If properly armed he could defeat Assad's army within six months.

Saudi supplying missiles to Syria rebels: Gulf source

 

 | Reuters – 

DUBAI (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia, a staunch opponent of President Bashar al-Assad since early in Syria's conflict, began supplying anti-aircraft missiles to rebels "on a small scale" about two months ago, a Gulf source said on Monday.

The shoulder-fired weapons were obtained mostly from suppliers in France and Belgium, the source told Reuters. France had paid for the transport of the weapons to the region.

The supplies were intended for General Salim Idriss, leader of the Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), who was still the kingdom's main "point man" in the opposition, the source said.

The Gulf source said without elaborating that the kingdom had begun taking a more active role in the Syrian conflict in recent weeks due to the intensification of the conflict.

A foreign ministry spokesman was not immediately available for comment.

King Abdullah returned to Saudi Arabia on Friday after cutting short a holiday in Morocco to deal with what state media described as "repercussions of the events that the region is currently witnessing".

Diplomatic sources in the kingdom say Riyadh has grown increasingly concerned after the entry of Lebanese Shi'ite militia Hezbollah into the conflict and the subsequent rebel defeat in Qusair.

Speaking to Reuters on Friday, Idriss urged Western allies to supply anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles and to create a no-fly zone, saying if properly armed he could defeat Assad's army within six months.

Idriss said his forces urgently needed heavier weapons in the northern city of Aleppo, where Assad's government has said its troops are preparing a massive assault.

DIPLOMATIC ACTIVITY

Syria's civil war grew out of protests that swept across the Arab world in 2011, becoming by far the deadliest of those uprisings and the most difficult to resolve.

Just months ago, Western countries believed Assad's days were numbered. But momentum on the battlefield has turned in his favor, making the prospect of his swift removal and an end to the bloodshed appear remote without outside intervention.

The reported Saudi supplies began shortly before its main Western ally the United States announced it would likely send arms to Syrian rebels, a development long encouraged by Riyadh.

Top Saudi princes have been shuttling from one ally to another in recent weeks for meetings about Syria.

The epicenter of this activity was Paris, visited by Interior Minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayef in May, intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan and Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal this month.

Saudi Arabian National Guard Minister Prince Miteb bin Abdullah is there this week after meeting Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara. Crown Prince Salman met British Defence Secretary Phillip Hammond in Jeddah in early June.

Diplomatic sources in Riyadh said Saudi Arabia, France and Britain shared common ground on pushing Washington to take more decisive action against Assad.

Saudi Arabia has led Arab opposition to Assad since early in Syria's revolution. It was the first country to cut diplomatic ties with Damascus last year and took an early lead in funding and arming the rebels and helping them logistically.

However, its support has always been tempered by concerns of blowback from the more militant Islamist groups spearheading the battle against Assad, diplomatic sources in Riyadh say.

Riyadh has spent years combating domestic militants who waged a bombing campaign against Saudi and U.S. targets last decade, after they returned from fighting under the Islamist banner in Afghanistan and Iraq.

All of us have the intention to stop the violence in Syria

Seeking a Syria consensus despite US-Russia divide

 | Associated Press – 

• 
  Associated Press/Evan Vucci - President Barack Obama meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland

ENNISKILLEN, Northern Ireland (AP) — Hunting for a glimmer of common ground, the leaders of major economic powers are declaring themselves dedicated to a political solution to Syria's bloody civil war, even as President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin stake out diametrically opposite stands on which side deserves military support.

Ahead of a Group of Eight joint statement on Syria to be issued Tuesday, the U.S. remained committed to Obama's recent decision to arm the rebels and Russia did not budge from its weapons sales to President Bashar Assad's regime.

Yet even as Obama found common ground among European allies against Putin at a G-8 summit in Northern Ireland, the U.S. president also struggled to convince some of those same allies to join him in sending armaments to the Syrian opposition.

Syria, where at least 93,000 people have been killed in the conflict, has emerged as one of the intractable issues at the G-8 in Northern Ireland, where leaders of eight of the wealthiest economies gathered at a gleaming lakeside golf resort to hash over trade, tax and foreign policy challenges.

"Of course, our opinions do not coincide, but all of us have the intention to stop the violence in Syria, to stop the growth of victims, and to solve the situation peacefully," Putin said after meeting for two hours with Obama. "We agreed to push the parties to the negotiations table."

"We do have differing perspectives on the problem," Obama concurred. "But we share an interest in reducing the violence; securing chemical weapons and ensuring that they're neither used nor are they subject to proliferation; and that we want to try to resolve the issue through political means, if possible."

In an interview on PBS that was taped Sunday and aired late Monday, Obama was much blunter, and pessimistic.

