War on Syria

 

Quick facts: What you need to know about the Syria crisis

Syrian girl

BRIC´s bank

BEIJING—
In July 2014, nations known as the “BRICS,” Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, announced the creation of a new, $100 billion development bank (NDB). The project is aimed at lending money to developing nations for investments, much like how the American and European-backed International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank operate.

Liu Haifang, a professor at Peking University’s Center for African Studies, said the bank will provide developing countries with more options for financing.

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BRICs Bank To Rival World Bank and IMF and Challenge Dollar Dominance

Outgoing President of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, after just three days ago dismissing the idea of a BRICs created, new global multi lateral bank, has come around and endorsed a BRICs bank in an interview with the FT.

Zoellick had initially said that a BRICs bank and potential rival to the western and U.S. dominated IMF and World Bank, would be difficult to implement given competing BRIC interests.

He acknowledged that a BRICs bank was being created and said that the World Bank supported such a bank. He said that not having Russia and China as part of "the World Bank system" would be a “mistake of historic proportions”.

Leaders of the BRICS nations meeting in India appear to have made much progress in creating a new global bank as the emerging economies seek to convert their growing economic might into collective diplomatic influence.

The five countries now account for nearly 28% of the global economy, a figure that is expected to continue to grow.

On Thursday morning, President Hu Jintao of China, President Dmitry Medvedev of Russia , President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil, President Jacob Zuma of South Africa and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India shook hands at the start of the one day meeting in New Delhi.

Read more: http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-04-02/markets/31272774_1_gold-prices-world-gold-council-world-bank#ixzz1ra85vRk9

The Islamic State

August 18, 2014 | 3:25 pm

The battle for Iraq's largest dam continued today, even as officials claimed that government troops and Kurdish forces had regained control of the complex from hardline Sunni militant group the Islamic State, which seized it earlier this month.

Iraqi military spokesman Lt-Gen. Qassim Atta told state television today that Mosul Dam had been "fully cleansed" of militants by a joint force of Iraqi troops and peshmerga fighters from Iraqi Kurdistan backed by US and Iraqi aircraft. However, when VICE News visited the peshmerga front lines close to the dam, fighting was still clearly underway and medical staff reported a number of Kurdish and Iraqi casualties.

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It is not true that the Middle East is inherently unstable. Human history is the history of conflict and the Middle East is the cradle of civilization. But it is not true that current conflict is just the continuum of thousand years of fighting. Muslims and Jews have lived in peace in the Middle East for hundreds of years. In Palestine they were well beyond tolerance into actual friendship. Even in the seventies anyone from any country could go to Beirut, Damascus, Kabul, and Bagdad and have a wonderful worry free time.

Most current conflict can be trace to imperialistic meddling. To point some highlights: the arbitrary partition of the Kurdish and Pashtun countries by the British; The creation of a European settler State in Palestine by the British; the placement in power of the aleut minority in Syria by the British; The coup de Etat by the CIA that put the Sha in power in Iran; The creation of the Taliban by the CIA; The unconditional support of Israel by the United States, even against the interest of the people and government of the US, and even after Israel has attacked US personnel in international waters.

The ISIS is a good example. Who supplies the money? Saudi Arabia with petrodollars; who supplies the weapons? The United States. Who provides the entry point for army grade weaponry? Israel; why? To weaken and destabilize Israel's neighbors and pave the way to an all out assault on Syria and Iran.

Obama authorises US air strikes to help Iraqis besieged on mountain by Isis

• Dan Roberts in Washington, Martin Chulov and Julian Borger
• 
  
• theguardian.com, Thursday 7 August 2014 23.33 EDT

Barack Obama has authorised targeted air strikes against Islamic militants in Iraq, as the US military began an airborne operation to bring relief to thousands of minority Iraqis driven to a grim, mountain-top refuge.

Describing the threats against stranded Yezidi refugees as holding the potential for “genocide”, the president said he had authorised limited air strikes to help Iraqi forces, to assist in the fight to break the siege and protect the civilians trapped there.

“When we face a situation like we do on that mountain, with innocent people facing the prospect of violence on a horrific scale and we have a mandate to help - in this case a request from the Iraqi government - and when we have unique capabilities to act to avoid a massacre, I believe the United States cannot turn a blind eye,” the president said in a late-night statement from the White House.

“Earlier this week, one Iraqi said no-one is coming to help. Well, today America is coming to help,” he said.

