Right-wing Obama hatred and hawk­ish for­eign pol­i­cy instincts can clash in all sorts of col­or­ful, unex­pect­ed ways, but cred­it to fresh­man sen­a­tor and not­ed piece of work Tom Cotton for this lat­est twist: neo­con­ser­v­a­tive Neville Chamberlain apol­o­gism. If your goal is to describe President Obama as the most naïve ama­teur in the his­to­ry of for­eign pol­i­cy, that means you have to mas­sage Chamberlain’s rep­u­ta­tion ever so slight­ly. (Another idea would be to find a more applic­a­ble ana­logue to Obama’s Iran pol­i­cy than Munich 1938, but we can only ask for so much his­tor­i­cal flex­i­bil­i­ty from neoconservatives.)

“Wait,” a shocked, SHOCKED Jeffrey Goldberg asks Cotton, “this is the 1930s to you?” Is it ever not?

Cotton: It’s unfair to Neville Chamberlain to com­pare him to Barack Obama, because Neville Chamberlain’s gen­er­al staff was telling him he couldn’t con­front Hitler and even fight to a draw — cer­tain­ly not defeat the German mil­i­tary — until prob­a­bly 1941 or 1942. He was oper­at­ing from a posi­tion of weak­ness. With Iran, we nego­ti­at­ed pri­vate­ly in 2012 – 2013 from a posi­tion of strength, not a posi­tion of weak­ness. The secret nego­ti­a­tions in Oman. This ulti­mate­ly led to the Joint Plan of Action of November 2013. So we were nego­ti­at­ing from a posi­tion of strength — not just inher­ent mil­i­tary strength of the United States com­pared to Iran, but also from our strate­gic position.

Neville Chamberlain oper­at­ed from a posi­tion of weak­ness and had lit­tle choice but to give all the good­ies to ol’ Hitler. Obama is oper­at­ing from a posi­tion of strength, and yet he still is giv­ing all the good­ies to Hitler, or what­ev­er the new Hitler thing is. Cotton can­not even bring him­self to call the pre­lim­i­nary frame­work a “deal.” He refers to it again and again as a “list of con­ces­sions.” When Goldberg tries to bring up just one of the con­ces­sions that Iran is mak­ing — reduc­ing “their stock­pile from 10,000 kilo­grams to 300 kilo­grams of high­ly enriched ura­ni­um” — Cotton brush­es it aside as, well, we don’t real­ly know the par­tic­u­lars of that and besides, they are lying liars. He sim­i­lar­ly dis­miss­es the pro­vi­sion that the under­ground cen­ter at Fordow won’t be enrich­ing ura­ni­um. It would have been nice if Goldberg had made him respond to the fact that Iran went into nego­ti­a­tions hop­ing to main­tain a capac­i­ty of 50,000 cen­trifuges and will walk away with 6,000, pend­ing a final agreement.

Sometimes dur­ing the course of a long con­ver­sa­tion, a politi­cian will for­get that he’s staked out a sur­pris­ing posi­tion — defend­ing Neville Chamberlain, for exam­ple — and revert back to a con­tra­dic­to­ry but famil­iar com­fort zone. And sure enough, by the end of the con­ver­sa­tion, Cotton is back to trash­ing Chamberlain for the “dis­hon­or” he showed at Munich:

Cotton: The world prob­a­bly wish­es that Great Britain had rebuilt its defens­es and stopped Germany from reoc­cu­py­ing the Rhineland in 1936. Churchill said when Chamberlain came back from Munich, ‘You had a choice between war and dis­hon­or. You chose dis­hon­or and you will there­fore be at war.’ And when President Obama likes to say, ‘It’s this deal or war,’ I would dis­pute that and say, ‘It’s this deal or a bet­ter deal through stronger sanc­tions and fur­ther con­fronta­tion with [Iran’s] ambi­tions and aggres­sion in the region.’ And if it is mil­i­tary action, I would say it’s more like Operation Desert Fox or the tanker war of the 1980s than it is World War II. In the end, I think if we choose to go down the path of this deal, it is like­ly that we could be fac­ing nuclear war.

Helloooo, final sen­tence! Because that’s the oth­er thing about this inter­view, is how Cotton mat­ter-of-fact­ly drops hints about the impend­ing nuclear war to which the Obama admin­is­tra­tion is set­ting the world on a path. This is anoth­er area where Cotton takes con­trast­ing posi­tions depend­ing on the moment: is Iran a ratio­nal actor, or is it not? Is it con­cerned about self-preser­va­tion or is it not?

For the most part Cotton treats Iran as a ratio­nal actor. “They react to threats that are severe enough,” he says. To him that means not just pre­serv­ing sanc­tions, but the cred­i­ble threat of mil­i­tary action if Iran doesn’t tear apart its nuclear pro­gram. Even though the Obama admin­is­tra­tion has been say­ing con­sis­tent­ly for years that it will take mil­i­tary action against Iran if it isn’t will­ing to nego­ti­ate, Cotton doesn’t buy this, because Tom Cotton doesn’t like Barack Obama.

But then, because the imagery of a mush­room cloud is too effec­tive to pass up, Cotton reverts to treat­ing Iran like an irra­tional actor, one intent for reli­gious pur­pos­es on nuk­ing Israel (and thus bring­ing about the instant, retal­ia­to­ry nuclear destruc­tion of itself.) Here, too, Cotton finds him­self defend­ing an unlike­ly part­ner — the Soviet Union! — as a con­ve­nient con­trast to Iran. He argues that ”we could always count on the Soviet lead­er­ship to be con­cerned about nation­al sur­vival in a way that I don’t think we can count on a nuclear-armed Iranian lead­er­ship to be sole­ly con­cerned about nation­al sur­vival.” Why not? Well, some­thing about how Iranians say a lot of mean things. “I think it” — Iran obtain­ing a nuclear bomb — “will prob­a­bly lead to the det­o­na­tion of a nuclear device some­where in the world, if not out­right nuclear war.”

The argu­ment of how Iran would act as a nuclear pow­er is hypo­thet­i­cal, because there’s a deal being nego­ti­at­ed right now that would pre­vent it from becom­ing a nuclear pow­er, and nei­ther Cotton nor his fel­low crit­ics are able to offer a clear expla­na­tion for their fre­quent asser­tion that this deal ensures Iran gets the bomb. But hey, let’s enter­tain it any­way. What’s an argu­ment for Iran becom­ing a nuclear pow­er and this lead­ing to nuclear war? Maybe that Iran going nuclear wouldn’t stop the likes of Tom Cotton and his fel­low hawks from pur­su­ing Iranian régime change. That would be a provoca­tive recipe for fire­works, indeed, and it’s some­thing that leads me to believe that the Obama admin­is­tra­tion is seri­ous when it says that it will do any­thing to pre­vent Iran from get­ting a bomb. Can we be trust­ed to be the ratio­nal actor?
Read more @ http://​www​.salon​.com/​2​0​1​5​/​0​4​/​1​3​/​t​o​m​_​c​o​t​t​o​n​_​g​o​e​s​_​n​u​c​l​e​a​r​_​t​h​e​_​n​e​o​c​o​n​s​_​o​b​a​m​a​_​d​e​r​a​n​g​e​m​e​n​t​_​s​y​n​d​r​o​m​e​_​r​e​a​c​h​e​s​_​n​e​w​_​h​e​i​g​h​ts/

The Rev. Al Sharpton took to the podi­um in a South Carolina church Sunday to praise the mayor’s swift response to the police shoot­ing of unarmed black man Walter Scott.

Keith Summey, North Charleston’s may­or, was inside the Charity Missionary Baptist Church along with Police Chief Eddie Driggers as Sharpton hailed them for swift­ly fir­ing the offi­cer charged with killing Scott. “What this may­or did is what we’ve asked may­ors to do all over the coun­try,” Sharpton said.

“(Summey) said it best when he said, ‘Wrong is wrong,’” the rev­erend con­tin­ued. “In the Deep South, a may­or and police chief did what we couldn’t get may­ors in the North and the Midwest to do,” he added.

