dialogue, but also threatened both sides with sanctions. “We believe Ukraine’s crisis can still be solved via dialogue, but those on both sides who fuel violence will open themselves to sanctions,” Payatt said on Twitter.
The protests began in late November after Yanukovych froze ties with the EU in exchange for a $15 billion bailout from Russia, but the political maneuvering continued and Moscow later suspended its payments. On Monday, however, while opposition leaders were meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Russia offered a fresh infusion of the billions of dollars that Ukraine needs to keep its ailing economy afloat.
The latest confrontations came two days after the government and the opposition reached a shaky compromise, with protesters vacating a government building in Kiev they had been occupying since Dec. 1 after the government released scores of jailed activists.
But tensions rose after Russia’s finance minister offered to resume financial aid to Ukraine on Monday, just as Yanukovych was expected to nominate a new prime minister, prompting fears among the opposition that he would tap a Russian-leaning loyalist.
Yanukovych still remains popular in the Russian-speaking eastern and southern regions of Ukraine, where economic and cultural ties with Russia are strong. But western Ukraine is keen to pursue closer ties to the 28-nation EU and move away from Russia’s orbit.
Russian President Vladimir Putin promised Yanukovych $15 billion in loans in December, but after purchasing Ukrainian bonds worth $3 billion Russia put the payments on hold. The Russian finance minister said Monday that $2 billion more would be purchased this week.
CNN’s Phil Black and Victoria Butenko reported from Kiev, while CNN’s Greg Botelho reported and wrote from Atlanta. CNN’s Michael Martinez contributed to this report.
“THERE SHALL BE WARS AND RUMORS OF WARS”
FORT RICHARDSON, ALASKA – The Pentagon has airmailed Beijing a belated and unsubtle message for the recent Chinese New Year – by parachuting combat troops into the Asia Pacific.
After more than a decade of wars in the Middle East, 2014 is the year in which the U.S. officially starts re-orientating its military focus to Asia as Washington aims to counter the military build-up by China. The U.S. fears America’s regional allies will suffer instability as Beijing flexes it muscles – including developing ballistic missiles designed to take out the U.S. Pacific fleet.
This past weekend, as part of the annual multinational joint exercise known as Cobra Gold, the U.S. dropped a crack airborne task force into central Thailand. They were the first U.S. boots on Asian soil since the official change in military and foreign policy posture. The drill was to seize and secure an airfield at Lop Buri, 90 miles north of Bangkok, amid a humanitarian disaster. The exercise involved 400 parachutists from 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division, known in military shorthand as 4-25, based at Fort Richardson, outside of Anchorage.
With the U.S. and Thailand leading Cobra Gold, commanders and analysts say the strategic aim of the exercise was to demonstrate to Beijing’s communist leadership how fast and effective the U.S. can be in supporting its Asian allies, all of whom lie in a tight arc around China — from India and Nepal through Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia to South Korea and Japan.
“It’s sent a message in terms of our capability of combat to our allies concerned about those who threaten peace and stability to the region,” said Army Col. Matt McFarlane, 4-25’s commander, speaking to Fox News by phone from Lop Buri. “We’re an established contingency force for when there’s an operational requirement to get a large amount of force combat power anywhere at any time [in the Asia Pacific] and to reassure our allies we can be there to support them.”
The presence of U.S. troops on the ground in what China considers its backyard will be unsettling for Beijing, say military analysts, because it resents America’s 60-year dominance of the Asia-Pacific.
“It’s a powerful message that the U.S. is putting boots on the ground because they have the entire U.S. military standing behind them. Every country in the region recognizes that,” said retired Gen. Jack Keane, a national security analyst and former acting U.S. Army chief of staff. “We’ve put parachuting forces into places and taken an amount of risk before and the U.S. will continue to do that,” Keane added.
As Cobra Gold got under way, one Chinese military official gloatingly told state media that Beijing’s “regional military impact […] cannot be ignored” – which is why the Chinese are participating in the eight-nation exercise for the first time this year. Their invitation is viewed as an attempt for all sides to gloss over the thorny issue that the drill is partially targeted at Beijing, which has been increasing its military spending at more than 10 percent annually.
Skeptics view China’s presence as a token gesture; its contingency sent to Cobra Gold comprises a mere 17 observers, compared to the 9,000 U.S. troops involved. Those observers are not participating in the live-fire drills, jungle survival training, amphibious landings and warplane formations.
Despite official downplaying of the underlying politics behind Cobra Gold, there is growing alarm among U.S. defense leaders over China’s military advance, particularly its deep strike capability.
Beijing has been quietly developing an anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) that can strike U.S. aircraft carriers and other vessels at a range of 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers). It is estimated that the missile can travel at Mach 10 (4-5km/sec) and reach its maximum range in less than 12 minutes. The U.S. fleet has nothing to repel firepower of that magnitude, prompting lawmakers to join in calls for a rapid development of new systems to intercept the ASBMs.
“We are going to have to have early defenses against ballistic missiles if we’re going to remain dominant in the western Pacific,” Representative Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., told Fox News at the Reagan National Defense Forum held in California in November. Until those systems are developed, 4-25’s involvement in Cobra Gold stands out as a critical line of tactical capability because it is the only airborne brigade the nation has covering the Pacific. It is also emerging as one of the most versatile brigades in the U.S. military.
China’s advanced missiles — and its provocative claims to Pacific land and airspace – are viewed in Washington as intimidation towards the U.S. and its allies and as part of China’s regional power grab.
The U.S. has become used to fighting insurgency-based warfare in the desert and mountainous terrains of Iraq and Afghanistan.
4-25’s unique area of operation stretches from Asia’s rainforests to the Arctic Circle, presenting challenging conditions the U.S. hasn’t fought in since Vietnam right through to the deep-cold hazards of protecting U.S. claims to oil underneath the northern ice cap.
“This mission in Thailand is the very start of that,” said LTC, Alan Brown, spokesman for U.S. Army, Alaska. “4-25 helps spearhead the combat readiness for America’s new Asia posture because their geographic reach extends more than any other over such diverse and extreme terrain and weather conditions.”
The brigade can deploy infantry soldiers anywhere in the region within 19 hours from “the phone call to being on the ground.” It is supported by a Stryker brigade, whose tactical vehicles can be flown in to bolster the advance forces within two to four days.
