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Paul Merrell

State: US concerned about missile defense system at Iranian uranium facility | TheHill - 0 views

thehill.com/...em-at-iranian-uranium-facility

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Aug 16 - No Cached
  • The State Department said Monday it is concerned about Iranian state media reports that the country has deployed an advanced missile defense system around its Fordow underground uranium facility.  The S-300 surface-to-air missile system was sold to Iran by Russia over U.S. objections, after an international accord was reached last July that lifted sanctions on Iran in exchange for limits to its nuclear program. 
  • Russia had canceled a contract to deliver the systems to Iran in 2010, under pressure from the West, but announced it was reviving the contract in April 2015, as reaching a final nuclear deal appeared imminent. On Sunday, Iranian state TV reported that the S-300 was deployed at the Fordow facility, about 60 miles south of Tehran, according to Reuters. Since the signing of the deal in January, Iran has stopped enriching uranium there.  But U.S. officials and allies are concerned that the deployment of the S-300, which intercepts missiles, would limit potential future military options. Last August, the Pentagon expressed objections to the sale, but said it was "confident" the president would "have all the options he needs" to counteract the system.  
  • In October, former Marine Corps commandant retired Gen. James Conway warned the S-300's deployment "would be a game changer in the region." Iranian officials characterized the deployment of the system as defensive. "Our main priority is to protect Iran's nuclear facilities under any circumstances," said Brig. Gen. Farzad Esmaili, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps' air defense force. "Today, Iran's sky is one of the most secure in the Middle East." "The S-300 system is a defense system, not an assault one, but the Americans did their utmost to prevent Iran from getting it," Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said. Sen. Tom CottonTom CottonState: US concerned about missile defense system at Iranian uranium facility GOP senators argue DOJ pressured Aetna on ObamaCare Trump, GOP see gold in Clinton Foundation attacks MORE (R-Ark.), member of the Senate Armed Service Committee, on Monday blasted the administration's Iran policy, saying it emboldened the "ayatollahs in Tehran" and led to the deal going through. "Had the Obama Administration not rushed to dismantle the international sanctions restraining Iran’s belligerence in the Middle East in pursuit of a legacy, Iran would not have been able to acquire and deploy such destabilizing weapons," he said.  
  • Paul Merrell on 30 Aug 16
     
    The S-300 is not state of the art, like Russia's S-500, but it's still a formidable deterrent to attack by air, particularly by the nation most likely to do so, Israel. The U.S. might conceivably do a saturation missile strike that could overcome the S-300. But Iran is correct: it's a defensive weapon. And the Iranian Nukes Myth is still a myth.
Paul Merrell

Damascus Has Audio of Daesh Talks With US Military Before Strike on Syrian Army - 0 views

sputniknews.com/...706456-us-airstrike-daesh-army

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy ISIL Mosul Deir-Ezzor U.S. Saudis deal

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • The Syrian intelligence possesses an audio recording of conversation between Daesh terrorists and US military prior to the Washington-led coalition's airstrikes on the government troops near Deir ez-Zor on September 17, the speaker of the People's Council of Syria said Monday."The Syrian Army intercepted a conversation between the Americans and Daesh before the air raid on Deir ez-Zor", Hadiya Khalaf Abbas said as quoted by the Al Mayadeen broadcaster. US warplanes hit Syrian government troops near the eastern city of Deir ez-Zor on September 17, leaving 62 military personnel killed and a hundred wounded. The Pentagon said initially that the airstrike was a mistake and targeted Daesh militants. The head of the Syrian parliament added during her visit to Iran that after the coalition's airstrikes on the government troops US military directed terrorists' attack on the Syrian army.
  • The attack on government positions put to test a US-Russia brokered nationwide ceasefire that came into being in Syria earlier that week. Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said last Friday it was necessary to separate Daesh terrorists from "moderate" opposition forces in order to salvage the truce. Britain, Australia and Denmark confirmed their air forces' participation in the deadly airstrikes. The politician noted that the details would be made public later. Syrian Army soldiers that survived U.S. bombs in Deir Ezzor. pic.twitter.com/BrvN6wBR06
  • Paul Merrell on 17 Oct 16
     
    The source is Sputnik, an official Russian government news agency. The story is dated September 19, 2016. The September 17 U.S. airstrike was on the surrounded Syran Army position that ISIL is now moving on from Mosul. SInce that report, the number killed by the airstrike has risen to over 80, apparently from some of the more than 100 wounded dying.
Paul Merrell

Trump's freeze on immigrants and refugees plays into the hands of Islamic terror recrui... - 0 views

www.latimes.com/...s-refugees-20170126-story.html

Trump refugees immigration War-on-Muslims

shared by Paul Merrell on 28 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • resident Trump is expected to sign orders Friday to temporarily freeze immigration from seven Muslim nations and halt refugee resettlements from everywhere — a classic example of a solution in search of problem, and just the kind of symbolic act that gives weight to radical Islamists when they argue that the U.S. is an enemy of their faith. Trump’s campaign for president was built on a foundation of fear and resentment, and that dark cloud hangs over these putative attempts to bolster national security. Based on a draft version of the executive order, it seems that Trump will impose a 30-day suspension of visas for people from seven predominately Muslim countries — Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen — while the government reviews and presumably tightens its visa-vetting protocols. He also will direct security officials to determine within 30 days what information they need to evaluate potential visitors, and list the countries around the world that don’t provide it. Countries that don’t correct the error of their ways within 60 days of that report — including the seven affected by the ban — will have their citizens barred until they comply. Worse, Trump apparently plans to suspend U.S. acceptance of all refugees — people fleeing war or oppression for whom returning home is not an option — for 120 days as the government reviews and revises its screening procedures, and he is expected to slash the number of refugees the U.S. would accept through October 2017 from 110,000 (set by President Obama last September) to 50,000. Trump also will prioritize the resettlement of refugees seeking asylum on grounds of religious persecution, officially valuing people oppressed because of their religion over those targeted for political dissent, sexual orientation or other reasons. 
  • And Trump wants plans drawn for “safe areas” for Syrians within Syria or nearby nations, which could help the administration at a later point if it wants to institute a longer-term ban on Syrian refugees. But the draft order offers no details on how the safe zones would be secured, or the legal basis for the U.S. establishing control of territory in a sovereign (if war-torn) state.  Such efforts to restrict access to the U.S. by people fleeing war-torn parts of the world would be misguided and inhumane. The Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, reported in 2015 that in the 14 years after the 9/11 terror attacks, 784,000 refugees resettled in the U.S. Yet during that time only three resettled refugees were convicted on terror-related charges — two of them for plotting against an overseas target and the third for hatching “plans that were barely credible,” according to the report. The vast majority of refugees allowed into the U.S. are first vetted by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, whose screeners then recommend placements in third countries. When the U.S. gets a referral, it conducts its own security screening before offering resettlement, a process that routinely takes one to two years.
  • What’s more, a study by the New America Foundation shows that 80% of the terrorist attacks in this country since 9/11 have been carried out by American citizens (although some of those perpetrators were naturalized citizens). It is not surprising that some Americans are worried by the hostility directed at them from a small, radicalized segment of the Islamic world. But such fears should not be channeled into a broad, discriminatory retrenchment that is at odds with the best of our humanitarian principles — especially if that retrenchment would likely do little to protect us. The U.S. became a wealthy world power in large part through immigration. And it’s openness has provided a lifeline to the oppressed of the world — the U.S. has formally resettled more refugees than any other country (though at the moment it is not bearing its fair share of the burden of resettling the tens of millions of migrants currently fleeing war zones). Trump’s actions are not only inhumane, they are a betrayal of what the United States stands for. 
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    • Paul Merrell
      Paul Merrell on 28 Jan 17
       
