Author Archives: News Sources

Mudoch’s plan to steal the presidency and install Petraeus

Carl Bernstein writes: So now we have it: what appears to be hard, irrefutable evidence of Rupert Murdoch’s ultimate and most audacious attempt – thwarted, thankfully, by circumstance – to hijack America’s democratic institutions on a scale equal to his success in kidnapping and corrupting the essential democratic institutions of Great Britain through money, influence and wholesale abuse of the privileges of a free press.

In the American instance, Murdoch’s goal seems to have been nothing less than using his media empire – notably Fox News – to stealthily recruit, bankroll and support the presidential candidacy of General David Petraeus in the 2012 election.

Thus in the spring of 2011 – less than 10 weeks before Murdoch’s centrality to the hacking and politician-buying scandal enveloping his British newspapers was definitively revealed – Fox News’ inventor and president, Roger Ailes, dispatched an emissary to Afghanistan to urge Petraeus to turn down President Obama’s expected offer to become CIA director and, instead, run for the Republican nomination for president, with promises of being bankrolled by Murdoch. Ailes himself would resign as president of Fox News and run the campaign, according to the conversation between Petraeus and the emissary, K T McFarland, a Fox News on-air defense “analyst” and former spear carrier for national security principals in three Republican administrations.

All this was revealed in a tape recording of Petraeus’s meeting with McFarland obtained by Bob Woodward, whose account of their discussion, accompanied online by audio of the tape, was published in the Washington Post – distressingly, in its style section, and not on page one, where it belonged – and, under the style logo, online on December 3.

Indeed, almost as dismaying as Ailes’ and Murdoch’s disdain for an independent and truly free and honest press, and as remarkable as the obsequious eagerness of their messenger to convey their extraordinary presidential draft and promise of on-air Fox support to Petraeus, has been the ho-hum response to the story by the American press and the country’s political establishment, whether out of fear of Murdoch, Ailes and Fox – or, perhaps, lack of surprise at Murdoch’s, Ailes’ and Fox’s contempt for decent journalistic values or a transparent electoral process.

The tone of the media’s reaction was set from the beginning by the Post’s own tin-eared treatment of this huge story: relegating it, like any other juicy tidbit of inside-the-beltway media gossip, to the section of the newspaper and its website that focuses on entertainment, gossip, cultural and personality-driven news, instead of the front page.

“Bob had a great scoop, a buzzy media story that made it perfect for Style. It didn’t have the broader import that would justify A1,” Liz Spayd, the Post’s managing editor, told Politico when asked why the story appeared in the style section.

Buzzy media story? Lacking the “broader import” of a front-page story? One cannot imagine such a failure of news judgment among any of Spayd’s modern predecessors as managing editors of the Post, especially in the clear light of the next day and with a tape recording – of the highest audio quality – in hand.

“Tell [Ailes] if I ever ran,” Petraeus announces on the crystal-clear digital recording and then laughs, “but I won’t … but if I ever ran, I’d take him up on his offer. … He said he would quit Fox … and bankroll it.”

McFarland clarified the terms: “The big boss is bankrolling it. Roger’s going to run it. And the rest of us are going to be your in-house” – thereby confirming what Fox New critics have consistently maintained about the network’s faux-news agenda and its built-in ideological bias. [Continue reading…]

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Egyptians are being held back by neoliberalism, not religion

Rachel Shabi writes: Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters have tried to frame the current crisis in religious terms, casting opposition to their speedily drafted constitution as the petulance of an anti-Islamist, liberal elite. Media analysis has often replicated this theme: in one corner stands Brotherhood-propelled President Mohamed Morsi who has the supposed blessings of a religious population. And in the other corner, the “secular” opposition, banging on about small details of a constitution that isn’t that bad. Such wrongheaded analysis prompted Egypt expert Dr HA Hellyer from the Brookings Institution to politely request that western media “knock it off“.