"What's been clear is that Assad, at this point — in part, because of his support from Iran and from Russia — believes that he does not have to engage in a political transition, believes that he can continue to simply violently suppress over half of the population," Obama told interviewer Charlie Rose. "And as long as he's got that mindset, it's going to be very difficult to resolve the situation there."

Even so, Obama in the interview portrayed himself as a reluctant participant in the civil war.

"We know what it's like to rush into a war in the Middle East without having thought it through," he said in obvious reference to the war in Iraq.

British officials said Cameron was looking for consensus among the G-8 members on five areas of potential agreement that could win Russian support, including securing chemical weapons, pursuing extremists and creating an executive authority for Syria after it undergoes a political transition.

But despite their shared belief that Assad must leave power, the U.S., Britain and France were also showing cracks in their unity. Britain and France appear unwilling — at least for now — to join President Barack Obama in arming the Syrian rebels, a step the U.S. president reluctantly finalized last week.

Ben Rhodes, Obama's deputy national security adviser, downplayed those differences, saying the Syrian opposition could be strengthened either politically, through humanitarian aid or as a military force.

"Different nations are going to feed into that process in different ways," he said.

The G-8 leaders capped the day Monday with a dinner at a lakeside lodge, where Syria was to be the main subject as they dined on Kilkeel crab, prawn and avocado salad, followed by roast fillet and braised shin of Kettyle beef with violet artichokes. Dessert was Bushmills whiskey custard.

The sensitive Syria discussions unfolded in the midst of awkward revelations that the British eavesdropping agency GCHQ tapped into the communications of foreign diplomats during the 2009 Group of 20 summit in London, including those of Russian leader Dmitry Medvedev. That report, in the newspaper The Guardian, came on the heels of reports about the high-tech surveillance methods and record-gathering employed by the National Security Agency in the United States.

While the disclosures added a layer of controversy to the summit, U.S. officials said heads of state at a summit like the G-8 are perfectly aware that such spying goes on. As for the issue coming up in talks with Putin, deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes told reporters, "It was a non-event at this meeting."

Indeed, in his interview with PBS, Obama made it clear such eavesdropping is commonplace, and tried to distinguish it from the cyber-hacking his administration has accused China of carrying out.

"There is a big difference between China wanting to figure out how can they find out what my talking points are when I'm meeting with the Japanese, which is standard fare, and we try to prevent them from penetrating that, and they try to get that information," he said. "There's a big difference between that and a hacker directly connected with the Chinese government or the Chinese military breaking into Apple's software systems to see if they can obtain the designs for the latest Apple product. That's theft."

It was a remarkably direct accusation coming just a week after Obama met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in a desert resort in California.

"We had a very blunt conversation about cybersecurity," Obama said of his talks with Xi.

With Putin, Obama also tried to emphasize their areas of cooperation, including an extension of a 1992 agreement designed to curtail the spread of nuclear weapons. The agreement resolved Russian concerns that the original post-Soviet pact, named after Senate sponsors Democrat Sam Nunn and Republican Richard Lugar, was too intrusive in securing material from Russia. Rhodes said the deal allows both countries to cooperate on nuclear security in the U.S. and Russia, but also in other countries. Obama is likely to draw attention to the deal in a speech Wednesday in Berlin.

Still, relations between Obama and Putin have never been warm. Rhodes called the encounter between the two "businesslike," one made even more stilted through translation.

Obama tried to leaven their joint appearance before reporters at the end of their talks by observing that "we compared notes on President Putin's expertise in judo and my declining skills in basketball. And we both agreed that as you get older it takes more time to recover."

Putin, through an interpreter, replied, "The President wants to relax me with his statement of age."

___

Are you supposed to wear that in school?...I don’t see why I shouldn’t

The 14-year-old kid arrested over his pro-NRA shirt now faces a year in jail

 

The Daily Caller – 

The West Virginia eighth-grader who was suspended and arrested in late April after he refused to remove a t-shirt supporting the National Rifle Association appeared in court this week and was formally charged with obstructing an officer.

As CBS affiliate WTRF reports, 14-year-old Jared Marcum now faces a $500 fine and a maximum of one year in prison.

The boy’s father, Allen Lardieri, is not pleased.

“Me, I’m more of a fighter and so is Jared and eventually we’re going to get through this,” Lardieri told WTRF.  “I don’t think it should have ever gotten this far.”

“Every aspect of this is just totally wrong,” Lardieri added.  “He has no background of anything criminal up until now and it just seems like nobody wants to admit they’re wrong.”

Officials at Logan Middle School in Logan County, West Va. maintain that Marcum, who has since completed eighth grade, was suspended for one day because he caused a disruption after a teacher asked him to remove a shirt emblazoned with a hunting rifle and the statement “protect your right.”

