TiLTNews Network: Earth Watch - Freedom is defined by the ability of citizens to live without government interference, not by safety. It is easy to clamor for government security when terrible things happen; but liberty is given true meaning when we support it without exception, and we will be safer for it ~ Dr. Ron Paul
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Robin Williams was a natural fit for the USO, with a magical ability to connect with every service member he met – he shook every hand, signed every autograph and lifted every spirit.
For 12 years, Robin generously gave his time to create special moments for more than 89,000 servicemen and women. His humor helped ease their loneliness, fear and uncertainty while they served to protect our freedom in remote locations far from home.
Everyone who met Robin has a special memory, and we want to share some of the amazing photos and stories from his USO tours.
Click here to see the USO’s tribute to Robin Williams, “He Brought Them Light,” and learn more about more about his dedication to our men and women in uniform.
The USO holds Robin Williams and his family in our hearts, and we thank him for all he did for those that do so much for all of us – the men and women of our Armed Forces. He will always be a part of our USO family and will be sorely missed.
Thank you,
Brigadier General John I. Pray Jr., USAF (Ret.)
Executive Vice President and Chief of Staff, USO
“He Brought Them Light’: How Robin Williams Turned his USO Tours into Personal Experiences for Troops
Tuesday, August 12, 2014
By Eric Brandner
Today, the audience gets to tell the story.
The photos of service members posing with Robin Williams flowing through social media feeds the past 24 hours say more than any condolence statement could.
There is Williams with a pair of female service members in Djibouti in 2004. Posing with a soldier after a long flight at Camp Speicher, Iraq, in 2007. Signing autographs during a holiday tour of Afghanistan in late 2010.
Those were hard times for people in uniform. But for a moment, Williams managed to make almost everyone he met in those conflict zones smile.
“There were these guys behind a fence, across a berm [and] a field, and they waved at him,” said USO Vice President of Entertainment Rachel Tischler, recalling her time with Williams during the 2007 USO Chairman’s Holiday Tour. “And he jumped across the berm and went running over to them. Obviously, our security team completely freaked out. Again – height of the war here. But he didn’t care. He just wanted to go over and shake their hands and thank them. And that is what he was like.”
A friend and entertainer to American service members around the globe, Williams was found dead in his Tiburon, California, home Monday afternoon in what the Marin County Sheriff’s Office characterized as a suspected suicide. He was 63.
Williams went on six USO tours from 2002 to 2013, including five overseas. He visited troops in 12 foreign countries, making three stops to both Iraq and Afghanistan.
See Album here: http://www.photosnack.com/FF9BC98F8D6/ptilwm9m
“There’s nothing I enjoy more than traveling with the USO and giving back to our troops in whatever way I can,” Williams said during his 2007 USO tour led by then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen. “They work hard, sacrifice a lot and deserve to be treated like the heroes they are. The very least I can do is bring a smile to their faces.”
The connections didn’t end when he left the stage. One of Williams’ legacies will be the photos with men and women in various shades of camo squinting and smiling at camera phones in the middle of the desert. He openly discussed his struggles with them, too.
“He talked to [troops] who had gone through [Alcoholics Anonymous] backstage,” said USO Senior Vice President John Hanson, who also went on the 2007 tour. “That was the most remarkable thing. It happened in Kuwait, it happened in Iraq, it happened in Afghanistan. People would seek him out and he would take the time to talk to them.”
According to Tischler, Williams was always cognizant of playing to the military audience’s shared experiences.
“What was great about him on tour was that he always took the time to sit down and talk to people about what they were going through, what life on the base was like, about personal experiences,” Tischler said. “And then he’d get on stage and he’d be telling a joke about Mexican Night in the [dining facility].
“He already put on a great show, but now it was just for the people who were there and no one else would have gotten the jokes. … It made the moment even more amazing for them because he’s talking about what they went through.
“We’d land and we had a show in five minutes and in the course of … walking to a stage, he somehow found someone and got that information and put it in a routine. It was absolutely mind-blowing.”
His fellow entertainers were impressed, too.
“His generosity of spirit was as boundless as his comedy,” comedian Lewis Black wrote on Twitter on Monday night. Black also performed on the 2007 USO Chairman’s Holiday Tour. “I will miss him terribly.”
The USO’s Entertainment team estimates Williams performed for or visited with more than 89,000 service members during his 12-plus years of volunteering.
