Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Thursday 18 December 2014


 Daily Headlines

Thoughts on ties between the killing of "THE INTERVIEW" movie and NSA, big corporations and possible repercussions, thinking about Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses and how Amazon and Netflix might have handled this.

Commentary on the recent The Smoking Gun report and revelations about Witness 40/ the Ferguson grand jury.
By now we're all aware the US & Cuba renewed diplomatic relations. It took 18 months of secret negotiations yet completed w/ a simple phone call by Obama & Cuban Pres. Raul Castro. Yet the US embargo of Cuba remains in place requiring an act of Congress to end it. No small hurdle to overcome. Repubs. said it was a very bad deal & Dems. may join them opposed to ending the economic, commercial & financial blockade.

The C.I.A. Detention and Interrogation Program (a.k.a. The Torture Program) is a symptom. The War on Terror is the disease. Both are based on lies, half-truths, false theories, greed and ambition, and exploitation of the fears of the American public. To get rid of the symptoms we must end the War on Terror.
Despite the revelations of the Senate Intelligence Committee's report, the chances are pretty good that Bush and his operatives will get away with their crimes. And that means that chances are just as good that it will all happen again. Ignorance and false assumptions seem secure in their positions of influence.
This is not the first time America tortured. Americans tortured Filipinos over 100 years ago as a way to terrorize the population into submission. CIA torture in Vietnam was so severe that most prisoners died during torture; and the torture was so horrific that those who didn't die during torture usually killed themselves soon after.
America's hypocrisy on terrorism included the U.S. government prosecuting and imprisoning five Cuban agents who were actually trying to thwart terrorist operations in Miami. President Obama's prisoner swap with Cuba finally addressed that upside-down justice, as Marjorie Cohn reports.
It's not bad enough that Obama refuses to prosecute our banksters who grew wealthy by leading the three financial fraud epidemics that cost the U.S. over $20 trillion in lost GDP and over 10 million jobs -- he's now importing Ecuador's banksters.
This is immoral, illegal, unethical. It's not what I used to think we are about.It seems we have lost our way.My role will be to continue to try to get us back on track.Perhaps idealistic and unrealistic yet I see this struggle as my duty. I took an oath to defend my country vs. enemies foreign and domestic.I now see our problem not as a foreign threat but a threat of ignorance,apathy and stupidity of our government & people.
Having someone who is the brother of one former president and the son of another run against the wife of still another former president would be sweetly illustrative of all sorts of degraded and illusory aspects of American life, from meritocracy to class mobility.
Outgoing Republican state Sen. Dale Schultz vents his spleen at the GOP : Ct
The man some consider the last remaining moderate Republican in the state Legislature has a few choice words for his fellow party members.
Murder in the Rainforest: Local Activists and the Global Politics of Climate Change
On the morning of December 5th, a dark piece of news began circulating at the U.N. climate talks in Lima: The body of Jose Isidro Tendetza Antún, a leading Ecuadorian indigenous-rights and anti-mining campaigner, had been found in a riverside grave near his village, his remains bound in rope, showing signs of beating and torture.
By Tom Engelhardt
Engelhardt: The National Security State "Works," Even If Nothing It Does Works
It was December 6, 2019, three years into a sagging Clinton presidency and a bitterly divided Congress. That day, the 500-page executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee's long fought-over, much-delayed, heavily redacted report on the secret CIA drone wars and other American air campaigns in the 18-year-long war on terror was finally released.
If a CEO tells his golf buddy that his company is being taken over, and his buddy makes a killing on that information, no problem. If his buddy leaks the information to a hedge-fund manager like Chiasson, and doesn't tell Chiasson where it comes from, Chiasson can also use the information to make a bundle.

