Barack Obama will not meet Benjamin Netanyahu in March.

Barack Obama will not meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he visits in March to speak to Congress, the White House says.

Spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan cited a "long-standing practice" of not meeting heads of state close to elections, which Israel will hold in mid-March.

Mr Netanyahu was invited by House Speaker John Boehner in what is seen as a rebuke to Mr Obama's Iran policy.

The US president has said he will veto attempts to add new sanctions on Iran.

Mr Obama believes new measures will be harmful to negotiations over Iran's nuclear programme, talks Mr Netanyahu has opposed. The Israeli prime minister has warned a deal between Iran and the US will pose a threat to Israel.

On Thursday, Mr Netanyahu formally accepted the invitation from senior Republican Mr Boehner, saying it will give him the chance to "thank President Barack Obama, Congress and the American people for their support of Israel"

He is expected to discuss Iran, as well as Islamic militant groups, in his address to Congress on 3 March.

"As a matter of long-standing practice and principle, we do not see heads of state or candidates in close proximity to their elections, so as to avoid the appearance of influencing a democratic election in a foreign country," Ms Meehan said in a statement.

She added Mr Obama had "been clear about his opposition" about new sanctions legislation.

"The president has had many conversations with the prime minister on this matter, and I am sure they will continue to be in contact."

Nancy Pelosi, the House's top Democrat, said the visit, two weeks before Israel's election and in the midst of "delicate" Iran talks, is not "appropriate and helpful".

Mr Netanyahu is fighting a tough election against the Labor Party's Yitzhak Herzog, who has focused on the prime minister's cooler relations with Mr Obama.

Analysis: Nick Bryant, BBC News, Washington:

"A full blown crisis" was how Jeffrey Goldberg, one of America's leading Middle East commentators, described relations between the US and Israel last October, in an article that famously quoted a senior Obama administration official describing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a most unflattering, ornithological manner.

Since then, relations have deteriorated still further. The news this week that Netanyahu had accepted an invitation from the Republican House Speaker John Boehner to address a joint session of Congress - essentially to deliver a rebuttal to the president's pledge to veto any new congressional sanctions against Iran - blindsided the White House.

They complained that it was a "breach of protocol." In announcing that the prime minister will not get to meet the president, the Obama administration is invoking diplomatic protocol again.

But this will be widely interpreted as a snub, and make a difficult relationship even more acrimonious. 22 January 2015 BBC.

US admits ex-Gitmo detainee from Australia innocent.

The United States has acknowledged that former Australian Guantanamo Bay inmate David Hicks, who had been held in the prison for five years, is innocent, according to his lawyer.

Lawyer Stephen Kenny told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) on Friday that Hicks’ legal team has been told that the US government admitted that his conviction in 2013 was not valid.

"We have no doubts that the Military Commission ... will make a ruling now that David Hicks' conviction should be set aside," he said.

Kerry said he expected a US military commission to respond to the appeal within a month.

The Pentagon however declined to comment directly on the lawyer’s statement, arguing that any developments in the case are a matter for the military court.

"The government will make additional responses through court filings," said Pentagon spokesman, Army Lieutenant Colonel Myles Caggins.

Hicks, now 38 and free in Australia, pleaded guilty in 2007 to providing "material support for terrorism."

His legal team, however, said that he did so under pressure and filed an appeal in a bid to get out of Guantanamo in late 2013, at the time when he was despondent and suicidal.

Hicks was among the first group of prisoners sent to Guantanamo a year after being arrested in Afghanistan in December 2001.

He was tortured, threatened with violence, deprived of sleep for long periods and sexually assaulted during his time at the prison, his lawyers said.

Should Hicks loses in the military appeals court, he could appeal to a federal appeals court and the US Supreme Court.

The Guantanamo Bay prison at the US naval base in Cuba was opened in January 2002 to hold terror suspects captured during the so-called war on terror.

During his sixth State of the Union speech on Tuesday, President Barack Obama once again promised to shut down the prison. He had promised to close the prison before his election in 2008.

Some 122 people are still imprisoned in the prison. PressTV, 23 January 2015.

Amnesty: European nations must admit CIA ties.

Amnesty International has called on European nations to admit their involvement in operations of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that included torture of inmates.

