Professor Cornel West, the radio personality and scholar, on Friday lashed out at organizers of Wednesday’s 50th-anniversary commemoration of the March on Washington, saying that it offered scant celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. and his accomplishments, according to Mediaite.
He said the event merely highlighted “the coronation of the bona fide house Negro of the Barack Obama plantation, our dear brother Al Sharpton.”
West lamented that black leadership has become “so sold-out” so as not to have the courage to be a “bull in the china shop,” break rank, and talk about “racism and poverty”.
This is not the first time West has referred to Sharpton as being “on the Obama plantation.” The radio host made the same claim in July when he felt Sharpton did not advocate hard enough for a Department of Justice “civil rights” prosecution against the recently-acquitted George Zimmerman.
Further, he said, the event was unremarkable because black leaders are too fearful to speak out against the nation’s first black president.
Early in the radio show “Smiley and West,” West said of the previous day’s commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington, “We saw of course the coronation of the bonafide house negro of the Obama plantation, our dear brother Al Sharpton, supported by the Michael Dysons and others who’ve really prostituted themselves intellectually in a very ugly and vicious way”.
[Transcript]CORNEL WEST: Well, on the one hand as you can imagine, that was a beautiful thing. I was there in D.C. to see the magnificent expression of, like, faces and sparkling eyes of everyday people of all colors, hungry, thirsty for justice, hungry, thirsty for truth. Then you turn to so many of the major organizers and major speakers at the march – not too much truth. Not too much talk about justice. Mainly talking about voting rights, and every once in a while you see a vague reference to jobs.
Now, they had some wonderful speakers earlier in the day, but most of the country didn’t get a chance to hear them. But for the most part, there was, Brother Martin himself, I think, would’ve been turning over in his grave. He wants people to talk about Wall Street criminality, he wants people to talk about war crimes, or drones dropping bombs on innocent people. He wants people talking about the new Jim Crow and the privatization of education, and the various ways in which the well to do, the oligarchs and plutocrats are getting away with murder. You didn’t hear that whatsoever. You not only got a tame Martin Luther King Jr., but a real sense in which who he really was at the end of his life hardly surfaced at all.
And we saw of course the coronation of the bonafide house negro of the Obama plantation, our dear brother Al Sharpton supported by the Michael Dysons and others who’ve really prostituted themselves intellectually in a very ugly and vicious way.
Malaysia and Washington are looking to expand its defence collaboration in various areas including regional and international security, trading, military technologies and exchanging information, said Home Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Tun Hussein.
The two countries also reaffirmed their commitment to continue conducting training for humanitarian efforts, disaster relief and peacekeeping, and counter trans-national threats, piracy as well as terrorism, he said after meeting US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel here yesterday.
“The relationship between the two countries is strong, but with the visit, we believe that it has added value.
“With the strategic and unfolding landscape, it is important for us to have friends that appreciate our concern, with the ability to cooperate and share with us at many levels,” he told a joint press conference at the “US–South East Asia Ties” programme organised by the Malaysian Institute of Defence and Security (Midas), here yesterday.
Hagel said the United States would also conduct more than 75 activities this year with the armed forces, including military exchanges and visits, designed to boost capabilities and help the armed forces become more professional and flexible.
“Malaysia has always been a good friend and has played an impressive role in contributing towards regional and global security,” he said. – thestar.com
Libertarian extraordinaire John Stossel asks the right questions. He doesn’t always arrive at the right answers.The questions Mr. Stossel poses on his Fox-Business TV show, small mercies, have little to do with the mindless things that busy Big Media.
For a couple of weeks, for example, the impetus among the mindless has been to provide the priapic Anthony Wiener with the boost his worthless life and life’s work have clearly needed. The sexting antics of this engorged organism—a New-York City mayoral candidate and once a Democratic congressman—have allowed Major Media to carry out its mission: knocking down one straw man (Weiner) to conceal the catastrophes of another (Obama).
Back to Stossel. To the question of “Are We Rome?” posed on the July 18 segment of his eponymous show, Mr. Stossel replied, “Not yet.” Wrong. Mr. Stossel takes comfort in the fact that “we don’t kill people for sport. When we go to war, misguided or not, we don’t conquer or plunder. And when we win, we usually leave.”
