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Gary Edwards

'Clinton death list': 33 spine-tingling cases - 0 views

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    "(Editor's note: This list was originally published in August 2016 and has gone viral on the web. WND is running it again as American voters cast their ballots for the nation's next president on Election Day.) How many people do you personally know who have died mysteriously? How about in plane crashes or car wrecks? Bizarre suicides? People beaten to death or murdered in a hail of bullets? And what about violent freak accidents - like separate mountain biking and skiing collisions in Aspen, Colorado? Or barbells crushing a person's throat? Bill and Hillary Clinton attend a funeral Apparently, if you're Bill or Hillary Clinton, the answer to that question is at least 33 - and possibly many more. Talk-radio star Rush Limbaugh addressed the issue of the "Clinton body count" during an August show. "I swear, I could swear I saw these stories back in 1992, back in 1993, 1994," Limbaugh said. He cited a report from Rachel Alexander at Townhall.com titled, "Clinton body count or left-wing conspiracy? Three with ties to DNC mysteriously die." Limbaugh said he recalled Ted Koppel, then-anchor of ABC News' "Nightline," routinely having discussions on the issue following the July 20, 1993, death of White House Deputy Counsel Vince Foster. In fact, Limbaugh said, he appeared on Koppel's show. "One of the things I said was, 'Who knows what happened here? But let me ask you a question.' I said, 'Ted, how many people do you know in your life who've been murdered? Ted, how many people do you know in your life that have died under suspicious circumstances?' "Of course, the answer is zilch, zero, nada, none, very few," Limbaugh chuckled. "Ask the Clintons that question. And it's a significant number. It's a lot of people that they know who have died, who've been murdered. "And the same question here from Rachel Alexander. It's amazing the cycle that exists with the Clintons. [Citing Townhall]: 'What it
Gary Edwards

The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever - and the VESTS Solution - 0 views

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    excerpt: Uber financial investigative journalist Matt Taibbi has discovered what we too realized when we began to scrutinize the financial industry. In his latest article, he writes, "Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever." The article's cut line is, "The Illuminati were amateurs. The second huge financial scandal of the year reveals the real international conspiracy: There's no price the big banks can't fix." Taibbi's incredulity is evident throughout the article, as well it should be. The interest-rate swap market is part of the larger derivatives market that totals over one billion TRILLION dollars............................... "Given the endless financial scandals that keep sweeping across the industry, it is fairly obvious that this regulatory system needs a good deal of improvement. In fact, I think that it may be no coincidence that so much is being revealed now. The idea is surely to create the conditions for another international regulatory effort that will end up further controlling what is left of free-market capital raising. It is a global game for globalists. The game is to regulate everything and then to position oneself above the regulations and above the governments that wield them. This gives you tremendous power over everyone else. One of the tools being used to whip up sentiment for a larger regulatory revisiting is scandal and more scandal. There have been revelations of so-called crooked practices in a number of areas lately, mostly in the area of industry pricing. It turns out that many standard prices are set via indications of interest rather than outright competition. We can see the same system at work in the gold market, where a small group of wise men set the price for physical gold every day. And now, as Taibbi and others have revealed, the dysfunctional system also affects interest rate swaps. This has incensed Taibbi, who opens his article as follows: Conspiracy theorists of the world, believers in the
Gary Edwards

10 Things That Every American Should Know About The Federal Reserve - 1 views

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    Awful stuff.  Brace yoruselves, the facts will make you wretch. excerpt: The American people got so upset about the bailouts that Congress gave to the Wall Street banks and to the big automakers, but did you know that the biggest bailouts of all were given out by the Federal Reserve? Thanks to a very limited audit of the Federal Reserve that Congress approved a while back, we learned that the Fed made trillions of dollars in secret bailout loans to the big Wall Street banks during the last financial crisis.  They even secretly loaned out hundreds of billions of dollars to foreign banks. According to the results of the limited Fed audit mentioned above, a total of $16.1 trillion in secret loans were made by the Federal Reserve between December 1, 2007 and July 21, 2010. The following is a list of loan recipients that was taken directly from page 131 of the audit report.... Citigroup - $2.513 trillion Morgan Stanley - $2.041 trillion Merrill Lynch - $1.949 trillion Bank of America - $1.344 trillion Barclays PLC - $868 billion Bear Sterns - $853 billion Goldman Sachs - $814 billion Royal Bank of Scotland - $541 billion JP Morgan Chase - $391 billion Deutsche Bank - $354 billion UBS - $287 billion Credit Suisse - $262 billion Lehman Brothers - $183 billion Bank of Scotland - $181 billion BNP Paribas - $175 billion Wells Fargo - $159 billion Dexia - $159 billion Wachovia - $142 billion Dresdner Bank - $135 billion Societe Generale - $124 billion "All Other Borrowers" - $2.639 trillion So why haven't we heard more about this? This is scandalous. In addition, it turns out that the Fed paid enormous sums of money to the big Wall Street banks to help "administer" these nearly interest-free loans....
Gary Edwards

Jim Kunstler's 2014 Forecast - Burning Down The House | Zero Hedge - 0 views

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    Incredible must read analysis. Take away: the world is going to go "medevil". It's the only way out of this mess. Since the zero hedge layout is so bad, i'm going to post as much of the article as Diigo will allow: Jim Kunstler's 2014 Forecast - Burning Down The House Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/06/2014 19:36 -0500 Submitted by James H. Kunstler of Kunstler.com , Many of us in the Long Emergency crowd and like-minded brother-and-sisterhoods remain perplexed by the amazing stasis in our national life, despite the gathering tsunami of forces arrayed to rock our economy, our culture, and our politics. Nothing has yielded to these forces already in motion, so far. Nothing changes, nothing gives, yet. It's like being buried alive in Jell-O. It's embarrassing to appear so out-of-tune with the consensus, but we persevere like good soldiers in a just war. Paper and digital markets levitate, central banks pull out all the stops of their magical reality-tweaking machine to manipulate everything, accounting fraud pervades public and private enterprise, everything is mis-priced, all official statistics are lies of one kind or another, the regulating authorities sit on their hands, lost in raptures of online pornography (or dreams of future employment at Goldman Sachs), the news media sprinkles wishful-thinking propaganda about a mythical "recovery" and the "shale gas miracle" on a credulous public desperate to believe, the routine swindles of medicine get more cruel and blatant each month, a tiny cohort of financial vampire squids suck in all the nominal wealth of society, and everybody else is left whirling down the drain of posterity in a vortex of diminishing returns and scuttled expectations. Life in the USA is like living in a broken-down, cob-jobbed, vermin-infested house that needs to be gutted, disinfected, and rebuilt - with the hope that it might come out of the restoration process retaining the better qualities of our heritage.
Paul Merrell

CCC | GCHQ to face European Court over mass surveillance - 0 views

  • Three of Britain’s most prominent campaign groups have today announced the launch of a legal challenge against the actions of GCHQ, alleging it has illegally intruded on the privacy of millions of British and European citizens. Big Brother Watch, the Open Rights Group and English PEN, together with German internet activist Constanze Kurz, have filed papers at the European Court of Human Rights bringing an action against the UK Government.