The UK-based group’s counter-terrorism and human rights expert Julia Hall said on Tuesday that the governments could no longer “rely on unsubstantiated 'national security' grounds and claims of state secrecy to hide the truth about their roles in the torture and disappearance of people.”

She also urged justice for all the detainees who have suffered the ghastly practices such as waterboarding, sexual assault, as well as mock executions.

The call came following the release of a report by the US Senate that painted a gruesome picture of how the CIA tormented those suspected of committing acts of terror. The damning report also shed light on British spy agencies’ role in the inhumane practices as London is Washington's closest partner in the so-called "War on Terror.”

The Senate report made it crystal clear that foreign governments “were essential to the 'success' of the CIA operations,” Hall further said.

No European countries have been explicitly named in the US report. However, Amnesty says based on its research, Poland, Romania, and Lithuania allowed the CIA to run secret detention sites on their soil while British agents were involved in torture.

The results of a parliamentary probe into allegations of British cooperation with Washington in torture will be published at end of 2015. Nevertheless, the rights group believes the investigation is “not independent.”

The controversial report was released by the Senate Intelligence Committee in late 2014 and presented a drastically redacted summary of the voluminous report on the CIA’s torture program during the administration of former President George W. Bush. 20 January 2015, PTV.

Sen. Graham threatens Palestinian Authority with annual aid cut.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham warns Palestinians that they could lose US’ annual aid should they lodge a lawsuit against Israel at the International Criminal Court.

Graham, who is visiting Israel, Saudi Arabia and Qatar as part of a seven-member senate delegation, said that existing US legislation “would cut off aid to the Palestinians if they filed a complaint.”

He described the prospect of a lawsuit against Israel as a “bastardizing of the role of the ICC”, saying it is “incredibly offensive" and a “provocative step”.

The US supplies more than $400 million dollars worth of aid to the Palestinian Authority annually.

Last month, Israel halted the transfer of more than $120 million in taxes belonging to the Palestinians after the Palestinian Authority applied to join the ICC.

After foreign aid is deducted, tax revenues account for around two-thirds of the Palestinian Authority's yearly budget.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has confirmed that Palestinians will formally become a member of the ICC on April 1, after applying earlier this month.

The US on Friday condemned the ICC decision to launch a preliminary investigation into Israel’s crimes calling it a "tragic irony".

In addition, Israel started lobbying member states of the ICC to cut their funding to the body in retaliation for its bid to launch a probe into Israeli war crimes.

ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda has announced that her office intends to conduct an “analysis in full independence and impartiality” into suspected war crimes carried out by Israeli military forces.

During its Gaza offensive last summer, Israel killed nearly 2,200 Palestinians, including 577 children, injured over 11,100. Tue Jan 20, 2015 6:32AM PTV.

Charlie Hebdo: the danger of polarised debate.

Gary Younge

Attempts to explain the Paris attacks are reductive. The truth is more complex and difficult to accept . Far from being ‘sacred’, as some have claimed, freedom of speech is always contingent.’

In times of crisis, those who would like us to keep just one idea in our heads at any one time are quick to the megaphones. By framing events in Manichean terms – dark versus light; good versus evil – an imposed binary morality seeks to corral us into crude camps. There are no dilemmas, only declarations. What some lack in complexity they make up for in polemical clarity and the provision of a clear enemy.

A black man kills two policemen in their car in New York, and suddenly those who protested against the police killing unarmed black people across the country and going unpunished have blood on their hands. Sony pulls a film about the fictional assassination of a real foreign leaderafter threats of violent reprisals, and suddenly anyone who challenged the wisdom of making such a film is channelling their inner Neville Chamberlain. Straw men are stopped and searched in case they are carrying nuance and then locked up until the crisis is over. No charges are ever brought because a trial would require questions and evidence. You’re either with us or against us.

The horrific events of the past week have provided one such crisis. From both the left and right, efforts to explain the assassinations at Charlie Hebdo magazine, a Kosher supermarket and elsewhere inevitably become reductive. Most seek, with a singular linear thesis, to explain what happened and what we should do about it: it’s about Islam; it has nothing to do with Islam; it’s about foreign policy; it has nothing to do with foreign policy; it’s war; it’s criminality; it’s about freedom of speech,integration, racism, multiculturalism.