      They forgot to work in that: [i] the U.S. is required by international law to accept refugees; [ii] the list of nations singled out for complete bans on acceptance of refugees is the same list of nations that the U.S. has inflicted its wars on, in other words, people of those nations are refugees precisely because of our nation's invasions of their countries. We broke it, we should fix it.
Paul Merrell

Failed NATO Invasion of Moldova SITREP, by Scott | The Vineyard of the Saker - 0 views

thesaker.is/ion-of-moldova-sitrep-by-scott

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Moldova coup-attempts

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 May 16 - No Cached
  • It’s hard to overestimate the value of planning in advance, especially when it comes to getting reservations in popular restaurants and invading countries by military force. In the week of the May 9th Victory Day two significant failures took place  each one remarkable in its own way. Each event went completely unreported by the Western corporate and government media, but discussed on Social Media.
  • In the following three weeks after the incident with the USS Florida, while Russia was preparing for Victory Day celebrations and all eyes were on Moscow, attention of Ukrainians was fully concentrated on the visit of Victoria Nuland to Kiev on April 26th allegedly to discuss the implementation of the Minsk II Agreement and the future elections in Donetsk and Lugansk republics. Since the day when President Putin said that the republics can have their elections anytime they want, the question of these elections ceased to be a subject of blackmail toward the Kremlin.   It appeared that the true reason for Nuland’s visit could be located to the west of Kiev, rather than the east. Just recently, Robert D. Kaplan, a former Stratfor’s Chief Geopolitical Analyst, and currently a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) has published a book “In Europe’s Shadow” where he lays out a plan to reunite Romania with “its lost province of Moldova.” Nuland visited Moldova back in January, with the task to coerce Moldova’s government and its oligarchs to change the country’s Constitution provision of neutrality. Before she left, she gave a short speech at the American Embassy in Bucharest after a private dinner with PM Ciolos and President Klaus. “We powerfully support the desire of the people in Moldova to have responsible leaders who can implement reforms. This is the best way to assure the future of Moldova. Romania and the United States, in conjunction with NATO, have support programs in place to assure the security of Moldova but the government has to work to implement these programs.”
  • Moldova is one of the poorest countries in Eastern Europe, and its economy heavily relies on Russia. According to the CIA Fact Book: Moldova’s annual remittances of about $1.12 billion comes from the roughly one million Moldovans working in Europe, Russia, and other former Soviet Bloc countries; Moldova imports almost all of its energy supplies from Russia and Ukraine; Moldova’s dependence on Russian energy is underscored by a more than $5 billion debt to Russian natural gas supplier Gazprom; Moldova signed an Association Agreement and a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement with the EU during fall 2014, however its biggest trade partner remains Russia. Everyone understands that a NATO membership will cut all economic ties with Russia, including jobs, and it will turn Moldova into a failed state, or in the CIA doublespeak, the country would stop being vulnerable to “Russian pressure.” Apparently, the failure of Moldova as a state, and its disappearance as a nation is also what the EU wants. On January 6, the new Moldovan Ambassador to Germany was presenting his credentials when, out of the blue, the German president asked the new ambassador what the procedure was for Republic of Moldova to formally unite with Romania. On May 4th, the Katehon reported on Vladimir Plahotniuc’s (the infamous Moldavian oligarch and mafia boss) visit to the US and his meeting with Victoria Nuland there. As the Victory Day celebration was approaching, we all fully anticipated from the US to conduct terror acts, military excursions/drills, and political and legal attacks on Russia as the US and the EU always do to harass Russia during its major national and Church holidays.
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  • Starting with April 21st,  we saw a flurry of “news” about Ukraine and Romania joining NATO Black Sea flotilla and the organization of Romanian-Ukrainian-Bulgarian brigade similar to that created by Poland. On April 26, Georgia (Gruzia) pitched in via the Georgia Today: “creation of NATO Black Sea Fleet Gains US Support” and praising Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania for calls to expand the Western military. All what Russia said to all this NATO generated noise was a brief statement of  Russia’s envoy to NATO Alexander Grushko. “NATO should be in a position to know that all necessary steps will be taken from our side to neutralize the emerging threats.” With all these  preparations for the war on Russia going on, NATO also planned military drills in neutral Moldova, chosen to start on May 2nd, the day of remembrance for the victims of the Odessa Massacre. Meanwhile, the patriots of Moldavia who worked together regardless of their political views, discovered something interesting and saved Moldova. NATO reported that for drills they would be entering Moldova in four formations, and that the total of motorized units will be 50+. However, the very first formation that made an attempt to enter the territory of Moldova contained 100+ unites. This was just one formation. And there was expected three more formations.
  • The plan of NATO was to enter the country with too large for this tiny country forces, to stage a bloody false flag attack during the Victory Day celebration in Moldova with the participation of Ukrainian Right Sector terrorists masquerading as “pro-Russia separatists.” This plot worked in Ukraine, so it should work in Moldova, right? That’s the true reason why Nuland was in Kiev two weeks prior. After this false flag attack, a Romanian fleet was planned to enter Ukrainian territorial waters “by invitation of the Ukrainian government” and arrive to Odessa in order to block Russian fleets from interfering and helping Transnistria. But… Coming back to the bizarre incident near Gibraltar, when one NATO member’s tiny 20 tone Costal Guards’ boat was attacked by another NATO member for interfering with the 18,000 tones behemoth of a submarine  of the third NATO member. The NATO plan apparently was to stealthy and quietly position the Ohio-class ballistic guided-missile submarine USS Florida (SSGN 728) in the Mediterranean or even in the Black Sea so it would be able to shoot into Moldova to overwhelm Moldovan minuscule defense forces. We have to remember that it was the USS Florida “that opened up the Libya intervention,” firing more than 90 cruise missiles to destroy Libya’s air defenses and clearing the way for NATO air strikes. “Never before in the history of the United States of America has one ship conducted that much land attack strikes, conventionally, in one short time period,” Rear Adm. Rick Breckenridge had said.
  • However, thanks to Spanish Costal Guards the submarine was discovered and talked about all around the world via social media and the press. The USS Florida had no other options but to retreat and return to home base. In fact, there were TWO incidents on the same April 16th  day involving the USS Florida. First, it was  the Spanish patrol boat belonged to the Servicio de Vigilancia Aduanera, at whom the British Navy opened  fire.  A bit later,  the Guardia Civil vessel Rio Cedeña tried to cut across the submarine’s bow and was photographed  by multiple witnesses.
  • According to V.V. Pyakin, a political analyst with the Concept Technologies Foundation, a think tank located in St. Petersburg, NATO was in a process of conducting a full-scale invasion of Moldova with the annexation of a Southern part of Ukraine including Odessa to construct a NATO Navy base there. Moldova was supposed to become a part of Romania automatically with the US military forces arriving to the capital and taking  over the government of Moldova. That’s why NATO needed all those military “drills” in the Black Sea region and in the Baltics simultaneously. When the patriotic forces of Moldavia discovered that NATO was about to enter the territory of Moldova in four formations, 100+ motorized units each, they protested loudly and blocked the entrance of NATO troops on the border. Meanwhile, the biggest political fraction in Moldova threatened with the impeachment of the president for treason, if  NATO troops would be allowed to enter the country. Reports from Moldova at the time disclosed that American troops stopped at the border crossing didn’t have proper ID and other papers. Moldovans came to greet them with the banners “Moldova is a neutral country” and “Stop bases of NATO,” “Stop NATO” and “NATO go home.” As the result, on April 28th only about 60 units and 200 servicemen the U.S. Army 2nd Cavalry Regimental Engineer Squadron were allowed to enter the country.
  • When a formation of American military crossed the Romanian-Moldova border allegedly to take part in  Dragon Pioneer 2016 NATO military drills, Moldavian opposition leaders expressed protests. Several members of the Parliament blocked the road.  They reported to Russian and international media and news outlets that the US troops didn’t have an international agreement signed by the defense ministers of Moldova and USA. They also lacked a legal government agreement on the entrance of the heavy military equipment and weaponry to the territory of the country. 60% of American servicemen didn’t have valid military IDs. According to a TASS report,  “To prevent collisions, officers from the Fulger (Lightning) police battalion of special purpose intervened, which were specially delivered from Chisinau. After checking the documents, a column of military vehicles followed the US to the place of temporary location at the site of Negresht,” said the inspectorate.” “The initiative to invite the US troops into the country and hold the exhibition of American technology belongs to the Minister of Defense of Moldova Anatol Șalaru, who is famous for the organization of the “Museum of Soviet occupation” in Chisinau, calls to repeal neutrality and make the country a member of NATO, and the fight against monuments of the Soviet era.” This move was harshly criticized by Igor Dodon, whose party has the largest faction in Parliament and controls a quarter of the seats.
  • He stated: “We believe military exercises involving US troops on Moldovan territory is a flagrant violation of the constitutional principle of neutrality of Moldova. In this regard, the deputies from the Party of socialists have already initiated a number of procedures. They will continue, and this will be one of the reasons for introducing in May the initiative to dismiss the government.” By Victory Day it became apparent that the Nuland-Kogan-NATO plan for invasion of Moldova was foiled. All Americans could do was   to “crush” a Victory Day parade in the center of Moldova’s capital by coming uninvited and bringing their motorized vehicles to it. And that’s where NATO troops and Moldovan patriots came face to face. Pindos lost their freaking mind:  An American Colonel demands from the citizen of Moldova to leave the central square ПИНДОСЫ ОХРЕНЕЛИ В КОНЕЦ! Американский полковник предлагает покинуть центральную площадь Кишинева гражданину РМ pic.twitter.com/FfECO3NBXi — Серж Высоцкий (@Albertich50) May 12, 2016 An American Colonel demands from the citizen of Moldova to leave the central square
Paul Merrell

