Mexico – praag.org

Letter: Gutter journalism

Since 2016, the mainstream media has made a vocation out of denigrating Donald Trump to the extent that their prejudice has become paranoid. In that context, The Witness editorial of January 6 really outdoes itself in virulence – and without a shred of justification.

Harvard law Professor Alan Dershowitz has dismissed the furore over Trump’s phone call to Raffensberger as “no crime there. Period.” Having perused the 50-page transcript he noted that Trump asked for the votes of people who voted for him to be found. He did not ask for votes to be created.

Your clichéd references to Trump “abusing his position,” “malfeasance” and “grim chapter of US history” have zero credibility because they are completely at odds with the facts. Trump carried out all the promises he made in his 2016 election campaign, an achievement of which no other president can boast. Above all, Trump put America first, unlike his predecessors, particularly Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Domestically he reversed the socialist economic policies of Obama which hobbled commerce, took 8 million people off food stamps, reduced unemployment to its lowest point since 1970, brought jobs back to America from Mexico and China, re-negotiated trade deals that favoured America and spurred economic growth to levels last seen thirty years ago. He rebuilt the military which Obama had neglected and stemmed the flow of illegal immigrants to the US by building a security wall.

Morally he endorsed pro-life and was proactive in emphasising the importance of Almighty God in America’s existence. He upheld American history and heritage while his opponents were complicit in tearing down statues, renaming places and denouncing America’s past. Trump defended law and order while his opponents defunded the police and tolerated vandalism and anarchy in Portland and Minneapolis.

He reversed the treasonous Obama/Kerry nuclear deal with Iran, met directly with the North Korean dictator which none of the three previous presidents managed, compelled NATO members to pay for the protection the US gives them, recognised the threat of communism posed by China in influencing US institutions and stealing intellectual property. He saw to it that America did not get involved in foreign wars which none of his predecessors managed to achieve. He initiated a Middle East peace deal between the UAE and Israel that is unprecedented in its skilful marginalising of the Palestinian terrorist component.

If The Witness, like the rest of the mainstream media pack had not been covering up the extent to which the November 3 election was subjected to fraud, details such as the following would be widespread knowledge:

In Pennsylvania, after Republican observers were sent home, 580,000 votes were counted, 99,4% for Biden. In Nevada 60,000 out- of -state people voted. A truck driver delivered 270,000 out-of-state votes to Pennsylvania from New York on November 4.
More than 50 lawsuits have been registered along with thousands of affidavits alleging voting irregularities. These include multiple counting of ballots cast by illegal voters or out –of- state voters; large scale manufacturing of fake ballots, ballots cast by dead voters, ballots accepted without voter ID, mailed-in ballots separated from their envelopes that could not matched to a signature.
According to Russel Ramsland of Allied Security Operations Group the Dominion voting system intentionally generates a high number of ballot errors – 68%, he observed – which then enter a process of adjudication. But that process has no oversight, no transparency and no audit trail. He advised against certifying votes that were processed by Dominion voting machines.
On December 18, John Ratcliffe, Director of National Intelligence stated that China, Iran and Russia were substantially involved in the November election.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg provided $400 million to the Democratic Party to be used in marginal Democrat districts. In so doing he violated the Help America Vote Act which requires federally approved resources to be equally available to all voters.

Having failed to remove Trump via the Mueller Report and the impeachment exercise, Deep State and the elite sought to deny him re-election by electoral fraud in seven key states. The 2020 Presidential election was stolen by the globalists and their allies. That is an incontrovertible fact. Trump gained 75 million votes, twelve million more than in 2016.

The Witness can rant all it likes but if it has a democratic fibre in itself, it should at least acknowledge that a significant number of people have a different view of Trump than the one paraded by the mainstream media pack – and in spite of the mainstream media pack.

So, barring divine intervention, Joe Biden will become the 46^th president. But he is the Manchurian candidate – a person used as a puppet by an enemy power, namely, China. It will be interesting to see how his fecklessness is treated in future Witness editorials.