The idea that in 21st century America we would put a woman in jail for being concerned enough about her baby that she informs her doctor about the full range of physical factors that might affect its development -- that we would throw someone in jail for this -- is simply astounding.
Robert Biswas-Diener has co-authored a book that looks at the value of some of the darker aspects of being human. He' also edited a book on Positive Psychology as social change. I've been in the field of positive psychology for over 30 years, and have enjoyed following Biswas Diener's work, so this opportunity to interview him was a real pleasure.
We've arrived back at the Winter Solstice, the beginning of a new year for us in the northern hemisphere. As the Dark is rising, the Light gets reborn! What a wonderful story to know and become part of. We need stories to frame our experiences, and the stories that the cosmos tells us are the important stories of life. Our patriarchal society tries to ignore them, but they explain our experiences and give meaning to life!
US/NATO Building "New Berlin Wall"
The U.S. and its NATO allies are building a "new Berlin Wall" by expanding the footprint of their military alliance eastward, said Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday as he railed against destabilizing and counterproductive behavior by western nations over the crisis in Ukraine that has contributed to his nation's economic troubles. The remarks were made during a televised national press conference in which Putin opened himself up to questions from journalists and citizens in a marathon Q&A session that last more than three hours.
By Bob Gorringe
Michael Brown Jurors Fabricate Evidence
Review of false testimony in the grand jury acquittal of Darren Wilson in the Michael Brown case.
Manipulations are dangerous. The ability or, rather, the audacity of the US government to manipulate the major financial markets is new. Can this new trend continue? The government is supposed to be the enforcer of laws against market manipulation but is itself manipulating the markets. Manipulations are now being used by Washington as an act of war by driving down the exchange value of the Russian ruble.

Covertly however Israel is a key player in prolonging the depleting war on Syria and the major beneficiary of neutralizing the Syrian military.
A European court has ruled that the Palestinian militant group Hamas must be removed from a European Union list of designated terror groups. The General Court of the European Union said Wednesday that the EU improperly included Hamas on the basis of information it got from the media and the Internet.
Despite Warnings of Future War, Obama to Impose New Russian Sanctions
The White House announced late Tuesday that President Obama will sign into a law a provocative, yet largely ignored, bill passed by both chambers of Congress last week that critics say increases the chances of a future military confrontation with Russia.
By Pepe Escobar
Go west, young Han
The Maritime Silk Road will start in Guangdong province en route to the Malacca Strait, the Indian Ocean, the Horn of Africa, the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, ending essentially in Venice, which would be poetic justice indeed. Think of it as Marco Polo in reverse.

The United States will restore full diplomatic relations with Cuba and open an embassy in Havana for the first time in more than a half-century after the release of an American contractor held in prison for five years, President Obama announced on Wednesday. In a deal negotiated during 18 months of secret talks hosted largely by Canada and encouraged by Pope Francis, who hosted a final meeting at the Vatican, Mr. Obama and President Raúl Castro of Cuba agreed in a telephone call to put aside decades of hostility to find a new relationship between the United States and the island nation just 90 miles off the American coast.
When natural gas companies first pressed into New York in 2008, state environmental regulators barely understood the process of "hydraulic fracturing." Today, six and a half years after ProPublica first raised concerns that the drilling could threaten both the state's water supply and its residents' health, Gov. Andrew Cuomo banned the process across the state. The ban makes New York, which holds large natural gas reserves in the Marcellus Shale, the largest and most significant region to bow out of the nation's energy boom because of concerns that its benefits may be outweighed by the risk.
Congress has voted to up the ante in the showdown with Russia over Ukraine, embracing a new Cold War and the neocon scheme for "regime change" in Moscow. But -- amid the tough-guy-ism -- there was little consideration of the risks from destabilizing nuclear-armed Russia, writes Robert Parry.
By David Swanson
No More Khirbet Khizehs
But what if the truth was always marching naked down the street with trumpets sounding?

 Latest Articles

An invitation for a discussion about how to bring us back from "The Dark Side" and into the Light.

Claims that Aleppo's Synagogues have been destroyed are false
In February of 2011, coincidentally the month before of the beginning of the current Syrian crisis, President Assad signed an executive order to repair the Al-Raqi Synagogue in the old Jewish quarter of Damascus by the end of the month as the renovation of 10 other synagogues in Syria's major cities continued.
Search for "Malaysian Airlines Flight 17" on the New York Times website and you'll find a page promoting three articles from July, two hyping the idea that Russia did it and one just focused on the horror of it.

Why Obama's recognition of Cuba is too little too late to save his presidency.

 Best News Links from the Web

Report: Secret CIA Document Admits US Drone Program "Counterproductive"
Updated: Wikileaks on Thursday has made public a never-before-seen internal review conducted by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency that looked at the agency's drone and targeted assassination programs in places like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and elsewhere.