In military parlance, its combat readiness is considered part of America’s standard battle rhythm. And, as the brigade’s additional training with their Thai colleagues is intended showed this past weekend, it doesn’t mean that America would need to enter into a fight in the Asia Pacific on its own. “If we do get into some kind of conflict or rapid engagement in the Asia Pacific,” added Brown, ”then the U.S. is going to do it in full lockstep with its partner nations.”
NORTH KOREA IS A LIVING HELL
GENEVA – “The horrifying events going on right now in North Korea under Kim Jong-il, are every bit as evil as anything Nazi Germany did during World War Two.”
Rape, torture, starvation, murder and death camps, are part of Kim’s dictatorship. Females are given no worth at all and are treated like pieces of garbage.
Famine began in North Korea in the late 1990s and continues nonstop while Kim spends millions of dollars to amuse himself.
Testimony by North Korean defectors at last year’s hearings produced chilling accounts of the living hell that exists there. A United Nations commission yesterday released a 372-page document with excerpts of many dozens of witnesses testimonies. The BBC’s Imogen Foulkes in Geneva says the report is one of the most detailed and devastating ever published by the United Nations. The “gravity, scale and nature” of the allegations “reveal a State that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world.”
The commission has warned North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that the rest of the world is fully aware of the “unspeakable atrocities” orchestrating widespread crimes against civilians in that secretive Asian nation. The panel’s chairman, retired Australian judge Michael Kirby, told the leader in a letter accompanying the yearlong investigative report on North Korea that international prosecution is needed “to render accountable all those, including possibly yourself, who may be responsible for crimes against humanity.”
Testimony given to the panel from defectors included an account of a woman forced to drown her own baby, children imprisoned from birth and starved, and families tortured for watching a foreign television show.
The report says that in North Korea:
there is “an almost complete denial of the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion” in North Korea
“entrenched patterns of discrimination”, rooted in the state-assigned class system, affect every part of life
discrimination against women is “pervasive in all aspects of society”
the state “has used food as a means of control over the population” and deliberately blocked aid for ideological reasons, causing the deaths of “hundreds of thousands” of people
“hundreds of thousands of political prisoners” have died in “unspeakable atrocities” in prison camps in the past 50 years
security forces “systematically employ violence and punishments that amount to gross human rights violations in order to create a climate of fear”
In spite of these things, the cult of personality surrounding the Kim family is as strong as ever in North Korea. This was witnessed by the country’s weeping commemoration in honor of the birthday of Kim Jong-il, who died in 2011, on Sunday.
“These are not mere excesses of the state; they are essential components of a political system that has moved far from the ideals on which it claims to be founded.” The UN “must ensure that those most responsible for these hideous crimes” are held accountable through a referral to the International Criminal Court, or a UN tribunal.
The UN should also adopt targeted sanctions “against those who appear to be most responsible for crimes against humanity”, says the report, and increase its monitoring of North Korea.
Its response came in a two-page statement sent to Reuters from its diplomatic mission in Geneva. “The DPRK [North Korea] once again makes it clear that the ‘human rights violations’ mentioned in the so-called ‘report’ do not exist in our country.”
Mr Kirby said there was “a very good way to answer the many charges and complaints – and that is to allow the door to be opened” to the international community so they could see the situation for themselves away from the choreographed celebrations. images showed few people on the streets of Pyongyang. Since Kim Jong-un took over, his regime has threatened nuclear war and conducted a deadly purge
Although this information has been in the public domain for years, the panel’s inquiry is the highest-profile international attempt to investigate the claims.
South Korea welcomed the report, saying it hoped it would “raise the international community’s awareness”, while the US said it “clearly and unequivocally documents the brutal reality” of the Pyongyang regime.
However China, North Korea’s only ally, said it would “not help resolve the human rights situation”.
The panel will formally present its findings next month, when the Human Rights Council will decide which recommendations to support. But it remains unclear what action will result. Correspondents say China would be likely to block any attempt to refer the North to the International Criminal Court.
An ad-hoc tribunal, like those set up for Rwanda, Sierra Leone or Cambodia, would appear unlikely without co-operation from elements within the country.
IRAN HAS BEEN HACKING US NAVAL INTELLIGENCE
An Iranian hack of the Navy’s largest unclassified computer network reportedly took more than four months to resolve, raising concern among some lawmakers about security gaps exposed by the attack.
The Wall Street Journal citing current and former U.S. officials, reported late Monday that the cyberattack targeted the Navy Marine Corps Internet, which is used by the Navy Department to host websites, store nonsensitive information, and handle voice, video, and data communications.
The paper reported that the hackers were able to remain in the network until this past November. That contradicts what officials told the Journal when the attack was first publicly reported this past September. At the time, officials told the paper that the intruders had been removed.
“It was a real big deal,” a senior U.S. official told the Journal. “It was a significant penetration that showed a weakness in the system.” The quoted official said that the Iranians were able to conduct surveillance and compromise communications over the unclassified computer networks of the Navy and Marine Corps. However, another senior official told the Journal that no e-mail accounts were hacked and no data was stolen. There is also no evidence that Iran was able to penetrate classified U.S. computer networks.
The cyberattack is one of the one of the most serious infiltrations of government computer systems by the Iranians. The Journal reported that U.S. defense officials were surprised at the skill of the hackers, who were able to enter the network through a security gap in a public-facing website.
The military response to the hack was overseen by Vice Admiral Mike Rogers, President Obama’s pick to be the next head the National Security Agency. Congressional aides told the Journal that Rogers would likely face questions on plans to fix security issues that have surfaced as a result of the attack. A confirmation hearing for Rogers has not yet been scheduled. Despite the length of the operation to remove the hackers, officials who spoke to the Journal praised Rogers for his leadership of the cybersecurity response. The issue is not expected to prevent Rogers from being confirmed as NSA director.
VIOLENCE CONTINUES IN VENEZUELA – THREE AMERICANS EVICTED
CARACAS, Venezuela – President Nicolas Maduro on Sunday ordered the expulsion of three U.S. Embassy officials after Washington came to the defense of an opposition hard-liner accused by Venezuela’s leader of responsibility for bloodshed during anti-government protests.
