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Paul Merrell

US military involvement in Syria a 'mistake': Gates | ArabNews - 0 views

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war & peace Syria Iran Russia Israel robert gates

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 May 13 - No Cached
  • Former US Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned yesterday that deepening US military involvement in Syria’s civil war would be a “mistake,” warning the outcome would be unpredictable and messy.
  • Gates’ comments on Syria come amid debate in Washington over whether to step up military support for rebels fighting the regime of President Bashar Assad, even as the administration attempts a new peace initiative with Russia. “I thought it was a mistake in Libya, and I think it is a mistake in Syria, even if we had intervened more significantly in Syria a year ago or six months ago. We overestimate our ability to determine outcomes. “Caution, particularly in terms of arming these groups and in terms of US military involvement, is in order,” he said. “Anybody who says, ‘It’s going to be clean. It’s going to be neat. You can establish safe zones, and it’ll be just swell,’ well, most wars aren’t that way,” he said. Gates, who served under both George W Bush and President Barack Obama, was US defense secretary in 2011 when the United States joined a NATO-led air operation in Libya that helped rebels topple Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi.
  • WASHINGTON: Former US Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned yesterday that deepening US military involvement in Syria’s civil war would be a “mistake,” warning the outcome would be unpredictable and messy.
  • Paul Merrell on 17 May 13
     
    Gates' remarks follow similar warnings by several retired U.S. generals that the outcome of war with Syria would be unpredictable. This is a proxy war being waged by the U.S., which is providing "humanitarian" aid to the "rebels," whilst Saudi Arabia and Qatar ostensibly provide their weapons. (Ostensibly, because most of their weapons are being transported by U.S. proxies from Libya and most of the "rebels" are non-Syrian foreign fighters, largely al Queda, infiltrated into Syria via Turkey.) The U.S. has moved anti-aircraft missile teams into areas of Turkey and Jordan that border Syria, a move that was met by Russia moving its own advanced anti-aircraft missile teams into Syria itself and repositioning a sizeable part of the Russian Navy in Syria and ramping up its naval presence in the Mediterranean.   Meanwhile, Lebanon's Hezbollah has pledged unity with Syria's existing government and is adding soldiers to the Syrian Army's forces. Israel has responded with two air assaults on Syria, ostensibly to deny advanced weaponry to Hezbollah. Iran has also pledged military involvement if needed to preserve the existing Syrian government.  In sum, Syria is a very large powder keg with a very short fuse that could easily erupt into a larger war with Russia and Iran too, with the resulting closing of the Straits of Hormuz and thereby plunging the world into economic disaster resulting from severe oil shortages. Nonetheless, Neocons and Zionists in the U.S. are pushing hard for the U.S. to directly wade in militarily.  Civilian casualties in the so-called Syrian "civil war" are estimated to be between 80,000 and 120,000 thus far.   
Paul Merrell

The Left Ought to Worry About Hillary Clinton, Hawk and Militarist, in 2016 | The Nation - 0 views

www.thenation.com/...inton-hawk-and-militarist-2016

Auction 2016 war war & peace Hillary

shared by Paul Merrell on 28 May 14 - No Cached
  • When it comes to Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy, start first by disentangling the nonsense about Benghazi—a nonexistent scandal if ever there was one—from the broader palette of Clinton’s own, relatively hawkish views. As she consolidates her position as the expected nominee in 2016, with wide leads over all the likely GOP challengers, it ought to worry progressives that the next president of the United States is likely to be much more hawkish than the current one. Expect to be deluged, in the next few weeks, with news about Hard Choices, the memoir of her years as secretary of state under President Obama, to be released June 10. But we don’t need a memoir to know that, comparatively speaking, two things can be said about her tenure at the State Department: first, that in fact she accomplished very little; and second, that both before her appointment and during her service, she consistently came down on the hawkish side of debates inside the administration, from Afghanistan to Libya and Syria. She’s also taken a more hawkish line than Obama on Ukraine and the confrontation with Russia.
  • In the brief excerpt that’s been released by her publisher, Clinton notes that as secretary of state she “ended up visiting 112 countries and traveling nearly one million miles.” But what, if anything, did she accomplish with all that to-ing and fro-ing? Not a lot. She largely avoided the Israel-Palestine tangle, perhaps because she didn’t want to risk crossing the Israel lobby at home, and it’s hard to see what she actually did, other than to promote the education and empowerment of girls and women in places where they are severely beaten down. And, while it’s wrong (and really silly) to call Clinton a neoconservative, she’s more of—how to put it?—a “right-wing realist” on foreign policy, who often backed military intervention as a first or second resort, while others in the White House—especially Obama’s national security staff and Vice President Biden’s own aides, were far more reluctant to employ the troops. In that vein, it’s useful to explore the memoirs of Robert Gates, who was secretary of defense under George W. Bush and then, inexplicably, under President Obama, too. In Duty: Memoir of a Secretary at War (which could also be the subtitle of Clinton’s own memoir), Gates says several times that he and Clinton saw eye to eye. (This has also been extensively documented by Bob Woodward, if more narrowly focused, in his 2010 book, Obama’s Wars.) In Duty, Gates says that he formed an alliance with Clinton because both he and her had independent power bases and were, in his words, “un-fireable”
  • Commentators were observing that in an administration where all power and decision making were gravitating toward the White House, Clinton and I represented the only independent “power center”, not least because…we were both seen as “unfire-able.” [page 289] Gates confirms that he and Clinton lined up with the hawks against the doves on Afghanistan
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  • And Gates says that on the crucial decision to escalate the Afghan war in 2009 and then to slow the drawdown in 2010, he and Clinton were on the same side:
  • Paul Merrell on 28 May 14
     
    Criticism of Hillary from the progressive side: even more prone to use military intervention than Obama and pro-military/industrial complex, with some evidence to back those classifications. The problem, of course, is that public wishes bedamned, both the Republicans and Democrats will select candidates representing the War Party then present the choice of evils as their campaign theme. Either way, the War Party wins unless a winning third party candidate miraculously emerges. Such is the state of democracy in the American republic.   
Gary Edwards