But the result of Egypt’s first referendum on the constitution (a second referendum takes place this Saturday, in districts that have yet to vote) has exposed some of the real sticking points. The referendum had to be split into two stages because so few Egyptian judges agreed to supervise it. And for all its legendary mobilising powers, of the votes cast the Brotherhood wasn’t able to get more than 57% for its constitution. Not long ago, the Brotherhood could rely on voter support reaching over 70%. And less than a third of the electorate turned out – though that might be because of the long queues and the difficulty in voting. In an atmosphere of mistrust and mismanagement, allegations of vote-rigging are rife.

But if Egyptians are, as results indicate, losing faith in the Brotherhood, it isn’t because the organisation is Islamist, but because it has so far been rubbish at ruling. Many believe the Brotherhood has kept its promises to power, but not to the people. Crucially, President Morsi’s economic policy has deepened the neo-liberalism that brought so much misery during the Mubarak era and was a key component of the uprising against him. [Continue reading…]

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The forgotten mental patients on Syria’s front line

AFP reports: A psychiatric hospital on the front line in Syria’s war-ravaged second city of Aleppo, home to some 60 patients, has suffered from chronic shortages since fighting first broke out in July.

“They’ve had no medication for months, and it gets worse each day. There’s no light, no heating, not even running water — and the patients have hardly anything to eat,” said nurse Abu Abdo, who helps to run Dar al-Ajaza hospital.

“If residents of the area hadn’t given them food they would have died of starvation ages ago,” he added.

During the summer, Aleppo became the focus of the battle between the army and rebels opposing President Bashar al-Assad, in a conflict that the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says has killed more than 44,000 people.

“Most staff stopped coming to work when the battle for Aleppo began, abandoning their patients. I’ve been working here for five years: this is my family, and I couldn’t leave them and let them die of cold and hunger,” Abu Abdo said.

“I fight for them each day.”

He offered a cigarette to Omar Sattut, an elderly patient dressed in military fatigues, who believed himself to be an army officer and said he wanted to go and fight against Israel.

Abu Abdo then introduced the youngest patient, Mohammed Matar, bare-footed and wearing a polo shirt, teeth chattering from the cold.

“Eight patients have died in the last few months,” Abu Abdo said. “We try to look after them as best we can. It’s a wonder they’re still alive.”

He and two other staff still come to the asylum every day, despite no longer receiving their salaries.

The imposing hospital, built in Aleppo’s once bustling historic old town, contains around 30 rooms overlooking the splendid mediaeval city centre.

It has been hit by artillery fire from Assad’s army since the uprising to bring down the regime, initially a peaceful protest movement in March 2011, descended rapidly into civil war.

“When the bombs hit, we put all the patients in the same room to try and calm them down,” said Abu Abdo, pointing to a massive shell hole in the wall.

He said that medical staff are now too afraid to come because of the bombardments. Even the hospital’s director only passes by at most two or three times a week.

Patient Walid Assiad ambled in the courtyard, walking without shoes in puddles of ice-cold water. In one bedroom, Matar huddled up under a thin blanket, shivering against the biting cold.

“The worst of winter is yet to come,” said Abu Abdo. “When there’s snow and ice it’ll be terrible. I’m scared that many of them won’t survive. Without heating they’ll die of cold.”

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Syria’s time is running out

Frederic C. Hof writes: In March 2011, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad made a fateful and catastrophic choice. In Deraa, regime thugs had pulled the fingernails off of teenagers guilty of the high crime of spray-painting anti-regime graffiti. Instead of going there to console and compensate families, he ordered the same thugs to open fire on demonstrators. With that decision, he signed his political death warrant — and perhaps that of Syria as well. What began in Deraa spread rapidly and (at first) peacefully. Now it consumes Syria entirely in a vicious and increasingly sectarian civil war.

Americans are now mourning the slaughter of innocents in Connecticut. Syrian children are terrorized, traumatized, injured, and killed daily. Americans wonder how to regulate the ownership of combat weaponry in the hands of private individuals. Syrians contemplate the horror of a regime that knows no limits in the methods it employs to stay in power, and an armed opposition no doubt tempted at times to mimic the behavior of those who do the unspeakable without regret or remorse.