World's Largest Barrier Reef to Disappear in 5 Years | News | teleSUR English - 0 views

www.telesurtv.net/...-in-5-Years-20160519-0001.html

ocean-environment Great-Barrier-Reef

shared by Paul Merrell on 01 Jun 16 - No Cached
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  • According to the report published in the journal Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science, saving the reef will take a huge amount of work and money. Poor water quality was seen as the major threat as well as global warming which is causing significant coral bleaching. Chief researcher of the report, John Brodie, told the Guardian, “The current spending is totally inadequate ... You either do it properly or you give up on the reef. It’s that bad.”
Gary Edwards

Comey has Long History of Cases Ending Favorable to Clintons - Tea Party News - 0 views

www.teaparty.org/ding-favorable-clintons-174947

Clinton Hillary

shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Jul 16 - No Cached
  • Messages found stored on Clinton’s private email server show that Berger – a convicted thief of classified documents – had been advising Clinton while she served as secretary of state and had access to emails containing classified information. For example, in an email dated Sept. 22, 2009, Berger advised Clinton advised how she could leverage information to make Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu more cooperative in discussions with the Obama administration over a settlement freeze.
  • Law firm ties Berger, Lynch, Mills Berger worked as a partner in the Washington law firm Hogan & Hartson from 1973 to 1977, before taking a position as the deputy director of policy planning at the State Department in the Carter administration. When Carter lost his re-election bid, Berger returned to Hogan & Hartson, where he worked until he took leave in 1988 to act as foreign policy adviser in Gov. Michael Dukakis’ presidential campaign. When Dukakis was defeated, Berger returned to Hogan & Hartson until he became foreign policy adviser for Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign in 1992. On March 28, WND reported Lynch was a litigation partner for eight years at Hogan & Hartson, from March 2002 through April 2010. Mills also worked at Hogan & Hartson, for two years, starting in 1990, before she joined then President-elect Bill Clinton’s transition team, on her way to securing a position as White House deputy counsel in the Clinton administration. According to documents Hillary Clinton’s first presidential campaign made public in 2008, Hogan & Hartson’s New York-based partner Howard Topaz was the tax lawyer who filed income tax returns for Bill and Hillary Clinton beginning in 2004. In addition, Hogan & Hartson in Virginia filed a patent trademark request on May 19, 2004, for Denver-based MX Logic Inc., the computer software firm that developed the email encryption system used to manage Clinton’s private email server beginning in July 2013. A tech expert has observed that employees of MX Logic could have had access to all the emails that went through her account.
  • In 1999, President Bill Clinton nominated Lynch for the first of her two terms as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, a position she held until she joined Hogan & Hartson in March 2002 to become a partner in the firm’s Litigation Practice Group. She left Hogan & Hartson in 2010, after being nominated by President Obama for her second term as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, a position she held until Obama nominated her to serve in her current position as attorney general. A report published April 8, 2008, by The American Lawyer noted Hogan & Hartson was among Hillary Clinton’s biggest financial supporters in the legal industry during her first presidential campaign. “Firm lawyers and staff have donated nearly $123,400 to her campaign so far, according to campaign contribution data from the Center for Responsive Politics,” Nate Raymond observed in The American Lawyer article. “Christine Varney, a partner in Hogan’s Washington, D.C., office, served as chief counsel to the Clinton-Gore Campaign in 1992.” While there is no evidence that Lynch played a direct role either in the tax work done by the firm for the Clintons or in linking Hillary’s private email server to MX Logic, the ethics of the legal profession hold all partners jointly liable for the actions of other partners in a business. “If Hogan and Hartson previously represented the Clintons on tax matters, it is incumbent upon U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch to [disclose] what, if any, role she had in such tax matters,” said Tom Fitton, president of Washington-based Judicial Watch.
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  • HSBC link When Lynch’s nomination as attorney general was considered by the Senate one year ago, as WND reported, the Senate Judiciary Committee examined her role in the Obama administration’s decision not to prosecute the banking giant HSBC for laundering funds for Mexican drug cartels and Middle Eastern terrorists. WND was first to report in a series of articles beginning in 2012 money-laundering charges brought by John Cruz, a former HSBC vice president and relationship manager, based on his more than 1,000 pages of evidence and secret audio recordings. The staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee focused on Cruz’s allegations that Lynch, acting then in her capacity as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, engaged in a Department of Justice cover-up. Obama’s attorney general nominee allowed HSBC in December 2011 to enter into a “deferred prosecution” settlement in which the bank agreed to pay a $1.9 billion fine and admit “willful criminal conduct” in exchange for dropping criminal investigations and prosecutions of HSBC directors or employees. Cruz called the $1.92 billion fine the U.S. government imposed on HSBC “a joke” and filed a $10 million lawsuit for “retaliation and wrongful termination.” From 2002 to 2003, Comey held the position of U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, the same position held by Lynch. On March 4, 2013, he joined the HSBC board of directors, agreeing to serve as an independent non-executive director and a member of the bank’s Financial System Vulnerabilities Committee, positions he held until he resigned on Aug. 3, 2013, to become head of the FBI.