In conclusion, I have no illusions that none of the above will ever see itself in print because, as American revolutionary Tom Paine once said: To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.

— Dr Duncan du Bois, Bluff, Durban

Univision president likens Donald Trump to Dylann Roof

Just days before Univision announced it would host a Republican debate, one of its top executives likened a Republican candidate to alleged mass murderer Dylann Storm Roof.

Alberto Ciurana, Univision’s president of programming and content, made a post on his official Instagram account last week that appeared to indicate that there were similarities between Trump and Roof, who last week killed nine people in a shooting at a church in Charleston, S.C.

The since-deleted Instagram post received hundreds of likes from Ciurana’s 116,000 followers on the site. It also received backlash.

“With all due respect, what happened last night is not a joke,” commented Patty Rodriguez, senior producer of radio show On Air with Ryan Seacrest. “This is very irresponsible of you.”

Michael Cohen, special counsel to Trump, called Ciurana’s post “totally insensitive” and said that Ciurana should resign.

“There are no words to describe Alberto Ciurana’s despicable and horrific decision to place Mr. Trump beside this racist murderer,” said Cohen. “It was a totally insensitive act and I would call for his immediate resignation from Univision.”

A spokesman for Univision did not respond to an inquiry asking whether the network agrees with the comparison.

Univision announced Thursday it would be cutting ties with the Miss Universe Organization because it is partially owned by Trump. Ciurana posted the reasoning for the network’s decision, using his Twitter account to say Trump’s comments on Mexican immigrants were the cause for the decision.

Source: freebeacon.com

WIN/Gallup poll: US represents threat to world peace

Is the most dangerous country in the world the United States of America? According to a new poll from WIN and Gallup International, the U.S. represents the largest threat to world peace today.

In their annual End of Year poll, researchers for WIN and Gallup International surveyed more than 66,000 people across 65 nations and found that 24 percent of all respondents answered that the United States “is the greatest threat to peace in the world today.” Pakistan and China fell significantly behind the United States on the poll, with 8 and 6 percent, respectively. Afghanistan, Iran, Israel and North Korea all tied for fourth place with 4 percent.

Much of the animosity toward America comes from Muslim Middle Eastern and North African nations, all located in a region most likely to be affected by American military actions over the past decade. Forty-four percent of Pakistani respondents, for instance, voted America as the most dangerous nation, despite Pakistan’s acceptance of U.S. foreign aid. The Chinese and Russians rated the United States as dangerous even more than Pakistanis did, at 54 and 49 percent, respectively.

However, a plurality of people polled in several officially American-allied nations also rated the United States as dangerous. Thirty-seven percent of Mexicans and 17 percent of Canadians view their neighboring country with suspicion on the world stage. A surprising 13 percent of American respondents rated their own nation the biggest threat to world peace as well.

While poll respondents seem anxious about the United States’ role in world affairs, many of them would have no problems moving to America if they could. The United States topped WIN/Gallup’s list of top countries people would move to with 9 percent of the vote. Canada and Australia came in second with 7 percent apiece, while 38 percent said they were happy exactly where they are.

Overall, responders seemed remarkably optimistic about their own futures, despite any misgivings about the United States. Nearly 50 percent of responders say that 2014 will be better than 2013, the first time since 1990 that people thought a better year was on the way.

“Despite an unstable economic situation, our happiness index is extremely high all over the world except in Europe,” Jean-Marc Leger, President of WIN/Gallup International Association, said in a statement. “Moreover people think that 2014 will be better than 2013. Optimism is back in the world.”

Exposing the racist Myth of Aztlan

The Myth of Aztlan is no more real than the Easter Bunny. Aztlan is a Lie.

It is time we stop holding back the historical truth and set the record straight. It is time the truth and the real history of how the Southwestern states became a part of the United States and Texas independence. We must not allow the revisionist to take over the narrative rewriting how the western United States was acquired.

