Puerto Rico governor to push for statehood

/

KCPNews

Puerto Rico's governor will call a special legislative session to push for approval of a resolution urging the U.S. Congress and President Barack Obama to honor the results of a recent referendum on changing the island's political status.

Gov. Luis Fortuno, who backs seeing statehood, said Saturday that Puerto Rican voters embraced statehood and rejected the current U.S. commonwealth status in the Nov. 6 ballot. He said Congress and Obama pledged to respect the results.In the first question of the two-part referendum, more than 900,000 voters, or 54 percent, said they were not content with the commonwealth status.

The second question asked what status was preferred. Of the about 1.3 million voters who made a choice, nearly 800,000, or 61 percent, supported statehood. Some 437,000 backed sovereign free association and 72,560 chose independence. However, nearly 500,000 left that question blank, complicating analysis of voter sentiment.

Another complication is that voters rejected Fortuno for another term, electing as governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla. His Popular Democratic Party wants to keep Puerto Rico as a semi-autonomous U.S. commonwealth.

Charges dropped against two more members of white supremacist American Front

/

OrlandoSentinel 

The case against the American Front white-supremacy movement in Osceola County has been reduced to just three remaining defendants.

In all, 14 people were accused this spring in one of the largest U.S. domestic-terrorism cases in more than a decade.

Since then, one defendant was sentenced to prison and 10 others received probation or their charges were dropped without explanation.

Most recently, all charges were dropped Friday against Verlin Lewis, who was identified by prosecutors as head of the American Front's north Florida chapter, and another member.

 

Assistant State Attorney Steve Foster, who oversaw the case, has declined to discuss its prosecution.

Read More

A Check on Bad Eyewitness Identifications

/

NY Times

The Oregon Supreme Court in a unanimous decision last week upended how eyewitness identification is to be used in criminal trials. The landmark ruling shifts the burden of proof to prosecutors to show that such identification is sufficiently reliable to be admissible as evidence at trial. Misidentification is the country’s leading cause of wrongful convictions. By altering the legal standard, Oregon has set an example that other states and the federal courts would be wise to follow.

Under the previous approach, trial courts had to assume eyewitness identifications were admissible unless defendants could show that they were unreliable; trial courts also relied heavily on the eyewitnesses’ reports of their own reliability even though that was at issue.

In ruling that such evidence should be subject to stricter standards, the court took into account three decades of scientific research showing that memory and perception can be highly unreliable. “Because of the alterations to memory that suggestiveness can cause,” the court said, “it is incumbent on courts and law enforcement personnel to treat eyewitness memory just as carefully as they would other forms of trace evidence, like DNA, bloodstains, or fingerprints, the evidentiary value of which can be impaired or destroyed by contamination.”

The justices further ruled that, even if the state proves that an identification is likely to be well-founded, a judge can still bar its use if the defendant establishes that it might be the result of “suggestive police procedures.”

The court announced its new approach in a decision dealing with two cases. In one case involving a robbery at a Safeway store, it found the identifications admissible because the witnesses gave the police a detailed description of two suspects, including the defendant, just minutes after the crime. Hours afterward, when the officer who investigated the robbery heard about a problem at a nearby restaurant, the men causing the disturbance matched the descriptions of the Safeway suspects. The police took them back to the Safeway where they were identified as the perpetrators and eventually charged with robbery. 

But in the second case, the court found that the reliability of the eyewitness identification — and the suggestiveness of the police procedure — warranted sending the case back for a new trial. The defendant was found guilty of murdering a man and shooting his wife at an Oregon campground. The wife had only a fleeting chance to see the person who shot her husband after she was critically wounded. She was “under tremendous stress and in poor physical and mental condition,” which impaired her “ability to encode information into memory,” the court said.

Two years passed before she made the identification, which happened only after the police took her to a pretrial hearing to observe the man they said had been arrested in the shootings and showed her his picture in a notebook. Under the court’s new approach, that kind of highly suggestive police procedure is likely to make the identification inadmissible.

