August 11, 2015


News Clips For The Day


http://finance.yahoo.com/news/obama-just-hinted-huge-trade-224245257.html

Obama just hinted at the huge trade-off at the heart of the Iran deal
Business Insider
By Armin Rosen
August 11, 2015

Photograph -- (REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque)
U.S. President Barack Obama pauses while speaking about gun violence during an address to the United States Conference of Mayors in San Francisco June 19, 2015.

President Barack Obama says the landmark nuclear deal with Iran might still leave Tehran with the ability to accumulate a weapon's worth of nuclear fuel within a matter of months 15 years down the road. In an interview with NPR, Obama said that Iran's "breakout time" — or the time needed to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a single nuclear device — would plunge to "a matter of months" 15 years into the deal.

Obama added that this 15-year delay in Iran's capabilities was one of the virtues of the agreement that US and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and Germany (the P5+1) signed with Iran in July.

"If in fact the breakout times now are a few months, and we're able to push that breakout time out to a year so that we have more time and space to see whether or not Iran is cheating on an agreement, kicking out inspectors, going for a nuclear weapon; if the breakout time is extended for 15 years and then it goes back to where it is right now, why is that a bad deal?" Obama said.

The acknowledgment of Iran's future capabilities hints at a trade-off that lies at the heart of the nuclear deal's logic: The deal controls Iran's stockpile of fissile material, while leaving it with the infrastructure needed to rapidly accumulate bomb fuel even within the life of the deal — something that puts an intense amount of pressure on international monitors and future US leaders.

Going by administration statements since 2013, the US didn't always want the deal to turn out this way, and intended for a final agreement with Iran to curtail aspects of Iran's nuclear infrastructure.

At times in 2013, chief US Iran negotiator Wendy Sherman and Secretary of State John Kerry said that a strong deal would include the closure of the Fordow enrichment facility and the Arak heavy water reactor, respectively.

Under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), all of the country's nuclear facilities remain open, including those two.

The deal forces Iran to take roughly half of its currently operating centrifuges offline, prohibits Iran from operating advanced centrifuges for a period of 8 1/2 years, imposes centrifuge research and development restrictions for 10 years, and limits uranium enrichment and heavy water reactor development for 15 years. But it doesn't actually require Iran to export or destroy any of its nuclear infrastructure.

All of its nuclear facilities will remain open. Iran will be allowed to operate hundreds of centrifuges for enriching non-fissile placeholder elements at Fordow, a facility inside of a mountain on an Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps base that was only discovered by Western intelligence agencies in 2009. And Iran can enrich uranium at Fordow 15 years into the deal.

For a period of 15 years, Iran will have to modify its heavy-water reactor at Arak so as to make make it impossible to produce bomb-grade plutonium. But it will still get to keep a reactor which has no conceivable civilian purpose — and, along with it, a possible future plutonium path to a nuclear weapon.

The administration's early statements about their negotiating objectives suggest that the US wanted a nuclear deal predicated on infrastructure rollback and on denying Iran the physical capability of quickly producing a weapon. Instead, the current deal is based largely around fastidious stockpile management.

It prohibits Iran from possessing more than 300 kilograms of low-enriched uranium. And it reaches a compromise on centrifuge development and numbers: It allows Iran to mothball rather than export or completely destroy its centrifuges, giving Tehran the ability to rapidly narrow its breakout time if it ever decided to take them back online.

But experts believe this would take months to accomplish and would definitively tip off international inspectors on activities that the JCPOA explicitly disallows.

In the words of administration officials, the deal "cuts off all pathways to a nuclear weapon." It still doesn't remove the means of reaching a nuclear weapon within a short time span if Iran ever decided to scrap the deal. And after 15 years, enrichment and stockpile limits disappear, even if end-use monitoring for fissile materials remains in place.

It's possible the US negotiators believed that stockpile controls obviated the need for Iran to export its centrifuges, close its illicit facilities, and shutter its heavy-water reactor. After all, the deal itself suggests that infrastructure control wasn't the negotiators' primary objective, as the JCPOA actually includes provisions that expand the range of Iran's nuclear hardware and expertise.

For instance, the deal obligates signatories to assist Iran in the development of its fuel fabrication capabilities, something that would wean Tehran off of the need to import fuel assemblies for its nuclear reactors.