It is time to shatter the lie saying southwest was stolen from Mexico. The Aztlan myth is about as real as the invention of Kwanza is a holiday. The truth is Aztec Indians never occupied the southwest. Why would they live in a desert wasteland when they had abundance in the tropical climate?

The truth is the border never crossed the so-called indigent people of Mexico. It was done lawfully and legally. Mexico and the rest of central and south America are responsible for their own problems. The perception that American stolen Texas and the southwest from Mexico is a flat out lie of the Ford Foundation that is published in Mexican textbooks. It is a shame that the leadership in Mexico blames America for their economic woes to divert people away from the government’s destructive policies as the cause of misery. Exploiting the ignorance of the people is the way they stay in power rewriting history to suit their needs.

Here is the truth about the real history of the southwest and Texas breaking free from Mexico:

1. When the southwest became US Territory after hostilities ceased between the United States and Mexico. Most Mexican born people of Hispanic decent overwhelmingly became US citizens instead of resettling in Mexico. They rather live under President Polk than under the rule of General Santa Anna.

2. The Southwest was never stolen from Mexico. How the Mexican war started was because Texas was going to be annexed to the United States becoming a state entering the union. The Mexican Army marched north into the United States all the way to Oklahoma until the American troops pushed them south until US troops surrounded the nation’s capital.

The United States did not want to annex all of Mexico to be a part of America. The United States government purchased the Southwest territory for 15 million dollars under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

4. A few short years later after the war was over. The Mexican and the American governments came together to negotiate in diplomatic meetings to settle the dispute making the national boundaries more defined with Mexico on the southern border. A tract of land from El Paso Texas to Yuma Arizona was brought from Mexico called the Gadsden Purchase. That was an agreement made between Mexico and the United States government.

5. Texas was not stolen from Mexico either. General Santa Anna handed over Norte Mexico to Sam Houston, which was named the Texas territory after the Mexican army was defeated at the Battle of Jan Jacinto.

The war of Texas independence was not an isolated conflict of just gringos who wanted to break free from the tyrannical military dictatorship. The Texas war for independence was fought side by side with Spanish-speaking people to defeat Santa Anna because this tyrant was hated by most of the citizens.

In the year 1824, when Mexico declared its independence from Spain and formed their own Republic. The Mexican government sold treasury bonds to fund the new government. Many Europeans invested in these bonds. When it was time for the bonds to come due. The Mexican government defaulted.

General Santa Anna led a coup and overthrew the elected government of Mexico and declared himself Dictator. He raised taxes on everything from land, duties and impost through all of Mexico.

Twice, all the states in Mexico, including Texas were in revolt against General Santa Anna’s military dictatorship ruling over them. All the rebellions were put down in Mexico by General Santa Anna except one providence. Texas was the sole militia that defeated the Mexican Army. Texas was the unique Republic which won by fighting for their Independence.

We must not allow groups like La Raza and other hate groups using the race card to browbeat Americans into feeling guilty we have nothing to do with and suppressing the real history about our dealing with Mexico.

You might not agree with me saying this. We must reach out to the illegal aliens telling them that they are being used as a political weapon against the American people.

Telling the truth that socialism is a failure and embracing the virtues they fled from is not the answer. We must expose the fact that La Raza and these race-based activists do not care about them. They are used as pawns in a game of divide and conquer. These racist groups want no one to learn English or embrace America’s culture and history that set this nation apart from the country they came from. It is by assimilation to the culture and the language, respecting the laws of the United States by making good by doing things legally instead of violating the sovereignty of the United States. There is the true pathway to citizenship and success as an individual.

We all know the politicians in Washington DC refuses to deport them as the law demands. We can be sure to engage in the info-war with countermeasures with the truth, so they can be educated making an informed choice winning their hearts and minds so the social engineers cannot use them as a pawn for their globalist agenda. If we allow these illegal aliens make choices based on ignorance, which causes our country to slip into the darkness because we did not reach out and sell why America was great and the principles that made us strong. Because we were too timid, or we made excuses. It will be our own fault. We did not do anything in our power to reverse this.

