Congress passes $50.5B Superstorm Sandy aid bill

WASHINGTON (AP) — Three months after Superstorm Sandyravaged coastal areas in much of the Northeast, Congress on Monday sent a $50.5 billion emergency relief measure for storm victims to President Barack Obama for his signature.

"I commend Congress for giving families and businesses the help they deserve, and I will sign this bill into law as soon as it hits my desk," Obama said in a statement late Monday.

Despite opposition from conservatives concerned about adding billions of dollars more to the nation's debt, the Senate cleared the long-delayed bill, 62-36, after House Republicans had stripped it earlier this month of spending unrelated to disasters. All 36 votes against the bill were from Republican senators.

"This is a huge relief," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., noting the vote came 91 days after Sandy struck.

The House passed the bill two weeks ago. Lawmakers say the money is urgently needed to start rebuilding homes, businesses, public transportation facilities and other infrastructure damaged by the Oct. 29 storm, one of the worst to strike the Northeast.

Sandy roared up the East Coast and is blamed for more than 130 deaths and tens of billions of dollars in property damage, particularly in New York and New Jersey. The measure is aimed primarily at helping residents and businesses as well as state and local governments rebuild.

The biggest chunk of money is $16 billion for Housing and Urban Development Department community development block grants. Of that, about $12.1 billion will be shared among Sandy victims as well as those from other federally declared disasters in 2011-2013. The remaining $3.9 billion is solely for Sandy-related projects.

More than $11 billion will go to the Federal Emergency Management Agency's disaster relief aid fund for providing shelter, restoring power and other storm-interrupted utility services and meeting other immediate needs arising from Sandy and other disasters. Another $10 billion is devoted to repairing New York and New Jersey transit systems and making them more resistant to future storms.

Sen. Dan Coats, R-Ind., said Republicans weren't seeking "to undermine" help for Sandy victims but instead were trying to make sure that the money was actually being spent on emergency needs.

"We're simply trying to say we need some standards," Coats said.

Earlier in January, Congress approved and Obama signed a $9.7 billion bill to replenish the National Flood Insurance Program, which has received well over 100,000 flood insurance claims related to Sandy. Added to the new, $50.5 billion package, the total is roughly in line with the $60.4 billion that Obama requested in December.

The aid package was greased for passage before the last Congress adjourned and the new one came in on Jan. 3. But Speaker John Boehner refused to bring it to the floor after two-thirds of HouseRepublicans voted against a "fiscal cliff" deficit-reduction deal raising taxes on couples making more than $450,000 a year while deferring some $24 billion in spending cuts to defense and domestic programs.

The ruckus after the Senate had passed an earlier $60.4 billion Sandy relief package by a nearly 2-to-1 margin on Dec. 28 exposed deep political divisions within Republican ranks. "There's only one group to blame for the continued suffering of these innocent victims, the House majority and their speaker, John Boehner," Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie fumed at the time.

Top House Republicans responded by bringing new Sandy aid legislation to the floor under ground rules designed to win over as many Republicans as possible while retaining support from Democrats eager to approve as much in disaster aid as possible.

GOP leaders cut spending in the Senate bill unrelated to disasters. One would have transferred $1 billion for training Iraqi policemen to instead be used to bolster security at U.S. diplomatic missions. The shift in money followed a Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, where the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans were killed.

Also deleted were $188 million for an Amtrak expansion project that included new, long-planned tunnels from New Jersey to Penn Station in Manhattan, and another $150 million for fisheries disasters that states such as Alaska and Mississippi could have shared.

After all the cost-cutting, 179 House Republicans still voted against the disaster aid package with only 49 favoring it. GOP leaders had to rely on yes votes from 192 Democrats to pass it.

As with past natural disasters, the Sandy aid bill is not offset with spending cuts, meaning the aid adds to the deficit. The lone exception is an offset provision requiring that $3.4 billion for Army Corps of Engineers projects to protect against future storms be covered by an equal amount of unspecified spending cuts in other programs before next October.

