"It is not enough to know that there is a shadow government pulling the strings of the visible government- we must also act to expose it, and defeat it!"-Mark Matheny
NEW YORK -- Beginning a day of protests that organizers say will spread to 50 cities and 1,000 stores across the country, a crowd of chanting workers gathered Thursday morning at aMcDonald's in midtown Manhattan to call for higher wages and the chance to join a union.
About 500 people, including workers, activists, religious leaders, news crews and local politicians, gathered outside the McDonald's on Fifth Avenue. The protesters chanted "Si Se Puede" ("Yes, We Can") and "Hey, hey, ho, ho $7.25 has got to go," holding signs saying "On Strike: Can't Survive on $7.25," referring to the federal minimum wage.
The protesters plan to spread out to other stores throughout New York during the day. Protests are also expected in Los Angeles, Chicago, Charlotte, N.C., and other cities.
FILE - In this April 17, 2013 file photo, President Barack Obama puts his arm around former Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords before speaking in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington about measures to reduce gun violence. Striving to take action where Congress would not, the Obama administration announced new steps Thursday on gun control, curbing the import of military surplus weapons and proposing to close a little-known loophole that lets felons and others circumvent background checks by registering guns to corporations. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Striving to take action where Congress would not, the Obama administration announced new steps Thursday on gun control, curbing the import of military surplus weapons and proposing to close a little-known loophole that lets felons and others circumvent background checks by registering guns to corporations.
Four months after a gun control drive collapsed spectacularly in the Senate, President Barack Obama added two more executive actions to a list of 23 steps the White House determined Obama could take on his own to reduce gun violence. With the political world focused on Mideast tensions and looming fiscal battles, the move signaled Obama's intent to show he hasn't lost sight of the cause he took up after 20 first graders and six adults were gunned down last year in an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.
One new policy will end a government practice that lets military weapons, sold or donated by the U.S. to allies, be reimported into the U.S. by private entities, where some may end up on the streets. The White House said the U.S. has approved 250,000 of those guns to be reimported since 2005; under the new policy, only museums and a few other entities like the government will be eligible to reimport military-grade firearms.
The Obama administration is also proposing a federal rule to stop those who would be ineligible to pass a background check from skirting the law by registering a gun to a corporation or trust. The new rule would require people associated with those entities, like beneficiaries and trustees, to undergo the same type of fingerprint-based background checks as individuals if they want to register guns.
Vice President Joe Biden, Obama's point-man on gun control after the Newtown tragedy thrust guns into the national spotlight, was set to unveil the new actions Thursday at the White House.
The current news cycle is, unsurprisingly, dominated by Syria and the increasing probability of a US-led military strike in reaction to President Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons.
HonestReporting will be there monitoring the media to make sure that all angles concerning Israel are covered fairly and accurately and giving you the relevant information and stories.
Particularly as Israel may be unable to avoid playing some part in this fluid situation despite her stated wish to stay out of the Syrian imbroglio.
Illustrative of the dilemmas facing Israel is this headline from Politico:
While there will always be those who will blame Israel for virtually anything and everything (British MP George Galloway even accused Israel of supplying chemical weapons to al-Qaeda in Syria), the current conundrum over action against Syria places Israel between a rock and a hard place.
Particularly in reference to Iraq, Israel’s detractors have resorted to accusations, some wrapped in anti-Semitic tropes, of a hidden hand or puppet master pushing the U.S. into Mideast wars. Openly support Western military intervention and Israel will, once again, be portrayed as a warmonger and held partially responsible for any fallout or failures that may occur as a result of a Syrian campaign.
On the other hand, there is no good outcome for Israel. While the removal of Assad and the resultant clipping of Iranian and Hezbollah wings would be welcome, the prospect of an anarchic Syrian state dominated by jihadists and terror organizations right on the Israeli border is not a desirable outcome.
But what if Israel or the so-called “Israel lobby” is silent? Could the headline above imply that not only is Israel not prepared to publicly back its greatest ally but also that it takes no moral stand against the Syrian use of chemical weapons?
Even though the U.S. government claims that the Syrian government is the perpetrator of the chemical weapons attack, it admits that it has no idea who in the government ordered the attack. It could have been a rogue, low-level military officer.
With the United States barreling toward a strike on Syria, U.S. officials say they are completely certain that Bashar al-Assad’s government is responsible for last week’s chemical weapons attack. They just don’t know who in the Syrian government is to blame.
On Wednesday, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf admitted as much. “The commander-in-chief of any military is ultimately responsible for decisions made under their leadership, even if … he’s not the one that pushes the button or said, ‘Go,’ on this,” Harf said. “I don’t know what the facts are here….”