We can stop these forces using the illegal aliens as a political weapon to take down the nation if we engage in the info war with the truth.

We must show them Latin people who became Americans have made great contributions to this nation. Do they know many Americans of Spanish descent were recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor? They have made great warriors in most of the wars fighting for the cause of liberty. The reason why La Raza is winning the hearts and minds of the illegal alien population is because we are not doing anything to counter the propaganda.

We have to bypass the Spanish-speaking TV and radio like we went around the establishment media with great success. If we act right now aggressively reaching out to these people smashing the lies and false hopes, the racial agitators try to sell. The weapon they are using against us can be the boomerang that can defeat the globalist if we plant the seeds of freedom and the principles of how liberty bears its good fruit that made American prosperous compared to the bitter rhetoric La Raza preaches, which are the values of slavery, tyranny and poverty.

These very same virtues these people fled from are being sold as liberation theology by these wolves in sheep clothing sold in a repackaged form. They have to be exposed for what they are for sowing the seeds of destruction misleading the masses.

It is time to shatter the AZTLAN lies with the truth. Do you agree? Blocking buses on the street to prevent these people with disease entering the city is not enough. We have to become proactive reaching out, or we are finished as a nation.

Source: http://www.thelonestarwatchdog.com

UN urges US to welcome immigrants as refugees

United Nations officials are pushing for many of the Central Americans fleeing to the U.S. to be treated as refugees displaced by armed conflict, a designation meant to increase pressure on the United States to accept tens of thousands of people currently ineligible for asylum.

Officials with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees say they hope to see a regional agreement on that status Thursday when migration and interior department representatives from the U.S., Mexico, and Central America meet in Nicaragua. The group will discuss updating a 30-year-old declaration regarding the obligations nations have to aid refugees.

While such a resolution would lack any legal weight in the United States, the agency said it believes “the U.S. and Mexico should recognize that this is a refugee situation, which implies that they shouldn’t be automatically sent to their home countries but rather receive international protection.”

Central Americans would be among the first modern migrants considered refugees because they are fleeing violence and extortion at the hands of criminal gangs.“Unaccompanied children and families who fear for their lives and freedoms must not be forcibly returned without access to proper asylum procedures,” UNHCR official Leslie Velez said in testimony submitted to the House Judiciary Committee late last month.

Immigration experts in the U.S. and Central America say the flow of migrants from Honduras and El Salvador is likely to rise as the two countries experience gang-related violence. Honduras, a primary transit point for U.S.-bound cocaine, has the world’s highest homicide rate for a nation that is not at war.

Salvadorans heading north through Mexico who were interviewed by The Associated Press last month said there also was fear of the “Sombra Negra,” or “Black Shadow” – groups of masked men in civilian clothes who are believed responsible for extrajudicial killings of teens in gang-controlled neighborhoods. The Salvadoran government denies any involvement in death squads, but says it is investigating the reports.

Source: CBS

‘US to become third world nation with immigrant influx’

People would flee a country that’s got … drug cartels, bribes, ignore the law

Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, warns that the United States will become a third world nation if the federal government does not enforce its immigration laws.

Speaking to “The Sean Hannity Show,” the Republican lawmaker said the country will be destroyed if the U.S. continues to allow thousands of immigrants to cross the border illegally.

“You’ve got to follow the law. You cannot bring hundreds of thousands of people in this country without destroying the country,” Gohmert told Hannity. “Then there’s no place that people can dream about coming.”

Gohmert stated that it’s the government’s job to defend the U.S. “against anybody that would overwhelm the country and bring it down.”

“It’s always been such an irony, though, that people would flee a country that’s got … drug cartels, people that ignore the law, or bribe people to look the other way,” Gohmert said. “So they don’t have jobs there so they come to the United States because we’ve mostly been a nation of laws where the rule of law matters. But then once they are here, they say now we want you to ignore the rule of law, which ironically is like the country they came from.”

