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Obama’s ‘Chicago mafia’ blamed for paralysis at the top http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7034910.ece

The UK Sunday Times says a year into the Obama administration, with healthcare yet to be reformed, Wall Street banks continuing to pay huge bonuses and Guantanamo Bay prison still open, hope has turned to disillusionment. The war in Afghanistan continues to exact a big toll and Obama and his team find themselves under fire for failing to move on from the “us versus them” feeling of the election campaign.

The paper says Obama relies on five people: Chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, political advisers David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett, Michelle Obama and spokesman Robert Gibbs. The Times says military commanders were astounded when these advisors participated in Afghanistan war councils and referred to them as the “Chicago mafia.” With Democrats fearing big losses in the November mid-term elections, the knives are out for Emanuel, whose abrasive manner has won him few friends.

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IG announces charges against presidential secretary http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/8341-ig-announces-list-of-charges-against-presidential-secretary.html

The Inspector General (IG) Monday announced the list of charges against Colombian President Alvaro Uribe's personal secretary Bernardo Moreno for his role in security agency DAS' wire tapping scandal.Presidential secretary Moreno is charged with "exceeding the limit of his powers" following a meeting in his office with DAS officials on April 24, 2008, where he was supplied with confidential information, the IG Alejandro Ordonez explained.Moreno stated Monday that he has never infringed the law.

The charges will also affect the director of Colombia's Financial Information and Analysis Unit, Mario Aranguren "who gave instructions to officials of the institution he headed to participate in the meeting on April 24, 2008, where the restricted information was supplied," Ordonez explained.Former DAS directors Jorge Noguera, Maria del Pilar Hurtado and Andres Penate will also have to respond before the IG to charges of wire tapping and illegal tailing of magistrates, politicians, journalists and trade unionists

Lists of charges will also be brought against DAS sub-director Jorge Narvaez and former DAS officials Jorge Lago, Fernando Tavares, and Carlos Alberto Arzayus.The IG first began investigations into Moreno last May, after a former DAS counterintelligence director testified the Presidential secretary was involved in ordering the illegal wiretappings.According to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), the country's Prosecutor General has opened criminal investigations against forty DAS officials and indicted another seven so far.

comment-also see...DAS was involved in drug trafficking, Uribe knew: former official http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/5711-das-was-involved-in-drug-trafficking-uribe-know-former-official.html

Colombia's DAS: Vicious security octopus acts with impunity http://www.medialeft.net/main/index.php/venezuela-and-colombia-medialeftsections-183/1608-colombias-das-vicious-security-octopus-acts-with-impunity

Plan Colombia and Beyond » The DAS scandals http://www.cipcol.org/?p=197

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VIDEO-F William Engdahl-Strategic denial of oil in Haiti? http://tiny.cc/MKqiN

The United States, through its control of the Middle East oil supplies, especially Saudi, Kuwait, earlier control of Iran when the Shah was in power, that gave the United States an enormous weapon over the European economies, over the world economy, actually, and over the Soviet Union during the Cold War era, because they had the power, by controlling the quantities of oil in the world market, to raise the price of oil at their behest, and also, as they did in 1986, to collapse the price of oil. Why has Haiti not been exploited?

I think the very reason the world is swimming in oil, and the US oil multinationals, and the US government that works intimately with them around the world, wants to prevent that anyone else develops the oil resources of a place like Haiti. They're extremely unhappy, no doubt, about the discovery in Cuba, and I think they would like to keep this oil off the market as long as possible. Haiti for them is a stone's throw away, and they could develop it any time they have need. But to keep it off the development market, I think, is their strategy—strategic denial of those oil resources.

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EU setting up intelligence "agency": The "Outcomes" http://euobserver.com/9/29519

The "Outcomes" (Minutes) of the Council's Article 36 Committee Article 36 Committee (11 February 2010, pdf) revealed that SITCEN (the EU's Joint Situation Centre intelligence-gathering unit) is to be "integrated" into the new EU External Action Service (EAS). This is confirmed in the euobserver story: EU diplomats to benefit from new intelligence hub (link). The Council of the European Union is planning to merge: SITCEN (110 seconded intelligence staff) which pools information, prepares reports and maintains 24/7 alert desk on open sources with two to three e-mails a day; the Watch-Keeping Capability (12 staff from police and armed forces) sends out alerts from the EU's 23 police-military missions around the world; and the Crisis Room (6 staff) operates a secure website with open source news on the 118 "active conflicts" going on globally together reports from the Commission's official 130 Delegations and offices based around the world:

Tony Bunyan, Statewatch editor, comments: "Mr Solana, the Council previous High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, was always frustrated because European Commission Delegations (Embassies) could not collect and act on locally gathered intelligence. To try and plug the gap he transferred SITCEN from the WEU and set up his own network of eleven Special Representatives (EUSRs) in different regions of the world. Now the merging of SITCEN, the Watch-Keeping Capability and the Crisis Room under the EAS marks the beginnings of an fully-fledged EU intelligence agency. We should be under no illusions. Despite the predictable denials it is only a matter of time before intelligence-gathering develops into intelligence-led operations with agents in the field acting to further and "protect" EU interests with its own version of MI6 or the CIA."

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“The Peasants Are REVOLTING!!!”Discovering the Global Peasant Movement – What is it? http://www.otherdiscovery.com/?p=566

Say ‘No!’ to Corporate Control of Agriculture and Food! http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=874:say-no-to-corporate-control-of-agriculture-and-food&catid=26:17-april-day-of-peasants-struggle&Itemid=33

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Debt Dynamite Dominoes: The Coming Financial Catastrophe Assessing the Illusion of Recovery http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17736

Neoliberalism spread out of America and Britain in the 1980s; through their financial empires and instruments – including the World Bank and IMF – they spread the neoliberal ideology around the globe. Countries that resisted neoliberalism were subjected to “regime change”. This would occur through financial manipulation, via currency speculation or the hegemonic monetary policies of the Western nations, primarily the United States; economic sanctions, via the United Nations or simply done on a bilateral basis; covert regime change, through “colour revolutions” or coups, assassinations; and sometimes overt military campaigns and war.    The neoliberal ideology consisted in what has often been termed “free market fundamentalism.” This would entail a massive wave of privatization, in which state assets and industries are privatized in order to become economically “more productive and efficient.” This would have the social effect of leading to the firing of entire areas of the public sector, especially health and education as well as any specially protected national industries, which for many poor nations meant vital natural resources.