China furious over interference in the South China Sea, tells US to “shut-up”

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By Ben Blanchard. China’s Foreign Ministry has called in a senior U.S. diplomat to protest against remarks by the U.S. State Department raising concerns over tensions in the contested South China Sea, further intensifying an already fraught territorial dispute.

In a statement released late on Saturday, China’s Foreign Ministry said Assistant Foreign Minister Zhang Kunsheng summoned the U.S. Embassy’s Deputy Chief of Mission Robert Wang to make “serious representations” about the issue.

The State Department on Friday said it was monitoring the situation in the seas closely, adding that China’s establishment of a military garrison for the area runs “counter to collaborative diplomatic efforts to resolve differences and risk further escalating tensions in the region”.

The South China Sea has become Asia’s biggest potential military flashpoint. Beijing’s sovereignty claim over the huge area has set it against Vietnam and the Philippines as the three countries race to tap possibly huge oil reserves.

Beijing and Washington are already at odds over numerous matters, including the value of China’s currency, Tibet and Taiwan. Read more from this story HERE.

China tell US to “Shut-up”

By Chris Buckley. China’s state-run media ramped up condemnation of the United States on Monday over tensions in the South China Sea, with the Communist Party’s top newspaper telling Washington to “Shut up” and charging it with “fanning flames” of division in the region.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry’s over the weekend condemned a U.S. State Department statement that said Washington was closely monitoring territorial disputes in the South China Sea, and that China’s establishment of a military garrison for the area risks “further escalating tensions in the region”.

The mosaic of rival territorial claims in the South China Sea has become Asia’s worst potential military flashpoint.

Beijing has said its disputes with Vietnam, the Philippines and other southeast Asian claimants should be settled one-on-one, and it has bristled at U.S. backing for a multilateral approach to solving the overlapping claims.

“We are entirely entitled to shout at the United States, ‘Shut up’. How can meddling by other countries be tolerated in matters that are within the scope of Chinese sovereignty?,” said a commentary in the overseas edition of the People’s Daily, an offshoot of the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s top newspaper. Read more from this story HERE.

Obama’s rebels in Syria committing Christian genocide

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U.S.-backed rebels are committing Christian genocide in Syria, where they are sacking churches and issuing threats that all Christians will be cleansed from rebel-held territory. A mass exodus of thousands of Christians is taking place, even as mainstream Western reporters like Robert Fisk demonize those same Christians for being supportive of the secular regime.

The bloody jihad waged against Nigeria’s Christians, which has seen hundreds killed this year alone, now includes plans to kill Christians with poisoned food, as part of the Islamic organization Boko Haram’s stated goal of purging Nigeria of all Christian presence.

During Egypt’s presidential elections, Al Ahram reported that “the Muslim Brotherhood blockaded entire streets, prevented Copts from voting at gunpoint, and threatened Christian families not to let their children go out and vote” for the secular candidate.

Meanwhile, under President Obama, the U.S. State Department, in an unprecedented move, purged the sections dealing with religious persecution from its recently released Country Reports on Human Rights. Likewise, the Obama administration insists that the Nigerian crisis has nothing to do with religion, even as Obama offered his hearty blessings to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood president, in the midst of allegations of electoral fraud.

Categorized by theme, June’s assemblage of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes (but is not limited to) the following accounts, listed in alphabetical order by country, not severity.  Read more from this story HERE.

If you want to see the Syrian rebels in action, view this video.  [warning: explicit content]

More Pentagon incompetency: Hugo Chavez “does not represent a threat to US security”

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U.S. Gen. Douglas Fraser on Tuesday backed up President Obama’s appraisal that Venezuela does not represent a threat to U.S. security. The only thing that statement proves is that both men refuse to acknowledge a menace that has grown worse on their watch.

Gen. Fraser is the last in a long line of regional commanders who have refused to mud-wrestle with Hugo Chavez. I have profound respect for men and women who are willing to risk their lives fighting our enemies or ordering others to do so, and I understand fully why they want to keep such conflicts to a minimum. However, the best way to prevent such confrontations is to kick over rocks to find the hidden threats and to take careful measure of our foes.

On Gen. Fraser’s watch, Mr. Chavez has consolidated a narco-state in Venezuela. U.S. law enforcement and federal prosecutors have gathered fresh, compelling evidence implicating Venezuela’s National Assembly president, minister of defense and Mr. Chavez himself in narcotics trafficking. If a foreign military using its personnel, vehicles and aircraft to shovel cocaine onto U.S. streets and schoolyards is not a national security threat, what is? If such activities by Venezuela’s government are not a threat, why do we spend billions of dollars to counter the problem? Why does Gen. Fraser’s own command website call drug trafficking “a significant threat to security and stability in the Western Hemisphere”?

On Gen. Fraser’s watch, Mr. Chavez and his senior military commanders have provided material, financial, logistical and political support for Colombian drug traffickers who are branded terrorists by the U.S. government. American authorities know Mr. Chavez’s regime has issued Venezuelan passports or visas to thousands of Middle Eastern terrorists and offered safe haven to Hezbollah trainers, operatives, recruiters and fundraisers. During a March visit to Southern Command headquarters in Miami, now Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin E. Dempsey said, “[W]e recognize the threat that transnational organized crime presents, not just because of what they transport to our shores, but what they could also transport — terrorists and weapons and weapons of mass destruction.”

On Gen. Fraser’s watch, a half-dozen Iranian companies sanctioned by United Nations, U.S. or European authorities have built suspicious industrial installations at various sites in Venezuela. Those facilities were important enough to attract secret visits by Iranian Maj. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the Revolutionary Guard Corps aerospace commander, who previously headed Iran’s missile program, in July 2009 and November 2011.

Read more from this story HERE.

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