Maduro didn’t identify the consular officials but said intelligence collected over the past two months pointed to attempts by them to infiltrate Venezuelan universities, a hotbed of recent unrest, under the cover of doing visa outreach. He didn’t provide additional details.
Triggering the expulsion was the Obama administration’s siding with opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, who is being hunted by authorities as Maduro accuses him of leading a “fascist” plot to oust the socialist government.
Maduro said a State Department official, in a phone conversation with Venezuela’s ambassador to the Washington-based Organization of American States, warned that arresting the 42-year-old former mayor would bring serious negative consequences with international ramifications.
“These are unacceptable, insolent demands,” Maduro said during a televised address Sunday night. “I don’t take orders from anyone in the world.”
There was no immediate reaction from the U.S. government, which has denied the accusations of Maduro that it is plotting with the opposition against him.
The Harvard-educated Lopez has been at the center of rising tensions in Venezuela since he led the biggest demonstration yet against Maduro’s 10-month-old government, mobilizing more than 10,000 people on Wednesday to peacefully protest hardships ranging from rampant crime to 56 percent inflation.
The government blamed him for the mayhem that erupted after the rally ended and a group of students battled with security forces and armed pro-government militias, leaving three dead. Most of the demonstrators had gone home before the violence broke out.
In his TV speech, Maduro called for a march by oil workers Tuesday beginning at the same central plaza in Caracas where Lopez said he would rally with supporters the same day, setting up the potential for clashes between the opposing forces.
Lopez announced his plans a few hours before Maduro’s speech, appearing in a video shot at an undisclosed location. He said he didn’t fear arrest but accused authorities of trying to violate his constitutional right to protest Maduro’s government.
He said that after today’s march to the Interior Ministry he planned to walk the final steps alone to the agency to deliver a petition demanding a full investigation of the government’s role in the deaths. He said he would surrender to officials then in answer to an arrest order on charges ranging from vandalism of public property to terrorism and homicide. “I haven’t committed any crime,” said Lopez, who hasn’t been seen in public since a news conference Wednesday night after the bloodshed. “If there is a decision to legally throw me in jail I’ll submit myself to this persecution.” He urged supporters to wear white shirts and march peacefully with him to the Interior Ministry.
Lopez’s comments came after security forces raided his home and that of his parents late Saturday, seeking to serve the arrest order. Lopez wasn’t at either residence in Caracas’ leafy eastern district when national guardsmen and military intelligence officials arrived. Aides said neighbors banged on pots and pans to protest what they considered an arbitrary detention order.
The raids capped another night of protests during which security forces fired tear gas and rubber bullets to break up a group of about 500 students who vowed to remain on the streets until all arrested anti-government demonstrators are released. Authorities said 23 people were being treated for injuries, none of them life-threatening. More protests took place Sunday, and authorities said 18 people were injured, none of them seriously.
Lopez is the most prominent of a group of opposition hard-liners who are challenging two-time presidential candidate Henrique Capriles for leadership of the anti-Maduro movement.
U.S. officials have denied any plotting to oust Maduro. Secretary of State John Kerry on Saturday expressed concern over the rising tensions and violence surrounding the protests.
“We are particularly alarmed by reports that the Venezuelan government has arrested or detained scores of anti-government protesters and issued an arrest warrant for opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez,” Kerry said in a statement. “These actions have a chilling effect on citizens’ rights to express their grievances peacefully.”
ITALY FORMING A NEW GOVERNMENT
Italy’s President Giorgio Napolitano has asked Matteo Renzi, the mayor of Florence, to form a new government. It follows the resignation on Friday of PM Enrico Letta after he was ousted in a vote called by Mr Renzi at a meeting of their center-left Democratic Party. The party had accused Mr Letta of failing to tackle the ailing economy.
Mr Renzi, who has never been elected as MP, must now negotiate a deal with Mr Letta’s former coalition partners and could be sworn in on Thursday. At 39, he will be Italy’s youngest ever prime minister.
In another development on Monday, Italian government borrowing costs dropped to their lowest rates for almost eight years. The yield on ten-year bonds fell to 3.64%, seen as an apparent nod from the markets towards Mr Renzi’s plans for economic reform. The EU’s economic chief Olli Rehn said he was confident Italy’s political transition would be smooth and that the new government would continue to pursue economic reforms.
As he emerged from talks with President Napolitano on Monday morning, Mr Renzi – the Democratic Party leader – talked of his commitment and determination and the need for urgency on reform. “The most pressing emergency, which concerns my generation and others, is the emergency of labour, of unemployment and of despair,” Mr Renzi told reporters.
Constitutional changes would be put forward by the end of February, labour reforms by March and improvements to bureaucracyin April.
Italy has a 41% rate of unemployment among 15-24 year-olds and an overall rate of 12.7%.
Democratic Party colleague Maria Elena Boschi said it would take several days to form a new administration. Mr Renzi’s initial priority will be to secure the support of the small New Centre Right (NCD) party in order to command a parliamentary majority and start cabinet building.
450 SLAVES DIE IN QATAR WHILE BUILDING FOR THE WORLD CUP
More than 450 Indian migrant workers in Qatar have died in the last two years Another upcoming report will show that 400 Nepalese have lost their lives scrambling to get the Gulf state ready for the 2022 World cup.
At least 237 Indian migrants lost their lives in Qatar in 2012 and another 218 in 2013 up to December 5, AFP reported on Monday, citing figures received via a Right to Information request filed at the Indian embassy in Qatar.
On average, 20 Indian migrants die per month in Qatar. August last year was the most deadly month on record, with 27 fatalities being reported.
The Indian embassy did not provide information regarding the causes of death or where they occurred. It also declined to disclose any correspondence between the diplomatic mission and the Indian government regarding the treatment of its nationals in the Gulf state.
Meanwhile, figures set to be released later this week say that 400 Nepalese workers have died at building sites since construction for the World Cup 2022 got underway in 2010. The total death toll stemming from the country’s World Cup scramble could in fact be higher, as other migrant groups are also present in the country.
On February 11, Qatar issued detailed guidelines intended to protect the country’s massive expatriate community from exploitation and stem the intensified international criticism on its human rights record.
Activists, however, believe the number of dead could swell to 4,000 by the time the 2022 World Cup kicks off.