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Ukraine

the petrodollar

Blood and Oil
Featuring Michael T. Klare

The notion that oil motivates America's military engagements in the Middle East is often disregarded as nonsense or mere conspiracy theory. In Blood and Oil, bestselling author and Nation magazine defense correspondent Michael T. Klare challenges this conventional wisdom and corrects the historical record. The film unearths declassified documents and highlights forgotten passages in prominent presidential doctrines to show how concerns about oil have been at the core of American foreign policy for more than 60 years -- rendering our contemporary energy and military policies virtually indistinguishable.

In the end, Blood and Oil calls for a radical re-thinking of US energy policy, warning that unless we change direction, we stand to be drawn into one oil war after another as the global hunt for diminishing world petroleum supplies accelerates.

The anti-proliferation brigade

Uploaded on Jul 22, 2010

Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto has created a beautiful, undeniably scary time-lapse map of the 2053 nuclear explosions which have taken place between 1945 and 1998, beginning with the Manhattan Project's "Trinity" test near Los Alamos and concluding with Pakistan's nuclear tests in May of 1998. This leaves out North Korea's two alleged nuclear tests in this past decade (the legitimacy of both of which is not 100% clear).

Each nation gets a blip and a flashing dot on the map whenever they detonate a nuclear weapon, with a running tally kept on the top and bottom bars of the screen. Hashimoto, who began the project in 2003, says that he created it with the goal of showing"the fear and folly of nuclear weapons." It starts really slow — if you want to see real action, skip ahead to 1962 or so — but the buildup becomes overwhelming.

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World Nuclear Stockpile Report

The exact number of nuclear weapons in global arsenals is not known. With little exception, each of the nine countries with nuclear weapons guards these numbers as closely held national secrets. What is known, however, is that more than a decade and a half after the Cold War ended, the world's combined stockpile of nuclear warheads remain at unacceptably high levels.

Hans Kristensen and Robert Norris of the Federation of American Scientists are the leading experts in estimating the size of global nuclear weapons inventories. The table is a compilation of their estimates and analyses, with links to their full reports. These reports are published in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and discussed further at the FAS Strategic Security Blog.
As the authors of these estimates note, the above numbers may not add up due to rounding and uncertainty about the operational statuses and size of the total inventories. For a full analysis of how the authors arrived at their estimates, please view the provided links for the complete reports.
These huge stockpiles come at great financial cost to the countries that keep nuclear weapons. Even in the U.S., these costs area difficult to determine but, through careful analysis, Ploughshares Fund has released our best estimate of just how much nuclear weapons will cost the U.S. over the next ten years.
Updated November 4, 2013.

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War Business

Published on Feb 4, 2013

Written and spoken by Michael Rivero. 

The written version is here: http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTI...

Video by Zane Henry.

This video is in the public domain. The producers have waived their copyright to this video.
Listen to a post production conversation between the producers by clicking on this mp3: https://soundcloud.com/eonitao-state/...

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Cora Currier writes for ProPublica via Juan Cole
The United States is loosening controls over military exports, in a shift that former U.S. officials and human rights advocates say could increase the flow of American-made military parts to the world’s conflicts and make it harder to enforce arms sanctions.
Come tomorrow, thousands of parts of military aircraft, such as propeller blades, brake pads and tires will be able to be sent to almost any country in the world, with minimal oversight – even to some countries subject to U.N. arms embargos. U.S. companies will also face fewer checks than in the past when selling some military aircraft to dozens of countries.
Critics, including some who’ve worked on enforcing arms export laws, say the changes could undermine efforts to prevent arms smuggling to Iran and others.
Brake pads may sound innocuous, but “the Iranians are constantly looking for spare parts for old U.S. jets,” said Steven Pelak, who recently left the Department of Justice after six years overseeing investigations and prosecutions of export violations.
“It’s going to be easier for these military items to flow, harder to get a heads-up on their movements, and, in theory, easier for a smuggling ring to move weapons,” said William Hartung, author of a recent report on the topic for the Center for International Policy.
In the current system, every manufacturer and exporter of military equipment has to register with the State Department and get a license for each planned export. U.S. officials scrutinize each proposed deal to make sure the receiving country isn’t violating human rights and to determine the risk of the shipment winding up with terrorists or another questionable group.
Under the new system, whole categories of equipment encompassing tens of thousands of items will move to the Commerce Department, where they will be under more “flexible” controls. Final rules have been issued for six of 19 categories of equipment and more will roll out in the coming months. Some military equipment, such as fighter jets, drones, and other systems and parts, will stay under the State Department’s tighter oversight.
Commerce will do interagency human rights reviews before allowing exports, but only as a matter of policy, whereas in the State Department it is required by law.
The switch from State to Commerce represents a big win for defense manufacturers, who have long lobbied in favor of relaxing U.S. export rules, which they say put a damper on international trade. Among the companies that recently lobbied on the issue: Lockheed, which manufactures C-130 transport planes, Textron, which makes Kiowa Warrior helicopters, and Honeywell, which outfits military choppers.
Overall, industry trade groups and big defense companies have spent roughly $170 million over the last three years lobbying on a variety of issues, including export control reform, a ProPublica analysis of disclosure forms shows.
The administration says in a factsheet that “spending time and resources protecting a specialty bolt diverts resources from protecting truly sensitive items,” and that the effort will allow them to build “higher fences around fewer items.” Commerce says it will beef up its enforcement wing to prevent illegal re-exports or shipments to banned entities. The military has also supported the relaxed controls, arguing that the changes will make it easier to arm foreign allies.