“She said, ‘Are you supposed to wear that in school?’” Marcum had previously explained in an interview with local station, WOWK-TV. “I said, ‘I don’t see why I shouldn’t.’”

In a move The Daily Caller can only characterize as courageous, Marcum returned to school after his suspension wearing exactly the same shirt. Students across the rural county showed their support for Marcum by wearing similar shirts on that day as well.

There are no accounts of any additional arrests or suspensions when Marcum returned to school.

Lardieri has claimed that police in Logan City (pop. 1,779) threatened to charge Marcum with making terroristic threats during the incident that led to his arrest.

In legal documents obtained by the CBS station, the arresting officer, James Adkins, reportedly fails to inform the court about any terrorist threats or any violent action. Instead, Adkins asserts that the 14-year-old boy did not follow his orders to stop talking. This verbosity somehow prevented Adkins from performing his police duties.

“In my view of the facts, Jared didn’t do anything wrong,” Ben White, Marcum’s attorney, opined, according to WTRF.  “I think Officer Adkins could have done something differently.”

White has previously asserted that his client was exercising his free speech rights by wearing the shirt.

The school district’s policy doesn’t prohibit shirts promoting Second Amendment rights.

Logan police and the prosecuting attorney, Michael White, declined to answer questions.

WHAT???? NON CITIZENS CAN VOTE IN AMERICA'S ELECTIONS! OMG!

Justices Block Law Requiring Voters to Prove Citizenship

Supreme Court Officers guarded the building on Monday morning, when the justices issued a ruling striking down an Arizona law requiring voters to prove their citizenship.

Published: June 17, 20

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled on Monday in a 7-to-2 decision that Arizona may not require documentary proof of citizenship from people seeking to vote in federal elections there.

The ruling was the second in two terms to reject Arizona laws that the state’s officials justified as responses to illegal immigration. In both cases, the court insisted that the federal government has the dominant role when it comes to national issues like controlling the borders and how federal elections are conducted.

According to lawyers for the plaintiffs in the case, tens of thousands of Arizonans have been denied the ability to vote because they failed to present the required evidence when they tried to register.

“The decision really puts another barrier in front of those who would seek to suppress votes,” said Thomas A. Saenz, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

But John Kavanagh, a Republican state legislator, said the federal government had not done enough. “Arizona has a serious problem with illegal immigration, being one of the leading illegal entry states, so protecting the credibility of our election system requires that we exclude illegal aliens and any other noncitizen from voting,” he said. “Not being able to request proof makes that impossible.”

The decision, with its lopsided vote, is not an indication that the court will always be sympathetic to claims of voter suppression. Its decision on the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is expected by the end of the month, and it may limit what its supporters say is an important tool in protecting minority voters.

Nor has the Supreme Court been uniformly hostile to Arizona’s efforts to address what lawmakers there say is a crisis in illegal immigration. Last year, it upheld one part of a tough 2010 state immigration law even as it endorsed broad federal power over immigration. In 2011, it sustained a different law that imposed harsh penalties on businesses that hired illegal workers.

On Monday, Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, No. 12-71, said a federal law requiring states to “accept and use” a form displaced an Arizona law requiring various kinds of proof of citizenship.

The law, the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, allows voters to register using a federal form that asks, “Are you a citizen of the United States?” Prospective voters must check a box for yes or no, and they must sign the form, swearing under the penalty of perjury that they are citizens.

The state law, by contrast, required prospective voters to prove they were citizens by submitting documents like birth certificates, passports or naturalization papers. They could also provide a driver’s license number from a state that verifies citizenship.

The state law was a result of a 2004 voter initiative, Proposition 200, that said it was meant to combat voter fraud. The law has given rise to tangled proceedings ever since. Under the Voting Rights Act, Arizona was required to obtain federal approval before it changed its voting procedures. The Justice Department granted approval in 2005.

Much of Justice Scalia’s majority opinion concerned the meaning of the phrase “accept and use.” Arizona officials argued that they do accept and use the form, but also require additional information. An airline may accept and use e-tickets, they said, but also require identification.

In the decision on Monday, Justice Scalia said the phrase “accept and use,” when understood in context, meant that the federal form had to be accepted as sufficient. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined all of the majority opinion, and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy joined most of it.

In a long dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas said the Constitution gave states the power “to determine the qualifications of voters in federal elections, which necessarily includes the related power to determine whether those qualifications are satisfied.”

“Congressional legislation of voter qualifications was not part of the framers’ design,” Justice Thomas wrote.

In a second dissent, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. focused on the language of the federal law, which he said was ambiguous. The majority’s interpretation of it, Justice Alito wrote, “produces truly strange results.” He said he would read the law to mean that states “accept and use” the federal form so long as it is “a meaningful part of the registration process.”

