Brazil Leader Postpones US State Visit Over Spy Row

The World News:- Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff postponed a long-planned state visit to Washington on Tuesday, quite possibly the most significant diplomatic fall-out yet from Edward Snowden's leak of US strategies.

When both sides couched the cancellation in diplomatic phrases, it marks an embarrassment for President Barack Obama along with a blow to his initiatives to enhance ties with the critical Latin American energy.

The visit experienced been scheduled for 23 Oct but was termed into problem soon after documents leaked by Snowden, a previous US intelligence technician, unveiled the extent of yankee spying on its Brazilian ally.

Obama has become attempting to defuse the row, most just lately throughout talks with Rousseff over the sidelines of this month's G20 summit, and he spoke together with her yet again on Monday by telephone.

But Brazil was unmoved, and on Tuesday Rousseff introduced an end into the speculation, confirming that her vacation was off.

"The two presidents chose to postpone the condition check out because the end result of this stop by should really not be conditioned on a concern which for Brazil has not been satisfactorily resolved," Rousseff's office stated.

Sovereignty violation

Her statement reflected Brazil's anger over Snowden's disclosures that the NSA spied on her email communications and on the state-run energy giant Petrobras.

"The illegal interceptions of communications and data of citizens, companies and members of the Brazilian government represents a serious act which violates national sovereignty and is incompatible with democratic coexistence between friendly countries," Rousseff's statement said.

In Washington, White House spokesperson Jay Carney, put a brave face on the situation.

"It's because the relationship is so important and because it has so many facets that the president agrees with this decision they made together to postpone the visit," Carney said.

Insisting that another later visit could be organised, Carney added: "It should not be overshadowed by a bilateral issue no matter how important or challenging the issue may be".

The spying row stems from allegations made by Snowden, a former NSA contractor who fled the United States and revealed the scope of the NSA's activities to Brazil-based journalist Glenn Greenwald.

In July, the Brazilian daily Globo, citing documents provided by Snowden, who has been granted temporary asylum in Russia, reported that US agencies eavesdrop on Brazilians' phone calls and Internet communications.

The report said Washington maintained an intelligence base in Brasilia, part of a network of 16 such stations operated by the NSA around the world to intercept foreign satellite transmissions.

Brazilian Communications Minister Paulo Bernardo dismissed claims by US officials that the NSA was only collecting metadata - logs of phone numbers called and the duration of such calls - and not listening in on calls.

Washington, he said, is conducting a "much deeper surveillance".

Brazil demanded an investigation and a US promise to stop such spying.

Snowden, who first fled to Hong Kong before moving on to Russia, is wanted by the United States on espionage charges.

Rousseff is to address the UN General Assembly session in New York later this month and her aides said she will raise the spying issue.

Contract on hold

Brazil's first woman president visited Washington last year, returning a visit to Brazil by Obama the previous year.

Brazil is Latin America's economic powerhouse and Obama made it a priority to improve ties, which were often prickly under Rousseff's predecessor Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

As the cancelled visit shows, the Snowden row has damaged tied between the two trading giants of the Western Hemisphere.

A Brazilian government source said last week that the spying row may have brought negotiations on buying US warplanes to a halt.

The talks to buy 36 fighter jets at a cost of around $5bn have been going on for years, and got a nudge when US Vice President Joe Biden visited Brazil in May.

Vying for the lucrative Air Force contract are the US Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornet, the Rafale from France's Dassault the Gripen NG by Saab of Sweden.

The United States is currently Brazil's second biggest trading partner behind China.

Snowden's revelations about international US spying and snooping programs have also caused Obama acute embarrassment and in relations with other allies.

Mexico's President Enrique Pena Nieto complained to Obama over reports US spies had gone through his emails.

There have also been pointed questions on the NSA issue from the likes of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, for whom the revelations caused discomfort during a re-election campaign.

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Washington Shooter Was A Cold Blooded

The World News:- The Washington shooter experimented with to recreate the bloody slaughter he noticed in video games during his massacre, a colleague claimed on Tuesday.
Aaron Alexis 'trained' himself on Contact of Duty then used buckshot bullets to determine his victims get blown up, explained Michael Ritrovato, who has know him for 4 a long time.
Mr Ritrovato reported the usage of buckshot showed that Alexis had been cold-blooded and experienced not simply snapped.

He said: 'He wished to determine the blood and guts, that's what he'd seen about the online video video games.
'That's what I noticed once i checked out him actively playing these online games, he would blow persons apart.
'If he utilized buckshot the intention was to try and do the gore detail with these folks like he did in all those video games.