 They allege that by collecting vast amounts of data leaving or entering the UK, including the content of emails and social media messages, the UK’s spy agency has acted illegally. When details recently emerged in the media about the Prism and Tempora programmes, codenames for previously secret online surveillance operations, it was revealed that GCHQ has the capacity to collect more than 21 petabytes of data a day – equivalent to sending all the information in all the books in the British Library 192 times every 24 hours. The disclosures have raised serious parliamentary concerns both in Britain and at the EU level. Deighton Pierce Glynn solicitors represent the applicants, instructing Helen Mountfield QC of Matrix Chambers and Tom Hickman and Ravi Mehta of Blackstone Chambers. The legal action will be funded through donations at www.privacynotprism.org.uk
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    One I missed from October 3, 2013. The case was later filed with the European Court of Human Rights as "Joint Application Under Article 34 of Big Brother Watch, Open Rights Group, English Pen Dr Constanze Kurz (Applicants) - v - United Kingdom (Respondent)." There is no appeal from decisions of this Court.
Paul Merrell

EU to bug every car in UK with tracker chips - and Ministers admit they are powerless t... - 0 views

  • Every new car sold in Britain will have to have a ‘black box’ device fitted to track drivers’ movements from next year, under plans being imposed by the European Union.  Despite serious concerns about privacy and cost, UK ministers admit they are powerless to stop the Big Brother technology being forced on motorists and car makers. The Government believes the gadget, designed to help emergency services find crashed vehicles, will add at least £100 to the cost of vehicles without providing significant safety improvements.
  • Officials also fear the scheme, known as eCall, could be used by police or insurance companies to monitor motorists’ every move.   The European Commission has ruled that by October next year, all new cars and vans sold across Europe must be fitted with the technology, which contains a mobile phone-like SIM card designed to transmit the vehicle’s location to emergency services in the event of a crash.
Paul Merrell

Most Americans think Big Brother is spying on them | New York Post - 0 views

  • If you think Big Brother is watching you, you’re not alone. An astonishing 82 percent of Americans believe the United States has become an Orwellian dystopia in which the government spies on our every move, a new poll has found. The report, released Monday by the Monmouth University Polling Institute, also found that nearly three out of four Americans believe in the existence of a shadowy “deep state” cabal that secretly runs the government. This growing paranoia and faith in conspiracy theories — equally prevalent across political lines — is a “worrisome” omen for the future stability of our public institutions, said Patrick Murray, director of the polling institute. “The strength of our government relies on public faith in protecting our freedoms, which is not particularly robust,” he said. “And it’s not a Democratic or Republican issue. These concerns span the political spectrum.” Just over half of the public — from liberals to conservatives — is either “very worried” or “somewhat worried” the government is digging into their private lives. The poll found 57 percent of independents, 51 percent of Republicans and 50 percent of Democrats are at least “somewhat worried” about snooping.
Gary Edwards

Tea Party Primary prior to RINO Primary - Tea Party Command Center - 0 views

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    Reply by Gary Edwards to the question:   "Should the TEA Party select their slate of candidates prior to the establishment RiNO primaries?" This question really surprised me.  Of course the Tea Party should enter the establishment RiNO primary with a full slate of previously selected candidates for all levels of elected office. The reasons are obvious.  The establishment RiNOS consistently win by flooding the primary, encouraging multiple conservative and libertarian candidates; all the while knowing exactly who they have hand picked and expect the party to coalesce around. It's divide and conqueror.  The incredible thing is how routinely and with ease the RiNOS can rope-a-dope Rush Limbaugh and the entire cadre of conservative leadership.  And do it year after year. The rope-a-dope maneuver only requires that conservatives and libertarians wait for the establishment primary process to begin before they can begin the drawn out process needed to coalesce and vote as a block. As a block, the Tea Party wins easily.  And, they would actually get candidates ready to stand and fight for the Constitution. Once the game of electoral money ball starts though, it's impossible to select and coalesce based on principles.  Money drives the game.  And that plays right into the hands of the establishment. Think of it this way.  The Tea Party has the "votes" and the "ground game".  The establishment has the "money", and position to make the "rules". The current system of selecting candidates in the establishment primary ALWAYS results in "money" and "rule making" dominating and determining the winners.  The Tea Parties numerical and ground game advantages are quickly diluted, dispersed and split by multiple candidates vying for the same vote.  The RiNO slate wins through the fractional split of their Tea Party opponents, which they encourage and expect, and, the hardball application of their money and rules advantages.  The result is that less than a third of
Paul Merrell

FindLaw | Cases and Codes - 0 views

  • SMITH v. MARYLAND, 442 U.S. 735 (1979)
  • The telephone company, at police request, installed at its central offices a pen register to record the numbers dialed from the telephone at petitioner's home. Prior to his robbery trial, petitioner moved to suppress "all fruits derived from" the pen register. The Maryland trial court denied this motion, holding that the warrantless installation of the pen register did not violate the Fourth Amendment. Petitioner was convicted, and the Maryland Court of Appeals affirmed. Held: The installation and use of the pen register was not a "search" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, and hence no warrant was required. Pp. 739-746. (a) Application of the Fourth Amendment depends on whether the person invoking its protection can claim a "legitimate expectation of privacy" that has been invaded by government action. This inquiry normally embraces two questions: first, whether the individual has exhibited an actual (subjective) expectation of privacy; and second, whether his expectation is one that society is prepared to recognize as "reasonable." Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 . Pp. 739-741.
  • (b) Petitioner in all probability entertained no actual expectation of privacy in the phone numbers he dialed, and even if he did, his expectation was not "legitimate." First, it is doubtful that telephone users in general have any expectation of privacy regarding the numbers they dial, since they typically know that they must convey phone numbers to the telephone company and that the company has facilities for recording this information and does in fact record it for various legitimate business purposes. And petitioner did not demonstrate an expectation of privacy merely by using his home phone rather than some other phone, since his conduct, although perhaps calculated to keep the contents of his conversation private, was not calculated to preserve the privacy of the number he dialed. Second, even if petitioner did harbor some subjective expectation of privacy, this expectation was not one that society is prepared to recognize as "reasonable." When petitioner voluntarily conveyed numerical information to the phone company and "exposed" that information to its equipment in the normal course of business, he assumed the risk that the company would reveal the information [442 U.S. 735, 736]   to the police, cf. United States v. Miller, 425 U.S. 435 . Pp. 741-746. 283 Md. 156, 389 A. 2d 858, affirmed.
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    The Washington Post has reported that "on July 15 [2001], the secret surveillance court allowed the NSA to resume bulk collection under the court's own authority. The opinion, which remains highly classified, was based on a provision of electronic surveillance law, known as "pen register, trap and trace," that was written to allow law enforcement officers to obtain the phone numbers of incoming and outgoing calls from a single telephone line." .  The seminal case on pen registers is the Supreme Court's 1979 Smith v. Maryland decision, bookmarked here and the Clerk's syllabus highlighted, with the Court's discussion on the same web page. We will be hearing a lot about this case decision in the weeks and months to come.  Let it suffice for now to record a few points of what my antenna are telling me:  -- Both technology and the law have moved on since then. We are 34 years down the line from the Smith decision. Its pronouncements have been sliced and diced by subsequent decisions. Not a single Justice who sat on the Smith case is still on the High Bench.   -- In Smith, a single pen register was used to obtain calling information from a single telephone number by law enforcement officials. In the present circumstance, we face an Orwellian situation of a secret intelligence agency with no law enforcement authority forbidden by law from conducting domestic surveillance perusing and all digital communications of the entire citizenry. -- The NSA has been gathering not only information analogous to pen register results but also the communications of American citizens themselves. The communications themselves --- the contents --- are subject to the 4th Amendment warrant requirement. Consider the circuitous route of the records ordered to be disclosed in the Verizon FISA order. Verizon was ordered to disclose them to the FBI, not to the NSA. But then the FBI apparently forwards the records to the NSA, who has both the "pen register
Paul Merrell

The American Deep State, Deep Events, and Off-the-Books Financing | Global Research - 0 views

