GULF WAR DOCUMENTS: Meeting between Saddam Hussein and Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie

Transcript of Meeting Between Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie. - July 25, 1990 (Eight days before the August 2, 1990 Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait)

July 25, 1990 - Presidential Palace - Baghdad

U.S. Ambassador Glaspie - I have direct instructions from President Bush to improve our relations with Iraq. We have considerable sympathy for your quest for higher oil prices, the immediate cause of your confrontation with Kuwait. (pause) As you know, I lived here for years and admire your extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country. We know you need funds. We understand that, and our opinion is that you should have the opportunity to rebuild your country. (pause) We can see that you have deployed massive numbers of troops in the south. Normally that would be none of our business, but when this happens in the context of your threat s against Kuwait, then it would be reasonable for us to be concerned. For this reason, I have received an instruction to ask you, in the spirit of friendship - not confrontation - regarding your intentions: Why are your troops massed so very close to Kuwait's borders?

Saddam Hussein - As you know, for years now I have made every effort to reach a settlement on our dispute with Kuwait. There is to be a meeting in two days; I am prepared to give negotiations only this one more brief chance. (pause) When we (the Iraqis) meet (with the Kuwaitis) and we see there is hope, then nothing will happen. But if we are unable to find a solution, then it will be natural that Iraq will not accept death.

Read More:

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=31145

Jeremy Warner - Debt crisis: a $46 trillion problem comes sweeping in

Just as you thought things couldn't get any worse, credit markets are about to be hit by a veritable tsunami of maturing corporate debt. Standard & Poor's estimates that companies in Europe, the US and the major Asian economies require a combination of refinancing and new money to fund growth over the next four years of between $43 trillion and $46 trillion. The wall of maturing debt is unprecedented, raising the prospect of further, extreme difficulties in credit markets.

With the eurozone debt crisis still at full throttle, the Chinese economy slowing fast and a still tepid US recovery, it's not clear that the banking system is in any position to deal with this incoming wave of demand.

As if the refinancing problem wasn't already challenging enough, into it all stumbles the European commissioner for internal markets, Michel Barnier, to prove the old saw that there is no mess quite so bad that official intervention won't make even worse.

A traditionalist French socialist by background, Mr Barnier positively revels in his job as the EU's top financial services regulator. In a recent interview, he said that he liked the term "shareholder spring" because it implied "a regulation spring, a rule making spring". Yes, indeed, Mr Barnier likes very much rules and regulations. He wants to regulate everything from pay to solvency. The financial crisis has given him a wide open canvass on which to paint.

Read More:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/jeremy-warner/9296117/Debt-crisis-a-46-trillion-problem-comes-sweeping-in.html

Government Defies Federal Judge on NDAA

Join the movement to repeal the NDAA:
http://www.peopleagainstndaa.com/

When 4^th District Court Judge Katherine Forrest ruled the NDAA unconstitutional, there was wide rejoicing across the internet. Posts from prominent civil liberties activists, like journalist David Seaman, rang out with VIICCTOOORRYY! A Russia Today newscast titled  “NDAA Shot Down, But Threats Remain” seemed to imply that the fight was over, or "on hold." But it was only just beginning.

Do you remember, from your high school or college government courses, where they talked about the court having “neither the power of the sword nor the purse?” That means the High Courts of the United States cannot force the government to accept their ruling. They can heavily imply it, but they have no power to force government compliance. When the Supreme Court ruled against the government in Worcester v. Georgia, President Andrew Jackson is famous for having responded: "[Justice] John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.”

The tyrannical U.S. Government has taken the exact same tack with the ruling against them on the NDAA. But first, let’s quickly recap exactly how weak the government case in favor of the NDAA actually was. In Hedges v. Obama, the government routinely avoided the judge’s questions and demands:

Read More:

http://beforeitsnews.com/story/2199/780/Government_Defies_Federal_Judge_on_NDAA.html

Drew Armstrong - Drugmakers Vowed To Campaign For Health Law, Memos Show

Drugmakers led by Pfizer (PFE) Inc. agreed to run a “very significant public campaign” bankrolling political support for the 2010 health-care law, including TV ads, while the Obama administration promised to block provisions opposed by drugmakers, documents released by Republicans show.