  • Comey, Fitzgerald and Valerie Plame On Jan. 1, 2004, the Washington Post reported that after Attorney General John Aschroft recused himself and his staff from any involvement in the investigation of who leaked the name of CIA employee Valerie Plame after journalist Robert Novak named her in print as a CIA operative, Comey assumed the role of acting attorney general for the purposes of the investigation. Comey appointed Patrick J. Fitzgerald, a U.S. attorney in Chicago, to act as special counsel in conducting the inquiry into what became known as “Plamegate.” At the time Comey made the appointment, Fitzgerald was already godfather to one of Comey’s children. On April 13, 2015, co-authoring a USA Today op-ed piece, Plame and her husband, retired ambassador Joseph Wilson, made public their support for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, openly acknowledging their political closeness to both Hillary and Bill Clinton. The first two paragraphs of the editorial read: We have known Hillary Clinton both professionally and personally for close to 20 years, dating back to before President Bill Clinton’s first trip to Africa in 1998 — a trip that they both acknowledge changed their lives, and gave considerable meaning to their post-White House years and to the activities of the Clinton Foundation. Joe, serving as the National Security Council Senior Director for African Affairs, was instrumental in arranging that historic visit. Our history became entwined with Hillary further after Valerie’s identity as a CIA officer was deliberately exposed. That criminal act was taken in retribution for Joe’s article in The New York Times in which he explained he had discovered no basis for the Bush administration’s justification for the Iraq War that Saddam Hussein was seeking yellowcake uranium to develop a nuclear weapon.
  • In January 2016, Chuck Ross in the Daily Caller reported that Hillary Clinton emails made public made clear that one of her “most frequent favor-seekers when she was secretary of state was former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a longtime Clinton friend, an endorser of Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, and an Africa expert with deep business ties on the continent.” Ross noted that Wilson emailed Clinton on Dec. 22, 2009, seeking help for Symbion Power, an American engineering contractor for whom Wilson consulted, in the company’s bid to pursue a U.S. Agency of International Development contract for work in Afghanistan. In the case of the Afghanistan project, Ross noted, Clinton vouched for Wilson and Symbion as she forwarded the request to Jack Lew, who served then as deputy secretary of state for management and resources. Ross further reported Wilson’s request might also have been discussed with President Obama, as one email indicates. In 2005, Fitzgerald prosecuted Libby, a prominent adviser to then Vice President Dick Cheney, in the Plame investigation, charging him with two counts of perjury, two counts of making false statements to federal prosecutors and one count of obstruction of justice. On March 6, 2007, Libby was convicted of four of the five counts, and on June 5, 2007, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton to two and a half years in federal prison. On April 6, 2015, the Wall Street Journal reported the publication of New York Times reporter Judith Miller’s memoir “The Story: A Reporter’s Journey” exposed “unscrupulous conduct” by Fitzgerald in the 2007 trial of Libby.
  • WSJ reporter Peter Berkowitz noted Miller “writes that Mr. Fitzgerald induced her to give what she now realizes was false testimony.” “By withholding critical information and manipulating her memory as he prepared her to testify, Ms. Miller relates, Mr. Fitzgerald ‘steered’ her ‘in the wrong direction.’” http://www.wnd.com/2016/07/comey-has-long-history-of-clinton-related-cases/
  • Gary Edwards on 09 Jul 16
     
    Bend over and grab your ankles. The rats nest of Clinton operatives in Washington DC is far deeper than anyone ever imagined. "FBI Director James Comey has a long history of involvement in Department of Justice actions that arguably ended up favorable to the Clintons. In 2004, Comey, then serving as a deputy attorney general in the Justice Department, apparently limited the scope of the criminal investigation of Sandy Berger, which left out former Clinton administration officials who may have coordinated with Berger in his removal and destruction of classified records from the National Archives. The documents were relevant to accusations that the Clinton administration was negligent in the build-up to the 9/11 terrorist attack. On Tuesday, Comey announced that despite evidence of "extreme negligence by Hillary Clinton and her top aides regarding the handling of classified information through a private email server, the FBI would not refer criminal charges to Attorney General Loretta Lynch and the Justice Department. Curiously, Berger, Lynch and Cheryl Mills all worked as partners in the Washington law firm Hogan & Hartson, which prepared tax returns for the Clintons and did patent work for a software firm that played a role in the private email server Hillary Clinton used when she was secretary of state. Lynch and Comey both served as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. They crossed paths in the investigation of HSBC bank, which avoided criminal charges in a massive money-laundering scandal for which the bank paid a $1.9 billion fine. After Attorney General John Aschroft recused himself in the Valerie Plame affair in 2004, Comey appointed as special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald, who ended up convicting "Scooter" Libby, a top aide to then Vice President Dick Cheney, of perjury and obstruction of justice. The charge affirmed the accusations of Plame and her former ambassador husband, Joe Wilson - both partisan supporters of Bill and
  • Paul Merrell on 10 Jul 16
     
    The "ethical" situation is far worse than described. Attorney disciplinary rules require that a lawyer, including all lawyers in the same firm, owe a lifetime duty of loyalty to a client, a duty that does not end with representation in a particular matter. Accordingly, Lynch had what the disciplinary rules refer to as an "actual conflict of interest" between her duties of loyalty to both Hillary and the U.S. government that required her withdrawal from representing either in the decision whether to prosecute Hillary. Saying that she would rubber stamp what Comey recommended was not the required withdrawal. Comey is an investigator, not a prosecutor. This was a situation for appointment of a special counsel to represent the Department of Justice in the decision whether to prosecute, not satisfied by rubber stamping Comey's recomendation,.
Paul Merrell

