Twitter This Commentary In The News: Thanks this morning to ChrisM, my MP3Angel, for supplying the news and commentary audio. Israel has tentatively agreed to engage in preliminary talks with the Palestinian Authority which means U.S. career diplomat George Mitchell will be engaged in 'commuter diplomacy' going back and forth across the Gaza border even as Israel announces it's intent to build 120 more illegal apartment units in the West Bank which it's own lackeys, the illegitimate Palestinian Authority, unelected, with a US trained paramilitary organization, are complaining about. The US pledges "Action"(make of that what you will) if the talks fail. Israel (AND Syria) ALSO announced it's intention to build a nuclear power plant, which will make it quite difficult to convince Iran not to continue it's nuclear development program. The Canadian Parliament dining room will be serving Seal meat in solidarity with the Seal clubbers of Eastern Canada this week in protest of a European Union ban on the meat's import into the signatory nations. But it may be due more to the economic fact that the Canadian government needs the Seal hunts to continue (barring the ability to find the hunters other occupations) even as the Seal population is threatened by climate change:

"It's been an unusual year this year, to the point that there is no ice. There have been high temperatures, high winds, and as a result we have very little ice," said Dan Frampton, the Coast Guard's supervisor of ice operations. "By this time of year, pack ice is usually down to the St. John's area." (In Newfoundland) Frampton said icebreakers have been idle because there's no pack ice in the Strait of Belle Isle between Newfoundland's Northern Peninsula and southern Labrador, as well as in the Gulf of St. Lawrence or further north off central Labrador. "The Northeast coast [of Newfoundland] is wide open," Frampton said. Frampton says pack ice usually forms during January and February. He said even if temperatures drop in March it's unlikely that ice conditions will change significantly this year. Now the problem is that seals need ice and if there is no ice the seal pups will be dropped in the water where they will drown," [In Full]

Secretary of Defense Gates is meeting Afghanistan's president Karzai to discuss conquest plans for Kandahar, a city of over one million people... The next stop for the mayhem machine on the Imperial conquest list, and Marja, our recently seized new outpost, which was the victim of a failed social engineering project in the 1950s and has been victimized again (See: "CakeWalks"...How Disinformation Campaigns Work (Marja Edition) - Fiction of Marjah as City Was US (DIS) Information War). President Obama has picked a new National Transportation Safety Board chief... ex-army GENERAL Robert Harding. Hardin apparently does not have the 'union sympathizer' tendencies that scuttled Obama's last nominee, nor any particular expertise on the subject of transportation safety, but HE WAS an Army intelligence officer... Meaning he knows how to keep his mouth shut (or for that matter, read the script) the next time there's a transportation related terrorist attack in the U.S.. In case you're cluelessly wondering what would drive someone to do that, and in light of "INTERNATIONAL Women's Week", here's a "Report From Cambodia's Garment Factories"

Most of the clothes produced in Cambodia - 70 percent - are intended for US export. This means that if these same workers were doing these same jobs under US standards - that is, if things switched up a bit and either the pay scale was exported or the entire labor force was imported - they would be earning about 30 times what they do now. Each member of this group makes $55 per month base pay. The slight increase over the minimum gives them bragging rights, and may quell some protests, but to get enough to send $50 or $60 back home to the provinces, this group works seven days per week, which can bring in as much as $100. (Around 20 percent of the country's 14 million people are estimated to rely on the pay of a garment worker.) Women who've left the factories say that forced overtime is common, but the workers in the truck do not complain, as jobs cuts and layoffs are often threatened in retaliation. Many work through illness, fearing the loss of wages or of their job. (In-factory health clinics are sometimes available, but lines are often too long and the care too insubstantial to make the wait worthwhile.) One woman tells me of a regular occurrence on the factory floor: that a worker will faint in the stifling heat. This is a fireable offense in the garment industry. [In Full]

Iran's president Ahmadinejad is due to arrive in Afghanistan (CNN) (PRESS-TV, Iran) to meet his counterpart Hamid Karzai. Discussions will include US special operations along the Iranian border. Something that House Intelligence Committee member Dennis Kucinich has been demanding from the Pentagon for the last couple of years, only to be ignored. More news from Iran: Former president Khatami, involved with one of the opposition parties during the last election and concurrent turmoil, has been barred from leaving the country. Meanwhile, in America... The “Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010,” was introduced by Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman last Thursday, but you wouldn't know it by reading the US papers or watching TV news:

The “Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010,” introduced by Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman on Thursday with little fanfare, “sets out a comprehensive policy for the detention, interrogation and trial of suspected enemy belligerents who are believed to have engaged in hostilities against the United States by requiring these individuals to be held in military custody, interrogated for their intelligence value and not provided with a Miranda warning,” writes the Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder. The full bill can be read here (PDF). The bill does not distinguish between U.S. citizens and non-citizens, and states that “suspected belligerents” who are “considered a “high-value detainee” shall not be provided with a Miranda warning.” A person is considered a “high value detainee” if they fulfill one of the following criteria... [In Full]

Also see: Two calls for rebellion H/t: And, yes, I DO take it personally by 'profmarcus' Chris Hedges... "There are no constraints left to halt America's slide into a totalitarian capitalism." -30-
Creative Commons Copyright Courtesy of Cabale News Service, KPIG Radio, and KVMR Radio. Listen to KPIG, Listen to KVMR Recorded & transcribed by The Buffalo Amongst Wolves @ Razed By Wolves Da' Buffalo's Google Reader Shared Items Feed is [Here] View what's current without a feed reader [Here] In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107 and The Berne Convention on Literary and Artistic Works, Article 10, the news clippings and images used in this posting are made available without profit for research and educational purposes.

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