Stasi in the White House - Paul Craig Roberts - 0 views

www.thedailybell.com/...berts-Stasi-in-the-White-House

Paul-Craig-Roberts End-of-America Obammunism Stassi ruling-class-elites

shared by Gary Edwards on 25 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • On June 19, 2013, US President Obama, hoping to raise himself above the developing National Security Agency (NSA) spy scandals, sought to associate himself with two iconic speeches made at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. Fifty years ago, President John F. Kennedy pledged: "Ich bin ein Berliner." In 1987, President Ronald Reagan challenged: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." Obama's speech was delivered to a relatively small, specially selected audience of invitees. Even so, Obama spoke from behind bullet proof glass.
  • Obama's speech will go down in history as the most hypocritical of all time. Little wonder that the audience was there by invitation only. A real audience would have hooted Obama out of Berlin.
  • Obama spoke lofty words of peace, while beating the drums of war in Syria and Iran. Witness Obama's aggressive policies of surrounding Russia with missile bases and establishing new military bases in the Pacific Ocean with which to confront China.
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  • This is the same Obama who promised to close the Guantanamo Torture Prison, but did not; the same Obama who promised to tell us the purpose for Washington's decade-long war in Afghanistan, but did not; the same Obama who promised to end the wars, but started new ones; the same Obama who said he stood for the US Constitution, but shredded it; the same Obama who refused to hold the Bush regime accountable for its crimes against law and humanity; the same Obama who unleashed drones against civilian populations in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen; the same Obama who claimed and exercised power to murder US citizens without due process and who continues the Bush regime's unconstitutional practice of violating habeas corpus and detaining US citizens indefinitely; the same Obama who promised transparency but runs the most secretive government in US history.
  • The tyrant's speech of spectacular hypocrisy elicited from the invited audience applause on 36 occasions.
  • Here was Obama, who consistently lies, speaking of "eternal truth."
  • Here was Obama, who enabled Wall Street to rob the American and European peoples and who destroyed Americans' civil liberties and the lives of vast numbers of Iraqis, Afghans, Yemenis, Libyans, Pakistanis, Syrians − and others, speaking of "the yearnings of justice."
  • Obama equates demands for justice with "terrorism."
  • Here was Obama, who has constructed an international spy network and a domestic police state, speaking of "the yearnings for freedom."
  • Obama has turned America into a surveillance state that has far more in common with Stasi East Germany than with the America of the Kennedy and Reagan eras. Strange, isn't it, that freedom was gained in East Germany and lost in America?
  • Here was Obama, president of a country that has initiated wars or military action against six countries since 2001 and has three more Muslim countries − Syria, Lebanon, and Iran − in its crosshairs and perhaps several more in Africa, speaking of "the yearnings of peace that burns in the human heart," but clearly not in Obama's heart.
  • At the Brandenburg Gate, Obama invoked the pledge of nations to "a Universal Declaration of Human Rights," but Obama continues to violate human rights both at home and abroad.
  • Obama has taken hypocrisy to new heights. He has destroyed US civil liberties guaranteed by the Constitution.
  • In place of a government accountable to law, he has turned law into a weapon in the hands of the government.
  • He has intimidated a free press and prosecutes whistleblowers who reveal his government's crimes. He makes no objection when American police brutalize peacefully protesting citizens.
  • His government intercepts and stores in National Security Agency computers every communication of every American and also the private communications of Europeans and Canadians, including the communications of the members of the governments, the better to blackmail those with secrets.
  • Obama sends in drones or assassins to murder people in countries with which the US is not at war, and his victims on most occasions turn out to be women, children, farmers and village elders.
  • Obama kept Bradley Manning in solitary confinement for nearly a year assaulting his human dignity in an effort to break him and obtain a false confession. In defiance of the US Constitution, Obama denied Manning a trial for three year
  • On Obama's instructions, London denies Julian Assange free passage to his political asylum in Ecuador. Assange has become a modern-day Cardinal Mindszenty.
  • Gary Edwards on 25 Jun 13
     
    Wow.  I remember Paul Craig Roberts writing on the backpage of NewsWeek Magazine, back in the late 1960's.  Wow, we've come a long way since the days of protesting the Vietnam War, the socialism behind LBJ's Great Society, and the outrageous coup d'état that took place with the in-your-face-America assassination of JFK.  The circle is almost complete. The American Constitution hangs by a thread.  The anger and heart ache of Paul Craig Roberts says it all. I wonder who will win this years "Dancing with the Stars" competition?
Paul Merrell

The Trump/Sanders Phenomena | Consortiumnews - 0 views

consortiumnews.com/...the-trumpsanders-phenomena

Auction 2016 Hillary sins neocons

shared by Paul Merrell on 28 Aug 15 - No Cached
  • At nearly every juncture, Hillary Clinton has opted for what seemed like the safe play at the time. Indeed, it is hard to think of any case in which she showed anything approaching genuine political courage or statesmanlike wisdom. Here is just a short list of her misjudgments after the Iraq War:–In summer 2006, as a New York senator, Clinton supported Israel’s air war against southern Lebanon which killed more than 1,000 Lebanese. At a pro-Israel rally in New York on July 17, 2006, Clinton shared a stage with Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Dan Gillerman, a renowned Muslim basher who proudly defended Israel’s massive violence against targets in Lebanon.“Let us finish the job,” Gillerman told the crowd. “We will excise the cancer in Lebanon” and “cut off the fingers” of Hezbollah. Responding to international concerns that Israel was using “disproportionate” force in bombing Lebanon and killing hundreds of civilians, Gillerman said, “You’re damn right we are.” [NYT, July 18, 2006] Clinton did not protest Gillerman’s remarks.–In late 2006, Clinton fell for the false conventional wisdom that President George W. Bush’s nomination of Robert Gates to be Secretary of Defense was an indication that Bush was preparing to wind down the Iraq War when it actually signaled the opposite, the so-called “surge.” Later, to avoid further offending the Democratic base as she ran for president, she opposed the “surge,” though she later acknowledged that she did so for political reasons, according to Gates’s memoir Duty.
  • In the early months of the Obama administration, with Gates still Defense Secretary and Clinton the new Secretary of State, Gates reported what he regarded as a stunning admission by Clinton, writing: “Hillary told the president that her opposition to the surge in Iraq had been political because she was facing him in the Iowa primary [in 2008]. She went on to say, ‘The Iraq surge worked.’”–In 2009, Clinton joined with Gates and General David Petraeus to pressure President Barack Obama into a similar “surge” in Afghanistan which – like the earlier “surge” in Iraq – did little more than get another 1,000 U.S. soldiers killed along with many more Iraqis and Afghans while extending the bloody chaos in both countries.–Also, in 2009, Clinton supported a right-wing coup in Honduras, overthrowing left-of-center President Manuel Zelaya.–In 2011, Clinton helped spearhead the U.S.-backed “regime change” in Libya, which led to the torture/murder of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi as Clinton chuckled, “we came, we saw, he died.” Like the “regime change” in Iraq, the Libyan “regime change” left the once-prosperous nation in bloody anarchy with major gains by Islamic extremists, including the Islamic State.
  • –Also, in 2011, Clinton pressed for a similar “regime change” in Syria adopting the popular though false notion that a “moderate opposition” would neatly fill the void after the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad. The reality was that Al Qaeda and its spin-off, the Islamic State, stood to be the real beneficiaries of the U.S.-supported destabilization of Syria. These Islamic terrorist groups now have major footholds in all three Arab countries where Clinton supported “regime change” – Iraq, Syria and Libya.
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  • Throughout her time as Senator and Secretary of State, Clinton supported the aggressive foreign policy prescriptions of the neoconservatives and their liberal-interventionist allies. In each of these cases, the neocons and liberal hawks were dominating Official Washington’s debate and it would have taken some political courage to stand in their way. Hillary Clinton never did.The enduring mystery with Hillary Clinton is whether she is a true neocon or whether she simply judges that embracing neocon positions is the “safest” course for her career – that by parroting the neocon “group think” she can win praise from the national-security elite and that big donors who favor a hard-line strategy for the Middle East will reward her with campaign contributions.Whatever the case, Clinton has carefully curried favor with key neocons, including consulting with Robert Kagan, a co-founder of the neocon Project for the New American Century, and promoting his wife, Victoria Nuland, making her the State Department spokesperson and putting her on track to become Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs. In that post, Nuland orchestrated “regime change” in Ukraine, which like other neocon targets has descended into bloody chaos, but this adventure also has precipitated a dangerous showdown with nuclear-armed Russia.
Gary Edwards

White House Insider: Obama Hesitated - Panetta Issued Order to Kill Osama Bin Laden | S... - 0 views

socyberty.com/...-order-to-kill-osama-bin-laden

obammunism osammunism osama-death

shared by Gary Edwards on 06 May 11 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 06 May 11
     
    Incredible excerpt: Q: You stated that President Obama was "overruled" by military/intelligence officials regarding the decision to send in military specialists into the Osama Bin Laden compound.  Was that accurate? A: I was told - in these exact terms, "we overruled him." (Obama)  I have since followed up and received further details on exactly what that meant, as well as the specifics of how Leon Panetta worked around the president's "persistent hesitation to act."  There appears NOT to have been an outright overruling of any specific position by President Obama, simply because there was no specific position from the president to do so.  President Obama was, in this case, as in all others, working as an absentee president. I was correct in stating there had been a push to invade the compound for several weeks if not months, primarily led by Leon Panetta, Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates, David Petraeus, and Jim Clapper.  The primary opposition to this plan originated from Valerie Jarrett, and it was her opposition that was enough to create uncertainty within President Obama.  Obama would meet with various components of the pro-invasion faction, almost always with Jarrett present, and then often fail to indicate his position.  This situation continued for some time, though the division between Jarrett/Obama and the rest intensified more recently, most notably from Hillary Clinton.  She was livid over the president's failure to act, and her office began a campaign of anonymous leaks to the media indicating such.  As for Jarrett, her concern rested on two primary fronts.  One, that the military action could fail and harm the president's already weakened standing with both the American public and the world.  Second, that the attack would be viewed as an act of aggression against Muslims, and further destabilize conditions in the Middle East.  Q: What changed the president's position and enabled the attack against Osama Bin Laden to
Paul Merrell