The popular host is utterly mistaken—just as he was wrong to summarily dismiss the threat to liberty of the “National Security Administration tracking patterns in our emails and phone calls,” to quote his nonchalant column.
Who is Stossel kidding? American assassins hunt down and kill very many innocents abroad by drone. Unmanned aerial U.S. “drones have killed thousands, many of them civilians,” attests Gabor Rona of Human Rights First. And talk about a Roman spectacle! Targeted killing is even a bit of a sport—so much so that the New Rome has established a “new medal that honors drone pilots and computer experts” for their long-distance killing prowess. It was to be called “The Distinguished Warfare Medal.”
Rome’s rulers were not nearly as efficient as the US is at killing. Uncle Sam has industrialized and streamlined war-time slaughter. No longer do thousands of legionnaires lay siege to a city with attack catapults; one pilot flattens it with a single “daisy cutter” (and few qualms).
Compare the demographic and economic indices of countries the US has invaded—for their own good, of course, but without their consent—before and after those faith-based initiatives. You’ll get a better idea of the carnage than John Stossel’s optimism allows.
Libya is no longer. Ditto Iraq. Afghanistan is not doing much better since Rome set up camp there.
The Comitatus—”the sprawling apparatus that encompasses the ministries of government, the lawyers, the diplomats, the adjutants, the messengers, the interpreters, the intellectuals”—refused to keep count of the casualties in the Iraq war. Thus are the losses variously estimated to run from 110,600 violent deaths (Associated Press), to 601,027 (a Lancet survey), and likely even 1,033,000 (Opinion Research Business survey).
Likewise has “Operation Enduring Freedom” in Afghanistan, still ongoing, been the direct and indirect cause of the deaths and displacement of many thousands of Afghan civilians. (Wikipedia has tallied the “deaths caused by Coalition forces in Libya.”)
Again, contrary to Stossel’s assertion, the latter-day Rome has mechanized the warfare-state’s killing capabilities and has refined its propaganda wing to an art—so fine an art that John Stossel has bought it hook, line, and sinker.
Nobody attempting to tackle the “Are We Rome?” vexation should get away with a failure to mention Cullen Murphy’s book by that name. This question Murphy has asked and answered. Superbly so.
Murphy’s “Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of Rome” draws the unflattering parallels between the imperial rule of ancient Rome and that of modern America, down to the contemporary “musicians” [like Beyoncé and Jay-Z], “the courtesans, diviners, buffoons [clearly categories are not mutually exclusive] … the people who taste the emperor’s food before he himself does … the core groups of bureaucrats and toadies who function within the nimbus of great power.”
The domain name “USA.gov.”, if you will.
Lest you forget, the D.C. hood is also home to your favorite, oh-so gritty media personalities, who gather inside or near the Bubble to reap “the benefits of being at the center of the Imperium.” This means rocking the ship of state just enough to retain street cred with “the folks.”
Ultimately, “All life in Washington today derives … from the capital’s own version of Rome’s annona — the continuous infusion not of grain and olive oil but of tax revenue and borrowed money,” avers Murphy. “Instead of ships and barges there are banks, 10,000 of them designated for this purpose, which funnel the nation’s tax payments to the city. This ‘never-ending flow of revenue creates a broad level of affluence that has no real counterpart anywhere in America. Washington simply doesn’t look like the rest of America.” But its residents “fail to view this as bizarre.”
The rest of the country doesn’t much flinch about the fleecing. The people of the provinces are programmed to go on pilgrimages to D.C., and genuflect to their opulent oppressors. The rest exist merely to serve the masters of modern Rome. Thanks to the graft flowing into the Beltway, the average income in and around Washington D.C. is $85,189 compared to $49,777 for the hinterland, where unemployment rates are almost double.
Unless the pauperized hoi polloi are willing to do something drastic, like repeal the “annona”—the number of that beast is 16: the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution—we’ll continue to live as the Beltway’s bitches.
Yet another of Mr. Stossel’s less piercing insights consists in objecting “to President Obama’s $100 million dollar [African] trip,” but consoling himself that “The Romans were worse”: “Nero traveled with 1,000 carriages.”