 

Newly Released Drone Records Reveal Extensive Military Flights in US

/

BlackListedNews

Today EFF posted several thousand pages of new drone license records and a new map that tracks the location of drone flights across the United States.

These records, received as a result of EFF’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), come from state and local law enforcement agencies, universities and—for the first time—three branches of the U.S. military: the Air Force, Marine Corps, and DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency).

Military Drone Flights in the United States

While the U.S. military doesn’t need an FAA license to fly drones over its own military bases (these are considered “restricted airspace”), it does need a license to fly in the national airspace (which is almost everywhere else in the US). And, as we’ve learned from these records, the Air Force and Marine Corps regularly fly both large and small drones in the national airspace all around the country.

This is problematic, given a recent New York Timesreport that the Air Force’s drone operators sometimes practice surveillance missions by tracking civilian cars along the highway adjacent to the base.

The records show that the Air Force has been testing out a bunch of different drone types, from the smaller, hand-launched Raven, Puma and Wasp drones designed by Aerovironment in Southern California, to the much larger Predator and Reaper drones responsible for civilian and foreign military deaths abroad.

The Marine Corps is also testing drones, though it chose to redact so much of the text from its records that we still don’t know much about its programs.

The capabilities of these drones can be astounding. According to a recent Gizmodo article, the Puma AE (“All Environment”) drone can land anywhere, “either in tight city streets or onto a water surface if the mission dictates, even after a near-vertical ‘deep stall’ final approach.”

Another drone, Insitu’s ScanEagle, which the Air Force has flown near Virginia Beach, sports an “inertial-stabilized camera turret, [that] allows for the tracking of a target of interest for extended periods of time, even when the target is moving and the aircraft nose is seldom pointed at the target.”

Boeing’s A160 Hummingbird (see photo above), which the Air Force has flown near Victorville, California, is capable of staying in the air for 16-24 hours at a time and carries a gigapixel camera and a “Forester foliage-penetration radar” system designed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). (Apparently, the Army has had a bunch of problems with the Hummingbird crashing and may not continue the program.)

Perhaps the scariest is the technology carried by a Reaper drone the Air Force is flying near Lincoln, Nevada and in areas of California and Utah. This drone uses “Gorgon Stare” technology, which Wikipedia defines as “a spherical array of nine cameras attached to an aerial drone . . . capable of capturing motion imagery of an entire city.”

This imagery “can then be analyzed by humans or an artificial intelligence, such as the Mind’s Eye project” being developed by DARPA. If true, this technology takes surveillance to a whole new level.

On a possibly lighter note, DARPA’s 2008 drone looks more like a modified flying lawnchair (see picture to left) than an advanced piece of technology. As DARPA notes in its application, this drone has been used recreationally, though probably with someone sitting in it.

Law Enforcement Drones—Some Agencies Release Information While Others Arbitrarily Withhold it

Once again, we see in these records that law enforcement agencies want to use drones to support a whole host of police work. However, many of the agencies are most interested in using drones in drug investigations.

For example, the Queen Anne County, Maryland Sheriff’s Department, which is partnering with the federal Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security and the Navy, applied for a drone license to search farm fields for pot, “surveil people of interest” (including “watching open drug market transactions before initiating an arrest”), and to perform “aerial observation of houses when serving warrants.”

The Gadsden Alabama Police Department also wanted to use its drone for drug enforcement purposes like conducting covert surveillance of drug transactions, while Montgomery County, Texas wanted to use the camera and “FLIR systems” (thermal imaging) on its ShadowHawk drone to support SWAT and narcotics operations by providing “real time area surveillance of the target during high risk operations.”

Another Texas law enforcement agency—the Arlington Police Department—also wanted to fly its “Leptron Avenger” drone for narcotics and police missions.

Interestingly, the Leptron Avenger can be outfitted with LIDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) technology. While LIDAR can be used to create high-resolution images of the earth’s surface, it is also used in high tech police speed guns—begging the question of whether drones will soon be used for minor traffic violations.

