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Paul Merrell

News - Antitrust - Competition - European Commission - 0 views

  • Google inquiries Commission accuses Google of systematically favouring own shopping comparison service Infographic: Google might be favouring 'Google Shopping' when displaying general search results
  • Antitrust: Commission sends Statement of Objections to Google on comparison shopping service; opens separate formal investigation on AndroidWed, 15 Apr 2015 10:00:00 GMTAntitrust: Commission opens formal investigation against Google in relation to Android mobile operating systemWed, 15 Apr 2015 10:00:00 GMTAntitrust: Commission sends Statement of Objections to Google on comparison shopping serviceWed, 15 Apr 2015 10:00:00 GMTStatement by Commissioner Vestager on antitrust decisions concerning GoogleWed, 15 Apr 2015 11:39:00 GMT
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    The more interesting issue to me is the accusation that Google violates antitrust law by boosting its comparison shopping search results in its search results, unfairly disadvantaging competing shopping services and not delivering best results to users. What's interesting to me is that the Commission is attempting to portray general search as a separate market from comparison shopping search, accusing Google of attempting to leverage its general search monopoly into the separate comoparison shopping search market. At first blush, Iim not convinced that these are or should be regarded as separable markets. But the ramifications are enormous. If that is a separate market, then arguably so is Google's book search, its Google Scholar search, its definition search, its site search, etc. It isn't clear to me how one might draw a defensible line taht does not also sweep in every new search feature  as a separate market.   
Paul Merrell

Tomgram: Engelhardt, The Ten Commandments for a Better American World | TomDispatch - 0 views

  • My War on Terror Letter to an Unknown American Patriot By Tom Engelhardt Dear American Patriot, I wish I knew your name. I’ve been thinking about you, about all of us actually and our country, and meaning to write for a while to explain myself.  Let me start this way: you should feel free to call me an American nationalist.  It may sound ugly as hell, but it’s one way I do think of myself. True, we Americans usually reserve the more kindly word “patriot” for ourselves and use “nationalist” to diss other people who exhibit special feeling for their country.  In the extreme, it’s “superpatriot” for us and “ultranationalist” for them. In any case, here’s how my particular form of nationalism manifests itself. I feel a responsibility for the acts of this country that I don’t feel for those of other states or groups.  When, for instance, a wedding party blows up thanks to a Taliban roadside bomb, or the Islamic State cuts some poor captive’s head off, or Bashar al-Assad’s air force drops barrel bombs on civilians, or the Russians jail a political activist, or some other group or state commits some similar set of crimes, I’m not surprised.  Human barbarity, as well as the arbitrary cruelty of state power, are unending facts of history. They should be opposed, but am I shocked? No.
  • Still -- and I accept the irrationality of this -- when my country wipes out wedding parties in other lands or organizes torture regimes and offshore prison systems where anything goes, or tries to jail yet another whistleblower, when it acts cruelly, arbitrarily, or barbarically, I feel shock and wonder why more Americans don’t have the same reaction. Don’t misunderstand me.  I don’t blame myself for the commission of such acts, but as an American, I do feel a special responsibility to do something about them, or at least to speak out against them -- as it should be the responsibility of others in their localities to deal with their particular sets of barbarians. So think of my last 12 years running TomDispatch.com as my own modest war on terror -- American terror.  We don’t, of course, like to think of ourselves as barbaric, and terror is, almost by definition, a set of un-American acts that others are eager to commit against us.  “They” want to take us out in our malls and backyards.  We would never commit such acts, not knowingly, not with malice aforethought.  It matters little here that, from wedding parties to funerals, women to children, we have, in fact, continued to take “them” out in their backyards quite regularly. Most Americans would admit that this country makes mistakes. Despite our best efforts, we do sometimes produce what we like to call “collateral damage” as we go after the evildoers, but a terror regime? Not us. Never.
  • And this is part of the reason I’m writing you. I keep wondering how, in these years, it’s been possible to hold onto such fictions so successfully. I wonder why, at least some of the time, you aren’t jumping out of your skin over what we do, rather than what they’ve done or might prospectively do to us. Let’s start with an uncomfortable fact of our world that few here care to mention: in one way or another, Washington has been complicit in the creation or strengthening of just about every extreme terror outfit across the Greater Middle East. If we weren’t their parents, in crucial cases we were at least their midwives or foster parents.
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  • Start in the 1980s with the urge of President Ronald Reagan and his fundamentalist Catholic spymaster, CIA Director William Casey, to make allies of fundamentalist Islamic movements at a time when their extreme (and extremist) piety seemed attractively anticommunist.  In that decade, in Afghanistan in particular, Reagan and Casey put money, arms, and training where their hearts and mouths were and promoted the most extreme Islamists who were ready to give the Soviet Union a bloody nose, a Vietnam in reverse.
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    Highly recommended reading. But note that, while I've never had occasion to correct Tom Engelhardt before, he errs in attributing the beginning of U.S. involvement with what we now call Al-Qaeda to the Reagan era. In fact, that honor belongs to the Carter Administration, specifically to then National Security Advisor and arch-anti-Communist Zbigniew K. Brzezinski, who wanted to give the Soviet Union its own "Viet Nam moment."  
digitalorainfo