By Murphy’s telling, when on-the-go, “just one element of the president’s U.S. security detail [is] a thousand strong”! It entails Air Force cargo planes which bring helicopters, Secret Service SUVs, and the official presidential limousine (plus the official decoy limousine). Along for the ride are ground forces, U.S. Naval vessels, with surface-to-air missiles as backup.
When the modern-day Xerxes is on the move, he travels with more auxiliaries than Nero, bringing smaller countries to a standstill.
There’s nothing Spartan or beneficent about the latter-day Rome’s rule.
Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN), whose founder Jeff Bezos is purchasing the Washington Post (WPO), ranks among the biggest spenders among high-technology companies seeking to influence the work of the federal government.
Former U.S. Senators Trent Lott, a Mississippi Republican, and John Breaux, a Louisiana Democrat, are among those working for Seattle-based Amazon, which spent $1.7 million on lobbying from January through June, ninth highest among high-tech companies, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based research group that tracks lobbying.
The company weighed in on issues with Congress, the Commerce Department and the Federal Trade Commission on matters such as Internet sales taxes and privacy, patent laws, cybersecurity and online wine sales, Senate filings show.
“They have a huge number of issues before the federal government and now he’s bought the hometown paper for covering those politicians,” said Bill Allison, editorial director for the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington-based watchdog group. “There’s always a concern you’re going to have a conflict when you have wealthy publisher. Given all of Amazon’s issues, it’s hard to see where Bezos won’t have a conflict.”
Ethics specialist Bob Steele agrees.
“There are certainly competing loyalties,” said Steele, director of the Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. “If he handles it very well, it’s possible to manage those competing loyalties, but it’s also possible for competing loyalties to turn into conflicts of interest that could erode the integrity of his journalistic obligations.”
Like other high-tech companies, Amazon has increased its lobbying spending. The company’s 2013 totals for the first six months of the year are 31 percent higher than the $1.3 million spent during the same period a year earlier. In 2000, when the company first reported it was lobbying the federal government, it spent $246,000 during the first six months.
Amazon’s team of lobbyists also includes former Assistant Treasury Secretary Jonathan Talisman, who served in the Clinton administration; Elizabeth Frazee, former aide to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, a Virginia Republican; and Holly Fechner, former counsel to the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
Bezos, chief executive officer of Amazon, is purchasing the Post on his own, paying $250 million to the Washington Post Co., for a newspaper which has been held by the family of Post CEO Donald Graham since 1933.
Bezos must consider the reputation of the Post going forward as he acquires a newspaper at the heart of reporting on and editorializing about Washington’s issues. Kelly McBride, an ethics specialist at the Poynter Institute, a St. Petersburg, Florida-based journalism training organization, says Bezos would undercut the value of his purchase if he used the Post to advocate for his business interests.
“He will have to create — and I have no doubt that he will — a standard of independence and transparency in his newsroom,” McBride said. “It doesn’t make any business sense for it to become a mouthpiece. It makes business sense to do the right thing.” – Bloomberg
Seventeen lawmakers from the European Parliament have called on President Barack Obama to put an end to the persecution of US soldier Bradley Manning accused of aiding the enemy after he handed over a bunch of sensitive military documents to the WikiLeaks website.
In an open letter to President Obama and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, the group of seventeen praised Manning for shedding light on “evidence of human rights abuses and apparent war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
“We hereby urge you to end the persecution of Bradley Manning, a young gay man who has been imprisoned for over three years, including ten months in solitary confinement, under conditions that the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan Mendez deemed ‘cruel and abusive.’ Bradley Manning has already suffered too much, and he should be freed as soon as humanly possible,” MEPs from Spain, France, Sweden, Germany, Portugal, Ireland, and Ukraine wrote.
The lawmakers specifically stressed that the “aiding the enemy” offense thrown at him by the US court martial would set a terrible precedent.
“To consider releasing information about war crimes to the public to be ‘aiding the enemy’ would be a terrible setback for the defense of Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law worldwide,” they underscored.
“Army prosecutors closed their arguments in the case without having provided any real evidence that Bradley Manning aided the enemy, or that he intended to do so,” they said.
Army Pfc. Bradley Manning faces a potential life sentence for passing hundreds of thousands of classified military and diplomatic cables to the transparency website WikiLeaks, which exposed America’s crimes in its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and further abuses around the world.