More disturbing than these proposed uses is the fact that some law enforcement agencies, like the Orange County, Florida Sheriff’s Department and Mesa County, Colorado Sheriff, have chosen arbitrarily to withhold some or—in Orange County’s case—almost all information about their drone flights—including what type of drone they’re flying, where they’re flying it, and what they want to use it for—claiming that releasing this information would pose a threat to police work.

This risk seems extremely far-fetched, given that other agencies mentioned above and in prior posts have been forthcoming and that even the US Air Force feels comfortable releasing information about where it’s flying drones around the country.

Interesting Drone Uses

Universities and state and local agencies are finding new and creative uses for drones. For example, the Washington State Department of Transportation requested a drone license to help with avalanche control, while the U.S. Department of Energy in Wyoming wanted to use a drone to “monitor fugitive methane emissions.”

The University of Michigan requested one license for its “Flying Fish” drone—essentially a buoy that floats on open water but that can reposition itself via flight (check out the picture to the left of the drone with some dolphin)—and another license for its “YellowTail” drone, which is designed to study “persistent solar-powered flight.”

And while some proposed uses seem unequivocally positive—several agencies like the U.S. Forest Service and the California Department of Forestry want to use drones to help in fighting forest fires—other uses raise the problem of mission creep.

For example, the University of Colorado (which the FAA said has received over 200 drone licenses) requested a license in 2008, not just to study meteorological conditions but also to aid “in the study of ad hoc wireless networks with [the drone] acting as communication relays.” And Otter Tail County, Minnesota wanted to use its drone, not only for “engineering and mapping” but also “as requested for law enforcement needs such as search warrant and search and rescue.” [MORE]

Read More

US unemployment falls to 7.7 percent, a 4-year low

/

TheGrio

The U.S. economy added 146,000 jobs in November and the unemployment rate fell to 7.7 percent, the lowest since December 2008. The government said Superstorm Sandy had only a minimal effect on the figures.

The Labor Department’s report on Friday offered a mixed picture for the economy.

Hiring remained steady during the storm and in the face of looming tax increases. But the government said employers added 49,000 fewer jobs in October and September than initially estimated.

And the unemployment rate fell to a four-year low in November from 7.9 percent in October mostly because more people stopped looking for work and weren’t counted as unemployed.

Black unemployment also fell, from 14.3 to 13.2 percent and African-American joblessness fell from 40.5 to 39.4 percent.

There were signs that the storm disrupted economic activity. Construction employment dropped 20,000. And weather prevented 369,000 people from getting to work — the most in almost two years. They were still counted as employed.

Stock futures jumped after the report. Dow Jones industrial average futures were down 20 points in the minutes before the report came out at 8:30 a.m., and just after were up 70 points.

Read More

Pet Negro Allen West Blew $18 million in losing effort

/
Politico
Allen West is pictured. | AP Photo

West still has $1.5 million left in his campaign coffers from his first election. | AP Photo

Rep. Allen West spent nearly the same amount in the final days before the election as his opponent spent during the entire election – and still lost.

In all, the Florida Republican spent $18.1 million in the 2012 cycle, which was more than four times as much as his opponent Patrick Murphy, who spent $4.2 million.

West dropped $4.1 million between Oct. 18 and Nov. 26 alone, according to federal reports filed Thursday.

Murphy, a 29-year-old construction company executive who had never sought office before this year, spent $880,000 during that same period.

West still has $1.5 million left in his campaign coffers – more money than the average amount raised by House GOP freshmen in 2010, when West was first elected, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Study: Widespread hunger in Haiti after storms

/

theGrio 

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Haitians have suffered widespread hunger following an unusually active storm season this year and are likely to experience more, according to a study released Friday.

The report, backed by a Rio de Janeiro, Brazil-based think tank, found that rural households in the heavily hit areas of Haiti’s west, north and Grand-Anse departments experienced what it termed “severe food shortages” after Hurricane Sandy and an unnamed storm that followed. The two merely brushed the Caribbean nation in October and November but caused major flooding and killed as many as 66 people.