Russian takeover of Crimea 'is not a done deal,' U.S. official says - latimes.com - 0 views

www.latimes.com/...20140309,0,4129469,print.story

war & peace Ukraine Crimea U.S. foreign policy

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • The United States would not recognize a referendum by Crimea to leave Ukraine, and a shift of that region to Russia “is not a done deal,” a top Obama administration official said Sunday. “If there is a referendum and it votes to move Crimea out of Ukraine and to Russia, we won’t recognize it and most of the world won’t either,” deputy national security advisor Tony Blinken said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “Were that to happen, the isolation of Russia, the cost that it would pay, would increase significantly from where they are now,” he said. Russia has shown no signs of backing down over the Crimea crisis in the face of economic sanctions from the U.S. and its European allies. The sanctions came after Russian troops seized control of the Crimean peninsula, which has a Russian-speaking majority. Moscow claims that the takeover of key facilities there in late February was the work of local pro-Russian militias. A referendum organized by pro-Russian members of Crimea’s regional assembly is scheduled for March 16.
  • Blinken, who was traveling with President Obama this weekend in Florida, said sanctions have taken an economic toll on Russia and that the dispute still could be resolved. “We've seen Russian markets go down substantially, the ruble go down, and investors sitting on the fence. So Russia’s paying a price for this,” Blinken said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “It's not a done deal,” he said of Crimea seceding from Ukraine to join Russia. “I think the door is clearly open to resolving this diplomatically.” The White House announced Sunday that Obama would meet with new Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk in Washington on Wednesday to “discuss how to find a peaceful resolution to Russia’s ongoing military intervention in Crimea that would respect Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity.” But former Obama administration Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said he did not foresee Russian President Vladimir Putin backing down. “I do not believe ... that Crimea will slip out of Russia’s hands,” Gates said on “Fox News Sunday.”
Paul Merrell

Israel deploys a new weapons system in Gaza - Intellihub.com - 0 views

www.intellihub.com/eploys-new-weapons-system-gaza

war & peace Israel Gaza energy-beam war-crimes

shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • Reports, including photographic evidence reveal that Israel is using an energy weapon to attack targets in Gaza. The destructive beam, thought to be a high energy laser, is emitted from a plane identified as a Boeing KC707 “Re’em,” originally configured for Electronic Warfare. Those observing the attacks cite a beam from a 4 engine jet hitting a target which immediately turns “white hot.” After these attacks, the target area is then hit with either bombs or artillery to destroy evidence of the use of an American designed and built energy weapon illegally given to Israel. BACKGROUND The weapon used is identified as part of the YAL 1 system, a COIL laser (chemical, oxygen/iodine laser), originally intended as an aircraft mounted system to shoot down ICBMs. Boeing approached the Department of Defense in 2002 and by 2004 had mounted its first system on a 747/400 previously flown by Air India. Boeing had convinced Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that this system, mounted on as many as 7 aircraft, could fly 24 hours a day around Iran and defend “the free world” against nuclear tipped ICBMs that Rumsfeld believed Iran was planning to use. Please note that it was Rumsfeld that told television audiences that Afghanistan was “peppered” with underground cities serviced by rail links that supported division sized Al Qaeda units that, after ten years, no one was able to locate.
  • Boeing tested the system in 2007. The Department of Defense claimed the system could shoot down low earth orbit satellites and that in tests conducted in 2010, destroyed multiple test missiles. There is no reliable confirmation of this other than a press release from then Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. CANCELLATION AND MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE The Center for Strategic Studies, in an interview with then Defense Secretary Gates published the following: “I don’t know anybody at the Department of Defense who thinks that this program should, or would, ever be operationally deployed. The reality is that you would need a laser something like 20 to 30 times more powerful than the chemical laser in the plane right now to be able to get any distance from the launch site to fire.” So, right now the ABL would have to orbit inside the borders of Iran in order to be able to try and use its laser to shoot down that missile in the boost phase. And if you were to operationalize this you would be looking at 10 to 20 747s, at a billion and a half dollars apiece, and $100 million a year to operate. And there’s nobody in uniform that I know who believes that this is a workable concept.”
  • After $5 billion was spent, the functioning prototype only capable of being fired directly at nearby targets, a system very capable of acquisition and destruction of ground targets with no air defense protection only, was said to have been flown to a scrap yard. The plane itself is still there, at Davis Monthan Air Force Base, with other failed dreams and nightmares. However, the weapons system disappeared, only to reappear in Israel as a “missile defense” project, an adjunct to the “Iron Dome” system. Israel’s Rafael Defense had been trying to develop laser weapons on its own to intercept rockets being fired from Gaza. It was never able to neither deploy a laser powerful enough nor develop a radar system able to be effective.
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  • “Friends of Israel,” within the US defense community were convinced by Israel that the system could be finished and deployed to protect Israel against a purported “missile onslaught” from Tehran. In truth, there was no such intention. Instead, as in the film “Real Genius,” the laser system was always intended to be deployed against ground targets, for terrorism and assassinations. The “delivery system,” a Boeing airliner configured for AWAC, electronic warfare or refueling, could easily be modified to “clone” commercial air traffic and attack targets thousands of miles away or as close as Gaza, Lebanon, Syria or Iraq with total impunity.
  • McLeod and Rogers, in The Law of War, examine the history of prohibition of incendiary weapons. Israel’s use of white phosphorous, intended as a “smoke market” as a corrosive anti-personnel weapon against civilian populations in Lebanon and Gaza skirts initial language, as cited below, in the St. Petersburg Declaration of 1868, but falls well short of evading later prohibition on the use of chemical agents. “The first treaty to deal with weapons was the St Petersburg Declaration of 1868. Here states were concerned about the development of explosive or incendiary bullets for use against the wagon trains of enemy forces. It was felt that these bullets might be used against enemy personnel15 and cause unnecessary injury. The Contracting Parties agreed ‘mutually to renounce, in case of war among themselves, the employment by their military or naval troops of any projectile of a weight below 400 grammes, which is either explosive or charged with fulminating or inflammable substances’.
  • The declaration does not seem to have affected the practice of states in using tracer for range finding, even mixed with normal ammunition, nor the use of small explosive projectiles for anti-aircraft and anti-material uses. It did not prevent states from using four pound, thermite-based incendiary bombs during the Second World War. These, obviously, were more than 400 grammes in weight. Furthermore it could be argued that they were not ‘projectiles’, a term that certainly would not include illuminating flares or smoke canisters.” The use of energy weapons for assassinations and terrorism had, prior to only a few short days ago, been subject of speculative fiction only. No one had imagined that a failed American weapons system would be pirated for deployment in acts of terrorism by a rogue state. A greater question arises, if this “failed system” costing many billions has been shipped off “in the dark of night” without public knowledge or official authorization for use in a criminal manner, what other systems may have been similarly pirated? There is conclusive evidence that W54/Davy Crocket nuclear weapons made their way to Israel after 1991 after an accident at Dimona is reputed to have made that facility useless for weapons development.
  • Similarly, when the Ukraine retired its “fleet” of SS21 tactical nuclear missiles, Israel took possession of the warheads, servicing their deuterium booster gas all these years to keep them ready for deployment. Intercepted communications between the Kiev junta and Israel now indicate that Israel is ready to “repatriate” some of these nuclear weapons to the Ukraine for use against pro-Russian separatists. Ukrainian leaders have spoken of the intent to deploy and use these nuclear weapons publicly on several recent occasions. From USA Today: “KIEV, Ukraine — Ukraine may have to arm itself with nuclear weapons if the United States and other world powers refuse to enforce a security pact that obligates them to reverse the Moscow-backed takeover of Crimea, a member of the Ukraine parliament told USA TODAY. ‘We gave up nuclear weapons because of this agreement,’ said Rizanenko, a member of the Udar Party headed by Vitali Klitschko, a candidate for president. ‘Now there’s a strong sentiment in Ukraine that we made a big mistake.’”
  • With the recent bombing of a UN refugee facility in Gaza, with the use of chemical and now energy weapons, with Israel’s planned sale of nuclear warheads to Ukraine, there is little more that could be done to establish Israel, not only as a rogue state, but as a “clear and present danger” to not only regional but global security as well. As Jim W. Dean of Veterans Today recently stated, “Their fingerprints are at every crime scene.”
Paul Merrell

