By Seyhmus Cakan, Reuters, September 14, 2012

* Fighter jets scramble as offensive continues

* Top military commanders oversee operation

* Deadliest clashes for more than a decade

DIYARBAKIR  - Turkish armed forces have killed 75 Kurdish militants near the border with Iran and Iraq over the past week, a provincial governor said on Friday, as a major offensive involving air strikes and several thousand ground troops intensifies.

Eight F-16 fighter jets took off from an air base in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir on Friday, a Reuters witness said, apparently to support the operation against militants from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

"Anti-terror operations are continuing in the region," the governor's office in the southeastern province of Hakkari said in a statement [....]

Also see:

Eight Turkish police killed in suspected PKK attack
Reuters, September 16, 2012

ISTANBUL - Eight Turkish police officers were killed and nine wounded when a roadside mine exploded in the Karliova district of Bingol in southern Turkey, security officials said on Sunday. The mine was detonated by suspected Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militants as a police bus was passing, officials said.

Suspected Kurdish separatists killed four Turkish soldiers and wounded five in an attack on a military convoy near the border with Iran and Iraq on Saturday.

The governor's office in the southeastern province of Hakkari said Turkish armed forces had killed 123 Kurdish militants in the past ten days in a major offensive against PKK bases [....]

By Saeed Kamali Dehghan, The Observer, 15 September 2012

In Iran, the country I was born in and where I lived until three years ago, public hanging is a horrific but familiar scene for many, at least for those living close to city centres and public squares. Once as a child, on my way to school, I became an inadvertent spectator of an execution, my eyes shocked at seeing the guards draping a rope around the neck of a convict. The sight has haunted me ever since.

Hanging is the common method for execution in Iran. The judicial killings usually take place in the morning as the sun rises, often at the crime scene or in a city centre. The families of victims and convicts gather as the authorities prepare to hang the condemned from cranes.

Under Iran's sharia law, the victim's family has the right to spare the convict from execution for certain crimes, such as when someone is convicted of killing another person in a car accident. This means many executions see the condemned's relatives incessantly pleading for a pardon. A huge crowd, which might include children, usually surrounds the scene [....]

Human rights organisations estimate that as many as 600 people were put to death in Iran last year, of which at least 488 executions were carried out for alleged drug offences. In the first half of 2011, Iran was executing at the rate of two people a day [....]

Associated Press in Washington, September 16, 2012

The US state department has ordered non-essential staff from its embassies in Sudan and Tunisia to leave with their families and warned its citizens against travelling to the two countries owing to concerns over rising anti-American violence.

"Given the security situation in Tunis and Khartoum, the state department has ordered the departure of all family members and non-emergency personnel from both posts, and issued parallel travel warnings to American citizens," said a spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland. [....]

Also see:

U.S. Is Preparing for a Long Siege of Arab Unrest
By Peter Baker and Mark Landler, New York Times, September 15, 2012

WASHINGTON — After days of anti-American violence across the Muslim world, the White House is girding itself for an extended period of turmoil that will test the security of American diplomatic missions and President Obama’s ability to shape the forces of change in the Middle East.

Although the tumult subsided Saturday, senior administration officials said they had concluded that the sometimes violent protests in Muslim countries may presage a period of sustained instability with unpredictable diplomatic and political consequences. While pressing Arab leaders to tamp down the unrest, Mr. Obama’s advisers say they may have to consider whether to scale back diplomatic activities in the region [....]

Katy O'Donnell,   Sara Sorcher and Meghan McCarthy,  National Journal, today: 

U.S. weapons purchases would be slashed, programs to protect food and water safety would take a hit, and crime-prevention programs would be scaled back if Congress fails to act to prevent automatic cuts known as the sequester from taking effect at the beginning of next year, the White House warned on Friday.

A report by the White House Office of Management and Budgetdescribed sequestration as a "blunt and indiscriminate instrument" and said the cuts would be harmful to the country. They are mandated by the 2011 Budget Control Act, which requires across-the-board cuts of $109 billion per year for nine years in an array of government programs. Sequestration will go into effect starting Jan. 2 unless Congress can reach a deficit-reduction deal to head it off.

