In the great tradition established by Bush, Jr. the British Prime Minister David Cameron has now issued a warning, insinuating that the UK’s domestic security is at risk from Somali militants. Hyperbole and fear-mongering at its finest, and for good measure the name of that that “catch-all ghost entity” has once again been drummed up to garner support. It seems that Cameron is trying to construct a parallel with Afghanistan, as a way of securing the voting public continuing support, in a fashion similar to Bush’s high popularity ratings in the aftermath of 9/11 and the opening months of the invasion of the Hindu Kush. Will his stratagem work and will the British public be lured into voting Tory again next time around???  The BBC remarks that ‘British Prime Minister David Cameron has told the BBC that radical jihadist islamism in Somalia remains his biggest concern about the country. In an interview with BBC Somali Service editor Yusuf Garaad Omar, Mr Cameron said the international security threat from al-Shabab, which controls large areas of Somalia, is real and substantial. The British government is hosting an international conference on Somalia in London on Thursday [, 23 February] to discuss strategies to tackle the security situation, piracy and aid for Somalia. The conference will be attended by more than 40 political leaders from Africa, the Middle East and other countries’.[1]

The Telegraph’s Damien McElroy informs us that “Britain is to spend £20 million on a new civilian rapid reaction force to secure parts of Somalia wrested from the control of the Islamic militant group al-Shabaab”, once the AU forces have left the country”.[2] Thus, one could argue that Cameron felt compelled to up the ante and sharpen his rhetoric so as to justify this extravagant-looking expenditure to a austerity-struck home public. Like Bush kept on saying that America was battling the terrorists in Iraq, rather than at home in the U.S., Cameron now employs a similar figure of speech to convince his critics that spending millions of Pounds on yet another foreign war is not just justified but necessary to keep Britain safe. The Foreign Secretary William Hague supports the words of his boss: “We want to help Somalis find longer-term political solutions, and a key part of tomorrow will be capitalising on recent security progress on the ground. We can make a huge difference if we get this right”.[3]  Cameron and Hague imply that this £20 million spent on weapons constitutes yet another humanitarian intervention that will secure the West, while immobilizing the threat of radical Islam. Al Qaeda and Al Shabaab have become the latest configuration of evil now that the Taliban are seen as a necessary evil in the Hindu Kush and Al Qaeda elements are primarily conspicuous in their absence in the Af-Pak theatre. Yemen, across the Gulf of Aden, has also been mobilized to present another Islamic threat, necessary for the continuation of the never-ending War-on-Terror. Will the Af-Pak theatre now be replaced by the Somali-Yemen axis as the locus for the West’s military interventionism???  Making his point abundantly clear, David Cameron told the BBC Somali service Al Shabaab “encourages violent jihad not just in Somalia but also outside Somalia. And there is a very real danger of young British Somalis having their minds poisoned by this organisation. So there is a terrorist threat that is current today, and if we are not careful, could get worse”.[4]

David Cameron has now ensured that Britain will stay the course on the ever-lasting War-on-Terror, but other world leaders are also attending the London Conference on Thursday, 23 February. Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, and representatives of the World Bank, the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) as well as many others will be present too in London. It seems that a number of Yemenis will be able to attend: the ‘Foreign Minister Abu Baker al-Qirbi, who will represents Yemen in the conference, said the conference will discuss the Somali case and its security and political implications on the Horn of Africa and the world in general. The discussions will be based on seven headings: Security, Political Process, Local Stability, Counter-Terrorism, Humanitarian, and International Coordination, according to Al-Qiribi. Senior representatives from over 40 governments and multi-lateral organizations will come together in London with the aim of delivering a new international approach to Somalia. They will discuss how the international community can step-up its efforts to tackle both the root causes and effects of the problems in the country’, as reported by the Yemen Post.[5]

But not just Yemen, also Turkey – which now sees itself as the pseudo-Ottoman champion of the Third World, as clearly evidenced by the charity campaign organized by the Diyanet during last Ramazan – is present at the London conference. In fact, Turkey’s wily Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu abandons an unofficial meeting of G20 foreign ministers in Mexico to be present at the Somalia Conference. David Cameron thus calls upon the international community to endorse his bold moves to perpetuate the never-ending War-on-Terror. The conference organizers have released this statement, already echoed by the Yemen Post higher: ‘The international community hopes to agree a series of practical measures which will be published in the form of a communiqué at the end of the conference. Discussion will be arranged under seven headings:

Security: sustainable funding for the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), and support for Somali security and justice sectors. Political Process: agreement to what should succeed the transitional institutions in Mogadishu in August 2012 and the establishment of a Joint Financial Management Board. Local Stability: a coordinated international package of support to Somalia’s regions. Counter-terrorism: renewed commitment to tackle collectively the terrorist threat emanating from Somalia. Piracy: breaking the piracy business model. Humanitarian: renewed commitment to tackling Somalia’s humanitarian crisis. International coordination: agreement on improved international handling of Somalia issues’.[6]

It’s been while since posted something on Fukushima . . . and now, as we can read in The Independent, it has been a ‘year since the Fukushima nuclear plant was destroyed, the fight to prevent disaster goes on. In an exclusive dispatch from the reactors, David McNeill becomes the first European journalist to revisit Japan’s ground zero’.[1]  But before digging into McNeill’s narrative, here is Dr Helen Caldicott, whom I have featured on numerous occasions in the past, talking to Arnie Gundersen on her weekly radio show If You Love This Planet.

(14 Feb 2012)

And, as the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown happened quite some time ago, here is a handy timeline compiled by the Independent:

11 March 2011

At 2.46pm a magnitude 8.9 earthquake strikes Japan’s north-eastern coast, triggering a devastating tsunami and a series of strong aftershocks.

12 March

A state of emergency is declared. About 170,000 people are evacuated from a 20km (12-mile) zone around the Fukushima nuclear plant after an explosion in one of its reactors.

13 March

Around 190 people are treated in hospital for radiation exposure.

17 March

Helicopters dump tons of water over the Fukushima plant in an attempt to cool the overheating nuclear reactors as fears over a meltdown grow.

22 March

Abnormal radiation levels are detected in tap water, vegetables, milk and fish.

25 March

Japan expands the exclusion zone around the plant, and asks a further 130,000 residents to evacuate as fears over the extent of the damage to the reactors worsen.

26 March

Levels of radioactive iodine in the sea near the Fukushima nuclear plant are found to be 1,250 times higher than the safety limit, according to officials.

30 June

Radiation contamination is found in 10 children’s urine samples, according to a citizen’s group.

19 July

Transport of beef from Fukushima is prohibited, but a crisis ensues after it emerges that meat from cattle fed on contaminated hay has already been distributed nationally.

8 September

A total of 15,000 terabecquerels of radiation were released into the sea from the damaged plant, according to the Japan Atomic Energy Agency.

29 September

Core temperatures for all three damaged reactors dip below 100C for the first time.

28 October

The Fukushima plant released twice as much radioactivity into the atmosphere as originally thought, a study by the Norwegian Institute for Air Research finds.

27 January 2012

The Japanese government had a secret plan to evacuate everyone living within 155 miles of the plant should the situation have spiralled out of control, it emerges. This would have included the Tokyo metropolitan area – home to 30 million people.

3 February

Researchers working around the Fukushima plant say bird populations there are dwindling, one of the first indications of the impact of radioactive fallout on local wildlife.[2]

And now let’s turn to The Independent’s David McNeill: the “journey to Fukushima Daiichi begins at the border of the 12-mile exclusion zone that surrounds the ruined nuclear complex, beyond which life has frozen in time. Weeds reclaim the gardens of empty homes along a route that emptied on a bitterly cold night almost a year ago. Shop signs hang unrepaired from the huge quake that rattled this area on 11 March [2011], triggering the meltdown of three reactors and a series of explosions that showered the area with contamination. Cars wait outside supermarkets where their owners left them in Tomioka, Okuma and Futaba – once neat, bustling towns. Even birds have deserted this area, if recent research is to be believed. The reason is signalled by a symphony of beeping noises from dosimeters on our bus. As we drive through a police checkpoint and into the town of Tomioka, about 15km from the plant, the radioactivity climbs steadily, hitting 15 microsieverts per hour at the main gate to the nuclear complex. At the other end of the plant, where the gaping buildings of its three most damaged reactors face the Pacific Ocean, the radiation level is 100 times this high, making it still too dangerous to work there. Inside the plant’s emergency co-ordination building, the air is filled with the sound of humming filters labouring to keep the contamination out”.[3]