'He was blowing people apart like he'd practiced at home.'
Mr Ritrovato added: 'If I saw him now I'd say: what sort of demonic person have you become?'
Another close friend of the Washington Navy Yard shooter had described him as a 'hardcore drinker'.

Nutpisit Suthamtewakul said he had known Aaron Alexis for three years and that they had been drinking buddies.
Alexis worked at Suthamtewakul's Happy Bowl Thai restaurant in Fort Worth, Texas and for a time lived with the owner and his wife.
Alexis shot dead 12 people and injured eight others in the Monday morning attack on the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C. The 34-year-old was being treated for serious mental illness and had been 'hearing voices.'
Mr Suthamtewakul also said that he would bring his friend food during violent video gaming sessions that would last for hours.
Such was Alexis' obsession that friends said that he would play mammoth 16-hour sessions of game Call Of Duty at a time.
Mr Ritrovato, a 50-year-old government worker and New York native, said that Alexis, an African-American, had complained to him that he was the victim of racial discrimination.
However Mr Suthamtewakul said that his friend was a recently-converted Buddhist who liked to meditate. He told the WSJ: 'He cursed a lot, but I [didn’t] see him angry very much.'

The restaurant owner invited Alexis to work at Happy Bowl, where he said that he got on well with customers and spoke Thai which he had learned during an extended trip to the country.
However, Mr Suthamtewakul was forced to reprimand his friend after he appeared at work one day with a gun tucked inside his waistband.
The Happy Bowl owner said that Alexis had moved out of his home around May after there was tension with Mr Suthamtewakul's wife over their pet cats.
He said he had not heard from Alexis in the weeks before the shooting and had believed he was flying to Japan as part of his government contractor job.
At the time of the shootings, Alexis worked for The Experts, a subcontractor on a Hewlett Packard contract to refresh equipment used on the Navy Marine Corps intranet network.
Despite entering the Navy Yard carrying an AR-15 and another weapon, Alexis appears to have drawn little attention as he was carrying a valid military ID card, according to the Washington Post.

Conflicting descriptions of the mass shooter continued to emerge as the family of Alexis said they were 'distraught' to learn that he carried out the massacre.
A family member said on Monday that the mother and sister of Aaron Alexis were also 'shocked' that he could have done this.
While some neighbors and acquaintances described him as 'nice,' his father once told detectives in Seattle that his son had anger management problems related to post-traumatic stress brought on by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
Alexis also complained about the Navy and being a victim of discrimination during his time as a reservist from 2007 to 2011.
After leaving the reserves, Alexis worked as a waiter and a delivery driver at the Happy Bowl Thai restaurant in White Settlement, a suburb of Fort Worth, according to Afton Bradley, a former co-worker. The two overlapped for about eight months before Alexis left in May, Bradley said.
Having traveled to Thailand, Alexis learned some Thai and could speak to Thai customers in their native language.
'He was a very nice person,' Bradley said in a phone interview. 'It kind of blows my mind away. I wouldn't think anything bad at all.'
Ty Thairintr, a congregant at Wat Budsaya, a Buddhist temple in Fort Worth which Alexis would attend, said: 'We are all shocked. We are nonviolent. Aaron was a very good practitioner of Buddhism. He could chant better than even some of the Thai congregants.'
Thairintr said Alexis told him he was upset with the Navy because 'he thought he never got a promotion because of the color of his skin. He hated his commander'.

As Thairintr and others at the temple understood, Alexis took a job as a contractor and he indicated to them he was going to go to Virginia. He last saw him five weeks ago.
'He was a very devoted Buddhist. There was no tell-tale sign of this behavior,' Thairintr said.
The shooter's family lives in a run-down area of Brooklyn called Bedford-Stuyvesant, which was known in the 1980s for being at the center of New York's crack epidemic.
His mother Cathleen, 60, lives in a fourth floor walk up apartment worth $130,000 with other relatives.
When MailOnline knocked on the door an attractive woman in her early 30s answered the door wearing a red top.
She let a female friend who had come to the door but refused to comment.

The street was then sealed off by police and FBI agents who stood guard outside and refused to let anybody into the side of the street where the house is.
Later the gunman's brother-in-law Anthony Little, who is married to Alexis' sister Naomi, 31, arrived and said: 'The family are distraught...They're shocked'.
Mr Little said it had been several years since had Alexis spoken with his family in Brooklyn.