Source: CBS

Churches aid illegal invasion of US

Obama Administration deliberately facilitating the flood of illegal immigrants and churches are aiding the flow

South Texas church groups are working around the clock to shuttle what appears to be hundreds of illegal immigrants to housing facilities, benefiting the Obama administration in its deliberate plan to flood America with illegal aliens for political purposes.

Infowars reporters are on the ground in the Rio Grande Valley, the continental United States’ southernmost region, where children and parents from Central America are pouring by the thousands past the US-Mexico border with hopes the U.S. will soon grant them amnesty, which the Obama administration has practically done through selective enforcement of immigration laws.

While monitoring activity at a bus station in McAllen, Texas, Infowars witnessed several church group vans arriving throughout the day and being loaded to capacity with children (many of them without parents), before heading out to facilities nearby.

Illegal immigration by youth to the U.S. has increased over 1300% in the past three years, from 6,500 in 2011 to around 90,000 this year, and may more than double in 2015.

Efforts to house the undocumented immigrants come as agents with the Department of Homeland Security are reaching a breaking point, with one agent telling Infowars he believed the Obama Administration was deliberately facilitating the flow.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez dies at age 87

MEXICO CITY — Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Colombian author whose beguiling stories of love and longing brought Latin America to life for millions of readers and put magical realism on the literary map, died on Thursday. He was 87.

A prolific writer who started out as a newspaper reporter, Garcia Marquez’s masterpiece was One Hundred Years of Solitude, a dream-like, dynastic epic that helped him win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.

Garcia Marquez died at his home in Mexico City, where he had returned from hospital last week after a bout of pneumonia.

Known affectionately to friends and fans as “Gabo”, Garcia Marquez was Latin America’s best-known and most beloved author and his books have sold in the tens of millions.

Although he produced stories, essays and several short novels such as Leaf Storm and No One Writes to the Colonel early in his career, he struggled for years to find his voice as a novelist.

He then found it in dramatic fashion with One Hundred Years of Solitude, an instant success on publication in 1967. Mexican author Carlos Fuentes dubbed it “Latin America’s Don Quixote” and Chilean poet Pablo Neruda also compared it to Miguel de Cervantes’ 17th century tour de force.

Garcia Marquez’s novel tells the story of seven generations of the Buendia family in the fictional village of Macondo, based on the languid town of Aracataca close to Colombia’s Caribbean coast where he was born on March 6 1927, and raised by his maternal grandparents.

In it, Garcia Marquez combines miraculous and supernatural events with the details of everyday life and the political realities of Latin America. The characters are visited by ghosts, a plague of insomnia envelops Macondo, swarms of yellow butterflies mark the arrival of a woman’s lover, a child is born with a pig’s tail and a priest levitates above the ground.

At times comical and bawdy, and at others tragic, it sold over 30-million copies, was published in dozens of languages and helped fuel a boom in Latin American fiction.

A stocky man with a quick smile, thick mustache and curly hair, Garcia Marquez said he found inspiration for the novel by drawing on childhood memories of his grandmother’s stories — laced with folklore and superstition but delivered with the straightest of faces.

“She told things that sounded supernatural and fantastic, but she told them with complete naturalness,” he said in a 1981 interview. “I discovered that what I had to do was believe in them myself, and write them with the same expression with which my grandmother told them: with a brick face.” Although One Hundred Years of Solitude was his most popular creation, other classics from Garcia Marquez included Autumn of the Patriarch, Love in the Time of Cholera and Chronicle of a Death Foretold.

Tributes poured in following his death.

“The world has lost one of its greatest visionary writers — and one of my favourites from the time I was young,” said US President Barack Obama.

“Your life, dear Gabo, will be remembered by all of us as a unique and singular gift, and as the most original story of all,” Colombian pop star Shakira wrote on her website alongside a photograph of her hugging Garcia Marquez.