There is something to most of these. And yet not enough to any one of them to get anywhere close. Too few, it seems, are willing to concede that while the act of shooting civilians dead where they live and work is crude, the roots of such actions are deep and complex, and the motivations, to some extent, unknowable and incoherent. The bolder each claim, the more likely it is to contain a qualifying or even contradictory argument at least as plausible.

Clearly, this was an attack on free speech. Despite the bold statements of the past week any cartoonist will now think more than twice before drawing the kind of pictures for which Charlie Hebdo became notorious. This principle should be unequivocally defended. It should also be honestly defined.

Every country, including France, has limits on freedom of speech. In 2005 Le Monde was found guilty of “racist defamation” against Israel and the Jewish people. In 2008 a cartoonist at Charlie Hebdo was fired after refusing to apologise for making antisemitic remarks in a column. And two years before the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten published the cartoons of Muhammad in 2006, it rejected ones offering a light-hearted take on the resurrection of Christ for fear they would “provoke an outcry”.

Far from being “sacred”, as some have claimed, freedom of speech is always contingent. All societies draw lines, that are ill-defined, constantly shifting and continually debated, about what constitutes acceptable standards of public discourse when it comes to cultural, racial and religious sensitivities. The question is whether those lines count for Muslims too.

The demand that Muslims should have to answer for these killings is repugnant. Muslims can no more be held responsible for these atrocities than Jews can for the bombings in Gaza. Muslims do not form a monolithic community; nor does their religion define their politics – indeed they are the people most likely to be killed by Islamic extremists. The Paris killers shot a Muslim policeman; the next day a Muslim shop assistant hid 15 people in the freezer of a kosher deli while the shooter held hostages upstairs. Nobody elected these gunmen; they don’t represent anyone.

That said, it is simply untenable to claim that these attackers had nothing to do with Islam, anymore than it would be to say the Ku Klux Klan had nothing to do with Christianity, or that India’s BJP has nothing to Hinduism. It is within the ranks of that religion that this particular strain of violence has found inspiration and justification. That doesn’t make the justifications valid or the inspirations less perverted. But it doesn’t render them irrelevant either.

Those who claim that Islam is “inherently”violent are more hateful, but no less nonsensical, than those who claim it is “inherently” peaceful. The insistence that these hateful acts are refuted by ancient texts makes as much sense as insisting they are supported by them. Islam, like any religion, isn’t “inherently” anything but what people make of it. A small but significant minority have decided to make it violent.

There is no need to be in denial about this. Given world events over the past decade or so, the most obvious explanation is also the most plausible: the fate of Muslims in foreign conflicts played a role in radicalising these young men. Working-class Parisians don’t go to Yemen for military training on a whim. Since their teens these young men have been raised on a nightly diet of illegal wars, torture and civilian massacres in the Gulf and the Middle East in which the victims have usually been Muslim.

In a court deposition in 2007, Chérif Kouachi, the younger of the brothers affiliated with al-Qaida who shot the journalists at Charlie Hebdo, was explicit about this. “I got this idea when I saw the injustices shown by television on what was going on over there. I am speaking about the torture that the Americans have inflicted on the Iraqis.”

In a video from beyond the grave the other shooter, Amedy Coulibaly, claims he joined Islamic State to avenge attacks on Muslims. These grievances are real even if attempts to square them with the killers’ actions make your head hurt. France opposed the Iraq war; Isis and al-Qaida have been sworn enemies and both have massacred substantial numbers of Muslims. Not only is the morality bankrupt, but the logic is warped.

But Islamists are not alone in their contradictions. Today is theanniversary of the opening of Guantánamo Bay. Given the recent release of the US torture report or France’s role in resisting democratic change during the Arab spring, many of those who claim that this is a battle between liberty and barbarism have a foot in both camps.

This is why describing these attacks as criminal is both axiomatic and inadequate. They were not robbing a bank or avenging a turf war. Anti-terrorism police described the assault on the magazine as “calm and determined”. They walked in, asked for people by name, and executed them. Coulibaly killed a policewoman and shot a jogger before holding up a kosher supermarket and killing four Jews. These were, for the most part, not accidental targets. Nor were they acts of insanity. They were calculated acts of political violence driven by the incoherent allegiances of damaged and dangerous young men.

