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	Tea Party Types Eye the Disasters Ahead by Tony Norman, Bill Moyers Pittsburgh Post-Gazette & agencies USA   October 2013   If Congress and the Obama administration fail to find a way for Tea Party conservatives to back out of the current budget stalemate with a shred of their dignity next week, the American economy will suffer a series of self-inflicted catastrophes.   As the reality of the world"s most dynamic economy strangled by conservative nihilists sinks in, financial markets abroad will panic, plunging most economies into recession. Trillions will be lost as investors and automated traders attempt to play the downward spiral of the markets to their advantage one last time.   Meanwhile, the annihilation of the environment continues at a pace that guarantees rising sea levels and mass extinction of marine life in the coming decades. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a report this month spotlighting the perilous state of the world"s oceans.   The report identifies the retention of excess heat by the oceans as a trigger for increasingly violent storms, the accelerated melting of ice sheets and the most dramatic acidification of the oceans in millions of years.   A study published in Nature this week predicts that by 2047, our century"s long addiction to fossil fuels will have ushered in a new global status quo in which the coldest years will be hotter than 2005 -- the hottest year on record. The biggest climate changes will take place in the tropics, not the polar regions, according to the study.   The most optimistic forecast is that it is going to feel like a really hot day in Phoenix everywhere on the planet by 2071. You don"t have to be Bill Nye the Science Guy to understand that such excessive heat will disrupt the global food chain and make dwindling supplies of drinkable water the most precious commodity on the planet.   Unless there is some unforeseen revolution in our economic and spiritual values, governments will topple from the combination of environmental pressures and political fury aimed at the world"s ruling elites caused by scarcity in everything. Drought, pollution and epidemics on the scale of the Black Death will go a long way in reducing the world"s population.   It is anyone"s guess how many wars will be fought between the last vestiges of governments and mega corporations over water and land still capable of growing food in the waning decades of this century.   If this scenario sounds a lot like a secular version of the Book of Revelations, you can bet the crazies in the House of Representatives currently holding a gun to the head of the American economy have picked up on that, too.   Recently, Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., stated with all the authority that comes with being wrong about absolutely everything she"s ever said, that we"re living in the "End Times." Her less than subtle hint that she"s a soldier in a proxy war against the forces of evil goes a long way in shedding light on the politics of the Tea Party. It is a movement with an apocalyptic religious subtext.   Forty percent of Americans, mostly religious and political conservatives, believe we"re living in the "End Times," according to a recent survey by the religious-oriented Barna Group. A high percentage of those would believe that President Barack Obama is either the Antichrist or his evil "hype man" -- a being of quasi-religious authority fundamentalists call the False Prophet.   The recent calamities in Syria and the upsurge in terrorism around the globe have convinced many American religious and political conservatives that something extraordinary is happening and that evil has been unleashed in the land.   Ironically, these folks, including their representatives in Congress, have gotten a reputation for skepticism about climate change and the environmental degradation to come if current levels of greenhouse emissions continue.   It"s not that Ms. Bachmann and her ilk believe secular scenarios about looming disasters in the future are false. They believe predictions about our dark future are true enough, sure, but only to the extent that they resemble the Bible"s prophecies -- which is why they want to help usher in these disasters with their politics of anarchy and extreme free markets.   They want to force Jesus, to hurry up with His too-long-delayed Second Coming. These doomsday politicos and their terrified constituents fully expect to be whisked away from Earth long before the fracking water caused by years of political malpractice begin gushing fire from the faucets of their heavily armed suburban compounds.   They believe in climate change and every other disaster, all right. They simply have another name for it -- God"s judgment. And they can"t wait for it to fall all over you.   The Lies That Will Kill America, by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship.   Here in Manhattan the other day, you couldn’t miss it — the big bold headline across the front page of the tabloid New York Post, screaming one of those sick, slick lies that are a trademark of Rupert Murdoch’s right-wing media empire. There was Uncle Sam, brandishing a revolver and wearing a burglar’s mask. “UNCLE SCAM,” the headline shouted. “US robs bank of $13 billion.”   Say what? Pure whitewash, and Murdoch’s minions know it. That $13 billion dollars is the settlement JPMorgan Chase, the country’s biggest bank, is negotiating with the government to settle its own rip-off of American homeowners and investors — those shady practices that five years ago helped trigger the financial meltdown, including manipulating mortgages and sending millions of Americans into bankruptcy or foreclosure. If anybody’s been robbed it’s not JPMorgan Chase, which can absorb the loss and probably take a tax write-off for at least part of it. No, it’s the American public. In addition to financial heartache we still have been denied the satisfaction of seeing jail time for any of the banksters who put our feet in cement and pushed us off the cliff.   This isn’t the only scandal JPMorgan Chase is juggling. A $6 billion settlement with institutional investors is in the works and criminal charges may still be filed in California. The bank is under investigation on so many fronts it’s hard to keep them sorted out – everything from deceptive sales in its credit card unit to Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme to the criminal manipulation of energy markets and bribing Chinese officials by offering jobs to their kids.   