Israel has said it will act if Russia delivers promised anti-aircraft missiles to its ally Syria, in an apparent allusion to another air raid on the neighbouring country. 

Moshe Yaalon, Israeli defence minister, issued his warning on Tuesday shortly after a senior official in Moscow said the Russian government reserved the right to provide Syria with state-of-the-art S-300 air defence missiles

“As far as we are concerned, that is a threat,” Yaalon said.

“As far as we are concerned, that is a threat,” Yaalon said.

“At this stage I can’t say there is an escalation. The shipments have not been sent on their way yet. And I hope that they will not be sent.

“But if, by misfortune, they arrive in Syria, we will know what to do.”

Yaalon’s comments were made before Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, ordered his cabinet to stay silent on the issue, according to public radio.

Earlier this month, Israel launched air raids inside Syria targeting what sources said were arms destined for the Lebanese Shia armed group Hezbollah, whose fighters have entered the conflict alongside the Syrian army.

Japanese Movement Against TPP Growing

Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro called Friday for long-time ally North Korea and the United States to avoid hostilities on the Korean Peninsula.

“If war breaks out there, the people of both parts of the peninsula will be terribly sacrificed, without benefit to all or either of them,” he said in a column published in Cuban state media.

“Now that (North Korea) has demonstrated its technical and scientific achievements, we remind her of her duties to the countries which have been her great friends, and it would be unjust to forget that such a war would particularly affect more than 70 per cent of the population of the planet.” Mr. Castro, 86, reminded the United States of its duty to avoid a clash, amid mounting tensions this year between North and South Korea.

“If a conflict of that nature should break out there, the government of Barack Obama in his second mandate would be buried in a deluge of images which would present him as the most sinister character in the history of the United States,” Mr. Castro said. “The duty of avoiding war is also his and that of the people of the United States.” Cuba is one of the last remaining allies of the communist government in Pyongyang.

A United Nations-based drug agency urged the United States government on Tuesday to challenge the legalization of marijuana for recreational use in Colorado and Washington, saying the state laws violate international drug treaties.

The International Narcotics Control Board made its appeal in an annual drug report. It called on Washington, D.C., to act to “ensure full compliance with the international drug control treaties on its entire territory.”

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said last week that he was in the last stages of reviewing the Colorado and Washington state laws. Holder said he was examining policy options and international implications of the issue. Marijuana is illegal under federal law.

A Senate proposal touted as protecting Americans’ e-mail privacy has been quietly rewritten, giving government agencies more surveillance power than they possess under current law.

CNET has learned that Patrick Leahy, the influential Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee, has dramatically reshaped his legislation in response to law enforcement concerns. A vote on his bill, which now authorizes warrantless access to Americans’ e-mail, is scheduled for next week.

Leahy’s rewritten bill would allow more than 22 agencies — including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Communications Commission — to access Americans’ e-mail, Google Docs files, Facebook wall posts, and Twitter direct messages without a search warrant. It also would give the FBI and Homeland Security more authority, in some circumstances, to gain full access to Internet accounts without notifying either the owner or a judge. (CNET obtained the revised draft from a source involved in the negotiations with Leahy.)

It’s an abrupt departure from Leahy’s earlier approach, which required police to obtain a search warrant backed by probable cause before they could read the contents of e-mail or other communications. The Vermont Democrat boasted last year that his bill “provides enhanced privacy protections for American consumers by… requiring that the government obtain a search warrant.”

Leahy had planned a vote on an earlier version of his bill, designed to update a pair of 1980s-vintage surveillance laws, in late September. But after law enforcement groups including the National District Attorneys’ Association and the National Sheriffs’ Association organizations objected to the legislation and asked him to “reconsider acting” on it, Leahy pushed back the vote and reworked the bill as a package of amendments to be offered next Thursday. The package (PDF) is a substitute for H.R. 2471, which the House of Representatives already has approved.

One person participating in Capitol Hill meetings on this topic told CNET that Justice Department officials have expressed their displeasure about Leahy’s original bill. The department is on record as opposing any such requirement: James Baker, the associate deputy attorney general, has publicly warned that requiring a warrant to obtain stored e-mail could have an “adverse impact” on criminal investigations.

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bamothernaturenetwork:

Obama needs to face climate change, reject Keystone pipeline
Climate activist Bill McKibben says now is the time for the administration to stand up to the richest industry on Earth.