5 Biggest Revelations from Latest Podesta Emails - 0 views

www.trueactivist.com/from-the-latest-podesta-emails

Auction-2008 Obama cabinet Citigroup banksters

shared by Paul Merrell on 09 Nov 16 - No Cached
  • Wikileaks’ releases of the now infamous “Podesta Emails” have become such a regular occurrence, it’s becoming difficult to keep up. 11 “batches” have been released so far, bringing the total to 17,510 with an estimated 32,000 left to go before the US election takes place on November 8th. Though True Activist covered many of the earlier leaks, including the transcripts of Clinton’s private speeches and Clinton’s admission that the Saudis are funding ISIS, many other potentially damning revelations have since come to light. Here are the top 5 newest revelations from the last 3 email releases (#9 to 11).
  • 4. Wall Street Handpicked Obama’s Entire 2008 Cabinet Though most of the leaks thus far have been focused largely on Clinton and her campaign, some of the released emails have shed light on corruption within the Obama administration. In 2008, at the height of the financial crisis, an executive from CitiGroup emailed John Podesta one month before Podesta was named chairman of Obama’s 2008 transition team. CitiGroup, at the time, was the largest company and bank in the world by assets. The email from CitiGroup executive Michael Froman is titled “Lists.” The lists within, naming prospective candidates for cabinet positions, matches Obama’s 2008 Cabinet almost exactly. They also suggest choosing candidates of various ethnic minorities as a political tactic (see #3 above). The email proposed: Robert Gates as secretary of Defense; Eric Holder as attorney general; Janet Napolitano as secretary of Homeland Security; Rahm Emanuel as White House chief of staff; Susan Rice as United Nations ambassador; Arne Duncan as secretary of Education; Kathleen Sebelius as secretary of Health and Human Services; Peter Orszag as head of the Office of Management and Budget; Eric Shinseki as secretary of Veterans Affairs; and Melody Barnes as chief of the Domestic Policy Council. Froman offered Podesta with three possibilities for the position of Secretary of the Treasury: Robert Rubin and his close disciples Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner. Obama ultimately chose Geithner, who was then president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Geithner, along with Bush Treasury Secretary and former Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson and then-Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, were those chiefly responsible for organizing the Wall Street bailout.
  • Paul Merrell on 09 Nov 16
     
    Citibank chose Obama's 2008 cabinet. Why am I not surprised?
Paul Merrell

Menendez Is to Face Corruption Charges, U.S. Official Says - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ederal-corruption-charges.html

Menendez criminal-prosecution

shared by Paul Merrell on 08 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • The Justice Department is preparing to file corruption charges against Senator Robert Menendez, a scrappy 61-year-old veteran of New Jersey politics, after a two-year investigation into allegations that he accepted gifts and lavish vacations in exchange for political favors for a longtime friend and political benefactor.A law enforcement official said on Friday that the charges would be filed within a month against Mr. Menendez, the son of Cuban immigrants, who rose from a childhood in the tenements to become the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and is now the highest-ranking Latino Democrat in Congress.
  • With the senator aggressively raising money for a legal-defense fund for more than a year now, charges against him had long been anticipated. But even in New Jersey, a state with a long history of political corruption, the case is jarring.
  • It revolves around the friendship between the senator and Salomon Melgen, a wealthy Florida eye surgeon. The two spent holidays together at Dr. Melgen’s home in the Dominican Republic, a gated oceanfront resort where the neighbors included Oscar de la Renta. Dr. Melgen eventually delivered hundreds of thousands of dollars to benefit Mr. Menendez and the national Democratic Party.Mr. Menendez accepted two round-trip flights aboard Dr. Melgen’s private jet for personal vacations in the Dominican Republic in 2010, but failed to report them as gifts or to reimburse Dr. Melgen at the time, as required under Senate disclosure rules.
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  • According to court papers that were mistakenly and briefly unsealed last week, prosecutors have been examining whether Mr. Menendez improperly tried to persuade Medicare officials in recent years to change reimbursement policies in a way that would make millions of dollars for Dr. Melgen, one of the country’s biggest recipients of Medicare funds. Mr. Menendez has acknowledged urging the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to change its reimbursement policy, but said he did so because he considered the policy unfair.
  • On Friday, Democratic leaders in the state took to the phones to plot how, as one put it, “to move a lot of the pieces around the board unexpectedly” should Mr. Menendez step down. Even as they did so, they cautioned against counting out a man known as one of the most tenacious political fighters in a state famous for them. But Mr. Menendez is also one of the least wealthy members of the United States Senate, and may not have the resources for a protracted legal fight.
  • The court papers that were mistakenly unsealed also revealed that a grand jury in New Jersey is looking into gifts that Dr. Melgen gave Mr. Menendez, in addition to the Medicare issue, as well as a deal Dr. Melgen had to sell port-screening equipment to the government of the Dominican Republic.The New Jersey Law Journal, which first reported about the documents last week, said the government also claims that Mr. Menendez, along with Senator Harry Reid, then the leader of the Democratic majority, advocated for Dr. Melgen in meetings with Kathleen E. Sebelius, then the secretary of health and human services.
  • The case will most likely involve a legal argument over when a senator’s activities are shielded from prosecution under the Constitution’s speech-or-debate privilege, which prohibits federal agents from using their law enforcement powers to interfere with lawmaking. The Justice Department and Congress have often battled over how broadly that protection applies.
Paul Merrell

The Possible Education of Donald Trump - Consortiumnews - 0 views

consortiumnews.com/...ible-education-of-donald-trump

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Syria CIA covert terrorists™

shared by Paul Merrell on 25 Aug 17 - No Cached
  • Though little noted, arguably the most important foreign policy decision of Trump’s presidency was his termination of the CIA’s covert support for Syrian rebels
  • Perhaps most significantly in that regard, Trump in July quietly abandoned the CIA’s covert war in Syria. In the U.S., some “regime change” advocates have complained about this “betrayal” of the rebel cause and some Democrats have tried to link Trump’s decision to their faltering Russia-gate “scandal,” i.e., by claiming that Trump was rewarding Putin for alleged election help. But the bottom line is that Trump’s policy has contributed to the Syrian slaughter abating and the prospect of a victory by Al Qaeda and/or its Islamic State spinoff fading.
  • Paul Merrell on 25 Aug 17
     
    This is news to me; I don't know how I missed it. But since it's Robert Parry saying it, I'm inclined to believe him. If the CIA support for the al Qaeda types has in fact ended, then there's hope for Syria's future.
Paul Merrell