According to German paper Die Welt, however, a source identified as a “senior FIFA employee” said moving the World Cup to another country is “a serious option” despite public claims to the contrary. Last July, Theo Zwanziger, a current member of FIFA’s executive committee, said the decision to award Qatar the 2022 event was a “blatant mistake.”
In September, The United Nations condemned Qatar for failing to comply with an international convention banning the use of forced labor.
ANOTHER MILITARY SCANDAL IN COLUMBIA
Columbia’s military grappled today with its second big scandal in less than a month after an investigation into extrajudicial killings exposed high-level corruption and raised questions over a commander’s human rights record. The joint chiefs deputy commander, General Javier Rey, resigned Monday after the country’s leading news magazine, Seaman, reported on what it called widespread kickbacks in multimillion-dollar military contracts.
But perhaps most damaging was its publication online of an audio recording in which General Leonardo Barrera, the armed forces chief, is heard verbally maligning prosecutors’ investigations into a spate of extrajudicial killings that earned Colombia international reproach.
Soldiers were implicated in hundreds of such killings through 2008 — dubbed “false positives,” in which innocent people were slain and presented as guerrillas who fell in combat.
The No. 2 official in Colombia’s prosecutor’s office, Jorge Fernando Pedometer, told reporters Monday that Seaman’s story was based on recordings made as part of a false positives case that grew into the wider corruption investigation. He said, without entering into details, that senior military officers could be called in for questioning in the corruption probe, which Seaman said involved multiple officers in different units who inflated costs and pocketed as much as 50 percent.
Seaman offered just a few examples from the hundreds of hours of audio recordings made in 2012-13 that it said it obtained.
The report did not accuse Ray, the former head of army aviation, of any specific wrongdoing. He said he was quitting to defend his honor.
In the most explosive recording, Barrera is heard telling Colonel Robinson Gonzalez led Rio, that prosecutors’ probes into false positives are “a bunch of crap.” Barrera suggests that Gonzalez, who is in a military lockup facing criminal charges over the 2007 “false positives” killing of two men, mount a counterattack to discredit prosecutors. Barrera said Sunday that he regretted making the remarks.
President Juan Manuel Santos said the allegations made in the Seaman report were serious and would be investigated. Barrera was not relieved of his command.
In one audio recording that raised eyebrows, Gonzalez is heard explaining to another man how he took a three-week family vacation in December 2012 when he was supposed to be confined to a military prison. Seaman said the army paid for his gasoline.
A separate investigation by Seaman earlier this month alleged that a military spy ring had eavesdropped for 15 months on emails and text messages of government negotiators involved in peace talks with leftist rebels. Critics said the spying could undermine rebel confidence in the peace process.
Leftist congressman Ivan Accepted said Monday that the two scandals highlight a complete lack of control over the military by Defense Minister Juan Carlos Pinon, whom he called on to resign.
Illegal eavesdropping has been common in Colombia in recent years, and a previous scandal over spying on journalists, judges and politicians led to the dismantling three years ago of the DAS domestic intelligence agency.
Associated Press writer Frank Baku in Lima, Peru, contributed to this report.
ZIMBABWE RELEASES 2000 PRISONERS
HARARE, ZIMBABWE – Zimbabwean authorities say President Robert Mugabe has pardoned 2,000 prisoners in an effort to ease overcrowding in the nation’s prisons, which face a shortage of funds and even food. State media on today quoted prison official Huggins Machination as saying those freed include almost all female prisoners, offenders under 18 years, those aged over 70 and the terminally ill.
Machination says prisoners serving time for murder, rape and armed robbery won’t be pardoned.
He told lawmakers last month that 100 prisoners died from hunger last year as a result of the food crisis in the nation’s prisons. The justice minister, Emerson Gangway, has refuted Machination’s claims.
Zimbabwe has 42 prisons that hold 19,000 inmates, 2,000 over capacity.
HEAD OF AL QAEDA TELLS PRESIDENT OBAMA HOW TO DEFEAT IT
SANAA, Yemen — Abd al-Wahhab al-Humayqani has some advice for Washington.
The United States is doing more to stoke terrorism, here in the heartland of al-Qaeda’s most active franchise, than to defeat it, he says. What the United States ought to do, he argues, is strengthen Yemen’s state institutions — rather than create enemies by carrying out drone strikes.
“The U.S. can protect itself by cooperating directly with local authorities,” he said in an interview in Yemen’s capital. “Take it from a man who might know.”
In December, the U.S. Treasury Department branded Humayqani, 42, a specially designated global terrorist, freezing his assets and sanctioning anyone who does business with him.
The Treasury accused Humayqani of using his network of Yemen-based charities to funnel money to al-Qaeda, placing him “at the center of global support networks that fund and facilitate terrorism.” The Treasury said that as of 2012, Humayqani was “an important figure” within one of the terrorist group’s most dangerous wings, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and that he had helped to orchestrate violent attacks on government targets and to recruit fighters.
Humayqani denies all of it. He said his charities benefit “orphans, mosques and poor families,” not al-Qaeda. “My personal stance is against al-Qaeda operations, because they kill outside the law,” he said.
It may be no surprise that a person who is the subject of sanctions dismisses the charges against him. But what makes Humayqani’s case slightly more puzzling, and potentially awkward for the United States, is that he says he is willing to meet with U.S. officials — he claims to have requested a meeting at the U.S. Embassy; the embassy declined to comment — and even face a court of law.
“Support the Yemeni government through a national project that would face al-Qaeda,” he said. Cease drone strikes and develop a reconciliation plan whereby militants would turn in their weapons. But he acknowledged it would not be so simple. “Not all of them will give up their weapons. But this way you give those who are willing to leave al-Qaeda a chance to become a citizen again and live a normal life. Those who don’t will lose the public’s sympathy,” he said.
Separately, he said, he would be “very grateful” if the United States would drop its charges. “It has affected me financially and psychologically,” he smiled.
Ali al-Mujahed in Sanaa and Lara El Gibaly in Cairo contributed to this report.
WAGE HIKE WOULD RAISE PAY FOR MILLIONS
AND COST 500,000 JOBS
A plan by President Obama and fellow Democrats to increase the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour would cost roughly 500,000 jobs but increase wages for roughly 16.5 million Americans, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday.