They are personally responsible for what they did. But we, as a society, are collectively responsible for the conditions that produced them. And if we want others to turn out differently – less hateful, more hopeful – we will have to keep more than one idea in our heads at the same time. The Guardian, 11 January 2015.

Chomsky: Paris attacks show hypocrisy of West's outrage.

By Noam Chomsky

The crimes also elicited a flood of commentary, inquiring into the roots of these shocking assaults in Islamic culture and exploring ways to counter the murderous wave of Islamic terrorism without sacrificing our values. The New York Times described the assault as a "clash of civilizations," but was corrected by Times columnist Anand Giridharadas,who tweeted that it was "Not & never a war of civilizations or between them. But a war FOR civilization against groups on the other side of that line. #CharlieHebdo."

The scene in Paris was described vividly in the New York Timesby veteran Europe correspondent Steven Erlanger: "a day of sirens, helicopters in the air, frantic news bulletins; of police cordons and anxious crowds; of young children led away from schools to safety. It was a day, like the previous two, of blood and horror in and around Paris."

Erlanger also quoted a surviving journalist who said that "Everything crashed. There was no way out. There was smoke everywhere. It was terrible. People were screaming. It was like a nightmare." Another reported a "huge detonation, and everything went completely dark." The scene, Erlanger reported, "was an increasingly familiar one of smashed glass, broken walls, twisted timbers, scorched paint and emotional devastation."

These last quotes, however -- as independent journalist David Peterson reminds us -- are not from January 2015. Rather, they are from a report by Erlanger on April 24 1999, which received far less attention. Erlanger was reporting on the NATO "missile attack on Serbian state television headquarters" that "knocked Radio Television Serbia off the air," killing 16 journalists.

"NATO and American officials defended the attack," Erlanger reported, "as an effort to undermine the regime of President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia." Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon told a briefing in Washington that "Serb TV is as much a part of Milosevic's murder machine as his military is," hence a legitimate target of attack.

There were no demonstrations or cries of outrage, no chants of "We are RTV," no inquiries into the roots of the attack in Christian culture and history. On the contrary, the attack on the press was lauded. The highly regarded U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke, then envoy to Yugoslavia, described the successful attack on RTV as "an enormously important and, I think, positive development," a sentiment echoed by others.

There are many other events that call for no inquiry into western culture and history -- for example, the worst single terrorist atrocity in Europe in recent years, in July 2011, when Anders Breivik, a Christian ultra-Zionist extremist and Islamophobe, slaughtered 77 people, mostly teenagers.

Also ignored in the "war against terrorism" is the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times -- Barack Obama's global assassination campaign targeting people suspected of perhaps intending to harm us some day, and any unfortunates who happen to be nearby. Other unfortunates are also not lacking, such as the 50 civilians reportedly killed in a U.S.-led bombing raid in Syria in December, which was barely reported.

One person was indeed punished in connection with the NATO attack on RTV -- Dragoljub Milanović, the general manager of the station, who was sentenced by the European Court of Human Rights to 10 years in prison for failing to evacuate the building,according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. TheInternational Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia considered the NATO attack, concluding that it was not a crime, and although civilian casualties were "unfortunately high, they do not appear to be clearly disproportionate."

The comparison between these cases helps us understand the condemnation of the New York Times by civil rights lawyer Floyd Abrams, famous for his forceful defense of freedom of expression. "There are times for self-restraint," Abrams wrote, "but in the immediate wake of the most threatening assault on journalism in living memory, [the Times editors] would have served the cause of free expression best by engaging in it" by publishing the Charlie Hebdo cartoons ridiculing Mohammed that elicited the assault.

Abrams is right in describing the Charlie Hebdo attack as "the most threatening assault on journalism in living memory." The reason has to do with the concept "living memory," a category carefully constructed to include Their crimes against us while scrupulously excluding Our crimes against them -- the latter not crimes but noble defense of the highest values, sometimes inadvertently flawed.

This is not the place to inquire into just what was being "defended" when RTV was attacked, but such an inquiry is quite informative (see my A New Generation Draws the Line).

There are many other illustrations of the interesting category "living memory." One is provided by the Marine assault against Fallujah in November 2004, one of the worst crimes of the U.S.-UK invasion of Iraq.

