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Thanks to you, R.E.M., Pearl Jam and major organizations like MoveOn.org have jumped on board to support Global Zero, and the media is buzzing about our biggest campaign ever to set the world’s course to zero. But we need you to build on this momentum if we’re going to get President Obama’s attention.
Earlier this month, we sent you an incredible video that shows how this unstoppable global movement can bring about the end of nuclear weapons. More than 50,000 people have already watched it. We know that the more people who see it, the more likely it is to get in front of President Obama — so this week let’s double that number.Have you shared it with friends and family yet?
Each year President Obama honors a handful of extraordinary Americans with the Citizens Medal, one of our nation’s highest civilian honors. The Citizens Medal recognizes Americans for exemplary deeds of service outside of their regular jobs — people who feed the needy, who take care of our veterans, or who support our children.
Is there someone in your life who deserves to be recognized by President Obama?
There are 9 days left before we close nominations on the 2013 Citizens Medal. Complete this easy nomination process before the public submission period closes:
Last year, people like you nominated over six thousand Americans from across the country and staff at the White House reviewed every single submission. Here are just a few examples: Read the rest of this entry »
Four years ago in Prague, President Obama announced his commitment to seek a world without nuclear weapons. He called for perseverance. He dared us to overcome our differences. He challenged us to ignore the voices that tell us the world cannot change.
We’ve just launched a massive grassroots campaign urging him to put those historic words into action. To tell him not only can the world change, but that we demand it to change. Please sign the petition and join us as we call on President Obama to set the world’s course to global zero.
Make history. Demand zero.
This is our moment. It’s going to be big.
All indications are that President Obama wants to make good on his commitment to eliminate nuclear weapons. As a second-term President, he’s in a dare-to-be-great moment to make that happen by calling on world leaders to join him at the negotiating table to eliminate nuclear weapons once and for all. And we’re urging him to do that on April 5th, the anniversary of his historic Prague speech.
We only have a few weeks to make sure the White House gets the message loud and clear! Sign the petition and let President Obama know you demand zero. Read the rest of this entry »
Acting Commerce Secretary Rebecca Blank explains President Obama’s cybersecurity policy after an executive order designed to combat cyber-terrorism was issued last week. Photo: Ann Heisenfelt, Associated Press
By James Temple
A prominent computer security firm has traced the activity of one of the world’s most sophisticated hacking groups to the gates of the Chinese military, underscoring critical weaknesses in both our cyber-defenses and trade policies.
Mandiant’s detailed 60-page analysis, first reported in the New York Times on Sunday, adds to the mounting evidence that Beijing plays a direct hand in ongoing espionage of U.S. corporations.
The Alexandria, Va., security firm explained that attacks from the group it calls APT1, or Comment Crew, originate in the same geographic location as the People’s Liberation Army Unit 61398, on the edge of Shanghai. The two groups also appear to share missions, capabilities, resources, tactics and technology infrastructure.
“It is time to acknowledge the threat is originating in China,” the company said.
China declined to do so, however, denying the allegations and labeling the report “unprofessional.”
But Mandiant’s analysis follows a string of reports linking corporate cyber-attacks to China in recent weeks, including ones aimed at the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and others. The report is also consistent with the U.S. government’s own findings. Read the rest of this entry »
With the fiscal cliff averted for now, it’ll be a few weeks until the debt ceiling debate is the next major money issue in Washington. Luckily, some economists say that crisis can be curbed as well, and all it will take is one very valuable coin.
By February, the United States will once again reach its maximum borrowing amount from foreign nations — the debt ceiling — and the House of Representatives and Senate will be stuck deciding if it’s worth raising it once again or rallying for another solution. In recent days, an alternative approach — one that is almost all too perfectly bizarre — has been tossed around. It would involve minting a few trillion dollar platinum coins, and although it’s an unlikely answer, it’s all too legit.
The United States can’t just print paper money all willy-nilly every time it exhausts its borrowing options, but the US can, however, have a figurative field day when it comes to some types of coin.
As analyst Chris Krueger from Guggenheim Securities’ Washington Research Group explains to the American Enterprise Institute, “There are limits on how much paper money the U.S. can circulate and rules that govern coinage on gold, silver and copper. BUT, the Treasury has broad discretion on coins made from platinum.” Read the rest of this entry »
International political thinktank Eurasia Group has ranked Russian President Vladimir Putin second on its list of the world’s most powerful people. The first position is held by ‘Nobody,’ reflecting the perception of a world without a clear leader.
The list, published by Foreign Policy magazine, ranks individuals’ ability to singlehandedly “bring about change that significantly affects the lives and fortunes of large numbers of people.”
Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer explained that he left the fist position empty because the modern world has no clear leader, and those in power are focused on domestic or regional issues rather than global challenges.