Lawmakers warn of 'radical' move by NSA to share information | TheHill - 0 views

thehill.com/...tutional-dangerous-nsa-changes

surveillance state NSA raw-data-sharing

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • A bipartisan pair of lawmakers is expressing alarm at reported changes at the National Security Agency that would allow the intelligence service’s information to be used for policing efforts in the United States.“If media accounts are true, this radical policy shift by the NSA would be unconstitutional, and dangerous,” Reps. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Blake FarentholdBlake FarentholdLawmakers warn of 'radical' move by NSA to share information Overnight Tech: Netflix scores win over Postal Service Lawmakers go green for St. Patrick's Day MORE (R-Texas) wrote in a letter to the spy agency this week. “The proposed shift in the relationship between our intelligence agencies and the American people should not be done in secret.ADVERTISEMENT“NSA’s mission has never been, and should never be, domestic policing or domestic spying.”The NSA has yet to publicly announce the change, but The New York Times reported last month that the administration was poised to expand the agency's ability to share information that it picks up about people’s communications with other intelligence agencies.The modification would open the door for the NSA to give the FBI and other federal agencies uncensored communications of foreigners and Americans picked up incidentally — but without a warrant — during sweeps.  
  • Robert Litt, the general counsel at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, told the Times that it was finalizing a 21-page draft of procedures to allow the expanded sharing.  Separately, the Guardian reported earlier this month that the FBI had quietly changed its internal privacy rules to allow direct access to the NSA’s massive storehouse of communication data picked up on Internet service providers and websites.The revelations unnerved civil liberties advocates, who encouraged lawmakers to demand answers of the spy agency.“Under a policy like this, information collected by the NSA would be available to a host of federal agencies that may use it to investigate and prosecute domestic crimes,” said Neema Singh Guliani, legislative counsel and the American Civil Liberties Union. “Making such a change without authorization from Congress or the opportunity for debate would ignore public demands for greater transparency and oversight over intelligence activities.”In their letter this week, Lieu and Farenthold warned that the NSA’s changes would undermine Congress and unconstitutionally violate people’s privacy rights.   
  • “The executive branch would be violating the separation of powers by unilaterally transferring warrantless data collected under the NSA’s extraordinary authority to domestic agencies, which do not have such authority,” they wrote.“Domestic law enforcement agencies — which need a warrant supported by probable cause to search or seize — cannot do an end run around the Fourth Amendment by searching warrantless information collected by the NSA.”
Paul Merrell

Clinton IT aide answered zero questions in deposition | TheHill - 0 views

thehill.com/...d-zero-questions-in-deposition

Auction 2016 Hillary email-scandal Pagliano 5th-Amendment FOIA litigation

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Jun 16 - No Cached
  • A former IT expert who was previously responsible for Hillary ClintonHillary Rodham ClintonTrump warns against Syrian refugees: 'A lot of those people are ISIS' Overnight Finance: Senate sends Puerto Rico bill to Obama | Treasury, lawmakers to meet on tax rules | Obama hits Trump on NAFTA | Fed approves most banks' capital plans Bush World goes for Clinton, but will a former president? MORE’s private email server answered virtually no questions during a roughly 90-minute deposition as part of an open records lawsuit this week.Aside from stating his name and saying three times that he understood procedural rules of the sworn-oath interview, Bryan Pagliano declined to say a single word other than to plead his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
  • The extensive reliance on the Fifth Amendment, which was first reported by Fox News on Wednesday, was expected; Pagliano’s lawyers had previously notified the court about the IT consultant’s plans.But it nonetheless could reflect poorly on Clinton, the former secretary of State and presumed Democratic presidential nominee, whom the judge in the case has said could be forced to answer questions herself.Pagliano’s refusal to talk ensures that key details about her email system remain unsettled and may raise the chances that she is asked to be interviewed herself as part of the case.
  • Pagliano has been granted limited immunity as part of the FBI’s ongoing investigation of Clinton’s email setup and the possibility that classified information was mishandled. In court documents filed ahead of his Wednesday morning deposition, lawyers for him and the federal government refused to outline the terms of the agreement or say how he might be assisting the investigation.However, lawyers did warn that the limited nature of his deal could leave him open to prosecution for incriminating information he divulged outside of protected sessions.The federal court ruled last week that Pagliano's immunity deal could remain secret.
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  • Judicial Watch has interviewed multiple former aides of Clinton as part of its lawsuit, which is one of several pending before a federal court in Washington.Next week, it is expected to conduct the final depositions as part of the case, with longtime deputy Huma Abedin and Undersecretary for Management Patrick Kennedy. 
Gary Edwards

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

www.wnd.com/...-list-33-most-intriguing-cases

Clinton-Body-Count

shared by Gary Edwards on 05 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 05 Feb 17
     
    "(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
Paul Merrell

McCain, Thornberry: Trump's Proposed Defense Spending Hike Not Enough | Military.com - 0 views

www.military.com/...fense-spending-not-enough.html

Trump-administration budget Defense-spending McCain Thornberry

shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • The Republican chairmen of the Senate and House armed services committees said Monday that President Donald Trump's proposal to boost defense spending by $54 billion for fiscal year 2018 is not enough. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, are pushing for a $640-billion base defense budget and said the $603-billion proposal unveiled by the White House will not reverse the decline in recent years in spending and military readiness.
  • Paul Merrell on 02 Mar 17
     
    Of course, why didn't I realize that ... So with 100 million Amercians living in povery, we need more to shove more dollars into the pockets of defense contractors to bring us monstroties like the F-35 program? Of course, why didn't I realize that ...?
Gary Edwards

Tax Code Tweak Might Make CNG for Vehicles More Available | RedState - 0 views

www.redstate.com/...ng-for-vehicles-more-available

William-Cassidy Natural-gas CNG Energy

shared by Gary Edwards on 08 May 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 08 May 12
     
    Representative Dr. William Cassidy (R-LA) has put forward a common sense change to the tax code that will jump the economy of the USA forward, making use of plentiful and comparatively inexpensive natural gas. excerpt: The recent natural gas boom in the United States has been so wide-spread and profound that it has dropped natural gas prices to historical lows. These prices are so low that producers have begun to scale back operations as extraction has almost become uneconomical. We should be focused on exploring new commercial markets for natural gas to take advantage of such a low-cost energy source. Because technology and supply is currently available to sell the natural gas equivalent for about $1.50 a gallon compared with the current price of gasoline, it would seem natural for consumers to begin making the switch to compressed natural gas CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) vehicles. So if the technology is already available and we have at least a 100-year supply of natural gas right here in America, why aren't we all driving CNG cars? Unfortunately, the main obstacle is a lack of natural gas fuel infrastructure in our country. Currently in the United States, there are only 449 CNG fueling stations accessible to the public, which is dwarfed by the more than 157,000 gasoline stations. There are a number of proposals to spur natural gas infrastructure development in Washington. Not surprisingly, when it comes to Congress, the most talked about option involves subsidies for both natural gas vehicles and for the actual CNG fuel itself. While we should be using all of our available natural resources to aid in lowering the costs of transportation, the reality is that our country has neither the money to subsidize development nor the expertise to pick winners and losers in the energy and transportation sectors. As opposed to subsidies, I believe that a simple change to our tax code would help those companies that develop natural gas look at domestic retail infrastruc
Gary Edwards