Nearly 70 percent of the more than 1,000 households interviewed said they experienced moderate or severe hunger, according to the study, “After the Storm: Haiti’s Coming Food Crisis.”

The report was written by social scientists Athena Kolbe, Marie Puccio and Robert Muggah, who frequently work in the impoverished country. It echoes U.N. warnings that more than 1.5 million of Haiti’s people are at risk of malnutrition because they lost crops in the storms. As much as 90 percent of Haiti’s harvest season, much of it in the south, was destroyed in Sandy’s floods, the world body said.

“We look at all these things and expect to see there’s going to be food insecurity in six months,” said Kolbe, a doctoral candidate in social work and political science at University of Michigan. “There are going to be a lot of areas where there is not a lot food and we know what happens when there’s not a lot of food.”

Read More

Brandon Jackson case: Mom seeks justice for son allegedly beaten by white peers

/

theGrio 

In October of 2006, the Jackson family of Solomons, Md., would be rocked, when their 21-year-old son, Brandon (pictured), was reportedly jumped by 7 to 8 white males. Six years later, Brandon would be sentenced by a nearly all-white jury to 12 years in prison for attempted murder, aggravated assault, and possession of a weapon for defending himself against one of the “victims.” Struck down but buoyed by faith, Brandon’s mother, Gloria Fisher, spoke with NewsOne about how she won’t stop until she gets justice for Brandon.

The Day That Changed Everything

While Brandon helped his employer move furniture at her house in Jackson, N.J., he allegedly noticed that a fight had broken out at a party across the street. After walking toward the altercation to investigate the melee, one of the individuals involved, who is said to have been visibly intoxicated along with the raucous group, began fighting with him.

According to Gloria, Brandon quickly shut the aggressor down and attempted to return to the house he came from.

But that would be just the beginning.

The aggressor — now allegedly armed with 7 to 8 other white males in tow — followed Brandon and then reportedly began stomping and kicking him while yelling, “Kill the ni**er!”

According to Gloria, Brandon pulled out his 3-inch work pocket knife in self-defense, forcing the group back, but it was the homeowner’s call to police that would finally force the motley group to stand down.

On the police report, even though the officer would list the incident as a “racial offense” and Brandon would sustain injuries to the back of his head and knees and even had a fingernail bitten off, he would later be the only one charged with aggravated assault and illegal weapons possession.

Click here to read more.

What You Need To Know About The Michigan GOP’s ‘Right-To-Work’ Assault On Workers

/

ThinkProgress

On Thursday, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) backtracked on his commitment to avoid so-called “right-to-work” legislation and by the end of the day, both the Michigan House of Representatives and the Michigan state Senate had introduced and passed separate bills aimed at the state’s union workforce.

Michigan Republicans claim the state needs the measure to stay competitive with Indiana, where lawmakers passed “right-to-work” last year. In reality, though, such laws have negative effects on workers and little effect on economic growth. Here is what you need to know about the state GOP’s campaign:

THE LEGISLATION: Both the state House and state Senate passed legislation on Thursday that prohibits private sector unions from requiring members to pay dues. The Senate followed suit and passed a different but similar measure that extends the same prohibition for public sector unions, though firefighters and police officers are exempt. The state House included a budget appropriations provision that is intended to prevent the state’s voters from being able to legally challenge the law through a ballot referendum. Due to state law, both houses are prevented from voting on legislation passed by the other for five days, so neither will be able to fully pass the legislation until Tuesday at the earliest.

THE PROCESS: Union leaders and Democrats claim that Republicans are pushing the legislation through in the lame-duck session to hide the intent of the measures from citizens, and because the legislation would face more trouble after the new House convenes in January. Michigan Republicans hold a 63-47 advantage in the state House, but Democrats narrowed the GOP majority to just eight seats in November. Six Republicans opposed the House measure; five of them won re-election in 2012 (the sixth retired). And Michigan Republicans have good reason to pursue the laws without public debate. Though the state’s voters are evenly split on whether it should become a right-to-work state, 78 percent of voters said the legislature “should focus on issues like creating jobs and improving education, and not changing state laws or rules that would impact unions or make further changes in collective bargaining.”