  • It is alleged that some of the bail money that released Sturgis and the other Watergate burglars was drug money from the CIA asset turned drug trafficker, Manuel Artime, and delivered by Artime’s money-launderer, Ramón Milián Rodríguez. After the Iran-Contra scandal went public, Milián Rodríguez was investigated by a congressional committee – not for Watergate, but because, in support of the Contras, he had managed two Costa Rican seafood companies, Frigorificos and Ocean Hunter, that laundered drug money.6
  • In the 1950s Wall Street was a dominating complex. It included not just banks and other financial institutions but also the oil majors whose cartel arrangements were successfully defended against the U.S. Government by the Wall Street law firm Sullivan and Cromwell, home to the Dulles brothers. The inclusion of Wall Street conforms with Franklin Roosevelt’s observation in 1933 to his friend Col. E.M. House that “The real truth … is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the Government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson.”18 FDR’s insight is well illustrated by the efficiency with which a group of Wall Street bankers (including Nelson Rockefeller’s grandfather Nelson Aldrich) were able in a highly secret meeting in 1910 to establish the Federal Reserve System – a system which in effect reserved oversight of the nation’s currency supply and of all America’s banks in the not impartial hands of its largest.19 The political clout of the quasi-governmental Federal Reserve Board was clearly demonstrated in 2008, when Fed leadership secured instant support from two successive administrations for public money to rescue the reckless management of Wall Street banks: banks Too Big To Fail, and of course far Too Big To Jail, but not Too Big To Bail.20
  • since its outset, the CIA has always had access to large amounts of off-the books or offshore funds to support its activities. Indeed, the power of the purse has usually worked in an opposite sense, since those in control of deep state offshore funds supporting CIA activities have for decades also funded members of Congress and of the executive – not vice versa. The last six decades provide a coherent and continuous picture of historical direction being provided by this deep state power of the purse, trumping and sometimes reversing the conventional state. Let us resume some of the CIA’s sources of offshore and off-the-books funding for its activities. The CIA’s first covert operation was the use of “over $10 million in captured Axis funds to influence the [Italian] election [of 1948].”25 (The fundraising had begun at the wealthy Brook Club in New York; but Allen Dulles, then still a Wall Street lawyer, persuaded Washington, which at first had preferred a private funding campaign, to authorize the operation through the National Security Council and the CIA.)26 Dulles, together with George Kennan and James Forrestal, then found a way to provide a legal source for off-the-books CIA funding, under the cover of the Marshall Plan. The three men “helped devise a secret codicil [to the Marshall Plan] that gave the CIA the capability to conduct political warfare. It let the agency skim millions of dollars from the plan.”27
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  • The international lawyers of Wall Street did not hide from each other their shared belief that they understood better than Washington the requirements for running the world. As John Foster Dulles wrote in the 1930s to a British colleague, The word “cartel” has here assumed the stigma of a bogeyman which the politicians are constantly attacking. The fact of the matter is that most of these politicians are highly insular and nationalistic and because the political organization of the world has under such influence been so backward, business people who have had to cope realistically with international problems have had to find ways for getting through and around stupid political barriers.21
  • In the 1960s and especially the 1970s America began to import more and more oil from the Middle East. But the negative effect on the U.S. balance of payments was offset by increasing arms and aviation sales to Iran and Saudi Arabia. Contracts with companies like Northrop and especially Lockheed (the builder of the CIA’s U-2) included kickbacks to arms brokers, like Kodama Yoshio in Japan and Adnan Khashoggi in Saudi Arabia, who were also important CIA agents. Lockheed alone later admitted to the Church Committee that it had provided $106 million in commissions to Khashoggi between 1970 and 1975, more than ten times what it had paid to the next most important connection, Kodama.31 These funds were then used by Khashoggi and Kodama to purchase pro-Western influence. But Khashoggi, advised by a team of ex-CIA Americans like Miles Copeland and Edward Moss, distributed cash, and sometimes provided women, not just in Saudi Arabia but around the world – including cash to congressmen and President Nixon in the United States.32 Khashoggi in effect served as a “cutout,” or representative, in a number of operations forbidden to the CIA and the companies he worked with. Lockheed, for one, was conspicuously absent from the list of military contractors who contributed illicitly to Nixon’s 1972 election campaign. But there was no law prohibiting, and nothing else to prevent their official representative, Khashoggi, from cycling $200 million through the bank of Nixon’s friend Bebe Rebozo.33
  • The most dramatic use of off-the-books drug profits to finance foreign armies was seen in the 1960s CIA-led campaign in Laos. There the CIA supplied airstrips and planes to support a 30,000-man drug-financed Hmong army. At one point Laotian CIA station chief Theodore Shackley even called in CIA aircraft in support of a ground battle to seize a huge opium caravan on behalf of the larger Royal Laotian Army.30
  • At the time of the Marshall Plan slush fund in Europe, the CIA also took steps which resulted in drug money to support anti-communist armies in the Far East. In my book American War Machine I tell how the CIA, using former OSS operative Paul Helliwell, created two proprietary firms as infrastructure for a KMT army in Burma, an army which quickly became involved in managing and developing the opium traffic there. The two firms were SEA Supply Inc. in Bangkok and CAT Inc. (later Air America) in Taiwan. Significantly, the CIA split ownership of CAT Inc.’s plane with KMT bankers in Taiwan – this allowed the CIA to deny responsibility for the flights when CAT planes, having delivered arms from Sea Supply to the opium-growing army, then returned to Taiwan with opium for the KMT. Even after the CIA officially severed its connection to the KMT Army in 1953, its proprietary firm Sea Supply Inc. supplied arms for a CIA-led paramilitary force, PARU, that also was financed, at least in part, by the drug traffic.28 Profits from Thailand filtered back, in part through the same Paul Helliwell, as donations to members from both parties in Congress. Thai dictator Phao Sriyanon, a drug trafficker who was then alleged to be the richest man in the world, hired lawyer Paul Helliwell…as a lobbyist in addition to [former OSS chief William] Donovan [who in 1953-55 was US Ambassador to Thailand]. Donovan and Helliwell divided the Congress between them, with Donovan assuming responsibility for the Republicans and Helliwell taking the Democrats.29
  • The power exerted by Khashoggi was not limited to his access to funds and women. By the 1970s, Khashoggi and his aide Edward Moss owned the elite Safari Club in Kenya.34 The exclusive club became the first venue for another and more important Safari Club: an alliance between Saudi and other intelligence agencies that wished to compensate for the CIA’s retrenchment in the wake of President Carter’s election and Senator Church’s post-Watergate reforms.35
  • As former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki bin Faisal once told Georgetown University alumni, In 1976, after the Watergate matters took place here, your intelligence community was literally tied up by Congress. It could not do anything. It could not send spies, it could not write reports, and it could not pay money. In order to compensate for that, a group of countries got together in the hope of fighting Communism and established what was called the Safari Club. The Safari Club included France, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Iran.36 Prince Turki’s candid remarks– “your intelligence community was literally tied up by Congress. …. In order to compensate for that, a group of countries got together … and established what was called the Safari Club.” – made it clear that the Safari Club, operating at the level of the deep state, was expressly created to overcome restraints established by political decisions of the public state in Washington (decisions not only of Congress but also of President Carter).
  • Specifically Khashoggi’s activities involving corruption by sex and money, after they too were somewhat curtailed by Senator Church’s post-Watergate reforms, appear to have been taken up quickly by the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), a Muslim-owned bank where Khashoggi’s friend and business partner Kamal Adham, the Saudi intelligence chief and a principal Safari Club member, was a part-owner.37 In the 1980s BCCI, and its allied shipping empire owned by the Pakistani Gokal brothers, supplied financing and infrastructure for the CIA’s (and Saudi Arabia’s) biggest covert operation of the decade, support for the Afghan mujahedin. To quote from a British book excerpted in the Senate BCCI Report: “BCCI’s role in assisting the U.S. to fund the Mujaheddin guerrillas fighting the Soviet occupation is drawing increasing attention. The bank’s role began to surface in the mid-1980′s when stories appeared in the New York Times showing how American security operatives used Oman as a staging post for Arab funds. This was confirmed in the Wall Street Journal of 23 October 1991 which quotes a member of the late General Zia’s cabinet as saying ‘It was Arab money that was pouring through BCCI.’ The Bank which carried the money on from Oman to Pakistan and into Afghanistan was National Bank of Oman, where BCCI owned 29%.”38
  • In 1981 Vice-president Bush and Saudi Prince Bandar, working together, won congressional approval for massive new arms sales of AWACS (airborne warning and control system) aircraft to Saudi Arabia. In the $5.5 billion package, only ten percent covered the cost of the planes. Most of the rest was an initial installment on what was ultimately a $200 billion program for military infrastructure through Saudi Arabia.41 It also supplied a slush fund for secret ops, one administered for over a decade in Washington by Prince Bandar, after he became the Saudi Ambassador (and a close friend of the Bush family, nicknamed “Bandar Bush”). In the words of researcher Scott Armstrong, the fund was “the ultimate government-off-the-books.” Not long after the AWACS sale was approved, Prince Bandar thanked the Reagan administration for the vote by honoring a request by William Casey that he deposit $10 million in a Vatican bank to be used in a campaign against the Italian Communist Party. Implicit in the AWACS deal was a pledge by the Saudis to fund anticommunist guerrilla groups in Afghanistan, Angola, and elsewhere that were supported by the Reagan Administration.42 The Vatican contribution, “for the CIA’s long-time clients, the Christian Democratic Party,” of course continued a CIA tradition dating back to 1948.
