The financial and banking crisis is showing tangible signs of a recovery, according to the Presidents of the Central banks of the MERCOSUR countries in Latin America. However, all may not be rosy in the economy of the USA, where an apparent recovery could very well turn into a double dip.

The meeting in Ponta del Este, Uruguay, 140 km from Montevideo, was attended by the representatives of the Central Banks of Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay and Venezuela, as future member of the Mercado Comun del Sur (MERCOSUR) , or Common Market of the South.

The final declaration of the meeting stated that although there are positive signs, the Central Banks need to remain prudent and keep an eye on fluctuations in the monetary and exchange rate systems, while it stressed the necessity of beginning a period of consolidation. The responsible and active role played by the Central Banks of MERCOSUL and associated states (Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru) was also stressed.

As for the future, analysts are maintaining a reserved prognosis because given that the economies of this region suffer strong influences from the economy of the United States of America, what happens in this country has profound knock-on effects on those of its neighbours to the south.

While macro-economists agree that technically, the USA is coming out of a sharp recession, the fact is that the micro-economic indicators continue to give mixed signals, as if there were two parallel economies - the real one with the bad news and the pseudo-laboratorial one with the good news. The micro-economic indicators show a country which is not pulling out of recession but instead threatening to confirm everyone's worst fears - a double-dip, meaning it could be facing a deep and prolonged depression.

Business among SMCs is sluggish, if not almost paralysed, production is falling, unemployment is officially 10.2 per cent but the real figure if one counts the partially employed, jumps to 17.5 per cent.

Worrying indicators for 2010 not only for the USA, but also for Latin America and indeed the rest of the world.

Lisa KARPOVA

PRAVDA.Ru

While US scientists put forward the new doctrine of the Minimum Nuclear Deterrence (targeting missiles against Russia's 12 key enterprises), Bigness.ru decided to draw a map of a limited strike that could paralyze the US economy. It turns out that the United States is much more vulnerable than Russia at this point. An attack against only five targets in the USA will throw the US economy back into the Stone Age Pravda.Ru reports.

US scientists put forward an idea to focus targets on 12 key objects of the Russian economy: enterprises of Gazprom, Rosneft, Rusal, Nornikel, Surgutneftegaz, Evraz and Severstal. The suggestion became an absolutely new approach to the deterrence doctrine The USA currently has the Mutual Assured Demolition Doctrine, which stipulates an attack of some 200 targets on Russia's territory.

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The United States of America has, for the first time in a decade, fallen from first place to third in the ranking of the Most Competitive Countries, according to the World Competitiveness Yearbook 2010, drawn up by the Institute for Management Development in Switzerland.

The IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook claims to be "the world's most renowned and comprehensive annual report on the competitiveness of nations, ranking and analyzing how a nation's environment creates and sustains the competitiveness of enterprises", classifying 58 nations based upon 327 criteria for the 2010 report.

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The American Empire lasted from 1945 to 2008."We have the potential to become an 'eternal republic', that was our original calling, but somehow we got lost on the way. We were supposed to be the nation that showed all nations how create a republic of individuality, diversity and creativity, how to create a generous nation of cooperation, mutual respect and aid. What happened to us?"Pravda.Ru reports.

America 's day as top superpower is over. And it is time for us to rethink our identity and our 'destiny'.

We should be thinking now in terms of 'eternity', that is, what can the United States of America give to the world? We ought to ask ourselves, what do we want to be known for in history thousands of years from now?

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A large penitentiary center for terrorist suspects can appear on the territory of the former USSR. Lithuania, a small European state in the Baltic region and a former Soviet Republic, announced its willingness to "accommodate" several prisoners from the notorious Guantanamo prison Pravda.Ru reports.

Vygaudas Usackas, Lithuania's Foreign Minister, said in an interview with a local newspaper that Lithuania may decide to organize a prison for Islamites after the nation determines that it will be able to handle all accompanying risks.