What will be next? Chemical warheads mounted on Scud missiles launched in the general direction of rebel-held areas? Alawite villagers slaughtered by armed men seeking to avenge atrocities by a regime that has cynically and shamelessly put at risk the Alawite community?

In these circumstances, time is the enemy of humanity. The longer the regime has to break the Syrian people into combustible categories of sect and ethnicity, the greater the chance that Syria will become a stateless, chaotic and expanding black hole in a region where stability is a challenge in the best of circumstances. Lebanese, Turks and Jordanians already feel Syria’s agony — and share in it. Time, in this case, is not the great healer. Time is the deadliest of enemies. [Continue reading…]

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Russia’s Putin warns of endless conflict in Syria

Reuters reports: Any solution to the conflict in Syria must ensure President Bashar al-Assad’s forces and his opponents do not simply swap roles and fight on forever, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday.

In what appeared to be his first direct comments on the possibility of a post-Assad Syria, Putin said he did not believe that a military solution could hold.

“We are not concerned about the fate of Assad’s regime. We understand what is going on there and that the family has held power for 40 years,” Putin told a news conference.

“We are worried about a different thing – what next? We simply don’t want the current opposition, having become the authorities, to start fighting the people who are the current authorities … and (we don’t want) this to go on forever.”

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U.N. warns of foreign influx into sectarian Syria war

Reuters reports: Fighters from around the world have filtered into Syria to join a civil war that has split along sectarian lines, increasingly pitting the ruling Alawite community against the majority Sunni Muslims, U.N. human rights investigators said on Thursday.

The deepened sectarian divisions in Syria may diminish prospects for any post-conflict reconciliation even if President Bashar al-Assad is toppled. And the influx of foreign fighters raises the risk of the war spilling into neighboring countries, riven by the same sectarian fault lines that cut through Syria.

“As battles between government forces and anti-government armed groups approach the end of their second year, the conflict has become overtly sectarian in nature,” the investigators led by Brazilian expert Paulo Pinheiro said in an updated report.

As a result, they said, more civilians were seeking to arm themselves in the conflict, which began 21 months ago with street demonstrations demanding democratic reform and evolved into an armed insurgency bent on toppling Assad.

“What we found in the last few months is that the minorities that tried to stay away from the conflict have begun arming themselves to protect themselves,” Karen Abuzayd, a member of the group, told a news conference in Brussels.

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Benghazi — still under the rule of the gun

Mary Fitzgerald and Umar Khan report: While heads are rolling in Washington over a damning independent report that found the U.S. State Department’s security planning to be “grossly inadequate,” tensions in Libya’s second largest city continue to rise. On Sunday, gunmen fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a police compound in the city, killing one officer and sparking a firefight that resulted in the deaths of three others who had rushed to the scene. Images of a patrol vehicle’s blood-splattered interior rippled across Libyan TV channels and social media. Not for the first time, Benghazians wondered what had become of the city they proudly describe as the wellspring of Libya’s revolution.

More than three months after the storming of the U.S. mission, and with the Libyan investigation into the attack that killed Amb. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans all but ground to a halt, Benghazi remains jittery and tense. Even in affluent neighborhoods, gunfire and explosions form an almost nightly soundtrack. Many residents are wary about where they venture after dark. The American drones that circle overhead prompt bitter complaints — as well as the occasional attempt at black humor. “That’s my brother-in-law up there keeping an eye on me,” one man said with a laugh as he pointed skywards.

But there is little levity when it comes to confronting Benghazi’s dense knot of security challenges — which include rogue militias, frequent assassinations, and a fraught political environment made even more flammable by the ready availability of weapons. “I think the security situation is going from bad to worse after the consulate attack,” says Wanis al-Sharif, the top Interior Ministry official in eastern Libya. Why that is depends on whom you ask.

For some, Ansar al-Sharia, the hardline Islamist faction which has rejected accusations it was involved in the U.S. consulate attack, is a popular target. “The Ansar people want to kill everybody who is against their ideology or anyone who was involved with Qaddafi,” said one Benghazi resident, as he and a friend debated who may have been behind the weekend attack on the police station. His companion begged to differ: “No, no, it was the azlaam (Qaddafi loyalists). They want to destroy the reputation of the Islamists and create chaos at the same time.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, this sentiment resonates with many of the former rebels — Islamist and otherwise — who still call themselves thuwar, or revolutionaries.