Putin’s second-place rank is due to “Russia’s personalized system,” and the influence the country wields in regional affairs.
[Ram Kumar Shrestha, the Global Coordinator of 'Lumbini-Kapilvastu Day Movement', founded in 2009 for raising awareness of the Buddha birth place Lumbini and Kapilvastu also, spoke to us tonight from Melborne, Australia. He opines that every Nepalese has a sacred duty to join hands towards the movement he has started for world peace through the Buddha's teachings and messages. He strongly asserts that the Buddha was born in present day Lumbini of southern Nepal.]
Israel and Palestine are momentarily at a ceasefire, but the potential reasoning behind the recess could have some real international implications. Israel’s Debka reports that the pause in fighting comes after the US promised to send troops to Sinai.
According to Debka, US troops will soon be en route to the Sinai peninsula, Egyptian territory in North Africa that’s framed by the Suez Canal on the West and Israel on the East. In its northeast most point, Sinai is but a stone’s throw from Palestinian-controlled Gaza, and according to Debka, Hamas fighters there have been relying on Iranian arms smugglers to supply them with weaponry by way of Egypt.
Debka reports this week that Sinai will soon be occupied by US troops, who were promised by President Barack Obama to Israel’s leaders as a condition that a ceasefire be called. Once deployed, the Americans will intervene with the rumored arms trade orchestrated by Iranians, ideally cutting off supplies for Hamas while at the same time serving as a thorn in the side of Iran.
“Once the missile and arms consignments depart Iranian ports or Libyan arms bazaars, Tehran has no direct control of their transit from point to point through Egypt until they reach Sinai and their Gaza destination,” Debka reports. “All the same, a US special forces operation against the Sinai segment of the Iranian smuggling route would count as the first overt American military strike against an Iranian military interest.” Read the rest of this entry »
Barack Obama - President US - Born: USA, Hawaii 1961 - Married - Children: 2
Annual: USD 400,000.00
Monthly: USD 33,333.00
Weekly: USD 8,000.00
Daily: USD 1,600.00
The Obama family, in tax returns released Friday 13, 2012 by the White House, reported an adjusted gross income of $789,674 for 2011, down from $1,728,096 in the previous year. The family income topped $5.5 million in 2009. The president earns a salary of $400,000 for his day job. His total earnings are much higher because of his books sales.Note: the VIP Salary Check is based on a 5 days working week and 2 weeks holiday per year.
NetWorth: between $1 million and $2.5 million
Xi Jinping - President of People’s Republic of China - Born: 1953 China - Married - Children: 1
Annual: USD 39,720.00
Monthly: USD 3,310.00
Weekly: USD 794.00
Daily: USD 158.00
WantChinaTimes July 2012: Xi Jinping earned US$3,275 a month as the Chinese vice president and vice chairman of the Central Military Commission. For his salary as President of China, we adapted the salary of Hu Jintao. In July 2012 the South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo revealed last Wednesday the monthly salary of Hu, also chairman of the Communist Party’s Central Military Commission, is 21,119 yuan (US$3,310), according to the salary scale for China’s public servants.
Heinz Fischer - President Austria - Born: 1938 Austria - Married - Children: 2
Annual: USD 393,443.00
Monthly: USD 32,787.00
Weekly: USD 7,869.00
Daily: USD 1,574.00
Herman van Rompuy - President of the European Council - Born: 1947 Belgium -Married - Children: 4
Annual: USD 498,228.00
Monthly: USD 41,519.00
Weekly: USD 9,965.00
Daily: USD 1,993.00
Raila Odinga (Agwambo) - Prime Minister Kenya - Born: 1945 Kenya - Married -Children: 4
Annual: USD 427,886.00
Monthly: USD 35,657.00
Weekly: USD 8,557.00
Daily: USD 1,711.00
Julia Gillard - Prime Minister Australia -Born: 1961 UK - Boyfriend
In the one week since US President Barack Obama won his bid for re-election, representatives from all 50 states have filed petitions with the White House asking to secede from the United States.
Just seven days after a citizen of Louisiana asked for the state’s peaceful secession from the rest of the country, hundreds of thousands of electronic signatures from around the United States have been submitted to WhiteHouse.gov for review as Americans from all corners of the country ask the president to grant them amicable separation from the union.