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Barack Obama's recent initiative to expose the information about CIA's secret torture chambers has come into effect already. As it turned out, the information is directly connected with a person from the previous US administration. It goes about Condoleezza Rice. As National Security Advisor in 2002, Rice gave her personal approval to water tortures Pravda.Ru reports.

The documents, which the Senate Committee for Intelligence declassified, showed that Rice approved this form of torture to al-Qaeda suspect Abu Zubaydah. The agreement to waterboarding was given verbally. The committee provided a detailed report of how the subject of tortures was discussed at the Bush's administration.

It is worthy of note that Condoleezza Rice previously testified to the Senate about the role of the White House in the tough measures taken by the CIA. The new details demonstrate that Rice was personally involved in approving the tortures.

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The State Department of the United States of America likes to publish its yearly report, the Report on Human Rights Practices in which it arbitrarily lists what it understands as abuses. Year after year, snide remarks are made about Russia and the People's Republic of China. Let us take a look at the Human Rights Practices in the United States of America and draw some conclusions.

The State Department of the United States of America likes to publish its yearly report, the Report on Human Rights Practices in which it arbitrarily lists what it understands as abuses. Year after year, snide remarks are made about Russia and the Prople's Republic of China. Let us take a look at the Human Rights Practices in the United States of America and draw some conclusions.*

Since the United States of America likes to list what it perceives as human rights abuses in other countries, in a holier than thou, intrusive, arrogant attitude, let us then list the human rights abuses in the USA and then we can make statements about throwing stones and glass houses. In short, the internal situation is so catastrophic that there are no basic human rights in that country, because people are not free to walk around at will. The delinquency rates are shocking and the population in prison is among the highest per capita percentages in the world.

In 2008, there were 4.9 million violent crimes committed in the United States of America, 16.3 million crimes against property, 137,000 robberies; the crime rate was 19.3 violent crimes per 1,000 people; there were 14,000 imprisonments; 198.2 people per 100,000 were arrested for violent crimes. In 2008, there were 14,180 murders in the USA.

In 2009, there were 35 domestic murders in Philadelphia, an increase of 67% over 2008. In New York, in the same year, there were 461 murders, over one per day while in San Antonio, Texas, there were 2,538 crimes committed per 100,000 inhabitants.

So it is not restricted to one area, one State, one region or one city. Violence is mushrooming all over the country. The USA is the country with the greatest number of firearms per capita in the world. 30,000 people per year die in firearms-related incidents. Serial massacres are commonplace: Michael McLendon (March 11, 2009 - 10 people); Robert Stewart (March 29, 2009 - 8 murdered and 3  wounded); Jiverly Wong (April 3, 2009 - 13 murders and 4 injured).

11.3 per cent of secondary school students in Washington DC have been threatened or wounded in violent crimes at school. In 2007/8 there were 17.666 violent incidents in public schools in New Jersey and between 2006 and 2007, there were 107 serious crimes committed on the campuses of New York University.

Abuses by the police are rife. 45 people were murdered by the police in 2009 due to improper use of tasers. One in every 198 inhabitants of the USA is a prisoner.

Abuse against prisoners is well documented, including cases of rape of prisoners by the authorities: reports of "bad sexual conduct" in 93 federal prisons over the last 8 years has risen by 100 %.

The flow of information is not free in the USA: The NSA taps telephones, intercepts mail and pries into e-mails from 25 centres.

And now that we are speaking about human rights abuse, what about water-boarding, what about illegal detention, what about the CIA torture flights, what about Abu Ghraib and Lynndie "Just havin' fun" England, what about the concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay, the most shocking and horrific example of human rights abuse where prisoners have been detained illegally, arbitrarily and have been denied the right to due legal process.

Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY

PRAVDA.Ru

*Source: Portuguese version of PRAVDA.Ru

material from vermelho.org

A recent study shows that in the United States of America, the number of girls reaching puberty by the age of seven has doubled in the last decade. Scientists are still investigating the reasons, but early conclusions point towards obesity and the ingestion of chemicals which mimic the female hormone, oestrogen.

