Romney answers allegations that he made a racist comment in Israel (+video)

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During Romney’s recent trip to Israel, he suggested that the Jewish culture is largely responsible for Israel’s successes and, by implication, that the Palestinian culture is largely responsible for Palestinian problems.  Palestinians called Romney’s statements “racist” and the US press is piling on:

 

This aggressive Palestinian response to Romney’s comments is somewhat curious given Romney’s insistence on a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  Romney has openly advocated for an independent Palestine.

Nevertheless, the media frenzy surrounding his comments continues.  To address this, Romney issued the following statement:

During my recent trip to Israel, I had suggested that the choices a society makes about its culture play a role in creating prosperity, and that the significant disparity between Israeli and Palestinian living standards was powerfully influenced by it. In some quarters, that comment became the subject of controversy.

But what exactly accounts for prosperity if not culture? In the case of the United States, it is a particular kind of culture that has made us the greatest economic power in the history of the earth. Many significant features come to mind: our work ethic, our appreciation for education, our willingness to take risks, our commitment to honor and oath, our family orientation, our devotion to a purpose greater than ourselves, our patriotism. But one feature of our culture that propels the American economy stands out above all others: freedom. The American economy is fueled by freedom. Free people and their free enterprises are what drive our economic vitality.

The Founding Fathers wrote that we are endowed by our Creator with the freedom to pursue happiness. In the America they designed, we would have economic freedom, just as we would have political and religious freedom. Here, we would not be limited by the circumstance of birth nor directed by the supposedly informed hand of government. We would be free to pursue happiness as we wish. Economic freedom is the only force that has consistently succeeded in lifting people out of poverty. It is the only principle that has ever created sustained prosperity. It is why our economy rose to rival those of the world’s leading powers — and has long since surpassed them all.

The linkage between freedom and economic development has a universal applicability. One only has to look at the contrast between East and West Germany, and between North and South Korea for the starkest demonstrations of the meaning of freedom and the absence of freedom.

Israel is also a telling example. Like the United States, the state of Israel has a culture that is based upon individual freedom and the rule of law. It is a democracy that has embraced liberty, both political and economic. This embrace has created conditions that have enabled innovators and entrepreneurs to make the desert bloom. In the face of improbable odds, Israel today is a world leader in fields ranging from medicine to information technology.

Read more from this story HERE.

 

NPR’s Cokie Roberts: Romney visiting Poland to get white votes

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NPR analyst Cokie Roberts claimed on air that Mitt Romney’s stop in Poland was meant to excite “ethnic white voters.”

The comment Monday came as the Republican presidential candidate landed in Poland for the final leg of his three-country tour.

Roberts, also an analyst with ABC News, inferred that the visit is essentially a bid to attract former Reagan Democrats, especially “descendants” of Polish people.

“You remember well the Reagan Democrats, those ethnic white voters who had been Democrats for many years, turned out for Ronald Reagan and have been fairly predictable Republicans since then,” Roberts said. “Now, it’s a smaller percentage of the population, of the voting population than it used to be, but white voters are still much more Republican than any other group in the electorate.

“They went for McCain in 2008 by 55 percent, and I think that, you know, getting those ethnic voters excited is really what Romney has in mind here. It’s more for the folks at home, the descendants of the people that he will be speaking to in Poland,” she said.

Read more from this story HERE.

CIA “Manages” Drug Trade, Mexican Official Says

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Photo credit: DonkeyHotey

The Central Intelligence Agency’s involvement in drug trafficking is back in the media spotlight after a spokesman for the violence-plagued Mexican state of Chihuahua became the latest high-profile individual to accuse the CIA, which has been linked to narcotics trafficking for decades, of ongoing efforts to “manage the drug trade.” The infamous American spy agency refused to comment.

In a recent interview, Chihuahua state spokesman Guillermo Terrazas Villanueva told Al Jazeera that the CIA and other international “security” outfits “don’t fight drug traffickers.” Instead, Villanueva argued, they try to control and manage the illegal drug market for their own benefit.

“It’s like pest control companies, they only control,” Villanueva told the Qatar-based media outlet last month at his office in Juarez. “If you finish off the pests, you are out of a job. If they finish the drug business, they finish their jobs.”

Another Mexican official, apparently a mid-level officer with Mexico’s equivalent of the U.S. Department of “Homeland Security,” echoed those remarks, saying he knew that the allegations against the CIA were correct based on talks with American agents in Mexico. “It’s true, they want to control it,” the official told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity.

Credibility issues with employees of the notoriously corrupt Mexican government aside, the latest accusations were hardly earth shattering — the American espionage agency has been implicated in drug trafficking from Afghanistan to Vietnam to Latin America and everywhere in between. Similar allegations of drug running have been made against the CIA for decades by former agents, American officials, lawmakers, investigators, and even drug traffickers themselves.

Read more from this story HERE.

Explosive: New photos of Auschwitz-like hospital that General tried to hide for Obama

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An explosive Congressional investigation revealed horrific new details this week about a U.S. funded military hospital in Afghanistan that kept patients in “Auschwitz-like” conditions.