J.P. Morgan Chase's Ugly Family Secrets Revealed | Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone - 0 views

www.rollingstone.com/...mily-secrets-revealed-20120313

Credit-Card-Scandal Banksters Linda-Almonte financial-collapse

shared by Gary Edwards on 17 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 17 Mar 12
     
    Socialist blogger and Rolling Stone Magazine journalist Matt Taibi has made a career out of exposing Banksters and their criminal activities causing the 2008 collapse of the global financial industry.  Here he sights a story in American Banker that fully demonstrates the depths of depravity and criminal activities that continues to characterize big Banksters. The mortgage-foreclosure-robo signing scandal is just the tip of the ice berg.  Matt recounts the story of Linda Almonte, a JP Morgan Chase employee in charge of Credit Card debt bundling.  It's horrific. Money shot: The financial crash wouldn't have happened if even a slim plurality of financial executives had done what Linda Almonte did, i.e. simply refuse to sign off on a bogus transaction. If companies had merely upheld their own stated policies and stayed within the ballpark of the law, none of these messes could have accumulated: fraudulent mortgages wouldn't have been sold, families wouldn't have been foreclosed upon based on robo-signed documentation, investors wouldn't have been duped into buying huge packets of "misrepresented assets." ............. excerpt: In a story that should be getting lots of attention, American Banker has released an excellent and disturbing exposé of J.P. Morgan Chase's credit card services division, relying on multiple current and former Chase employees. One of them, Linda Almonte, is a whistleblower whom I've known since last September; I'm working on a recount of her story for my next book. One of the things we were promised by the lawmakers who passed the Dodd-Frank reform bill a few years back is that this would be a new era for whistleblowers who come forward to tell the world about problems in our financial infrastructure. This story now looms as a test case for that proposition. American Banker reporter Jeff Horwitz did an outstanding job in this story detailing the sweeping irregularities in-house at Chase, but his very thoroughness means the news may have ram
Gary Edwards

Housing Boom and Bust - Thomas Sowell - National Review Online - 0 views

www.nationalreview.com/...thomas-sowell

shared by Gary Edwards on 24 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 24 Mar 12
     
    A classic dissection of the financial collapse of 2008.  Genius! excerpt: EDITOR'S NOTE: The following is adapted from Thomas Sowell's new book, The Housing Boom and Bust. Let us go back to square one to consider the empirical consequences of policies in the housing market. Politicians in Washington set out to solve a national problem that did not exist - a nationwide shortage of "affordable housing" - and have now left us with a problem whose existence is as undeniable as it is painful. When the political crusade for affordable housing took off and built up steam during the 1990s, the share of their incomes that Americans were spending on housing in 1998 was 17 percent, compared to 30 percent in the early 1980s. Even during the housing boom of 2005, the median home took just 22 percent of the median American income. What created the illusion of a nationwide problem was that, in particular localities around the country, housing prices had skyrocketed to the point where people had to pay half their income to buy a modest-sized home and often resorted to very risky ways of financing the purchase. In Tucson, for example, "roughly 60% of first-time home buyers make no down payment and instead now use 100% financing to get into the market," according to the Wall Street Journal. Almost invariably, these locally extreme housing prices have been a result of local political crusades in the name of locally attractive slogans about the environment, open space, "smart growth," or whatever other phrases had political resonance at the particular time and place.
Gary Edwards

Fact Check: Osama Bin Laden Alive, General Motors Dead - 0 views

www.breitbart.com/...Osama-alive-GM-dead

Osama-Objectives GM-Government-Motors Obammunism

shared by Gary Edwards on 11 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 11 Sep 12
     
    Excellent analysis and statement of facts in evidence.   Conclussion is that Osama is well on his way to winning on every one of his stated objectives, and GM is heading for a real bankruptcy, despie $100 Billion in taxpayer bailout funds.  GM is expected to cost taxpayers upwards of $56 Billion when all is said and done. excerpt: "Vice President Joe Biden has a suggested slogan for the Obama/Biden 2012 campaign. He repeats it everywhere he goes. "Osama Bin Laden is dead," he bellows, "and General Motors is alive!" There's only one problem. He's wrong. Yes, Bin Laden's dead, thank God. And General Motors is still an operating concern. But in point of fact, the cause for which Osama Bin Laden stood is stronger than at any time in American history, thanks in large part to the Obama administration. And as for GM, it's not so much alive as it is a member of the corporate living dead, feasting on taxpayer brains while slowly deteriorating, the first zombie company created by Obama's cronyism. On the eleventh anniversary of Osama Bin Laden's attack on America, it's worthwhile to examine just what he hoped to accomplish. He spelled out his goals in three documents: a 1996 fatwa titled, "Declaration of War Against The Americans Occupying The Land of the Two Holy Places"; a 2002 "Letter to America"; and a 2004 video. In these manifestos, he declared his willingness to die, of course. His goals included:"
Gary Edwards

Robosigning Credit Cards: The Next Major Bank Scandal? | The Reformed Broker - 0 views

www.thereformedbroker.com/...ds-the-next-major-bank-scandal

robosigning-mortgages robosigning-credit-cards Banksters Joshua-M-Brown Foreclosure-Gate Credit-Card-Debt-Collection

shared by Gary Edwards on 18 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 18 Jan 12
     
    This article is definately a "must read".  The summary is that the credit card debt mess is far worse than the mortgage foreclosure mess.  The Banksters are guilty of massive illegal activities in foreclosure gate, including forging documents and signatures.  Apparently the same thing has happened with Credit Card Debt Collection!!!! excerpt:   From American Banker: "If sloppy record keeping and problems with false affidavits is a problem with mortgages, it's 100 times bigger in credit card accounts," says Michelle Weinberg of the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago. Worse than mortgages, even? Let's just review the mortgage situation: Robosigning consists of blatantly illegal practices in which banks and mortgage companies had their employees sign affidavits and other documents without verifying the information therein; forge signatures on documents; backdate documents; falsely notarize documents; create new documents to replace missing ones; or some combination of all the above. Did I mention that all of this is illegal? Contrary to what the banks would have you believe, robosigning was not a one-off - it happened on a systematic level. So much so that some of the nation's largest banks (including Bank of America Corp. and  JPMorgan Chase & Co., ) were forced to halt foreclosures to "review" these practices in late 2010. The companies that did this claimed that they had to cut corners because they couldn't keep up with all of the paperwork created by the housing boom last decade. But we now know that this is not true - there's evidence that robo-signing goes back all the way to at least 1998. This all means that thousands of Americans were foreclosed upon erroneously and that even homebuyers and sellers in good standing may be unable to prove their rightful ownership. The problem is so big that Sheila Bair, the former head of the FDIC, acknowledged that they don't even know how big it is. It's so big that the b
Gary Edwards

Federal Reserve Loans Need To Be Investigated - post-journal.com | News, Sports, Jobs, ... - 1 views

post-journal.com/...s-Need-To-Be-Investigated.html

Banksters Federal-Reserve-Bankster-Cartel

shared by Gary Edwards on 06 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 06 Mar 12
     