Radiation Spread in Pacific from Fukushima 2012

But already in May 2011, the Natural News’ Ethan Huff reported that the ‘US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced [on 4 May 2011] that it is ceasing its special monitoring protocols in the US for radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan, despite the fact that no real progress at the plant has been made, and threats to the US are persistent. At the same time as the EPA announcement, foreign reports also indicate that levels of radiation in Pacific waters near the Fukushima plant are now up to 1,000 times normal levels, with no real indication of where this radioactive water is flowing. The EPA has stated that radiation levels in the US related to the Fukushima incident have been “consistently decreasing,” and that the agency no longer needs to regularly test food, air, and water for radiation in the manner that it has been. In fact, the agency is so confident that it states in its announcement that “[t]he next round of milk and drinking water sampling will take place in approximately three months.” But just a few weeks ago, EPA data revealed that several milk and water samples from across the country were testing positive with dangerously high levels of radiation‘.[4]  And now we are in February 2012, and the Fukushima disaster fallout is still in full swing . . .

Iran has been threatened with new EU sanctions, and in response Tehran has suspended the sale of oil to Britain and France. But, according to Press TV this is just the beginning: ‘Iran has cut its oil flow to British and French companies, in response to the unilateral sanctions on the country’s oil exports, on the pretext of concerns over its peaceful nuclear program. Interview with columnist and commentator, Nader Mokhtari (20 Feb 2012)’.

The IAEA has sent a delegation to Iran and Istanbul has been set as the venue for new negotiations regarding Tehran’s nuclear programme: a ‘team of five United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors arrived in Tehran a day after Iran cut off oil exports to Britain and France. A spokesman from Iran’s Oil Ministry, Ali Reza Nikad-Rahbar, said the move was part of punitive measures that will be employed against “hostile” European countries that have complied with sanctions. European countries make up about 18 percent of imports of Iranian crude oil, and have collectively agreed to an oil embargo set to begin in the summer. The trip for the team of U.N. inspectors has been the second in a month during efforts to revive talks that collapsed in Istanbul a year ago. They come at a time of heightened tensions over concerns that Iran’s nuclear program, which the country maintains is for peaceful purposes, is instead aimed at nuclear weapons development. Last week, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made an appearance on state television announcing progress in the program, increasing the amount of centrifuges and inserting nationally made fuel rods. Meanwhile, the United States has initiated escalating sanctions and not ruled out a military strike on Iran if concerns over the nuclear program are not allayed’, as can be read in the respectable Foreign Policy.[1]  The Turkish daily Hürriyet Daily News, on the other hand, reports that “Iran announces that Istanbul will host expected nuclear talks between Iran and the P5+1 but there is no confirmation on the Turkish side, which previously feared that Tehran might use the talks to parry the West. The next round of talks between Iran and six world powers on the Islamic republic’s nuclear program will be held in Istanbul, Iran’s foreign minister said yesterday [, Sunday, 19 February] in Tehran, the Associated Press reported. According to the semi-official Iranian Mehr news agency, Iran proposed Istanbul as the venue of talks in Supreme National Security Council Secretary Saeed Jalili’s letter to EU Foreign Policy chief Catherine Ashton. The agency added that this proposal had been accepted by Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu and Ashton, who represents the P5+1 group consisting of the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany”.[2]

Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said “In these negotiations we are looking for a way out of Iran’s current nuclear issues so that both sides win”.[3]  Unfortunately, a win-win situation is not exactly what Bibi is looking for . . .

It looks like the one percent are fighting back against Occupy Wall Street. A Bloomberg report out this week highlights what looks like a concert effort by hedge funders, banking executives and the like, to craft their own message. Peter Schiff, CEO of Euro Pacific Capital discusses (22 Feb 2012).

In my previous post, I talked about Yemen’s upcoming elections and the Yemeni population’s addiction to Khat, but from a purely geo-political point of view the small Arab state is extremely important. The U.S. established a base for its drones in Yemen, and the continuation of the War-on-Terror depends on the continuing existence of that “catch-all ghost entity”, employing the Escobarian phrase, Al Qaeda . . . and here is the intrepid Jeremy Scahill giving his opinion on the matter.