The report was immediately met with sharp Republican criticism for the wage hike plan.
The White House was quick to respond to the report, with Jason Furman, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, telling reporters on a conference call,“CBO’s estimate doesn’t reflect the overall consensus view of economists who say [the increase] would have minimum or no impact on employment. Zero would be a perfectly respectable estimate
The report was released as the Democrat-controlled Senate prepares to debate an Obama-backed proposal to gradually increase the $7.25 hourly minimum wage to $10.10 by 2016. However, the proposal faces long odds of passing in the GOP-controlled House.
Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, author of the Senate legislation, cited other research concluding that a higher minimum wage would create jobs, not reduce them. “And as the CBO report affirms, an increase in the minimum wage will help lift families out of poverty,” he said. The report also states that as a result of the increase, 900,000 fewer people would be living below the federal poverty line.
The report said that besides boosting wages for people earning less than $10.10 hourly, some people making more than that amount would also see higher earnings as bosses adjust their pay scales upward.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
THE PEOPLE OF NEW JERSEY ARE GETTING PICKLED
New Jersey is in a pickle as a rule of the high seas shuts off the flow of salt to keep roads clear. State officials are now being forced to turn to a briny pickle juice-like mixture as an alternative to de-ice the roads, while racing to get a federal waiver that is currently holding up a 40,000-ton shipment of rock salt. The salt is sitting at a port in Maine, docked until New Jersey officials obtain a federal waiver. Once that is done, it will take two days to ship the load from Maine to Newark.
The shipment is being denied entry because it’s on a vessel that isn’t flying under a U.S. flag – a violation of the 1920 federal Maritime Act — also known as The Jones Act — that requires shipments to arrive on a ship with goods traveling between two U.S. ports to be flying the American flag.
New Jersey Transportation Commissioner Jim Simpson said during a radio interview that the nearest U.S.-flagged vessel would take a month to deliver the shipment of salt.
“We’ve been going back and forth with the feds,” Simpson said during the interview. “This is the kind of stuff we’re dealing with. Even government, the federal government, gets in the way.”
New Jersey Democratic Senators Cory Booker and Bob Menendez have reached out to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the state Department of Transportation to resolve the matter quickly, but have yet to obtain a waiver. The state is slated for another round of icy winter weather Tuesday. Many cities and towns in northern New Jersey saw a foot or more of snow from last week’s nor’easter. Sussex County received 22 inches of snow. Many stretches of road remain coated in ice and slush. For now, the state may be stuck using the pickle juice as it waits for the federal government to cut through the government red tape.
This isn’t the first time New Jersey has turned to the briny pickle juice-like mixture as a quick way to melt snow. In 2011, Bergen County’s 230 plows and salting vehicles were loaded up with juice, which costs about 7 cents a gallon compared to $63 a ton for salt.
For its part, the acidic combo may actually be better for the environment as a way to de-ice the roads. A study by Marquette University shows that while salting snowy roads can cut down on accidents up to 88 percent, sodium chloride stays in the ground, seeping into streams and eating into cars and concrete.
EVERYBODY WANTS TO KEEP DRINKING
The drought-parched states of Georgia, Alabama and Florida are back at it — fighting for a slice of water rights in a decades-long water war that’s left all three thirsty for more. The 24-year dispute is emblematic of an increasingly common economic problem facing cities and states across the country – the demand for water quickly outpacing the supply as spikes in population soak up resources.
During the dispute, Alabama and Florida have argued metro Atlanta consumes more water than it should, leaving too little downstream for municipalities, farmers, business interests and endangered shellfish. They believe the amount of water legally available to the metro Atlanta area should be scaled back significantly.
Florida says Georgia’s water grab is cutting off the water flow the seafood industry in Apalachicola Bay needs to survive. Alabama says Georgia’s increased water consumption is placing an unfair economic burden on its residents.
The water fight was taken to the courts, and in June 2011 Atlanta won a big legal victory after a panel of judges reversed a decision that would have severely restricted access to the city’s water supply for nearly 3 million people. Almost immediately, Alabama and Florida asked the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider the ruling over water rights in the basin formed by the Chattahoochee, Flint and Apalachicola rivers. In 2011, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals also ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to work on a new water allocation plan for the region.
In October, Florida officials said their state needed immediate relief from the growing water consumption problem. “Generations of Florida families have relied upon these waters for their livelihood, but now risk losing their way of life if Georgia’s actions are not stopped,” Florida Governor Rick Scott told reporters after the state filed legal action last year.
Last week, attorneys for the state of Georgia asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay out of the latest legal drama, saying Florida was trying to sue “the wrong party, in the wrong court, and at the wrong time,” according to court documents.
The tristate fight has moved from the courts to Congress as lawmakers in Alabama and Florida have looked for ways to challenge Georgia’s water consumption. Senator Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., argued in a January letter to Senators Barbara Boxer and David Vitter, the chairman and ranking member of the Committee on Environmental & Public Works, that Atlanta-area water withdrawals are causing “substantial harm to the environment and downstream communities in Alabama and Florida.”
Sessions letter highlights key findings from hearings held last summer from water management officials from all three states and leaders from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers before a congressional committee.
He says because there is less water to generate electricity at the hydroelectric dams, “more expensive energy — perhaps produced by carbon fuels — will have to replace it.” He also says federal hydropower customers in his home state would pay lower rates for electricity if Atlanta-area interests paid appropriately for water “they actually withdraw.”
He also zeroes in on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, saying it has entered “but never enforces, water supply contracts with Atlanta-area interests and even allows Atlanta-area interests to withdraw water from Lake Lanier for just one-thousandth of a penny per gallon and to sell the same water to their respective customers for around 250 times that amount.”
Georgia’s water war isn’t limited to Florida and Alabama. Last year, lawmakers in Atlanta tried to renew efforts to tap into Tennessee’s water supply contesting the state’s border with its northern neighbor.
ISRAEL’S PRIME MINISTER RESPONDS TO THE THREAT OF A BOYCOTT
JERUSALEM – It is time Israel fought back against those who boycott the Jewish state, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday, dubbing them “anti-Semites.”