The military judge in Manning’s trial is expected to deliver a final verdict today, July 30. The sentencing stage of the trial is expected to run for several weeks in August.
Manning faces life imprisonment if found guilty
The sentence a US court will pass upon Wikileaks informant Private Bradley Manning will show what fugitive former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden would get should he return to his country, a senior Russian lawmaker Alexei Pushkov said.
“When the sentence is passed upon Manning for handing files to the Wikileaks website, it would be clear what would await Snowden if he returned to the United States,” Alexei Pushkov, the head of the Russian lower house’s international committee, said on Twitter on Monday.
Snowden, who is wanted by the United States for leaking classified data about the US National Security Agency’s surveillance programs, formally requested temporary asylum in Russia on July 16. Washington has repeatedly called on Moscow to reject Snowden’s request for asylum and send him back to the United States to stand trial on charges of espionage and theft. – Voice of Russia, RIA, RT, Express Tribune, TASS, Scoop
Amitai Etzioni has raised an important question: “Who authorized preparations for war with China?” Etzioni says that the war plan is not the sort of contingency plan that might be on hand for an improbable event. Etzioni also reports that the Pentagon’s war plan was not ordered by, and has not been reviewed by, US civilian authorities. We are confronted with a neoconized US military out of control endangering Americans and the rest of the world.
Etzioni is correct that this is a momentous decision made by a neoconized military. China is obviously aware that Washington is preparing for war with China. If the Yale Journal knows it, China knows it. If the Chinese government is realistic, the government is aware that Washington is planning a pre-emptive nuclear attack against China. No other kind of war makes any sense from Washington’s standpoint. The “superpower” was never able to occupy Baghdad, and after 11 years of war has been defeated in Afghanistan by a few thousand lightly armed Taliban. It would be curtains for Washington to get into a conventional war with China.
When China was a primitive third world country, it fought the US military to a stalemate in Korea. Today China has the world’s second largest economy and is rapidly overtaking the failing US economy destroyed by jobs offshoring, bankster fraud, and corporate and congressional treason.
The Pentagon’s war plan for China is called “AirSea Battle.” The plan describes itself as “interoperable air and naval forces that can execute networked, integrated attacks-in-depth to disrupt, destroy, and defeat enemy anti-access area denial capabilities.”
Yes, what does that mean? It means many billions of dollars of more profits for the military/security complex while the 99 percent are ground under the boot. It is also clear that this nonsensical jargon cannot defeat a Chinese army. But this kind of saber-rattling can lead to war, and if the Washington morons get a war going, the only way Washington can prevail is with nuclear weapons. The radiation, of course, will kill Americans and most of the rest of the world as well.
Nuclear war is on Washington’s agenda. The rise of the Neocon Nazis has negated the nuclear disarmament agreements that Reagan and Gorbachev made. The extraordinary, mainly truthful 2012 book, The Untold History of the United States by Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, describes the post-Reagan breakout of preemptive nuclear attack as Washington’s first option.
During the Cold War nuclear weapons had a defensive purpose. The purpose was to prevent nuclear war by the US and USSR each having sufficient retaliatory power to ensure “mutually assured destruction.” MAD, as it was known, meant that nuclear weapons had no offensive advantage for either side.
The Soviet collapse and China’s focus on its economy instead of its military have resulted in Washington’s advantage in nuclear weaponry that, according to two US Dr. Strangeglove characters, Keir Lieber and Daryl Press, gives Washington first-strike capability. Lieber and Press write that the “precipitous decline of Russia’s arsenal, and the glacial pace of modernization of China’s nuclear forces,” have created a situation in which neither Russia nor China could retaliate to Washington’s first strike.
The Pentagon’s “AirSea Battle” and Lieber and Press’ article in Foreign Affairs have informed China and Russia that Washington is contemplating pre-emptive nuclear attack on both countries. To ensure Russia’s inability to retaliate, Washington is placing anti-ballistic missiles on Russia’s borders in violation of the US-USSR agreement.
Because the American press is a corrupt government propaganda ministry, the American people have no idea that neoconized Washington is planning nuclear war. Americans are no more aware of this than they are of former President Jimmy Carter’s recent statement, reported only in Germany, that the United States no longer has a functioning democracy.