    I'm almost too afraid to look, but the Federal Reserve must be stopped.  Let's see, the Treasury takes in $2 Trillion per year in taxes;  the ruling establishment has tripled the spending, pegging at $3.6 Trillion per year; meaning we have to finance a deficit of $1.6 Trillion per year; and we're facing interest payments on the national debt of $5 Trillion per year with unfunded "social" obligation at $100 Trillion.  Now we find out the Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel passed out over $7 Trillion in goodies to member banksters before they secretly passed out $16.2 Trillion to the Cartel to cover the 2008 financial collapse losses. Time to dust off Executive Order 11110, issued by President John F Kennedy five months prior to the coup d'état, giving the Treasury Department the explicit authority to issue silver certificates backed by Treasury silver bullion, if needed.  Basically Order 11110 stripped the Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel of it's power to loan money to the US Government at interest.  The Federal Reserve Notes in use would be competing with newly minted US Silver Certificates.   It would be easy enough to pay off the Bankster Cartel interest with official Federal Reserve Notes since there is so much paper out there.  But i would prefer the RiCO statue be invoked, assets seized, and charges of treason levied via the outrageous violations of the 1792 Coinage Act and conspiracy to destroy the dollar.   Many Americans, myself included, have long wondered why We the People would charge ourselves "interest" on money we borrow from our future selves?  Who does that?  But when we discover that the Federal Reserve is about as 'Federal" as Federal Express, the narrative wuickly leads to questions of how did it happen that we turned governance and stewardship of the national currency over to a private cartel of banksters?   Is the Federal Reserve Bankster Act of 1913 constitutional? Hardly.  Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution la
Paul Merrell

Pentagon 'big winner' in $1T omnibus bill | TheHill - 0 views

thehill.com/...er-in-1t-omnibus-spending-bill

war & peace War-Party appropriations sequestration

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • The Pentagon and the defense industry came out of the $1 trillion omnibus spending bill as a big winner, experts and lawmakers said Tuesday, a day after the bill was released. “The big winner is the Defense Department. They should be breaking out champagne in the Pentagon,” said Gordon Adams, a defense budget expert and former Clinton official.The omnibus spending bill provides about $497 billion for the Defense Department in 2014 — about the same as in 2013. But the Pentagon also received $85.2 billion in overseas contingency operations (OCO) for the war in Afghanistan, roughly $5 billion more than it requested for 2014.Before last month’s budget deal that relieved $22.4 billion in sequestration cuts, the 2014 defense budget would have been around $475 billion. The OCO funding, which Adams said is the “cherry on top of the dessert,” can be used to pay for operations and maintenance in the base budget and help restore military readiness lost in previous years. Fiscal watchdog and anti-war groups criticized the $5 billion increase from the Pentagon's request in OCO funding as a “slush fund to pad the department’s budget and avoid spending reductions,” especially with the winding down of the Afghan War. 
  • The defense industry was also a winner in the omnibus spending bill, Adams said. All major weapons systems procurement requests were fully-funded, including the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter — the Pentagon’s most expensive weapons system in history. Also fully funded were the Army’s M1 Abrams tank program, and the Navy’s shipbuilding plans for eight new ships. Israel is also a winner in the omnibus spending bill, with money fully provided for the Arrow, David’s Sling, and the Iron Dome rocket defense systems. 
  • While lawmakers touted the completed spending bill as a win for nearly everyone, there were a few losers. One of the most notable losers included the Pentagon’s research and development projects, which received $7 billion less than last year.In addition, the defense space program and the procurement for the E-2D Advanced Hawkeye program were delayed. Also, funds for the Afghan National Security Forces is about half as much as the White House requested, Adams said.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Overall, lawmakers said the omnibus spending bill, which is expected to pass this week, was 'a good start'. 
  • Paul Merrell on 16 Jan 14
     
    The War Party wins again. Spending cuts will come out of non-defense branches of government. Meanwhile, the Judicial Branch is nearly flat on its back because of sequestration. Judicial spending before sequestration was only 0.19 per cent of federal spending (19 cents of each $100) but  $350 million got chopped by sequestration.  The result: things like massive delays in court proceedings and a 35 per cent cut in personnel in the Federal Defenders office, a loss of institutional knowledge that will never be recovered.
Paul Merrell

Cost of a U.S. strike against Syria could top Hagel's estimate | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...sa-costs-idUSBRE98415K20130905

war & peace Syria cost of war

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told lawmakers a limited military strike to deter Syria from using chemical weapons would likely cost tens of millions of dollars, but if past experience is a guide, the number could be substantially higher than that.
  • Paul Merrell on 06 Sep 13
     
    Reuters explains why Gen. Dempsey's was wrong in his estimate that the military strikes on Syria would cost only "tens of millions of dollars."  His estimate was apparently counting only the costs that would be incurred before the end of the fiscal year on September 30.   If the U.S. used only as many cruise missiles as was used against Libya, the cost would be over $100 million. More are likely because Syria, unlike Libya, has advanced anti-missile and anti-aircraft defenses. Throw in the cost of using aircraft too, and the cost rises to over $1 billion.
Paul Merrell

Tomgram: Alfred McCoy, It's About Blackmail, Not National Security | TomDispatch - 0 views