United States Falls out of Top Ten Most Prosperous Nations

The presidents of Mexico, Colombia and Guatemala all called for a vigorous global debate of anti-narcotics laws at the United Nations on Wednesday, raising new questions about the wisdom of the four-decade-old, U.S.-led “war on drugs.”

Although none of the leaders explicitly called for narcotics to be legalized, they suggested at the U.N. General Assembly that they would welcome wholesale changes to policies that have shown scant evidence of limiting drug flows while contributing to massive violence throughout Latin America.

“It is our duty to determine - on an objective scientific basis - if we are doing the best we can or if there are better options to combat this scourge,” Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who leaves office on December 1 after spending much of his presidency locked in a bloody battle with drug-smuggling gangs, called on the United Nations to lead a global debate over a less “prohibitionist” approach to drugs.

Taxpayers in Europe (and the United States) who have been terrorized since 2008 by government officials warning about economic armageddon, catastrophe, and pestilence should look to tiny Iceland for a taste of how little there is to fear when the experts can’t save the people.

Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, recently branded Iceland’s economic performance “impressive.” In the last few years the small island in the north Atlantic has managed to shrink its deficit, reduce unemployment, and allow its economy to grow.

Meanwhile, on mainland Europe, there is hardly any economic growth to be seen, and countries that pledged to make necessary austerity reforms have almost certainly failed to do so.

Government growth, fiscal activism, and national resentment are the norm. Officials from the eurozone have been trying to help heavily-indebted nations like Greece, Portugal, and Italy avoid banking-system collapse and exit from the single currency. Were they to examine Iceland’s example they might find that temporary financial collapse and monetary sovereignty provide a better roadmap to economic recovery than bailouts backed up by unpopular and unenforceable “austerity” conditions.

The headache of the nation in this era of history is one that cannot easily be dealt with by popping grandpa’s “one vote always counts” aspirin. The marry-go-round, horse race paced election cycle is spinning once again. Only this time people in this country are genuinely afraid of what in the world the United States of America will become after this mind numbingly misleading plutocratic pageant festival‘s talleys have been counted.

In the olden days, (which I wasn’t around to experience) U.S. elections dealt with how two politicians significantly differed in terms of explicit policy. Did Abe Lincoln explicitly propose what things he would do to better the nation when he ran, or was it a euphemism and meme-off-pants-off like it is now? I don’t know how presidents rolled their tongue in the past, but maybe it wasn’t as cognitively dissonant as it is now.  All I know now is that the race happenin right now demands a foreknowledge of double speak and a stomach strong enough to not barf when you hear close to no input on, what now appears to be the “behind the scenes news”, where candidates blatantly ignore, mislead, hyperbolize, and out right lie about recent history.

Other than the expected dishonesty that came out of meat holes of the “people”, nah more like monsters in suits at the 2012 Republican National Convention, even Obama doesn’t touch “real issues” with a ten foot pole. He’d rather dance around them in ten foot heels. However, disregarding the erroneous anti-logic Romney or Ryan spew, Obama dosent ever mention anything about all the spooky post 9/11 horror stories like the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012(NDAA) indefinite detention provisions or the court case about it, which is supposed to set precedent for how much Freedom of Speech you can engage in before you are considered someone who “gives material support to terrorist organizations”.

The Prez also dosent clarify how he will reform Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security. All the ruckus we hear from Europe about “Technocracies” popin up and engaging in austerity campaigns where all that is done to help the damaged economies is through cost cutting of social safety nets, pensions, healthcare, and education. It’s like a tragic play about the romanticizing of the fiscal duty to eviscerate all government functions for public welfare.  For a while it seemed like we ’Mericans didn’t have to worry about the weird euro undergarmented chaos across the pond, but it seems like granny’s retirment and medicare are gonna be subject to our own brand of deep fried austerity fetishism.

Obamanauts everywhere tend to see him in a wishful pro-middle class light. He is in any way less threatening to regular dildos than Team Rocket Romney and Ryan. Jus google up Ayn Rand, Goldwater Republicans, Supply Side Economics, Reagan(which met Ayn Rand) as well as the voting records of Romney and Ryan as well as Ryan’s involvement in the Debt Commision.

 Buuuuut, doesn’t Obama have a lot of Wallstreet Influence whispered into his ear all the time, dosent he? Didn’t our first Black President get into the White’s House with the help of huge Too Big To Fail institutions? Also I heard recently the Federal Government failed to prosecute Goldamn Sachs for it’s role in the Financial Crisis of selling junk mortgage securities to banks and investors.