But it's also possible that Iran negotiated successfully enough to force the P5+1 off of its initial demands. A deal that even administration officials said would be based on infrastructure rollback instead had to depend on the net-best option: Stringent stockpile controls that still allowed Iran to keep nearly all of its nuclear hardware in some form and to bring that hardware online within the life of the deal.

This puts a huge amount of pressure on international monitors and on the future P5+1 leaders who must interpret and enforce the deal. And it leaves Iran with the option of rapidly accumulating weapons fuel if it ever believed the deal was no longer working to its advantage.

Obama motions towards this tradeoff in the NPR interview. The president describes a "situation where 15 years from now, that breakout time is approximately where it is now, but we now have an entire infrastructure that's been built to keep track of exactly what Iran's doing, and we had the entire international community behind us."

Obama says the agreement displaces Iran's current breakout capabilities by 15 years, but makes up for it through unprecedented stockpile monitoring and control. Weeks before a decisive Congressional vote, the deal's most forceful public advocate has been forced to speak frankly about what his negotiating outcome buys the US and its allies.




"If in fact the breakout times now are a few months, and we're able to push that breakout time out to a year so that we have more time and space to see whether or not Iran is cheating on an agreement, kicking out inspectors, going for a nuclear weapon; if the breakout time is extended for 15 years and then it goes back to where it is right now, why is that a bad deal?" Obama said. The acknowledgment of Iran's future capabilities hints at a trade-off that lies at the heart of the nuclear deal's logic: The deal controls Iran's stockpile of fissile material, while leaving it with the infrastructure needed to rapidly accumulate bomb fuel even within the life of the deal — something that puts an intense amount of pressure on international monitors and future US leaders.”

I do see why the Republicans don’t like this deal. All it does is buy time. According to the article, though, “but we now have an entire infrastructure that's been built to keep track of exactly what Iran's doing, and we had the entire international community behind us." We still have to trust Iran to be an essentially peaceful nation like we assume England and France are. I am waiting with great interest to see what the US Congress and Senate will do. If they don’t ratify it, Israel has threatened to bomb Iran. I do hope that doesn’t happen. Let’s face it, there are nuclear nations all over the world now. This is just one more.




RIGHT WING MILITIA GROUP IN FERGUSON


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-year-after-ferguson-washington-still-working-on-police-reforms/

A year after Ferguson, Washington still working on police reforms
By STEPHANIE CONDON, CBS NEWS
August 11, 2015

Photograph -- St. Louis County Police and Missouri State Highway Patrol troopers stand guard as protesters march on West Florissant Avenue in Ferguson, Missouri on August 9, 2015. MICHAEL B. THOMAS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Play VIDEO
The death of Michael Brown: What’s changed one year after Ferguson?


One year ago, after the death of Michael Brown and the overblown police response to largely peaceful demonstrations, lawmakers in Washington said they had seen enough -- it was time to reform the nation's policing protocols.

This week, however, clashes between police and protesters have once again erupted in Ferguson, Missouri, illustrating that the fractured relations between police forces and minority communities are far from repaired. It's a lesson that the deaths of Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Eric Garner and others drove home repeatedly over the past year.

State of emergency declared in St. Louis County
Face the Nation: What has changed since Michael Brown's death?
"Recent events in communities across the country have served as stark and tragic reminders of the tensions that exist in too many neighborhoods between law enforcement officers and the people we serve," Attorney General Loretta Lynch said in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on Monday to the National Fraternal Order of Police. "Bridging the rifts that divide us will take all of our best efforts and cannot rest on the shoulders of law enforcement alone."

The Obama administration and Congress have in the past year discussed several ways to reform policing efforts -- often in the context of broader criminal justice reforms. While there's a growing bipartisan consensus around criminal justice reform, the levers of power in Washington are moving in their typically slow fashion.

"There have been a bunch of proposals put forward, but really nothing has been enacted at this point," Kanya Bennett, legislative counsel for the ACLU, told CBS News. "Police reform legislation has really stalled."

Reforms at the federal level are limited by the fact that police forces are largely governed by state and local laws. Congress and the Obama administration can incentivize police departments to adopt certain reforms, or penalize departments for failing to do so.

Even so, criminal justice reform advocates like Bennett say that Washington has a definite role to play in improving the way local police reforms work with the communities they protect. Here's a look at what Washington has -- and hasn't -- done so far:

Tracking police force
There's one area where both the Obama administration and Congress have already taken action to improve policing nationwide: tracking the use of force by police.