Justice Alito likened his proposed process to the common application used by many colleges and universities. Those institutions, he said, “also require that applicants submit various additional forms or documents.”

Justice Scalia wrote that Arizona had additional options if it wished to obtain documentary proof of citizenship. It may ask the Election Assistance Commission, a federal body, to make changes to the federal form.

Arizona made such a request in 2005, and the commission split 2 to 2, effectively rejecting it. The state did not challenge that action in federal court. The commission recently approved a request from Louisiana to require additional information from its voters, Justice Scalia noted. He said Arizona could ask again.

In dissent, Justice Alito said the majority was giving the state an empty promise. He pointed out that the commission “currently has no members, and there is no reason to believe that it will be restored to life in the near future.” In response, Justice Scalia suggested that the state could sue in federal court based on its inability to obtain relief from the commission.

Last year, a divided 10-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that the federal and state laws “do not operate harmoniously” and “are seriously out of tune with each other in several ways.” The court blocked the state law.

The decision from that panel effectively affirmed a 2010 ruling from a three-judge panel that included Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who retired from the Supreme Court in 2006 but occasionally acts as a visiting appeals court judge. She joined the majority in ruling that the state law was inconsistent with the federal one and so could not survive.

Justice O’Connor was in the Supreme Court’s courtroom on Monday to see the announcement of the decision.

Under the Obama administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has moved away

U.S. Seizes 14 7-Eleven Stores in Immigration Raids

 

Published: June 17, 2013

More than a dozen 7-Eleven franchises took in more than $180 million in revenue by running a “modern-day plantation system,” prosecutors in New York charged on Monday, built on the unpaid labor of dozens of illegal immigrants hired using sham Social Security numbers.

Federal authorities seized 14 7-Eleven stores on Long Island and in Virginia, arresting nine owners and managers, and seized property, including five homes. They are investigating 40 other 7-Eleven franchises in New York City and elsewhere in one of the largest criminal immigrant employment investigations ever conducted by the Justice and Homeland Security Departments, officials said.

Through the scheme, the defendants, who as franchisees for the parent company were licensed to use 7-Eleven buildings, trademarks and Slurpee and hot dog machines, recruited more than 50 illegal immigrants and gave them identities stolen from American citizens, including children and dead people.

The employees worked for 100 hours a week but were paid for a fraction of that time, and were forced to live in substandard housing owned by the operators of the convenience stores, the authorities said.

The store managers escaped notice, some for more than a decade, because the national company, 7-Eleven Inc., which has more than 7,600 stores in the United States, did not have safeguards in place to protect its payroll system from employee fraud, the authorities said. For example, two immigrant employees, one in New York and one in Virginia, used the same Social Security number to get paid.

There was “little to no effort to insure the integrity of their payroll system,” said Loretta E. Lynch, the United States attorney in Brooklyn, whose office helped investigate the case.

A spokesman for 7-Eleven Inc., Scott Matter, said in a statement that the company would “take aggressive actions to audit the employment status of all its franchisees’ employees” and was cooperating with federal authorities. The company, based in Dallas, is one of the largest operators of convenience stores in the world.

The raids come as Congress is debating a major overhaul of the immigration system, and Obama administration officials have been called upon to defend their record on enforcement against illegal immigration to convince skeptical lawmakers, many of them Republicans, that the nation is ready to grant legal status to undocumented immigrants.

Under the Obama administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has moved away from high-profile workplace raids in which dozens of workers in the country illegally were rounded up for deportation. Instead, agents from ICE, as the agency is known, have relied on audits of employers’ hiring records to detect illegal immigrant workers.

The audits were low profile but often very effective at forcing illegal immigrants to leave their jobs.

Federal immigration officials said the wage theft and other abuses of the workers in the 7-Eleven case were the type of violation they now treat as a priority. Vincent Picard, an ICE spokesman, said the timing of the arrests was not related to the debate in Washington.

The case began two years ago when a 7-Eleven employee approached the New York State Police about not being paid for his work. Another worker later contacted the Suffolk County police.

The investigation led to two families and their associates with roots in Pakistan and the Philippines, who recruited from their own ethnic communities.

Farrukh and Bushra Baig, a married couple and American citizens from Pakistan who live on Long Island, owned and managed 12 stores in New York and Virginia along with Mr. Baig’s brothers, Zahid and Shannawaz, and his associates, Malik Yousaf, Tariq Rana and Ramon Nanas. All have been charged.

A separate case was brought against two brothers, Ahzar Zia, a citizen of the United States and Pakistan, and Ummar Uppal, who the authorities said was an illegal immigrant. They own and control two stores in Suffolk County. 

  The defendants entered each employee’s personal information and hours worked into computer terminals at the stores. The parent company processed the payroll and sent the wages to the employers for distribution. The defendants, officials said, never paid the workers all that they were due.