An interview with Commerce Department officials was canceled due to the government shutdown, and the State Department did not respond to questions.
The shift is part of a larger administration initiative to update the arms export process, which many acknowledge needed to be streamlined. But critics of the move to Commerce say that decision has been overly driven by the interests of defense manufacturers.
“They’ve cut through the fat, into the meat, and to the bone,” said Brittany Benowitz, who was defense adviser to former Senator Russ Feingold, D-Wisc., and recently co-authored a paper on the pending changes.
“I think it’s fair to say that the views of the enforcement agencies and actors charged with carrying out the controls haven’t won the day,” said Pelak, the former Justice Department official.
Current controls haven’t prevented the U.S. from dominating arms exports up to now: In 2011, the U.S. concluded $66 billion in arms sales agreements, nearly 80 percent of the global market. The State Department denied just one percent of arms export licenses between 2008 and 2010.
At a recent hearing, a State Department official touted the economic benefits, saying the “defense industry is going to become even more competitive than they are already.”
Under the new policy, military helicopters, transport planes and other types of military equipment that typically need approval may be eligible for license-free export to 36 allied governments, including much of Europe, Argentina, Japan, South Korea, and New Zealand.
According to Colby Goodman, an arms-control expert with the Open Society Policy Center, once an item is approved for that exemption, it’s not clear that there will be any ongoing, country-specific human rights review. (The State Department hasn’t yet responded to our request for comment on that point.)
Goodman is particularly concerned about Turkey, where in the last year authorities violently suppressed protests and “security forces committed unlawful killings,” according to the most recent State Department Human Rights report.
Under the new system, some military parts can now be sent license-free to any country besides China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan or Syria. Other parts that are deemed not “specially designed” for military use, while also initially banned from those countries, have even fewer restrictions on re-exports.
Spare parts are in high demand from sanctioned countries and groups, which need them to keep old equipment up and running, according to arms control researchers. Indonesia scrambled to keep its C-130s in the air after the U.S. blocked exports for human rights violations in the 1990s. In a report on trade in arms parts, Oxfam noted that by the time of the 2011 NATO intervention in Libya, Muammar Qaddafi’s air combat fleet was in dire shape, referred to by one analyst as “the world’s largest military parking lot.” Goodman said Congolese militia members may be using aging arms that the U.S. sold decades ago to the former Zaire.
Pelak says the changes will make enforcement harder by getting rid of part of the paper trail as parts and munitions exit the U.S.: “When you take away that licensing record, you put the investigation overseas.” His office handled dozens of cases each year in which military items had been diverted to prohibited countries. The Government Accountability Office raised concerns last year about Commerce’s enforcement abilities as it takes control of exports that once went through the State Department.
The president is authorized – in fact, required – to revise the list of items under State Department control. But the massive shift to Commerce means that laws and regulations that were designed with the longstanding State Department system in place may now be up to presidential prerogative.
Vetting for human rights compliance is one such requirement. The Commerce Department said it will also continue to publicly report the sales of so-called “major defense equipment.”
Other laws may not get carried over, however. For example, if firearms are moved to Commerce, manufacturers may no longer have to notify Congress of foreign sales.
Several organizations, including the Center for International Policy, the Open Society Policy Center, and the American Bar Association’s Center for Human Rights, have called on the administration to hold off moving some military items from the State Department, and have asked Congress to apply State’s reporting requirements and restrictions to more of the military items and parts soon to be under Commerce control.
In one area, the administration does appear to have temporarily backed off – firearms and ammunition. Any decision to loosen exports for firearms could have conflicted with the president’s call for enhanced domestic gun control.
According to a memo obtained by the Wall Street Journal last spring, the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security both opposed draft versions of revisions to the firearms category. (The Justice Department press office is out of operation due to the government shutdown, and the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment.) Shifting firearms was also likely to be a lightning rod for arms control groups. As the New York Times’ C.J. Chivers has documented, small arms trafficking has been the scourge of conflicts around the world.