According to the White House’s own rules on the ‘We the People’ portal of the Executive Branch’s official website, a staffer from within the walls of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue will respond in a timely manner to any petition that can garner more than 25,000 signatures. As of the morning of Nov. 14, pleads out of Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, Florida, North Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee have all crossed that threshold, with petitions from the rest of the country quickly accumulating enough signatures to soon require a reply as well. Read the rest of this entry »
And so it has begun. On the morning of Nov. 8, just a day (because of the time difference) after U.S. voters re-elected President Barack Obama, China began its once-a-decade leadership transition. President Hu Jintao is expected to make way for Vice President Xi Jinping, the 59-year-old bureaucrat son of a Communist Party elder. More than 2,000 delegates, supposedly representing 82.6 million Party members, gathered in the crimson-carpeted Great Hall of the People on Thursday morning to begin the week-long process of designating the new Politburo Standing Committee. This powerful conclave will soon rule China, with Xi helming the seven (or possibly nine) committee members as the new General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC).
At the Party confab’s Opening Ceremony, delegates were adorned with hammer-and-sickle identity cards. Hu’s 100-minute-long keynote report, delivered in front of a massive golden hammer-and-sickle mounted on the wall, was heavy with Communist cant, urging Chinese citizens and Communist Party members to “firmly march on the path of socialism with Chinese characteristics and strive to complete the building of a moderately prosperous society in all respects.”
Just in case the message wasn’t clear—there were, after all, delegates who took the outgoing General Secretary’s speech as an opportunity to snooze—a slogan that wrapped around part of the room reminded delegates of the contributions of previous Communist chiefs: “Hold high the banner of socialism with Chinese characteristics, use [former leader] Deng Xiaoping Theory, the Three Represents [theory of former party chief Jiang Zemin] and the scientific development outlook [of current leader Hu] as our guidelines, advance on the road of socialism with Chinese characteristics without hesitation, struggle for the building of a well-off society in an all-round way!” Read the rest of this entry »
A new form of radical centrist politics is needed to tackle inequality without hurting economic growth
BY THE end of the 19th century, the first age of globalisation and a spate of new inventions had transformed the world economy. But the “Gilded Age” was also a famously unequal one, with America’s robber barons and Europe’s “Downton Abbey” classes amassing huge wealth: the concept of “conspicuous consumption” dates back to 1899. The rising gap between rich and poor (and the fear of socialist revolution) spawned a wave of reforms, from Theodore Roosevelt’s trust-busting to Lloyd George’s People’s Budget. Governments promoted competition, introduced progressive taxation and wove the first threads of a social safety net. The aim of this new “Progressive era”, as it was known in America, was to make society fairer without reducing its entrepreneurial vim.
Modern politics needs to undergo a similar reinvention—to come up with ways of mitigating inequality without hurting economic growth. That dilemma is already at the centre of political debate, but it mostly produces heat, not light. Thus, on America’s campaign trail, the left attacks Mitt Romney as a robber baron and the right derides Barack Obama as a class warrior. In some European countries politicians have simply given in to the mob: witness François Hollande’s proposed 75% income-tax rate. In much of the emerging world leaders would rather sweep the issue of inequality under the carpet: witness China’s nervous embarrassment about the excesses of Ferrari-driving princelings, or India’s refusal to tackle corruption. Read the rest of this entry »
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has called on the United States to move from words to actions, and put an end to its persecution of WikiLeaks, its people and its sources. He made the statement during an address to a panel of UN delegates.
Addressing the representatives of the United Nations’ member countries, the WikiLeaks founder spoke of the difference between words and actions, praising US President Barack Obama for his words.
“We commend and agree with the words that peace can be achieved… But the time for words has run out. It is time for the US to cease its persecution of WikiLeaks, our people and our sources.”
Assange was highly critical of US involvement in the Arab Spring, denouncing Obama as audacious for exploiting it. He added that it is “disrespectful of the dead” to claim that the US has supported forces of change. Read the rest of this entry »
WASHINGTON — When President Obama announced last month that he was barring a Baghdad bank from any dealings with the American banking system, it was a rare acknowledgment of a delicate problem facing the administration in a country that American troops just left: for months, Iraq has been helping Iranskirt economic sanctions imposed on Tehran because of its nuclear program.
The little-known bank singled out by the United States, the Elaf Islamic Bank, is only part of a network of financial institutions and oil-smuggling operations that, according to current and former American and Iraqi government officials and experts on the Iraqi banking sector, has provided Iran with a crucial flow of dollars at a time when sanctions are squeezing its economy.
The Obama administration is not eager for a public showdown with the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki over Iran just eight months after the last American troops withdrew from Baghdad.
Still, the administration has held private talks with Iraqi officials to complain about specific instances of financial and logistical ties between the countries, officials say, although they do not regard all trade between them as illegal or, as in the case of smuggling, as something completely new. In one recent instance, when American officials learned that the Iraqi government was aiding the Iranians by allowing them to use Iraqi airspace to ferry supplies to Syria, Mr. Obama called Mr. Maliki to complain. The Iranian planes flew another route. Read the rest of this entry »