THE CONSEQUENCES: While Snyder and Republicans pitched “right-to-work” as a pro-worker move aimed at improving the economy, studies show such legislation can cost workers money. The Economic Policy Institute found that right-to-work laws cost all workers, union and otherwise, $1,500 a year in wages and that they make it harder for workers to obtain pensions and health coverage. “If benefits coverage in non-right-to-work states were lowered to the levels of states with these laws, 2 million fewer workers would receive health insurance and 3.8 million fewer workers would receive pensions nationwide,” David Madland and Karla Walter from the Center for American Progress wrote earlier this year. The decreases in union membership that result from right-to-work laws have a significant impact on the middle class and research “shows that there is no relationship between right-to-work laws and state unemployment rates, state per capita income, or state job growth,” EPI wrote in a recent report about Michigan. “Right-to-work” laws also decrease worker safety and can hurt small businesses.

Read More

U.S. military is detaining more than 200 children and teens as 'enemy combatants'

/

CitizensforLegitGov

The U.S. military has detained more than 200 Afghan teenagers who were captured in the war for about a year at a time at a military prison next to Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, the United States has told the United Nations. The U.S. State Department characterized the detainees held since 2008 as "enemy combatants" in a report sent every four years to the United Nations in Geneva updating U.S. compliance with the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. Most of the juvenile Afghan detainees were about 16 years old... the U.S. report said. "I've represented children as young as 11 or 12 who have been at Bagram," said Tina M. Foster, executive director of the International Justice Network, which represents adult and juvenile Bagram detainees.

Suspected White Supremacist Arrested for Possession of Weapons Arsenal

/

CBS

Police arrested a suspected white supremacist Wednesday morning when an assortment of firearms and ammunition was discovered inside his Citrus Heights home.

Around 9 a.m. detectives from the Sheriff’s IMPACT Division went to 49-year-old David Laux’s home in the 8300 block of Fair Way to serve a search warrant.

Laux was seen driving away from the residence and was detained without incident.

Inside the home, 13 firearms, including several assault rifles and over 20,000 rounds of ammunition were discovered. 

Detectives believe Laux is affiliated with an extremist organization whose ideologies are consistent with white supremacist beliefs. It is also believed the weapons may have likely been supplied to other members of the group or sold for profit.

Laux was booked into the Sacramento County Jail for multiple weapons charges, and is being held on $110,000 bail.

The IMPACT Division’s primary mission is to combat youth and gang-related violence throughout the Sacramento region and its outlying areas. The division is composed of personnel from multiple local, state and federal law enforcement agencies. They include the Sheriff’s Department, Rancho Cordova Police Department, Elk Grove Police Department, Galt Police Department, California Highway Patrol, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (Special Services Unit), Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms, and Immigrations & Customs Enforcement.

Julian Assange: A Call to Cryptographic Arms

/

This book is not a manifesto. There is not time for that. This book is a warning.

The world is not sliding, but galloping into a new transnational dystopia. This development has not been properly recognized outside of national security circles. It has been hidden by secrecy, complexity and scale. The internet, our greatest tool of emancipation, has been transformed into the most dangerous facilitator of totalitarianism we have ever seen. The internet is a threat to human civilization.

These transformations have come about silently, because those who know what is going on work in the global surveillance industry and have no incentives to speak out. Left to its own trajectory, within a few years, global civilization will be a postmodern surveillance dystopia, from which escape for all but the most skilled individuals will be impossible. In fact, we may already be there.

While many writers have considered what the internet means for global civilization, they are wrong. They are wrong because they do not have the sense of perspective that direct experience brings. They are wrong because they have never met the enemy.

No description of the world survives first contact with the enemy.

We have met the enemy.