In December 2015, Congress passed the Death in Custody Reporting Act, which requires states to report how many people are killed during an arrest or while in police custody. The law was enacted at the beginning of the year, and the attorney general has authority to penalize states that don't comply.

In June, Democratic Sens. Barbara Boxer of California and Cory Booker of New Jersey introduced a bill that would go a step further. The Police Reporting of Information, Data and Evidence (PRIDE) Act would require states to report any use of force by or against an officer that results in serious bodily injury or death (as opposed to just deaths).

Meanwhile, the White House this past May rolled out its Police Data Initiative, which aims to improve data collection and transparency in 21 large police jurisdictions.

"We welcome efforts like this but, I'm surprised we are not further along with the data collection and reporting," Bennett told CBS.

"Data is critical," she continued. "It's the only thing that's going to present us with the big picture of how our communities are being policed."

Body cameras
There's wide bipartisan agreement that police forces should wear body cameras. In June, the Republican-led House passed a resolution encouraging state and local law enforcement officers to wear them.

And in May, the Justice Department announced a $20 million body-worn camera pilot partnership program. The program is part of President Obama's proposal to spend $75 million over three years to buy 50,000 body cameras across the U.S.

Lynch highlighted the program in her remarks to the Fraternal Order of Police on Monday, telling the officers that the Justice Department "is committed to doing all that we can to ensure that you have the tools and resources you need to perform these difficult jobs as effectively - and as safely - as possible."

Still, there's more lawmakers could do. Multiple body-camera bills are sitting in Congress, waiting for action.

Bennett hailed the bipartisan support for the policy reform but added that "how they're implemented is critical."

"It's great if we have them, but if only [government] entities have access to the footage, then there's no public accountability. We certainly don't want to be surveilled 24 hours a day," she said.

Sending military equipment to police
After police forces in Ferguson last year confronted largely peaceful protesters with riot gear and tanks, Mr. Obama and members of Congress agreed it was time to stop sending free military equipment to local police forces.

In January, Mr. Obama issued an executive order (announced a month earlier) aimed at curtailing police militarization. The federal government is now prohibited from giving bayonets and grenade launchers to local police, but local forces are still eligible to get Mine-Resistant, Ambush-Protected vehicles (or MRAPs). The executive order also installed new requirements that local police departments must meet before obtaining military gear, such as proving that they've implemented community policing practices.

Bennett said the executive order should have a "significant impact" on the policing landscape. Even so, the ACLU would like to see the requirements made retroactive, requiring police departments to meet the new requirements or have their military gear recalled.

Meanwhile, the Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act is idling in Congress.

Working directly with local forces
As Congress and the administration consider implementing new policies, the Justice Department has been working closely with several police departments around the country to help them improve their policing tactics.

In fact, Lynch was in Pittsburgh on Monday in part to highlight how the city and others like it have partnered with the Justice Department to implement reforms.

"In pilot sites across the country - including right here in Pittsburgh - we are working alongside community leaders to develop plans for progress that are tailored to local needs," she told the Fraternal Order of Police. "Our Civil Rights Division is also working productively with police departments across the country to ensure constitutional policing throughout their jurisdictions."