He lat­er led the fam­i­ly in a small vig­il at the grassy spot along a seclud­ed path where Scott died April 4. The man charged in his death, Police Officer Michael Slager, 33, was dis­missed when video sur­faced that showed him pump­ing five bul­lets into Scott. Scott, 50, had tried to flee after Slager pulled him over in a rou­tine traf­fic stop. Slager, 33, has been jailed with­out bond and charged with mur­der.

The seem­ing­ly cold-heart­ed crime only became pub­lic knowl­edge because a wit­ness — unseen by Slager — cap­tured it on his cell­phone and lat­er shared the video with Scott’s dev­as­tat­ed fam­i­ly. Slager told police Scott grabbed for his Taser — prompt­ing the bar­rage of bul­lets. “Shots fired, sub­ject is down,” Slager said into his radio as Scott lay unmov­ing on the grass. “He grabbed my Taser,” Slager said.

Video from Slager’s dash cam was released to the media Thursday. It showed the offi­cer pulling Scott over, and then Scott’s abrupt flight. The dash cam kept record­ing and lat­er caught an exchange between Slager and an offi­cer who respond­ed to the scene. The offi­cer advised him to “kind of jot down your thoughts on what hap­pened … once the adren­a­line quits pump­ing,” accord­ing to The Guardian, a British news­pa­per. Slager respond­ed with an audi­ble chuck­le of agree­ment. “It’s pump­ing,” he said, with a short burst of laugh­ter. “What hap­pens next?” he asked. The offi­cer told him he’d be brought to police head­quar­ters and then home.

“It’ll be real quick. … They’re not going to ask you any kind of ques­tions right now. They’ll take your weapon, and we’ll go from there. That’s pret­ty much it,” said the offi­cer, who was not iden­ti­fied on the tape. The National Bar Association, a pre­dom­i­nant­ly African-American group of attor­neys and judges, last week also called for the arrest and indict­ment of the sec­ond offi­cer to respond to the shoot­ing. That offi­cer, Clarence Habersham, filed false infor­ma­tion on his police report in an attempt to help Slager’s coverup, the Bar Association claimed.

Slager told offi­cials Scott tried to take his Taser — prompt­ing his bar­rage of bul­lets. Habersham in his brief report said he tried to give Scott emer­gency med­ical aid — but the video does­n’t back that up, the National Bar Association said. Habersham is also seen stand­ing near Scott as Slager walks up and appar­ent­ly drops an object near the body — pos­si­bly the Taser he said Scott tried to grab from him.

Officials did­n’t imme­di­ate­ly com­ment on the demand for fur­ther police arrests. Sharpton called for an increase of black police offi­cers in an effort to improve com­mu­ni­ty rela­tions and stop the vio­lence. “This is not about black and white, it’s about right and wrong,” he said. “There must be an increase in black offi­cers. … We got­ta encour­age our young­sters that our com­mu­ni­ty is a com­mu­ni­ty that breeds peo­ple that do the right thing. We are not thugs and gang­sters,” he told the packed pews. But he also made an effort to keep emo­tions in check — telling the con­gre­gants not to judge all cops by Slager’s actions.

“I’m not anti-police. We’re anti-police bru­tal­i­ty,” he said. “I did­n’t come to start trou­ble. I come to help stop trou­ble,” Sharpton stressed.Scott’s fam­i­ly held a 3 p.m. vig­il at the scene of his shooting.
Read more @http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/al-sharpton-praises-north-charleston-mayor-police-chief-article‑1.2182592

Whenever there are glar­ing inde­fen­si­ble proof that many of America’s cops are mur­der­ous sociopaths there is the oppos­ing argu­ment of only a tiny amount of cops are bad.
Really ?
We have con­sis­tent­ly stat­ed in this pub­li­ca­tion, if you wit­ness a crime by your col­league and you do noth­ing that makes you an acces­so­ry to the crime, if you fal­si­fy report to sub­stan­ti­ate the lie your crim­i­nal col­league prof­fer, you are equal­ly as guilt as the pri­ma­ry offender.
Civilians are pros­e­cut­ed to the full extent of the law, if they com­mit perjury.
All across America there are inmates sit­ting in state and fed­er­al pri­ons for lying to investigators.
Why are cops allowed to fal­si­fy reports,plant evi­dence, and lie to pro­tect their col­leagues with­out consequence?
Is the objec­tive to get to the truth in crim­i­nal mat­ters, or is it sim­ply about fill­ing jail and prison cells?
If this is so the pub­lic needs to be told that the police do not have to obey laws like every­one else.

Philly Cops Caught on Camera Beating Man Like a Drum #NajeeRivera.

The con­tro­ver­sial mar­i­jua­na issue was one of many hot-but­ton top­ics United States President Barack Obama spoke on yes­ter­day dur­ing a youth town hall forum held in the Assembly Hall at the University of the West Indies (UWI). Arriving at the hall to a thun­der­ous uproar at 2:55 p.m., Obama showed how infec­tious the Jamaican cul­ture can be, as after just a few hours into his first vis­it to the island, he was quite ‘Jamaicanised’ and almost flu­ent in the island’s patois dialect.

“Greetings, mas­sive! Wha a gwaan, Jamaica? Big up, UWI!” he exclaimed after burst­ing on stage, receiv­ing deaf­en­ing laugh­ter and applause. “I have been mak­ing myself at home. It is great to be in beau­ti­ful Jamaica . I just like the vibe here. I feel right at home and grate­ful for the warm Jamaican hos­pi­tal­i­ty.” After address­ing the gath­er­ing for about 15 min­utes, he opened the floor to ques­tion and answers, as he was deter­mined to engage the young lead­ers of Jamaica and CARICOM in an inter­ac­tive ses­sion for the just over an hour he spent with them.

Of course, he was ques­tioned on his views on the legal­i­sa­tion and decrim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of mar­i­jua­na and the US’s pol­i­cy on the issue. But he cau­tioned that legal­is­ing gan­ja was not a “sil­ver bul­let” for solv­ing prob­lems asso­ci­at­ed with the drug, not­ing that there are seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tions which must be giv­en to such a move.

WARNING

He added that although there appears to be many pos­i­tive out­comes which could result from decrim­i­nal­i­sa­tion, a con­ver­sa­tion must be held on pos­si­ble reper­cus­sions, includ­ing its impact on the illic­it drug trade, and even warn­ing that if legalised, a con­sid­er­a­tion must be giv­en that big com­pa­nies could very well take over and squeeze out the small man. He said poli­cies must first be devel­oped to decrease the flow of ille­gal drugs and guns across the region. Jamaica recent­ly passed a law to decrim­i­nalise the pos­ses­sion and cul­ti­va­tion of small quan­ti­ties of gan­ja. The pres­i­dent promised that once he leaves office, he hopes to island hop in the Caribbean.

anastasia.​cunningham@​gleanerjm.​com

See also : BEFORE YOU START COUNTING THAT GANJA MONEY:here’s Something To Think About.

WASHINGTON — A white police offi­cer in North Charleston, S.C., was charged with mur­der on Tuesday after a video sur­faced show­ing him shoot­ing and killing an appar­ent­ly unarmed black man in the back while he ran away.

The offi­cer, Michael T. Slager, 33, had said he feared for his life because the man took his stun gun in a scuf­fle after a traf­fic stop on Saturday. A video, how­ev­er, shows the offi­cer fir­ing eight times as the man — Walter L. Scott, 50 — fled.

The North Charleston may­or announced the state charges at a news con­fer­ence Tuesday evening.

The shoot­ing comes on the heels of high-pro­file inci­dents of police offi­cers using lethal force in New York, Cleveland, Ferguson, Mo., and else­where around the coun­try. The deaths have sparked a nation­al debate over whether police are too quick to use force, par­tic­u­lar­ly in cas­es involv­ing black men.

A White House task force has rec­om­mend­ed a host of changes to the nation’s police poli­cies, and President Obama dis­patched Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., to cities around the coun­try to try to improve police rela­tions with minor­i­ty neighborhoods.

North Charleston is the state’s third-largest city with a pop­u­la­tion of about 100,000. African-Americans make up about 47 per­cent of res­i­dents, and whites account for about 37 per­cent. The city police depart­ment is about 80 per­cent white, accord­ing to data col­lect­ed by the Justice Department in 2007, the most recent peri­od available.