Draft rules for firearms and ammunitions were ready in mid-2012, according to Lawrence Keane, general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade group for gun manufacturers. The Commerce Department even sent representatives to an industry export conference to preview manufacturers on the new system they might fall under.
But since the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., last December, no proposed rule has been published.
Keane thinks the connection is irrelevant. “This has nothing to do with domestic gun control legislation. We’re talking about exports,” he said. “Our products have not moved forward, and we’re disappointed by that.”
The defense industry has long pushed for a loosening of the U.S. export controls. Initial wish-lists were aimed at restructuring and speeding up the State Department system, where the wait for a license had sometimes stretched to months. The current focus on moving items to Commerce began under the Obama administration.
The aerospace industry has been particularly active, as new rules for aircraft are the first to take effect. Commercial satellites had been moved briefly to Commerce in the 1990s, but when U.S. space companies were caught giving technical data to China in 1998, Congress returned them to State control. Last year, satellite makers successfully lobbied Congress to lift satellite-specific rules that had kept them from being eligible for the reforms.
Newer industries want to cash in, too. Virgin Galactic wrote in a comment on a proposed rule that the “nascent but growing” space tourism industry was hindered by current rules. At a conference in 2011, the chief executive of Northrup Grumman warned of “the U.S. drone aircraft industry losing its dominance” if exports weren’t boosted. (Drones are regulated under missile technology controls, and are mostly unaffected by the current changes.)
Lauren Airey, of the National Association of Manufacturers, named two main objections to the current system. First off, fees: Any company that makes a product on the State Department list has to be registered whether or not they actually export, with yearly costs starting at $2,500. There’s no fee for the Commerce list.
Secondly, any equipment that contains a listed part gets “lifetime controls,” Airey said. If a buyer wants to resell something, even for scrap, they need U.S. approval. (For example, the U.S. is currently debating whether to let Turkey re-sell American attack helicopters to Pakistan.) Under Commerce, “there are still limitations, but they are more flexible,” Airey said.
Airey’s association (and other trade groups) makes the case that foreign competitors are “taking advantage of perceived and real issues in U.S. export controls to promote foreign parts and components – advertising themselves as State-Department-free.” Airey demurred when asked for an estimate on the amount of business lost: “It’s hard to put a number directly on how much export controls cause U.S. companies to be avoided.”
An Aerospace Industries Association executive noted at a panel this spring, “We really did not move the needle at all by complaining about the fact that we weren’t making as much money as we wanted to.”
But at a recent hearing of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, members of Congress highlighted economic impact.
“In my district in Rhode Island,” said David Cicilline, D-R.I., “as many of our defense companies are looking to expand their business, really, to respond to declines in defense domestic spending, international sales are becoming even more important and really critical…to the job growth in my state.”
William Keating, D-Mass., said that “with declining defense budgets, arms sales are even more critical to the defense industry in my state to maintain production lines and keep jobs.”
“That would not have been the response a decade ago,” said one staffer who works on the issue. “National security hawks would have been worried about defense items moving to the Commerce list. The environment on the Hill has dramatically changed.”
One concern came from the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, which believes that easing controls on military technology and software could actually lead to more outsourcing of production.
William Lowell, who spent a decade of his 30 years at the State Department directing defense trade controls, told ProPublica that the move represents a major shift in the U.S. attitude towards international arms trade. U.S. policy has long been aimed at “denying the entry of U.S. military articles of any type into the international gray arms market – for which small arms and military parts are the lifeblood,” Lowell wrote in comments opposing the new rules. “Commercial arms exports have never been considered normal commercial trade.”
Follow @coracurrier