On Tuesday, The Cable reported that U.S. officials are basing their assessment that the Assad regime bears responsibility for the strike largely on an intercepted phone call between a panicked Ministry of Defense official and a commander of a Syrian chemical weapons unit. But that intelligence does not resolve the question of who in the government ordered the strike ….
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Because of that lack of clarity, Harf took a beating on Wednesday. In a testy exchange during her daily briefing, Harf very nearly admitted that it makes no difference who in the Syrian government ordered the attack, a reflection of the lack of certainty that still shrouds U.S. understanding of the chemical attack that may have left as many as 1,000 people dead.
In effect, Harf was left arguing that because no one else could have carried out the attack, it must have been the Syrian government. “The world doesn’t need a classified U.S. intelligence assessment to see the photos and the videos of these people and to know that the only possible entity in Syria that could do this to their own people is the regime,” she said.
Given that U.N. inspectors with a mandate to investigate chemical weapons use were on the ground when the attack happened, the decision to deploy what appears to have been a nerve agent in a suburb east of Damascus has puzzled many observers. Why would Syria do such a thing when it is fully aware that the mass use of chemical weapons is the one thing that might require the United States to take military action against it? That’s a question U.S. intelligence analysts are puzzling over as well. “We don’t know exactly why it happened,” the intelligence officialsaid. “We just know it was pretty fucking stupid.”
Pressed on whether the United States would still consider itself justified in launching a punitive strike if the chemical weapons were deployed by a “rogue officer,” Harf said, “yes,” before quickly adding a caveat: “But that’s also a wildly conjecturous question.”
Given that American, British and other Western soldiers have pleaded guilty to massacring civilians and committing war crimes, should we condemn the entire Syrian regime if it turns out to be a crime carried out by one rogue officer?
A federal judge ruled that a biblically based denunciation of homosexuality was a “crime against humanity.”
In his decision in the case of Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) v. Lively, U.S. District Court Judge Michael Ponsor held that Scott Lively, an evangelical pastor, was “aiding and abetting a crime against humanity” when Lively spoke in Uganda and in America against homosexual behavior.
Ponsor wrote in his 79-page opinion that Lively’s message was “analogous to a terrorist designing and manufacturing a bomb in this country, which he then mails to Uganda with the intent that it explode there.”
The plaintiff in the case is a consortium of groups based in Kampala, Uganda that fight for “fair and equal treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) people” in the East Africa region.
Ponsor says that Lively, by publishing tracts and delivering discourses condemning same-sex relationships, was acting as “an upper-level manager or leader of a criminal enterprise.”
While in Uganda, Lively praised local pastors working to fight the proliferation of sexual activity between those of the same gender, basing his remarks on his interpretation of the Bible’s condemnation of such behavior.
“I’ve never done anything in Uganda except preach the Gospel and speak my opinion about the homosexual issue,” Lively told theNew York Times.
Reading between the lines, it becomes apparent that the “criminal enterprise” in which Ponsor found Lively engaged was that of believing, preaching, and promoting Judeo-Christian morality in an age that glorifies ungodliness and exalts satisfaction of appetites above the sacrifice of self to the will of God.
Ponsor, a 1994 Clinton appointee, calls Lively’s Ugandan hosts “co-conspirators” in Lively’s violations of “international norms.”
Harry Mihet, Lively’s lawyer, responded to Ponsor’s decision to allow the case against his client to proceed.
We are disappointed with the decision because we believe SMUG’s claims are firmly foreclosed, not only by the First Amendment right to free speech, but also by the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Kiobel, which eliminated Alien Tort Statute claims for events that allegedly occurred in foreign nations. We are still reviewing the court’s ruling, and will continue to vigorously defend Mr. Lively’s constitutional rights, with confidence that he will ultimately be vindicated.
Mihet’s comments were echoed by Mat Staver, founder of Liberty Council, the organization representing Lively. “Like all American citizens, Lively enjoys a fundamental First Amendment right to engage in nonviolent political discourse anywhere in the world,” Staver said.
Beyond the de jure banning of biblical morality by a Bill Clinton appointee, there is another curious political connection in the persecution of Pastor Lively.
SMUG is represented in its suit against Lively by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR). CCR receives substantial financial support from George Soros’s Open Society Institute and the Ford Foundation. It should come as no surprise that these groups would be the money behind an attack on the First Amendment, the Bible, the freedom to exercise religion, and the freedom to express those beliefs in the public forum.