Photography Tips For Couple - Candid Wedding Photographers in Banglore Hydrabad - 0 views

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digitalorainfo

Professional Photography - Candid Wedding Photographers in Banglore Hydrabad - 0 views

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Gary Edwards

Obama's Taqqiya Unravels - Nonie Darwish - 0 views

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    Perhaps the clearest and most direct explanation yet concerning the Benghazi Massacre and the once strapping young Muslim-Socialist in the White House.   excerpt: "I have never entertained the idea that Obama was a Muslim and always believed he was a socialist. But Obama's behavior over the last four years regarding Islam has convinced me that Obama has a Socialist/Islamic centered worldview -- a combination that is not uncommon in many parts of the Muslim world. Having been a journalist in Egypt for six years in the seventies, I have witnessed socialism with an Islamic twist to be a popular political ideology, especially amongst Arab journalists and intellectuals. Socialism, and even communism, have managed to survive in the ruthless Islamic political system as an alternative to full-fledged Sharia. The two ideologies have blended together in cases including the Baath Party in Syria and Iraq and socialist regimes in Egypt and Yemen. One major difference between the two ideologies is that Islam uses Allah, while socialism uses atheism, to fight the God of Christianity. Free democracies, such as the United States, are alien to Islam and socialism both because they regard government as a servant of the people and hold that human rights are granted by God and not by government or the code of Sharia. Both Sharia and socialism are united in their envy of Western society and need to change it. That is why Obama has become the savior of both Islam and socialism. He embodies both ideologies. The claim that Obama is a Christian was a silly joke, but a necessary lie for the greater cause of changing America to fit the goals of both creeds. Obama became the One, the savior of both Islam and socialists. To do that, Obama had to deny who he really was, which explains why his actions and words have never added up. At the recent Alfred E. Smith Catholic Charity dinner speech, Obama did not seem to be just kidding when he said that Romney uses his middle name Mitt and "I wish I c
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    I can't see Obama as a Muslim, a Christian, or a Socialist. He is simply too corrupt to honestly subscribe to any ideology other than Corruption.
Paul Merrell

Doctors Without Borders Says Yemen Hospital Is Destroyed - The New York Times - 0 views

  • A hospital in northern Yemen run by Doctors Without Borders was destroyed by warplanes belonging to a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia, even though the coalition had been given the coordinates of the hospital, the relief organization said Tuesday.The airstrikes, about 10:30 p.m. Monday, forced the evacuation of staff and patients from the site and raised new questions about what precautions Saudi Arabia and its military partners were taking to avoid civilians.The coalition, of 10 Arab states, receives military and intelligence support from the United States and has been battling Yemen’s Houthi rebels since March. Bombings by the coalition have killed more than 1,100 people — the majority of civilian casualties during the war, according to human rights advocates. The airstrikes have also hit nonmilitary targets, including markets, houses and wedding parties.
  • “With the hospital destroyed, at least 200,000 people now have no access to lifesaving medical care,” Doctors Without Borders said in a statement. Hassan Boucenine, the group’s head of mission in Yemen, said in the statement that the attack was “another illustration of a complete disregard for civilians in Yemen, where bombings have become a daily routine.”A spokesman for the coalition did not return phone calls seeking comment.Mr. Boucenine said in an interview that the hospital was hit by several airstrikes while roughly a dozen patients and staff members were inside. The operating theater and maternity ward were struck. The staff evacuated the hospital between strikes, and one staff member was slightly injured in the escape.The airstrikes then continued for at least two hours, leaving most of the facility in rubble, the group said.
  • Doctors Without Borders had supplied the hospital’s coordinates to the coalition about six months ago and reconfirmed them every month, Mr. Boucenine said. The group’s logo was on the roof.
Paul Merrell