Naomi wrote a note to say she would report us to the landlord. She got nasty about it. She wasn't nice'.
Today at around 5pm two FBI agents arrived and questioned neighbors and workmen who were inside the apartment doing renovations but left after 15 minutes and refused to answer questions.
Two different portraits of the shooter have emerged, as his criminal record runs in contrast to the reports of friends and family.
He was arrested for gun-related incidents in 2004 and 2010, while he was also kept in jail in Georgia for two nights in 2008 for disorderly conduct.
Alexis had joined the Navy in 2007 but was kicked out in 2011, the year after the second gun arrest. In both gun cases, charges were never filed.

He was a Petty Officer Third Class in the Navy prior to his dismissal. Alexis was awarded the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal and the National Defense Service Medal prior to his discharge.
Alexis was stationed at the Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base in Fort Worth. His LinkedIn profile reveals that he attended Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and worked as a network technician at SinglePoint Technologies.
He received a general discharge from the Navy Reserve in 2011 after a series of misconduct issues, a Navy official said.
Two construction workers told police that Aaron Alexis walked out of a home next door on May 6, 2004, pulled a pistol from his waistband and fired three shots into the rear tires of their parked car. Alexis later told police he thought the victims had "disrespected him."
Court records show he was released on the condition he not have contact with any of the construction workers.
The same documents from his 2004 arrest in Seattle show that Alexis said he had 'been present' during the September 11th attacks.
'Those events disturbed him,' the police documents said and his father told police that his son had experienced rage issues and blamed his experience of 9/11 for causing his post traumatic stress disorder.
The 2011 arrest stems from when Alexis was charged with property damage and the discharge of a firearm and the Seattle Police Department reported that the charges were later dismissed.
Seattle police said in a statement Monday that detectives later spoke with Alexis' father, who told police Alexis had anger management problems associated with PTSD, and had participated in rescue attempts on September 11th, 2001.
NBC5 today said that the suspect was arrested in 2010 for firing a gun through the ceiling of his Forth Worth apartment.
His neighbor called the police after the bullet came through her floor and hit the ceiling.

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Is The USA Doomed As History Repeats Itself?

"Doom" has a religious color; history is unique

The World News:- Milleramanda53 asked this question: "Are we doomed as a society for history to constantly repeat itself?"
In her profile, I find that milleramanda53 is from Florida, USA so I presume that when she says "Are we..." she is referring to the USA.
We register our reaction to the question as an outsider. We focus our discussion on the concepts "doom" and "history repeats itself."

Doomed

“Doom” is a term with a religious connotation. It has elements of predestination and as a form of punishment. Doomed indicates failure on the part of the perpetrator; it is a judgment with accompanying sufferance. This judgment is passed upon accumulated misdeeds.

As a nation what could have been the misdeeds of USA?

Let’s start with the history of USA since 1783 when the 13 former British colonies gained their independence from the British empire.

Misdeed on Mexico

The occupation and grabbing of part of Mexico can be considered a misdeed of USA. That grabbing is called the American-Mexican war where the American army was victorious under the command of Gen. Zachary Taylor. That part of Mexico now comprises one-third of the contiguous territory of USA.

[Taylor himself would become president of USA. Under his command were soldiers who became prominent in the USA history: Jefferson Davis (then a colonel) who became president of the Confederate States of America; Gen. Winfield Scott who became chief of staff of the armed forces until the presidency of Lincoln; Gen. George McClellan who became commander of the North army in the American Civil War; Gen. Robert Lee who became commander of the South army under Davis; Gen. Ulysses Grant who became commander of the North army during the American civil war].

Misdeed on the Philippines

Another misdeed of USA is the conquest of the Philippines in 1899 to make it its first territory of its empire in the far east and as a jumping board to the great China market. The Filipino revolutionary leaders who were in exile in Hong Kong met with Admiral George Dewey. The Filipinos had the impression that the Americans were defenders of freedom. There was an understanding between Dewey and the Filipinos in exile that the Dewey would help in the fight for freedom of the Filipinos from Spain.

Upon their return the exiled Filipino leaders, with purchased arms, reactivated the armed revolution against Spain. They went as far as surrounding Manila, the capital of the Philippines and were about to capture the Spanish officials. Before they could do that, there was a battle between the USA navy under Dewey and the Spanish navy in Manila bay resulting in the defeat of the Spaniards. This was a mock battle because the Americans bought the Philippines from Spain. The point is that the Filipinos had virtually captured the Spaniards. That purchase was a ruse on the part of USA to make the Philippines its territory. Having realized the betrayal on the part of USA, the Filipinos went on to proclaim independence, lead by Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo in Kawit, Cavity on June 12,1898. The following year, Filipino leaders met in the first Philippine congress in Barasoain church in Malolos, Bulacan.