Instead, prosecutors said, they might have earned $300 to $500 per week for 100 hours of work.

Ms. Lynch said the employees “were not innocent victims in this scheme,” but added that they had been abused.

Investigators have not found a connection between the two families, suggesting that the knowledge of how to exploit the payroll system could have been widespread and the ongoing investigation is based on payroll records provided by the parent company. Prosecutors are seeking $30 million in forfeiture from the stores and the corporate parent.

The charges were announced at a news conference by Ms. Lynch and James T. Hayes, who is in charge of ICE’s office of investigations in New York City, along with officials from the New York State Police and the Suffolk County Police Department.

“From their 7-Eleven stores the defendants dispensed wire fraud and identity theft, along with Slurpees and hot dogs,” Ms. Lynch said. “In bedroom communities across Long Island and Virginia, the defendants not only systematically employed illegal immigrants but concealed their crimes by raiding the cradle and grave to steal the identify of children and even the dead.”

Ms. Lynch said the defendants “ruthlessly exploited their immigrant employees,” forcing them to live in unregulated boardinghouses and “creating a modern -day plantation system.”

In one instance, an employee of one franchise was paid using the Social Security number of a former 7-Eleven employee, a person who had not worked for the store for 10 years and who had been the target of collection efforts by the Internal Revenue Service for much of that time because of the reported payments to the illegal immigrant, officials said.

The charges against the owners and managers, eight men and a woman, included wire fraud conspiracy and aggravated identity theft. Each pleaded not guilty in federal court and was held in custody pending trial.

The conduct charged in the indictment, officials said, had been going on since 2000, during which the defendants generated more than $180 million in revenue.

One of the raids took place around 6 a.m., at a 7-Eleven on Carleton Avenue in Islip Terrace, on Long Island, according to a law enforcement agent at the scene who declined to give his name or reveal the agency he worked for. One person, he said, was taken into custody from the store and two people were taken away from a house across the street.

A neighbor who lives near the house said the home had been divided into several apartments.

“It’s packed in there,” said the neighbor, who asked not to be identified. “There’s been a constant flow of new people coming in.”

Looking at the many problems besetting the Middle East

U.S. right to arm Syrian rebels, says Israeli president

 

 | Reuters –

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli President Shimon Peres has thrown his weight behind U.S. plans to arm Syrian rebels, shrugging off fears the weapons could be turned on Israel and exacerbate the conflict.

In a wide-ranging interview with Reuters before his 90th birthday, Peres dismissed the idea that Israel could launch a unilateral military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities and urged Palestinians and Israelis to forge immediate peace.

Looking at the many problems besetting the Middle East, Israel's elder statesmen, who is a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, said terror groups were ripping apart the Arab world.

After two years of uncertainty in the face of the Syrian civil war, the United States announced last week it would start to arm rebels seeking to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad after concluding his forces had used chemical weapons.

Many Israeli politicians have cautioned against giving weapons to the increasingly radicalized rebel fighters, fearful that the arms would sooner or later used against Israel, which shares a tense frontier with its old foe Syria.

But asked if the U.S. decision was wise, Peres said "Yes."

"They didn't have a choice," he added, sitting in the sun-soaked garden of his tranquil Jerusalem residence and speaking in quiet, measured tones.

"Unfortunately it is becoming more of a confrontation between two superpowers and (there is) a growing intervention of outside forces ... It is a tragedy," he said.

While Russia, Iran and Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah have thrown their weight behind Assad, radicalized Islamist groups allied to al Qaeda have increasingly taken over the rebel cause, marginalizing more moderate forces backed by Washington.

Peres said all the world's "unemployed terrorists" were heading to the region, bringing ruin in their wake.

"They are killing Lebanon, they are killing Syria, they are killing Iraq. Wherever they are around, they are endangering the Arab identities, their nationalities."

BOYCOTT

Lionized abroad for promoting Middle East peace, Peres is often a lonesome dove in Israel and wields moral authority as president rather than any real political power.

Closely associated with the political left, he has sought to avoid friction with the right-wing prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. But he has broken ranks over Iran, scoffing at threats from the government to attack Iranian nuclear facilities in an effort to prevent Tehran from building an atomic bomb.

"Why should Israel talk about wars and arms? We must understand there are things we cannot do," Peres said, adding that only the United States could prevent Iran obtaining nuclear weapons. Tehran says its atomic program is peaceful.

Peres is due to host an international conference this week, drawing an array of business and political leaders.

One man who will not be attending is prominent British scientist Stephen Hawking, who pulled out of the event last month to protest against Israel's occupation of territory where the Palestinians want to create an independent state.