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U.N. Arms Trade Treaty...Not only would it violate Texans’ Second Amendment rights, including the right to self defense, it also raises U.S. sovereignty and national security concerns.

Senator John Cornyn

On 2 April 2013, the General Assembly adopted the landmark Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), regulating the international trade in conventional arms, from small arms to battle tanks, combat aircraft and warships. The treaty will foster peace and security by putting a stop to destabilizing arms flows to conflict regions. It will prevent human rights abusers and violators of the law of war from being supplied with arms. And it will help keep warlords, pirates, and gangs from acquiring these deadly tools.

Anti-fracking protests over Romania

Published on Oct 19, 2013

Anti-fracking protesters from all over Romania have been galvanized US energy giant Chevron's plan to start drilling outside the village of Pungetsi. While the energy firm has Bucharest's blessing, people have come together to take a stand against the potential health and environmental risks of hydraulic fracturing in the region.

cyberwar against Iran

• Stuxnet worm hits Iranian centrifuges - from mid-2009 to late 2010
• Iran complains facilities hit by Stars malware - April 2011
• Duqu trojan hits Iran's computer systems - November 2011
• Flame virus targets computers in PCs across the Middle East, including Iran and Israel - June 2012
• Iran says Stuxnet worm returns - December 2012

Greenpeace activists

Published on Sep 20, 2013

At least 27 Greenpeace activists have been arrested by the Russian coast guard after trying to disrupt work on an oil platform in the Arctic. Security forces boarded the environmentalists' ship after it ignored warnings and refused to stop. The authorities say the actions of the activists were dangerous and threatened the lives of the rig crew. RT's Tom Barton has the details.

The scope of the crisis is our hope: wake up

Russian Facebook users have poured scorn on a promise by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to investigate reports of electoral fraud.

At least 7,000 comments had appeared under his post by 20:00 GMT on Sunday, a day after the biggest anti-government protests since Soviet times.

An early random sample showed the comments were equally divided between hostility, support and neutrality.

Mr Medvedev prides himself on using social media.

He recently suffered an embarrassment on Twitter.

Having already conceded that some violations of electoral law had taken place at the parliamentary elections last Sunday, he went on Facebook to say he had issued instructions for all official reports on the conduct of the polls to be checked.

It was his comments on Saturday's election protests - some 50,000 people turned out in Moscow alone - which drew particular anger.

'Pathetic liar'

"I do not agree with either the slogans or statements heard at the rallies," Mr Medvedev wrote.

Facebook users pointed out that the chief, official slogan of the rallies had been "For Honest Elections".


Thousands of people have attended the biggest anti-government rally in the Russian capital Moscow since the fall of the Soviet Union.

As many as 50,000 people gathered on an island near the Kremlin to condemn alleged ballot-rigging in parliamentary elections and demand a re-run.

Other, smaller rallies took place in St Petersburg and other cities.

Communists, nationalists and Western-leaning liberals turned out together despite divisions between them.

The protesters allege there was widespread fraud in Sunday's polls though the ruling United Russia party did see its share of the vote fall sharply.

Continue reading the main story
“
Start Quote
The time has come to throw off the chains”
End Quote
Alexei Navalny

Jailed protest leader, in message posted on his blog

Demonstrations in the immediate aftermath of the election saw more than 1,000 arrests, mostly in Moscow, and several key protest leaders such as the anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny were jailed.

A message from Mr Navalny was released through his blog, saying: "The time has come to throw off the chains. We are not cattle or slaves. We have a voice and we have the strength to defend it."

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has never experienced popular protests like these before, the BBC's Steve Rosenberg reports from Moscow.

During his decade in power, first as president then prime minister, he has grown used to being seen as Russia's most popular and powerful politician.

But as one of the protesters put it to our correspondent, Russia is changing.



Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics  

eurozone members and others will adopt an accord with penalties for breaking deficit rules. It will be backed by a treaty between governments, not an EU treaty.

Moscow is braced for what the opposition claims will be the biggest demonstration in Russia for 20 years.

Tens of thousands are expected to gather in a square south of the Kremlin, in the latest show of anger over disputed parliamentary polls.

Smaller rallies are taking place in cities across the country.

The protesters allege Sunday's elections - which gave Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's ruling United Russia party a small lead - were fraudulent.

Hundreds of people have been arrested during anti-Putin protests over the past week, mainly in Moscow and St Petersburg.

At least 50,000 police and riot troops have been deployed in Moscow ahead of Saturday's protests.

The opposition says it is hoping for a turnout of 30,000 in the capital in the demonstration dubbed "For Fair Elections", due to begin at 14:00 (10:00 GMT).

Protests have already begun elsewhere, with several hundred marching in Vladivostok, seven timezones to the east of Moscow.

communist camarads

A Russian joke goes like this:

Two old communist camarads are sitting in a park talking to each other.
- You know Dimitri, everything they told us about communism was a lie.
- Well, yes… But that’s NOT the problem.
- what’s the problem?
- The problem is that everything they told us about capitalism is true

the national debt

Government debt (also known as public debt, national debt)^[1][2] is the debt owed by a central government. (In the U.S. and other federal states, "government debt" may also refer to the debt of a state or provincial government, municipal or local government.) By contrast, the annual "government deficit" refers to the difference between government receipts and spending in a single year, that is, the increase of debt over a particular year.

Government debt is one method of financing government operations, but it is not the only method. Governments can also create money to monetizetheir debts, thereby removing the need to pay interest. But this practice simply reduces government interest costs rather than truly canceling government debt.^[3]

Governments usually borrow by issuing securities, government bonds and bills. Less creditworthy countries sometimes borrow directly from asupranational organization (e.g. the World Bank) or international financial institutions.