“One year ago, after the death of Michael Brown and the overblown police response to largely peaceful demonstrations, lawmakers in Washington said they had seen enough -- it was time to reform the nation's policing protocols. This week, however, clashes between police and protesters have once again erupted in Ferguson, Missouri, illustrating that the fractured relations between police forces and minority communities are far from repaired. It's a lesson that the deaths of Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Eric Garner and others drove home repeatedly over the past year. …. "Recent events in communities across the country have served as stark and tragic reminders of the tensions that exist in too many neighborhoods between law enforcement officers and the people we serve," Attorney General Loretta Lynch said in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on Monday to the National Fraternal Order of Police. "Bridging the rifts that divide us will take all of our best efforts and cannot rest on the shoulders of law enforcement alone." …. There have been a bunch of proposals put forward, but really nothing has been enacted at this point," Kanya Bennett, legislative counsel for the ACLU, told CBS News. "Police reform legislation has really stalled." Reforms at the federal level are limited by the fact that police forces are largely governed by state and local laws. Congress and the Obama administration can incentivize police departments to adopt certain reforms, or penalize departments for failing to do so. …. In December 2015, Congress passed the Death in Custody Reporting Act, which requires states to report how many people are killed during an arrest or while in police custody. The law was enacted at the beginning of the year, and the attorney general has authority to penalize states that don't comply. …. In June, Democratic Sens. Barbara Boxer of California and Cory Booker of New Jersey introduced a bill that would go a step further. The Police Reporting of Information, Data and Evidence (PRIDE) Act would require states to report any use of force by or against an officer that results in serious bodily injury or death (as opposed to just deaths). …. "We welcome efforts like this but, I'm surprised we are not further along with the data collection and reporting," Bennett told CBS. "Data is critical," she continued. "It's the only thing that's going to present us with the big picture of how our communities are being policed." Body cameras
There's wide bipartisan agreement that police forces should wear body cameras. In June, the Republican-led House passed a resolution encouraging state and local law enforcement officers to wear them. And in May, the Justice Department announced a $20 million body-worn camera pilot partnership program. The program is part of President Obama's proposal to spend $75 million over three years to buy 50,000 body cameras across the U.S. …. , Mr. Obama and members of Congress agreed it was time to stop sending free military equipment to local police forces. In January, Mr. Obama issued an executive order (announced a month earlier) aimed at curtailing police militarization. The federal government is now prohibited from giving bayonets and grenade launchers to local police, but local forces are still eligible to get Mine-Resistant, Ambush-Protected vehicles (or MRAPs). The executive order also installed new requirements that local police departments must meet before obtaining military gear, such as proving that they've implemented community policing practices.” …. Even so, the ACLU would like to see the requirements made retroactive, requiring police departments to meet the new requirements or have their military gear recalled. …. "In pilot sites across the country - including right here in Pittsburgh - we are working alongside community leaders to develop plans for progress that are tailored to local needs," she told the Fraternal Order of Police. "Our Civil Rights Division is also working productively with police departments across the country to ensure constitutional policing throughout their jurisdictions."

Bennett hailed the bipartisan support for the policy reform but added that "how they're implemented is critical." "It's great if we have them, but if only [government] entities have access to the footage, then there's no public accountability. We certainly don't want to be surveilled 24 hours a day," she said.” This comment contains two sentences that don’t go together, if I understand it. I agree wholehearted that of course we want the public to have access to the camera footage, because some departments have already tried to block the media from showing the footage to the public. That’s the beginning of a cover-up if that is allowed. So what did she mean by “don’t want to be surveilled 24 a day,” which has not at any time been suggested. I have seen one case of family members of a suspect complaining because the cameras were on in their home. Perhaps that is the problem she is referring to. Her phrasing “constitutional policing” is better than anything I’ve seen any other leader use. Our local police departments need to conform to a newly revised set of ethical standards of policing. If that happens our community problems will be improved. I will say, however, that the black civil rights organizations need to communicate with neighborhoods to help them clean up the drugs, street violence, gang activity, etc. that undeniably does exist in some pockets of all US cities. Social services departments need to be involved in this, though, as the underlying problems are the oft-mentioned poverty, lack of jobs and lack of education. Even Jacksonville has some two dozen or so different identified street gangs, and we aren’t a very populous city. It’s a massive, complex and nationwide problem, not just the typical Southern racism.

“The executive order also installed new requirements that local police departments must meet before obtaining military gear, such as proving that they've implemented community policing practices.” This is a good thing if the Pentagon and DOJ will see to it that productive relations between police and the community are indeed in place. The police behave the way they do because they are trained under a theory of policing which is called “broken windows” policing. In that method cops are supposed to crack down hard on minor problems, on the theory that it prevents -- by sheer intimidation perhaps -- the formation of more violent problems in the neighborhoods.” We need much, much better and more honest relations, not more intense hostility on both sides, and that is what the result of the brass knuckles style of policing has produced. What we have now is a much more united and hate-filled black community. It is being matched with White Supremacists in the form of “Oath Keepers” right now who are adding their far right presence to the streets of Ferguson. This can only end in tragedy for our nation.




http://www.cbsnews.com/news/presence-of-militia-style-group-oath-keepers-in-ferguson-questioned/

Presence of militia-style group in Ferguson questioned
CBS/AP
August 11, 2015

Photograph -- Oath Keepers
Members of the Oath Keepers walk with their personal weapons on the street during protests in Ferguson, Missouri, on August 11, 2015. REUTERS/LUCAS JACKSON
Video -- Who are Sovereign Citizens?
28 Photographs – Ferguson One Year Later
Play VIDEO -- Who are "sovereign citizens"?

FERGUSON, Missouri - In the midst of a spasm of tension in Ferguson, Missouri, on the one-year anniversary of the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown, several heavily armed men carrying assault rifles and flak jackets appeared, and they weren't cops.