In Aracataca, a lone trumpet played on Thursday night as residents held a candlelight vigil for the man who made the town famous.

Magic and reality

Garcia Marquez was one of the prime exponents of magical realism, a genre he described as embodying “myth, magic and other extraordinary phenomena”. His most prolific years coincided with a turbulent period in much of Latin America, where right-wing dictators and Marxist revolutionaries fought for power.

Chaos was often the norm, political violence ripped some countries to shreds and life verged on the surreal. Magical realism struck a chord.

“In his novels and short stories we are led into this peculiar place where the miraculous and the real converge. The extravagant flight of his own fantasy combines with traditional folk tales and facts, literary allusions and tangible — at times obtrusively graphic — descriptions approaching the matter-of-factness of reportage,” the Swedish Academy said when it awarded Garcia Marquez the Nobel Prize in 1982.

Garcia Marquez admired Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis and was also influenced by esteemed Latin American writers Juan Rulfo of Mexico and Argentina’s Jorge Luis Borges.

US author William Faulkner inspired Garcia Marquez to create “the atmosphere, the decadence, the heat” of Macondo, named after a banana plantation on the outskirts of Aracataca.

“This word had attracted my attention ever since the first trips I had made with my grandfather, but I discovered only as an adult that I liked its poetic resonance,” he wrote in his memoirs, Living to Tell the Tale. Fans will pay their last respects to him in the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City on Monday and he will be cremated in a private ceremony.

Politics, literary feud

Like many of his Latin American literary contemporaries, Garcia Marquez became increasingly involved in politics and flirted with communism.

He spent time in post-revolution Cuba and developed a close friendship with communist leader Fidel Castro, to whom he sent drafts of his books.

“A man of cosmic talent with the generosity of a child, a man for tomorrow,” Mr Castro once wrote of his friend. “His literature is authentic proof of his sensibility and the fact that he will never give up his origins, his Latin American inspiration and loyalty to the truth.” The US banned Garcia Marquez from visiting for years after he set up the New York branch of communist Cuba’s official news agency and was accused of funding leftist guerrillas at home.

He once condemned the US war on drugs as “nothing more than an instrument of intervention in Latin America” but he became friends with former US president Bill Clinton.

“He captured the pain and joy of our common humanity in settings both real and magical. I was honoured to be his friend and to know his great heart and brilliant mind for more than 20 years,” Mr Clinton said on Thursday.

Despite his reputation as a left-leaning intellectual, critics say Garcia Marquez didn’t do as much as he could have done to help negotiate an end to Colombia’s long conflict, which has killed tens of thousands of people.

Instead, he left his homeland and went to live in Mexico.

The damning criticism he leveled at his homeland still rings heavily in the ears of some Colombians.

He was also a protagonist in one of literature’s most talked-about feuds with fellow Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa of Peru.

The writers, who were once friends, stopped speaking to each other after a day in 1976 when Mr Vargas Llosa gave Garcia Marquez a black eye in a dispute — depending on who one believes — over politics or Mr Vargas Llosa’s wife.

But Mr Vargas Llosa paid tribute to Garcia Marquez on Thursday, calling him a “great writer” whose novels would live on.

Politics and literary spats aside, Garcia Marquez’s writing pace slowed down in the late 1990s.

A heavy smoker for most of his life, he was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer in 1999, although the disease went into remission after chemotherapy treatment.

None of his latest works achieved the success of his earlier novels.

One of those, Love in the Time of Cholera, told the story of a 50-year love affair inspired by his parents’ courtship.

It was made into a movie starring Spanish actor Javier Bardem in 2007, but many critics were disappointed and said capturing the sensuous romance of Garcia Marquez’s novel had proved too tough a challenge.

Garcia Marquez’s most recent work of fiction, Memories of My Melancholy Whores, got mixed reviews when it was released in 2004. The short novel is about a 90-year-old man’s obsession with a 14-year-old virgin, a theme some readers found disturbing.