The comments come as concerns grow in Israel over a Palestinian-led movement of boycott, divestment and sanctions —known by its acronym, BDS. The boycott has been growing recently, mainly in Europe, where some businesses and pension funds have cut investments or trade with Israeli firms they say are connected to West Bank settlements.
Speaking to a group of visiting Jewish-American leaders, Netanyahu said it is time for Israel to “delegitimize the delegitimizers. In the past anti-Semites boycotted Jewish businesses and today they call for the boycott of the Jewish state, and by the way, only the Jewish state,” Netanyahu said. “I think that it is important that the boycotters be exposed for what they are, they are classical anti-Semites in modern garb,” Netanyahu said.
Many Israelis say the boycott has strong anti-Semitic connotations and is meant to delegitimize the Jewish state as a whole and not merely a pressure tactic against its policies toward the Palestinians.
For many Israelis, the boycott conjures up dark images of the Nazi boycott prior and during WWII when Jewish academics were kicked out of universities and Jewish businesses were vandalized and boycotted.
BDS activists say they promote different objectives, with some focusing on a boycott of the settlements and others saying everything Israeli must be shunned until there is a peace deal. BDS supporters argue that Israel will withdraw from war-won lands only if it has a price to pay. Israeli leaders dismiss such claims, pointing to their willingness to negotiate a land-for-peace deal with the Palestinians.
Netanyahu said Israeli is fighting BDS by exposing the boycotters and with its booming high-tech sector which is a big attraction for leaders and investors worldwide.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is hoping to get Palestinian leader Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to agree to a framework to guide negotiations for a permanent settlement to the long-running conflict. Talks began last summer with a nine-month target for an agreement. That timetable for a peace accommodation runs out at the end of April, and there has been little tangible sign of progress yet.
Kerry is currently in Abu Dhabi for talks with United Arab Emirates officials on Syria, Iran and the Mideast peace process. He will meet with the Palestinian leader in Paris on Wednesday.
After years of brushing off boycott threats as a tool of fringe extremists, Israel seems to have become genuinely worried in recent months. Israel’s finance minister Yair Lapid has said that the country could suffer economically from a costly boycott if peace talks with the Palestinians fail.
Associated Press writers Fabiola Sanchez and Andrew Rosati contributed to this report.
GAYS IMPRISONED IN SENEGAL
DAKAR, SENEGAL – Activists say the vice president of a Cameroonian gay rights organization was arrested after his name was included on a list of presumed homosexuals given to police. Yves Yomb, executive director of Alternatives-Cameroon, said Richard Kwa Bette was arrested Friday in Douala, the commercial capital. The list, he said, was prepared by a man arrested for theft.
Cameroon’s penal code calls for prison sentences of up to five years for homosexual acts. The country carries out more prosecutions of sexual minorities than any other in sub-Saharan Africa.
PRESIDENT OBAMA SETS NEW GREENHOUSE GAS STANDARDS
President Obama will order the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation to create and issue new fuel efficiency and greenhouse gas standards for trucks by the end of March 2016.
The President announced this in remarks Tuesday at a Safeway distribution center in Upper Marlboro, Maryland. White House officials say the new directive will build on a promise Obama made in his State of the Union address, and will cover both personal and commercial trucks. The order will also build on fuel efficiency and greenhouse gas standards issued by the administration in August 2011.
Under those standards, combination tractors, pickup trucks and vans, and vocational vehicles were required to reduce fuel consumption and emissions by between 10 and 20 percent. The White House claimed that the requirements would save a projected 530 million barrels of oil and save owners and operators more than $50 billion in fuel costs.
Obama will also call on Congress to end subsidies to oil and gas companies and create a fund for the research and development of so-called “advanced vehicle technologies,” which power vehicles that run on alternate fuels, such as hydrogen and natural gas, as well as electric cars.
The president will also propose a new $200 million tax credit for companies that invest in advanced vehicles and infrastructure, as well as an extension of tax credits for companies developing new biofuels.
.WHATEVER YOU BELIEVE ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE,
AMERICA CAN’T DO IT ALONE
Editor’s Note: The following subject is so important for people on both sides of the climate change issue to understand that I have included this excellently written analysis of what China is doing to the the world’s air. It is thorough and balanced, and it covers the ground like nothing else I have ever read on this subject. Ray
China is erecting huge industrial complexes in remote areas to convert coal to synthetic fuel that could make the air in its megacities cleaner. But the complexes use so much energy that the carbon footprint of the fuel is almost double that of conventional coal and oil, spelling disaster for earth’s climate, a growing chorus of scientists is warning.
Efforts by China to develop so-called “coal bases” in its far-flung regions have received scant attention beyond the trade press, but scientists watching the effort say it could cause climate damage that eclipses worldwide climate protection efforts.
The facilities, which resemble oil refineries, use coal to make liquid fuels, chemicals, power and “syngas,” which is like natural gas but extracted from coal. The fuels and electricity are then transported to China’s big cities to be burned in power plants, factories and cars.
Currently 16 coal base sites are being built and many are operational. One being constructed in Inner Mongolia will eventually occupy nearly 400 square miles—almost the size of the sprawling city of Los Angeles. It’s been growing bit by bit over a period of some 17 years with coal mines, power plants, power lines, pipelines, roads, rail tracks and all manner of chemical processing plants with their towers, smokestacks and tanks.
Driving China’s desire to create coal bases are its soaring energy demand, abundant coal resources, lack of inexpensive alternatives and the need to move coal power production out of its cities—which are already drowning in smog from dirty coal plants. Meanwhile, its energy-hungry economy is booming to meet insatiable demands of consumers in America and Europe for cheaply manufactured products.
By any measure, China’s coal base plan is the single largest fossil fuel development project in the world. So while more coal bases could mean cleaner air for many urban Chinese, scientists fear a nightmare scenario for global climate change.
By 2011, humans had added 531 billion tons of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, according to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the leading global body for assessing climate science. That figure means countries have already blown through more than half of the world’s “carbon budget”—or the maximum amount of carbon humans can spew into the air to keep warming below 2-degrees Celsius, the threshold that would trigger runaway warming.
Experts estimate that if China’s planned coal bases are built, the country’s emissions would likely hit 10 billion tons a year—putting it on track to consume the world’s remaining 349 billion tons by 2050.
“This is a major change in China,” said Robert Jackson, director of Duke University’s Center on Global Change, of the coal bases. “If they proceed, both water use and greenhouse gases would explode.”