US May Be Complicit in War Crimes in Yemen | Al Jazeera America - 0 views

  • Eight months after Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies began an aerial campaign against the Houthi rebels, the civilian death toll continues to mount. More than 5,600 people, including 2,615 civilians and 500 children, have been killed since March. The vast majority of civilian deaths are attributable to coalition airstrikes.  Human rights groups have warned about war crimes and the continued humanitarian calamity in Yemen. “Yemen in five months is like Syria after five years,” Peter Maurer, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said in August. “The humanitarian situation is nothing short of catastrophic. Every family in Yemen has been affected by this conflict.” Complicit in the growing humanitarian disaster is the United States and its unchecked arms sales to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf allies. The Barack Obama administration agreed to transfer more than $64 billion in weapons and services to members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) during its first five years. On Oct. 20, the U.S. government approved an $11.25 billion deal to sell warships to Saudi Arabia, ignoring calls from human rights activists to refrain from selling certain military equipment in light of the civilian toll it is inflicting. In continuing to provide weapons, intelligence and logistical support to Riyadh, including precision rockets and internationally banned cluster munitions, the U.S. is contributing to Yemen’s suffering.
  • Take the Sept. 28 coalition airstrike that hit a wedding party, killing dozens and wounding many more. Among the dead were women and children. The White House expressed concern about the incident, but its words ring hollow, given that the U.S supplied the planes used in the attack. In a report on Oct. 6, London-based advocacy group Amnesty International investigated 13 coalition airstrikes from May to July that killed an estimated 100 people, including 59 children. The group found that some of the strikes hit civilian objects such as “homes, public buildings, schools, markets, shops, factories, bridges, roads and other civilian infrastructure,” as well as civilians fleeing in vehicles and those delivering humanitarian assistance. Amnesty said the strikes violate international law and found “damning evidence of war crimes,” which warrant an international investigation and the suspension of certain arms transfers. A United Nations panel has accused all sides of human rights abuses, but singled out coalition forces for committing “grave violations.” But international condemnation has done little to ease the devastation wrought by the strikes.
Paul Merrell

The Progressive Movement is a PR Front for Rich Democrats » Counterpunch: Tel... - 0 views

  • There is good news in the Boston Globe today for the managers, development directors, visionaries, political hacks and propaganda flacks who run “the Progressive Movement.”   More easy-to-earn and easy-to-hide soft money, millions of dollars,  will be flowing to them from super rich Democrats and business corporations.  It will come clean, pressed and laundered through Organizing for Action, the latest incarnation of the Obama Money Machine which has recently morphed into a “nonpartisan non-profit corporation” that will  ‘‘strengthen the progressive movement and train our next generation of leaders.’’
  • Does this information concern you?  If not, you need to get out of the propaganda bubble of your Progressive Movement echo chamber and think.  Think hard.  Think about fundamental, radical, democratic, social and economic change, who might bring it about and how.  Ask yourself if the the rich elite, the 1%, are going to fund that.   Leave The Nation and Mother Jones on the shelf;  turn off Ed Schultz, Rachel Madow and Chris Hayes;  don’t open that barrage of email missives from Alternet, Media Matters, MoveOn, and the other think tanks;  and get your head out of the liberal blogosphere for a couple days.  Clear your mind and consider this:
  • The self-labeled Progressive Movement that has arisen over the past decade is primarily one big propaganda campaign serving the political interests of the the Democratic Party’s richest one-percent who created it.  The funders and owners of the Progressive Movement get richer and richer off Wall Street and the corporate system.  But they happen to be Democrats, cultural and social liberals who can’t stomach Republican policies, and so after bruising electoral defeats a decade ago they decided to buy a movement, one just like the Republicans, a copy. The Progressive Movement that exists today is their success story.  The Democratic elite created  a mirror image of the type of astroturf front groups and think tanks long ago invented, funded and promoted by the Reaganites and the Koch brothers.  The liberal elite own the Progressive Movement. 
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  • Real movements are not the creation of and beholden to millionaires.  The Progressive Movement is astroturf beholden to the rich elite, just as the Democratic millionaires and operatives of the Democracy Alliance intended.  The “movement’s” funding is in the hands of a small number of super rich Democrats and union bureaucrats and advisors who run with them.  Its talking points, strategies, tactics and PR campaigns are all at the service of the Democratic elite.  There is no grassroots organized progressive movement with power in the United States, and none is being built.  Indeed,  if anything threatens to emerge,  the cry  “Remember Nader!” arises and the budding insurgency is marginalized or coopted, as in the case of the Occupy Wall Street events.  Meanwhile, the rich elite who fund the Progressive Movement, and their candidates such as Barack Obama, are completely wedded to maintaining the existing status quo on Wall Street and in the corporate boardroom.  Their well-kept Progressive Movement is adept at PR, propaganda, marketing and fundraising necessary in the service of the Democratic Party and the corporate elite who rule it.
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    Why the anti-war and 99-percenter "progressives" never get around to ending wars and reforming Wall Street. Spot on. An excellent snapshot of where the real political power in the U.S. is. And for Gary, George Soros gets mentioned more than once.
Paul Merrell