Garcia Marquez is survived by Mercedes Barcha, his wife of more than 55 years, and by two sons, Rodrigo and Gonzalo.

When he was working, Garcia Marquez would wake up before dawn every day, read a book, skim through the newspapers and then write for four hours. His wife would put a yellow rose on his desk.

His last public appearance was on his 87th birthday in March when he came out from his Mexico City home to smile and wave at well-wishers, a yellow rose in the lapel of his gray suit. – Reuters

US spying causes new anger in France, Mexico

by Marianne Barriaux and Michael Mainville BARRIAUX, Michael MAINVILLE

The United States has become embroiled in a new row over its controversial spying programme as allies France and Mexico condemned revelations Washington tapped millions of phonecalls and hacked into leaders’ emails.

French President Francois Hollande on Monday expressed his “deep disapproval” of reports of US spying in a phone call with President Barack Obama.

France’s Le Monde newspaper reported that the US National Security Agency had secretly monitored 70.3 million phone communications in France over 30 days from December 10, 2012, to January 8 this year.

The allegations, the latest from leaks by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, also marred a visit to Paris by US Secretary of State John Kerry, where he discussed moves to try to end the war in Syria.

At the same time, German weekly Der Spiegel reported the NSA had also hacked into former Mexican president Felipe Calderon’s email account.

Calderon, on Twitter, described the revelations as an “affront to the institutions of the country, given that it took place when I was president”.

Hollande told Obama that the alleged practices were “unacceptable between friends and allies because they infringe on the privacy of French citizens”, the French leader’s office said in a statement.

The allegations come on top of previous revelations by Snowden — who has sought safety in Russia as US authorities pursue him for leaking classified information — that the United States had a vast, secret programme called PRISM to monitor Internet users.

French prosecutors are already investigating the programme, and French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said he was “deeply shocked” by the new revelations.

“It’s incredible that an allied country like the United States at this point goes as far as spying on private communications that have no strategic justification, no justification on the basis of national defence,” he told journalists.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, on a visit to Luxembourg, said US ambassador Charles Rivkin was summoned to his ministry early Monday.

“These kinds of practices between partners that harm privacy are totally unacceptable,” he told reporters, adding France needed assurances that the United States was no longer monitoring its communications.

His comments were relayed to the US ambassador during the meeting, a ministry spokesman said — the second time in less than four months that America’s top representative in France has been hauled in over revelations about US snooping.

Kerry refused to comment on the specific accusations, but noted that Washington was reviewing its intelligence gathering operations following protests from allied governments.

He also sought to defend the US position.

“Protecting the security of our citizens in today’s world is a very complicated, very challenging task… because there are lots of people out there seeking to do harm to other people,” Kerry said at a press conference after meeting Arab League officials.

“Lots of countries are engaged in the activity of trying to protect their citizens in the world,” he said. “Our goal is always to try to find the right balance between protecting the privacy and security of our citizens.”

According to Le Monde, the spy agency automatically picked up communications from certain phone numbers in France and recorded certain text messages under a programme code-named “US-985D”.

The French daily said the documents gave grounds to believe that the NSA targeted not only people suspected of being involved in terrorism but also high-profile individuals in business and politics.

Hollande’s office said the French president and Obama had agreed “to work together to determine the facts and the exact scope of surveillance activities” revealed by Le Monde.

Der Spiegel also revealed that US agents had hacked into the Mexican presidency’s network, gaining access to Calderon’s account.

According to the report, the NSA said this contained “diplomatic, economic and leadership communications which continue to provide insight into Mexico’s political system and internal stability”.

The agency reportedly said the president’s office was now “a lucrative source”.

Mexican authorities said they would be seeking answers from US officials “as soon as possible”.

“This practice is unacceptable, illegitimate and contrary to Mexican law and international law,” the foreign ministry said.

Glenn Greenwald, an American journalist now living in Brazil who has broken many of the recent stories about secret US surveillance programmes, says Washington has spied on all Latin American countries.