Peres said the boycott was a mistake, but urged his government to find a way to resume peace negotiations with the Palestinians which broke down in 2010 over the issue of continued Jewish settlement building on occupied land.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry hopes to revive the talks and Peres said the opportunity must be seized. "I say again and again, clear and loud, we have to make peace right now."

Kerry has warned that the so-called two state solution might evaporate within two years, as Israel forges ahead with its expansion program in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which are speckled with some 120 authorized settlements and dozens of outposts built by settlers without permission.

Ever optimistic, Peres thought the settler problem could be overcome, pointing to ideas outlined in previous negotiations.

"They were offered two options. One, the settlers that want to come back (to Israel) should come back and be compensated. There will be three blocs for the ones that want to remain ... What will be in the (next) negotiations, we will see in the future," he said.

Peres played a central role in the Oslo Accords, which were signed in 1993 after months of secrecy, laying out the promise of an independent Palestine within five years.

He shared a Nobel Peace prize for the deal, but the agreement failed to live up to expectations and is now routinely denounced by numerous Israeli and Palestinian politicians.

However, Peres refused to review his career, saying he did not want to become a "poet of regret".

"I don't look back. It is not interesting. Because what happened is over, unchangeable ... I am more interested in what will happen tomorrow. History moves forward," he said.

WALKING EAGLE

President BARACK OBAMA was invited to address a major gathering of the American Indian Nation two weeks ago in upstate New York.

He spoke for almost an hour about his plans for increasing every Native American's present standard of living.

He referred to his time as a U.S. Senator and how he had voted for every Native American issue that came to the floor of the Senate.

Although President Obama was vague about the details of his plans, he seemed most enthusiastic and spoke eloquently about his ideas for helping his "Red sisters and brothers".

At the conclusion of his speech, the Tribes presented Obama with a plaque inscribed with his new Indian name, "Walking Eagle".

The proud President Obama accepted the plaque and then departed in his motorcade to a fundraiser, waving to the crowds.

A news reporter later asked the group of chiefs how they came to select the new name they had given to the President.

They explained that "Walking Eagle" is the name given to a bird so full of shit it can no longer fly.

President Barack Obama suddenly is positioned more aggressively on Syria

Obama takes bolder Syria stand as G-8 talks open

| Associated Press –

• 
  Associated Press/ President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron

WASHINGTON (AP) — After months of caution, President Barack Obama suddenly is positioned more aggressively on Syria than the global leaders he's joining at a summit Monday, now that he has authorized weapons and ammunition shipments to struggling rebels.

Obama is expected to push Britain and France to take similar action when talks open in Northern Ireland among the Group of Eight leading industrial powers. The U.S., Britain and France also will urge Russian President Vladimir Putin to drop his political and military support for Syrian President Bashar Assad, still in power after more than two years of fighting.

"It's in Russia's interest to join us in applying pressure on Bashar Assad to come to the table in a way that relinquishes his power and his standing in Syria," said Ben Rhodes, Obama's deputy national security adviser. "We don't see any scenario where he restores his legitimacy to lead the country."

Obama and Putin plan separate talks on the sidelines of the summit, in what would be their first in-person meeting since Obama' re-election last November.

Russia analyst and Georgetown University professor Angela Stent said Putin probably will try to draw a distinction with Obama on Syria by portraying himself as a "guarantor of the absolute sovereignty of states."

"That may go down less well with the G-8 but has a broader appeal in the rest of the world," Stent said.

Also on the agenda for the two-day summit at a golf resort in Lough Erne are the global economy, a proposed U.S.-European Union trade agreement, and counterterrorism.

Obama will stop first in Belfast, where he will speak to young people about maintaining Northern Ireland's peace with its Irish neighbors. The president will cap his European trip with a visit to Germany for meetings with Chancellor Angela Merkel and a speech at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate.

Questions about the international response to the Syrian civil war seem likely to dominate. For months, Obama resisted calls, both in Washington and from global allies, for greater U.S. involvement, though he said repeatedly that the use of chemical weapons would cross a "red line" and change his calculus.

The White House said Thursday that it had conclusive evidence of the Assad government's use of chemical weapons. In response, U.S. officials said Obama had, for the first time, authorized lethal aid for the Syrian rebel forces. The exact type of weaponry and how quickly it would get to the opposition remained unclear.

Rhodes said Obama would consult on Syria with the G-8 leaders, particularly British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Francois Hollande. Both countries have indicated a willingness to arm the rebels but are yet to take that step.

"With the French and the British, they have shared our positions generally on Syria," Rhodes said. "He'll be discussing with those leaders what the best way forward is. He'll hear from them what their plans are."

Still, it appears almost impossible for the G-8 leaders to reach a consensus, given Putin's allegiance to Assad. Russia has called for a political dialogue between Assad and the opposition, but Putin has not called for the Syrian president to step down and opposes foreign military intervention.