“When you’re wrong, you’re wrong,” Mayor Keith Summey said of the shoot­ing dur­ing the news con­fer­ence. “And if you make a bad deci­sion, don’t care if you’re behind the shield or just a cit­i­zen on the street, you have to live by that decision.”

The shoot­ing unfold­ed after Officer Slager stopped the dri­ver of a Mercedes-Benz with a bro­ken tail­light, accord­ing to police reports. Mr. Scott ran away, and Officer Slager chased him into a grassy lot that abuts a muf­fler shop. He fired his Taser, an elec­tron­ic stun gun, but it did not stop Mr. Scott, accord­ing to police reports.

Moments after the strug­gle, Officer Slager report­ed on his radio, “Shots fired and the sub­ject is down. He took my Taser,” accord­ing to police reports.

But the video, which was tak­en by a bystander and pro­vid­ed to The New York Times by Mr. Scott’s lawyer, presents a dif­fer­ent account. The video begins in the vacant lot, appar­ent­ly moments after Officer Slager fired his Taser. Wires, which car­ry the elec­tri­cal cur­rent from the stun gun, appear to be extend­ing from Mr. Scott’s body as the two men tus­sle and Mr. Scott turns to run.

Something — it is not clear whether it is the stun gun — is either tossed or knocked to the ground behind the two men and Officer Slager draws his gun, the video shows. When the offi­cer fires, Mr. Scott appears to be 15 to 20 feet away and flee­ing. He falls after the last of eight shots.

The offi­cer then runs back toward where the ini­tial scuf­fle occurred and picks some­thing off the ground. Moments lat­er, he drops an object near Mr. Scott’s body, the video shows.

The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, the state’s crim­i­nal inves­tiga­tive body, has begun an inquiry into the shoot­ing. The F.B.I. and the Justice Department, which has opened a string of civ­il rights inves­ti­ga­tions into police depart­ments under Mr. Holder, is also investigating.

The Supreme Court has held that an offi­cer may use dead­ly force against a flee­ing sus­pect only when there is prob­a­ble cause that he “pos­es a sig­nif­i­cant threat of death or seri­ous phys­i­cal injury to the offi­cer or others.”

Officer Slager served in the Coast Guard before join­ing the force five years ago, his lawyer said. The police chief of North Charleston did not return repeat­ed calls. Because police depart­ments are not required to release data on how often offi­cers use force, it was not imme­di­ate­ly clear how often police shoot­ings occur in North Charleston, a work­ing-class com­mu­ni­ty adja­cent to the tourist des­ti­na­tion of Charleston.

New York, New York – 22-year-old Ramsey Orta, the young man who filmed the NYPD killing Eric Garner, was arrest­ed short­ly after on trumped up charges. He has since been locked up at the noto­ri­ous Rikers prison in New York.

Immediately fol­low­ing the killing of Eric Garner, Orta was stalked and tar­get­ed by police. They alleged­ly scru­ti­nized Orta’s dai­ly life until they were able to find some­thing to charge him with. Eventually, he was con­front­ed by police who ille­gal­ly searched him and arrest­ed him for the non-vio­lent crime of car­ry­ing an unreg­is­tered firearm.

Orta had expressed con­cern for his safe­ty after his arrest because he was sure that the police were retal­i­at­ing against him for expos­ing what they had done to Eric Garner.

While in prison, Orta has tak­en seem­ing­ly dras­tic mea­sures to ensure that he is not killed by the gang he wit­nessed mur­der Eric Garner. Orta has been refus­ing to eat, as he fears that guards may poi­son him because he is a high-pro­file oppo­nent of police bru­tal­i­ty. Sadly, Orta’s fears were well-found­ed. While he has been behind bars at Rikers, dozens of oth­er inmates have report­ed traces of rat poi­son in their food, a claim that was actu­al­ly recent­ly admit­ted by prison officials.

It was report­ed by the New York Post last month that 19 dif­fer­ent inmates were denied med­ical test­ing after bluish green pel­lets were found in their food. The prison admit­ted that these pel­lets were rat poi­son, but failed to give the inmates med­ical atten­tion, and failed to offer any kind of expla­na­tion as to why the prison’s food was taint­ed with rat poison.

Orta has been refus­ing to eat, so he has not ingest­ed any of the food laced with rat poi­son and is not one of the 19 inmates in ques­tion. However, his health is dete­ri­o­rat­ing and he is becom­ing mal­nour­ished due to the lack of food.

Speaking in an exclu­sive inter­view with The Free Thought Project, Danette Chavis, orga­niz­er and founder of National Action Against Police Brutality (NAAPB) point­ed out that Orta’s search and arrest were com­plete­ly unjustified.

“It’s imper­a­tive that each and every one of us watch this case close­ly, for what is being done to Ramsey Orta is being done across the United States to those who would resist the oppres­sive forces of police. When police have to reach back into the his­to­ry of a per­son to jus­ti­fy their actions of “today,” some­thing is very wrong. For the actions com­mit­ted by the per­son at the time of arrest should be suf­fi­cient. And when it isn’t they ought not be charged with a crime. Because if “his­to­ry” is enough to “con­vict” the United States itself is guilty, for crimes unable to be enu­mer­at­ed here,” Chavis said.

Orta’s sit­u­a­tion is dire, there is only so long that a per­son can go with­out ade­quate nutri­tion. It has now been proven that the food in prison can­not be trust­ed, not for your aver­age inmate, and espe­cial­ly not for con­tro­ver­sial ones. His bail has been set at $16250, and his fam­i­ly can­not afford to pay it. This is tru­ly a life and death sit­u­a­tion, so his fam­i­ly has start­ed a fundrais­er to help with the legal fees. Unfortunately, how­ev­er, the cam­paign has only raised a frac­tion of its goal. Please con­sid­er donat­ing to the fundrais­er if you have the means, even if it is only a few dollars.

Orta was not the only per­son to be tar­get­ed for film­ing the Garner mur­der either, as we report­ed last month, Taisha Allen, who also filmed the death of Eric Garner, is speak­ing out and say­ing that her involve­ment with the case has put a tar­get on her back with the NYPD.
Read more at.http://​the​freethought​pro​ject​.com/​m​a​n​-​j​a​i​l​e​d​-​f​i​l​m​i​n​g​-​e​r​i​c​-​g​a​r​n​e​r​s​-​d​e​a​t​h​-​e​a​t​-​r​a​t​-​p​o​i​s​o​n​-​p​r​i​s​o​n​s​-​f​o​o​d​/​#​D​e​2​L​i​c​A​2​t​W​4​I​q​r​g​R​.01

Any final deal with Iran must include a clear and unam­bigu­ous recog­ni­tion by Tehran of Israel’s right to exist, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday.
Netanyahu’s com­ments came after a meet­ing of the secu­ri­ty cab­i­net called to dis­cuss the frame­work agree­ment agreed upon Thursday between the world pow­ers and Iran in Lausanne. This was the first time he has called for an explic­it recog­ni­tion of Israel by Iran.
Netanyahu said that Israel would not accept an agree­ment that “allows a coun­try that vows to anni­hi­late us to devel­op nuclear weapons, peri­od.” In recent days senior Israeli offi­cials have spo­ken open­ly about pos­si­ble Israeli mil­i­tary action if need be to pre­vent Iran from get­ting a bomb.

“Iran is a régime that open­ly calls for Israel’s destruc­tion and open­ly and active­ly works towards that end.” he said. “Just two days ago, in the midst of the nego­ti­a­tions in Lausanne, the com­man­der of the Basij secu­ri­ty forces in Iran said this: The destruc­tion of Israel is non-nego­tiable.’ Well, I want to make clear to all. The sur­vival of Israel is non-nego­tiable. Netanyahu, while not threat­en­ing mil­i­tary action, said that the secu­ri­ty cab­i­net is “unit­ed in strong­ly oppos­ing the pro­posed deal.” He said it would pose a grave dan­ger to the region, the world, and threat­en Israel’s sur­vival. Netanyahu said the deal “would not shut down a sin­gle nuclear facil­i­ty in Iran, would not destroy a sin­gle cen­trifuge in Iran and will not stop R&D on Iran’s advanced cen­trifuges. On the con­trary. The deal would legit­imize Iran’s ille­gal nuclear pro­gram. It would leave Iran with a vast nuclear infra­struc­ture. A vast nuclear infra­struc­ture remains in place.” Furthermore, he said the deal would lift sanc­tions almost imme­di­ate­ly, giv­ing Iran a huge eco­nom­ic boost just as it is step­ping up its ter­ror and aggres­sion in the region and elsewhere.