'This Week' Transcript: Ambassador Samantha Power - ABC News - 0 views

abcnews.go.com/...story

war & peace ISIL Iraq Syria U.S.-foreign-policy

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • STEPHANOPOULOS: And we are joined now by the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power. Thanks for coming back to This Week. And you know, the president said he's prepared to strike Syria. Those strikes could be imminent. Will the United States try to get UN Security Council authorization first? Or do you accept now that's just not going to be possible? SAMANTHA POWER, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED NATIONS: Well, let me say that Secretary Kerry just convened a meeting of the Security Council on Friday which showcased just how much support there is on the Security Council and in the broader international community for the anti-ISIL effort. STEPHANOPOULOS: But the Russia veto.
  • POWER: Russia has vetoed in the past, but on very different issues. I think Russia has made clear for a long time its opposition to ISIL. The Iraqis have appealed to the international community to come to their defense not only in Iraq, but also to go after safe havens in foreign countries. And what they mean by that of course is Syria. And they're quite explicit about that. So they have made an appeal to the international community for collective defense. And we think we have a legal basis we need if the president decides... STEPHANOPOULOS: Without a UN authorization. POWER: Consistent with the UN charter, we -- it will depend on the facts and circumstances of any particular strike in Syria, but we have a legal basis we need.
  • Paul Merrell on 22 Sep 14
     
    Context: U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Samantha Power, holds the U.N. Security Council's rotating chair this month. Powers'  claims a right for the U.S. to wage war against ISIL in Syria on grounds of the collective security exception to the U.N. Charter's prohibition; that is, that the U.S. has a collective security agreement with the nation of Iraq, that makes it lawful for the U.S. to strike ISIL. True enough as a matter of international law, ignoring the fact that Obama has yet to obtain permission from the U.S. Congress, which the U.S. Constitution requires him to do. But ISIL is not the nation of Syria; hence to attack ISIL in Syria, an additional exception is necessary for both Iraq and the U.S. The only other recognized exception that might seem to do deals with the situation when a nation in which a private organization inflicting harm on another nation  is "unwilling or unable" to protect the second nation (Iraq) from the depradations of the private organization. And that is where Powers' legal analysis dissembles because the U.S. has been actively attempting to overthrow the Syrian government via proxy terrorist organizations including ISIL. So the U.S. lacks clean hands in claiming any lawful right to invade Syria on the theory that the Syrian government is unwilling or unable to put down the ISIL organization. The Syrian government is certainly willing and has been attempting to do so. But its inability to do so thus far is entirely due to the U.S., its Gulf Coast state allies, and its ally Turkey continuing to supply ISIL and other terrorist groups in Syria with weapons, training, and supplies, aimed at overthrowing the Syrian government. The doctrine of unclean hands has limited applicability in international law governing human rights. See Lisa LaPlante, The Law of Remedies and the Clean Hands Doctrine: Exclusionary Reparation Policies in Peru's Political Transition, 23 Am Univ Int Law Rev 50 (2007), https://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cg
Paul Merrell

How America can counter Putin's moves in Syria - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...5-b31c-d80d62b53e28_story.html

war & peace Syria Russia U.S.-foreign-policy neocons safe-harbors no-fly-zones

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • By Condoleezza Rice and Robert M. Gates
  • Second, we have to create our own facts on the ground. No-fly zones and safe harbors for populations are not “half-baked” ideas. They worked before (protecting the Kurds for 12 years under Saddam Hussein’s reign of terror) and warrant serious consideration. We will continue to have refugees until people are safe. Moreover, providing robust support for Kurdish forces, Sunni tribes and what’s left of the Iraqi special forces is not “mumbo-jumbo.” It might just salvage our current, failing strategy. A serious commitment to these steps would also solidify our relationship with Turkey, which is reeling from the implications of Moscow’s intervention. In short, we must create a better military balance of power on the ground if we are to seek a political solution acceptable to us and to our allies.
  • Paul Merrell on 10 Oct 15
     
    Neocons seem to be centering on safe-harbors and no-fly-zones in Syria to protect our takfiri mercenaries. But both would bring U.S. and Russian air forces into direct conflict. Is Obama courageous enough (or willing) to tell the neocons "no?"
Gary Edwards