Fourteen months after Muammar al-Qaddafi’s death, Benghazi finds itself pulled in multiple directions. Not only are there tensions between powerful militias that pride themselves on their revolutionary credentials and remnants of the old order — pejoratively referred to as taheleb, the Arabic word for algae and a reference to the green color of the Qaddafi era flag — but cleavages between Islamists and non-Islamists, and supporters and opponents of the region’s nascent federalist movement also threaten to tear the city apart. [Continue reading…]

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Greece: A debt colony, shackled to its lenders

Matthaios Tsimitakis writes: The Greek government has hailed the eurozone finance ministers’ latest decision on Greece, requiring the country to lower its debt in return for bailout funds, as yet another political victory. This was not surprising at all to Greeks, who have often seen their government celebrating decisions that have made life miserable for its citizens.

But this time, Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras went so far as to call the agreement a “landmark for the country’s rebirth”, releasing a video on YouTube entitled “Greece starts now”.

Viewers of the video pointed out the irony of propagating national unity and hope to Greeks, who have meanwhile been devastated by the government’s harsh austerity measures. This simplistic piece of propaganda elicited comments reflecting the genuine bitterness and disenchantment of the Greek people.

A boy aged 14 wrote: “The present is uncertain, the future looks nonexistent. When a country dies, so do its inhabitants.” A low-income woman then asked: “What will you do for those who have to live on 5,000 and 10,000 euro per year? Thank you for your valuable time and your earnest contribution in the common affairs of our occupied land”. [Continue reading…]

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Hagel, Obama and Iran

Ali Gharib writes: The Washington Post today decried Chuck Hagel as a possible choice to lead the Defense Department, with the editorial board remarking that, “Mr. Hagel’s stated positions on critical issues, ranging from defense spending to Iran, fall well to the left of those pursued by Mr. Obama during his first term — and place him near the fringe of the Senate that would be asked to confirm him.” That Hagel would be near the fringe of the Senate because of his views on Iran speaks to how close the Senate is to the fringes of reality: the Senate’s efforts to limit the President’s diplomacy and impose devastating sanctions haven’t worked to “prevent” Iran from advancing its nuclear program either. In 2007, Hagel asked, “What confidence should we have in a strategy that, to date, has nothing to show for it? That has achieved no tangible changes to Iran’s nuclear program and actually has seen the Middle East become more dangerous, and Iran more defiant?” Five years later, the Post editors — along with perhaps the Obama administration and certainly the Congress — would do well to ask themselves these questions.

There’s a lot to debate with regard to Hagel’s long record of views on Iran, and one might begin with his sober accounting of what the regime there is like: “[T]hey support terrorists, they support Hezbollah,” he told the Israel Policy Forum in 2008. “They’ve got their tentacles wrapped around every problem in the Middle East. They’re anti-Israel, anti-United States. Those are realities. Those are facts.” In the speech, he also called for opening a diplomatic interests section in Tehran and resuming commercial flights to the country. Try though the critics may, these can hardly be classified as “fringe” views, or unreasonable ones, and are certainly open to discussion.

What’s not up for debate is that the overall Senate tack—to impose yet more sanctions, disallow any future Iranian enrichment at any level, and oppose any confidence-building measures that could relieve pressure, as stated in a recent AIPAC-backed Senate letter — hasn’t stopped Iran from continuing to enrich apace (though hedging in various ways). The Congress and an assortment of neoconservatives may consider skepticism about the efficacy of military action a sin, but their view is again divorced from reality: the enthusiasm for keeping the military option on the table hasn’t curtailed Iran either. Rather, experts have assessed that attacking would only delay Iran and harden its resolve to build weapons — not to mention risking a years-long “all-out regional war.” Hagel’s positions may put him on the fringes of the Senate, but he’s firmly in the mainstream of expert opinion, from Israel to the Pentagon. [Continue reading…]

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Americans preparing for the end of America

Max Blumenthal writes: Many of those I interviewed at the gun shows were common hunters, sportsmen, and expert target shooters. One man told me he hunted deer with a bow and throwing knives, a family tradition he learned from his grandfather. For them, guns were a part of daily life, enabling their interaction with the rugged western environment in which they were raised.