The assault opened with occupation of Fallujah General Hospital, a major war crime quite apart from how it was carried out. The crime was reported prominently on the front page of the New York Times, accompanied with a photograph depicting how "Patients and hospital employees were rushed out of rooms by armed soldiers and ordered to sit or lie on the floor while troops tied their hands behind their backs." The occupation of the hospital was considered meritorious and justified: it "shut down what officers said was a propaganda weapon for the militants: Fallujah General Hospital, with its stream of reports of civilian casualties."

Evidently, this is no assault on free expression, and does not qualify for entry into "living memory."

There are other questions. One would naturally ask how France upholds freedom of expression and the sacred principles of "fraternity, freedom, solidarity." For example, is it through the Gayssot Law, repeatedly implemented, which effectively grants the state the right to determine Historical Truth and punish deviation from its edicts? By expelling miserable descendants of Holocaust survivors (Roma) to bitter persecution in Eastern Europe? By the deplorable treatment of North African immigrants in the banlieues of Paris where the Charlie Hebdo terrorists became jihadis? When the courageous journal Charlie Hebdo fired the cartoonist Siné on grounds that a comment of his was deemed to have anti-Semitic connotations? Many more questions quickly arise.

Anyone with eyes open will quickly notice other rather striking omissions. Thus, prominent among those who face an "enormous challenge" from brutal violence are Palestinians, once again during Israel's vicious assault on Gaza in the summer of 2014, in which many journalists were murdered, sometimes in well-marked press cars, along with thousands of others, while the Israeli-run outdoor prison was again reduced to rubble on pretexts that collapse instantly on examination.

Also ignored was the assassination of three more journalists in Latin America in December, bringing the number for the year to 31. There have been more than a dozen journalists killed in Honduras alone since the military coup of 2009 that was effectively recognized by the U.S. (but few others), probably according post-coup Honduras the per capita championship for murder of journalists. But again, not an assault on freedom of press within living memory.

It is not difficult to elaborate. These few examples illustrate a very general principle that is observed with impressive dedication and consistency: The more we can blame some crimes on enemies, the greater the outrage; the greater our responsibility for crimes -- and hence the more we can do to end them -- the less the concern, tending to oblivion or even denial.

Contrary to the eloquent pronouncements, it is not the case that "Terrorism is terrorism. There's no two ways about it." There definitely are two ways about it: theirs versus ours. And not just terrorism. CNN January 19, 2015.

Richest 1% to own more than rest of world, Oxfam says.

The wealthiest 1% will soon own more than the rest of the world's population, according to a study by charity group Oxfam.

The charity's research shows that the share of the world's wealth owned by the richest 1% increased from 44% in 2009 to 48% last year.

On current trends, Oxfam says it expects the wealthiest 1% to own more than 50% of the world's wealth by 2016.

The research coincides with the start of the World Economic Forum in Davos. The annual gathering attracts top political and business leaders from around the world, and Oxfam's executive director Winnie Byanyima, who will co-chair the Davos event, said she would use the charity's high-profile role at the gathering to demand urgent action to narrow the gap between rich and poor.

In a statement ahead of the gathering, Ms Byanyima said the scale of global inequality was "simply staggering". "It is time our leaders took on the powerful vested interests that stand in the way of a fairer and more prosperous world.

"Business as usual for the elite isn't a cost free option - failure to tackle inequality will set the fight against poverty back decades. The poor are hurt twice by rising inequality - they get a smaller share of the economic pie and because extreme inequality hurts growth, there is less pie to be shared around," she added.

Rich getting richer:

The charity is calling on governments to adopt a seven point plan to tackle inequality, including a clampdown on tax evasion by companies and the move towards a living wage for all workers.

Oxfam made headlines at Davos last year with the revelation that the 85 richest people on the planet have the same wealth as the poorest 50% (3.5 billion people).

It said that that comparison had now become even more stark, with the 80 richest people having the same wealth as the poorest 50%.

The charity said the research, published on Monday, showed that 52% of global wealth not owned by the richest 1% is owned by those in the richest 20%.

The remaining population accounts for just 5.5% of global wealth and their average wealth was $3,851 (£2,544) per adult in 2014, Oxfam found.