The investigation also revealed that Lt. General William B. Caldwell, then commander of the $11.2 billion dollar a year Afghan training program, tried to block the probe and ordered a cover-up.

Lt. General William Caldwell & Pelosi
Photo credit: Nancy Pelosi

There are currently two ongoing investigations looking into the Dawood Military Hospital abuses: one centered around the Military Whistleblower Protection Act, the other concerned with Caldwell’s politically-motivated decision to delay investigations into the hospital until after the 2010 elections.

What follows is a very disturbing look inside the Dawood National Military Hospital. It was compiled with sworn eye-witness testimony from the three U.S. Army colonels who blew the whistle on the scandal, as well as never-before published photos obtained by BuzzFeed.

The photos and corresponding descriptions were collected by U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan.

Read more from this story and see the shocking photos HERE.

UN trying to sucker the US into another bad treaty, this one gutting parental rights

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Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore

This past week, 34 senators, the bare minimum, were convinced to stand against the internationalist Law of the Sea Treaty.  Today, Obama may attempt to subject the US to the UN’s Arms Trade Treaty.  But another bad UN treaty that has not received the same amount of publicity as LOST and the Arms Trade Treaty, is also being considered.  This proposed treaty addresses national laws pertaining to persons with disabilities.  According to Rick and Karen Santorum, parents of a disabled child, the proposed treaty is an attack on the fundamental rights of parents to educate, care, and raise their disabled children:

On the surface, United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (“CRPD”) calls for numerous protections for people with disabilities. Many of these protections are consistent with the Americans with Disabilities Act. However, CRPD also includes provisions that were drafted by the United Nations and should concern all Americans. If ratified, CRPD would become the law of the land under the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, and would trump state laws, and could be used as precedent by state and federal judges. Since it is a treaty, the Constitution requires that it must be ratified by two-thirds of the United States Senate.

There are two very troubling provisions in this treaty. The first spreads the identical standard for the control of children with disabilities as is contained in the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. This means that the Federal government, acting under U.N. directions, can determine for all children with disabilities what is best for them. The second, the education provision of CRPD does not support the parental rights rules of past U.N. human rights treaties. Omission of these rules would potentially eradicate parental rights for the education of children with disabilities.

Over the years we have seen many U.N. treaties which can endanger the American way of life by attempting to trump U.S. laws. As a matter of foreign policy, we firmly believe that we should never allow our beliefs and values to be outsourced to outside entities that may not always have our best interests in mind.

On this particular treaty, however, we come at it from a more personal experience.

During our campaign for president, many of you learned about our daughter Bella. She is a special-needs child who has blessed our hearts. In working with health-care professionals, we found that a few advised treatments were not only not helpful to Bella, but could actually be quite harmful. As parents, it was crucial to be involved to make the proper decision for the best benefits of our child. And through our experience caring for her, we found that we are far from alone.

Read more from the Santorums’ critique of the CRPD .

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NOAA Scientist: Experiment Suggests Worst of Fukushima “still on the way”

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It’s been over a year since natural disaster ravaged a nuclear plant in Fukushima and interrupted the lives of millions of Japanese. Scientists now fear though that contaminated water is on course to America, and it could be more toxic than thought.

Researchers have released the findings of an intense study into the aftermath of last year’s Fukushima nuclear disaster and warn that the United States isn’t exactly spared just yet. In fact, scientists now fear that incredibly contaminated ocean waters could be reaching the West Coast of the US in a matter of only five years, and the toxicity of those waves could eventually be worse than what was seen in Japan.

A team of scientists led by Joke F Lübbecke of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory have published the findings of an experiment recently conducted to measure the impact of last year’s nuclear disaster and the results are eye-opening to say the least. By simulating the spreading of contaminated ocean waters and seeing how currents could carry them across the Pacific from Japan to the US, scientists believe that the worst might be still on the way.

“Within one year it will have spread over the entire western half of the North Pacific and in five years we predict it will reach the US West Coast.” Claus Böning, co-author of the study, tells the website Environmentalresearchweb.

Böning adds that “The levels of radiation that hit the US coast will be small relative to the levels released by Fukushima,” yet fails to exactly stand by that statement in the fullest. “But we cannot estimate accurately what those levels will be because we do not know for certain what was released by Fukushima,” the doctor adds.  In fact, others fear that contaminated ocean waters may collect in packets and produce waves of highly concentrated nuclear toxins that could pose a dangerous toll to Americans.

Read more from this story HERE.

Publisher’s note:  This article was originally published by RT News.  Shortly after posting, Restoring Liberty received a voice mail from Ms. Jana Goldman, a ” NOAA Communication officer.”  Ms. Goldman reported that the scientist involved in the above-referenced study regarding Fukushima was not actually with NOAA at the time the report was prepared.  Rather, she was with a team from Germany, even though she is now employed by NOAA.  Ms. Goldman confirmed this information by email as well.

Photo credit: Ryan Somma