US Boycotts Pakistan's Push For Greater Transparency On Drone Strikes - 0 views

  • The United States is refusing to participate in UN Human Rights Council talks about greater accountability for human rights violations in covert drone wars. Foreign Policy reporter Colum Lynch, who broke the story Wednesday, says the U.S. is opting out of discussions about a draft Pakistani resolution aimed at the U.S. drone strikes. Lynch explains: The Pakistani draft, which was obtained by Foreign Policy, urges states to “ensure transparency” in record-keeping on drone strikes and to “conduct prompt, independent and impartial investigations whenever there are indications of any violations to human rights caused by their use.” It also calls for the convening of “an interactive panel discussion” on the use of drones. During the third round of talks on Wednesday about the resolution, the United States was notably absent. The boycott marks a shift from President Obama’s decision in 2009 to join the Human Rights Council after years of U.S. boycott at the behest of former President George W. Bush.
  • Yet, the move is in keeping with the Obama administration’s diligent refusal to share public information about those U.S. drone wars and those killed in the attacks. A “modest” initiative in the U.S. Senate that would have forced the U.S. government to publicly report and identify those killed by U.S. drone strikes overseas failed last November. While the Obama administration has repeatedly claimed that civilian deaths in drone strikes are minimal, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism documents alarming rates of civilian deaths by covert U.S. attacks in Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia. Furthermore, in a 21-page report released earlier this month, UN special rapporteur on human rights Ben Emmerson identifies drone strikes in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Gaza in which civilians were killed, injured, or threatened in drone attacks by the U.S. and close ally Israel. The U.S. still has not answered for numerous high-profile attacks, including a December 2013 U.S. drone strike on a recent wedding procession in Yemen near the city of Rad’a that left 12 people dead and at least 15 wounded. The boycott of the talks comes as the U.S. escalates its covert drone war in Yemen, with at least seven suspected strikes in the first two weeks of March.
Paul Merrell

M of A - Lack Of U.S. Air Support In Ramadi Points To Disguised Darker Aim - 0 views