Over the last six years WikiLeaks has had conflicts with nearly every powerful state. We know the new surveillance state from an insider's perspective, because we have plumbed its secrets. We know it from a combatant's perspective, because we have had to protect our people, our finances and our sources from it. We know it from a global perspective, because we have people, assets and information in nearly every country. We know it from the perspective of time, because we have been fighting this phenomenon for years and have seen it double and spread, again and again. It is an invasive parasite, growing fat off societies that merge with the internet. It is rolling over the planet, infecting all states and peoples before it.

What is to be done?

Read More

Trying to Diss Cory Booker's Food Stamp Challenge White CNN Host says Assistance is Not Meant to be Only Source of Food

/

MediaMatters

CNN's Christine Romans dismissed millions of Americans who rely exclusively on food stamps for nutrition in a segment discussing Newark Mayor Cory Booker's decision to take the food stamp challenge. Romans downplayed Booker's attempt to destigmatize this program when she claimed that food stamps aren't meant to be people's only source of food when in fact, millions need the program for that exact reason.

Detroit mayor Dave Bing facing a recall effort

/

The Grio

Detroit mayor Dave Bing, who said last week that his job was the second hardest in the country behind President Obama, is facing a recall effort led by a state representative. The recall effort comes at a crucial time as the city is facing potential bankruptcy and city workers face potential layoffs starting in January.

“In order to compensate for the deficit, the city will begin to institute unpaid furloughs and other cost-saving actions, effective January 1, 2013,” Bing said on Nov. 21. “We will ensure that revenue-generating departments are not impacted by these cost-cutting measures. These actions are necessary to keep the City from falling into further financial distress.”

State Rep. John Olumba (D-Detroit) filed the recall petition in October, but the original language was rejected. The recall claims that Bing has reduced public hours to police precincts, thus jeopardizing public safety.

Olumba has previously asked Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette to investigate Bing on charges of fraud and embezzlement, but that request was quickly denied. Bing made waves last week saying that he feels that many city employees, including elected officials, have a “sense of entitlement” and he has often dismissed detractors as being part of a vocal minority.

“You’ve got a very small percentage of our population that speaks out very loudly,” Bing told theGrio in August. “The unfortunate thing is that a vast majority of our citizens are willing to stand on the sideline and let this minority group yell, scream, and get people excited without knowing facts. It’s all emotional.”

Read More

'Everyone in US under virtual surveillance' - NSA whistleblower

/

CitizensforLegitGov

'They are violating the foundation of this entire country. 04 Dec 2012 The FBI has the e-mails of nearly all US citizens, including congressional members, according to NSA whistleblower William Binney. Speaking to RT he warned that the government can use information against anyone it wants. One of the best mathematicians and code breakers in NSA history resigned in 2001 because he no longer wanted to be associated with alleged violations of the constitution. He asserts, that the FBI has access to this data due to a powerful device, Naris.

US Ending the War in Afghanistan? It Depends on the Meaning of the Word ‘War’

/

CommonDreams

It is amazing to watch politicians trying to weasel their way around their promises. President Obama is providing us with a good illustration of the art.

During the latest presidential campaign and in the final televised debates, both Obama and Vice President Joe Biden were adamant in asserting that the US would be leaving Afghanistan and ending the war in that country at the end of 2014--a goal most Americans profoundly want. Biden, in a heated debate with his Republican opponent Paul Ryan, said the US would “absolutely” be “out” of Afghanistan at the end of 2014. Obama, a week later, said, “By 2014, this process of transition will be complete and the Afghan people will be responsible for their own security."

I’m reminded of President Clinton, a lawyer who, when pressed under oath by a special prosecutor hounding him over the details of whether he had had sex with a young White House intern, said that the answer hinged on “what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”

This past weekend, it was reported that Obama and the generals at the Pentagon are planning on keeping at least 10,000 US troops stationed in Afghanistan indefinitely after that 2014 deadline for ending the war and withdrawing from that war-torn land.

Just to make it clear what we’re talking about here, 10,000 troops would represent an army half the size of the entire army of either the Netherlands or Denmark, two countries which currently have troops assigned to the NATO forces posted in Afghanistan as allies in the 12-year-long US war there.