There are serious First Amendment implications in Ponsor’s ruling, should it be upheld on appeal.
The White House has so far failed to respond to a letter signed by 56 bipartisan members of Congress asking President Obama to get congressional approval for an attack on Syria, despite Obama himself affirming the constitutional necessity of such an authorization during his 2008 campaign.
The letter, written by Virginia Rep. Scott Rigell, strongly urges Obama, “to consult and receive authorization from Congress before ordering the use of U.S. military force in Syria, adding, “Your responsibility to do so is prescribed in the Constitution and the War Powers Resolution of 1973.”
It goes on to stress that launching an offensive act of war when the United States is not directly threatened with a green light from Congress is unconstitutional, citing Obama’s decision to order the use of “221 Tomahawk cruise missiles, 704 Joint Direct Attack Munitions, and 42 Predator Hellfire missiles,” against Libya in 2011 with zero congressional approval.
Rigell is asking Obama to reconvene Congress so that lawmakers can carefully study the evidence and the necessity for the United States to become directly embroiled in the conflict in Syria.
According to Rep. Rigell’s official Twitter page, 56 members of Congress from both parties have signed onto the letter, a number which is growing by the hour.
However, on Sunday, Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., the top Democrat on the House Foreign Relations Committee, told Fox News that Congress would not be consulted on the move and that lawmakers would have to “assent” to it at a later date.
It’s highly unlikely that Obama will adhere to the constitution by seeking congressional approval for any assault on Syria given his attitude under similar circumstances before the 2011 attack on Libya.
When Obama faced criticism from Congress over the 2011 attack, he churlishly dismissed the issue, remarking, “I don’t even have to get to the Constitutional question,” before claiming that his authority came from NATO and the UN.
According to Congressman Walter Jones, this amounted to “an impeachable high crime and misdemeanor under article II, section 4 of the Constitution.”
Obama’s hostility towards getting Congressional approval before launching military attacks in ironic given that both he and Vice President Joe Biden made reference to that very necessity during their 2008 campaign. “The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation,” Obama said in 2008.
Passed after the Vietnam War, the War Powers Resolution states that the President’s powers as commander-in-chief should be “exercised only pursuant to a declaration of war, specific statutory authorization from Congress, or a national emergency created by an attack upon the United States.”
Obama’s rebuff of Congress during the attack on Libya was followed by former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s astounding claim that the United Nations and NATO have supreme authority over the actions of the United States military.
During a March 2012 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Panetta responded to a question about whether the administration would consult Congress before future conflicts by responding, “You know, our goal would be to seek international permission. And we would come to the Congress and inform you and determine how best to approach this, whether or not we would want to get permission from the Congress.”
The difference this time around is that Obama is not even bothering to claim his moral authority from the UN, never mind Congress, with the US indicating that it will launch cruise missile strikes within days without first obtaining a UN Security Council resolution.
Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a host for Infowars Nightly News.
Former congressman Dennis Kucinich (D., Ohio) said today that striking Syria would turn the United States military into “al-Qaeda’s air force.”
Kucinich, who voted against the Iraq War and campaigned for the Democratic nomination for president in 2004 and 2008, lambasted the idea that Obama could act without congressional authorization, which he said would be a violation of the Constitution. He also warned that intervening in Syria would entangle the United States in another war in the Middle East and encourage Islamists who are fighting the forces of Syrian president Bashar Assad.
“So what, we’re about to become al-Qaeda’s air force now?” Kucinich sarcastically asked The Hill.
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israel ordered a special call-up of reserve troops Wednesday as nervous citizens lined up at gas-mask distribution centers, preparing for possible hostilities with Syria.
With the U.S. threatening to attack Syria over its alleged use of chemical weapons, Israel fears that Syria may respond by attacking Israel, a close American ally. While Israeli officials believe the chances of a Syrian strike remain slim, people were clearly preparing for the possibility.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spent the day huddled with his top security advisers discussing the situation. Afterwards, he sent a mixed message, urging people to remain calm while also approving special precautionary measures.
"There is no reason to change daily routines," he said. "At the same time we are prepared for any scenario." He said the Israeli military "is ready to defend against any threat and to respond strongly against any attempt to harm Israeli citizens."
An Israeli official briefed on the meeting said the government had ordered a "limited" callup of reserve units to beef up civil defense preparations and to operate air-defense units near the border. Other officials briefed on the meeting said the call-up is anticipated to bring in "hundreds" of troops.
Earlier, defense officials had confirmed the deployment of Iron Dome and Patriot missile-defense batteries in areas near the Syrian border.