Speeding 200 miles per hour on a bullet train over the crest of a hill toward Beijing, China’s air pollution dilemma becomes clear—as trees, farm buildings and power poles fade into a gray haze. It’s as if a heavy fog has filled the air. A young Chinese student riding the train on that August afternoon explains that it’s air pollution.
Particle-laden smog has been enveloping wide areas of China more often and reaching ever-higher levels due to growing use of energy as hundreds of millions of its citizens moved out of poverty. The smog kills 1.2 million Chinese prematurely each year, according to a World Bank estimate in 2013.
On the surface, the source is readily identifiable. “Too much coal,” exclaimed Natural Resources Defense Council scientist Fugiang YANG, waving his hand across his face. Fuqiang, senior adviser on energy, environment and climate change in NRDC’s Beijing Office, said China needs to move to cleaner forms of energy and greater energy efficiency to clean up its air and address climate change, rather than depending upon coal. But that’s easier said than done.
China produces 70 per cent of its electricity from coal, using it to make steel and concrete as it builds whole cities, and burns 47 per cent of all the coal that’s mined each year in the world.
“It’s hard to see that changing anytime soon,” said Barry Jones, general manager of the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute in Australia, an energy industry-funded organization that promotes CCS technology. He thinks that cleaning up coal by capturing and sequestering the carbon emissions ultimately is needed, yet admits efforts are only beginning. If all goes well, by some estimates, by 2020, China will be able to sequester about 10-20 million of the more than 8 billion tons of carbon dioxide it emits annually right nowapplicable.
The Worldwatch Institute estimates at least a third of those emissions stem from producing exports for the US and other nations as China increasingly serves as the world’s workshop. “Outsourcing has led to tremendous pollution in China,” said Steven J. Davis, University of California at Irvine professor of earth sciences. He’s been studying the amount of emissions attributed to exports produced in China since 2010.
CCS won’t put a dent in those greenhouse gas emissions, either, particularly now that China is moving to clean up its air in novel ways by using even more of the mineral Marco Polo marveled at when visiting ancient Cathay in 1292.
Far from its major population centers along the coastal plain, state-owned companies like Shenhua, the world’s largest coal company, are busy building huge coal bases to make the most of China’s most abundant energy resource. Several complexes, at varying stages of completion in Shanxi Province, Inner Mongolia and other inland areas, already are turning coal into more power, synthetic natural gas, gasoline, chemicals and fertilizer.
The process extracts these materials by heating up coal in the absence of oxygen so it turns into gases instead of burning. Those gases then are captured and used as chemical building blocks to make the other products. The problem is that it takes a lot of energy in the form of electricity or other means to heat up the coal. This combustion releases carbon dioxide to the air. Burning the products from the process—be it syngas, or liquid fuels—releases yet more of the greenhouse gases responsible for global warming. Researchers estimate the complete cycle releases almost twice the carbon to the air as burning the coal alone in a power plant.
Since beginning its planning in 2003, Shenhua says it’s brought on line “a large number of coal mines, coal chemicals, electric power, railway, and coal deep processing projects,” as well as a coal-to-methanol production plant.
In 2012, Shenhua broke ground on a plant to turn coal into liquids that can be used for a wide variety of products, including fuel and plastics. The project is so huge that engineers used the world’s largest crane to set in place the unit that’s to serve as the heart of the plant, a 2,155-ton Fischer-Tropsch synthesis reactor that’s as high as a 17-story building.
By 2020, Shenhua hopes to complete the base, which by then is planned to produce 30,000 MW of power, along with a constellation of products ranging from gasoline to chemicals. It’s to consume 100 million tons a year of coal from surrounding mines.
Ironically, the bases stand a decent chance of cleaning up dirty air in China’s coastal cities by moving coal-fired power production to remote inland areas, not to mention yielding synthetic gas to pipe to cities.
About the only thing that may stop the bases from being fully built is that they need large amounts of water in a water-tight land, according to Greenpeace activist Lifeng Fang in Beijing. He thinks that water represents the upper limit on further use of coal.
But Jackson, the director of Duke’s Center on Global Change, differs. He maintains China will merely move herders and farmers off already dry land in its interior and transfer their water rights to the coal industry, which produces more economic value than agriculture with the water. Already, the government is moving herders off their grazing land into cities in Inner Mongolia where conflicts have arisen.
“It’s increasingly tense,” he said, noting that violence has flared numerous times in the past three years as herders trying to stay on their land engage in confrontations with coal company employees charged with building the Ordos coal base.
Meanwhile, while water and ethnic conflicts may have slowed the coal bases, China’s National Development and Reform Commission last year approved China National Coal Company to begin working on a coal-to-chemicals plant at the Yulin coal base in Shanxi Province.
Also last year, the first major syngas plant in Datang, Inner Mongolia, began operating. It’s capable of producing 4 billion cubic meters of gas each year and is linked to Beijing through a new 267-mile-long pipeline. Like natural gas, syngas is much cleaner at the burner tip than coal.
For comparison, the bases already being built will emit more than three times as much carbon dioxide by 2020 when completed than fully developing the Canadian tar sands will loft into the atmosphere. The tar sands will add 420 million tons of carbon dioxide a year by then, according to the environmental organisation, while China’s coal bases in development will boost that nation’s emissions 1.4 billion tons annually by 2020.
Jackson believes Greenpeace’s assessment is right because of all the energy it takes to turn coal into syngas or liquid fuels. On a lifecycle basis, Jackson points out syngas emits up to 82 per cent more greenhouse gases than mining and burning coal in conventional power plants.
China has approved nine syngas plants, according to Chi-Jen Yang, a research scientist at the Duke center, who’s been tracking developments. Ultimately, 40 syngas plants are being planned, including five already approved at Ordos. If all are completed, they will release 110 billion tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere over 40 years, according to Chi-Jen, and they represent just a portion of the various coal processing facilities being planned and built on the coal bases and other scattered locations. That amount alone—110 billion tonnes—would represent almost a third of the carbon budget that’s remaining to all nations between now and 2050 if humanity is to avoid irreversible global warming, according to many scientists.