The notion that these 10,000 post-2014 soldiers would just be “training” the Afghan military is simply absurd. Parris Island, the famed boot camp in South Carolina for the US Marine Corps, which boasts what probably is the toughest training program of any of the branches of the US military, churns out 17,000 new Marines a year with a training unit of 600 uniformed personnel. That’s one trainer per 170 recruits. At that rate, the 10,000 US “trainers” in Afghanistan could be training 1.7 million new recruits for the Afghan army each year! Even allowing for the typical top-heaviness of the US military, if only a third of those 10,000 “trainers” were actually drill sergeants and their staff, we’re talking about a training force capable of producing over 500,000 new Afghan soldiers per year! But Afghanistan’s army today, which the US claims is already largely trained and ready to protect the country, has only a total of some 200,000 active duty soldiers altogether.

Read More

UN Calls on Israel to Open Nuclear Program to Inspections

/

Anti-War

The UN General Assembly has overwhelmingly approved a resolution calling on Israel to open its nuclear program for inspection “without further delay.”

Israel’s advanced nuclear arsenal has long been understood to exist, although it hasn’t been officially admitted by the Israeli government. Many have argued Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons is what drives the accelerated Iranian program and causes other regional instability.

The resolution was approved on Monday by a vote of 174-6 with 6 abstentions and calls on Israel to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty immediately and open its nuclear facilities to inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

It also offered support for a high-level conference to ban nuclear weapons from the Middle East which was just canceled by the US and Israel, in order to protect Israel’s regional nuclear monopoly.

If Israel agreed to dismantling its vast stockpiles of nuclear weapons and to a deal enforcing a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East – a deal Iran and Israel’s Arab neighbors have repeatedly proposed – the supposed threats Israel faces in the region would virtually disappear.

But Israel refuses to give up its nuclear monopoly, insistent on maintaining its excuse to build up its military and distract from the Palestinian issue.

As former CIA Middle East analyst Paul Pillar has written, “the Iran issue” provides a “distraction” from international “attention to the Palestinians’ lack of popular sovereignty.”

4th Amendment becoming a Joke - Cops to Congress: We need logs of Americans' text messages

/

CitizensforLegitGov

AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint, and other wireless providers would be required to record and store information about Americans' private text messages for at least two years, according to a proposal that police have submitted to the U.S. Congress. CNET has learned a constellation of law enforcement groups has asked the U.S. Senate to require that wireless companies retain that information, warning that the lack of a current federal requirement "can hinder law enforcement investigations." They want an SMS retention requirement to be "considered" during congressional discussions over updating a 1986 privacy law for the cloud computing era -- a move that could complicate debate over the measure and erode support for it among civil libertarians.

Cory Booker to live on food stamps starting Tuesday

/

The Grio

Mayor Cory Booker said he will live on food stamps for a week starting Tuesday.

Booker told The Associated Press on Thursday that he will honor the challenge he made to a Twitter follower earlier this month and try living on the monetary equivalent of food stamps for at least a week.

“December 4 to 11. Seven days,” Booker said after the ribbon cutting for new loft apartments in Newark. He said he will be limited to $1.40 for each meal.

The North Carolina woman Booker challenged plans to accept, but she is not sure she will do it next week.

The woman, who uses the Twitter handle (at)MWadeNC and goes by the name TwitWit, spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because she says she has received threats.

She said she is upset that Booker didn’t consult with her before picking the dates. She said Booker sent her a tweet this week saying his staff would be in touch, but she has heard nothing since.

“I don’t think it’s fair to be challenged and just find out from the Internet when I’m supposed to take part,” she said in a telephone interview. “I would have appreciated the consideration that I have a life as well.”

Nevertheless, she said she will participate in the challenge for at least a week, possibly two.

The average monthly food stamp benefit was $133.26 per person in New Jersey in fiscal year 2011, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. As mayor, Booker makes about 100 times that amount, $13,400 a month.

Read More