The Purchase Of Our Republic | Zero Hedge - 0 views

www.zerohedge.com/...purchase-our-republic

shared by Gary Edwards on 06 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • The massive consolidation of wealth, combined with the removal of any limits on money in campaigns, has allowed for the purchase of our government. Today I am publishing a comprehensive and important guest essay, The Purchase of Our Republic, by longtime correspondent Y. Falkson.
  • Americans know that something is wrong, deeply wrong. They see signs of the problem everywhere: income inequality, growing concentration and power of mega corporations, political donations/corruption, the absence of jobs with decent salaries, the explosion of the US prison population, healthcare costs, student loan debt, homelessness, etc. etc.  However, the true causes and benefactors behind these problems are purposely hidden from view. What Americans see is Kabuki Theater of a functioning form of capitalism and democracy, but beyond this veneer our country has devolved into the exact opposite. Those who benefit from this crony capitalist state go to extreme lengths to paper over the reality and convince Americans that the system works, the American Dream is still a reality and that American democracy is in fact democratic. Below I hope to begin to outline some of the underlying dynamics and trends that have evolved in recent decades and led us so far from what we once were. As fun as it would be, the answer is not some evil conspiracy by the Illuminati, but rather the unfortunate result of three long term and mutually reinforcing components that have been attacking the fundamental roots of the structure of our Republic. The first is the increased concentr
  • ation of corporate and private wealth. Both of which are quickly yelled down in the media as anti-free market and class war hysteria. The second is the use of this wealth to capture all three branches of government in order to ensure the continued extraction of capital from the many and to the few.The rich might have climbed the ladder because they earned it, but they have then purchased government to pull up the ladder behind them. The consequence of the first two components is a democracy in name only that represents the very few.
  • ...28 more annotations...
  • 1. Faux Capitalism = Wealth Consolidation / Income Inequality
  • While there is no true beginning to the story, we can start with the incredible build up and concentration of wealth among corporations in recent decades. The USA now boasts a cartel-like set of corporate titans in almost every industry. It goes beyond, but certainly includes, our Too Biggerer To Fail banks, merged from what was 37 banks in 1995 into a Frankenstein’s monster like 5 (Citigroup, JP Morgan-Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs). In agriculture, Monsanto alone controls over 85% of all corn and soy bean crops, four companies control 83% of the beef market, 66% of the hog market and 58% of the chicken market. So while shopping at the grocery store might appear to be the manifestation of capitalism at its finest, it doesn’t take much digging to look behind the curtain to see how little competition truly exists.
  • When the average American goes to pick up some groceries, they are shopping at Walmart and buying something from P&G that is mostly made of Monsanto corn. Is that true choice? The same story plays out with our news and media (and other industries) where we have gone from 50 companies in 1983 to the big 6 which control over 90% of all media. Is choosing to watch one of 30 news channels, all of which are owned by News Corp (Rupert Murdoch) a real choice? This is not capitalism and they are not competing, not in the true sense of the word. Along with this consolidation of corporations in recent decades, their senior leaders have taken up a larger and larger piece of the pie at the expense of their employees. In particular, the ratio of CEO-to-worker pay has increased 1,000 percent since 1950. Unsurprisingly, Walmart is both the largest employer in the country and the worst CEO pay offender with a ratio of over 1000:1. This is at a time where worker productivity has increased significantly, something that historically correlated with increased pay. But no more. It’s a new twist on the old Soviet saying “we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us”, but now it’s closer to “we do all of the work and they pretend to pay us”.
  • Private Wealth: As a consequence of the royal tribute we pay to the C-suite class these days, we have likely surpassed the pre-Depression Roaring Twenties in terms of inequality.
  • This, amazingly, has only accelerated since the crisis in 2008 in thanks to bailouts, Quantitative Easing and other gifts from Congress and the Fed. The wealthy 1% and in particular the .01% have now grown their fortunes to levels that tax comprehension and even their ability to spend it (the decisions by a few billionaires such as Bill Gates to essentially donate his fortune is a tacit acknowledgement that our current system over provides wealth to a select few).
  • So what is an incredibly wealthy capitalist CEO of a mega-corporation do once they control their industry and have essentially limitless wealth? Well in a competitive market, the only way to go from the top is down and the only thing that can make that happen is competition. Consequently, competition must be avoided whenever possible.
  • To squash or prevent competition, the oligopolies and oligarchs target their resources on the one place that can make competition illegal, our government.Something to keep in mind the next time you see a corporate billionaire grandstanding about the importance of “Free Markets” when their strategy is quite the opposite. As this capture of the government has taken place we have essentially shifted from capitalism and to crony capitalism. So we now have industries that have mastered the art of faking capitalism by turning our government into one that fakes democracy. This government takeover took time, but the purchase of all 3 branches of government has almost been completed by 2014. You don’t have to take my word for it, luckily that has now been empirically proven in an analysis of over 20 years of government policy where the clear conclusion was that policy makers respond solely to those in the top 90th percentile and essentially ignore the large majority of Americans.
  • 2. Wealthy Purchase of Government Institutions / Elections
  • Purchase of the Executive Branch:
  • Let’s take a step back and take a glimpse at how the government was purchased, beginning with the executive branch. In 1980, Reagan’s election cost less than $300 million. When Bush beat Kerry in 2004, it cost almost 3x times as much, almost $900 Million. 4 years later, the 2008 election cost a record $1.3 Billion. It was in this election where Obama hammered the final nail in the coffin for government funded for elections. Obama, more so than any other candidate in recent decades had the widespread support of millions of small donors, but in the end I guess it wasn’t enough. So when Obama “leaned to the green”, it forever set the precedent that you can’t win without the backing of our nation’s oligarchs. Consequently, the money has only gushed in since as the cost of Obama’s reelection in 2012 skyrocketed to an unfathomable $7 billion. Needless to say this is slightly above the rate of inflation. Our Presidents are now preselected exclusively by a tiny fraction of Americans can have the money to fund what has become necessary for a legitimate run. Summary: Candidates spend years courting the super-rich to build up a multi-billion dollar war chest. Only those who succeed can actually run a campaign that an average American will be aware of. Then Americans get to choose one of the pre-selected “candidates”. No wonder voter turnout is so low… Executive branch, check!
  • – Note that media corporations benefit doubly as they can use their cash to fund elections, but are also the beneficiary of all that money as it is used for campaign spending.
  • Purchase of the Legislative Branch:
  • The process has progressed similarly in Congress. In 1978, outside groups spent $303,000 on congressional races. In 2012 that was up to $457,000,000. That is over 1,500 times the level in 1978. It would be funny, if it was so blatant and terrifying. By many accounts, our “leaders” in Congress spend 50% or more of their time working the phones or fundraisers rather than trying (and failing) to actually do the “people’s business”. Let’s also take a minute to appreciate the hypocrisy of anyone that pretends that the money doesn’t influence our government. Businesses do not give to politicians for charity. This is a payment for services that has proven exceedingly reliable and profitable. The ROI for money invested in purchasing Congressman is what CEO dreams are made of. No wonder the incentive is to invest in Congress rather than R&D or marketing. There are very few places in the world or times in history where you can find ROI’s in the thousands, or even the tens of thousands.
  • Review: Congressmen beg for money to get elected, make sure to vote the way your benefactors would like, consequently get more money to get elected again. If at any point they do lose or quit, they take the big payday to work for those who have been paying them all along. Legislative Branch, Check!
  • In addition, increasingly those who work on Congress (and regulators) were previously employed by these large corporations or expect to work there later. A recent example is Chris Dodd who left the Senate the head lobbyist for Hollywood at the MPAA, the guys behind SOPA and PIPA, but there are many many others.
  • Judicial Branch Endorsement of the Purchase of Government:
  • Last but not least, we have the enabling Judicial Branch. It only took a few purchased presidents to ensure the appointment of a majority of “free market” and “pro-business” judges. For instance, and disgracefully, Clarence Thomas was once legal counsel for Monsanto, but has not once recused himself from any cases involving Monsanto and always votes in their favor. These radicals have now fully endorsed and enabled the influx of money used to purchase the other branches. Specifically, 2 major decisions have completely opened the floodgates, Citizens United and McCutcheon. The first allowed unlimited contributions of corporate money into elections and brought us the notorious declaration that “corporations are people” and that “money is free speech”. This was more recently followed up with the private wealth equivalent in McCutcheon. In this ruling, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts said as part of his majority opinion (presumably with a straight face) “… nor does the possibility that an individual who spends large sums may garner influence over or access to elected officials or political parties”. And with this, the Supreme Court has fully endorsed both major sources of immense wealth to purchase our elections and consequently our government. Review: The rich fund Presidential elections, Presidents nominate “business-friendly” judges and then the bought Congress approves their nominations. New judge then votes to ensure even more money is allowed to purchase elections. Judicial Branch, CHECK!
  • 3. A Faux Republic Dependent Upon the Funders and Not the Voters
  • The Founder’s Hope and the Sad Reality:
  • Acknowledging where we are as a country, it is often helpful to look to where we started for some perspective. Unsurprisingly, this type of problem was not overlooked back in the 18th century. In 1776, James Madison stated that his goal was to design a republic in which “powerful interest groups would be rendered incapable of subdoing the general will”. Madison hoped, perhaps naively, that factions would be thwarted by competing with other factions. Sadly, we are now in a time where factions (aka wealthy special interests) subdue the will of the people and ensure the government responds to them alone on those issues where they have a “special interest” and consequently asymmetric stakes in the game (Charles Hugh Smith). As a result, these groups essentially collude to allocate their resources to their own issues, but do not “thwart” or compete with other factions as they do the same. It’s a pretty great system, as long as you’re one of the wealthy few who can use their money to drown out the poor and voiceless many. And just like that, what was once a Republic has become a corrupt shell of its past self. All the signs are still there; votes, elections, campaigns, branches of government, etc., but behind the scenes the only ones represented are those who can afford to be heard.
  • Summary: This massive consolidation of wealth, combined with the removal of any limits on money in campaigns, has allowed for the purchase of our government, or as Dick Durban once stated, “frankly they [the banks in this case] own the place”. If money = free speech, then those with all the money, have all the free speech.
  • What Might Help? Now that I have likely and thoroughly depressed the reader, let’s bounce around some ideas for what can be done. As stated in the beginning, this is not an unknown problem and many people are promoting a number of ways to fix or at least ameliorate the problem. I will briefly describe just a few which I think provide some direction any of us could easily implement or support.
  • Change the Rules: Laurence Lessig of Harvard Law has put forward a visionary proposal for re-writing the way that campaigns are financed in his book, Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress--and a Plan to Stop It. Put simply, he would like to empower every voter with a stipend, say $150 per election to give to whatever candidate or candidates they prefer. If you would like to accept this money, you would need to forgo any other contributions or support (one would hope including the indirect PAC kind). This would actually provide even more money than is used in current elections, but would effectively democratize the funding process. While there would still be a “funding election” that takes place before the actual election, the funding would not be unequally provided. Lessig’s work has only begun, as this sort of bill or likely constitutional reform is nearly impossible to achieve, but he has undertaken and I assume will continue to implement many brave and creative ways of bringing about the change all American’s should support. Most recently he has suggested we begin to fund, ironically enough, a Super PAC to end all Super PACs. It would be funded with the solitary goal of changing how money impacts our elections. Please support them here: www.mayone.us/
  • Change Our Day-to-Day: At the more micro level, Charles Hugh Smith believes that we will inevitably see our overly centralized and inefficient system erode away as it is replaced by more resilient, local and efficient businesses and societies outside of the current system. With that in mind, he recommends that “all anyone can do is the basic things--lower our energy footprint, stay healthy and avoid unnecessary medications and procedures, support local businesses, organic food growers, etc. In other words, what we can do is support local businesses that are part of the emerging economy rather than support corporate cartels.” Your Vote Does Matter: Do you live in Ohio, Florida or New Hampshire? Probably not. Despite what we are told every 4 years, there are actually states outside of the “swing states”, and even more surprising, the very large majority of Americans live in those states where your “vote doesn’t matter”. New Yorkers an Californians all know their state will turn Blue no matter who the candidates are and either don’t vote at all, or often vote for the Blue team in order to feel like they are on the winning side.
  • The truth is that if you see the election as Red vs. Blue, you vote probably doesn’t matter. But here is the trick, if all the people who think their vote didn’t matter decided to vote for whom they might actually believe in, then their votes just might matter.
  • What if all the growing number of “Independents” (who usually still vote Blue), chose to vote for a third party? What if a third party candidate won a state like New York or California? What if that candidate was one whose primary promise to the voters was to champion a change to the role of money in government (perhaps in line with what Lessig proposes)? Would you vote for such a person?I would argue you should. If California alone (with 55 electoral votes) were to vote for a 3rd party that would likely prevent either Red or Blue candidate from winning the requisite 270 electoral votes.
  • Think about the message that would send to both parties. I would predict that both sides would start to bend over backwards for an endorsement from that 3rd party and they would have to get it by taking up the same primary cause for reforming money in government. Consequently, at the root of our corrupted system which is perpetually ignored as both sides might suddenly become the big issue of the election. Then maybe we might begin to turn things around.
  • Sources: Charles Hugh Smith (oftwominds, Surivival+, etc.), Yves Smith (Naked Capitalism, Econned), Laurence Lessig (Republic Lost, multiple TED Talks), Matt Taibbi (blog at Rolling Stone and now at The Intercept), Zero Hedge, John Robb, Max Keiser, Clay Shirky (Cognitive Surplus), Aldous Huxley (Brave New World, Brave New World Revisited), George Orwell (1984), Michael Lewis, Daniel Kahneman (Thinking Fast and Slow), James Richards (Currency Wars), Han Joon Chang (23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism) and Joseph Stiglitz (Mismeasuring Our Lives) 
Paul Merrell