“When our service members had the opportunity to see him in person, they knew they were seeing an icon of comedy, but it was more than that,” said John Pray, the USO’s executive vice president and chief of staff. “It was someone who actually understood their own trials and tribulations and struggles as they dealt with loneliness, fear, uncertainty and a variety of negative emotions.
“He brought them light and took them away for a period of time from those challenges and gave them a chance to recharge.”
** Read about more moments from Robin Williams' 2007 USO tour including a touching exchange with a service member on the USO blog. **
A potential showdown this fall over the reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank (or, Ex-Im Bank) could be a bellwether of just how much Ron Paul and the Liberty Movement have changed the discussion in Washington, D.C. over the past six years.
In a post titled “Welcome to Dave Brat’s America: Majority Leader-elect Kevin McCarthy says Kill the Export-Import Bank,” columnist Tim Carney, and long-time advocate for killing the Ex-Im Bank, writes:
[McCarthy's] announcement today shows a clear shift within the Republican Party against corporate welfare.
If McCarthy refuses to bring an Ex-Im renewal to the floor, the agency would expire, regardless of the actions of the Senate and the White House, both controlled by Democrats.
But the fight to take down the Ex-Im Bank, a longstanding symbol of all that is wrong with crony capitalism and corporate welfare, predates Brat’s historic win over Eric Cantor, who successfully attacked the Majority Leader on those grounds.
Back in 2002, Dr. Ron Paul encouraged his colleagues to reject the Ex-Im Bank on economic, moral, and constitutional grounds.
Eximbank distorts the market by allowing government bureaucrats to make economic decisions in place of individual consumers. Eximbank also violates basic principals of morality, by forcing working Americans to subsidize the trade of wealthy companies that could easily afford to subsidize their own trade, as well as subsidizing brutal governments like Red China and the Sudan. Eximbank also violates the limitations on congressional power to take the property of individual TRcitizens and use them to benefit powerful special interests.
As always, Washington, D.C. is a little slow to catch up. By late 2008, in the throws of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, the American people were starting to realize the effects of crony capitalism, and began to look for answers. Many found them by reading books like Meltdown and Obamanomics, or by watching old Ron Paul floor speeches on YouTube or in CSPAN’s archives.
In 2012, Senator Rand Paul urged his colleagues to reject the Ex-Im Bank. It passed the Senate that year 78-20, and the House passed it 330-93.
If Carney’s prediction holds, it would be a huge blow to the crony capitalists and a major victory for free markets. And a sign that as Bob Dylan sang, ”For the times they are a-changin’!”
Take a moment today to contact your representative and urge them to oppose any attempt to reauthorize the Ex-Im Bank in 2014.
The post Ron Paul and the Liberty Movement have changed the discussion in Washington, D.C. appeared first on Campaign for Liberty.
Ron Paul and the Liberty Movement have changed the discussion in Washington, D.C.
Tim Shoemaker
Mon, 23 Jun 2014 17:30:19 GMT
James Hall
Image provided by Getty Images (LDProd)
Wages in U.S. down 23 percent since 2008, report shows Workers assemble Nissan pickup trucks on the production line at the Nissan manufacturing plant in Smyrna, Tenn. Higher-paying manufacturing jobs lost during the 2008 recession have been replaced by lower-wage jobs, according to a report released Monday by the United States Conference of Mayors. (Josh Anderson, New York Times file photo) Print Cliff Pinckard, Northeast Ohio Media Group By Cliff Pinckard, Northeast Ohio Media Group Email the author | Follow on Twitter on August 12, 2014 at 2:29 AM While 8.7 million jobs have been regained since the 2008 recession, they are paying much less, by an average of 23 percent, according to a report released Monday by the United States Conference of Mayors. The report comes as debate continues about income inequality in the United States. "While the economy is picking up steam, income inequality and wage gaps are an alarming trend that must be addressed," said Conference of Mayors President Kevin Johnson, the mayor of Sacramento, Calif., in a news release. "We cannot put our heads in the sand on these issues." The annual wage in sectors where jobs were lost, particularly in manufacturing and construction, during the recession was $61,637, but the average wage of new jobs through the second quarter of 2014 is $47,131, the report shows. It represents a loss of $93 billion in wages, according to the report. (Go below to see the full report. Mobile users can see it here.) The losses in construction and manufacturing were replaced by jobs in hospitality, health-care and administrative support. The report shows the gap between low- and higher-income households is growing and likely will continue in the future. In 2012, the latest year for which figures are available, 73 percent of metro areas had a larger share of poorer households (those making less than $35,000 per year) than upper-income households of above $75,000.