  • The activities of the Safari Club were exposed after Iranians in 1979 seized the records of the US Embassy in Tehran. But BCCI support for covert CIA operations, including Iran-Contra, continued until BCCI’s criminality was exposed at the end of the decade. Meanwhile, with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, Washington resumed off-budget funding for CIA covert operations under cover of arms contracts to Saudi Arabia. But this was no longer achieved through kickbacks to CIA assets like Khashoggi, after Congress in 1977 made it illegal for American corporations to make payments to foreign officials. Instead arrangements were made for payments to be returned, through either informal agreements or secret codicils in the contracts, by the Saudi Arabian government itself. Two successive arms deals, the AWACS deal of 1981 and the al-Yamamah deal of 1985, considerably escalated the amount of available slush funds.
  • It is reported in two books that the BCCI money flow through the Bank of Oman was handled in part by the international financier Bruce Rappaport, who for a decade, like Khashoggi, kept a former CIA officer on his staff.39 Rappaport’s partner in his Inter Maritime Bank, which interlocked with BCCI, was E.P. Barry, who earlier had been a partner in the Florida money-laundering banks of Paul Helliwell.40
  • After a second proposed major U.S. arms sale met enhanced opposition in Congress in 1985 from the Israeli lobby, Saudi Arabia negotiated instead a multi-billion pound long-term contract with the United Kingdom – the so-called al-Yamamah deal. Once again overpayments for the purchased weapons were siphoned off into a huge slush fund for political payoffs, including “hundreds of millions of pounds to the ex-Saudi ambassador to the US, Prince Bandar bin Sultan.”43 According to Robert Lacey, the payments to Prince Bandar were said to total one billion pounds over more than a decade.44 The money went through a Saudi Embassy account in the Riggs Bank, Washington; according to Trento, the Embassy’s use of the Riggs Bank dated back to the mid-1970s, when, in his words, “the Saudi royal family had taken over intelligence financing for the United States.”45 More accurately, the financing was not for the United States, but for the American deep state.
  • This leads me to the most original and important thing I have to say. I believe that these secret funds from BCCI and Saudi arms deals – first Khashoggi’s from Lockheed and then Prince Bandar’s from the AWACS and al-Yamamah deals – are the common denominator in all of the major structural deep events (SDEs) that have afflicted America since the supranational Safari Club was created in l976. I am referring specifically to 1) the covert US intervention in Afghanistan (which started about 1978 as a Safari Club intervention, more than a year before the Russian invasion), 2) the 1980 October Surprise, which together with an increase in Saudi oil prices helped assure Reagan’s election and thus give us the Reagan Revolution, 3) Iran-Contra in 1984-86, 4) and – last but by no means least – 9/11. That is why I believe it is important to analyze these events at the level of the supranational deep state. Let me just cite a few details.
  • 1) the 1980 October Surprise. According to Robert Parry, Alexandre de Marenches, the principal founder of the Safari Club, arranged for William Casey (a fellow Knight of Malta) to meet with Iranian and Israeli representatives in Paris in July and October 1980, where Casey promised delivery to Iran of needed U.S. armaments, in exchange for a delay in the return of the U.S. hostages in Iran until Reagan was in power. Parry suspects a role of BCCI in both the funding of payoffs for the secret deal and the subsequent flow of Israeli armaments to Iran.46 In addition, John Cooley considers de Marenches to be “the Safari Club player who probably did most to draw the US into the Afghan adventure.”47 2) the Iran-Contra scandal (including the funding of the Contras, the illegal Iran arms sales, and support for the Afghan mujahideen There were two stages to Iran-Contra. For twelve months in 1984-85, after meeting with Casey, King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, in the spirit of the AWACS deal, supported the Nicaraguan Contras via Prince Bandar through a BCCI bank account in Miami. But in April 1985, after the second proposed arms sale fell through, McFarlane, fearing AIPAC opposition, terminated this direct Saudi role. Then Khashoggi, with the help of Miles Copeland, devised a new scheme in which Iranian arms sales involving Israel would fund the contras. The first stage of Iran-Contra was handled by Prince Bandar through a BCCI account in Miami; the second channel was handled by Khashoggi through a different BCCI account in Montecarlo. The Kerry-Brown Senate Report on BCCI also transmitted allegations from a Palestinian-American businessman, Sam Bamieh, that Khashoggi’s funds from BCCI for arms sales to Iran came ultimately from King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, who “was hoping to gain favor with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.”48
  • 3) 9/11 When the two previously noted alleged hijackers or designated culprits, al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi, arrived in San Diego, a Saudi named Omar al-Bayoumi both housed them and opened bank accounts for them. Soon afterwards Bayoumi’s wife began receiving monthly payments from a Riggs bank account held by Prince Bandar’s wife, Princess Haifa bint Faisal.49 In addition, Princess Haifa sent regular monthly payments of between $2,000 and $3,500 to the wife of Osama Basnan, believed by various investigators to be a spy for the Saudi government. In all, “between 1998 and 2002, up to US $73,000 in cashier cheques was funneled by Bandar’s wife Haifa … – to two Californian families known to have bankrolled al-Midhar and al-Hazmi.”50 Although these sums in themselves are not large, they may have been part of a more general pattern. Author Paul Sperry claims there was possible Saudi government contact with at least four other of the alleged hijackers in Virginia and Florida. For example, “9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta and other hijackers visited s home owned by Esam Ghazzawi, a Saudi adviser to the nephew of King Fahd.”51
  • But it is wrong to think of Bandar’s accounts in the Riggs Bank as uniquely Saudi. Recall that Prince Bandar’s payments were said to have included “a suitcase containing more than $10 million” that went to a Vatican priest for the CIA’s long-time clients, the Christian Democratic Party.52 In 2004, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Riggs Bank, which was by then under investigation by the Justice Department for money laundering, “has had a longstanding relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency, according to people familiar with Riggs operations and U.S. government officials.”53 Meanwhile President Obiang of Equatorial Guinea “siphoned millions from his country’s treasury with the help of Riggs Bank in Washington, D.C.”54 For this a Riggs account executive, Simon Kareri, was indicted. But Obiang enjoyed State Department approval for a contract with the private U.S. military firm M.P.R.I., with an eye to defending offshore oil platforms owned by ExxonMobil, Marathon, and Hess.55 Behind the CIA relationship with the Riggs Bank was the role played by the bank’s overseas clients in protecting U.S. investments, and particularly (in the case of Saudi Arabia and Equatorial Guinea), the nation’s biggest oil companies.
  • The issue of Saudi Embassy funding of at least two (and possibly more) of the alleged 9/11 hijackers (or designated culprits) is so sensitive that, in the 800-page Joint Congressional Inquiry Report on 9/11, the entire 28-page section dealing with Saudi financing was very heavily redacted.56 A similar censorship occurred with the 9/11 Commission Report: According to Philip Shenon, several staff members felt strongly that they had demonstrated a close Saudi government connection to the hijackers, but a senior staff member purged almost all of the most serious allegations against the Saudi government, and moved the explosive supporting evidence to the report’s footnotes.57 It is probable that this cover-up was not designed for the protection of the Saudi government itself, so much as of the supranational deep state connection described in this essay, a milieu where American, Saudi, and Israeli elements all interact covertly. One sign of this is that Prince Bandar himself, sensitive to the anti-Saudi sentiment that 9/11 caused, has been among those calling for the U.S. government to make the redacted 28 pages public.58
  • This limited exposure of the nefarious use of funds generated from Saudi arms contracts has not created a desire in Washington to limit these contracts. On the contrary, in 2010, the second year of the Obama administration, The Defense Department … notified Congress that it wants to sell $60 billion worth of advanced aircraft and weapons to Saudi Arabia. The proposed sale, which includes helicopters, fighter jets, radar equipment and satellite-guided bombs, would be the largest arms deal to another country in U.S. history if the sale goes through and all purchases are made.59 The sale did go through; only a few congressmen objected.60 The deep state, it would appear, is alive and well, and impervious to exposures of it. It is clear that for some decades the bottom-upwards processes of democracy have been increasingly supplanted by the top-downwards processes of the deep state.
  • But the deeper strain in history, I would like to believe, is in the opposite direction: the ultimate diminution of violent top-down forces by the bottom-up forces of an increasingly integrated civil society.61 In the last months we have had Wikileaks, then Edward Snowden, and now the fight between the CIA and its long-time champion in Congress, Dianne Feinstein. It may be time to see a systemic correction, much as we did after Daniel Ellsberg’s release of the Pentagon Papers, which was followed by Watergate and the Church Committee reforms. I believe that to achieve this correction there must be a better understanding of deep events and of the deep state. Ultimately, however, whether we see a correction or not will depend, at least in part, on how much people care.
Paul Merrell