Speaking to a press association in Miami, Greenwald said he would report about each case in the region and warned that more spying within the United States would also be revealed.

He also said the disclosures published by Le Monde Monday had been in the hands of the French daily for some time.

This is not the first time there have been reports that France and Mexico have been targeted in relation to NSA spying allegations since information leaked by Snowden first emerged in June.

Mexico’s current President Enrique Pena Nieto has already complained to Obama over reports US spies have gone through his emails.

And Der Spiegel reported last month that in 2010 the NSA monitored the internal computer network of France’s diplomats and that of the foreign ministry.

But France itself has also been accused of spying. Le Monde reported in recent months that intelligence services intercepted all communications in the country, stocking telephone and computer data for years –accusations denied by the government. – AFP

Mexico world’s most obese nation

The United States no longer holds the title of the world’s most populous, obese nation; that designation has been passed on to Mexico.

According to a new report from the United Nations, nearly 70 percent of Mexican adults are overweight, and childhood obesity in the country has tripled within the past decade, Medical Daily reported. One-third of Mexican teenagers are also obese, and experts believe that four out of every five obese children will remain overweight for the rest of their lives.

Overall, 32.8 percent of Mexican adults are considered obese, compared to 31.8 percent of adults in the United States. Nearly 70,000 deaths in Mexico each year are caused by weight-related diabetes, and more than 400,000 new cases of diabetes are diagnosed annually.

Experts believe the rise in Mexico’s obesity rates has to do with the continuously growing gap between the country’s classes, as 50 percent of the population currently lives below the poverty line. According to Medical Daily, healthy diets are becoming less affordable, prompting individuals with low incomes to consume more unhealthy foods, such as fried foods and soda.

One researcher also believes the increase can be attributed to more Mexicans moving from rural to urban areas, where food prices are much higher and sedentary lifestyles are easier. – Fox News

Soccer: Italy’s coach critical of Balotelli after win against Mexico

Andrea Pirlo celebrates scoring the opening goal for Italy against Mexico yesterday

Italy coach Cesare Prandelli tore a strip off tearaway striker Mario Balotelli despite the controversial star grabbing the winner in the 2-1 Confederations Cup victory over Mexico at the Maracana.

Balotelli sealed the win 12 minutes from time with a fine, muscular finish, but Prandelli was furious after the Milan striker was booked for stripping off his shirt in celebration.

“Mario needs to stop taking his shirt off after scoring a goal. Picking up silly bookings is not a good idea in a tournament as difficult as this one,” said Prandelli, having already castigated Balotelli for his sending off in the recent World Cup qualifier against the Czech Republic.

But as regards the performance, sparked by a sumptuous opening free-kick goal from evergreen cap centurion Andrea Pirlo, Prandelli pronounced himself satisfied with the Italians having shrugged off a limp warm-up draw against Haiti.

“It was a very tactical match but we dominated it for the most part. Mexico were trying to get into it on the counter-attack when we made mistakes. But we stopped them from finding their game and dictating the place. That’s what we tried to do and we managed it,” said Prandelli.

“Mexico came up against a very solid Italian team.”

Italy now head for Recife in the north to meet a Japan side beaten by Brazil in their opening game and coached by fellow Italian Alberto Zaccheroni as they look to keep pace with the Brazilians before their final pool showdown.

“He (Zaccheroni) knows us well and how we do things,” said Prandelli. “I know Alberto and we will have to be alert to anything. We are already concentrating on that next match.”

Mexico coach Jose Manuel de la Torre said Italy had to thank their “individual” moments of brilliance for their win.

“That was what made the difference,” said de la Torre in noting the majestic showing and free-kick finish of Pirlo.

“We came up against a very well-organised team with very good players, but it was their individual brilliance which proved the difference between us.

“We have a few things we need to work on and now we will focus on the next match against Brazil,” in Fortaleza, de la Torre concluded. – AFP