The possibility that the United States would initiate nuclear war was given reality eleven years ago when President George W. Bush, at the urging of Dick Cheney and the neocons that dominated his regime, signed off on the 2002 Nuclear Posture Review.
This neocon document, signed off on by America’s most moronic president, resulted in consternation and condemnation from the rest of the world and launched a new arms race. Russian President Putin immediately announced that Russia would spend all necessary sums to maintain Russia’s retaliatory nuclear capability. The Chinese displayed their prowess by knocking a satellite out of space with a missile. The mayor of Hiroshima, recipient city of a vast American war crime, stated: “The nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the central international agreement guiding the elimination of nuclear weapons, is on the verge of collapse. The chief cause is US nuclear policy that, by openly declaring the possibility of a pre-emptive nuclear first strike and calling for resumed research into mini-nukes and other so-called ‘useable nuclear weapons,’ appears to worship nuclear weapons as God.”
The Neocons do not accept any accountability whatsoever to international law, to human rights, to the Geneva Conventions, or to any statutory law.
The post World War II wars originate in the so-called “free world”. Other countries do not have imperial expansionary ambitions. The Chinese government has not seized Taiwan, which China could do at will. The Russian government has not seized former constituent parts of Russia, such as Georgia, which, provoked by Washington to launch an attack, was instantly overwhelmed by the Russian Army. Putin could have hung Washington’s Georgian puppet and reincorporated Georgia into Russia, where it resided for several centuries and where many believe it belongs.
For the past 68 years, most military aggression can be sourced to the “superpower”.Washington has drafted a war plan based on nuclear first strike, a direct threat to life on earth.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy under Ronald Reagan and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal.
China on Monday joined calls for Washington to provide explanations following disclosures of National Security Agency (NSA) programmes, which collect millions of telephone records and track foreign internet activity on US networks.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told reporters that Washington needs to heed international concerns expressed since the programmes were made public earlier this month by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
Officials and lawmakers in Germany and other countries are already pressing Washington for information about the collection of information that might affect their citizens’ privacy.
“We think that the United States should regard seriously the concerns and demands of the global community and people from all countries and furnish the global community with a necessary explanation,” Hua said at a regularly scheduled briefing.
Snowden flew to the Chinese autonomous region of Hong Kong on May 20 and is believed to still be there, though in hiding at an unknown location. China hasn’t said whether it would cooperate with any US demands for his extradition, and Hong Kong’s Western-style legal system that is distinct from that on the Chinese mainland allows opportunities for him to appeal.
US officials have defended the surveillance programmes as essential to disrupting terrorist plots.
Former vice-president Dick Cheney said on Sunday that he was “very, very worried” that Snowden would pass on sensitive information to China in return for immunity or sanctuary.
Asked whether Snowden was a Chinese spy or co-operating with Beijing, Hua answered, “This is complete nonsense.”
Max Keiser called Cheney out for being duplicitous as he was instrumental in selling American military equipment to China.
Addressing the backlash against him in the US, Snowden said much of it was predictable. He said: “It’s important to bear in mind I’m being called a traitor by men like former vice president Dick Cheney. This is a man who gave us the warrantless wiretapping scheme as a kind of atrocity warm-up on the way to deceitfully engineering a conflict that has killed over 4,400 and maimed nearly 32,000 Americans, as well as leaving over 100,000 Iraqis dead. Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American.”– Sapa-AP
Officials in Washington and around the world are bracing for the death of longtime civil rights leader and former South African President Nelson Mandela, who is hospitalized again in serious condition for a lung condition. His aides have asked for prayers.
“It looks bad,” said one U.S. official who added: “Washington is keeping a close eye on the former leader and civil rights hero.”
Expectations are that President Obama and possibly former Presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush would attend a funeral. No travel plans have been made, however.
Mandela, in prison for 27 years before being freed and eventually winning the presidency, has been in a Pretoria hospital since Saturday, his fourth hospital trip for lung ailments. On Saturday, a government spokesman said Mandela’s condition had “deteriorated.” On Monday, President Jacob Zuma said “his condition is unchanged.”
World leaders were shaken when Zuma on Saturday appealed for prayers and Mandela’s wife, children’s rights activist Graca Machel, canceled a speech in Britain to remain by his side.