“In a few years, the deal would remove the restric­tions on Iran’s nuclear pro­gram, enabling Iran to have a mas­sive enrich­ment capac­i­ty that it could use to pro­duce many nuclear bombs with­in a mat­ter of months,” he added. Echoing com­ments he made to Congress last month and repeat­ing what he said to US President Barack Obama dur­ing a con­ver­sa­tion overnight, Netanyahu said this deal does not block Iran’s path to a bomb, but rather paves it. In addi­tion, he said, it may spark a nuclear arms race through­out the Middle East and increase the risks of “ter­ri­ble war.” Rejecting argu­ments made by Obama that the alter­na­tive to the deal is war, Obama said there is anoth­er alter­na­tive: “stand­ing firm, increas­ing the pres­sure on Iran until a good deal is achieved.”

The basis for an agree­ment for a peace­ful Iranian nuclear pro­gram and a lift­ing of sanc­tions against that nation has been reached, EU for­eign pol­i­cy chief Federica Mogherini announced Thursday in Switzerland. “We have reached solu­tions on key para­me­ters of a joint com­pre­hen­sive plan of action,” she said.

• Iran’s enrich­ment capac­i­ty and stock­pile would be lim­it­ed, and Iran’s sole enrich­ment facil­i­ty would be at the Natanz nuclear facil­i­ty, Mogherini said. Other nuclear facil­i­ties would be con­vert­ed for oth­er uses, she said.

• Under the agree­ment, the nuclear facil­i­ty at Fordow would be con­vert­ed to a nuclear physics and tech­nol­o­gy cen­ter and the facil­i­ty at Arak would be redesigned as a heavy-water research reac­tor that will not pro­duce weapons-grade plutonium.

• The European Union would ter­mi­nate all nuclear-relat­ed eco­nom­ic and finan­cial sanc­tions against Iran, and the United States would do the same once Iran’s imple­men­ta­tion of the agree­ment is con­firmed, accord­ing to announce­ments of the deal.

• The United Nations would ter­mi­nate all pre­vi­ous res­o­lu­tions sanc­tion­ing Iran, and would incor­po­rate oth­er restric­tions for an agreed-upon peri­od, accord­ing to Thursday’s announcements.

Significant agree­ments have been reached regard­ing Iran’s nuclear pro­gram, accord­ing to tweets by offi­cials ahead of a planned joint statement.

“Found solu­tions,” Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif tweet­ed. “Ready to start draft­ing immediately.”

“Solutions on key para­me­ters” reached, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Twitter. The European Union’s for­eign pol­i­cy chief, Federica Mogherini, tweet­ed, “Good news,” regard­ing the talks.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry sent a tweet say­ing that “para­me­ters to resolve major issues” have been reached.

The flur­ry of tweets basi­cal­ly amount­ed to a leak of the upcom­ing state­ment. The mes­sage: expect a break­through from the marathon talks in Lausanne.

Mogherini is expect­ed to make a state­ment, which will also be read in Farsi by Zarif.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is also expect­ed to make a statement.

The goal had been to agree on a frame­work for a future final nuclear agree­ment by Tuesday. The talks stretched well past the orig­i­nal deadline.

The state­ment will mark the end of a round of talks that start­ed last week.

Earlier Thursday, as Zarif was walk­ing back to the hotel where the nego­ti­a­tions were being held, he told reporters that a state­ment was in the works.

Issuing a state­ment sounds like some­thing less sig­nif­i­cant than the frame­work of under­stand­ing that the par­ties were aim­ing for.

“What we expect today is a state­ment and the fact that we have all reached com­mon under­stand­ing on how to resolve the issues,” Zarif said. “But the agree­ment, a writ­ten agree­ment, is some­thing that needs to be draft­ed by all par­tic­i­pants and agreed upon in a mul­ti­lat­er­al process. And that would take, hope­ful­ly, three months, to final­ize, and hope­ful­ly less.”

Asked if an under­stand­ing has been reached on all issues, Zarif replied, “that’s what we think we have, but noth­ing is agreed until every­thing is agreed.”

World pow­ers — the United States, Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom and Germany — were exam­in­ing the results of the overnight talks with­out Iran present, he said.

The talks, aimed at reach­ing a pre­lim­i­nary polit­i­cal deal on Iran’s nuclear pro­gram, blew past their ini­tial, self-imposed dead­line of late Tuesday as Iranian and U.S. nego­tia­tors strug­gled to find com­pro­mis­es on key issues.

But the nego­tia­tors have dogged­ly con­tin­ued their work in Lausanne, try­ing to over­come decades of mis­trust between Tehran and Washington.

The mutu­al mis­trust has been a seri­ous prob­lem in the talks, Zarif said.

“I believe respect is some­thing that needs to be exer­cised in prac­tice and in deeds, and I hope that every­one is engag­ing in that in mutu­al respect,” he said.

‘A few meters from the finishing line’

“We are a few meters from the fin­ish­ing line, but it’s always the last meters that are the most dif­fi­cult. We will try and cross them,” French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said as he returned to the talks late Wednesday. “We want a robust and ver­i­fi­able agree­ment, and there are still points where there needs to be progress, espe­cial­ly on the Iranian side.”

Iran wants swift relief from pun­ish­ing sanc­tions that have throt­tled its econ­o­my. And Western coun­tries want to make sure any deal holds Iran back from being able to rapid­ly devel­op a nuclear weapon.

It’s unclear what kind of accord might emerge from this round of talks — Iran appears to be resist­ing too many specifics, while the U.S. side wants to put hard num­bers on key points.

Whatever it might turn out to be, the inter­im deal will need to be fleshed out into a full deal by June 30. Some of the thorni­est issues could end up being left for that final phase.

But in the mean­time, the Obama admin­is­tra­tion needs some­thing sol­id enough it can sell to a skep­ti­cal Congress, which has threat­ened to impose new sanc­tions on Iran. The poten­tial deal is also com­ing under sus­tained attack from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

http://​www​.cnn​.com/​2​0​1​5​/​0​4​/​0​2​/​w​o​r​l​d​/​i​r​a​n​-​n​u​c​l​e​a​r​-​t​a​l​k​s​/​i​n​d​e​x​.​h​tml

Here’s a sta­tis­tic for you: It’s been 31 days since the release of the White House Task Force on 21^st Century Policing report, but the num­ber of fatal police encoun­ters is already over 100 and count­ing. That’s an aver­age of more than three peo­ple killed each day in March by police in America.

Too many of this mon­th’s vic­tims fit a pro­file we know all too well — unarmed men of col­or, some of whom have psy­chi­atric dis­abil­i­ties. Victims like Charly Keunang in Los Angeles, California; Tony Robinson in Madison, Wisconsin; Anthony Hill in DeKalb County, Georgia; and Brandon Jones in Cleveland, Ohio; con­firm that the prob­lems with polic­ing are nation­al in scope.

This isn’t a prob­lem con­cen­trat­ed in a few rogue police depart­ments. Even those police depart­ments with the best of inten­tions need reform. Take, for exam­ple, last week’sDepartment of Justice report that Philadelphia police shot 400 peo­ple — over 80 per­cent African-American — in sev­en years. This is in a city where the police com­mis­sion­er is an author of the very same White House task force report call­ing for police reform.

So clear­ly we must do more than read — or even write — these reports. Report rec­om­men­da­tions, sev­er­al of which are adopt­ed from ACLU rec­om­men­da­tions, must be imple­ment­ed. The task force report makes 63 rec­om­men­da­tions, but let’s focus on just two. Neither one is nov­el, but both are crit­i­cal to real police reform.

Deescalate Situations

This is stat­ing the obvi­ous, but clear­ly it needs to be repeat­ed — police depart­ments should adopt use-of-force poli­cies that empha­size de-escalation.