LAPD scopes out Israeli drones, 'Big Data' solutions | Nation | Jewish Journal - 0 views

  • For the first nine days of February, eight of the Los Angeles Police Department’s top brass were 7,500 miles away from home, being shuttled around Israel in a minibus.
  • LAPD Deputy Chief Jose Perez, a good-natured 30-year veteran of the department who oversees its central bureau, tweeted updates at nearly every stop. On Feb. 2, he shared a group photo of the Los Angeles delegation visiting the corporate headquarters of Nice Systems, an Israeli security and cyber intelligence company that can intercept and instantly analyze video, audio and text-based communications. (A seemingly tongue-in-cheek inspirational poster on the wall behind them reads: “Every voice deserves to be heard.”)
  • The group visited private security firms and drone manufacturers, as well as the terror-prone Ashdod Port, a museum in Sderot full of old rockets shot from nearby Gaza (the same one United States President Barack Obama visited on his 2008 campaign trip to Israel), and a “safe city” underground control center in the large suburb of Rishon LeZion, which receives live streams from more than 1,000 cameras with license plate recognition installed throughout the city.
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  • Frank was joined by seven of his fellow command staff at the Big Data Intelligence Conference hosted by i-HLS in the beach town of Herzliya, Israel, on Feb. 6. “On behalf of my chief of police, Chief Charlie Beck, and the 13,000-plus sworn and non-sworn members of the Los Angeles Police Department, a very heartfelt thanks to all of you for having me here,” Frank said in an opening statement for the conference, which brought together some of Israel’s — and the world’s — top cyber security and intelligence experts.
  • Frank said he was especially impressed by what he saw while visiting Israeli companies Nice Systems (as tweeted by Perez) and Verint, one of the companies whose services the National Security Administration (NSA) reportedly used in the infamous United States wiretapping scandal. Both companies already count the LAPD as a client. But, Frank said, “we’re looking at some of their additional solutions … They have a lot of new technologies that we are very much interested in.” Nice System’s  president of security, Yaron Tchwella, spoke at the conference about the company’s ability to help government agencies capture and store the billions of calls, emails, messages and social media posts that their populations generate each day, then analyze it in real time to detect potential threats.
  • Perez said he hoped the LAPD, too, would eventually be able to “use technology to incorporate all the systems that we have. That’s the wave of the future. We’re definitely looking at the ability to get that information out to the officers on the beat with a handheld. Something happens, and you’re looking at the handheld — almost like ‘The Bourne Supremacy’ — here’s a picture of the guy you’re looking for.”
  • Also in Khan’s crosshairs is Special Order 1, an LAPD policy that allows officers to document any otherwise lawful activity that they, or other members of the community, deem suspicious. (Including, for example, the photographing of certain government sites.) And new LAPD intel collection methods or surveillance drones, said Khan, would only be “adding more to their toolbox of being highly militarized in counterinsurgency forces” against protesters and movements such as Occupy. “Yet it is wrapped in this whole language of community policing.” Two separate L.A. Weekly investigations in 2012 found that the LAPD uses expensive StingRay devices, which can locate cellphones (and their users) by acting like cellphone towers, and license-plate recognition cameras that track millions of drivers. Although both devices technically require a warrant to be used in a police investigation, there is little way to know whether police are always complying with the rules.
  • Surveillance drones manufactured by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) and Sky Sapience were also hot items on the LAPD tour. Both Frank and Perez lit up when talking about the HoverMast, a new tethered drone from Sky Sapience that was just released to the IDF late last year. “There are several things on the wish list, but we did like Sky Sapience — that was incredible,” Perez said. “For me personally, just for my command, which is five stations, and all the special events that I have, crowd control and being able to see everything would be some technology that is needed immediately.” However, Frank added, the HoverMast “has its challenges: from a political standpoint, convincing our political leaders, and from a community standpoint, convincing the community that it’s not Big Brother watching over you.”
  • A spokeswoman for Sky Sapience said the HoverMast can intercept wireless communications, and its cameras are capable of facial recognition. A spokeswoman for IAI said that while showing LAPD officers their drones, the company “wanted to emphasize the fact that drones can be very helpful in giving intelligence in urban scenarios… you need it now, you need it quick, you need to see what’s inside a window, and what’s behind this building.”
  • Many of the companies attracting LAPD interest have one thing in common: They were formed by veterans of the IDF’s elite, top-secret 8200 Unit, better known as Israel’s version of the NSA.
  • Perez emphasized that as a local police agency, the LAPD has much tighter legal constraints than federal agencies to adhere to when adopting army-born surveillance and “big data” technologies.
Gary Edwards

The Ultimate Net Monitoring Tool: NARUS - 0 views

  •  
    Chilling stuff.  Note that Mark Klien is an important whistleblower whose testimony has helped expose the  Federal Government - NSA domestic dragnet that has violated the constitutional rights of hundreds of thousands of law abiding American citizens.  The question I have concerns cooperation between NSA NARUS spying and the IRS. We know that the IRS used key words such as "TEA PARTY", "PATRIOT", "Constitution", and "Tenth Amendment" to target American citizens.  Does the NSA NARUS target Americans in the same way?  Are there political enemy lists with background surveillance information now circulating through different government agencies based on this targeted and illegal spying? The first thing we need to do is protect whistle blowers who are risking it all to protect the constitutional rights of American citizens and save our country.   "The equipment that technician Mark Klein learned was installed in the National Security Agency's "secret room" inside AT&T's San Francisco switching office isn't some sinister Big Brother box designed solely to help governments eavesdrop on citizens' internet communications. Rather, it's a powerful commercial network-analysis product with all sorts of valuable uses for network operators. It just happens to be capable of doing things that make it one of the best internet spy tools around. "Anything that comes through (an internet protocol network), we can record," says Steve Bannerman, marketing vice president of Narus, a Mountain View, California, company. "We can reconstruct all of their e-mails along with attachments, see what web pages they clicked on, we can reconstruct their (voice over internet protocol) calls."" Narus' product, the Semantic Traffic Analyzer, is a software application that runs on standard IBM or Dell servers using the Linux operating system. It's renowned within certain circles for its ability to inspect traffic in real time on high-bandwidth pipes, identifying packets of interest as they r
Paul Merrell