As the government draws its income from much of the population, government debt is an indirect debt of the taxpayers. Government debt can be categorized as internal debt (owed to lenders within the country) and external debt (owed to foreign lenders). Sovereign debt usually refers to government debt that has been issued in a foreign currency. Another common division of government debt is by duration until repayment is due. Short term debt is generally considered to be for one year or less, long term is for more than ten years. Medium term debt falls between these two boundaries. A broader definition of government debt may consider all government liabilities, including future pension payments and payments for goods and services the government has contracted but not yet paid.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion or The Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion is an antisemitic hoax purporting to describe a Jewish plan for global domination. It was first published in Russia in 1903, translated into multiple languages, and disseminated internationally in the early part of the 20th century. Henry Ford funded printing of 500,000 copies that were distributed throughout the US in the 1920s.

US Pacific presence and influence

US servicemen in Japan have been banned from drinking in public places following a number of incidents involving US marines and the local population. According to the order by US Forces Japan (USFJ), all personnel are only allowed to consume alcohol in their own homes. Selling liquor has also been forbidden on the US bases from 10 pm to 8 am local time and anyone found leaving the compound drunk after sunset will be prevented from leaving the base. In the latest round of incidents involving inappropriate and dangerous behavior of US marines, a serviceman was arrested by Japanese police for drunk driving that injured two people on November 30.

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The end of America's Pacific century - Opinion - Al Jazeera English.

Pussy Riot

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian lawmakers are reworking a draft law introducing prison terms for religious offences after signs that Vladimir Putin is concerned it could undermine the delicate balance between the country's many religions.
The president's party proposed the law after two members of the Pussy Riot punk band were jailed for two years over a protest in a cathedral against Putin's increasingly close ties with the Russian Orthodox Church.
Putin has trod a thin line between celebrating a secular state of many religions and promoting the Russian Orthodox Church since rising to power in 2000, but has leaned more on the Orthodox Church for support since starting his third term as president in May following protests against his rule.
Opponents say the draft law is intended as part of broader Kremlin moves to suppress dissent and bolster public support by casting Putin, a former KGB spy, as the protector of religious believers.
Critics have also said the definition of offending religious feelings is so broad and vaguely defined in the draft law that it risks being ineffective or applied selectively in practice, hurting relations between Russia's many religions.
"The impression is that in the Kremlin they understood that somehow they have overdone it," said Alexei Malashenko, a religion expert at the Carnegie Moscow Center think tank.
"The goal of this law is still to tighten regulations in general but they understand that a too radical tightening is dangerous so they will consult now and hold talks, especially as at the Kremlin itself there is no unanimity on that matter."
Yaroslav Nilov told Reuters that the parliamentary committee overseeing the legislation, which he heads, was looking again at the wording after Putin told his advisory council on human rights that lawmakers should not rush with the bill.
He did not comment on the jail term it now envisages -- up to three years for offending religious feelings and up to five years for inflicting damage on religious sites or holy books, in addition to fines and community work.
"What does offending religious feelings mean? Is the most important principle for Muslims, that there is no God but Allah, an offence to the religious feelings of Christians?," said Alexei Grishin, a member of Russia's Civic Chamber, an advisory body to the Russian authorities.
"Most likely it is if you approach it very stringently, as it suggests all other gods are not really gods. So the law really needs to be worded very precisely, otherwise it would lead to unpredictable consequences."
RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH RESURGENT
The Russian Orthodox Church has been resurgent since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, but atheistic traditions are also strong after decades of repression of religious faith during the Soviet Communist era.
About three in four Russians say they are Orthodox Christians and a vast majority were outraged by the profanity-laced Pussy Riot protest in February, although far fewer supported the tough sentences, opinion polls showed.
The two members of the all-female protest band were sentenced for hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.
Nilov, head of parliament's committee on civic and religious groups, said he hoped the jail terms would stay.
"We are refining the wording. The law will only be passed next year," he said, adding that one change discussed was aimed at avoiding legal discrimination of atheists.
"For example, we will move away from talking of safeguarding the feelings of believers towards creating a punishment for offending people because of their views on religion. Such a phrase will also include non-believers."
Rights activists have said the legislation, in its current form, could blur the line between religion and the state in Russia, which by constitution is a secular country.
"I think our legislation already has enough instruments to protect against attacks on citizens whose right to easily exercise their freedom of conscience, both in religious and other terms, is hindered," Russia's human rights ombudsman, Vladimir Lukin, said.
(Editing by Timothy Heritage and Anna Willard)