Stephen Lendman
Activist Post
On August 11, Human Rights Council (HRC) President Baudelaire Ndong Ella announced the formation of an "independent, international commission of inquiry" into war crimes committed during Israel's Operation Protective Edge.
International human rights law expert Professor William Schabas was appointed to chair a three-person panel. His special focus is genocide.
Other members include international law, criminal law, human rights and extradition law expert, Amal Alamuddin, and former UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, Doudou Diene.
Note: According to AP, Alamuddin said she's unable to serve. Expect an alternate appointment to replace her.
The HRC "decided to establish the commission of inquiry at its twenty-first special session on 23 July 2014 to investigate all violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, in the context of the military operations conducted since 13 June 2014, whether before, during or after, to establish the facts and circumstances of such violations and of the crimes perpetrated and to identify those responsible, to make recommendations, in particular on accountability measures, all with a view to avoiding and ending impunity and ensuring that those responsible are held accountable, and on ways and means to protect civilians against any further assaults."
Schabas is a well-known Israeli critic. He praised the Goldstone Committee Operation Cast Lead report. More on it below.
Earlier, he called for putting Netanyahu and former Israeli president Shimon Peres in the dock at the International Criminal Court for committing high crimes too serious to ignore.
Israel failed to influence the commission of inquiry's composition. In response to the appointment of Schbas, Alamuddin, and Diene, it called the panel "biased, misconceived and destructive."
Defrocked and reinstated Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman called HRC a "terrorists' rights council." His spokesman Yigal Palmer added:If more evidence was needed to show this, the appointment of the commission’s chairman, whose opinions and positions against Israel are known to all, proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Israel cannot expect justice from such a body, and that the report has already been written and remains only to be signed.In March 2015, the commission will submit its report. According to HRC President Ella, its mission is also "to establish the facts and circumstances of (human rights) violations and of the crimes perpetrated and to identify those responsible, to make recommendations, in particular on accountability measures, all with a view to avoiding and ending impunity and ensuring that those responsible are held accountable, and on ways and means to protect civilians against any further assaults."
MSM scoundrels reported little or nothing about the commission's appointment and mission. The New York Times covered it in one long paragraph only with little context.
Pro-Israeli bias is longstanding MSM policy. An attempt to downplay the potential importance of the commission's investigation shows in failure to give it the attention it deserves.Following Israel's 2008-09 Operation Cast Lead, the HRC appointed the Goldstone "fact-finding mission to investigate international human rights and humanitarian law violations related to the recent conflict in the Gaza Strip."
On September 15, 2009, the HRC released the commission's 575-page report, titled "Human Rights in Palestine and Other Occupied Arab Territories: Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict."
An accompanying press release said "there is evidence indicating serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law were committed by Israel during the Gaza conflict, and that Israel committed actions amounting to war crimes, and possibly crimes against humanity.”
Examples included Palestinians shot while waving white flags, arbitrary arrests, extrajudicial assassinations and using Palestinians as human shields.
According to the commission:While the Israeli Government has sought to portray its operations as essentially a response to rocket attacks in the exercise of its right of self defence, the Mission considers the plan to have been directed, at least in part, at a different target: the people of Gaza as a whole.Palestinian rocket and mortar attacks were minor incidents compared to Israel's onslaught.
The Palestinian death toll exceeded 1,400. Thousands were injured.
Israeli aggression amounted to strictly prohibited collective punishment against a civilian population.
It lawlessly targeted residential neighborhoods, schools, hospitals, mosques, public buildings, factories and vital infrastructure.
It violated the principles of "distinction" between combatants and military targets v. civilians and non-military ones, as well as "proportionality" prohibiting disproportionate force likely to cause extensive damage and loss of life.
Commission findings included numerous examples of disproportionate Israeli attacks against civilians with lethal outcomes.
It called them war crimes for being unrelated to justifiable military objectives. It cited "a justice crisis in the Occupied Palestinian Territory that warrants action."
It urged referral to the International Criminal Court for further action.