Instead, they said they were members of the Oath Keepers. The group, led by a man identified only as John, told reporters they were in Ferguson to protect a journalist for InfoWars.com, a conservative website run by radio host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

"There were problems here, there were people who got hurt. We needed to be prepared for that," John told Reuters.

An Infowars representative told Reuters that it had not asked them for security.

"We happen to be in some of the same circumstances as theyare on occasion and ideologically we may share the same views,"said the representative, who asked not to be named citing security concerns. "They are there of their own volition and secondarily they are there to protect anyone who is innocent. Of course, we fall under that because our reporters are reporting."

One member of the militia-style group described the Oath Keepers as constitutionalists. On their website, they say they are "a non-partisan association of current and formerly serving military, police, and first responders who pledge to fulfill the oath all military and police take to 'defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic."'

In a statement, St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar called their presence "both unnecessary and inflammatory." St. Louis County police and prosecutors told CBS News said they would consult about the legality of openly displaying the weapons during a state of emergency, which had been declared Monday after violence rocked Ferguson during protests the previous evening.

Jones' website is well known for hosting inflammatory conservative rhetoric, and posting items that take an extreme view of current events. One of the headlines produced about the recent Ferguson unrest screams: "PROTESTERS DECLARE THEY ARE READY FOR WAR AS AMERICA'S IMPOVERISHED INNER CITIES THREATEN TO ERUPT."

A separate video claiming to be from an Oath Keepers' award banquet shows one of them imploring members to "assume the worst" and "prepare for economic collapse."

Oath Keepers is a national group best known as supporters of the Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy during a 2014 dispute with the Bureau of Land Management. The Idaho group gets its name from the 3 percent of Americans who fought in the Revolutionary War.

They come from what was a general rise in sometimes-violent anti-government activity in the Inland Northwest. After a lull following the demise of the Idaho-based neo-Nazi Aryan Nations in 2000, anti-government and white supremacist groups and individuals saw a dramatic uptick in activity and organization.

The Oath Keepers appear to still be active in multiple parts of the country. Last week, they were among several similar groups involved in a dispute in Montana over a mining claim.

The groups were there in support of a mine owner who is in contention with the U.S. Forest Service over his claim. Members of Oath Keepers, Pacific Patriot Network and 3% of Idaho said they came to Lincoln - the former hometown of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski - at White Hope Mine owner George Kornec's request.

In 2011, a member of the Georgia Oath Keepers, Darren Huff, was convicted in Tennessee on a federal firearms charge in what police said was a plot to take over a Tennessee courthouse and force President Barack Obama out of office.




“Instead, they said they were members of the Oath Keepers. The group, led by a man identified only as John, told reporters they were in Ferguson to protect a journalist for InfoWars.com, a conservative website run by radio host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. "There were problems here, there were people who got hurt. We needed to be prepared for that," John told Reuters. An Infowars representative told Reuters that it had not asked them for security. "We happen to be in some of the same circumstances as theyare on occasion and ideologically we may share the same views,"said the representative, who asked not to be named citing security concerns. "They are there of their own volition and secondarily they are there to protect anyone who is innocent. Of course, we fall under that because our reporters are reporting." …. On their website, they say they are "a non-partisan association of current and formerly serving military, police, and first responders who pledge to fulfill the oath all military and police take to 'defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic."' In a statement, St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar called their presence "both unnecessary and inflammatory." St. Louis County police and prosecutors told CBS News said they would consult about the legality of openly displaying the weapons during a state of emergency, which had been declared Monday after violence rocked Ferguson during protests the previous evening.”

Oath Keepers, Sovereign Citizens, 3% and more are a part of a ferment of what is being called “conservatism,” but which are to my viewpoint purely radical and not the least bit “conservative.” They are anarchists who are actively involved in trying to get rid of government of any kind. They want things to be like the wild, wild West. The fastest gunfighter is the boss. It’s insane. I think it’s time our laws were changed to make violent rhetoric and actions illegal -- crimes and not matters for a civil law suit. It should be covered under the “don’t yell fire in a crowded theater” provision. That is one of the limitations of our much prized freedom of speech. I think “hate speech” should also be specifically disallowed by the Supreme Court. Supposedly “fighting words” are also not allowed in that provision, but to me hate speech is specifically “fighting words.” We need to get a little more control over the radicals of left, right, religious fanaticism, race, and so on. They are causing real problems.