The cuts would be divided evenly between discretionary domestic and defense spending. Most entitlement programs, such as Social Security and Medicaid, would be shielded from cuts. Veterans' benefits and unemployment insurance would also be exempted.

A House GOP plan that passed the chamber on a party-line vote earlier this year would have made additional cuts to domestic programs in order to shift more money to defense. Congressional Republicans have stressed the dangers of cutting defense spending, but the primary point of contention between them and Democrats has been over whether revenue increases should be part of any deficit-reduction plan.

The 394-page OMB report includes graphs and tables, but its warnings about the consequences of sequestration were part of a push by the administration to ratchet up pressure on Congress to make a deal on the budget. Among the highlights from the report:

.......

Dana Hughes, ABC OTUS News, 15 hours ago.  She has Hillary saying the following:

Secretary Clinton delivered a powerful and personal speech about religion at an Eid ul-Fitr reception, marking the end of the Muslim holiday of Ramadan. The speech, at times, was a direct response to the attacks on U.S. diplomatic missions in the Middle East, and the deaths of four diplomats at the hands of militants in Libya.

In her remarks, Clinton repeated much of what she's said in the last two days. Namely that the Benghazi attack was carried out by a "small and savage group," and that the United States completely rejects what she called the "inflammable and despicable" anti-Muslim film circulating the Internet. However, Clinton pointed out all religions have faced insults and denigration, but that's no justification for violence. The response to such insults is what separates people of true faith from those who would use religion as an excuse to commit violent acts, she said.

"When Christians are subject to insults to their faith, and that certainly happens, we expect them not to resort to violence. When Hindus or Buddhists are subjected to insults to their faiths, and that also certainly happens, we expect them not to resort to violence," said Clinton. "The same goes for all faiths, including Islam."

She spoke movingly about her own personal beliefs as a way of re-enforcing her point.

"I so strongly believe that the great religions of the world are stronger than any insults. They have withstood offense for centuries," said Clinton."Refraining from violence, then, is not a sign of weakness in one's faith; it is absolutely the opposite, a sign that one's faith is unshakable."

She asked the crowd to work towards building a world where if one person commits a violent religious act, millions of people will stand up and condemn it

"We can pledge that whenever one person speaks out in ignorance and bigotry, ten voices will answer," Clinton said forcefully. "They will answer resoundingly against the offense and the insult; answering ignorance with enlightenment; answering hatred with understanding; answering darkness with light."

The secretary urged the audience not to be discouraged by the hatred and violence that exists, but instead resolve to do something tangible to promote religious tolerance in their own communities.

"In times like these, it can be easy to despair that some differences are irreconcilable, some mountains too steep to climb; we will therefore never reach the level of understanding and peacefulness that we seek, and which I believe the great religions of the world call us to pursue," she reflected. "But that's not what I believe, and I don't think it's what you believe…

..............

Go Hillary.  Saying just what needs to be said right now.

Well bust my buttons. Who could have POSSIBLY have guessed.

A study released last week by Stanford scientists, which claims organic foods are no more healthy than non-organic foods, was funded by corporate agriculture and biotechnology giants, according to a new report by the Cornucopia Institute.

"We were not one bit surprised to find that the agribusiness giant Cargill, the world’s largest agricultural business enterprise, and foundations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which have deep ties to agricultural chemical and biotechnology corporations like Monsanto, have donated millions to Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute, where some of the scientists who published this study are affiliates and fellows," said Charlotte Vallaeys, Food and Farm Policy Director at the Cornucopia Institute, a non-profit organic farm policy organization.

On September 3, Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute, released the research, garnishing widespread press coverage from corporate news outlets such as the New York Times, Associated Press, and CBS News. As the New York Times reported, the study "concluded that fruits and vegetables labeled organic were, on average, no more nutritious than their conventional counterparts, which tend to be far less expensive."

However, as Cornucopia points out, a deeper examination of the actual research reveals "glaring errors, both in understanding the important and complex differences between organic and conventional foods and in the researchers’ flawed choice of research methods."

