We previously discussed the curious step of President Obama seeking approval for a new war while insisting that he does not need such authorization to attack Syria. Now, Secretary of State John Kerry has referred to a one week period for Syria to comply with U.S. demands or presumably face an attack. It so happens that the Senate is set to vote this week, but opposition in this country is extremely high to yet another military intervention by the Administration. Moreover, unsuccessful in his earlier pitch for a free war, Kerry is now trying to sell the world on an “unbelievably small” military campaign. The U.S. seems to be saying that President Obama just needs the world to let him attack briefly to show that he cannot be dismissed or mocked in his earlier red line announcement. However, Kerry suggested a new red line in turning over control of the weapons and Russia has now announced that it will ask Syria to put chemical weapons under international control. That would undermine further the U.S. rationale for war if Russia says that it is moving to comply with Kerry’s demand. However, State Department handlers are trying to again walk back from the Secretary’s public statements.
Category: International
With the continuing stories of contaminated or mislabeled food coming from China, many people have actively sought to avoid Chinese products. The United States Department of Agriculture (long the enemy of the consumer and friend of agribusiness) has come up with a solution: Chinese chicken imports will be sold without telling people that they are from China. In an apparent effort to bring our standards to Chinese levels, the Administration is also planning to hand over key inspection posts to industry.
Submitted by Charlton Stanley, Guest Blogger
Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways…Chardonnay in one hand…chocolate in the other…body thoroughly used up, totally worn out, screaming “WOO HOO, What a Ride!”
– author unknown, but often attributed to Hunter S. Thompson
Photo by Jim Foreman
Used with permission
Lately the news seems to be nothing but a non-stop stream of woe, outrage, tragedy and lawlessness. Instead of focusing on the latest outrage of the day, I decided to do a series of stories about people who inspire. This is the first installment of a series of stories about people who inspired me (and many others) in one way or another. I hope the reader will find them fascinating and inspiring as well. Not necessarily stories about celebrities, although some may be familiar names, but real people who led extraordinary lives.
Women do not get the recognition they deserve, and to compete in a male dominated world, have to be twice as good at everything. Barbara Jordan once said, “Life is too large to hang out a sign: For Men Only.” I am an admirer of women who are smart, strong, competent and accomplished. I was married to a woman like that for 55 years, but lost her two years ago.
This story is about one of those women. Sabrina “Sib” Jackintell died last year at the age of 71, just two weeks before her 72nd birthday.
Continue reading “Remarkable People: Sabrina Jackintell, a Woman for all Seasons”
Submitted by Charlton Stanley (aka Otteray Scribe) Guest Blogger
First there was WikiLeaks, then there was Edward Snowden. The drip, drip, drip of information about secretive spy agencies continues. There have been bombshell revelations about the extent to which government agencies like the FBI, CIA, NSA and others are invading our most private communications. Of course, spies do what spies do, and that is to spy on whoever or whatever they can get away with. Few people understood the implications of PRISM when news of the program was leaked. Additionally, I suspect that despite revelations of its existence, the full extent of its capability and reach will never be known by the public.
The NSA reportedly paid tech companies millions of dollars to cover the cost of compliance with their “requests” for back-door access to the software package.
Another program to keep in mind is the FBI Stingray operation that sucks up wireless telephone communications. Last May, in the first litigation where the government admitted having Stingray, Arizona Federal District Judge David Campbell dismissed a motion to suppress. Judge Campbell is a George W. Bush appointee. PDF of his ruling is here. Last July, the ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in the Northern District of California, in an effort to learn more about Stingray, and if it is scooping up domestic phone calls.
Continue reading “Encryption and the Spymasters: Is Privacy Dead?”
Various news sites are reporting that Alireza Forghani, prominent Khamenei strategist and former governor of southern Iran’s Kish Province, has warned that the daughters of American officials will be kidnapped and raped by Muslims in response to any Syrian attack. He would presumably include President Obama’s daughters in a latest insight into the twisted religious fanaticism of Iranian officials. The quote is all-too-believable for Forghani who previously called for the eradication of Jews in Israel. He also previously proclaimed “In the name of Allah, Iran must attack Israel by 2014.”
In a culture of the oppression and abuse of women, Sushmita Banerjee stood out. An Indian married to an Afghan businessman, Banerjee wrote of the rule of the Taliban and her effort to flee the medieval Islamic rules placed on women. Her book “A Kabuliwala’s Bengali Wife” was an inspiration for women facing religious oppression and was later made into the movie “Escape From The Taliban.” The title proved tragically optimistic. This week, after she returned to her husband in Afghanistan, Banerjee was executed at her home by the Taliban.
Continue reading “Taliban Murders Sushmita Banerjee, Author and Women’s Rights Advocate”
Another one of our close Arab allies are back in the news to remind us that basic freedoms are not part of our common alliance. Oman has shut down The Week newspaper after it published an article viewed as too sympathetic to homosexuality in the Gulf state. The country has a gay population but it insists that these citizens live like criminals under Islamic prohibitions of homosexuality. The Week is the largest circulation English-langauge weekly in the country.
There are large protests in Romania against a plan to turn over a historic area to a Canadian company which will destroy four mountains tops, ancient Romanian sites, and use cyanide to extract gold and silver. It is a plan to devastate the environment, but the Canadians have promised local and national politicians a cut of the open-cast mine in the Rosia Montana.