Secret Docs Reveal Dubious Details of Targeted Killings in Afghanistan - SPIEGEL ONLINE - 0 views

www.spiegel.de/...-in-afghanistan-a-1010358.html

war & peace drone attacks Afghanistan Pakistan leaked-docs

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • Combat operations in Afghanistan may be coming to an end, but a look at secret NATO documents reveals that the US and the UK were far less scrupulous in choosing targets for killing than previously believed. Drug dealers were also on the lists.
  • The child and his father are two of the many victims of the dirty secret operations that NATO conducted for years in Afghanistan. Their fate is described in secret documents to which SPIEGEL was given access. Some of the documents concerning the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and the NSA and GCHQ intelligence services are from the archive of whistleblower Edward Snowden. Included is the first known complete list of the Western alliance's "targeted killings" in Afghanistan. The documents show that the deadly missions were not just viewed as a last resort to prevent attacks, but were in fact part of everyday life in the guerilla war in Afghanistan. The list, which included up to 750 people at times, proves for the first time that NATO didn't just target the Taliban leadership, but also eliminated mid- and lower-level members of the group on a large scale. Some Afghans were only on the list because, as drug dealers, they were allegedly supporting the insurgents.
  • Different rules apply in war than in fighting crime in times of peace. But for years the West tied its campaign in Afghanistan to the promise that it was fighting for different values there. A democracy that kills its enemies on the basis of nothing but suspicion squanders its claim to moral superiority, making itself complicit instead. This lesson from Afghanistan also applies to the conflicts in Syria, Iraq, Pakistan and Yemen. The material SPIEGEL was able to review is from 2009 to 2011, and falls within the term of US President Barack Obama, who was inaugurated in January 2009. For Obama, Afghanistan was the "good" war and therefore legitimate -- in contrast to the Iraq war. The president wanted to end the engagement in Iraq as quickly as possible, but in Afghanistan his aim was to win.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • After Obama assumed office, the US government opted for a new strategy. In June 2009, then Defense Secretary Robert Gates installed Stanley McChrystal, a four-star general who had served in Iraq, as commander of US forces in Afghanistan. McChrystal promoted the aggressive pursuit of the Taliban. Obama sent 33,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, but their deployment was tied to a demand that military officials provide a binding date for the withdrawal of US forces. At the same time, the president distanced himself from the grand objectives the West had proclaimed when it first marched into Kabul. The United States would not try to make Afghanistan "a perfect place," said Obama. Its new main objective was to fight the insurgency.
  • This marked the beginning of one of the bloodiest phases of the war. Some 2,412 civilians died in Afghanistan in 2009. Two-thirds of them were killed by insurgents and 25 percent by NATO troops and Afghan security forces. The number of operations against the Taliban rose sharply, to between 10 and 15 a night. The operations were based on the lists maintained by the CIA and NATO -- Obama's lists. The White House dubbed the strategy "escalate and exit." McChrystal's successor, General David Petraeus, documented the strategy in "Field Manual 3-24" on fighting insurgencies, which remains a standard work today. Petraeus outlined three stages in fighting guerilla organizations like the Taliban. The first was a cleansing phase, in which the enemy leadership is weakened. After that, local forces were to regain control of the captured areas. The third phase was focused on reconstruction. Behind closed doors, Petraeus and his staff explained exactly what was meant by "cleansing." German politicians recall something that Michael T. Flynn, the head of ISAF intelligence in Afghanistan, once said during a briefing: "The only good Talib is a dead Talib."
  • Under Petraeus, a merciless campaign began to hunt down the so-called shadow governors and local supporters aligned with the Islamists. For the Americans, the fact that the operations often ended in killings was seen as a success. In August 2010, Petraeus proudly told diplomats in Kabul that he had noticed a shifting trend. The figures he presented as evidence made some of the ambassadors feel uneasy. At least 365 insurgent commanders, Petraeus explained, had been neutralized in the last three months, for an average of about four killings a day. The existence of documents relating to the so-called Joint Prioritized Effects List (JPEL) has only been described in vague terms until now. The missions by US special units are mentioned but not discussed in detail in the US Army Afghanistan war logs published by WikiLeaks in 2010, together with the New York Times, the Guardian and SPIEGEL. The documents that have now become accessible provide, for the first time, a systematic view of the targeted killings. They outline the criteria used to determine who was placed on the list and why.
  • When an operation could potentially result in civilian casualties, ISAF headquarters in Kabul had to be involved. "The rule of thumb was that when there was estimated collateral damage of up to 10 civilians, the ISAF commander in Kabul was to decide whether the risk was justifiable," says an ISAF officer who worked with the lists for years. If more potential civilian casualties were anticipated, the decision was left up to the relevant NATO headquarters office. Bodyguards, drivers and male attendants were viewed as enemy combatants, whether or not they actually were. Only women, children and the elderly were treated as civilians. Even officers who were involved in the program admit that these guidelines were cynical. If a Taliban fighter was repeatedly involved in deadly attacks, a "weighing of interests" was performed. The military officials would then calculate how many human lives could be saved by the "kill," and how many civilians would potentially be killed in an airstrike.
  • The document also reveals how vague the basis for deadly operations apparently was. In the voice recognition procedure, it was sufficient if a suspect identified himself by name once during the monitored conversation. Within the next 24 hours, this voice recognition was treated as "positive target identification" and, therefore, as legitimate grounds for an airstrike. This greatly increased the risk of civilian casualties. Probably one of the most controversial decisions by NATO in Afghanistan is the expansion of these operations to include drug dealers. According to an NSA document, the United Nations estimated that the Taliban was earning $300 million a year through the drug trade. The insurgents, the document continues, "could not be defeated without disrupting the drug trade."
  • According to the NSA document, in October 2008 the NATO defense ministers made the momentous decision that drug networks would now be "legitimate targets" for ISAF troops. "Narcotics traffickers were added to the Joint Prioritized Effects List (JPEL) list for the first time," the report reads. In the opinion of American commanders like Bantz John Craddock, there was no need to prove that drug money was being funneled to the Taliban to declare farmers, couriers and dealers as legitimate targets of NATO strikes.
  • In early 2009, Craddock, NATO's Supreme Allied Commander for Europe at the time, issued an order to expand the targeted killings of Taliban officials to drug producers. This led to heated discussions within NATO. German NATO General Egon Ramms declared the order "illegal" and a violation of international law. The power struggle within NATO finally led to a modification of Craddock's directive: Targets related to the drug production at least had to be investigated as individual cases. The top-secret dossier could be highly damaging to the German government. For years, German authorities have turned over the mobile phone numbers of German extremists in Afghanistan to the United States. At the same time, the German officials claimed that homing in on mobile phone signals was far too imprecise for targeted killings. This is apparently an untenable argument. According to the 2010 document, both Eurofighters and drones had "the ability to geolocate a known GSM handset." In other words, active mobile phones could serve as tracking devices for the special units.
  • The classified documents could now have legal repercussions. The human rights organization Reprieve is weighing legal action against the British government. Reprieve believes it is especially relevant that the lists include Pakistanis who were located in Pakistan. "The British government has repeatedly stated that it is not pursuing targets in Pakistan and not doing air strikes on Pakistani territory," says Reprieve attorney Jennifer Gibson. The documents, she notes, also show that the "war on terror" was virtually conflated with the "war on drugs." "This is both new and extremely legally troubling," says Gibson.
  • A 2009 CIA study that addresses targeted killings of senior enemy officials worldwide reaches a bitter conclusion. Because of the Taliban's centralized but flexible leadership, as well as its egalitarian tribal structures, the targeted killings were only moderately successful in Afghanistan. "Morover, the Taliban has a high overall ability to replace lost leaders," the study finds.
Paul Merrell