The Senate on Monday rejected, 35-62, an attempt by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, to amend the final package Monday with a provision to cut federal programs across the board by one-half of 1 percent through 2021 as a way to prevent the disaster aid from swelling the U.S. debt.

As of Monday, FEMA said it spent $3.3 billion in disaster relief money for shelter, restoring power and other immediate needs arising from the storm.

New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, New Hampshire, Ohio, Delaware, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and the District of Columbia have shared that money.

Philippine dictatorship victims to be compensated

Associated Press/Bullit Marquez - Filipino poet Bonifacio Ilagan, one of hundreds of activists imprisoned during the Martial Law period which was declared by the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos, poses by the granite wall which is engraved with the names of Martial Law victims, including his sister Rizalina Ilagan, at the Heroes Shrine at suburban Quezon city, northeast of Manila, Philippines Monday Jan. 28, 2013. More than 9,000 victims will be awarded compensation using $246 million that the Philippine government recovered from Marcos' ill-gotten wealth. But all claims will still have to evaluated by an independent commission and the amount each will receive will depend of the abuse suffered. (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez)

In this Jan. 26, 2013 photo, Carmencita Florentino, 64, holds newspaper clippings during an interview in her home at a poor neighborhood of Tatalon, Quezon city, northeast of Manila, Philippines. Florentino was jailed twice, in 1977 and 1978, during the Martial Law period imposed by the late Philippine strongman Ferdinand Marcos. More than 9,000 victims will be awarded compensation using $246 million that the Philippine government recovered from Marcos' ill-gotten wealth. But all claims will still have to evaluated by an independent commission and the amount each will receive will depend of the abuse suffered. (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez)

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Almost four decades after he was arrested and tortured and his sister disappeared into a maze of Philippine police cells and military houses, playwright Bonifacio Ilagan is finally seeing his suffering officially recognized.

A writer for an underground communist newspaper, Ilagan and thousands like him were rounded up by dictator Ferdinand Marcos' security forces after he placed the Philippines under martial law in 1972. Detentions, beatings, harassment and killings of the regime's opponents continued until Marcos was toppled in 1986.

Even though democracy was restored, it would take another 27 years for the Philippine Congress to vote on a bill awarding compensation and recognition to martial law victims. The bill was ratified Monday and will be sent to Pres. Benigno Aquino III for signing into law, said Sen. Francis Escudero, a key proponent.

"More than the monetary compensation, the bill represents the only formal, written document that martial law violated the human rights of Filipinos and that there were courageous people who fought the dictatorship," said a statement from SELDA, an organization of former political prisoners that campaigned for the passage of the bill.

Ilagan's story is more of a rule than exception among leftist activists of his generation.

"The torture started in the house. We were beaten up, punched and kicked," he said, recalling a police raid on his residence in April 1974 and the beginning of his two-year detention ordeal. He said he vomited blood after being kicked in the thighs and had the soles of his foot burned by an iron.

"The one episode in my torture that I cannot forget was when they ordered me to remove my pants and underwear and they inserted a piece of stick into my penis. 'Oh my God,' I said, this is one torture I could not bear,'" the 61-year-old said in an interview. He said that interrogators wanted him to decode documents and identify people in pictures that were seized from suspected communist activists.

"Compared to others, mine was not the worst torture," he said. "The others were electrocuted and injected with truth serum. ... But the threats continued."

Ilagan's sister, Rizalina, disappeared in 1976 along with nine other activists, many of them students involved in anti-Marcos publications, he said. One of the women arrested by the same government unit that he suspected was involved in his sister's abduction had escaped to recount her rape and torture. Ilagan said he has no doubt that his sister went through the same abuses.

His parents died still hoping his sister would turn up alive, but the family has found no closure, Ilagan said.

Lawmakers in two chambers of the Congress agreed last week on the text of the compensation bill.

Aquino is the son of an assassinated anti-Marcos activist and a mother who led the 1986 "people power" revolt that ousted Marcos and sent him into U.S. exile, where he died three years later without ever facing prosecution for human rights abuses.

Many of Marcos' men reinvented themselves as powerful politicians or businessmen, and not one was successfully prosecuted for any of the crimes allegedly committed during the martial law years.