News reports noted that comments from South African officials have been suggesting that Mandela is near death. Jackson Mthembu, spokesman for the African National Congress, told Sky News that the party was “prepared for the worst.” Even Mandela’s estranged wife Winnie visited him.
Back in March, there was another health scare for Mandela, but he recovered. He contracted tuberculosis while he was in jail for fighting apartheid. He was freed in 1990 and was elected president four years later. He helped to heal the years of segregation.
Obama is planning a trip to Africa in early July with stops in South Africa. Michelle Obama visited Mandela two years ago. On Tuesday, White House spokesman Jay Carney said the president wished Mandela a “speedy recovery.” – The Examiner
South African Jews and Muslims meet at the South African ambassador's residence in Washington
Partnership between Jews and Muslims in South Africa flourished when both communities joined forces in the struggle to end the apartheid regime. But as the common cause uniting them was resolved in the early 1990s, Jews and Muslims, both minorities in South Africa, grew apart and allowed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to become a wedge issue and a source of ongoing tension.
Now, leaders of the two communities are in Washington are trying to find ways, thousands of miles away from their homeland, to rebuild the bridges.
“The greatest challenge we’ve encountered is South Africa,” said Rabbi Marc Schneier, who is the founder and president of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, the organization that put together the joint mission of Muslim and Jewish leaders to the United States. This challenge, which he sees as being more difficult than in other parts of the world in which the group has been trying to promote interfaith dialogue, is made up of a community of 70,000 Jews and a Muslim population 10 times its size, both of which have been far behind the United States in terms of interfaith cooperation. The reason, leaders of both communities agree, has to do more with the Middle East than with relations on the ground in Africa.
“Obviously, Israel is a huge issue,” said Rabbi Ron Hendler, who represented South Africa’s chief rabbi in the mission to Washington. “Many in the Muslim community feel very, very strongly about the Israeli-Palestinian issue, and many in the Jewish community are very Zionist.”
Sitting around a breakfast table at the residence of Ebrahim Rasool, South Africa’s ambassador to the U.S. and one the country’s leading Muslim activists, leaders of the two communities expressed their eagerness to move closer. Rasool, who co-founded the Call of Islam, a Muslim organization formed to fight apartheid, told the Forward that he would like to see the discussion about Jewish-Muslim relations begin not in the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, but rather in 1492, when Christians expelled Jews and Muslims from Spain, a place in which both communities flourished together. Like other activists, Rasool lamented the break in Muslim-Jewish cooperation once South Africa transitioned beyond its racist past. “We all cooperated in fighting apartheid. Our humanity forced us to reach our common values,” he said, “but as soon as that evil was pushed down, we allowed ourselves to retreat to the issue of Israel-Palestine.”
Speaking to two dozens activists gathered at his home, Rasool said that in order to build bridges, both communities need to “divest from the exclusive victimhood.” He quoted South African leader Nelson Mandela, who “knew that victims can’t make peace.”
In practical terms, organizers hope the short trip to Washington can inspire South African Jews and Muslims to follow some of the models set in the United States for interfaith dialogue, including the idea of twinning synagogues and mosques, the flagship program of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding.
The organization has long sought to spread the idea of interfaith relations beyond the United States and has already conducted programs in Europe and Latin America. This mission, which alongside delegates from South Africa also included representatives from Australia and from New Zealand, is the first attempt to reach out to Jews and Muslims in the Southern Hemisphere.
“South Africa is such a deeply prejudiced society,” said David Jacobson, executive director of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies, the community’s umbrella organization. But it is this deep divide that gave participants hope that just as South Africa overcame its racial tensions, it can build bridges between Jews and Muslims. “If we can do it in South Africa, we can be a beacon to the world,” Jacobson said. – Jewish Daily Forward
They’re supposed to be the cream of the crop, going to Washington to protect the newly elected American president and represent Phoenix, Arizona.
But the police association said the Phoenix Police Department used race to determine who’s going – and that’s not all CBS 5 News, a local TV channel has learned.
One of the officers who’s set to pack up and head to Washington when we elect a new president is on the Brady List – a compilation of officers whose honesty and integrity is in question.