(17 Feb 2012)

Even though the mere existence of Al Qaeda as a SPECTRE-like worldwide network has always been in doubt, currently, following the execution of its supposed kingpin Usamah bin Laden, talk of Al Qaeda has been receding. Still, in Yemen, the military U.S. presence and support for Ali Abdullah Saleh (arguably to be replaced by Abd Rabbuh Mansur al-Hadi) is explained by the existence of a shadowy group called Al Qaeda in the Arabic Peninsula, even though this fierce terrorist group only boasts about 700 or so members. The Associated Press’ Bradley Klapper lays it out in some detail: the “Obama administration is putting its hopes for Yemen in a vice president long seen as the loyal deputy to strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh, confident that at the very least he can shore up a counterterrorism alliance with Washington against Al-Qaeda’s resurgent Arabian Peninsula offshoot. Ushering in democracy may be significantly harder. But American support for Yemen’s transition appears to be as much a matter of US security interests as the lofty ideals of the Arab Spring”.[1]  Klapper’s words seem to indicate that the U.S. administration is hell-bent on continuing its War-on-Terror, thereby perpetuating its financial and moral support for the Military-Industrial Complex,[2] and thus appears equally willing to sacrifice the Yemeni population’s aspirations for democracy and a higher levels of freedom and prosperity (or would that be another Khat-induced state?). In a rather cynical fashion, Klapper appears to concur when he says that the “transition starts next week when Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi is rubber-stamped as Yemen’s new leader, ending 34 years of one-man rule under Saleh, a polarizing figure who craftily kept his opponents divided for decades before the protests across North Africa and the Middle East caught up with him”.[3]  Or is he merely being facetious when he calls Yemen’s upcoming elections nothing but an exercise in rubber-stamping???

But Klapper hits the nail on the head when he says that the “United States is keen to see stability prevail in the Arabs’ most impoverished nation”.[4]  Steady as she goes, seems to be Washington’s continuing advice ever since the days of Bush, Jr. who instigated the War-on-Terror and thus forstered the growing fortunes of the Military-Industrial Complex. And President Obama seems eager enough to continue this legacy as well . . .  In addition to safeguarding the flow of oil through the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden as well as pacifying Saudi Arabia, not keen on a too turbulent southern neighbour.

Yemen is preparing for its first presidential elections since the downfall of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh. Only one man is running and that is Saleh’s Vice President, Abd Rabbuh Mansur al-Hadi. Some protesters feel they are being robbed of the achievements of their revolution. Al Jazeera‘s Hashem Ahelbarra reports from the Yemeni capital Sanaa.

Saleh’s wavering and lying has taken up a lot of time, costing the lives of many innocent Yemenis. As evidenced in Al Jazeera’s report, the people of Yemen have become quite politicized, while still adhering to traditional ways of expressing democratic demands, as illustrated by the hijabî lady stating that “The will of the people is divine inspiration”. The Yemeni independent online newswire established in 2005, YemenOnline, reports that ‘[d]ozens of people were hurt in clashes in southeast Yemen between rival demonstrators supporting and opposing Tuesday’s presidential election [, 21 February], witnesses said on Friday [, 17 February]. They said the trouble began late on Thursday when activists of the pro-secession Southern Movement, which opposes the election, threw stones and petrol bombs at a sit-in of pro-election activists in Mukalla, the capital of Hadramawt province. The activists have been campaigning for the election, which will see Vice President Abd Rabbuh Mansur al-Hadi stand as the sole candidate to replace veteran strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh, who is standing down under a Gulf-brokered deal. Tuesday’s election follows a year of protests against Saleh’s rule, deadly unrest that erupted last January as the so-called Arab Spring swept through Tunisia and Egypt. Saleh’s departure has been the main demand of the anti-regime demonstrators in Yemen. “Armed men of the Southern Movement” attacked their sit-in, the activists said in a statement, “injuring 60 youths of the revolution, some seriously, and setting fire to four tents” in Mukalla’s Change Place, focus of the protests. Residents also reported Southern Movement protests against the election in several other Hadramawt towns late Thursday. Thousands of people have burned their electoral cards in recent weeks at the urging of the Southern Movement. Meanwhile, government forces detained 10 Al-Qaeda-linked fighters on Friday, a security source said, after an attack in a town which underscored the security challenges of next week’s presidential elections. On Wednesday [, 15 February], militants shot dead a military officer and an election official in the town of Baydah, about 130 km southeast of the capital Sanaa. The militants opened fire on a car carrying Khaled Waqaa, the leader of a brigade of the elite Republican Guard, killing him as well as the head of Baydah’s election committee, Hussein Al-Babli, his son and two soldiers. Ten people were wounded. Yemenis vote on Feb. 21 to pick a leader to replace Saleh, now in the United States for medical treatment, amid concern that violence could reduce turnout. Militant group Ansar Al-Shariah claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s attack but said it had targeted only the military commander in revenge for the government’s failure to fulfill its half of a deal under which militants quit a town they had seized. Militants agreed last month to pull out of Radda, about 170 km southeast of Sanaa, in exchange for the formation of a council to govern it under Islamic law and the release of several jailed comrades. The militants’ spokesman said that instead of setting up such a council, Republican Guard forces had entered the town. He warned the assassination was just a preliminary response. Saleh formally handed power to his deputy, Vice President Abd Rabbuh Mansur al-Hadi in November as part of a Gulf-brokered plan to end months of anti-government protests that paralysed the impoverished state for most of 2011. Weakened by the upheaval, Yemen’s government has lost control of swathes of the country, giving Al-Qaeda’s regional Yemen-based wing room to expand its foothold near oil shipping routes through the Red Sea’.[1]