The internal memos and e-mails for the first time unveil the industry's plan to finance positive TV ads and supportive groups, along with providing $80 billion in discounts and taxes that were included in the law. The administration has previously denied the existence of a deal involving political support.

The documents were released today by Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. They identify price controls under Medicare and drug importation as the key industry concerns, and show that former Pfizer Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Kindler and his top aides were involved in drawing it up and getting support from other company executives.

“As part of our agreement, PhRMA needs to undertake a very significant public campaign in order to support policies of mutual interest to the industry and the Administration,” according to a July 14, 2009, memo from the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. “We have included a significant amount for advertising to express appreciation for lawmakers’ positions on health care reform issues.”

Read More:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-31/drugmakers-vowed-to-campaign-for-health-law-memos-show.html

Karen Dolan - Disgusting: 7 Million Kids and Mothers Suffer Extreme Poverty in the Richest Country in the World

I recently had the opportunity to talk with Georgetown law professor Peter Edelman, to discuss his decades of anti-poverty work and his new book, So Rich So Poor: Why It’s So Hard to End Poverty In America. Peter Edelman was legislative aide to Senator Robert F. Kennedy and accompanied Kennedy on his 1967 visits to the deep South to understand hunger and poverty in this country and how to fix it. Edelman also served as Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services years later under President Bill Clinton. He resigned this post in protest of Clinton's signing of the welfare reform legislation that converted the federal anti-poverty cash-assistance entitlement into a state block grant program that severely restricted the availability of cash assistance to those in need. [Disclosure: Edelman serves an adviser to the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and sits on the board of one of the project's current funders, the Public Welfare Foundation.]

Karen Dolan: Peter, you tell us in your book that "extreme poverty" in the U.S. is increasing. Can you explain what this means with regard to things like shelter and food and whether it's getting a lot harder to be poor than it was a few decades ago?

Peter Edelman: Extreme poverty means having an income of less than half the poverty line. That's less than $9,000 a year for a family of three. The stunning fact is that in 2010, there were 20.5 million people who had incomes that low. And perhaps even more disturbing -- 6 million people have no income other than food stamps (SNAP). That means an income at one third of the poverty line or less than $6,000 a year for a family of three. You can't live on that.

Read More:

http://www.alternet.org/story/155642/disgusting%3A_7_million_kids_and_mothers_suffer_extreme_poverty_in_the_richest_country_in_the_world

Karl Grossman - Nuclear Rubberstamp Commission

The resignation last week of the chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is another demonstration of the bankrupt basis of the NRC. Gregory Jaczko repeatedly called for the NRC to apply "lessons learned" from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant disaster in Japan. And, for that, the nuclear industry -- quite successfully -- went after him fiercely.

The New York Times, in an editorial over the weekend, said that President Obama's choice to replace Jaczko, Allison Macfarlane, "will need to be as independent and aggressive as Dr. Jaczko."

That misses the institutional point.

The NRC was created in 1974 when Congress abolished the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission after deciding that the AEC's dual missions of promoting and at the same time regulating nuclear power were deemed a conflict of interest. The AEC was replaced by the NRC, which was to regulate nuclear power, and a Department of Energy was later formed to advocate for it.

Read More:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/karl-grossman/nuclear-regulatory-commission-chairman_b_1549012.html

Ray McGovern - The Moral Challenge of ‘Kill Lists’

In an extraordinary article in Tuesday’s New York Times, “Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will,” authors Jo Becker and Scott Shane throw macabre light on the consigliere-cum-priestly role that counterterrorist adviser John Brennan provides President Barack Obama 

At the outset, Becker and Shane note that, although Obama vowed to “align the fight against Al Qaeda with American values,” he has now ordered the obedient Brennan to prepare a top secret “nominations” list of people whom the President may decide to order killed, without charge or trial, including American citizens.

The authors understate this as “a moral and legal conundrum.” It is, in fact, a moral and legal impossibility to square “kill lists” for extrajudicial murders with traditional legal and moral American values.