But then there were others seeking out military-grade sniper rifles designed specifically to kill humans with deadly accuracy from hundreds of meters away. Though the exemption covers all “private sales”, not limited to gun shows, the so-called “gun show loophole” means that two in every five guns are acquired without a federally-mandated criminal background check.

Inside the Reno casino, I sidled up to a group of gray-haired men gathered around an exhibition table where a dealer from Nemesis Arms was touting the features of the Mini Windrunner .308 caliber sniper rifle. (Adam Lanza’s weapon of choice was a .223 caliber Bushmaster assault rifle.) According to Defense Review, a leading online newsletter covering the small arms industry, the gun was a “nasty little piece of manpackable/backpackable ballistic business!” With the sleek, 3ft-long rifle in his hand, the dealer explained:

“The bipod will articulate to the side. You can shoot off of walls, car or truck doors, building tops, cliffs – at any angle, all the way to barricade position.”

In less than a minute, the dealer effortlessly disassembled the gun and packed it away discreetly in a black backpack, explaining:

“The reason that we don’t do this in a molly pack is that it looks military. If it’s military, then people will assume that you’re military. So what we do with this is we keep it as benign as possible so it looks like just any other backpack that anybody would have … so anybody with any garb, any dress, can go anywhere with it.”

Why would a common civilian need a sniper rifle capable of shooting off of building tops and car doors? And why would they require stealthy methods of concealment, so they could pass through American cities without detection? Companies like Nemesis Arms never explained the logic behind such disturbing sales pitches. But clearly, they were falling on fertile soil.

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Obama vows fast action in new push for gun control

The New York Times reports: President Obama declared on Wednesday that he would make gun control a “central issue” as he opens his second term, promising to submit broad new firearm proposals to Congress no later than January and to employ the full power of his office to overcome deep-seated political resistance.

Leading House Republicans responded to the president’s pledge in the aftermath of the Connecticut school massacre by restating their firm opposition to new limits on guns or ammunition, setting up the possibility of a bitter legislative battle and a philosophical clash over the Second Amendment soon after Mr. Obama’s inauguration.

Having avoided a politically difficult debate over guns for four years, Mr. Obama vowed to restart a national conversation about their role in American society, the need for better access to mental health services and the impact of exceedingly violent images in the nation’s culture.

He warned that the conversation — which has produced little serious change after previous mass shootings — will be a short one, followed by specific legislative proposals that he intends to campaign for, starting with his State of the Union address next month.

“This time, the words need to lead to action,” Mr. Obama said. “I will use all the powers of this office to help advance efforts aimed at preventing more tragedies like this.” [Continue reading…]

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Cerberus to sell Bushmaster gun company

The New York Times reports: Sitting in their offices high above Park Avenue late on Monday, the private equity executives who own the country’s largest gun company received a phone call from one of their most influential investors.

An official at the California teachers’ pension fund, which has $750 million invested with the private equity firm, Cerberus Capital Management, was on the line, raising questions about the firm’s ownership of the Freedom Group, the gun maker that made the rifle used in the Connecticut school shootings.

Hours later, at 1 a.m. on Tuesday, Cerberus said that it was putting the Freedom Group up for sale.

“It is apparent that the Sandy Hook tragedy was a watershed event that has raised the national debate on gun control to an unprecedented level,” Cerberus said in a statement.

The move by Cerberus is a rare instance of a Wall Street firm bending to concerns about an investment’s societal impact rather than a profit-at-all-costs ethos. Public pension funds like the California one — officially, the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, or Calstrs — have hundreds of billions of dollars in private equity and hedge fund investments. While their influence is vast, it is usually exerted behind the scenes and rarely prompts snap business decisions. [Continue reading…]

It turns out that quite a few gun owners are happy about the sale.