Research conducted by a team of American scientists* and revealed in the study "Pubertal Assessment Method and Baseline Characteristics in a Mixed Longitudinal Study of Girls", published in Pediatrics, the Official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, shows startling revelations: namely that the number of white girls reaching puberty by seven has doubled since the year 1997.

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"The gap between our citizens and our Government has never been so wide. The people are looking for honest answers, not easy answers; clear leadership, not false claims and evasiveness and politics as usual..What you see too often in Washington and elsewhere around the country is a system of government that seems incapable of action. You see a Congress twisted and pulled in every direction by hundreds of well financed and powerful special interests. You see every extreme position defended to the last vote, almost to the last breath by one unyielding group or another. You often see a balanced and a fair approach that demands sacrifice, a little sacrifice from everyone, abandoned like an orphan without support and without friends ... Our people are losing...the ability as citizens to serve as the ultimate rulers and shapers of our democracy. " Jimmy Carter, July 15, 1979 Pravda.Ru reports.

It was an unremarkable incident, really. I happened to be in an American high school setting watching students (grades 9-12) comingling, laughing, discussing and, at the same time, eating lunch. The locale was not the school cafeteria but rather a large school hallway, sandwiched between a lounge and a library, with benches and plenty of floor space for 15-20 students. Adjacent to one of thebenches was a trash can. On top of the garbage can was stacked, precariously, many lunch trays with leftover food, silverware and plates. One student accidently bumped the trash can and down came the whole mess crashing to the floor making a sound akin to a popping balloon.

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U.S. president, Barack Obama, and the Democratic majority in Congress will consider a new million dollar stimulus plan for jobs in order to boost this weakened sector, said the daily Los Angeles Times on Friday (27).

Lawmakers said they will work on a bill with the president for next January, although it is still not known how much effort will be needed.

Uncertainty still prevails that the amount for this plan can debilitate an already deep government deficit for next year, said an editorial in the daily Los Angeles Times.

It is hoped that the million dollar plan will boost the sector hardest hit by the crisis in this country, allowing for the creation of jobs and maintaining already existing ones.

Arguments about the total of the proposal will be covered these days, therefore the legislators proposed they have a strategy ready to begin in the year 2010.

This initiative arose from official recognition that the 787 billion dollars approved in February to boost the recessive U.S. economy are not sufficient to combat unemployment, the current rate is 10.2 percent.

According to the figures officially recognized, October has already recorded about 16 million people without work, and barely here into January the country has lost 3.49 million jobs due to the economic crisis.

Congressional advisors speculate that the new program may have a cost of 10 billion dollars, the paper warns.

In recent days, the Federal Reserve and the Central Bank reported optimistic predictions about the U.S. economy towards recovery, but fears remain ahead of rising unemployment, analysts said.

Translated from the Portuguese version by:

Lisa KARPOVA
PRAVDA.RU

In the United States of America, it has recently been concluded in a top-level report that lawyers who wrote covering memos authorizing torture did not violate legal ethics, an outrage which has prompted Human Rights Watch to call for a full inquiry into the abuse of detainees. The question also arises as to why the original charge of "professional misconduct" referred in the draft version of the Report was changed to "poor judgement".

Two words typed into an internet search engine will immediately lead the researcher to the British site Iraq Inquiry, an in-depth study of the behaviour of the British Government in Iraq to deem whether the United Kingdom acted illegally in going to war outside a UN mandate, a process in which Prime Ministers and Government Officials past and present are subjected to the same grilling as "ordinary citizens".

Would such an inquiry be possible in the United States of America? Hell, no! And after the results of the US Justice Department Report on the behaviour of lawyers working for the Bush Administration, this hardly comes as a surprise.