Cut Off the NSA's Juice | Global Research - 0 views

  • The National Security Agency depends on huge computers that guzzle electricity in the service of the surveillance state. For the NSA’s top executives, maintaining a vast flow of juice to keep Big Brother nourished is essential — and any interference with that flow is unthinkable. But interference isn’t unthinkable. And in fact, it may be doable. Grassroots activists have begun to realize the potential to put the NSA on the defensive in nearly a dozen states where the agency is known to be running surveillance facilities, integral to its worldwide snoop operations. Organizers have begun to push for action by state legislatures to impede the electric, water and other services that sustain the NSA’s secretive outposts.
  • Those efforts are farthest along in the state of Washington, where a new bill in the legislature — the Fourth Amendment Protection Act — is a statutory nightmare for the NSA. The agency has a listening post in Yakima, in the south-central part of the state. The bill throws down a challenge to the NSA, seeking to block all state support for NSA activities violating the Fourth Amendment. For instance, that could mean a cutoff of electricity or water or other state-government services to the NSA site. And the measure also provides for withholding other forms of support, such as research and partnerships with state universities. Here’s the crux of the bill: “It is the policy of this state to refuse material support, participation, or assistance to any federal agency which claims the power, or with any federal law, rule, regulation, or order which purports to authorize, the collection of electronic data or metadata of any person pursuant to any action not based on a warrant that particularly describes the person, place, and thing to be searched or seized.” If the windup of that long sentence has a familiar ring, it should. The final dozen words are almost identical to key phrases in the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
  • In recent days, more than 15,000 people have signed a petition expressing support for the legislation. Launched by RootsAction.org, the petition is addressed to the bill’s two sponsors in the Washington legislature — Republican Rep. David Taylor, whose district includes the NSA facility in Yakima, and Democrat Luis Moscoso from the Seattle area. Meanwhile, a similar bill with the same title has just been introduced in the Tennessee legislature — taking aim at the NSA’s center based in Oak Ridge, Tenn. That NSA facility is a doozy: with several hundred scientists and computer specialists working to push supercomputers into new realms of mega-surveillance capacities. A new coalition, OffNow, is sharing information about model legislation. The group also points to known NSA locations in other states including Utah (in Bluffdale), Texas (San Antonio), Georgia (Augusta), Colorado (Aurora), Hawaii (Oahu) and West Virginia (Sugar Grove), along with the NSA’s massive headquarters at Fort Meade in Maryland. Grassroots action and legislative measures are also stirring in several of those states.
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  • “By working together to tackle the erosion of the Fourth Amendment presented by bulk data collection,” Kellegrew said, “people from across partisan divides are resurrecting the lost art of collaboration and in the process, rehabilitating the possibility of a functional American political dialogue denied to the people by dysfunction majority partisan hackery.” From another vantage point, this is an emerging faceoff between reliance on cynical violence and engagement in civic nonviolence.
  • Serving the warfare state and overall agendas for U.S. global dominance to the benefit of corporate elites, the NSA persists in doing violence to the Constitution’s civil-liberties amendments — chilling the First, smashing the Fourth and end-running the Fifth. Meanwhile, a nascent constellation of movements is striving to thwart the surveillance state, the shadowy companion of perpetual war. This is a struggle for power over what kind of future can be created for humanity. It’s time to stop giving juice to Big Brother.
Gary Edwards

Articles by Mark Dice - 0 views

  •  
    Libertarian writer and researcher, Mark Dice, has provided a list of articles he has written.  Mark's literary works include: ... "The Illuminati: Facts & Fiction" ...... separates and analyzes the various claims and evidence about the Illuminati, their history, beliefs, members, organizations, and activities. This is a supplement for Mark's previous book - ..... "The Resistance Manifesto",  which focuses more on the New World Order, the 9/11 attacks, Big Brother, and how the political agendas of the elite are fulfilling Bible prophecy.   .... "The New World Order" ....   His website, markdice.com has high light summary of his work that's quite interesting: A detailed analysis of the September 11th attacks and evidence they were aided by elements within U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies to be used as a reason to jumpstart the "War on Terror" and the erosion of privacy and personal liberties outlined in the constitution. The Knights Templar, the real Holy Grail, and the role the Templars played in the formation of the Illuminati mafia. Quotes from the original writings of the Illuminati founders and how the organization drew up plans over 200 years ago to take over every major institution of power and influence in the world through deception and criminal activity. An expose on the Bohemian Grove resort including quotes from President Richard Nixon, senator John Decamp, and information from Chris Jones who worked at the club and became an informant on the activities within the compound. The secrets of Freemasonry and a history of the organization and their influence on society and quotes from the bible of Freemasonry on how the organization knowingly deceives lower level members and nonmembers as to the true secrets and goals of the fraternity. The history and meaning of the mysterious Georgia Guidestones monument and why the elite want to reduce world population to 500 million by killing billions of people through wars and plagues. A history of
Paul Merrell

Eyes Over Compton: How Police Spied on a Whole City - Conor Friedersdorf - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • In a secret test of mass surveillance technology, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department sent a civilian aircraft* over Compton, California, capturing high-resolution video of everything that happened inside that 10-square-mile municipality. Compton residents weren't told about the spying, which happened in 2012. "We literally watched all of Compton during the times that we were flying, so we could zoom in anywhere within the city of Compton and follow cars and see people," Ross McNutt of Persistence Surveillance Systems told the Center for Investigative Reporting, which unearthed and did the first reporting on this important story. The technology he's trying to sell to police departments all over America can stay aloft for up to six hours. Like Google Earth, it enables police to zoom in on certain areas. And like TiVo, it permits them to rewind, so that they can look back and see what happened anywhere they weren't watching in real time.  If it's adopted, Americans can be policed like Iraqis and Afghanis under occupation–and at bargain price
  • Sgt. Douglas Iketani acknowledges that his agency hid the experiment to avoid public opposition. "This system was kind of kept confidential from everybody in the public,"he said. "A lot of people do have a problem with the eye in the sky, the Big Brother, so to mitigate those kinds of complaints we basically kept it pretty hush hush." That attitude ought to get a public employee summarily terminated. 
  • The CIR story reports that no police department has yet purchased this technology, not because the law enforcement community is unwilling to conduct mass surveillance of their fellow citizens without first gaining the public's consent, but because the cameras aren't yet good enough to identify the faces of individuals. It's hard to imagine that next technological barrier won't be broken soon.
Paul Merrell

Legally required video surveillance - The Washington Post - 1 views

  • Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has proposed an ordinance that would compel all gun dealers to video-record sales (“to discourage traffickers and buyers who use false identification”). Presumably the video recordings would have to be kept for an extended time, since future investigations that would use the video recordings could happen years after the sale. A similar New York state bill would require that the videos be kept for one year. Likewise, two weeks ago, Minnesota enacted a law — with much less fanfare — that would require video- or photo recording of people who come to sell cellular phones, with each recording to be kept for at least 30 days:
  • The ostensible focus of the law is on people who sell the phones (presumably in order to deter phone theft), but any video cameras — which “must be turned on at all times” — will also capture all cell phone buyers as well. The Center for Democracy & Technology has more on this statute. Likewise, last year, Minnesota enacted a similar law applicable to people who sell scrap vehicles, presumably aimed at sellers of stolen vehicles. I suspect that, especially if the gun sales videorecording bills are enacted, similar laws will be proposed for sales of alcohol (which is often sold to underage buyers who have fake IDs, or to straw purchasers who are buying on behalf of an underage buyer), for sales of marijuana in places where it has been legalized, for sales of legal substances that are nonetheless potential drug or bomb precursors, and so on.
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    And of course it's only a hop from the video surveillance database to the facial recognition database. This is straight out of George Orwell's "1984" novel. Big Brother wants to watch you at all times, whether your conduct is legal or not. But note that because these measures do not discriminate between the lawful and unlawful conduct there's a strong argument that a prohibited Fourth Amendment search and seizure is involved, without particularized suspicion of a particular crime, i.e., without "probable cause." 
Paul Merrell

Revealed: the top secret rules that allow NSA to use US data without a warrant | World ... - 0 views

  • Fisa court submissions show broad scope of procedures governing NSA's surveillance of Americans' communication• Document one: procedures used by NSA to target non-US persons• Document two: procedures used by NSA to minimise data collected from US persons
  • Top secret documents submitted to the court that oversees surveillance by US intelligence agencies show the judges have signed off on broad orders which allow the NSA to make use of information "inadvertently" collected from domestic US communications without a warrant.The Guardian is publishing in full two documents submitted to the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (known as the Fisa court), signed by Attorney General Eric Holder and stamped 29 July 2009. They detail the procedures the NSA is required to follow to target "non-US persons" under its foreign intelligence powers and what the agency does to minimize data collected on US citizens and residents in the course of that surveillance.The documents show that even under authorities governing the collection of foreign intelligence from foreign targets, US communications can still be collected, retained and used.
  • The procedures cover only part of the NSA's surveillance of domestic US communications. The bulk collection of domestic call records, as first revealed by the Guardian earlier this month, takes place under rolling court orders issued on the basis of a legal interpretation of a different authority, section 215 of the Patriot Act.
  •  
    Lots of gruesome detail in the article and even more in the documents. Another major leaked disclosure from the Big Brother secret arm of U.S. government. A cautionary warning: these are merely documents. They are not regulations as that term is understood under the Administrative Procedures Act. There may or may not be one or more secret Executive Orders requiring Agency personnel to adhere to what the documents say.  Even with agencies that are far more open to public scrutiny, it is common for agency staff to ignore regulations and statutes. Every time someone wins a lawsuit pursuant to the combination of the Administrative Procedures Act and some other federal law or regulation, one of the most common types of lawsuits against federal agencies, it is because agency staff violated the law or the regulation. It's a common situation even with agencies that have to operate in the sunlight. An agency allowed to operate without any right of the public to challenge its actions has even less incentive to adhere to its formal procedures.   So particularly with an agency permitted to operate in secret, the existence of these documents does not mean that they get more than an occasional wink and a nod by agency staff. That said, this is pretty gruesome reading for a civil libertarian and is also rife with vagueness, ambiguity, and loopholes. Not surprisingly though for an experienced lawyer; those who deliberately trample on others' rights rarely write written confessions.
Paul Merrell