“The Freedom Group came in and consolidated production and just alienated everybody because they bought up these great brands and then destroyed them… it is fu***ng up some of the best brands in the gun world.”

Robert Farago, publisher of the popular gun blog The Truth About Guns, told me that about the Freedom Group a month before the shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, involving its gun brand Bushmaster. It was a month and a few days before Cerberus Capital Management announced it would sell its 95 percent stake in Freedom Group, citing the school tragedy which had, in its words, “raised the national debate on gun control to an unprecedented level.”

Investors saw Cerberus’ move as a surprise (an added wrinkle: the father of the founder of Cerberus lives in Newtown) despite the raging gun debate. But many in the gun owning community saw it as a ray of hope. Finally, maybe, some classic gun brands would be free from an umbrella group that, in the opinion of many, was destroying untold brand value.

“Cerberus is fu***ng up those gun making companies without any help whatsoever from George Soros. Every company they’ve bought is making inferior products to those made before the acquisition, and at higher prices. That’s why it’s important to support the remaining makers (Ruger, S&W, Taurus, Glock, Kel Tec, among others). Cerberus is ruining some great brand names that had long traditions of quality,” wrote user “Rbstern” on a message board back in March.

Freedom Group has faced two distinct problems since buying up some of the most storied names in firearms, including Barnes Bullets, Remington, Bushmaster, Dakota, Marlin, Parker. The first was a rumor that the conglomerate was a holding company owned by liberal boogeyman billionaire George Soros, who, the rumor went, would then close them down. That rumor turned out to be just another wild conspiracy theory but was so string that the NRA itself had to issue an official denial.

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Aleppo residents, battered by war, struggle to survive

C.J. Chivers reports: Inside the classrooms where they once studied, the boys darted like a pack. Their banging and clanking could be heard for a city block.

The playground outside had been hit by a Syrian Air Force airstrike, which fractured the school’s walls. Now the children were smashing the furniture, prying off wooden desktops and bench seats, rushing away with what they could.

The Isam al-Nadri School for Boys was being dismantled for the firewood it contained. One sixth grader, Ahmed, clutching the kindling he had made by ransacking a room, offered an irreducible argument for looting his own school. “I want heat,” he said.

Winter is descending on Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and the bloodied stage for an urban battle, now running into its sixth month, between rebels and the military of President Bashar al-Assad.

As temperatures drop and the weakened government’s artillery thunders on, Aleppo is administered by no one and slipping into disaster. Front-line neighborhoods are rubble. Most of the city’s districts have had no electricity and little water for weeks. All of Aleppo suffers from shortages of oil, food, medicine, doctors and gas.

Diseases are spreading. Parks and courtyards are being defoliated for firewood, turning streets once lined with trees into avenues bordered by stumps. Months’ worth of trash is piled high, often beside bread lines where hundreds of people wait for a meager stack of loaves.

One of the Middle East’s beautiful and historic cities is being forced by scarcity and violence into a bitter new shape. Overlaying it all is a mix of fatigue and distrust, the sentiments of a population divided in multiple ways. [Continue reading…]

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How Pakistan’s children are paying the price for the CIA’s hunt for Osama bin Laden

Reuters reports: Gunmen shot dead six health workers on an anti-polio drive in a string of attacks in Pakistan over 24 hours, officials said on Tuesday, raising fears for the future of efforts to eradicate the crippling disease in one of its last strongholds.

It was not clear who was behind the shootings, but Taliban insurgents have repeatedly denounced the vaccination campaign as a Western plot. The campaign aims to wipe out polio in one of the last three countries where it is endemic.

“Such attacks deprive Pakistan’s most vulnerable population – especially children – of basic life-saving health interventions,” the World Health Organization and the UN Children’s Fund, which are working with the Pakistani government on the campaign, said in a joint statement.

Health officials suspended the campaign in two provinces of Pakistan, Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Karachi, the capital of Sindh, is Pakistan’s biggest city and home to 18 million people.

Four people were killed in separate attacks on health workers in Karachi on Tuesday, the UN said. Another health worker was killed in the same city on Monday.