  • Why were there so few U.S. air attacks on the Islamic State attackers when they took Ramadi? The first excuse put out by the U.S. military was "a sandstorm ate my lunch". That excuse was placed as news in the NYT: Islamic State fighters used a sandstorm to help seize a critical military advantage in the early hours of the terrorist group’s attack on the provincial Iraqi capital of Ramadi last week, helping to set in motion an assault that forced Iraqi security forces to flee, current and former American officials said Monday. The stenographer writing the piece did not bother to ask eyewitnesses or to check with some weather service. The myth of the "sandstorm" was thus born and repeated again and again. But people looking at the videos and pictures from the fighting could only see a bright blue sky. The military, though not the NYT, had to retract: Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters today that last weekend's sandstorm had not affected the coalition’s ability to launch airstrikes in Ramadi, though “weather was a factor on the ground early on.”
  • Now the U.S. military needs a new excuse to explain why it does not really bother to attack the Islamic State troops. Again it is the NYT that is willing to stenograph: American officials say they are not striking significant — and obvious — Islamic State targets out of fear that the attacks will accidentally kill civilians. Killing such innocents could hand the militants a major propaganda coup and alienate both the local Sunni tribesmen, whose support is critical to ousting the militants, and Sunni Arab countries that are part of the American-led coalition. The alleged restrain in in fear of killing civilians in bonkers. The few U.S. airstrikes on Islamic State targets, though not admitted, have already killed hundreds of civilians. This excuse for not helping the defenders of Ramadi is also nonsense as many occasions for potential attacks, like the Islamic State parade in this picture, are in areas with no or few civilians around. Why are Islamic State fighters free to travel the roads between Syria and Iraq in mass?
  • Nether the "sandstrom" excuse nor the "fear" of accidentally killing civilians seem to be an explanation for the decision to not support the Iraqi troops against the Islamic State attacks. A sound explanation can be found in the 2012 Defense Intelligence Agency assessment, recently revealed, that says that the U.S. and the Gulf monarchies do want an Islamic State covering east Syria and west Iraq: “… there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist Principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).” In a recent Sunday show the neocon and former U.S. ambassador to the UN John Bolton put it on the record: I think our objective should be a new Sunni state out of the western part of Iraq, the eastern part of Syria run by moderates or at least authoritarians who are not radical Islamists. What's left of the state of Iraq, as of right now, is simply a satellite of the Ayatollahs in Tehran. It's not anything we should try to aid.
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  • Not unrelated the Associated Press is running a home story about a nice, Islamic State financed, honeymoon in Raqqa: The honeymoon was a brief moment for love, away from the front lines of Syria's war. In the capital of the Islamic State group's self-proclaimed "caliphate," Syrian fighter Abu Bilal al-Homsi was united with his Tunisian bride for the first time after months chatting online. They married, then passed the days dining on grilled meats in Raqqa's restaurants, strolling along the Euphrates River and eating ice cream. It was all made possible by the marriage bonus he received from the Islamic State group: $1,500 for him and his wife to get started on a new home, a family — and a honeymoon. "It has everything one would want for a wedding," al-Homsi said of Raqqa ... Who paid how much to AP for that  Islamic State recruiting advertisement?
  • The U.S. military in the Middle East is not helping the legitimate state of Iraq against the illegitimate Islamic State. It is shaping the environment so that it will allow for a delimited "Salafist Principality" in Syria and Iraq, mostly independent Kurdish areas and a rump state of Shia Iraq.
  • The only sound explanation for the very, very limited air support the U.S. is giving to Iraq is its aim of dismembering the Iraqi state and creating a new Sunni state entity under its tutelage. The Iraqi government should finally recognize this and should stay away from U.S. advice and dependency.
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    I'll be posting more bookmarks on the topic of the cover being blown from the U.S. strategy on behalf of Israel to carve up Syria and Iraq into Balkanized states, whilst blocking the Iran-Iraq-Syria Freedom Pipeline. This has been covered from the beginning by alternative press but never made it into mainstream media. Not even the release of the Defense Intelligence Agency document proving that goal could crack that media blackout.   
Paul Merrell

Gowdy wants Clinton to answer 'all questions' on Benghazi - Jennifer Shutt - POLITICO - 0 views

  • The chairman of the House Benghazi Committee said on Sunday former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s scheduled Oct. 22 committee testimony on the 2012 terrorist attack in Libya will take as long as necessary for all of the committee’s questions to be answered. “If she is going to insist on only coming once, I’m going to insist that all questions are asked and answered, so she’s going to be there for a while,” Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said on “Fox News Sunday.” Story Continued Below The questions, he said, will include why Clinton set up a private email account to use at the State Department and why some classified documents were on her private server. “I don’t have any yoga emails, but the greater steps you take to delete something or clean something — that is a higher level of concealment,” Gowdy said, referring to comments that Clinton deleted private emails related to yoga classes and her daughter Chelsea’s wedding.
  • Gowdy insisted the committee’s investigation is to determine how four Americans died at the U.S. diplomatic compound in Libya and is not politically motivated. “We are trying to run this in the way serious investigations are run,” he said. “We are going to follow the facts wherever they go — and if that impacts people’s perception of her fitness to be commander and chief, so be it.”
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    But will she plead the 5th Amendment? And will the Committee even attempt to learn and disclose what the State Dept. and CIA were up to in Libya when the attack occurred? Don't hold your breath for that one. This hearing is about bruising Hillary's prospects in Auction 2016, not about exposing the CIA ratline of weapons shipments from Libya to "jihadi" mercenaries in Syria.  Fun and games on Capitol Hill. 
digitalorainfo

Candid Photography - Candid Wedding Photographers in Banglore Hydrabad - 0 views

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    We have an elite team of candid photographers equipped with people skills. With a friendly approach, they make you feel ease and help you face the camera without being nervous. They thump interesting conversation and intermingle just like your long known friend. This is the appreciable quality of our candid photographer that makes them your first preference over the traditional photographer.
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