"Crisis At The Border" Is Yet Another Example Of "Blowback." - 0 views

www.informationclearinghouse.info/article39068.htm

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy immigration Honduras coup El-Salvador Guatemala

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • If you’re reading this, you probably follow the news. So you’ve probably heard of the latest iteration of the “crisis at the border”: tens of thousands of children, many of them unaccompanied by an adult, crossing the desert from Mexico into the United States, where they surrender to the Border Patrol in hope of being allowed to remain here permanently. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s detention and hearing system has been overwhelmed by the surge of children and, in some cases, their parents. The Obama Administration has asked Congress to approve new funding to speed up processing and deportations of these illegal immigrants. Even if you’ve followed this story closely, you probably haven’t heard the depressing backstory — the reason so many Central Americans are sending their children on a dangerous thousand-mile journey up the spine of Mexico, where they ride atop freight trains, endure shakedowns by corrupt police and face rapists, bandits and other predators. (For a sense of what it’s like, check out the excellent 2009 film “Sin Nombre.”) NPR and other mainstream news outlets are parroting the White House, which blames unscrupulous “coyotes” (human smugglers) for “lying to parents, telling them that if they put their kids in the hands of traffickers and get to the United States that they will be able to stay.” True: the coyotes are saying that in order to gin up business. Also true: U.S. law has changed, and many of these kids have a strong legal case for asylum. Unfortunately, U.S. officials are ignoring the law.
  • The sad truth is that this “crisis at the border” is yet another example of “blowback.” Blowback is an unintended negative consequence of U.S. political, military and/or economic intervention overseas — when something we did in the past comes back to bite us in the ass. 9/11 is the classic example; arming and funding radical Islamists in the Middle East and South Asia who were less grateful for our help than angry at the U.S.’ simultaneous backing for oppressive governments (The House of Saud, Saddam, Assad, etc.) in the region. More recent cases include U.S. support for Islamist insurgents in Libya and Syria, which destabilized both countries and led to the murders of U.S. consular officials in Benghazi, and the rise of ISIS, the guerilla army that imperils the U.S.-backed Maliki regime in Baghdad, respectively. Confusing the issue for casual American news consumers is that the current border crisis doesn’t involve the usual Mexicans traveling north in search of work. Instead, we’re talking about people from Central American nations devastated by a century of American colonialism and imperialism, much of that intervention surprisingly recent. Central American refugees are merely transiting through Mexico.
  • “The unaccompanied children crossing the border into the United States are leaving behind mainly three Central American countries, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. The first two are among the world’s most violent and all three have deep poverty, according to a Pew Research report based on Department of Homeland Security (DHS) information,” reports NBC News. “El Salvador ranked second in terms of homicides in Latin America in 2011, and it is still high on the list. Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador are among the poorest nations in Latin America. Thirty percent of Hondurans, 17 percent of Salvadorans and 26 percent of Guatemalans live on less than $2 a day.” The fact that Honduras is the biggest source of the exodus jumped out at me. That’s because, in 2009, the United States government — under President Obama — tacitly supported a military coup that overthrew the democratically elected president of Honduras. “Washington has a very close relationship with the Honduran military, which goes back decades,” The Guardian noted at the time. “During the 1980s, the US used bases in Honduras to train and arm the Contras, Nicaraguan paramilitaries who became known for their atrocities in their war against the Sandinista government in neighbouring Nicaragua.”
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  • Honduras wasn’t paradise under President Manuel Zelaya. Since the coup, however, the country has entered a downward death spiral of drug-related bloodshed and political revenge killings that crashed the economy, brought an end to law, order and civil society, and now has some analysts calling it a “failed state” along the lines of Somalia and Afghanistan during the 1990s. “Zelaya’s overthrow created a vacuum in security in which military and police were now focused more on political protest, and also led to a freeze in international aid that markedly worsened socio-economic conditions,” Mark Ungar, professor of political science at Brooklyn College and the City University of New York, told The International Business Times. “The 2009 coup, asserts [Tulane] professor Aaron Schneider, gave the Honduran military more political and economic leverage, at the same time as the state and political elites lost their legitimacy, resources and the capacity to govern large parts of the country.” El Salvador and Guatemala, also narcostates devastated by decades of U.S. support for oppressive, corrupt right-wing dictatorships, are suffering similar conditions.
  • Talk about brass! The United States does it everything it can to screw up Central America — and then acts surprised when desperate people show up at its front gate trying to escape the (U.S.-caused) carnage. Letting the kids stay — along with their families — is less than the least we could do.
Paul Merrell

'A Line in the Sand' in Fight to Release Thousands of Photos of Prisoner Abuse - The In... - 0 views

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war & peace torture Abu-Graib photos litigation

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • A federal judge is demanding that the government explain, photo-by-photo, why it can’t release hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of pictures showing detainee abuse by U.S. forces at military prison sites in Iraq and Afghanistan. In a courtroom in the Southern District of New York yesterday, Judge Alvin Hellerstein appeared skeptical of the government’s argument, which asserted that the threat of the Islamic State and Al Qaeda exploiting the images for propaganda should override the public’s right to see any of the photos. He was “highly suspicious” of the government’s attempt to declare the whole lot of the photos dangerous. “It’s too easy and too meaningless,” he said. Since 2004, the American Civil Liberties Union has been fighting for the release of photos from military investigations into prisoner abuse beyond those that were leaked from Abu Ghraib. The additional pictures reportedly show sexual assault, soldiers posing with dead bodies, and other offenses. The exact number of photos has not been disclosed in court, though former Senator Joe Lieberman has previously said that there are nearly 2,100.
  • Hellerstein first ordered the government to hand over a subset of the pictures in 2005. President Obama decided to release them in 2009, but Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the top American general in Iraq implored him not to. Congress then passed a law amending the Freedom of Information Act to allow the Secretary of Defense to certify that publishing the pictures could put American lives at risk, which then-secretary Robert Gates did. The ACLU continued to fight the issue in court, and last August, Hellerstein ordered that the government needed to justify withholding each picture individually.
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