LEAKED: Secret Negotiations to Let Big Brother Go Global | Wolf Street - 0 views

  • Much has been written, at least in the alternative media, about the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), two multilateral trade treaties being negotiated between the representatives of dozens of national governments and armies of corporate lawyers and lobbyists (on which you can read more here, here and here). However, much less is known about the decidedly more secretive Trade in Services Act (TiSA), which involves more countries than either of the other two. At least until now, that is. Thanks to a leaked document jointly published by the Associated Whistleblowing Press and Filtrala, the potential ramifications of the treaty being hashed out behind hermetically sealed doors in Geneva are finally seeping out into the public arena.
  • If signed, the treaty would affect all services ranging from electronic transactions and data flow, to veterinary and architecture services. It would almost certainly open the floodgates to the final wave of privatization of public services, including the provision of healthcare, education and water. Meanwhile, already privatized companies would be prevented from a re-transfer to the public sector by a so-called barring “ratchet clause” – even if the privatization failed. More worrisome still, the proposal stipulates that no participating state can stop the use, storage and exchange of personal data relating to their territorial base. Here’s more from Rosa Pavanelli, general secretary of Public Services International (PSI):
  • The leaked documents confirm our worst fears that TiSA is being used to further the interests of some of the largest corporations on earth (…) Negotiation of unrestricted data movement, internet neutrality and how electronic signatures can be used strike at the heart of individuals’ rights. Governments must come clean about what they are negotiating in these secret trade deals. Fat chance of that, especially in light of the fact that the text is designed to be almost impossible to repeal, and is to be “considered confidential” for five years after being signed. What that effectively means is that the U.S. approach to data protection (read: virtually non-existent) could very soon become the norm across 50 countries spanning the breadth and depth of the industrial world.
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  • The main players in the top-secret negotiations are the United States and all 28 members of the European Union. However, the broad scope of the treaty also includes Australia, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Hong Kong, Iceland, Israel, Japan, Liechtenstein, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, South Korea, Switzerland, Taiwan and Turkey. Combined they represent almost 70 percent of all trade in services worldwide. An explicit goal of the TiSA negotiations is to overcome the exceptions in GATS that protect certain non-tariff trade barriers, such as data protection. For example, the draft Financial Services Annex of TiSA, published by Wikileaks in June 2014, would allow financial institutions, such as banks, the free transfer of data, including personal data, from one country to another. As Ralf Bendrath, a senior policy advisor to the MEP Jan Philipp Albrecht, writes in State Watch, this would constitute a radical carve-out from current European data protection rules:
Gary Edwards

Global Financial Meltdown Coming? Clear Signs That The Great Derivatives Crisis Has Now... - 0 views

  • No one “understands” derivatives. How many times have readers heard that thought expressed (please round-off to the nearest thousand)? Why does no one understand derivatives? For many; the answer to that question is that they have simply been thinking too hard. For others; the answer is that they don’t “think” at all. Derivatives are bets. This is not a metaphor, or analogy, or generalization. Derivatives are bets. Period. That’s all they ever were. That’s all they ever can be.
  • One very large financial institution that appears to be in serious trouble with these financial weapons of mass destruction is Glencore.  At one time Glencore was considered to be the 10th largest company on the entire planet, but now it appears to be coming apart at the seams, and a great deal of their trouble seems to be tied to derivatives.  The following comes from Zero Hedge… Of particular concern, they said, was Glencore’s use of financial instruments such as derivatives to hedge its trading of physical goods against price swings. The company had $9.8 billion in gross derivatives in June 2015, down from $19 billion in such positions at the end of 2014, causing investors to query the company about the swing. Glencore told investors the number went down so drastically because of changes in market volatility this year, according to people briefed by Glencore. When prices vary significantly, it can increase the value of hedging positions. Last year, there were extreme price moves, particularly in the crude-oil market, which slid from about $114 a barrel in June to less than $60 a barrel by the end of December.
  • That response wasn’t satisfying, said Michael Leithead, a bond fund portfolio manager at EFG Asset Management, which managed $12 billion as of the end of March and has invested in Glencore’s debt.
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  • According to Bank of America, the global financial system has about 100 billion dollars of exposure overall to Glencore.  So if Glencore goes bankrupt that is going to be a major event.  At this point, Glencore is probably the most likely candidate to be “the next Lehman Brothers”. And it isn’t just Glencore that is in trouble.  Other financial giants such as Trafigura are in deep distress as well.  Collectively, the global financial system has approximately half a trillion dollars of exposure to these firms… Worse, since it is not just Glencore that the banks are exposed to but very likely the rest of the commodity trading space, their gross exposure blows up to a simply stunning number:
  • For the banks, of course, Glencore may not be their only exposure in the commodity trading space. We consider that other vehicles such as Trafigura, Vitol and Gunvor may feature on bank balance sheets as well ($100 bn x 4?)
  • Call it half a trillion dollars in very highly levered exposure to commodities: an asset class that has been crushed in the past year. The mainstream media is not talking much about any of this yet, and that is probably a good thing.  But behind the scenes, unprecedented moves are already taking place. When I came across the information that I am about to share with you, I was absolutely stunned.  It comes from Investment Research Dynamics, and it shows very clearly that everything is not “okay” in the financial world… Something occurred in the banking system in September that required a massive reverse repo operation in order to force the largest ever Treasury collateral injection into the repo market.   Ordinarily the Fed might engage in routine reverse repos as a means of managing the Fed funds rate.   However, as you can see from the graph below, there have been sudden spikes up in the amount of reverse repos that tend to correspond the some kind of crisis – the obvious one being the de facto collapse of the financial system in 2008:
  • What in the world could possibly cause a spike of that magnitude? Well, that same article that I just quoted links the troubles at Glencore with this unprecedented intervention… What’s even more interesting is that the spike-up in reverse repos occurred at the same time – September 16 – that the stock market embarked on an 8-day cliff dive, with the S&P 500 falling 6% in that time period.  You’ll note that this is around the same time that a crash in Glencore stock and bonds began.   It has been suggested by analysts that a default on Glencore credit derivatives either by Glencore or by financial entities using derivatives to bet against that event would be analogous to the “Lehman moment” that triggered the 2008 collapse. The blame on the general stock market plunge was cast on the Fed’s inability to raise interest rates.  However that seems to be nothing more than a clever cover story for something much more catastrophic which began to develop out sight in the general liquidity functions of the global banking system. Back in 2008, Lehman Brothers was not “perfectly fine” one day and then suddenly collapsed the next.  There were problems brewing under the surface well in advance. Well, the same thing is happening now at banking giants such as Deutsche Bank, and at commodity trading firms such as Glencore, Trafigura and The Noble Group. And of course a lot of smaller fish are starting to implode as well.  I found this example posted on Business Insider earlier today…
  • On September 11, Spruce Alpha, a small hedge fund which is part of a bigger investment group, sent a short report to investors. The letter said that the $80 million fund had lost 48% in a month, according the performance report seen by Business Insider. There was no commentary included in the note. No explanation. Just cold hard numbers.
  • Wow – how do you possibly lose 48 percent in a single month? It would be hard to do that even if you were actually trying to lose money on purpose. Sadly, this kind of scenario is going to be repeated over and over as we get even deeper into this crisis. Meanwhile, our “leaders” continue to tell us that there is nothing to worry about.  For example, just consider what former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is saying…
  • Former Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke doesn’t see any bubbles forming in global markets right right now. But he doesn’t think you should take his word for it. And even if you did, that isn’t the right question to ask anyway. Speaking at a Wall Street Journal event on Wednesday morning, Bernanke said, “I don’t see any obvious major mispricings. Nothing that looks like the housing bubble before the crisis, for example. But you shouldn’t trust me.”
  • I certainly agree with that last sentence.  Bernanke was the one telling us that there was not going to be a recession back in 2008 even after one had already started.  He was clueless back then and he is clueless today. Most of our “leaders” either don’t understand what is happening or they are not willing to tell us. So that means that we have to try to figure things out for ourselves the best that we can.  And right now there are signs all around us that another 2008-style crisis has begun. Personally, I am hoping that there will be a lot more days like today when the markets were relatively quiet and not much major news happened around the world. Unfortunately for all of us, these days of relative peace and tranquility are about to come to a very abrupt end.
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    "Warren Buffett once referred to derivatives as "financial weapons of mass destruction", and it was inevitable that they would begin to wreak havoc on our financial system at some point.  While things may seem somewhat calm on Wall Street at the moment, the truth is that a great deal of trouble is bubbling just under the surface.  As you will see below, something happened in mid-September that required an unprecedented 405 billion dollar surge of Treasury collateral into the repo market.  I know - that sounds very complicated, so I will try to break it down more simply for you.  It appears that some very large institutions have started to get into a significant amount of trouble because of all the reckless betting that they have been doing.  This is something that I have warned would happen over and over again.  In fact, I have written about it so much that my regular readers are probably sick of hearing about it.  But this is what is going to cause the meltdown of our financial system. Many out there get upset when I compare derivatives trading to gambling, and perhaps it would be more accurate to describe most derivatives as a form of insurance.  The big financial institutions assure us that they have passed off most of the risk on these contracts to others and so there is no reason to worry according to them. Well, personally I don't buy their explanations, and a lot of others don't either.  On a very basic, primitive level, derivatives trading is gambling.  This is a point that Jeff Nielson made very eloquently in a piece that he recently published…"
Paul Merrell