That compares to an average wealth of $2.7m per adult for the elite 1%.

The study comes just a day before US President Barack Obama's State of the Union address, in which he is expected to call for tax increases on the wealthy to help the middle class.

In October, a report from banking giant Credit Suisse also said that the richest 1% of people own nearly half of the world's wealth. BBC,19 January 2015 Last updated at 08:12

 

‘40% of UK families too poor to play societal role’

A charity has revealed that 40 percent of British families are “too poor to play a part in society,” amid government benefit cuts and rising living costs.

On Monday, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation released a report showing that some 8.1 million parents and children are living on earnings that cannot adequately cover minimum household budgets, up from 5.9 million in 2008-2009.

The findings also showed that the situation for single-parent households were even worse with 71 percent of lone parents, or 2.3 million individuals, living below a socially acceptable standard of living.

Katie Schmuecker, the charity’s policy and research manager, blamed the Tory-led coalition government’s cuts to benefits, stagnant wages and increased living costs for the worsening situation.

“Stagnant wages, cuts to in and out-of-work benefits and sharp rises in the cost of essential items over several years have taken their toll upon the ability of families with children to secure a decent living standard,” said Schmuecker.

The charity called on Prime Minister David Cameron’s government as well as employers to tackle the problem as “this trend is likely to have serious consequences for the next generation.”

Donald Hirsch, a co-author of the report, said it would take years of increased earnings and government measures to significantly reduce the number of families living below standards.

The current UK government has been implementing austerity measures since it came to power in 2010 in a bid to tackle the country’s mounting debt and sluggish growth. The cuts have severely hit the poorest households in the country, forcing many of them to choose between paying for food or energy.Mon Jan 19, 2015 8:34AM.

Iran: Nuclear deal only possible without pressure

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif speaks during a press conference with his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier in Berlin on January 15, 2015.

Iran says an agreement on the country’s nuclear energy program can only be signed when Western countries stop exerting pressure on Tehran.

“The policies of pressure and dialog are mutually exclusive,” Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told the Iranian television on Saturday.

“If Western countries intend to negotiate with Iran, they should make a political decision, which might be difficult for some, and cease applying pressure,” he added.

Also on Saturday, a senior Iranian nuclear negotiator said Iran and six world powers can reach a deal on the Islamic Republic's nuclear program if the other side shows real determination for an accord.

“We still hope and think that reaching an agreement is possible if the other side has the necessary determination and goodwill,” said Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs Seyyed Abbas Araqchi.

A fresh round of talks between Iran and P5+1 countries -- the US, the UK, Russia, China, France and Germany -- started in the Swiss city of Geneva early Saturday.

The meeting comes as Zarif has been engaged in four rounds of talks with US secretary of State John Kerry over the past three days.

Zarif also held talks with German and French foreign ministers, during which he urged his European counterparts to play a more active role in the final phases of the negotiations on Iran’s nuclear deal.

In November 2013, Iran and the P5+1 clinched an interim nuclear accord that took effect on January 20 and expired six months later. However, they agreed to extend their talks until November 24, 2014 as they remained divided on a number of key issues.

Tehran and the six countries failed to reach a final agreement by the 2014 deadline despite making some progress.

The two sides agreed to extend their discussions for seven more months until July 1, 2015. They also agreed that the interim deal should remain in place during the negotiations. Sun Jan 18, 2015 12:23AM Press TV.

We are fed up: Thousands march against TTIP & GMOs in Berlin

A broad alliance of farmers, ethical consumers, and anti-capitalist activists staged a march through Berlin that numbered up to 50,000, to denounce the proposed TTIP treaty between the US and EU, and mass farming technologies.

More than 120 organizations joined the fifth annual ‘We are Fed Up!’ demonstration, which this year focused on the increased importation of American farming practices – such as genetic modification, frequent antibiotic injections for animals, and chemical meat treatments – following the implementation of the controversial Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).

"The EU-USA trade agreement TTIP only serves global concerns, and will take away the means of existence from many farms here and across the world," rally organizer Jochen Fritz told the media.

,

Police said that 25,000 people joined the peaceful demonstration – with organizers claiming twice that number – though the most impressive spectacle included a procession of 80 tractors manned by angry farmers. The demonstration was timed to coincide with International Green Week, a large agriculture fair that has just begun in Berlin.

