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Washington Okays Attack on Unarmed US Boat to Gaza

Stephen Zunes
Truthout
Fri, 01 Jul 2011 22:06 UTC
Image
© twitpic

The Obama administration appears to have given a green light to an Israeli attack on an unarmed flotilla carrying peace and human rights activists - including a vessel with 50 Americans on board - bound for the besieged Gaza Strip. At a press conference on June 24, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton criticized the flotilla organized by the Free Gaza Campaign by saying it would "provoke actions by entering into Israeli waters and creating a situation in which the Israelis have the right to defend themselves."

Clinton did not explain why a country had "the right to defend themselves" against ships which are clearly no threat. Not only have organizers of the flotilla gone to great steps to ensure are there no weapons on board, the only cargo bound for Gaza on the U.S. ship are letters of solidarity to the Palestinians in that besieged enclave who have suffered under devastating Israeli bombardments, a crippling blockade, and a right-wing Islamist government. Nor did Clinton explain why the State Department suddenly considers the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of the port of Gaza to be "Israeli waters," when the entire international community recognizes Israeli territorial waters as being well to the northeast of the ships' intended route.
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Dollar

US: Treasury Confirms Deadline for Raising Debt Limit

Christopher S. Rugaber
The Sacramento Bee
Fri, 01 Jul 2011 11:36 UTC
Image
© J. Scott Applewhite, File/AP Photo
FILE - In this June 28, 2011 file photo, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Ky. speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington. Congress has one month to raise the United States' borrowing limit or the government will default on its debt, the Treasury Department said Friday. Treasury officials confirmed the Aug. 2 deadline in a monthly update that assesses the nation's borrowing situation. The U.S. reached the $14.3 trillion limit in May. Higher revenue and accounting maneuvers have allowed the government to keep paying its bills in the interim.
Washington -- Congress has one month to raise the nation's borrowing limit or the government will default on its debt, the Treasury Department said Friday.

Treasury officials confirmed the Aug. 2 deadline in a monthly update that assesses the nation's borrowing situation. The United States reached the $14.3 trillion limit in May. Higher revenue and accounting maneuvers have allowed the government to keep paying its bills in the interim.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner urged Congress to raise the limit and "avoid the catastrophic economic and market consequences of a default crisis."

President Barack Obama and Congressional Republicans are engaged in tough negotiations over resolving the issue. Republicans are demanding deep spending cuts as a condition of increasing the limit. But Republicans will not support tax increases, which Democrats say must be part of any deal.
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Dollar

Since 2009, 88 Percent Of Income Growth Went To Corporate Profits, Just One Percent Went To Wages

Sean Savett
ThinkProgress
Thu, 30 Jun 2011 21:49 UTC
wages fat cat monopoly
© Unknown
After the longest recession since WWII, many Americans are still struggling while S&P 500 corporations are sitting on $800 billion in cash and making massive profits. Now, economists from Northeastern University have released a study that finds our sluggish economic recovery has almost solely benefited corporations. According to the study:
"Between the second quarter of 2009 and the fourth quarter of 2010, real national income in the U.S. increased by $528 billion. Pre-tax corporate profits by themselves had increased by $464 billion while aggregate real wages and salaries rose by only $7 billion or only .1%. Over this six quarter period, corporate profits captured 88% of the growth in real national income while aggregate wages and salaries accounted for only slightly more than 1% of the growth in real national income. ...The absence of any positive share of national income growth due to wages and salaries received by American workers during the current economic recovery is historically unprecedented."
The New York Times adds,
"According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, average real hourly earnings for all employees actually declined by 1.1 percent from June 2009, when the recovery began, to May 2011, the month for which the most recent earnings numbers are available."
So as average wages fall, and nearly 14 million people remain unemployed, America's economic recovery has almost entirely benefited corporations. This development adds another chapter to the decline of the middle class, whose incomes are shrinking and wages are stagnating. Last year, top executives' salaries increased 27 percent, while workers' salaries increased only 2 percent. At the moment, income inequality in America is the worst it's been since the 1920s, as the richest 1 percent make nearly 25 percent of the country's income.
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Stormtrooper

US Rejects Demand to Vacate Shamsi Base


Dawn.com
Thu, 30 Jun 2011 00:00 UTC
Image
© Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times
A Reaper drone is steered around the Kandahar air base in southern Afghanistan.
The US is rejecting demands from Pakistan that American personnel abandon a military base used by the CIA to stage drone strikes against militants, US officials told Reuters.

US personnel have not left the Shamsi air base and there is no plan for them to do so, said a US official familiar with the matter. "That base is neither vacated nor being vacated," the official said. The information was confirmed by a second US official.

On Wednesday, federal Minister for Defence Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar said that US had been asked to stop using the base for drone strikes and vacate it.

Relations between the two uneasy allies deteriorated after the May 2 raid by US SEALs in Abbottabad that killed Osama bin Laden. Wednesday's statement by Mr Mukhtar was the latest salvo.

"We have been talking to them (on the issue) for some time, but after May 2, we told them again," he told Reuters on Thursday. "When they (US forces) will not operate from there (Shamsi base), no drone attacks will be carried out."

Earlier, the Financial Times quoted Mr Mukhtar as saying that Pakistan had already stopped US drone flights from the air base. Despite the defence minister's statements, it was unclear what the situation at Shamsi is.
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Rocket

Pakistan Tells US Military to Leave 'Drone' Attack Base


Dawn.com
Wed, 29 Jun 2011 00:00 UTC
Image
© Reuters
“We have told them (US officials) to leave the air base,” national news agency APP quoted Pakistani Defence Minister Ahmed Mukhtar as telling a group of journalists in his office on Wednesday.
Pakistan told the United States to leave a remote desert air base reportedly used as a hub for covert CIA drone attacks, Defence Minister Ahmed Mukhtar was quoted by state media as saying Wednesday.