Two martial law figures, former Defense Secretary Juan Ponce Enrile and the deputy military chief of staff, Fidel Ramos, led a mutiny against Marcos as part of the 1986 revolt. Ramos later served as president from 1992 to 1998, and Enrile is currently the president of the Senate.

Despite cases filed by former political prisoners, "there have been no convictions of perpetrators," Marie Hilao-Enriquez, chairwoman of SELDA, said Monday.

The Marcos family, meanwhile, returned from exile in 1990s and again wields influence. Former first lady Imelda Marcos is a lawmaker, son Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcosis is a senator, and daughter Imee is a provincial governor.

"Governments after Marcos did not move or did not do anything to go after Marcos seriously, so we filed a case in Hawaii," Hilao-Enriquez said.

In 1992, victims won a class action suit against the Marcos estate in Hawaii.

Under the Human Rights Victims Reparation and Recognition Act of 2013, the 9,539 victims will be awarded compensation using $246 million that the Philippine government recovered from Marcos' ill-gotten wealth. But all claims will have to evaluated by an independent commission and the amount each will receive will depend of the abuse suffered.

"Finally, over two decades after the fall of the dictatorship, we will have a law that puts the responsibility of human rights abuses square on the shoulder of Marcos and provides justice for all those who suffered under his reign," said Rep. Walden Bello, a member of a congressional committee that drafted and approved the bill.

___

Associated Press writers Oliver Teves and Hrvoje Hranjski contributed to this report.

Photograph: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Stephen: It appears a common belief that war is the last resort coupled withan open understanding and mistrust of any ‘new world order’ (or should that be ‘old’ world order?) are the primary reasons US President Barack Obama has chosen Chuck Hagel as his nomination for US Defense Secretary….

Interesting that this story has now appeared as an opinion piece in a major US newspaper – and has subsequently been picked up by other mainstream media – prior to Hagel’s nomination being accepted. I doubt it is to derail his nomination; rather to explain it in terms that everyday people can understand and relate to. We all want peace, after all.

Why Obama Picked Hagel

By Bob Woodward, Washington Post – January 28, 2013

http://tinyurl.com/b8dn938

In the first months of the Obama presidency in 2009, Chuck Hagel, who had just finished two terms as a U.S. senator, went to the White House to visit with the friend he had made during the four years they overlapped in the Senate.

So, President Obama asked, what do you think about foreign policy and defense issues?

According to an account that Hagel later gave, and is reported here for the first time, he told Obama: “We are at a time where there is a new world order. We don’t control it. You must question everything, every assumption, everything they” — the military and diplomats — “tell you. Any assumption 10 years old is out of date. You need to question our role. You need to question the military. You need to question what are we using the military for.

“Afghanistan will be defining for your presidency in the first term,” Hagel also said, according to his own account, “perhaps even for a second term.” The key was not to get “bogged down.”

Obama did not say much but listened.

At the time, Hagel considered Obama a “loner,” inclined to keep a distance and his own counsel. But Hagel’s comments help explain why Obama nominated his former Senate colleague to be his next secretary of defense. The two share similar views and philosophies as the Obama administration attempts to define the role of the United States in the transition to a post-superpower world.

This worldview is part hawk and part dove. It amounts, in part, to a challenge to the wars of President George W. Bush. It holds that the Afghanistan war has been mismanaged and the Iraq war unnecessary. War is an option, but very much a last resort.

So, this thinking goes, the U.S. role in the world must be carefully scaled back — this is not a matter of choice but of facing reality; the military needs to be treated with deep skepticism; lots of strategic military and foreign policy thinking is out of date; and quagmires like Afghanistan should be avoided.

The bottom line: The United States must get out of these massive land wars — Iraq and Afghanistan — and, if possible, avoid future large-scale war.

Although much discussion of the Hagel nomination has centered on his attitudes about Iran, Israel and the defense budget, Hagel’s broader agreement with Obama on overall philosophy is probably more consequential.

Hagel has also said he believes it is important that a defense secretary should not dictate foreign policy and that policy should be made in the White House.