But, whatever the turnout or outcome of the elections, it seems certain that Saleh will be replaced by Field Marshall Abd Rabbuh Mansur al-Hadi, or the right hand man will become the main man. Whether this seeming change at the top will usher in the kind of changes Yemeni protesters have clamoured for remains doubtful. On the other hand, in a country where one of the people’s main occupation is the chewing of Khat leaves, one can but wonder about crowds and their motivations. Time magazine’s Andrew Lee Butters explains in some detail that by “4 in the afternoon, most men walking the streets of Sana’a are high, or about to get high — not on any sort of manufactured narcotics, but on khat, a shrub whose young leaves contain a compound with effects similar to those of amphetamines. Khat is popular in many countries of the Arabian peninsula and the Horn of Africa, but in Yemen it’s a full-blown national addiction. As much as 90% of men and 1 in 4 women in Yemen are estimated to chew the leaves, storing a wad in one cheek as the khat slowly breaks down into the saliva and enters the bloodstream. The newcomer to Yemen’s ancient capital can’t miss the spectacle of almost an entire adult population presenting cheeks bulging with cud, leaving behind green confetti of discarded leaves and branches”.[2]

So, the question really seems to be whether the people will choose democracy or another leaf of  Khat???  Butters explains that “khat is a social lubricant on a par with coffee or alcohol in the West. Indeed, because chewing the leaf isn’t forbidden by Islam, “khat is alcohol for Muslims,” says Yahya Amma, the head merchant at the Agriculture Suq, one of the largest khat markets in the city. “You can chew it and still go to prayers.” The leaf’s energy-boosting and hunger-numbing properties help university students focus on their homework, allows underpaid laborers to work without meals and, according to local lore, offers the same help to impotent men that Westerners seek in Viagra. Evening khat ceremonies — regular salon gatherings (usually only of men) to chew and chat about matters great and small — are the country’s basic form of socializing”.[3]  But every leaf has its flipside, as Butters reminds us: “khat’s detractors say the leaf is destroying Yemen. At around $5 for a bag (the amount typically consumed by a single regular user in a day) it’s an expensive habit in a country where about 45% of the population lives below the poverty line. (Most families spend more money on khat than on food, according to government figures.) A khat-addled public is more inclined to complacency about the failings of the government, khat ceremonies reinforce the exclusion of women from power and, as is obvious to anyone finding a government office nearly empty on a weekday morning, khat is keeping the country awake well past its bedtime”.[4]  One can but wonder about the deadly demonstrations that have upset Yemen since last year . . . were they Khat-induced copy-cat attempts to walk like an Egyptian or should they be seen as serious moves to wean the people off chewing the Khat???  Either way, it seems like a certainty that Field Marshall Hadi will be assuming the post of President of Yemen coming Tuesday . . .