His remarks are the latest indication of Pakistan attempting to limit US activities since a clandestine American military raid killed Osama bin Laden on May 2 and plunged ties between the anti-terror allies into chaos.

"We have told them (US officials) to leave the air base," national news agency APP quoted Mukhtar as telling a group of journalists in his office.

Images said to be of US Predator drones at Shamsi have been published by Google Earth in the past. The air strip is 900 kilometres (560 miles) southwest of the capital Islamabad in Baluchistan province.

A US embassy spokeswoman told AFP there were no US military personnel at the Shamsi base.

American drone attacks on Taliban and Al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan's northwestern semi-autonomous tribal belt are hugely unpopular among a general public opposed to the government's alliance with Washington.
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Magic Hat

Fake photo fallout: Chinese officials embrace social media to explain mixup

Laura Rozen
Envoy
Fri, 01 Jul 2011 20:34 UTC
Image
© Huili Country Government
Huili officials hover over a a highway project in China's Sichuan province they are supposed to be inspecting.
One of the worst doctored photographs in Internet history? That's the emerging verdict on a clumsily altered photo of bureacrats in the sleepy county of Huili, in southwest China's Sichuan province. In an ill-fated PR stunt, the trio of area government officials are shown appearing to float over the surface of a road, casting nary a shadow in a bid to promote a local road construction project.

"The saga began on Monday when Huili's website published a picture showing, according to the accompanying story, three local officials inspecting a newly completed road construction project this month," the Guardian's Peter Walker reports.

Calls soon began flooding the county's offices, which quickly issued an apology and removed the image.
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Whistle

UK: Are strikes always bad, Mr Gove? Embarrassing Picture of Tory Minister When HE Joined the Picket Line

Rob Cooper
The Daily Mail
Thu, 30 Jun 2011 00:49 UTC
Image

Tory striker: Michael Gove (front, left with the placard) holds a sign saying 'NUJ Official Picket Line Don't Cross' as he joins in a walkout himself at 1989
He has urged people to break today's public sector strikes - but Conservative minister Michael Gove was once on the picket line himself.

The Education Secretary, who has repeatedly called for teachers to call off their industrial action, walked out while working on a regional newspaper in 1989.

He had called for a 'Mum's Army' of strike breakers to keep schools open today.
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Camera

US: Government sues Apollo 14 astronaut over lunar camera

Terry Baynes
Reuters
Fri, 01 Jul 2011 19:38 UTC
Image
© Unknown
Edgar Mitchell
New York - The U.S. government has sued a former NASA astronaut to recover a camera used to explore the moon's surface during the 1971 Apollo 14 mission after seeing it slated for sale in a New York auction.

The lawsuit, filed in Miami federal court on Wednesday, accuses Edgar Mitchell of illegally possessing the camera and attempting to sell it for profit.

In March, NASA learned that the British auction house Bonhams was planning to sell the camera at an upcoming Space History Sale, according to the suit.

The item was labeled "Movie Camera from the Lunar Surface" and billed as one of two cameras from the Apollo 14's lunar module Antares. The lot description said the item came "directly from the collection" of pilot Edgar Mitchell and had a pre-sale estimate of $60,000 to $80,000, the suit said.
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Bad Guys

Strauss-Kahn Twist May Change Stakes in France

Catherine Bremer
Reuters
Fri, 01 Jul 2011 10:00 UTC
Image
© AP Photo/Allan Tannenbaum
Former IMF leader Dominique Strauss-Kahn, right, appears at his arraignment on charges of sexually assaulting a Manhattan hotel maid, at State Supreme Court in New York. Attorney William Taylor is at left. A person familiar with the case says former International Monetary Fund Leader Dominique Strauss-Kahn will have his bail substantially reduced in his sexual assault case because of issues with his accuser's credibility.
Paris - News that the sex assault case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn could collapse hit France like a thunderbolt on Friday, raising prospects of his return to French politics, though probably not to the 2012 presidential race.

Socialists, who saw Strauss-Kahn as their best chance of winning power after years in opposition until his arrest in May, rejoiced at news that prosecutors in New York now doubt the credibility of the hotel maid who alleged he tried to rape her.

The dramatic twist revived anger among his supporters over the way the former IMF chief was paraded handcuffed and unshaven by U.S. authorities, and locked up in the grim Rikers Island prison, before having a chance to defend himself.

But others in France said that even if his name were cleared, too much damage may have been done to Strauss-Kahn's reputation for him to be electable, although he could return gradually to politics and take a lesser post in government.

Comment: For more information concerning the Strauss-Kahn situation, see this Sott - Best of the Web link:

Strauss-Kahn simply had to be eliminated - The Amerikan Police State Strides Forward

      Read More...
Vader

Russia to deploy 2 army brigades in Arctic


Associated Press
Fri, 01 Jul 2011 16:14 UTC
Moscow - Russia's defense minister says the military will deploy two army brigades to help protect the nation's interests in the Arctic.

Anatoly Serdyukov says his ministry is working out specifics, such as troops numbers, weapons and bases, but a brigade includes a few thousand soldiers.

Serdyukov was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying Friday the brigades could be based in Murmansk, Arkhangelsk or other areas.

Russia, the U.S., Canada, Denmark and Norway have been trying to assert jurisdiction over parts of the Arctic, believed to hold up to a quarter of the Earth's undiscovered oil and gas.

On Thursday, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Russia "remains open for dialogue" with its polar neighbors, but will "strongly and persistently" defend its interests in the region.
      Read More...
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