Russia's foreign minister said Saturday that the U.S. evidence of chemical weapons apparently didn't meet stringent criteria for reliability. Sergey Lavrov also scoffed at suggestions that Assad would use such weapons now in light of its apparent growing advantage against the rebels. "The regime doesn't have its back to the wall. What would be the sense of the regime using chemical weapons, moreover at such a small quantity?" Lavrov said.

Secretary of State John Kerry told Iraq's foreign minister in a telephone call Friday that Assad's use of chemical weapons and the "increasing involvement" of Hezbollah fighters backing Assad threatens "to put a political settlement out of reach," according to the State Department.

Obama and Putin also will discuss missile defense and U.S. calls for further reductions of both countries' nuclear stockpiles. These issues have exposed a deep mistrust between the U.S. and Russia, and there is no expectation of a breakthrough.

The leaders will talk about counterterrorism cooperation following the April bombings at the Boston Marathon. The two brothers suspected in the attacks are ethnic Chechens who lived in the U.S. for more than a decade. Russia asked the U.S. to investigate the older brother before the attacks, but it's unclear what type of information Moscow provided, particularly related to his six-month stay in the Russian region of Dagestan before the bombings.

In Europe, Obama will be seeking a reprieve from the domestic controversies that have diverted attention from his second term agenda. They include the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservative political groups; the resurgent investigation into the deadly attacks on Americans in Benghazi, Libya; the Justice Department's seizure of phone records from journalists; and most recently, revelations that the National Security Agency has been broadly monitoring U.S. phone and Internet records.

The debate over the NSA programs may follow Obama to Western Europe, where privacy laws are stricter than in the U.S. A German government spokesman has said that Merkel will question Obama about the programs.

"The Obama administration will face some awkward conversations in Europe," said Michael Geary, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center. "Europeans are a little bit miffed on the subject."

Cameron, as the summit host, is pushing an agenda focused heavily on the global economy and trade. He had hoped to announce the launch of negotiations on a broad U.S.-E.U. free trade pact. But those prospects appear to be dimming given French insistence that European film, radio and TV industries be excluded from the negotiations.

The U.S. says nothing should be taken off the table before negotiations even begin.

The other members of the G-8 are Italy, Japan and Canada. Leaders from developing nations, including Libya and Liberia, will join the G-8 leaders at a lunch Tuesday to close the summit.

Domestic energy boom is sweeping through some of the nation's driest pockets

Fracking fuels water fights in nation's dry spots

| Associated Press – 

• 
  Associated Press/ farmer Kent Peppler stands for his photo in front of two gas wells on his land near Greeley, Colo. 

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The latest domestic energy boom is sweeping through some of the nation's driest pockets, drawing millions of gallons of water to unlock oil and gas reserves from beneath the Earth's surface.

Hydraulic fracturing, or the drilling technique commonly known as fracking, has been used for decades to blast huge volumes of water, fine sand and chemicals into the ground to crack open valuable shale formations.

But now, as energy companies vie to exploit vast reserves west of the Mississippi, fracking's new frontier is expanding to the same lands where crops have shriveled and waterways have dried up due to severe drought.

In Arkansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah and Wyoming, the vast majority of the counties where fracking is occurring are also suffering from drought, according to an Associated Press analysis of industry-compiled fracking data and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's official drought designations.

While fracking typically consumes less water than farming or residential uses, the exploration method is increasing competition for the precious resource, driving up the price of water and burdening already depleted aquifers and rivers in certain drought-stricken stretches.

Some farmers and city leaders worry that the fracking boom is consuming too much of a scarce resource, while others see the push for production as an opportunity to make money by selling water while furthering the nation's goal of energy independence.

Along Colorado's Front Range, fourth-generation farmer Kent Peppler said he is fallowing some of his corn fields this year because he can't afford to irrigate the land for the full growing season, in part because deep-pocketed energy companies have driven up the price of water.

"There is a new player for water, which is oil and gas," said Peppler, of Mead, Colo., who also serves as president of the Rocky Mountain Farmers Union. "And certainly they are in a position to pay a whole lot more than we are."

In a normal year, Peppler said he would pay anywhere from $9 to $100 for an acre-foot of water in auctions held by cities with excess supplies. But these days, energy companies are paying some cities $1,200 to $2,900 per acre-foot. The Denver suburb of Aurora made a $9.5 million, five-year deal last summer to provide the oil company Anadarko 2.4 billion gallons of excess treated sewer water.

In South Texas, where drought has forced cotton farmers to scale back, local water officials said drillers are contributing to a drop in the water table in several areas.

For example, as much as 15,000 acre-feet of water are drawn each year from the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer to frack wells in the southern half of the Eagle Ford Shale, one of the nation's most profitable oil and gas fields.