The United Nations General Assembly has given overwhelming approval to an Arab League plan calling on Syrian President Bashar al Assad to step aside. A non binding resolution received 137 votes in favour, with 12 against and 17 abstentions. Following the vote, US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice said the Syrian leader had “never been more isolated.” However, Syria’s senior UN representative told diplomats there were “deep concerns about the real intentions of countries who have sponsored the draft”.

Meanwhile, Assad himself claims that he is battling terrorist receiving external aid and support. Arguably, Libyan fighters are now a active in Syria too, while rumours abound that Syrian “rebels” are being trained on Turkish soil, and Saudi-backed Jihadi fighters have joined the fray as well, in addition to Qattari-backed armed men. The Assad regime seems to be at pains to present the current fighting as a kind of sectarian-based civil war, suggesting that outside forces opposed to the Baath regime in Damascus are fanning the flames of Sunni dissatisfaction. Ever since the days of Bush, Jr. the U.S. has been vocal in its condemnation of Bashar al Assad, even though Damascus has moved closer to being accepted since the Iraq debacle. Now, the Obama administration is once again following the lead of Bush and Cheney. On 29 January 2002, Bush first listed North Korea, Iran, and Iraq as the core of the “Axis of Evil”, and subsequently then-Undersecretary of State John Bolton gave a speech entitled “Beyond the Axis of Evil” on 6 May 2002, which significantly broadened the scope by including Libya, Syria, and Cuba. Since then, Iraq and Libya have succumbed to direct and indirect external pressure, and the question now seems to be whether Syria will follow suit. The ever-critical broadcaster RT reports that the equally ever-critical ‘former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds told Turkey’s [d]aily Milliyet newspaper that Syrian rebels had been trained by US and NATO forces in the South of Turkey. She said the US had been involved in smuggling weapons across the Turkish border from the Incirlik military base. Qatar and Saudi Arabia have also reportedly offered financial support to the Syrian opposition with a view to helping them replenish their dwindling weapons supply. If the US is able to supply the Syrian opposition with arms through it Arab allies, it hardly seems necessary for the US to pressure for any official military support, much less a peaceful resolution to the conflict if their ultimate aim is to oust Assad. Middle East expert Randa Slim from the New America Foundation think-tank says that of the many groups in Syria, Western powers mainly support Syrian National Council despite the organization’s general lack of control over events in the country’.[1]  At the same time, Russia and China’s reluctance to allow a Libya-style intervention should not surprise us. As I indicated quite some time ago, the Arab Awakening in general and Syria in particular are nothing but battlegrounds for proxy wars in the New Cold War between the West and the New East.[2]

Against this backdrop, NATO’s Secretary General visits Ankara: ‘Anders Fogh Rasmussen arrived in Ankara on Thursday [, 16 February] for a visit to mark the 60^th anniversary of Turkey’s membership in NATO. During his visit, Rasmussen will meet President Abdullah Gül and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu. He will also attend a joint meeting of the parliamentary Defense and Foreign Policy Committees and the NATO Parliamentary Assembly (NATO PA) Turkish group. Rasmussen will also be a keynote speaker at a panel jointly organized by Turkey and NATO on Friday. Before coming to Turkey, Rasmussen said during a visit to Athens that the Cyprus problem negatively affects NATO and EU relations, Greek media reported. He stated he hopes that a solution to the Cyprus issue will be finally arrived at before July 1, the date Greek Cyprus assumes the EU presidency. Rasmussen lamented that NATO-EU cooperation could not reach its full potential due to the Cyprus problem’, as related by the Turkish English-language daily Today’s Zaman.[3]  In spite of these official declarations, it stands to reason that other matters, such as Syria and Iran, will also be on the agenda. And projected or hoped-for parallels with Libya could very well be discussed as well. Particularly as 17 February marks the one year anniversary of the Libyan Revolution, as elaborated by the BBC’s Gabriel Gatehouse: “It was [in Benghazi] one year ago that protests turned into a revolt that eventually toppled one of the most entrenched dictatorships of the last half-century”.[4]  But, in spite of the fact that the Gadhafi is dead and gone, Libya now appears on the brink of another civil war, as many have predicted in the past.[5]  Gatehouse explains that “[t]his is a country where the power rests – to a large extent – not with the interim government or the National Transitional Council (NTC), but with a patchwork of armed militias . . . The government wants to persuade fighters to hand in their weapons and join the national army. Some of these men said they had done so, but had not been paid”.[6]  Will tribal rivalries over oil revenues in combination with the abuses that are currently being perpetrated pave the way towards a new armed conflict???  Will Libya become an African Afghanistan???  Gatehouse insightfully warns us that “there is a danger that unless the militias disarm, [the] gains [of the revolution] could quite quickly give way to renewed violence and oppression”.[7]  Now, will Libya’s unfinished revolution move to Syria???  A couple of months ago, Sibel Edmonds appeared on RT to warn the world that the Syrian Revolution has been in the making since May 2011.