Excessive and dead­ly use of force, dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly against peo­ple of col­or and peo­ple with psy­chi­atric dis­abil­i­ties, is dri­ving nation­al dis­course. Jaywalking and sell­ing indi­vid­ual cig­a­rettes should not result in death — nor should fail­ing to take your med­ica­tion.

The ACLU told the task force that de-esca­la­tion, train­ing, and inci­dent review are nec­es­sary com­po­nents to any use-of-force pol­i­cy. The task force agreed, rec­om­mend­ing that, “Law enforce­ment agency poli­cies for train­ing on use of force should empha­size de-esca­la­tion and alter­na­tives to arrest or sum­mons in sit­u­a­tions where appropriate.”

DOJ’s Community Oriented Policing Services office must con­tin­ue work­ing with local police depart­ments to imple­ment appro­pri­ate use-of-force stan­dards. The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment must com­mit the appro­pri­ate resources for this.

And par­tic­u­lar atten­tion must be paid to how these poli­cies are impact­ing peo­ple of col­or, peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties, and oth­er mar­gin­al­ized pop­u­la­tions. Otherwise police will con­tin­ue to be seen as an oppres­sive force in cer­tain com­mu­ni­ties, there­by mak­ing com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing impossible.

Collect Data

The pub­lic needs legit­i­mate data col­lec­tion prac­tices that pro­mote trans­paren­cy and account­abil­i­ty when police use unrea­son­able force. We need some­thing a lit­tle more thought­ful than a Google search to give us the stats on the num­ber of police shoot­ings — fatal or non­fa­tal — in any giv­en peri­od of time.

As the ACLU explained to the task force, data col­lec­tion and report­ing is the eas­i­est sin­gle thing any police depart­ment can do start­ing today. And it will offer the best depic­tion of what polic­ing in the 21^st cen­tu­ry looks like.

Both the ACLU and the task force rec­om­mend data col­lec­tion on a range of police and cit­i­zen encoun­ters — from stops and arrests to non­fa­tal and fatal police shoot­ings. “Policies on use of force,” the task force writes, “should also require agen­cies to col­lect, main­tain, and report data to the Federal Government on all offi­cer-involved shoot­ings, whether fatal or non­fa­tal, as well as any in-cus­tody death.” And data must be inclu­sive not just of race and gen­der but dis­abil­i­ty as well.

In order for local law enforce­ment to get seri­ous about data col­lec­tion, it may take the dan­gling of fed­er­al dol­lars. The recent­ly enact­ed Death in Custody Act, which requires data col­lec­tion on what the title sug­gests, is tak­ing that approach by penal­iz­ing non­com­pli­ant agen­cies through Department of Justice funds. Earlier man­datesaround data col­lec­tion — ones that allow law enforce­ment tovol­un­tar­i­ly report data with­out penal­ty –aren’t working.

The task force report — like so many oth­ers before it — has spelled out what’s need­ed for police reform. How many more reports or police shoot­ings do we need before we get to work?

This post first appeared on the ACLU’s “Blog of Rights.”

OPPOSITION Leader Andrew Holness tri­umphed again over inter­nal rivals by eas­i­ly win­ning a secret bal­lot among Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) mem­bers of par­lia­ment (MPs) at a cau­cus called yes­ter­day to decide his future.

Twenty of the JLP’s 21 MPs took part in the poll at the par­ty’s Belmont Road head­quar­ters in Kingston, with Holness being the only one with­out a vote. The result of the bal­lots showed that he had the sup­port of approx­i­mate­ly two-thirds of the MPs.

Thirteen of the MPs sup­port­ed him remain­ing as their leader, while sev­en were opposed. Deputy Leader JC Hutchinson, the only MP absent fol­low­ing med­ical surgery, sent in his bal­lot in a letter.

However, the rebel MPs could take some solace in the fact that the votes against Holness were two more than the five expected.

Yesterday’s vote also sig­nalled that the anti-Holness fac­tion is declin­ing among those who favoured his rival in the bit­ter 2013 lead­er­ship race, Audley Shaw.

Leader of Opposition Business in the House of Representatives, Derrick Smith, admit­ted yes­ter­day that his inten­tion in call­ing the meet­ing was not to seek a vote among MPs, but to allow for dis­cus­sions on the issues gen­er­at­ed by two recent court deci­sions against Holness.

The Constitutional Court had ruled that Holness’ request for and use of undat­ed pre-signed res­ig­na­tion let­ters to oust Arthur Williams and Dr Christopher Tufton from the Senate was unconstitutional.

Holness appealed the rul­ing but lost in the high­er court.

Smith said that after dis­cus­sions on a num­ber of issues at the meet­ing, he was will­ing to allow the dis­senters to put Holness’ pop­u­lar­i­ty to a test.

“It was obvi­ous that the par­ty now has to put this lead­er­ship issue behind us and move on,” Smith said, point­ing to the need to get the JLP machin­ery ready for both upcom­ing local gov­ern­ment and gen­er­al elections.

Smith said that, despite the vote, he picked up at the meet­ing that the two sides were mov­ing ahead as one.

“I am very con­vinced that, based on the mood of the meet­ing, and the final result of the meet­ing, that we all will be togeth­er; we will sing from the same hymn book,” Smith said.

The dis­sent­ing mem­bers refused to speak with the media fol­low­ing the bal­lot, acknowl­edg­ing that Smith was appoint­ed to make press statements.

Veteran MP Edmund Barlett, who had sup­port­ed Shaw in 2013 but now sup­ports Holness, said that he was con­fi­dent that the par­ty would move ahead, united.

“We are one. We agreed on a posi­tion and now we are going out there to beat the PNP: We are going out there to beat the PNP, that is the mis­sion,” Bartlett said.

Holness, who also chaired last night’s meet­ing of the pow­er­ful Standing Committee, put on a show of how this elu­sive uni­ty could be achieved, when he led a large team of JLP MPs, includ­ing sev­er­al of his detrac­tors, to a polit­i­cal ral­ly and gospel con­cert host­ed by Everald Warmington’s South Western St Catherine con­stituen­cy in Old Harbour on Sunday night.

Holness intro­duced to sup­port­ers a num­ber of MPs, includ­ing Karl Samuda, Mike Henry, Pearnel Charles, Olivia ‘Babsy’ Grange, Shahine Robinson, Dr Andrew Wheatley, Rudyard Spencer, James Robertson, and Warmington.

Finance spokesman Shaw was also sched­uled to speak, but was said to be unavoid­ably absent.

The theme of the ral­ly was polit­i­cal uni­ty, and Holness, in his effort to pro­mote that theme, used sev­er­al quotes from the Bible, includ­ing Romans chap­ter 12, vers­es 4 – 5 which reads:

“For just as each of us has one body with many mem­bers, and these mem­bers do not all have the same func­tion: So in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each mem­ber belongs to all the others.”

Holness said that the JLP can­not remain a divid­ed house.

Members of the par­lia­men­tary oppo­si­tion are to meet on Monday to decide on the fate of Andrew Holness fol­low­ing his loss in the Appeals Court ear­li­er this week. The meet­ing was orig­i­nal­ly planned for today.

It was called by Leader of Opposition Business in the House, Derick Smith, who says he will pledge his sup­port for Holness. The Court of Appeal threw out an appeal by Holness in the Senate seat saga and made it abun­dant­ly clear that Senators Arthur Williams and Dr Christopher Tufton did not resign in 2013 and must retake their posi­tions in the Senate. Minutes after the rul­ing Wednesday, Delroy Chuck resigned from the Shadow Cabinet and urged Holness to do the same. The par­ty was thrown into tur­moil last month when the Constitutional Court ruled that Holness act­ed uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly when he used undat­ed, unsigned res­ig­na­tion let­ters to oust Tufton and Williams from the Senate. There were reports that the par­ty was divid­ed on what was to become of the Opposition Leader. Several heat­ed meet­ings were held with­in the par­ty to deter­mine his fate. Meanwhile, Senators Williams and Tufton are expect­ed to retake their seats in the Upper House this morning.