That's equal to about half of the water recharged annually into the southern portion of the aquifer, which spans five counties that are home to about 330,000 people, said Ron Green, a scientist with the nonprofit Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.

The Eagle Ford, extending from the Mexican border into East Texas, began to boom in 2011, just as Texas struggled with the worst one-year drought in its history. While conditions have improved, most of the state is still dealing with some level of drought, and many reservoirs and aquifers have not been fully replenished.

"The oil industry is doing the big fracks and pumping a substantial amount of water around here," said Ed Walker, general manager of the Wintergarden Groundwater Conservation District, which manages an aquifer that serves as the main water source for farmers and about 29,000 people in three counties.

"When you have a big problem like the drought and you add other smaller problems to it like all the fracking, then it only makes things worse," Walker said.

West Texas cotton farmer Charlie Smith is trying to make the best of the situation. He plans to sell some of the groundwater coursing beneath his fields to drillers, because it isn't enough to irrigate his lands in Glasscock County. Smith's fields, like the rest of the county, were declared to be in a drought disaster area this year by the USDA.

"I was going to bed every night and praying to the good Lord that we would get just one rain on the crop," said Smith, who hopes to earn several thousand dollars for each acre-foot of water he can sell. "I realized we're not making any money farming, so why not sell the water to the oil companies? Every little bit helps."

The amount of water needed to hydraulically fracture a well varies greatly, depending on how hard it is to extract oil and gas from each geological formation. In Texas, the average well requires up to 6 million gallons of water, while in California each well requires 80,000 to 300,000 gallons, according to estimates by government and trade associations.

Depending on state and local water laws, frackers may draw their water for free from underground aquifers or rivers, or may buy and lease supplies belonging to water districts, cities and farmers. Some of the industry's largest players are also investing in high-tech water recycling systems to frack with gray or brackish water.

Halliburton, for instance, recently started marketing a new technology that allows customers to use recycled wastewater, calling it an "investment to further the sustainable development of the oil and gas industry." The American Petroleum Institute, the principal lobbying group for the industry, said its members are working to become less dependent on fresh water, and instead draw on other sources.

"Recycling wastewater helps conserve water use and provide cost-saving opportunities," said Reid Porter, a spokesman for the group.

In some states, regulators have stepped in to limit the volume or type of water that energy companies can use during drought conditions.

In northwest Louisiana, as the production rush began in the Haynesville Shale in 2009, the state water agency ordered oil and gas companies to stop pulling groundwater from the local aquifer that also supplied homes and businesses, and use surface water instead. That order is still in effect and has helped groundwater levels to recover, said Patrick Courreges, a spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources.

In Colorado's Weld County, home to Peppler's farm and more than 19,000 active oil and gas wells, some officials see selling unneeded portions of their allotments from the Colorado River as a way to shore up city budgets.

The county seat of Greeley sold 1,575 acre-feet of water last year to contractors that supply fracking companies, and made about $4.1 million. It sold farmers nearly 100 times more water but netted just $396,000.

"The oil and gas industry is a small but significant player," said Jon Monson, director of the city's water department, which has designated 35 fire hydrants where haulers may fill up their tanks to truck to gas wells. "Just knowing that oil and gas is a boom-and-bust industry, we are trying to not get used to it as a source of revenue because we know it won't last."

Some environmental groups argue that local and regional planners should let the public weigh in on how much drilling can be supported in drought-stricken areas. Some states require oil and gas companies to disclose the chemicals and the amount of water they use in fracking operations on FracFocus.org, a website formed by industry and intergovernmental groups in 2011, but the statistics are not complete.

"We don't want to look up 20 years from now and say, 'Oops, we used up all our water,'" said Jason Bane of the Boulder, Colo.-based Western Resource Advocates.

In California, oil companies are pressing for further exploration of the massive Monterey Shale, a 1,750-square-mile area extending from the agricultural Central Valley to the Pacific Ocean that federal energy officials say could ultimately comprise two-thirds of the nation's shale oil reserves.

In Ventura County, at the southern tip of the Monterey Shale and an hour north of Los Angeles, drought-induced pressures on local water systems are already visible; one local water district predicts some groundwater wells will go dry by summer.

David Schwabauer, a fourth-generation farmer in the county, said overtures by companies that want to drill new wells amid his avocado and lemon groves are prompting difficult conversations about how to manage the family farm. One orchard relies on irrigation from an overdrawn aquifer, while the other is kept alive using expensive water piped in from the distant Sierra Nevada mountains.

"Some parts of the family have very strong feelings against it, given the challenges that we face environmentally," Schwabauer said. "But other parts of the family are very comfortable with it, because we still have to stay in business. We still haven't reached a decision."