“Eating is political. Every single decision I make about what to buy is determined by how the animals are kept, or what grows in our fields. And I can make sure that I support the farmers and not the big agricultural industry corporations,” said Fritz.

The much stalled TTIP, whose 24-chapter provisional text was made public last week after formal negotiations since July 2013, seeks to formalize the economic relationship between the EU and US economies across the board. The two partners trade nearly €1 billion (US$1.1 billion) worth of goods and services annually.

y 17, 2015. (AFP/DPA)

But the search for standardization has led to wide rifts in several areas – specifically agriculture – with US-based multinationals such as Monsanto leading the way in technological innovations, while the European public remains wary, despite assurances from EU regulators.

Speaking at one of the Green Week events, Federal Agriculture Minister Christian Schmidt promised to address the issues raised by the demonstrators, and said that he welcomed the public display of opinion. Published time: January 17, 2015 20:08

 Russia Today.

All Israeli war crimes will be documented, says Palestinian premier

The Palestinian prime minister says all Israeli war crimes against Palestinians will be documented and Palestine will move to join more international organizations.

Rami Hamdallah made the comments during a ceremony to mark Palestinian Martyr Day in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Saturday.

Palestine is set to become a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC) as of April 1.

The senior Palestinian official added that Palestinians will not allow their martyrs be forgotten, as Israel desires.

“We will not accept that our martyrs be turned into numbers, names, or be forgotten as Israel wants,” he said.

“We will continue working with all the free people of the world and with international human rights organizations to make sure that the bodies of all Palestinian martyrs be returned from numbered graves (in Israeli-controlled areas) and be buried according to Palestinian national and religious rituals,” he said.

On January 16, the ICC prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, said in a statement that the court will launch an investigation into the Tel Aviv regime’s war crimes in the besieged Gaza Strip.

During the latest Israeli war on the coastal enclave, which ended in August 2014, more than 2,140 Palestinians, including 577 children were killed.

On Saturday, the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas welcomed the ICC decision, saying the resistance movement is ready to provide the tribunal with thousands of reports and documents.

The ICC decision to start the probe came after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas requested an ICC membership for Palestine. The request saw strong opposition from the Israeli regime and its staunch supporter the United States.

Israel denounced the ICC decision as hypocrisy while the US State Department said it is a “tragic irony” that Israel “is now being scrutinized by the ICC.” Sun Jan 18, 2015 6:44AM PTV

Who’s the true enemy of internet freedom - China, Russia, or the US?

Beijing and Moscow are rightly chastised for restricting their citizens’ online access – but it’s the US that is now even more aggressive in asserting its digital sovereignty

Recent reports that China has imposed further restrictions on Gmail,Google’s flagship email service, should not really come as much of a surprise. While Chinese users have been unable to access Gmail’s site for several years now, they were still able to use much of its functionality, thanks to third-party services such as Outlook or Apple Mail.

This loophole has now been closed (albeit temporarily – some of the new restrictions seem to have been mysteriously lifted already), which means determined Chinese users have had to turn to more advanced circumvention tools. Those unable or unwilling to perform any such acrobatics can simply switch to a service run by a domestic Chinese company – which is precisely what the Chinese government wants them to do.

Such short-term and long-term disruptions of Gmail connections are part of China’s long-running efforts to protect its technological sovereignty by reducing its citizens’ reliance on American-run communication services. After North Korea saw its internet access blacked out temporarily in theInterview brouhaha – with little evidence that the country actually had anything to do with the massive hacking of Sony – the concept of technological sovereignty is poised to emerge as one of the most important and contentious doctrines of 2015.

And it’s not just the Chinese: the Russian government is pursuing a similar agenda. A new law that came into effect last summer obliges allinternet companies to store Russian citizens’ data on servers inside the country. This has already prompted Google to close down its engineering operations in Moscow. The Kremlin’s recent success in getting Facebook to block a page calling for protests in solidarity with the charged activist Alexey Navalny indicates that the government is rapidly re-establishing control over its citizens’ digital activities.