The team had received telephone calls warning workers they would regret helping the “infidel” campaign against polio, health official Gul Naz said.

In the northwestern city of Peshawar, gunmen on a motorbike shot a 17-year-old girl supervising an anti-polio campaign, government official Javed Marwar said.

She died of her wounds in hospital, a doctor said.

All of the victims were Pakistanis who are among the tens of thousands working with a UN-backed program to eradicate polio, a disease which can be prevented but not cured and can cause permanent paralysis within hours of infection.

Pakistan, its neighbour, Afghanistan, and Nigeria are the only three countries where polio is still endemic, and so are key to the campaign to eradicate the disease worldwide. At least 35 children have been infected in Pakistan this year.

There have been at least three other shootings involving polio-eradication workers this year.

Some Islamists and Muslim preachers say the polio vaccine is a Western plot to sterilize Muslims while other religious leaders have taken part in campaigns aimed at debunking that myth.

Accusations that immunization campaigns are cover for spies were given credence when it emerged that the United States had used a Pakistani vaccination team to gather intelligence about Osama bin Laden.

In Karachi, provincial Health Minister Saghir Ahmed said the government had told 24,000 polio workers it was suspending the anti-polio drive in Sindh province.

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NRA comes out of hiding and promises meaningful something or other

Reuters reports: The National Rifle Association said on Tuesday it wanted to contribute meaningfully to prevent another massacre like the Connecticut shooting, suggesting a sharp change in tone for the largest U.S. gun rights group.

“The National Rifle Association of America is made up of four million moms and dads, sons and daughters – and we were shocked, saddened and heartbroken by the news of the horrific and senseless murders in Newtown,” the organization said in a statement.

It said it plans a news conference on Friday after staying silent as a matter of common decency and out of respect for families in Newtown, Connecticut, where a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at a school last Friday.

“The NRA is prepared to offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again,” the statement said. An NRA spokesman did not immediately respond when asked to elaborate on what the contributions might entail.

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How gun defenders deny the science on stopping more massacres

Alternet: Their innocence underlies our horror. In any mass shooting, we speak of the innocent bystanders, but for children to be gunned down prior to the end of their first semester in school leaves us speechless. While the victims remained anonymous, President Obama demanded “meaningful action.” But what do we, as a nation, do to slow the loss of innocent lives?

Almost immediately as the words “gun control” began to be uttered, opponents defended the status quo with their beliefs: that no law could have prevented this because the gun used by the shooter was legally purchased and registered; that if teachers had been armed lives would have been saved; that guns don’t kill people, people kill people.

I’m hearing an eerie echo of the partisan disavowal of data showing the immediate perils of climate change, of Darwin’s theory of evolution and, in the days leading up to the election, the data of the polling aggregators, who predicted an Obama victory.

Indeed, the Pew Research Center found that previous mass shootings have not altered people’s core values regarding gun control, so despite slaughtering 20 children, we can expect the Newtown, Connecticut, mass shooting, to also have no such effect. This is a prediction based on the data, which as a scientist, I know to be the best basis available to both understand and address any issue.

And yet, we should hear the data as loud as we heard the gunshots (data which Ezra Klein conveniently compiled in his Washington Post blog on Friday). Mother Jones reported that 61 mass shootings have occurred in the US in the past 30 years, mostly with legally obtained guns. We witnessed 5 of the 11 most violent mass shootings since 2007, when most of the kindergarteners killed in Newtown were born. According to economist Richard Florida, writing in the Atlantic, states with the tightest gun control laws correlate to the states with the lowest gun related deaths.

As with climate change, we possess data that that documents a growing problem as well as a clear suggestion of actions that could ameliorate the problem. In the case of climate change, a recent report from the National Center for Atmospheric Research showed that the most ominous climate change algorithms best predicted what has occurred in the past decade. These algorithms forecast a global eight-degree temperature rise by 2100, a prediction that is incompatible with life as we know it.

The data also argue for tough gun control: when guns are not as easily available there are fewer gun deaths. [Continue reading…]

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