The Goldstone "report conclude(d) that the Israeli military operation was directed at the people of Gaza as a whole, in furtherance of an overall and continuing policy aimed at punishing the Gaza population, and in a deliberate policy of disproportionate force aimed at the civilian population."The destruction of food supply installations, water sanitation systems, concrete factories and residential houses was the result of a deliberate and systematic policy which has made the daily process of living, and dignified living, more difficult for the civilian population.Repeatedly, the Israel Defense Forces failed to adequately distinguish between combatants and civilians, as the laws of war strictly require.Pursuing justice in this case is essential because no state or armed group should be above the law.Failure to do so “will have a deeply corrosive effect on international justice, and reveal an unacceptable hypocrisy."As a service to hundreds of civilians who needlessly died and for the equal application of international justice, the perpetrators of serious violations must be held to account.On October 19, 2009, the 47-member HRC approved a resolution endorsing Israeli war crimes charges.The vote was 25 in favor, six against (including Washington), 11 abstentions and five no-shows.
On September 21, 2010, an HRC statement said:It was clear to the Committee that the IDF had not distinguished between civilians and civilian objects and military targets.Both the loss of life and the damage to property were disproportionate to the harm suffered by Israel or any threatened harm. Israel's actions could not be justified as self-defense.The IDF was responsible for the crime of killing, wounding and terrorizing civilians (as well as) wonton(ly) destr(oying) property and that such destruction could not be justified on grounds of military necessity.The HRC called IDF crimes so grave, "it was compelled to consider whether (genocide) had been committed." Its conclusion was that Israel "committed war crimes, crimes against humanity and, possibly genocide in the course of Operation Cast Lead."
This writer calls Operation Protective Edge Cast Lead on steroids. The 2008-09 war lasted 22 days - from December 27, 2008 until January 18, 2009.
Israel's current aggression began on July 8. It remains ongoing. Shaky ceasefires interrupted hostilities briefly. A current 72-hour one continues during talks in Cairo aimed at ending conflict conditions.
A previous three-day suspension of accomplished nothing. Both sides remain at impasse. Israel wants all its demands met unconditionally.
It offers virtually nothing in return except empty promises certain to be broken. On Tuesday, Reuters quoted an unnamed Israeli official saying no progress was made during current talks.
"The gaps between the sides are big, and there is no progress in the negotiations," he said. Hamas had no comment.
According to Maan News, a partial draft on easing Gaza's siege was drafted. Terms include:It's unclear how they'll react to this proposal. It's well short of lifting siege conditions and agreeing to other fundamental Palestinian demands.
- Letting Gazans fish up to 12 nautical miles from shore.
- Increasing daily trucks with imported goods to 250.
- Increasing the number of monthly permits for Gazans to pass through Erez crossing to 500.
- Permitting money transfers from the West Bank to Gaza via the PA.
- Opening the Rafah crossing to Egypt.
- Freeing released prisoners in exchange for Gilad Shalit later rearrested.
- According to the Israeli Ynet news site, letting construction materials enter Gaza "under close supervision."
- Prohibiting construction of a seaport to facilitate imports and exports unless Hamas and other resistance groups agreed to demilitarize.
It bears repeating what previous articles stressed. Israeli agreements aren't worth the paper they're written on.
Willful violations occur with disturbing regularity. Israel invents reasons to justify the unjustifiable.
Whatever comes out of Cairo talks, expect the pattern to repeat this time. Expect long sought justice to be denied.
At the same time, Israel violated ceasefire conditions by using live fire against Palestinian fishermen off southern Gaza's coast. No injuries were reported.
On August 11, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights reported 2,008 Palestinians killed. They include 1,670 civilians (83%): 471 were children; 252 were women.
Another 8,150 Palestinians were wounded, many seriously. Other reports said up to 10,000. Thousands of houses were destroyed or damaged.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forcibly displaced. Israel bombed and shelled their homes and neighborhoods to rubble.
It remains unaccountable for crimes of war and against humanity amounting to genocide. Goldstone's Cast Lead report achieved nothing. Expect justice to be denied again this time.
With Western support and US Security Council veto power, Israel is free to commit high crimes against peace whenever it wishes with impunity.
It takes full advantage. Palestinian liberation remains an unfulfilled distant dream. Maybe some day. Not now.
Related Activist Post Article:
The 'Legal Issue' of Operation Cast Lead: ICC Rules That Palestinians Cannot Investigate Israeli War Crimes
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III." http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network. It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs. http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour
Investigating Gaza War Crimes
Activist
Tue, 12 Aug 2014 16:14:00 GMT