Nor is JPMorgan Chase the only culprit under scrutiny. Bank of America was found guilty just this week of civil fraud, and a gaggle of other banks is being investigated by the government for mortgage fraud. No wonder the camp followers at Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, CNBC and other cheerleaders have ganged up to whitewash the banks. If justice is somehow served, this could be the biggest egg yet across the smug face of unfettered, unchecked, unaccountable capitalism.   One face in particular: Jamie Dimon, the chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase. One of Murdoch’s Fox Business News hosts, Charlie Gasparino, claims the Feds are on a witch hunt against Dimon for criticizing President Obama, whose administration, we are told, “is brutally determined and efficient when it comes to squashing those who oppose their policies.” But hold on: Dimon is a Democrat, said to be Obama’s favorite banker, with so much entree he’s been doing his own negotiating with the attorney general of the United States.   But that’s crony capitalism for you, bipartisan to a fault. Rupert Murdoch has been defending Dimon in his media for a long time. Last spring, when it looked like there might be a stockholders revolt against Dimon, Murdoch was one of many bigwigs who rushed to his defense. He tweeted that JPMorgan would be “up a creek” without Dimon. “One of the smartest, toughest guys around,” Murdoch insisted. Whether Murdoch’s exaltation had an effect or not, Dimon was handily reelected.   Over the last few days, The Wall Street Journal, both Bible and supplicant of high finance as well as one of Murdoch’s more reputable publications — at least in its reporting — echoed the “UNCLE SCAM” indignation of the more lowbrow Post. The government just wants “to appease their left-wing populist allies,” its editorial writers raged, with a “political shakedown and wealth-redistribution scheme.” Perhaps, the paper suggested, the White House will distribute some of the JPMorgan Chase penalty to consumers and advocacy groups and “have the checks arrive in swing congressional districts right before the 2014 election.” We can hear the closet Bolsheviks panting for their handouts now and getting ready to use their phony ID’s to stuff the box on Election Day with multiple illegal ballots.   Such fantasies are all part of the Murdoch News Corp. pattern, an unending flow of falsehood and phony populism that in reality serves only the wealthy elite. Fox News is its ministry of misinformation, the fake jewel of the News Corp. crown, a 24/7 purveyor of flimflam and the occasional selective truth. Look at the pounding they’ve given Obama’s healthcare reform right from the very start, whether the non-existent death panels or claims that it would cause the highest tax increase in history.   While it’s true that the startup of Obamacare has been plagued by its website nightmare and other problems, Fox News consistently has failed to mention Republican roadblocks that prevented the program from getting proper funding or the fact that so many states ruled by Republican governors and legislatures — more than 30 — have deliberately failed to set up the insurance marketplaces critical to making the new system work. Just the other day, Eric Stern at Salon.com fact-checked a segment on Sean Hannity’s show. “Average Americans are feeling the pain of Obamacare and the healthcare overhaul train wreck,” Hannity declared, “and six of them are here tonight to tell us their stories.”   Eric Stern tracked down each of the Hannity Six and found that while their questions about health reform may have been valid, the answers they received from Hannity or had decided for themselves were not. “I don’t doubt that these six individuals believe that Obamacare is a disaster,” Stern reported. “But none of them had even visited the insurance exchange.”   And there you have the problem: ideology and self-interest trump the facts or even caring about the facts, whether it’s banking, Obamacare or global warming. Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists say that climate change is happening and that humans have made it so, but only four in ten Americans realize it’s true. According to a new study in the journal Public Understanding of Science, written by a team that includes Yale University’s Anthony Leiserowitz, the more that people listen to conservative media like Fox News or Limbaugh, the less sure they are that global warming is real. And even worse, the less they trust science.   Such ignorance will kill democracy as surely as the big money that funds and encourages the media outlets, parties and individuals who spew the lies and hate. The ground is all too fertile for those who will only believe whatever best fits their resentment or particular brand of paranoia. It is, as an old song lyric goes, “the self-deception that believes the lie.” The truth will set us free; the lie will make prisoners of us all.   http://billmoyers.com/2013/10/25/the-lies-that-will-kill-america/ http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/01/16/fox-doesnt-believe-in-income-inequality-but-sti/197621 http://www.alternet.org/authors/william-k-black http://mediamatters.org/research/2013/05/14/report-how-evening-news-covered-economic-issues/194031 http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2014/01/27-0 Visit the related web page
	Failure of Leadership at AU Summit by Daniel Bekele Human Rights Watch   May 2014   African Union: Reject Immunity for Leaders.   A proposal to give immunity to sitting government leaders before Africa’s regional court would be a major setback for justice for grave crimes, African organizations from 19 countries and international organizations with a presence in Africa said in a letter to African governments.   Justice ministers and attorney generals of African Union (AU) member countries are scheduled to meet in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on May 15 and 16, 2014, to consider a draft protocol to expand the authority of the African Court on Justice and Human Rights to include criminal jurisdiction over genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. A proposal providing immunity for heads of state and senior government officials from prosecution for such crimes is being considered as part of the amended protocol.   “Exempting sitting heads of state and senior government officials from African Court jurisdiction on grave crimes would shield the powerful from the reach of the law,” said Sulemana Braimah, executive director of the Media Foundation for West Africa. “This is fundamentally at odds with the AU Constitutive Act, which rejects impunity.”   The consideration of the draft protocol comes at a time of intense opposition to the International Criminal Court (ICC) by some African leaders, particularly in the face of the ICC’s proceedings against Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto, who were later elected as Kenya’s president and vice president.   “Impunity remains one of the biggest threats to human rights protection in Africa,” said Thuso Ramabolu, human rights officer at Lesotho’s Transformation Resource Centre. “It’s crucial for people responsible for mass atrocities to face justice, irrespective of their official positions. Immunity poses grave alarm and would create an incentive to hold on to power indefinitely.”   International conventions, including the Convention against Torture, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, and the Geneva Conventions of 1949 recognize the imperative of accountability for grave crimes irrespective of the title or position of those responsible. The irrelevance of official capacity before international criminal courts has become entrenched in international law since the post-World War II trials before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg.   Immunity with respect to serious crimes is also barred before some domestic courts in Africa.   “Even domestic law in Kenya and South Africa bars immunity for sitting officials before domestic courts on grave crimes,” said Stella Ndirangu, program manager at the Kenyan Section of the International Commission of Jurists. “African governments should not roll back important progress in ensuring perpetrators can be held to account.”   http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/05/12/african-union-reject-immunity-leaders-0   October 2013   Failure of Leadership at AU Summit.   When African Union (AU) heads of state gathered in Addis Ababa this weekend for an extraordinary summit, Africans might have expected that their leaders would have extraordinary issues to discuss. They might have asked: would the poverty that maintains a stranglehold on millions of people across the continent, for instance, killing scores of children who lack access to clean water, nutrition, and health care, be on the agenda?   Or maybe the ongoing conflicts in Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Somalia that have left tens of thousands dead, injured, and traumatized and millions displaced would take center stage? Or how about Central African Republic, where a predatory militia has taken control of much of the country, fostering sectarian tensions that are displacing scores of villagers every day?   Some might have speculated that the loss of hundreds of Eritrean, Somali, and other African lives fleeing from conflict, repression, and poverty, in a recent boat capsizing off Lampedusa, Italy, would move the human rights crises in Eritrea and Somalia and the desperate need for development to stem economic and political migration onto the agenda.   Any or all of these issues certainly warrant extraordinary attention – and measures from African heads of state.   But no, the depressing truth is that the main issue on the agenda in Addis Ababa was how to protect a handful of Africa’s most powerful people.   AU leaders concluded that instead of addressing any of the urgent human rights disasters that threaten Africans, displacing millions and forcing tens of thousands to flee abroad, the most urgent issue was to unite their voices to obstruct the work of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has become the last, best hope for many of those Africans who have been victims of atrocities implicating some of these very same leaders.   Let’s be candid. The ICC is not beyond criticism. Like all other international institutions, starting with the United Nations and the Security Council, the ICC has its problems, and the cases that reach it are vulnerable to international double standards. It cannot yet ensure that justice reaches the gravest crimes regardless of where they are committed. Nonetheless, it remains the most significant institution and achievement of the world community to fight impunity for the most serious crimes and against the most powerful people. Over the past few years, significant progress has been made to hold even heads of states to account – such as former Liberian president Charles Taylor and former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic. A key step forward has been the recognition that official status is not a bar to prosecution for the gravest crimes.   Yet despite paying lip service to ending impunity, the central proposal out of Addis was that sitting heads of state or anybody acting or entitled to act in such a capacity should have immunity from prosecution. That means Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir should be not be required to appear for trial for genocide and crimes against humanity, or Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta for crimes against humanity. (Let’s not forget that Bashir is currently the only head of state aside from Syria’s Bashar al-Assad who is implicated in bombing his own people on a daily basis.)   There doesn’t seem to have been much support for the much-rumored mass withdrawal from the ICC. However, the notion that sitting heads of state should have immunity for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity is not just appallingly self-serving, it’s repugnant given the kind of disincentive it would create for anyone to leave power, as well as the incentive it creates for the unscrupulous to gain or maintain power at whatever cost—by murder, coup, or fraudulent elections, just to name a few.   The proposal also directly undermines the AU’s own Charter and principles that proclaim support for the rule of law, respect for human rights, and an end to impunity. But most of all, the AU’s message from Addis is a profoundly disturbing message to Africans that their leaders’ biggest priority is not development, good governance, or respecting basic rights; it’s ensuring that the leaders themselves are insulated from justice, at whatever price.   http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/10/12/dispatches-failure-leadership-au-summit Visit the related web page
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