But it’s hardly a global defeat for Google: the company is still expanding elsewhere, building communications infrastructure that extends far beyond simple email services. Thus, as South American countries began exploring plans to counter NSA surveillance with a fibre optic network of their own that would reduce their reliance on the US, Google opened its coffers to fund a $60m undersea cable connecting Brazil to Florida.

The aim was to ensure that Google’s own services run better for users in Brazil, but it is a potent reminder that extricating oneself from the grasp of America’s tech empire requires a multidimensional strategy attuned to the fact that Google today is not a mere search and email company – it also runs devices, operating systems, and even connectivity itself.

Given that Russia and China are not known for their commitment to freedoms of expression and assembly, it is tempting to view their quest for information sovereignty as yet another stab at censorship and control. In fact, even when the far more benign government of Brazil toyed with the idea of forcing American companies to store user data locally – an idea it eventually abandoned – it was widely accused of draconian overreach.

However, Russia, China and Brazil are simply responding to the extremely aggressive tactics adopted by none other than the US. In typical fashion, though, America is completely oblivious to its own actions, believing that there is such a thing as a neutral, cosmopolitan internet and that any efforts to move away from it would result in its “Balkanisation”. But for many countries, this is not Balkanisation at all, merely de-Americanisation.

US companies have been playing an ambiguous role in this project. On the one hand, they build efficient and highly functional infrastructure that locks in other countries, creating long-term dependencies that are very messy and costly to undo. They are the true vehicles for whatever is left of America’s global modernisation agenda. On the other hand, the companies cannot be seen as mere proxies for the American empire. Especially after the Edward Snowden revelations clearly demonstrated the cosy alliances between America’s business and state interests, these companies need to constantly assert their independence – occasionally by taking their own government to court – even if, in reality, most of their interests perfectly align with those of Washington.

This explains why Silicon Valley has been so vocal in demanding that the Obama administration do something about internet privacy and surveillance: if internet companies were seen as compromised parties here, their business would collapse. Just look at the misfortunes of Verizon in 2014: uncertain of the extent of data-sharing between Verizon and the NSA, the German government ditched its contract with the US company in favour of Deutsche Telekom. A German government spokesman said at the time: “The federal government wants to win back more technological sovereignty, and therefore prefers to work with German companies.”

However, to grasp the full extent of America’s hypocrisy on the issue of information sovereignty, one needs to look no further than the ongoing squabble between Microsoft and the US government. It concerns some email content – relevant to an investigation – stored on Microsoft’s servers in Ireland. American prosecutors insist that they can obtain such content from Microsoft simply by serving it a warrant – as if it makes no difference that the email is stored in a foreign country.

In order to obtain it, Washington would normally need to go through a complex legal process involving bilateral treaties between the governments involved. But now it wants to sidestep that completely and treat the handling of such data as a purely local issue with no international implications. The data resides in cyberspace – and cyberspace knows no borders!

The government’s reasoning here is that the storage issue is irrelevant; what is relevant is where the content is accessed – and it can be accessed by Microsoft’s employees in the US. Microsoft and other tech giants are now fighting the US government in courts, with little success so far, while the Irish government and a handful of European politicians are backing Microsoft.

In short, the US government insists that it should have access to data regardless of where it is stored as long as it is handled by US companies. Just imagine the outcry if the Chinese government were to demand access to any data that passes through devices manufactured by Chinese companies – Xiaomi, say, or Lenovo – regardless of whether their users are in London or New York or Tokyo. Note the crucial difference: Russia and China want to be able to access data generated by their citizens on their own soil, whereas the US wants to access data generated by anybody anywhere as long as American companies handle it.

In opposing the efforts of other countries to reclaim a modicum of technological sovereignty, Washington is likely to run into a problem it has already encountered while promoting its nebulous “internet freedom” agenda: its actions speak louder than its words. Rhetorically, it is very hard to oppose government-run digital surveillance and online spin in Russia, China or Iran, when the US government probably does more of it than all of these countries combined.

Whatever motivates the desire of Russia and China to exert more control over their digital properties – and only the naive would believe that they are not motivated by concerns over domestic unrest – their actions are proportional to the aggressive efforts of Washington to exploit the fact that so much of the world’s communications infrastructure is run by Silicon Valley. One’s man internet freedom is another man’s internet imperialism. 

Evgeny Morozov, The Observer, 04.01.2015