Russian Mafia State

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia has agreed tough measures to respond to U.S. Congress if lawmakers pass legislation intended to punish Russian officials for human rights violations, a senior Foreign Ministry official said on Friday.
Congress will vote on a bill named after Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky on Friday - the third anniversary of his death in detention - which is designed to deny visas for Russian officials involved in his imprisonment, abuse or death.
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Russia had already prepared its response but gave no more details than a Foreign Ministry statement on Thursday that warned of tough retaliation.
"Of course there are (measures in place). We have discussed (them) at all stages of the debate over the so-called Magnitsky bill," Interfax news agency quoted Ryabkov as saying.
"I can confirm that our response will be tough," he said, but did not specify what those measures would entail.
Lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives voted on Thursday 243-164 to include the legislation in a broader package to be put to a vote on Friday.
Magnitsky was jailed in 2008 on suspicion of tax evasion and fraud, charges which colleagues say were fabricated by police investigators he had accused of stealing $230 million from the state through fraudulent tax refunds. The Kremlin's own human rights council has said he was probably beaten to death.
His case has become a symbol of corruption and the abuse of citizens in Russia who challenge the authorities. But adoption of the bill could undermine efforts to improve relations at the start of U.S. President Barack Obama's new term and a few months into President Vladimir Putin's third term in Russia.
(Reporting By Thomas Grove, Editing by Timothy Heritage)

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WEYBRIDGE, England/LONDON (Reuters) - A Russian businessman helping Swiss prosecutors uncover a powerful fraud syndicate has died in unexplained circumstances near his mansion in Britain, in a chilling twist to a Russian mafia scandal that has strained Moscow's ties with the West.
Alexander Perepilichny, 44, sought refuge in Britain three years ago and had been helping a Swiss investigation into a Russian money-laundering scheme by providing evidence against corrupt officials, his colleagues and media reports said.

Iraq has cancelled deal to buy arms from Russia

The Iraqi Defence Minister has denied that the country has cancelled a major arms deal with Russia. It's in response to the Prime Minister's spokesman who'd earlier said corruption concerns caused the scrapping of a deal sealed only a month ago, to sell Iraq more than 4-billion-dollars' worth of military hardware.
RT talks to government and business consultant, Christoph R. Horstel.



Iraq has cancelled a $4.2bn (£2.6bn) deal to buy arms from Russia because of concerns about "corruption", an Iraqi government advisor has said.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has suspicions about corruption within his own team, his spokesman told the BBC.

The purchase - said to include attack helicopters and missiles - was only signed off in October.

Iraq has been rebuilding its armed forces since the end of US-led combat operations against insurgents.

One Russian military expert has suggested the that Iraqi authorities scuppered the Russian arms deal under pressure from Washington.

Brian Becker

Only a few days after his victory in the US presidential election, Barack Obama is already making bold steps in the international arena. The US has sent an air force detachment to service warplanes in Poland - which had pressed Washington for a security guarantee against its perceived threat from Russia. For more on Washington's foreign policy moves, RT talks to anti-war activist Brian Becker.

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• Co-Director of the International Action Center
• Member of International A.N.S.W.E.R.’s steering committee
• Member of the Secretariat of the Workers World Party

Brian Becker is a Co-Director of Ramsey Clark's International Action Center (IAC) and a steering committee member of International A.N.S.W.E.R.  Both are front groups for the Marxist-Leninist Workers World Party (WWP). Through his association with these organizations, Becker has been a prominent figure in the anti-war movement's massive rallies against the war on terror. 

Becker is a member of the Secretariat of the WWP of the United States, which is a staunch supporter of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il. As Chairman of the "U.S. Troops out of Korea Committee," Becker has accused the United States of conducting a campaign of genocide against North Korea.

Becker is also a member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation.

In March 2002, Becker was elected Vice-Chairman of the Committee of the International Liaison for Reunification and Peace in Korea (CILRECO). According to one source, this Committee (under Becker’s stewardship) has developed a pro-Kim public relations campaign designed to force the U.S. to withdraw its troops from the Korean peninsula.

In Becker’s calculus, America’s entire history has been laced with unremitting evil. In July 1999 hestated:

The United States government leaders speak so piously about human rights in countries that they have decided to attack. This is part of war propaganda, but it is also designed to divert attention from their own history.

We all learn in school and the government leaders tell us and it’s repeated in the media that the United States became a rich and powerful country because of the so-called "magic of the free market." Because of the purported virtues of capitalism. Or sometimes they tell us it’s because of their love for democracy, or "the rule of law." These supposed virtues are supposed to have le[d] to such a spontaneous and creative outpouring of human energy that it made the United States a wealthy and powerful country.