"Poor judgement" is the consideration of the Report, carried out by the Justice Department's office of Professional Responsibility, regarding the issuing of memos authorizing torture, but not a violation of legal ethics rules. So we may then infer that if in the United States of America it is "poor judgement" and nothing more to perpetrate an act of torture, what about terrorism? Were the culprits of 9/11 using "poor judgement" as well?

Yet there is something more sinister. "Poor judgement" was the term referred to in the final version of the report, revised by a David Margolis, from the Office of Professional Responsibility, who reviewed it and who overruled the adoption of the expression "professional misconduct" contained in an earlier version.

Nevertheless despite this apparent attempt to water down the Report, Andrea Prasow, senior counter-terrorism counsel at Human Rights Watch, considers that "Despite failing to find the former Justice Department lawyers responsible for misconduct, the Justice Department report nevertheless provides strong evidence indicating that the authors of these legal opinions should be investigated for their role in facilitating torture".

In short, if the United States of America and its President are serious about Change, and he should remember that he was elected on this ticket, then Change has to mean the execution and implementation of policy from the US Administration in a way which is transparent, above suspicion and wholly not only within the letter of the law, but also every code of ethics.

When senior lawyers issue opinions which are carefully drafted not to uphold the law but rather to facilitate torture, then surely if something is not deemed to be wrong, then we can only conclude that the United States of America has not changed one iota and probably never will, in the near future at least.

Where is the Change, President Obama?

Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY

PRAVDA.Ru

The USA has decided to resume the training of the Georgian army suspended last year due to the war in the Caucasus. According to The New York Times, the campaign will begin on September 1. Jeff Morrell, an official with the United States Department of Defense, said that the training would be resumed to prepare the Georgian army to meet NATO standards in order they could be sent to Iraq and Afghanistan. The first American instructors arrived in Tbilisi, Georgia, on August 17 Pravda.Ru reports.

The Pentagon officials noticed, that they had notified Russia of the intentions. Morrell tried to make Russia understand that the training was not a measure to have the Georgian army prepared for another large-scale military operation as it happened in August of 2008. As he said, Georgians would be unable to apply the acquired skill in the country. Morrell added that the USA was prepared to the extremely negative reaction of Russia regarding the plans to train the Georgian army.

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The USA has considerably increased its defense spending. President Barack Obama signed the new defense budget October 28. The defense budget of the United States made up $650 billion in 2009, but for 2010 it will be increased by $30 billion - to $680 billion Pravda.Ru reports.

Obama said that the new bill would save tens of billions of dollars by cutting wasteful projects.

"I have always rejected the notion that we have to waste billions of dollars of taxpayer money to keep this nation secure," Obama said, before signing the defense authorization act at the White House. "In fact, I think that wasting these dollars makes us less secure - and that's why we have passed a defense bill that eliminates some of the waste and inefficiency in our defense process."

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In Afghanistan public sector corruption has got worse over the past two years . According to Transparency International, Afghan corruption is now seen to be more rampant than in any country apart from Somalia Pravda.Ru reports.

Releasing its annual Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) on Tuesday, the watchdog said Afghanistan had sunk for the second straight year in its ranking of 180 nations based on perceived levels of corruption in the public sector.

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The United States of America certainly does not deserve to be known as the United States of Torture. Or does it? The most shocking and horrific acts of human cruelty and barbarity were committed by personnel representing the State, they had a certain degree of hierarchical backing within this State and the courts only sprang into action when the whistle was blown by human rights groups.

True, there have been numerous prosecutions and punishments, some of which were extremely light in the circumstances. Under international law, the inviolability of the human person and the equal status of the human condition are universal rights which are accepted by each and every signatory State of the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions. Among these is the United States of America.

However, the widespread frequency of such cases of physical and psychological abuse by trained personnel working for the US State, as well as the contracted parties, would point towards a culpability and accountability of the State, due to the fact that ultimately, in the case of the sub-contracted parties, the State had an obligation to oversee modus operandi and to establish a system of checks and balances; in the case of employees of the State, i.e. military personnel and CIA psychologists and operatives being involved in registered cases of torture of illegally detained persons, the State is involved directly.