Syria may turn out to be Obama's defining legacy | Asia Times - 0 views

  • By M.K. Bhadrakumar October 5, 2016 9:54 AM (UTC+8) Share 0 Tweet Print Email Comment 0 Asia Times is not responsible for the opinions, facts or any media content presented by contributors. In case of abuse, click here to report. On Monday, the Barack Obama administration fulfilled its week-old threat to suspend bilateral talks with Russia over the Syrian crisis. Does this signal that the dogs of war are about to be unleashed? The thought may seem preposterous but tensions are palpable. US spy planes are spotted ever more frequently in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea over Russian bases, especially Tartus and Hmeimim in Syria.
  • Russia has deployed SA-23 Gladiator anti-missile and anti-aircraft systems in Syria, the first-ever such deployments outside Russia. Western analysts see it as a pre-emptive step to counter any American cruise missile attack. Russia is not taking any chances.
  • Moscow factors in that the US may use some rebel groups to ensure that Russian “body bags” are sent to Moscow, as threatened explicitly by US state department spokesman John Kirby last week. Moscow suspects American involvement in the missile attack on the Russian embassy in Damascus — “Brits and Ukrainians clumsily helped the Americans”, a Russian statement in New York said on Tuesday. Indeed, passions are running high. There could be several dozen western intelligence operatives trapped with the rebel groups in east Aleppo. Clearly, the turning point was reached when the US and western allies undertook a fierce air attack on the Syrian army base at Deir Ezzor lasting an hour and killing 62 government troops. The US explanation of that being an accident lost credibility, since within an hour of the airstrike, extremist groups of al-Qaida followed up with ground attack as if acting in tandem.
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  • Trust has consequently broken down. The Russians are convinced that the US was never really interested in separating the moderate groups from extremists despite repeated promises, because Washington sees a use for al-Qaida affiliates, which happen to be the only capable fighting force to push the ‘regime change agenda in Syria. Put differently, Russians are inclined to agree with what Tehran has been saying all along. Moscow, therefore, switched tack and put its resources behind the Syrian operations to capture the strategic city of Aleppo and the military campaign is within sight of victory.
  • That is, unless there is US intervention in the coming days to tilt the military balance in favor of extremist groups trapped in the eastern districts of Aleppo with supply lines for reinforcements cut.
  • With no prospect of getting reinforcements, facing relentless air and ground attacks from the north and south, the rebels are staring at a hopeless battle of attrition. The point is, with the fall of Aleppo, the Syrian war becomes a residual military operation to purge the al-Qaida affiliate Jubhat al-Nusra from Idlib province as well, which means regime forces would secure control over the entire populous regions of Syria, all main cities and the entire Mediterranean coast. In a nutshell, the Syrian war ends with President Bashar al-Assad ensconced in power. The specter of “total victory” for Assad haunts Washington. It explains the string of vituperative statements against Moscow, betraying a high level of frustration. Theoretically, Obama can order missile attacks on the victorious Syrian government forces, but that will be like pouring oil on fire. On Saturday, the Russian Defense Ministry warned the Pentagon that any US military intervention to remove Assad would result in “terrible tectonic shifts” across the region.
  • In considering the war option, Obama has three things to take into account. First, Washington’s equations with Ankara and Riyadh are hugely uncertain at the moment and both regional allies are key partners in Syria.
  • Second, Turkish President Recep Erdogan is unlikely to gamble on another confrontation with Russia when his country’s legitimate interests in Syria can be secured by working in tandem with President Vladimir Putin at the negotiating table.
  • Third, and most important, Obama is unlikely to lead his country into a war without any clear-cut objective to realize when the curtain is coming down on his presidency. In this current state of play, Assad stands between the West and the deluge.
  • But what rankles is that Russian victory in Syria would mark the end of western hegemony over the Middle East, and historians are bound to single it out as the defining foreign-policy legacy of Obama’s presidency. Certainly, Moscow cannot but be sensing this. Russia may offer at some point a face-saving exit strategy — but only after the capture of Aleppo. After all, there is really no hurry between now and January to salvage Russia-US ties.
  • The debris of Russia’s ties with the US lies all around and no one knows where to begin a clean-up. Relations got worse when Obama called the Kremlin leadership “barbarous” in regard to Aleppo. Then, on Monday, Moscow explained its decision to suspend cooperation in getting rid of excess plutonium (that could be used to make nuclear weapons) as being due to “the emergence of a threat to strategic stability and as a result of unfriendly actions” by the US. This was a decision that Moscow could have deferred until Obama left office. After all, it meant suspending the sole Russian-American nuclear security initiative carrying Obama’s imprimatur. However, Moscow couldn’t resist depicting a Nobel Prize winner who promised to ensure “America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons,” as someone who actually enhanced the role of nuclear weapons in the security strategy of the US.
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    If you haven't been following the Syrian War in the last couple of weeks, you'd have missed that the U.S. government has gone bats**t crazy lately, since the ceasefire agreement Kerry negotiated with Lavrov fell apart because the U.S. couldn't deliver its fundamental promise to separate the "moderate" Syrian opposition from Al-Nusrah and ISIL The U.S. problem was two-fold: [i] the Pentagon mutinied and ended all talk of intelligence sharing with Russia by bombing a Syrian Army unit, killing over 60 and wounding over 100, followed within minutes by a coordinated Al-Nusra ground attack; and [ii] all the "moderate Syrian opposition groups refused the U.S. instruction to separate from the head-choppers, saying that ISIL and Al-Nusrah were their brothers-in-arms. (In fact, there are no "moderate" Syrian rebels; just agents of ISIL and Al-Nusrah who fly a different flag when it's time to pick up their supplies and ammunition from the U.S.) What's the Empire of Chaos to do when the mercenaries refuse to obey orders? So with all major elements of al-Nurah surrounded in an East Aleppo noose with the knot rapidly tightening (Aleppo will be taken before Hillary takes her throne), it's up to Obama to decide whether to unleash the Pentagon to save the CIA's al-Nusrah from destruction. He can't kick that can down the road to Hillary (or Donald). MSM is flooding its viewership with anti-Putin propaganda of the most vituperative kind as well as horror stories about all those poor freedom fighters and their kids being ruthlessly killed by Russia in East Aleppo. James Clapper dutifully trotted out an announcement of sorts blaming the Russian government for attempting to hack the U.S. election process, so Hillary could red-bait Donald's "I'd get along with Putin" position in the last debate. The choice must be painful for Obama. Does he want his legacy to be the President who lost the Middle East or the President who waged a war of aggression to protect al-Qaeda from destructio
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