When the Americans started to implement their purchase of the Philippines, the Philippine-American war broke out. There was a great debate in USA whether to annex the Philippines or not. Mark Twain joined the debate against the taking of the islands. He said that if the annexation were for the enlightenment of the Filipinos he would go for it but if it were for business interest he would go against it. The business interests won.

The next misdeed of the USA against the Philippines is by turning this nation its neocolony. Filipino leaders were able to work out a peaceful way to independence where US control over the islands would end on July 4,1945. That was delayed to July 4,1946 because of the intervening World War II. That war saw the defeat of Japan, liberation of Korea from Japan, and support of the USA for Gen. Chiang Kai-shek, leader of Nationalist China that was pro-feudalism.

In post-WWII, the USA had some policies as follows:

“If conservative nationalists likely to shift the economic assets of a new state from the old colonial power toward the United States dominated the resistance, as in Dutch East Indies, Washington was anti colonial and pro-independence. Where, on the other hand, the Left controlled the resistance and had a mass base, the United States recommended trusteeship or a prolonged but ‘liberalized’ continuation of colonialism, as in Indochina and Korea” (Kolko, J. and G. Kolko. “Korea, 1945-1948: The American Way of Liberation.” The Limits of Power. 1972: 277-299).

In the Philippines, along these policies, the Americans dismantled the leadership of some groups. During the Japanese occupation, some patriotic Filipinos in central Luzon organized the Hukbo ng Bayan Laban sa Hapon (Army of the country against the Japanese) monickered “Hukbalahap.” This group had carried out some redistribution of land so acquired during the Spanish regime. They leaned toward the Marxist-Leninist ideology. In the first free election after the Japanese occupation, they had candidates who ran for Congress and won. These were charged with some contrived crimes like collaboration with the Japanese, and electoral fraud then tried, convicted, and imprisoned.

The USA pressured the Philippines to amend its constitution to allow Americans to exploit natural resources and engage in retail trade. Also the Americans were allowed to maintain military bases that were eventually terminated in 1990. Trade quotas were also imposed on some Philippine export items such that the economy would be tied up with the USA.

Misdeed on Korea

Another misdeed of USA is the destruction of Korea in a proxy war as part of the Cold War. During the Korean war (1950-53) the USA served as caretaker of the United Nations army; subsumed the South Korean army and provided the commander of these coalition. Gen. Douglas MacArthur was the first commander, succeeded by Gen. Bradley. The Americans bombed every building in the South and North Korea that could be used as shelter by the North Koreans (same source as above).

Misdeed on its allies in Europe

There are more misdeeds committed by the USA like the shaping of the economies of Europe after WWII to its advantage. This was an exercise in power that the USA acquired as a result of WWII. USA was the only source of credit at that time. In the loans under Marshal plan I and II, a country that applied for a loan of say, US$ 1 billion, would have to put a counterpart of US$ 1 billion to make the whole package US$ 2 billion. The latter was charged an interest of 5% that belonged to USA. In effect, the borrower was paying interest on his counterpart of US$1 billion.

France, Great Britain and other European countries who were allies in the war effort to defeat Hitler’s Germany were not spared of Marshal plan loan scheme.

Misdeed of USA upon itself

If it is any commiseration or expiation on the part of USA, it has committed misdeeds upon itself. For example, conveying to private business the power to control the economy of the USA through the Federal ‘Reserve Bank. Today if the chairman of the Fed raised the interest rate by 1% the president of USA has nothing to do with this decision. The president cannot abrogate it if it proves to be detrimental to the USA economy.

The agnostic or the scientist or the modern executive will not agree with the concept of “doom,” especially if it has a religious connotation.

History repeats itself?

There are no laws of history as history is not a science. It belongs in the humanities according to a Filipino historian, Teodoro A. Agoncillo, author of “A History of the Filipino People,” published in 1990.

Every event in history is unique, as every flow of blood in an artery is unique, or the flow of flood waters is unique.

The psychology of man may follow a pattern and that pattern could be repeated. The craving for food is repeated often enough during the lifetime of man/woman. Of course a law in psychology is not a law in history.

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