Furthermore, in the case of the Pentagon giving the nod to the practice of water-boarding, a medieval torture-chamber-type simulated drowning, then perhaps Donald Rumsfeld should be hauled up before the nearest court and tried on human rights violations. Unless, of course, the United States of America does not wish him to be tried.

And here is the crux of the matter. Why did the USA illegally kidnap Slobodan Milosevic, against the Constitution of Serbia and the FR Yugoslavia at the time, and bring him before a kangaroo court, the International Court of Justice at The Hague, Netherlands, when the USA itself is not a signatory nation?

Because the USA wishes to exonerate its own citizens from being placed before the court and being tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Why did the USA commit acts of torture on vessels in international waters and aircraft in international airspace or in certain nations where there exist legal loopholes? To escape from accountability.

Yet under international law, accountability is not something you can escape from by not signing one statute or avoiding to sign a protocol. There are international norms on common human decency which have been woven into the legal framework covered by the UN Charter, International Human Rights Treaties and Customary International Law, among these the Geneva Conventions.

If Washington is serious about its intention to come back into the fold of the international community, to enter the hearts and minds of the rest of humanity as an equal and respected member of the community of nations, then it has to behave like one. This does not mean a few token sentences for the intellectually challenged "persons" (?) who perpetrated these acts of evil. It goes far beyond that.

It means that the United States of America has the moral duty and legal obligation to go after each and every one of those involved in the illegal acts of butchery in Afghanistan and Iraq, following up and holding them responsible for the consequences of these acts and holding accountable each and every person involved in the decision-making process, however high their position in the pyramid may have been.

Then, yes, we can say that the United States of America represents freedom, justice and democracy...Not until.

Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY

PRAVDA.Ru

A joint report released by three organizations has issued a report condemning the US policy towards Latin America under President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, claiming Washington has failed to deliver any substantial change. Does this indicate that the occupant of the White House has little or no control over the way US policy is delivered?

The joint publication Waiting for Change: Trends in US Security Assistance to Latin America and the Caribbean, was released today and was drawn up by The Center for International Policy, the Latin America Working Group Education Fund and the Washington Office on Latin America. Its claims reveal information which would point toward the President of the United States of America being little more than a puppet, unless substantial change is delivered, where actions speak louder than words.

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The government of Abkhazia said July 8 that Georgia resumed the flights of its unmanned aircraft. "The border guards of the Republic of Abkhazia registered two unmanned aircraft flying from the direction of Georgia to Abkhazia's inland," a spokesperson for Abkhazia's Foreign Affairs Ministry said in a statement Pravda.Ru reports.

"We are particularly concerned about the fact that Georgia conducts provocative activities in the area of Europe's monitoring mission in Georgia . Since there is no adequate assessment of Georgia's actions from the European mission, Abkhazia doubts about the impartiality of the mission and regards it as an encouragement for Georgia's military sabotage," the statement from Abkhazia's Foreign Ministry said.

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The map of the collapse of the United States in 2010, made by Russian scientist of politics Igor Panarin, has received millions of views in the United States over one day only. The Wall Street Journal published the map on its front page at the end of 2008. Alaska is pictured on the map as a part of Russia. Hawaii were shown as a territory of Japan, whereas four new states were pictured on the territory of the USA: the Californian Republic, the Central North American Republic, the Texas Republic and the Atlantic America, which included the traditional states Pravda.Ru reports.

In spite of the fact that the map was published many months ago, it attracted public attention only a while ago. Will the United States break up like the USSR did? Anatoly Vasserman, a political advisor, believes that Igor Panarin created the map on the base of several important arguments. First and foremost, the US state debt has skyrocketed from $2 trillion to $11 trillion within a decade. The USA will never be able to pay off the debt.

Secondly, the political structure of the nation nation is vulnerable. There is neither universal legislation in the country, nor common traffic rules. The US Army does not execute its major function - defense - anymore since many foreign nationals prefer to serve in the army to obtain the US citizenship.