Pundits are won­der­ing why two state­ments by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pri­or to the Israeli elec­tions and on the day of the elec­tions drew so much atten­tion. After the elec­tions, Republican leader and for­mer pres­i­den­tial con­tender John McCain told US pres­i­dent Barack Obama to “get over your tem­per tantrum.”

For Israel sup­port­ers like McCain, Netanyahu’s state­ments are mere­ly elec­tion rhetoric that can eas­i­ly be resolved and even erased. In fact, Netanyahu already slight­ly back­tracked from his pre-elec­tion oppo­si­tion to the two-state solu­tion and also tech­ni­cal­ly apol­o­gized to Israel’s Arab cit­i­zens. So some might won­der why the big fuss over these two state­ments. Well, to under­stand the depth of the prob­lems caused by these two state­ments, it is impor­tant to under­stand the two basic com­po­nents of the world (i.e., US) pol­i­cy towards Israel.

Washington and many European coun­tries con­sid­er Israel a demo­c­ra­t­ic coun­try that fair­ly and hon­est­ly rep­re­sents all its cit­i­zens, and not just the Jewish pop­u­la­tion. If the US and oth­er Western coun­tries reached the con­clu­sion that Israel is unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic and a reli­gious state, they could not have giv­en it the kind of sup­port (finan­cial, polit­i­cal and mil­i­tary) they have. Based on this assump­tion that Israel is a demo­c­ra­t­ic state rep­re­sent­ing all of its cit­i­zens, the world always takes the side of Israel in jus­ti­fy­ing its decades-old occu­pa­tion. Israelis have fooled the world for so long say­ing that they want peace and a civ­il end to the occu­pa­tion, but it is some­how those bar­bar­ic ter­ror­ist Palestinians who refuse to deal hon­est­ly with Israel.

When the issue was fur­ther pressed on Israel as to what kind of a solu­tion it is will­ing to accept, Netanyahu reluc­tant­ly accept­ed the idea of a two-state solu­tion, putting two con­di­tions on such a state in order for benev­o­lent Israel to accept. But as US-spon­sored talks began and end­ed with­out a solu­tion, Washington start­ed to ques­tion Israel’s com­mit­ment. Secretary of State John Kerry pub­licly blamed Israelfor mak­ing peace talks fail because of its set­tle­ment expan­sion and reneg­ing on the promise to release pris­on­ers. Yet the US con­tin­ues to give Israel the ben­e­fit of the doubt and to believe that, some­how, the nor­mal cycle of democ­ra­cy will resolve this prob­lem. Americans real­ly believed that the Israeli pub­lic, like any oth­er democ­ra­cy, will make the need­ed adjust­ments at the polls when the time comes to decide whether they want peace or not.

The US had good rea­son to think that way. In the past, Israeli lead­ers, includ­ing Netanyahu in the first term, were oust­ed by the pub­lic in sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances. The Americans believe that the Israelis would take into con­sid­er­a­tion their rela­tion­ship with Washington when they go to the polls. After all, no oth­er ally in the world has stood by Israel and pro­tect­ed Israeli pol­i­cy more than Washington. The two state­ments by Netanyahu, there­fore, must have come as a dis­ap­point­ment for some. All of a sud­den, the Americans were faced with the real­i­ty that Israel is a democ­ra­cy only for Jewish cit­i­zens. When the non-Jewish cit­i­zen, i.e., Palestinian Arab cit­i­zens, unit­ed in one bloc and attempt­ed to prop­er­ly use their legal right to vote, Netanyahu and com­pa­ny got upset and showed where they real­ly stood on the issues of democ­ra­cy as a mech­a­nism work­ing to the ben­e­fit of the people.

The United States does not need to change its pol­i­cy. It sim­ply needs to hon­our its own com­mit­ments and hold all coun­tries, includ­ing Israel, account­able. The idea that Israel and the US have shared val­ues in terms of democ­ra­cy and the right to self-deter­mi­na­tion proved fake. The truth is com­ing out and Netanyahu’s attempts to cor­rect his errors will do lit­tle to change what the world has now final­ly come to under­stand, name­ly that Israel is nei­ther a democ­ra­cy nor that its five-decades old occu­pa­tion of four mil­lion Palestinians is the fault of the occu­pied rather than the occu­pi­er. huff​in​g​ton​post​.com

See also NO NICE WAY TO SAY “LIAR”.

Flying time from Barcelona to Dusseldorf is an hour and fifty-six min­utes — not a long haul — so there’s no rea­son to imag­ine that Andreas Lubitz, the co-pilot of Germanwings Flight 9525, could have antic­i­pat­ed that his com­man­der, Captain Patrick Sondenheimer, would get up and leave him alone in the cock­pit, as the cap­tain did, a lit­tle more than twen­ty min­utes after take­off on Tuesday, while the plane, an Airbus 320, cruised over the French Alps. There is no rea­son to imag­ine, in oth­er words, that Lubitz could have fore­seen, on that route, or on that day, much less in that pre­cise air­space, that he would find him­self, with­out any strug­gle, in a posi­tion to lock him­self in the cock­pit and take con­trol of the plane, ini­ti­at­ing its descent, and con­tin­u­ing to fly it steadi­ly down, down, down over eight min­utes that must have seemed to any­one con­scious of the tra­jec­to­ry a god-awful eter­ni­ty, espe­cial­ly after the cap­tain began knock­ing, then shout­ing, then pound­ing at the barred cock­pit door — fly­ing down, down out of the sky, down into the moun­tains, down into death: his death and the deaths of the hun­dred and forty-nine oth­er souls whose fate he had become.

But that, we’re told, is what hap­pened to that plane. That’s the sto­ry that emerged from the recov­ered cock­pit voice recorder, by way of Brice Robin, the chief pros­e­cu­tor of Marseille, who lis­tened to the full thir­ty min­utes of audio, from take­off to obliv­ion. There was noth­ing wrong with the plane. There was noth­ing iden­ti­fi­ably wrong with the pilots: their con­ver­sa­tion, until the cap­tain stepped away, was per­fect­ly genial, col­le­gial, banal. But the cock­pit door could only be secured like that inten­tion­al­ly, from with­in, and the plane’s loss of alti­tude, its steady dive into the teeth of the Rhone Alpes, too, could only be the result of delib­er­ate indi­vid­ual action. Asked if Lubitz had com­mit­ted sui­cide, Robin said he did not call it that but that it was a log­i­cal the­o­ry to con­sid­er. Robin would only go so far as to say that Lubitz had evi­dent­ly intend­ed “to destroy the air­craft,” and that he was upgrad­ing the case from invol­un­tary to vol­un­tary manslaugh­ter. In the final moments before anni­hi­la­tion, the recorder reg­is­tered the ham­mer­ing of the captain’s fists and feet against the door, the screams of pas­sen­gers, and the qui­et, steady rhythm of Lubitz’s last breaths.

The hor­ror. It’s all there in the sound of Lubitz breath­ing. The wind of life, the wind of death. That steady sough­ing tells us all that we know so far, and all that we don’t yet — and may nev­er — know, about this atroc­i­ty, the dead­liest avi­a­tion cat­a­stro­phe in France in more than three decades. Just as the brevi­ty of the flight, and the appar­ent spon­tane­ity of the captain’s deci­sion to leave the cock­pit — to stretch a leg? or take a piss? or have a chat? We do not know — tells us that Lubitz could not have planned before he flew that day to crash the plane that way; and just as the lock­ing of the door, and the push­ing of the but­ton that brought the plane down, tell us that he act­ed con­scious­ly and delib­er­ate­ly, so Lubitz’s breath­ing, unbro­ken by any attempt at speech, tells us that he chose not to explain him­self. He knew that he was on the record. What did he think he was doing? What came over him? What pos­sessed him? And why?