He privately voiced reservations about Obama’s decision in late 2009 to add 51,000 troops to Afghanistan. “The president has not had commander-in-chief control of the Pentagon since Bush senior was president,” Hagel said privately in 2011.

If Hagel is confirmed, as appears likely, he and the president will have a large task in navigating this new world order. Avoiding war is tied directly to the credibility of the threat to go to war.

Hagel’s experience provides two unusual perspectives. The first is as a former E-5 Army sergeant in 1968, which he has described as “the worst year of the Vietnam War.” In summation, another Vietnam must be avoided.

The second is the Georgetown University class that he taught called “Redefining Geopolitical Relationships.” He asks the class the basic question: Where is all this going?

For example, he has said that one result of the Iraq war has been to make Iran the most important country in the Middle East, and he worried that Iraq could become an Iranian satellite.

When I interviewed President Obama in the summer of 2010 for my book “Obama’s Wars,” his deeply rooted aversion to war was evident. As I reported in the book, I handed Obama a copy of a quotation from Rick Atkinson’s World War II history, “The Day of Battle,” and asked him to read it. Obama stood and read:

“And then there was the saddest lesson, to be learned again and again . . . that war is corrupting, that it corrodes the soul and tarnishes the spirit, that even the excellent and the superior can be defiled, and that no heart would remain unstained.”

“I sympathize with this view,” Obama told me. “See my Nobel Prize acceptance speech.”

I had listened to the speech when he gave it, Dec. 10, 2009, and later read it, but I dug it out again. And there it was:

“The instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace. And yet this truth must coexist with another — that no matter how justified, war promises human tragedy. The soldier’s courage and sacrifice is full of glory, expressing devotion to country, to cause, to comrades in arms. But war itself is never glorious” — Churchill had called it that — “and we must never trumpet it as such. So part of our challenge is reconciling these two seemingly irreconcilable truths — that war is sometimes necessary and war at some level is an expression of human folly.”

That is probably the best definition of the Obama doctrine on war. Applying such a doctrine in today’s dangerous and unpredictable world will be daunting — but on these issues Obama seems to have found a soul mate.

Bob Woodward is an associate editor of The Post. His latest book is “The Price of Politics.” Evelyn M. Duffy contributed to this column.

The above column has led to other media picking up this story, too. This one below from Business Insider thanks to Lance.

Hagel Warned Obama Of Rogue Pentagon Leading A ‘New World Order’

Robert Johnson and Geoffrey Ingersoll, AP, Business Insider – January 28, 2013

As Chuck Hagel seeks support for his nomination to become Secretary of Defense, Bob Woodward has released a story about a White House trip the former Senator made in 2009.

The Washington Post reports:

According to an account that Hagel later gave, and is reported here for the first time, he told Obama: “We are at a time where there is a new world order.

“We don’t control it. You must question everything, every assumption, everything they” — the military and diplomats — “tell you. Any assumption 10 years old is out of date. You need to question our role. You need to question the military. You need to question what are we using the military for.”

Hagel warned the president about getting “bogged down” in Afghanistan and voiced concern over the deployment of 51,000 additional troops sent at the time to fight in the war.

The Post reports Hagel went so far as to say privately in 2011: “The president has not had commander-in-chief control of the Pentagon since Bush senior was president.”

Hagel is likely referring to Donald Rumsfeld’s battle for control of the military, both against generals and the president. The perception was that Bush was less the decider, and more a person to be advised of decisions already made.

Obama encountered his lack of control early in his first term. His stated intent was to draw down forces in Afghanistan. Later, through a controlled leak, Gen. Stanley McCrystal, then-commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, grudgingly leveraged 30,000 troops out of a stubborn Obama administration.

Some would call that normal politics, but again the perception is that the commander in chief is not really in charge of the military.

The common word on the street nowadays is that the U.S. needs to de-escalate its overseas military obligations, focusing more on a lighter “footprint” approach to global counterinsurgency. The assessment falls in line with the president’s Defense Secretary nomination.