But what is the truth? For more than three centuries U.S. capitalism grew largely from the accumulation of wealth from slave labor. Millions and millions of African people worked as slaves, as human chattel, and it was their unpaid labor that led to a vast accumulation of capital and wealth. Was this slavery legal according to U.S. law? Yes it was. But do we consider it any less of a crime against humanity? Of course not. In the United States slavery was legal, but the system of slavery was a criminal affront to humanity.

The rulers in the United States speak in the name of legality and about the rights of national minorities. But they neglect to mention that the wealth of this country was also derived from the theft and the genocidal ethnic cleansing of millions of Native Indian people. They neglect to mention that these Indian people were deliberately massacred throughout the continent of North America and that the few survivors were forced into reservations, deprived of their language, and of their culture. It was the theft of their rich, bountiful land that made the corporate establishment of the United States very rich indeed.

On November 6, 2001, less than two months after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Becker called America's military retaliation against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan "one of the great crimes and acts of terrorism." "Let us not forget," he said, "that September 11 was not the beginning of violence, but just one point in a long continuum of violence that is fundamentally a consequence of U.S. policies around the world."

According to Becker, "September 11 was an unanticipated attack on the American 'homeland.' As an empire, the U.S. was required to respond massively, though not necessarily on terrain of its own choosing, to offset the impression it was no longer invincible. Our government rashly hit out at poverty-stricken and weak Afghanistan as the only immediately available target.... But this was not simply a defensive war to prove a point. It is part of an existing American strategy [of expansion] already in place in the Middle East. Thus, the U.S. is not seeking just to 'defend itself' but is looking for advantages such as new markets and profits." 

In Becker's estimation, the American government is also using the war on terror as a pretext for an assault on the civil liberties of its own citizens. "It's really not about terrorism but about repression,"he argued. "So-called anti-terrorism laws will be used against the growing anti-war movement.... Anti-terrorism has replaced anti-communism [as a unifying ideology] in the U.S. and on a global scale." 

In September 2002, Becker condemned the Bush administration for contemplating military action against Iraq. Characterizing the U.S. as a "rogue state," he likened members of the Bush administration to "drunken gunslingers who shoot up the town in a Saturday night frenzy -- just because they can." He ridiculed their "sneering, swaggering and threatening foreign policy." He stated that any claims of an Iraqi WMD threat were "all lies -- incredible lies." He identified the world's foremost nuclear threat as the United States, "the only country to have used atomic bombs, which it did against the civilian cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki...."  And he asserted that America's motivation for attacking Iraq was its desire to achieve a "re-conquest of a country that had earlier dared to nationalize Western oil installations."

Becker has worked closely with Muslim American Society (MAS) President Esam Omeish. Both were guest speakers at a July 2006 rally in support of Hezbollah and Hamas. In Becker's view, Israel's military response to the rockets that Hamas had fired (from Gaza) at Israeli towns constituted a "criminal reaggression." He minimized Hezbollah's cross-border raid that had killed three Israeli soldiers and ended with the kidnapping of two others. He made no reference to the Hezbollah rocket fire which was raining down on Israeli civilian neighborhoods. And he arguedthat Israel is supported by U.S. aid because "Israel carries out the fundamental colonial functions against not only the Palestinians but against all Arab people and against other peoples of the Middle East."

In the fall of 2007, Omeish was forced to resign from his recently-appointed position on Virginia Governor Tim Kaine's immigration commission when a series of videos -- featuring Omeish at a December 2000 rally praising Palestinians for using “the jihad … to liberate your land” -- were brought to the governor's attention. Becker stepped forward as a character witness for Omeish, asserting that Omeish was the victim of a smear campaign conducted by "right-wing anti-Muslim bigots.”

On February 4, 2011, Becker said: “The most important thing we can do for the people in Venezuela and the people in Cuba and the people everywhere who want to be free, is build a revolutionary party and organization and movement in the United States, that can fight and defeat U.S. imperialism.” "We're building a revolutionary party," he added, "wiith one idea in mind: That the same phenomenon that happened in Egypt [where popular uprisings has forced a major shift in the structure of the country's government] will actually happen in the United states."

On April 1, 2011, Becker said: "While we dont like violence, we [PSL members] are not pacifists. And in fact, we recognize that sometimes violence not only is necessary, but necessary for the liberation of human beings.” He likened the notion that PSL and its ideological allies might someday resort to violence, to General George Washington's “armed struggle against British colonialism,” and to the Civil War's role in bringing about “the end of chattel slavery as a legal institution.”