Meanwhile, coal-to-liquid technology is advancing, as evidenced by approvals for facilities in Ningdong, already under construction, and Yulin. Coal-to-liquids almost doubles emissions compared with using oil-based gasoline, according to Chi-Jen.
That’s why building out the coal bases will put China on the road to emitting 10 billion tons a year of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by 2030 and that’s even if the nation succeeds in meeting its goal of becoming 20 per cent more energy efficient per unit of economic output, explains David Fridley, a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who’s been studying Chinese energy use since the early 1980s.
Modeling studies that Fridley has worked on at LBNL show that under the most aggressive cleanup scenario, China’s carbon dioxide emissions will not peak until early in the 2020s. His projections don’t count the impact of the coal bases, but assume China instead will make a radical turn toward renewable energy. Currently, China is the No. 1 emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, pumping out 8.7 billion tons in 2011, according to the Energy Information Administration, compared to 5.5 billion tons by the US, the No. 2 emitter. It’s adding up.
“There’s no scenario we can conceive of that’s rational where coal gets backed out,”said Fridley of LBNL’s modeling projections for China’s energy future. “Coal is the foundation of their energy system.”
The US played a major role in turning China into the coal-fired workshop of the world. At the heart of that story are figures both familiar and beloved by American environmentalists, former President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore. It was Clinton who greased the skids through trade deals in the 1990s for the whole US economy to become dependent upon goods made in China with rock bottom wages for labor and cheap, dirty energy. Walk through any money-saving retail store today and read where products are made and most likely it’ will tell you in China.
Ironically, Clinton championed free trade while doing much to clean up the air in America. Clinton’s former US Trade Representative Mickey Kantor, who helped broker free trade deals with China, today admits that the US should have worked harder to include environmental conditions in the agreements. Meanwhile, while Clinton, Kantor and others worked to stoke up trade with China, Gore lectured the central government in Beijing on the need to control greenhouse gases. In 1997, he showed China’s leaders the hockey stick graph he later made famous in the movie “An Inconvenient Truth.” Toward any idea of developing climate change, China is very inconvenient.
William J. Kelly is co-author with Chip Jacobs of the forthcoming book The People’s Republic of Chemicals (Rare Bird Books). This article and the book have been supported by a grant from the Society of Environmental Journalists. Kelly also coauthored Smogtown: The Lung Burning History of Air Pollution in Los Angeles (Overlook Press) and is correspondent for California Current. He served as spokesperson and communications manager for the South Coast Air Quality Management District, the smog control agency for Los Angeles, from 1988 through I2001.
NO, IT’S NOT THE AVON LADY!
Ding g-dong, Capital One calling!
Credit card issuer Capital One isn’t shy about getting into customers’ faces. The company recently sent a contract update to cardholders that makes clear it can drop by any time it pleases. The update specifies that “we may contact you in any manner we choose” and that such contacts can include calls, emails, texts, faxes or a “personal visit.”
David Lazarus
As if that weren’t creepy enough, Cap One says these visits can be “at your home and at your place of employment.” The police need a court order to pull off something like that. But Cap One says it has the right to get up close and personal anytime, anywhere.
Rick Rofman, 71, of Van Nuys received the contract update the other day. He was spooked by the visitation rights Cap One was claiming for itself. “Even the Internal Revenue Service can’t visit you at home without an arrest warrant.”
Indeed, you’d think the 4th Amendment of the Constitution, which guards against unreasonable searches and seizures, would make this sort of thing verboten.
Apparently not. “It sounds really invasive, but I don’t think it’s a violation of your 4th Amendment rights,” said Daniel E. Kann, a Santa Clarita lawyer who specializes in illegal-search cases. He explained that the amendment applies primarily to searches and seizures by law enforcement, not civilians. A credit card company, in theory, could reserve the right to visit your home or office without a court order, Kann said.
But he emphasized that there are laws against harassment, not to mention stalking, and Cap One could be held accountable under such statutes if, say, it took to inviting itself over for dinner or hanging around your cubicle.
Incredibly, Cap One’s aggressiveness doesn’t stop with personal visits. The company’s contract update also includes this little road apple:
“We may modify or suppress caller ID and similar services and identify ourselves on these services in any manner we choose.” Now that’s just freaky. Cap One is saying it can trick you into picking up the phone by using what looks like a local number or masquerading as something it’s not, such as Save the Puppies or a similarly friendly-seeming bogus organization. This is known as spoofing, and it’s perfectly legal. The federal Truth in Caller ID Act makes it a crime to use a phony number or caller ID message to commit fraud or cause harm to others.
But it’s not against the law to engage in what courts have called “non-harmful spoofing,” which includes businesses wearing digital disguises to penetrate a consumer’s phone defenses.
Such corporate spoofing is employed primarily by telemarketers. It’s weird, to say the least, for this practice to be so publicly adopted by a major credit card issuer.
Emily Rusch, executive director of the California Public Interest Research Group, a consumer advocacy organization, said it’s especially troubling for Cap One to declare itself a spoofer as people grapple with recent security breaches involving Target, Neiman Marcus and other businesses. “Now more than ever, consumers need to be able to trust companies,” she said, “unless it’s to repossess something. “Capital One does not visit our cardholders, nor do we send debt collectors to their homes or work,” Girardo said.
let’s give Cap One the benefit of the doubt. Let’s accept that the company isn’t as menacing as it sounds. That raises the question of why Cap One is sending out this bizarre contract language in the first place rather than explaining in plain English, as Girardo did, what its true intentions are.
In the meantime, cardholders can make up their own minds. Do they want to believe the non-binding explanations of a company representative or the legally enforceable language that’s currently in their written contracts? It’s all in the cards.
Send your tips or feedback to david.lazarus@latimes.com
From a friend on the East Coast:
The Governor suggested that anyone traveling in the current weather conditions should ensure they have the following:
Shovel
Blankets or sleeping bag
Extra clothing including hat and gloves
24 hours worth of food
De-Icer
Rock Salt
Flashlight with spare batteries
Road Flares or Reflective Triangles
Full gas Can
First Aid Kit
Booster cables
I looked like a real idiot on the bus this morning.
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THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
Don’t let the best you have ever done
be the standard for the rest of your life.
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Tuesday morning edition ( includes Monday), February 19, 2014 CHRISTIAN NEWS FROM RAY