“I couldn’t believe it, because we sent officers back four years ago and that was done on seniority,” said William Buividas with the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association, or PLEA.
The Phoenix Police Department hand-picked a group of 40 or so officers to go, but the way they did so has PLEA up in arms.
“In this case the department decided to use ethnic and gender as a basis for selection,” Buividas said.
He showed CBS 5 News a group of officers from one division who were chosen. Buividas said several officers were passed up despite their seniority.
“The two alternates have seniority, are senior to every person who’s going on the list,” Buividas said.
He also showed CBS 5 News a string of emails with the department in which they admitted to using race, gender and ethnicity in their selection process, saying it was the expressed desire of the police chief.
“Why somebody with very little seniority gets to go but somebody with 20, 25 years on gets passed over because they’re the wrong color,” Buividas said.
But that’s not all. In this sample we found one officer, Diana Pineda, is on the Brady List. The Brady List is a group of officers within each department whose integrity has been called into question. CBS 5 News paid a visit to Pineda and asked her why she thought she was chosen to go to the capital.
“Oh, I have no idea,” Pineda told us.
Pineda is on the list stemming from an incident back in 2007. We asked her what happened.
“You know what? I can’t really talk right now, but why don’t you guys come back,” she said.
But when we returned, no one answered the door.
PLEA has filed a grievance but so far no changes have been made. We reached out to police for an interview, but they declined saying because they’re in the grievance process it would be inappropriate for them to comment.
Washington said it was deploying forces to cope with violence in as many as 18 different locations as deadly Muslim anger spreads over a US-made movie that mocks Islam.
Two US marines were killed in Afghanistan when insurgents armed with guns and rockets stormed a heavily fortified air base late on Friday in an attack that the Taliban militia said was to avenge the film.
The attack on Camp Bastion in Helmand province, which continued until Saturday morning, was a major security breach at a base where Britain’s Prince Harry is stationed and has been the target of specific death threats.
It came after at least six protesters died in Egypt, Tunisia, Lebanon and Sudan on Friday as local police battled to defend American missions from mobs of stone-throwers.
Symbols of US influence in cities across the Muslim world came under attack — embassies and schools as well as fast food chains — as protesters vented their fury at the low-budget American-made YouTube film, “Innocence of Muslims”.
US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta said Washington was configuring its forces to be able to cope with widespread violence following its deployment of Marine counter-terrorism units to Libya and Yemen and its stationing of two destroyers off the North African coast.
“We have to be prepared in the event that these demonstrations get out of control,” Panetta told Foreign Policy magazine.
He did not offer any specifics. But the magazine said that the Pentagon was discussing, but had not yet decided, whether to send a third platoon of 50 specially trained Marines to protect the US embassy in Khartoum.
Guards on the roof of the embassy fired warning shots on Friday as the compound was breached by protesters waving Islamic banners, after earlier ransacking parts of the British and German missions in the Sudanese capital.
The US embassy compounds in Egypt and Yemen have also been breached in the past week, and on Tuesday the US ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed when a mob torched the consulate in Benghazi.
Panetta said Friday that it was still too early to say exactly what happened in Benghazi where there have been suggestions that Al-Qaeda sympathisers rather than angry Muslim protesters may have been responsible.
“It’s something that’s under assessment and under investigation, to determine just exactly what happened here,” he said.
The assault on the consulate came on the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States and the head of Libya’s national assembly, Mohammed al-Megaryef, on Friday blamed Al-Qaeda as he laid a bouquet of flowers in front of the devastated mission.
Protests spread across continents
In Friday night’s attack in Afghanistan, the assailants managed to penetrate the air base and damaged several aircraft although military spokesman Major Adam Wojack declined to say what type or how many.
Wojack said 18 insurgents were killed — including a suicide bomber. Prince Harry was never in danger, officials confirmed.
A Taliban spokesman said the attack was to avenge the YouTube movie.
“Last night, a number of mujahedeen fighters have carried out suicide attacks on Camp Bastion of Helmand in revenge for the insulting movie by the Americans,” spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi told AFP by telephone.
Britain’s Ministry of Defence said in June that the massive base, spread over several square kilometres (miles) of desert, is home to more than 28,000 people and the attack raised serious questions about security.