Enter the legal consiglieres. Attorney General Eric Holder and Harold Koh, the State Department’s top lawyer, seem to have adopted the retro (pre-1215) practices of their immediate predecessors (think Ashcroft, Gonzales, Mukasey) with their extraordinary ability to make just about anything “legal.”

Even torture? No problem for the earlier trio. Was not George W. Bush well-armed with the perfect squelch, when NBC’s Matt Lauer asked him about waterboarding in November 2010?

Lauer: Why is waterboarding legal, in your opinion?

Read More:

http://consortiumnews.com/2012/05/30/the-moral-challenge-of-kill-lists/

Gavin Aronsen - No Disclosure, Please, We're Contractors

Earlier this month, the Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee approved the Keeping Politics Out of Federal Contracting Act [1] (KPOFCA), which would prohibit the government from forcing federal contractors to disclose campaign spending and lobbying expenditures as a condition for keeping their contracts. In response, 14 watchdog groups are urging senators [2] to block the bill, condemning it as a "pay-to-play" political maneuver that would make it easier for corporations to peddle influence in the shadows.

The bill is the latest chapter in a debate over transparency for the companies that rake in more than $536 billion [3] in federal contracts annually. In April 2011, the Obama administrationdrafted an executive order [4] (PDF) that would have required corporations bidding on federal contracts to disclose any political spending greater than $5,000, including money given to dark-money groups such as the Chamber of Commerce that do not disclose their donors. Following staunch opposition from Republicans and the Chamber, President Obama hasn't acted on the order [5].

Meanwhile, a rider attached to the 2012 Omnibus Appropriations bill preempted the order by prohibiting the government [6] from requiring corporations to reveal their political spending as a precondition to bid on federal contracts.

Read More:

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/05/federal-contractors-campaign-disclosure-kpofca

Danny Weil - The Washington Post, PBS and the Koch-Funded American Enterprise Institute Attack Community Colleges

There has been an interesting spate of "news" recently regarding the nation's public community colleges. The timing of articles appearing in March and April seem suspicious as they all follow on the heels of the defeat of California Assembly Bill 515, which would have partially privatized the California community college system.

The bill would have allowed for the creation of an internal governing board within community college districts that could then be authorized to sell college courses based on a students' ability to pay. This proposed pay-to-play system would have semi-privatized the 112 community colleges. The fact that it did not pass has infuriated the corporate press, eager to see all education privatized.

The corporate articles also come after a wave of opposition to the Student Success Task Force (SSTF) recommendations developed by the California community colleges chancellor's office, recently announced on January 11, 2012. The recommendations, if adopted, would centralize control of community colleges, impose assessments developed by for-profit corporations and develop target assessments. SSTF also would set up a rationing program for students, giving students the bum's rush by limiting the amount of time and number of classes students could take at a California community college. SSTF is basically "Race to the Top" for the California community college system with the same onerous privatization and financialization schemes.

Read More:

http://truth-out.org/news/item/9383-the-washington-post-pbs-and-the-koch-funded-american-enterprise-institute-vilify-community-colleges

Michael A. Smith, MD - Is Processed Fructose Stealing Your Smarts?

A new study from UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) shows that what you eat can influence how you think.

Specifically, the researchers were worried about all of the fructose in the American diet. They reported that eating a diet heavy in processed fructose over the long term alters your brain’s ability to learn and remember information.

Let’s start by looking at fructose itself. What is it, and is it ever okay to eat it?

Fructose is a Natural Fruit Sugar

Fructose in its natural form is called fruit sugar. It’s a simple sugar found in many plants and is one of the three dietary monosaccharides, along with glucose and galactose. These simple sugars are absorbed directly into the bloodstream during digestion and can be used for immediate cellular energy.

From plant sources, fructose is found naturally in honey, tree and vine fruits, flowers, berries and most root vegetables. In plants, fructose may be present naturally as the monosaccharide or as a component of sucrose.

Here’s the point we’re trying to make: Fructose in its natural form is not the problem. In nature, sugars can be found in foods that are also rich in antioxidants and fiber. And those accompanying nutrients can help minimize the impact of natural sugar. 

Read More:

http://blog.lef.org/2012/05/processed-fructose-brain-power.html