Also Recently the first ever audit of the Federal Reserve showed that the Reserve had given more than $16 trillon to foreign banks and corporations without the approval of Congress or the Executive branch, which sounds like treason to me. While Obama may not have to do with what the Fed does, he probably knew it was happening, thus making him an accomplice to it, as well as prolly every other douche bag in a suit.

Be that as it may, Obama also hasn’t come out to discuss the Stellar Wind surveillance algorithm program design by the mathematician turned NSA whistle blower William Binney, or the other surveillance programs like Trap Wire, Tarton, and the Utah Data Mining Center. There is a massive and complex national security society working to spy on American citizens, blatantly and existentially violating the 4th amendment and everyone’s privacy online, on the phone and in some cases through security cameras established on private property.

Obama has expanded and continued various Bush era Patriot Act flavored endeavors. As well as a new found hostility towards whistle blowers, a fetish for messy drone strikes which massacre civilians all through the video game-esque remote control of flying death robots and the sly militarization of police forces.

Aside from the perpetual rationing of social movement because of the cohesive measures that war times demand, our President doesn’t seem to vehemently support progress and protection of the Internet. While he has come out against certain de-facto internet censorship bills when convenient, he has also voiced support for international legislation to further the hold and restriction of digital copy write laws on the internet, such as ACTA.  Recently news has reached of executive support of the spookily secret Trans Pacific Partnership Trade Agreement (TPP), which is a vastly spanning rewrite of global trade rules having to do with intellectual property and copy write on many different areas of the global economy, not just Internet trade and file sharing. The extent to which this secret trade agreement reaches has potential to negatively affect Freedom of speech and Expression around the world and at home.

Aside from all the other manufactured nit picks like Solyndra or TARP or Auto bailouts or what ever that you hear on MSNBC and CNN and the like, the overall national discussion on what’s important has been reduced to a deformed newspeak and rhetorical shit toss about “jobs” and “job creation” and a tapered off and carefully framed shallow debate on the economy, devoid of any existential input on what actually caused the economy to crash or how to fix it efficiently. The debate has been sculpted into a partisan meme fight. While the Republicans cry and wax poetic about Libertarianism and this new mythical narrative about what it means to have a “free market” and how the economy is like some kind of divine flow of casino luck that can only progress and bestow prosperity if there are zero banking and financial regulations what so ever. This is a new level of financial religiosity dressed in a style of propaganda  not seen since some of the darkest times of the 20th century.

And the people of the U.S. are hopelessly left out of the loop of what is right and what is wrong. People don’t know what is true and what isn’t. We have a social epidemic of citizens becoming ideologically defensive of one another. “You cant be trusted, you watch MSNBC you’re a godless, communist, liberal!”. “You have a McCain, Palin sticker! You must be be racist, queer hatin fascist!”. This type of language is starting to come from regular folks who are easily malleable by daddy’s ole’ GOP righteousness. This is like pre Civil War stuff when people start fightin each other. There are even genuine propaganda films running in neighborhood movie theaters! Have you heard of “2016: Obama’s America”? There are actual propaganda documentaries that convey absolute lies about what the President has done and will do. There are genuine “rev up the Fear” movies now because people are soo starved of truth.

I havent the slightest clue what will happen next. The every man, “that’s a given”, answer to this election sound like voting for Barack Obama. However, a vote for Obama has to come with a sense of reservation, much like when he signed the NDAA. The possibility of voting Third Party seems like playing a game of Russian Roulette now. Since the 2000 election, third party voting only seems to siphon votes from one of the big party candidates and gives it to the other. In 2000, people voted the most for Third  Party than ever before, but that only took votes from Gore and gave them to Dubbya and we all know how that played out. So even when you existentially weigh the FACTS against the image of the candidates, it sooooo depressing! Other than the fact that Obama’s Healthcare Plan is strikingly similar to Romney’s healthcare plan that he implemented in Massachusetts, and had originated with Nixon, both candidate are in reality centrists accompanied by insider “V Ps”(Biden helped write the Patriot Act, FYI). Romney was Democrat before he decided to run in 08 and Obama is more Corporate Capitalist than any “Euro Socialist” could strive to be.

The players this time around are Obama for the Dems, Romney for the GOP, Dr. Jill Stein for the Green Party and Gary Johnston for the Libertarian ticket. I suggest a reader such as your self go research the national as well as the Geo Political situation so as to paint a one big picture that encompasses all the dilemmas that are tearing away at the fabric of Human society at the moment, that of course Romney wont mention, but all the more important is that Obama wont touch the truth about what is really happening in the world with a $16 trillion dollar, ten foot pole.