Police in Sydney fired pepper spray to contain protesters trying to enter the building housing the US consulate on Saturday, as Australia became the the latest focus of disturbances.
Bottles, shoes and other objects were hurled during the clashes with police which resulted in eight arrests, with six police officers injured as the unexpected protest brought parts of the city to a standstill.
Shoppers looked on in surprise as protesters, including children, shouted “Down, down USA” and waved banners such as “Behead all those who insult the prophet”.
Hundreds also demonstrated in Indonesia and the Maldives.
In Somalia, the Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab militia, which controls large swathes of the country called on Muslims to launch revenge attacks on Western targets.
“The Shebab mujahedeen are urging people of Somalia to show their love for Islam and particularly to our Prophet Mohammed by making attacks against the West,” Shebab spokesman Ali Mohamud Rage told AFP by telephone.
US President Barack Obama urged Americans not to be disheartened by images of anti-American violence in the Islamic world, expressing confidence that the ideals of freedom America stands for would ultimately prevail.
“I know the images on our televisions are disturbing,” Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address. “But let us never forget that for every angry mob, there are millions who yearn for the freedom, and dignity, and hope that our flag represents.”
Obama said his administration was doing everything it could to protect Americans serving abroad.
“We are in contact with governments around the globe, to strengthen our cooperation, and underscore that every nation has a responsibility to help us protect our people,” he said. – AFP
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged South Africa to build on icon Nelson Mandela’s legacy and flex its growing influence on the global sticking points of Syria, Iran and Zimbabwe.
“The man who did so much to shape the history of a free South Africa has never stopped thinking about the future of South Africa,” she said in a speech at a Cape Town university.
“Because of your history, South Africa has an obligation to be a constructive force in the international community,” she added.
Washington’s top diplomat said strong African partners were needed to tackle the world’s challenges and urged the continent’s biggest economy to do more.
“There cannot be a strong global network unless there are strong African partners. Now I’ve often heard it said that African problems need African solutions. Well I’m here to say that some of our global problems need African solutions too,” said Clinton.
“And few nations on this continent can carry as much weight or be as effective partners and leaders as South Africa. You are a democratic power with the opportunity to influence Africa and the world.”
On her sixth stop of a continent-crossing mission, Clinton noted differences between Washington and Pretoria, particularly on recent conflicts in the Ivory Coast and Libya, but said this should not obscure common goals.
“We welcome South Africa’s support last week with the resolution at the UN General Assembly condemning Syria and the Assad regime’s brutal reign of terror,” she said.
“I hope this vote can be the foundation for a new level of cooperation.”
Clinton called on South Africa to lead efforts at the United Nations human rights council to protect global human rights.
“When old friends in power become corrupt and repressive, a decision by South Africa to stand on the side of freedom is not a sign that you are giving up on old allies, it’s a reminder to yourselves and the world that your values don’t stop at your borders.”
Drawing out neighbouring Zimbabwe, she urged leaders in the region to push for progress for new polls that will end a troubled power-sharing deal that pulled the country out of election chaos five years ago.
“Now the same leaders can help accelerate progress for finalising and adopting that constitution through a credible referendum and holding a free and fair election monitored by the international community,” she said.
“And if Zimbabwe’s leaders meet these commitments, the United States is prepared to match action for action.”
The US has insisted that Zimbabwe take more steps to curb political violence before agreeing to ease sanctions against veteran President Robert Mugabe and his inner circle.
In a speech that blended praise and encouragement, Clinton called on South Africa to use its “rare authority” as the first country to have voluntarily given up its nuclear weapons to discourage armaments.
“You can help ensure that any country that pursues nuclear weapons programmes will invite only more pressure and isolation,” she said.
“This means South Africa can play an even greater role on issues like curbing Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons from preventing nuclear materials from falling into the hands of terrorists.”
Clinton reserved parts of her speech to pay homage to Mandela’s example of humanity by reaching out to his former apartheid jailers.
“That is the true legacy of president Mandela — calling all of us to complete the work he started. To overcome the obstacles, the injustices, the mistreatments that everyone, every one of us will encounter at some point in our lives.”
Earlier, she signed a new deal supporting efforts to fight AIDS in South Africa, which has the world’s biggest population of people with HIV.
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