As channeled by Ute Posegga-Rudel – January 29, 2013

http://radiantlyhappy.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/metatron-real-love-is-great-catalyst.html

VIDEO (recommended) [below]

MY DEAR ONES, I AM AA METATRON!

I AM here to tell you that all is fine. All is fine for all souls on earth, in which ever way life looks like! It does not matter whether you are conscious right now about who you are or whether you are aware of the ascension process. You all are alive in the Consciousness of the Creator Who is Pure Love and Light.

Even if the information of the new creation has not yet manifested in your body-mind, all Are, even if still asleep, in the womb of the Divine.

There are souls, and ever more among all of you, who are bearers of light, who hold the torch of love high, who are emanations of love itself among you all. And they are creating vortexes which are igniting successively the sparks of light in the hearts of those who are now ready. And there are many and growing!

I AM Metatron and I assure you that plans are underway to make it possible to awaken the masses in ways you would not have thought it was possible.

You see, the Divine Power of Creation is limitless! Being asleep and not aware of ones own Divinity is only a “problem” from the point of view of a duality that is based on the two pillars of light and darkness, on the pairs of opposites. So when you are standing on the side of the light you tend to feel a problem how to awaken the ones who still seem to dream in the dark of self-forgetfulness.

However this kind of awareness is locked into the specific design of duality, but which does not exist in in the Heart of God where there is Unity and Singleness without opposites. The Divine has many ways to awaken what is Its Own. And naturally, everything is Its Own!

Therefore do not worry about “others”. Firstly, because they are all different aspects of yourself. And secondly, when you understand this, what you do is to propel your own en-lightenment. That is to allow the Divine Light to break free in your own body-mind so that your body-mind becomes Light Itself!

The more of you do this, the more lights switch on in the One Body of Humanity, the more radiant this Great Human Body of Unity becomes. So do take care about your own Divine Process. This is all you have to do. Short-circuit yourself with the Divine Heart of All and shed your light on the path so that all humanity can step into it.

Gaia is waiting for all her children and it is She Who makes sure that no one is lost.

All who read this message and desire to be awakened in their heart are called to unite with Faith their heart with the Divine Heart. And it will happen in an instant. Even if you are not aware of it, know that it happened for each one of you. And if you continue to assume the Re-Connection with your Source with faith, it will show the Signs to you very soon in your own body-mind and therefore in your life.

It is merely your mind that doubts and cannot see and feel Reality. Reality Is your in-separable connection and unity with God, the Divine, Your Source, or however you want to name the Truth in which you are arising.

Your consent to reconnect Is the very act that makes this unity-union happen. And the process begins. Your mere agreement and willingness Is the initiation into the process of ascension that is promised to you.

In which way your ascension will occur, do not worry about it. It can happen in many ways, including through the death process. No soul will be left behind or be forced to reincarnate again somewhere else in a 3th dimensional circumstance. But every soul has the chance to be reborn on New Ascended Earth. And this means ascension for every soul, who is prepared for Love.

Therefore your service is important to live this Love among your human family so that Love is known again. It is the Very Force, when Real and True, that changes hearts and lives.

The experience of Real Love which is unconditional, is the Great Catalyst that opens the heart and awakens in the being the remembrance of the soul.

I AM Metatron, and I Am here to assist your Re-Connection with your Own Divine Source, as your Re-Connection is Inherent in the Present Creation Process that Is Your Ascension. This is the Will of the Creator! And I Am a Servant of the Divine Will.

All is One Great Process and we All are taking part in It. Therefore each one of you is an integral piece of the total fabric of Divine Creation.

Do not presume any longer separation but understand that there is Only One Light, One Consciousness, One Heart in which you all participate and play your unique part.

Therefore the One Heart of God or Divine Reality is the Totality of all your hearts, while all your hearts are arising in That One Great Heart.

Marvel about this More than Wonderful Divine Mystery and Be the Love that You Already Are!

I AM AA Metatron!

Message conveyed by Ute

Copyright© 2012. All rights reserved: Ute Posegga-Rudel, http://radiantlyhappy.blogspot.com

Working Toward a New Paradigm: Coming Together, Demanding Truth and Making Contact (Part 2/3)