By Issandr el Amrani,  Arabist.net, September 14, 2012

[....] It appears very likely that the Benghazi attack that killed US diplomats was a pre-planned attack by a group probably trying to avenge the death of Sheikh al-Libi, an al-Qaeda leader. And it seems that the initial Egyptian protests were in good part due to a call by a small Salafi group led by Mohammed Zawahri (Ayman's brother) and a few fellow travellers, and timed for the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. That these protests expanded and got out of hand speaks volumes of the complicated, chaotic situation in Egypt. (I'll pass on the government's reaction, or lack thereof, for now.) I think it is important to see who involved in getting the ball rolling — and particularly the international network of Islamist activists who amplify and spread this manufactured outrage (I say manufactured because why now and not, say, at the time of the scandal over the desecreation of Quran by US soldiers in Afghanistan or other incidents?)

I'll write more in the next few days, but here is an excerpt from The National op-ed: [....]

It’s pop-quiz time when it comes to the American way of war: three questions, torn from the latest news, just for you.  Here’s the first of them, and good luck!

Two weeks ago, 200 U.S. Marines began armed operations in…?:

a) Afghanistan
b) Pakistan
c) Iran
d) Somalia
e) Yemen
f) Central Africa
g) Northern Mali
h) The Philippines
i) Guatemala

By Rory Carroll in Los Angeles, guardian.co.uk, 12 September 2012

The hunt for the maker of the anti-Islamic video that inflamed mayhem in Egypt and Libya and triggered a diplomatic crisis has led to a Californian Coptic Christian convicted of financial crimes.

Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, who lives outside Los Angeles, confirmed on Wednesday he managed and provided logistics for The Innocence of Muslims.

Nakoula, who pleaded no contest to federal bank fraud charges in 2010, told AP in a brief interview outside his home that he considered Islam a cancer and that the film was intended to be a provocative political statement assailing the religion.

He denied being Sam Bacile, the pseudonym for the video's purportedly Israeli Jewish writer and director, but AP said the cellphone number it called for a telephone interview with Bacile on Tuesday matched Nakoula's address.

His outing solidified growing evidence that members of Egypt's Coptic diaspora, who complain of persecution by Egypt's Muslim majority, were behind the making and promotion of the video.

Morris Sadek, a conservative Coptic Christian in the US, promoted it on his website last week. Within days it was fuelling outrage in Arab countries [....]

By Salman Masood,  Zia ur-Rehman and Declan Walsh, New York Times,
September 12, 2012

KARACHI, Pakistan — Fire ravaged a textile factory complex in the commercial hub of Karachi early Wednesday, killing almost 300 workers trapped behind locked doors and raising questions about the woeful lack of regulation in a vital sector of Pakistan’s faltering economy.

It was Pakistan’s worst industrial accident on record, officials said, and it came just hours after another fire, at a shoe factory in the eastern city of Lahore, had killed at least 25.

Flames and acrid smoke swept quickly through the cramped textile factory in Baldia Town, a northwestern industrial suburb, creating panic among the hundreds of poorly paid workers who had been making undergarments and plastic tools.

They had few options of escape — every exit but one had been locked, officials said, and the windows were mostly barred. In desperation, some flung themselves from the top floors of the four-story building, sustaining serious injuries or worse, witnesses said. But many others failed to make it that far, trapped by an inferno that advanced mercilessly through a building that officials later described as a death trap [.....]

ScienceDebate.org is a grassoots nonprofit organization funded by individual small donations.  Its supporters include more than 40,000 scientists and engineers, concerned citizens, about 200 leading universities and science organizations, dozens of Nobel laureates, and notable writers and editors.

Along with its media partner Scientific American magazine, the group has also asked some three dozen members of Congress that lead key science committees to answer a subset of eight of the fourteen questions.

The Top American Science Questions were developed by asking thousands of scientists, engineers, and concerned citizens to submit the most important questions they thought the candidates should be debating but weren't. ScienceDebate.org then worked with several leading US science organizations, including the National Academies, the AAAS, the Council on Competitiveness, IEEE-USA, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and others listed on the site to refine those questions into the final fourteen that the group universally agreed were the most important.