There is a wonderful scene unfolding on Capitol Hill. In the past, President Barack Obama has insisted that he alone decides what constitutes a war and when he needs a congressional declaration. It was a claim that was challenged in federal court when I represented members of Congress. Now, however, England has refused to go along with the latest American-led military venture and there is heavy opposition in the public. Obama therefore is now saying that he wants to consult with Congress while his aides insist that he really does not need such consultation and, unless they agree with him, may just ignore them. Welcome to the new Imperil Presidency and what now constitutes checks and balances.
Just a note on this Labor Day, that some jobs are bit too much labor for the money. While jobs are tight, this is one ad (sent to me by one of my colleagues from China) that you do not want to answer. The business man (who appears a non-Chinese man working in China) looking for “open minded ladies” appears to be really an ad for a highly educated prostitute. What is interesting is the claim to be working in various cities including New York. If that were the case, he could find himself in the custody of less than opened officers.
Continue reading “Labor Day Special: Businessman In China Seeks “Open Minded Ladies” But You Might Want To Read The Fine Print”
-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
President Obama claims that a chemical weapons attack was carried out by the Syrian government in Ghouta on Aug 21. The Obama Administration then sent an “intelligence official” to Foreign Policy magazine to leak the intelligence supporting that claim. That intelligence consisted of captured phone call between an official of the Syrian Ministry of Defense and the leader of a chemical weapons unit. The phone calls were described as panicky with the official demanding answers.
Continue reading “Was A Rogue Syrian Officer Responsible For Chemical Weapons Attack?”
Submitted By: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger
Most readers of Jonathan Turley’s blog are concerned with the direction that this country has taken of late. In truth the problems we see are merely the manifestations of a long term trend that has resulted in a lack of respect for our republican form of government as defined by our Constitution. One merely has to go through the range of stories covered only in this past week’s Jonathan Turley blogs, to understand that we are at a critical juncture in our nation’s history. The issue to me is whether our country goes fully down the road towards empire. The phenomenon of a nation with overwhelming military superiority becoming imperial is a drama played out over and again over eons on the world’s stage. With empire perforce comes the trappings of an imperial state and with it the creation of an elite class defined by the term “nobility.” When a society defines an elite, whether called “the Nobility”; “the Cream of the Crop”; “The Upper Crust”; or even “Celebrities”; you can be certain the need to have an “underclass” becomes imperative. From a psychological standpoint once someone has the need to define themselves as being “elite”, they of necessity have to have people of “lesser worth” to compare themselves to and to differentiate their status. For a society to maintain this status hierarchy there then arises the necessity to have the “underclass” see ”their betters” as superior beings, living superior lives to their own. The “elite” must by definition be more beautiful, more wise and smarter than the “mob” beneath them. The “elite” set the trends and the fashions and it seems the “mob” is always one or two steps behind their lead. I believe that this is what we are observing today in our country. As an example within the past month we have been treated to the spectacle of one cable news network (CNN) devoting 24 hours of exclusive coverage to the birth of an heir to the English Throne.
To my mind there is no person in America who exemplifies the trend to establish a 21st Century nobility in this country, via celebrity, than the man now known as “The Donald”, the sadly ubiquitous Mr. Trump. As a New Yorker at the beginning of this man’s rise to fame, I watched with amusement and then disgust as he turned himself into a “brand” that to us common folk represented wealth, fame and its attendant luxury. Continue reading “Trumped!”
We have had a long litany of stories where we have criticized the Saudi Sharia system and the Kingdom’s treatment of religious minorities and women. So, when the Kingdom does something progressive, it is equally important to note it. This week, the Saudi cabinet passed a ban on domestic violence and other forms of abuse against women. That may seem a bit long in coming — by a few hundred years — but it is a major breakthrough for women given the Islamic clerics who still insist that beating your wife is ordained by God, as expressed in the Koran.
A document has surfaced from the intelligence budget that confirms what many have said for years: Israel continues to spy on the United States despite massive levels of U.S. aid and support. Israel is listed as one of the key targets for counterintelligence effort with China, Russian, Iran, and Cuba. Even as Israel continues to pressure the United States for the release of American Jonathan Pollard, an Israeli spy convicted in 1987, the report indicates that Israel is continuing to target the United States with espionage.
Continue reading “Israel Listed Among Greatest Threats To U.S. Intelligence”
While President Obama continues to maintain that only he decides what constitutes a war and requires consultation (let alone a declaration) from Congress, there remains a modicum of democratic process in England. The Obama Administration was surprised to learn that British Prime Minister David Cameron could not simply plunge his nation into another military conflict and that Parliament did not want to blindly follow the United States into attacking Syria. They would like to wait for all of the facts to be established by the United Nations before deciding how to act. It is of course a ridiculous notion that was long ago discarded in this country. If that was the approach in the United States, we would never have been able to invade Iraq on false pretenses and spend hundreds of billions in a war that has cost us tens of thousands of dead and wounded service members. Indeed, such knowledge is steadfastly avoided by our own politicians. By simply giving Bush a blank approval, politicians like Hillary Clinton and John Kerry could later deny that they really approved of the Iraq war and insist that they were misled by Bush.
Continue reading “English Parliament Balks At Obama’s Latest Demand For Military Intervention”