Assuming, for now, that Robin has got the sto­ry right, Lubitz’s vic­tims — high-school stu­dents and opera stars, vaca­tion­ers and busi­ness com­muters, young lovers and old mar­ried cou­ples, fam­i­lies and soli­tary trav­ellers, cit­i­zens from at least fif­teen coun­tries — meant noth­ing to him. They could have been any of us, any­where — who­ev­er flies or rides a train or takes a bus or in any way entrusts her life to strangers, as we all must reg­u­lar­ly and rou­tine­ly to get through this world. That sense of invest­ment in calami­ty — it could have been me — is true, of course, of acci­dents and tar­get­ed acts of ter­ror­ism as well. But to be told that a scene of mass death is the result of an acci­dent or ter­ror­ism is to be giv­en not only an expla­na­tion of the cause but also an idea of how to reck­on with the con­se­quence – through jus­tice, or revenge, or mea­sures meant to pre­vent a recur­rence. After the mas­sacre at Sandy Hook, we could at least dream of gun con­trol. But the sto­ry of Lubitz, sud­den­ly in con­trol of a plane fly­ing all those aboard to their deaths, offers us only a cos­mic mean­ing­less­ness and bewilderment.

Around the same time that the pros­e­cu­tor, Robin, was telling a press con­fer­ence in Marseille what he had heard on the Germanwings flight recorder, the news wires were report­ing from England on the grand cer­e­mo­ni­al rebur­ial, at Leicester Cathedral, of Richard III, the blood-soaked fif­teenth-cen­tu­ry king, whose remains were recent­ly exhumed from a local park­ing lot. The Bishop of Leicester, pre­sid­ing, laid the cut­throat monarch to rest with the words “All our jour­neys lead to this place where rep­u­ta­tion counts for noth­ing.” You could take that to mean that all world­ly action and ambi­tion is in vain, or that the void of death that awaits us makes it irrel­e­vant whether we do good or bad on Earth. But why let the Bishop have the last word? Thinking of the mys­tery of Lubitz’s last breaths, and the bones of Richard, I turned to my idea of a high­er author­i­ty, Shakespeare, and his imag­i­na­tion of Richard reck­on­ing his own bloody mean­ing and mean­ing­less­ness as a force of nature:
What do I fear? Myself? There’s none else by.
Richard loves Richard; that is, I and I.
Is there a mur­der­er here? No. Yes, I am.
Then fly! What, from myself? Great rea­son why:
Lest I revenge. What, myself upon myself?
Alack, I love myself. Wherefore? For any good
That I myself have done unto myself?
O, no! Alas, I rather hate myself
For hate­ful deeds com­mit­ted by myself.
I am a vil­lain. Yet I lie. I am not.
Fool, of thy­self speak well. Fool, do not flatter:
My con­science hath a thou­sand sev­er­al tongues,
And every tongue brings in a sev­er­al tale,
And every tale con­demns me for a villain.
This week, the King of Spain, the President of France, the German Chancellor — all said that they will stop at noth­ing to make sure that the Germanwings crash is thor­ough­ly inves­ti­gat­ed. But what com­fort is there in such assur­ances? When death strikes with­out the rhyme or rea­son of coher­ent human agency, in the form of a tsuna­mi or an earth­quake, a flood, or light­ning bolt, or falling tree, the insur­ance com­pa­nies, god­less agen­cies of cap­i­tal though they be, describe the blow as an “act of God.” Even those who like to believe in a divin­i­ty that loves us and means us well can grasp, and take some sort of solace in, the aware­ness that cre­ation is ran­dom and incom­pre­hen­si­ble and indif­fer­ent; that — turn, turn, turn — there is a time to every pur­pose under heav­en; that, in short, it is not per­son­al. Still it seems to go against our grain to accept that we are part of this nat­ur­al order of dis­or­der our­selves — and that the whole­sale mur­der of inno­cents by some­one as appar­ent­ly motive­less as Lubitz (as far as we know so far) might also best be under­stood as an act of God.newyork​er​.com

A Detroit man was pulled from his Cadillac at gun­point, thrown to the pave­ment and put in a choke­hold by police in a shock­ing­ly famil­iar scene caught on dash­board cam­era video. An offi­cer put Floyd Dent, 57, in a choke­hold with one arm and began throw­ing right-hand­ed hay­mak­ers to the man’s head. Video shows the full, vicious assault: 16 blows to the head and a kick to the arm, and anoth­er offi­cer shock­ing Dent with a stun gun three times, Click On Detroit report­ed. “I’m lucky to be liv­ing,” Dent told reporters Wednesday about what was a sim­ple traf­fic stop. “I think they were try­ing to kill me, espe­cial­ly when they choked me. I was on my last breath. I told them, ‘Officer please, I can’t breathe.’”

“I can’t breathe” became a nation­al catch­phrase for police bru­tal­i­ty after Staten Island man Eric Garner died after being placed in a choke­hold dur­ing a July 17 NYPD arrest gone wrong. Police fol­lowed Dent’s car in a sub­ur­ban Detroit area known for drug deal­ing and pulled him over Jan. 28 for not prop­er­ly stop­ping at a stop sign. The police report claims Dent was try­ing to flee in his car, but the video shows oth­er­wise. “Next thing I know, he took out his gun. He’s talk­ing about blow­ing off my head,” Dent said. “Then he grabbed me out the car and start­ed beat­ing on me. I just couldn’t believe it.”

Officers said Dent yelled, “I’ll kill you.” But police micro­phones were off.

Cops arrest­ed Dent on a slew of charges, includ­ing dri­ving with sus­pend­ed license and pos­ses­sion of crack cocaine they allege was found in the car, accord­ing to Click On Detroit. Dent has no crim­i­nal past and a blood test at the hos­pi­tal revealed no drugs or alco­hol in his sys­tem. State police told Dent’s attor­ney this week they were inves­ti­gat­ing the inci­dent. William Melendez, the Inkster, Mich., offi­cer who placed Dent in the choke­hold, was accused of mis­con­duct as a Detroit police offi­cer in 2004 as part of a group of cops acquit­ted in a fed­er­al tri­al for civ­il rights abus­es, the Detroit Free Press report­ed. A judge dis­missed all but the drug charge against Dent, who faces an April 1 court date. He refused a plea deal for pro­ba­tion, his attor­ney said.“I get tears think­ing about it,” Dent told reporters. “I don’t want to watch the tape of them beat­ing me because I get upset.”newyork​dai​lynews​.com

The off-duty Jersey cop at the wheel dur­ing a wrong-way fatal acci­dent on Staten Island had been bust­ed for drunk­en dri­ving after crash­ing into a deli in 2011, police records reveal.

Pedro Abad Jr., a Linden police offi­cer, swerved off the road in a black 2010 Audi A5 and hit a bus stop sign, a street sign and a stop sign before slam­ming through the side of New Way Supermarket in Roselle, N.J., at 3:46 a.m. on Jan. 22, 2011, accord­ing to a police report.

His car end­ed up inside the store, caus­ing heavy dam­age to the building.

Ravi Patel, 26, who co-owns the deli with his dad, recalled get­ting a call in the mid­dle of the night that the store’s alarms had been triggered.

“We did­n’t know it was a crash,” Patel told the Daily News Wednesday.

“It was­n’t until we got to the cor­ner. We saw the car inside — the whole car!”

It took three months for all the dam­age to be fixed and the dam­age was so exten­sive the store was closed for the first three weeks of repairs.

“Everything was messed up,” Patel said. “The reg­is­ter was on the ground, every­thing. The door does­n’t even shut still because of the crash.”

Reeking of alco­hol, Abad, 27, was rushed from the scene to University Hospital in Newark, where he was charged with dri­ving while intox­i­cat­ed and care­less driving.

Inside the ambu­lance he admit­ted to hav­ing two mixed drinks at a local club, accord­ing to the police report.

“He should have learned his les­son,” Patel said. “You don’t screw up again. That’s just wrong. Look at how many lives he took.”

Investigators are con­tin­u­ing to probe whether Abad was drink­ing with his three pas­sen­gers at Staten Island strip club Curves before Friday’s crash. Abad was dri­ving a Honda north­bound in the south­bound lanes of the West Shore Expressway when he hit a trac­tor-trail­er head-on at 4:50 a.m., killing two men in the car.

Hours before the dead­ly crash, Abad recount­ed in an online post his toast at a Roselle, N.J., bar ear­li­er that night, beneath a pho­to of three glass­es filled with 70-proof Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Fire.

Killed in the grue­some Staten Island crash were Linden cop Frank Viggiano, 28, and pas­sen­ger Joseph Rodriguez, 28. Another Linden cop in the car, Patrik Kudlac, 23, and Abad remain hos­pi­tal­ized in crit­i­cal condition.