(15 December 2011)

Join critically-acclaimed author and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and world-renowned theoretical physicist and author Lawrence Krauss as they discuss biology, cosmology, religion, and a host of other topics. The authors will also discuss their new books. Dawkins recently published The Magic of Reality: How We Know What’s Really True,[1] an exploration of the magic of discovery embodied in the practice of science. Written for all age groups, the book moves forward from historical examples of supernatural explanations of natural phenomena to focus on the actual science behind how the world works. Krauss’s latest book, A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing, explains the scientific advances that provide insight into how the universe formed. Krauss tackles the age-old assumption that something cannot arise from nothing by arguing that not only can something arise from nothing, but something will always arise from nothing. Founded in 2008, the ASU Origins Project is a university-wide transdisciplinary initiative aimed at facilitating cutting edge research and inquiry about origins questions, enhancing public science literacy, and improving science education. Since its inception, the Origins Project has brought the world’s leading scientists, including Nobel Prize winners, to Tempe to explore origins questions. The Origins Project has hosted workshops and public events that have focused on questions as fundamental as the origin of the universe, how life began, the origins of human uniqueness, and the origins of morality (14 Feb 2012).

Bombers struck Monday, 13 February, at Israeli Embassy personnel in the capitals of India and Georgia. The New York Times explains: “The wife of an Israeli defense envoy to New Delhi was hurt along with several other people when her car was destroyed by an explosive device placed on it by a motorcyclist at a red light. In Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, a similar device was discovered on the car of a local staff member of the Israeli Embassy, but was defused by the police”.

President Barack Obama has unveiled a budget blueprint he says will boost the U.S. economy in the short term and cut America’s massive federal deficit in the long term. Opposition Republicans, who control one house of Congress, are blasting the Obama budget as an abdication of fiscal responsibility, and say it will never become law. VOA’s Michael Bowman reports.

On a positive note, the The Sacramento Bee reports as Good News that:

‘$27.2 billion for the Department of Energy, a 3.2 percent increase over what Congress enacted last year:

$2.3 billion would go towards research and development for energy efficiency, advanced vehicles and biofuels.

$522 million increase in renewable energy sources and an additional $174 million for a revamped industrial technology-advanced manufacturing program.

$12 million would go towards multi-year research investments in safer natural gas infrastructure in order to reduce risks associated with hydraulic fracturing in shale formations.

Pipeline safety would receive a 70 percent, or $64 million, increase.

Approximately $1 billion for energy conservation efforts in the Department of Defense (DOD), which is the world’s largest energy consumer.

DOD is increasing its commitment to renewable energy, which now makes up 8.5 percent of its energy production and procurement.

$174 million for sustainable fisheries work by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which supports the science and management needed to support the commercial fishing industry that supports 1 million jobs and yields more than $32 billion in income every year.

$28 million for the National Catch Share Program, a critical part of the nation’s strategy to return its fisheries to abundance, the same level adopted by the Congress last year’.

Whereas, Bad News is listed thus:

‘Counterproductive cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency

The fiscal 2013 budget seeks $8.3 billion, which is $105 million below the current funding level for the agency.

If Congress approves the proposal, it would be the first time since 1994 that the agency’s budget was cut for three consecutive years.

Counterproductive cuts to USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service

The fiscal 2013 budget seeks to cut funding for Farm Bill conservation programs by about $600 million.

Congress already has cut conservation funding by $2.8 billion over the last five years (FY 2008-2012), representing 81 percent of the nearly $3.5 billion in Farm Bill spending cuts during that time period’.[1]