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William Taylor, the US Ambassador to Ukraine, refused to give money to Ukraine to repair the nation's gas supply system. At the gala dinner arranged on the occasion of laying the foundation for the new American embassy, Taylor stressed out his disappointment with the "orange policy" during the recent years Pravda.Ru reports.

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It appears a lot of people have decided to attack President Obama for whatever he does, or does not do. There are those who complain, for example that he has not granted TPS to Haitians, which is totally untrue. There are those who complain he has not done enough, when he has pledged one hundred million USD towards rebuilding Haiti.

The world needs a strong Barack Obama as President of the United States of America, just as the world needs strong and resolute governments in the most powerful nations, which can make a difference against the forces of evil which stubbornly plot against the happiness of ordinary families going about their daily lives: the Islamist fanatics who believe that through murdering innocent people they have a cause.

The world needs a strong Barack Obama because he is the right man in the right place at the right time. After eight years of knee-jerk reactions from the Bush regime, which followed the Serbophobic Clinton regime that unforgivably created the Kosovo question, it is time for someone who understands the issues and more than that, who has the human qualities to listen and to dialogue, debate and discuss. These are the fundamentals of democracy, not illegal wars, not doling out contracts to White House cronies without tender, not lies and skulduggery.

The world needs a strong Barack Obama because the world needs the United States of America onboard and engaged, the world needs a country with the USA's natural and human resources standing up for common values of decency, standing up for what is regarded as right by the vast majority of balanced and sane individuals in the four corners of the world and standing up against the monstrosity of Islamist terrorism, as indeed Russia does and has done since the end of the 1970s when she went to fight this scourge in Afghanistan.

And the world needs a strong Barack Obama because he is an excellent advocate for his people, the antithesis of the "stupid American" stereotype which is bandied around by the feeble minded but which does not exist - try entering a University in the USA and then call them stupid! He is articulate, intelligent and focused, he knows the world outside the USA and there is an aura of decency about the man which makes him likeable.

In his dealings with the Russian Federation, he got off to an excellent start with the Reset Summit, discovering that Russia never had so many problems with the USA as the USA had with Russia. Since then, the two Governments have been working together in a professional and workmanlike manner, proof that they are two partners on the same team and facing the same common enemy: Islamist fanaticism.

This does not mean that Islam is an evil religion any more than it justifies Islamophobia, because 99.9% of Moslems abhor violence and deride the Jihadis as the murderers and fanatics they are. Too cowardly to carry out the attacks themselves, they use feeble-minded young men, brainwash them and send them to blow themselves up. Neither does it mean that it is acceptable for people to take swipes at the USA and Americans just because they are Americans or it is the USA, for doing so is paramount to racism, which is based on ignorance, stupidity and plain evil.

Therefore those who try to attack Barack Obama by making false accusations, as is the case with the Stephen Lendman article "Haitians in America Denied Temporary protected Status" lend no credence whatsoever to the notion that they are intelligent and therefore worthy opinion makers. The Haitians in America have not been denied Temporary Protected Status: the Obama Administration stated on Friday that it will indeed grant TPS to Haitians in the USA.

Janet Napolitano, US Secretary of Homeland Security , declared as follows: "As part of the Department's ongoing efforts to assist Haiti following Tuesday's devastating earthquake, I am announcing the designation of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitian nationals who were in the United States as of January 12, 2010.

"This is a disaster of historic proportions and this designation will allow eligible Haitian nationals in the United States to continue living and working in our country for the next 18 months."

The world needs responsible and level-headed people at a difficult time, a time in which there is a globalization of knowledge and resources to do evil and to destroy. The world needs responsible and level-headed journalists and responsible and level-headed news organisms to print the truth, to inform. The more hate-mongering and lie-mongerers we have among us, the easier it is for those who are our enemies.

Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY

Lisa KARPOVA

PRAVDA.Ru