Rodriguez’s funer­al was held Wednesday morn­ing at St. Elizabeth Church in Linden.

Abad also received vio­la­tions for drunk­en dri­ving and refus­ing a Breathalyzer test on Feb. 26, 2013, after he crashed in Rahway, N.J., New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission records show.

During that inci­dent, Abad was caught on cam­era stum­bling and slur­ring his words while ask­ing for an offi­cer he said he knew from the acad­e­my, NJ​.com report­ed.

His license was sus­pend­ed for sev­en months in the wake of the Rahway crash, records show.

In addi­tion to the two drink­ing-relat­ed crash­es, Abad was involved in six oth­er acci­dents going back to 2005, state records show​.nydai​lynews​.com

Speaking with NBC, Zarif slamed the Israeli prime min­is­ter, Benjamin Netanyahu, after he once again said in his Monday’s speech before the US Congress that Iran open­ly threat­ened to wipe Israel off the map.

The Iranian FM urged Netanyahu to refresh his knowl­edge of his­to­ry as his com­ments have not only “distort[ed] real­i­ties of today,” but also go against the Bible and Jewish sacred texts.

“He even dis­torts his own scrip­ture. If you read the book of Esther, you will see that it was the Iranian king who saved the Jews…” Zarif said.

The Iranian Minister called Netanyahu’s accu­sa­tions “tru­ly regret­table” stress­ing that they refer to “an entire nation which has saved Jews three times.”

“It is tru­ly, tru­ly regret­table that big­otry gets to the point of mak­ing alle­ga­tions against an entire nation which has saved Jews three times in its his­to­ry: Once dur­ing that time of a prime min­is­ter who was try­ing to kill the Jews, and the king saved the Jews; again dur­ing the time of Cyrus the Great, where he saved the Jews from Babylon, and dur­ing the Second World War, where Iran saved the Jews,” he said.

“We’re not about the anni­hi­la­tion of Jews,” Zarif stressed, remind­ing the chan­nel that 20,000 Jews reside in Iran “in peace” and even have their own rep­re­sen­ta­tive in parliament.

“We have a his­to­ry of tol­er­ance and coöper­a­tion and liv­ing togeth­er in coex­is­tence with our own Jewish peo­ple, and with Jews every­where in the world. If peo­ple want to espouse fear mon­ger­ing to fan such hys­te­ria in the world, that’s to their detri­ment,” Zafir said.

On the con­trary, he stressed, the cur­rent Israeli régime “is a threat” to Iran as it’s a régime “that engages in the killing of inno­cent chil­dren, a régime that engages in acts of aggression.”

“Israel threat­ens to use force against Iran almost on a dai­ly basis… Of course, if they did use force against Iran, we would defend our­selves, as we have done with great sac­ri­fice in the past. But we are not invad­ing, we are not threat­en­ing any­body. We have not threat­ened any­body for 250 years,” the Iranian FM said.

While Netanyahu only has “a record full of infan­ti­cide, full of killing of inno­cent peo­ple, full of aggres­sion against his neigh­bor, full of occu­pa­tion,” he added.

Read moreIran nuclear deal pos­si­ble, bond with Israel ‘unbreak­able’ — Obama

Tehran and the P5+1 pow­ers (the US, Russia, China, Britain and France, plus Germany) are cur­rent­ly in the deci­sive stage of talks, hop­ing to reach com­pro­mise over Iran’s con­tro­ver­sial nuclear pro­gram by mid-summer.

Zarif has once again turned down accu­sa­tions by the West that the Iranian author­i­ties are try­ing to devel­op nuclear-weapons capa­bil­i­ties, but Tehran insists that its pro­gram is for peace­ful purposes.

“We nev­er had the bomb. We will nev­er have a bomb. We’re not look­ing to have a bomb. We do not believe a bomb is in our inter­est. Whereas [Netanyahu] does have a bomb. He has 200 nuclear weapons,” he said.

Zarif then went on to say that Israeli Prime Minister “has stood against a Middle East free from weapons of mass destruc­tion” and he still accus­es Iran of prepar­ing one.

“He’s in no place to do that. He doesn’t have the author­i­ty, the moral author­i­ty, to do that,” Zarif said.

According to the FM, Iran and the six world pow­ers are “very close” to reach­ing a deal, but “there are details that need to be worked out.”

Read moreNetanyahu offered no ‘viable alter­na­tive’ to Iran nuclear deal — Obama

On Tuesday the Israeli Prime Minister once again voiced his fierce oppo­si­tion to Iran’s nuclear pro­gram in front of a joint ses­sion of the US Congress, call­ing Tehran “the fore­most spon­sor of ter­ror­ism” that threat­ens not only the Israel and the Middle East, but the world, includ­ing the America.

Netanyahu urged for Iran to cease a “march of con­quest, sub­ju­ga­tion and terror.”

Yet, on Monday, US President Barack Obama defend­ed nuclear nego­ti­a­tions with Iran and main­tained that a favor­able set­tle­ment was still possible.

While Iran is still “more like­ly than not” to reject a deal, Obama stressed to Reuters that the odds of suc­cess are bet­ter today than three or five months ago.

The so-called P5+1 group of Britain, China, France, Russia, the United States and Germany is amid nego­ti­a­tion hop­ing to strike a frame­work deal with Iran before a late March deadline.
Read more here @http://​rt​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​2​3​8​1​7​7​-​i​r​a​n​-​i​s​r​a​e​l​-​h​i​s​t​o​r​y​-​n​e​t​a​n​y​a​hu/

The Obama admin­is­tra­tion has led the charge against Jewish set­tle­ment con­struc­tion in the con­test­ed West Bank, Israel’s defense min­is­ter has said, adding that he hopes the slow­down will be “tem­po­rary”.

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said Israel wants to con­struct more set­tle­ments in the West Bank, but an out­pour­ing of glob­al con­dem­na­tion — spear­head­ed by the United States — has side­lined those aspirations.

READ MORE: Palestinian min­is­ter dies after run-in with IDF sol­diers in West Bank protest

“I real­ly want to approve plans and build more – right now this issue pro­vokes a reac­tion first and fore­most from the Americans, and then threats from var­i­ous sources,” Ya’alon said, as quot­ed by Haaretz, on Tuesday address­ing high school stu­dents in a Jewish West Bank settlement.

According to Ya’alon, the United States has “led the charge” and Israel has been “very, very care­ful not to push the enve­lope too much.” The con­struc­tion will even­tu­al­ly begin again because the Obama admin­is­tra­tion “won’t be around for­ev­er.” The com­ments, also broad­cast on Israeli Army Radio, may fur­ther strain rela­tions between the gov­ern­ment of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Obama administration.

In October, top-rank­ing offi­cials in the Obama admin­is­tra­tion, includ­ing Vice-President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry refused to meet Ya’alon dur­ing a vis­it to Washington.

The snub should not have come as a sur­prise, how­ev­er, con­sid­er­ing the Israeli min­is­ter had ear­li­er been quot­ed in Israeli news­pa­per Yedioth Ahronoth as accus­ing Kerry of being “obses­sive and mes­sian­ic” in regard to his stren­u­ous efforts to bro­ker a peace agree­ment between Israelis and Palestinians, an elu­sive objec­tive that has evad­ed US lead­ers for decades.

READ MORE: Israel approves plan to build 1,000 set­tler homes in E. Jerusalem

The human rights group Peace Now said that while there have been no new set­tle­ment projects since a meet­ing between Obama and Netanyahu in October, the con­struc­tion of pre­vi­ous­ly announced hous­ing con­tin­ues, AP cit­ed the group as say­ing. Israel attract­ed the crit­i­cism of the glob­al com­mu­ni­ty when it accept­ed ten­ders — short­ly after a 50-day con­flict in the Gaza Strip that left some 2,200 peo­ple dead, the major­i­ty of them Gazans — to con­struct over 1,000 new set­tler homes in East Jerusalem.
Read more @http://​rt​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​2​1​3​0​9​5​-​i​s​r​a​e​l​-​o​b​a​m​a​-​u​s​-​s​e​t​t​l​e​m​e​n​ts/