www.tomdispatch.com/...kmail%2C_not_national_security

surveillance state blackmail power-projection empire Obama BushII

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • For more than six months, Edward Snowden’s revelations about the National Security Agency (NSA) have been pouring out from the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Guardian, Germany’s Der Spiegel, and Brazil’s O Globo, among other places.  Yet no one has pointed out the combination of factors that made the NSA’s expanding programs to monitor the world seem like such a slam-dunk development in Washington.  The answer is remarkably simple.  For an imperial power losing its economic grip on the planet and heading into more austere times, the NSA’s latest technological breakthroughs look like a bargain basement deal when it comes to projecting power and keeping subordinate allies in line -- like, in fact, the steal of the century.  Even when disaster turned out to be attached to them, the NSA’s surveillance programs have come with such a discounted price tag that no Washington elite was going to reject them.
  • What exactly was the aim of such an unprecedented program of massive domestic and planetary spying, which clearly carried the risk of controversy at home and abroad? Here, an awareness of the more than century-long history of U.S. surveillance can guide us through the billions of bytes swept up by the NSA to the strategic significance of such a program for the planet’s last superpower. What the past reveals is a long-term relationship between American state surveillance and political scandal that helps illuminate the unacknowledged reason why the NSA monitors America’s closest allies. Not only does such surveillance help gain intelligence advantageous to U.S. diplomacy, trade relations, and war-making, but it also scoops up intimate information that can provide leverage -- akin to blackmail -- in sensitive global dealings and negotiations of every sort. The NSA’s global panopticon thus fulfills an ancient dream of empire. With a few computer key strokes, the agency has solved the problem that has bedeviled world powers since at least the time of Caesar Augustus: how to control unruly local leaders, who are the foundation for imperial rule, by ferreting out crucial, often scurrilous, information to make them more malleable.
  • Once upon a time, such surveillance was both expensive and labor intensive. Today, however, unlike the U.S. Army’s shoe-leather surveillance during World War I or the FBI’s break-ins and phone bugs in the Cold War years, the NSA can monitor the entire world and its leaders with only 100-plus probes into the Internet’s fiber optic cables. This new technology is both omniscient and omnipresent beyond anything those lacking top-secret clearance could have imagined before the Edward Snowden revelations began.  Not only is it unimaginably pervasive, but NSA surveillance is also a particularly cost-effective strategy compared to just about any other form of global power projection. And better yet, it fulfills the greatest imperial dream of all: to be omniscient not just for a few islands, as in the Philippines a century ago, or a couple of countries, as in the Cold War era, but on a truly global scale. In a time of increasing imperial austerity and exceptional technological capability, everything about the NSA’s surveillance told Washington to just “go for it.”  This cut-rate mechanism for both projecting force and preserving U.S. global power surely looked like a no-brainer, a must-have bargain for any American president in the twenty-first century -- before new NSA documents started hitting front pages weekly, thanks to Snowden, and the whole world began returning the favor.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • As the gap has grown between Washington’s global reach and its shrinking mailed fist, as it struggles to maintain 40% of world armaments (the 2012 figure) with only 23% of global gross economic output, the U.S. will need to find new ways to exercise its power far more economically. As the Cold War took off, a heavy-metal U.S. military -- with 500 bases worldwide circa 1950 -- was sustainable because the country controlled some 50% of the global gross product. But as its share of world output falls -- to an estimated 17% by 2016 -- and its social welfare costs climb relentlessly from 4% of gross domestic product in 2010 to a projected 18% by 2050, cost-cutting becomes imperative if Washington is to survive as anything like the planet’s “sole superpower.” Compared to the $3 trillion cost of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, the NSA’s 2012 budget of just $11 billion for worldwide surveillance and cyberwarfare looks like cost saving the Pentagon can ill-afford to forego. Yet this seeming “bargain” comes at what turns out to be an almost incalculable cost. The sheer scale of such surveillance leaves it open to countless points of penetration, whether by a handful of anti-war activists breaking into an FBI field office in Media, Pennsylvania, back in 1971 or Edward Snowden downloading NSA documents at a Hawaiian outpost in 2012.
  • In October 2001, not satisfied with the sweeping and extraordinary powers of the newly passed Patriot Act, President Bush ordered the National Security Agency to commence covert monitoring of private communications through the nation's telephone companies without the requisite FISA warrants. Somewhat later, the agency began sweeping the Internet for emails, financial data, and voice messaging on the tenuous theory that such “metadata” was “not constitutionally protected.” In effect, by penetrating the Internet for text and the parallel Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) for voice, the NSA had gained access to much of the world’s telecommunications. By the end of Bush’s term in 2008, Congress had enacted laws that not only retrospectively legalized these illegal programs, but also prepared the way for NSA surveillance to grow unchecked. Rather than restrain the agency, President Obama oversaw the expansion of its operations in ways remarkable for both the sheer scale of the billions of messages collected globally and for the selective monitoring of world leaders.
  • By 2012, the centralization via digitization of all voice, video, textual, and financial communications into a worldwide network of fiber optic cables allowed the NSA to monitor the globe by penetrating just 190 data hubs -- an extraordinary economy of force for both political surveillance and cyberwarfare.
  • With a few hundred cable probes and computerized decryption, the NSA can now capture the kind of gritty details of private life that J. Edgar Hoover so treasured and provide the sort of comprehensive coverage of populations once epitomized by secret police like East Germany’s Stasi. And yet, such comparisons only go so far. After all, once FBI agents had tapped thousands of phones, stenographers had typed up countless transcripts, and clerks had stored this salacious paper harvest in floor-to-ceiling filing cabinets, J. Edgar Hoover still only knew about the inner-workings of the elite in one city: Washington, D.C.  To gain the same intimate detail for an entire country, the Stasi had to employ one police informer for every six East Germans -- an unsustainable allocation of human resources. By contrast, the marriage of the NSA’s technology to the Internet’s data hubs now allows the agency’s 37,000 employees a similarly close coverage of the entire globe with just one operative for every 200,000 people on the planet
  • Through the expenditure of $250 million annually under its Sigint Enabling Project, the NSA has stealthily penetrated all encryption designed to protect privacy. “In the future, superpowers will be made or broken based on the strength of their cryptanalytic programs,” reads a 2007 NSA document. “It is the price of admission for the U.S. to maintain unrestricted access to and use of cyberspace.” By collecting knowledge -- routine, intimate, or scandalous -- about foreign leaders, imperial proconsuls from ancient Rome to modern America have gained both the intelligence and aura of authority necessary for dominion over alien societies. The importance, and challenge, of controlling these local elites cannot be overstated. During its pacification of the Philippines after 1898, for instance, the U.S. colonial regime subdued contentious Filipino leaders via pervasive policing that swept up both political intelligence and personal scandal. And that, of course, was just what J. Edgar Hoover was doing in Washington during the 1950s and 1960s.
  • Indeed, the mighty British Empire, like all empires, was a global tapestry woven out of political ties to local leaders or “subordinate elites” -- from Malay sultans and Indian maharajas to Gulf sheiks and West African tribal chiefs. As historian Ronald Robinson once observed, the British Empire spread around the globe for two centuries through the collaboration of these local leaders and then unraveled, in just two decades, when that collaboration turned to “non-cooperation.” After rapid decolonization during the 1960s transformed half-a-dozen European empires into 100 new nations, their national leaders soon found themselves the subordinate elites of a spreading American global imperium. Washington suddenly needed the sort of private information that could keep such figures in line. Surveillance of foreign leaders provides world powers -- Britain then, America now -- with critical information for the exercise of global hegemony. Such spying gave special penetrating power to the imperial gaze, to that sense of superiority necessary for dominion over others.  It also provided operational information on dissidents who might need to be countered with covert action or military force; political and economic intelligence so useful for getting the jump on allies in negotiations of all sorts; and, perhaps most important of all, scurrilous information about the derelictions of leaders useful in coercing their compliance.
  • In late 2013, the New York Times reported that, when it came to spying on global elites, there were “more than 1,000 targets of American and British surveillance in recent years,” reaching down to mid-level political actors in the international arena. Revelations from Edward Snowden’s cache of leaked documents indicate that the NSA has monitored leaders in some 35 nations worldwide -- including Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff, Mexican presidents Felipe Calderón and Enrique Peña Nieto, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and Indonesia’s president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.  Count in as well, among so many other operations, the monitoring of “French diplomatic interests” during the June 2010 U.N. vote on Iran sanctions and “widespread surveillance” of world leaders during the Group 20 summit meeting at Ottawa in June 2010. Apparently, only members of the historic “Five Eyes” signals-intelligence alliance (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Great Britain) remain exempt -- at least theoretically -- from NSA surveillance. Such secret intelligence about allies can obviously give Washington a significant diplomatic advantage. During U.N. wrangling over the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2002-2003, for example, the NSA intercepted Secretary-General Kofi Anan’s conversations and monitored the “Middle Six” -- Third World nations on the Security Council -- offering what were, in essence, well-timed bribes to win votes. The NSA’s deputy chief for regional targets sent a memo to the agency’s Five Eyes allies asking “for insights as to how membership is reacting to on-going debate regarding Iraq, plans to vote on any related resolutions [..., and] the whole gamut of information that could give U.S. policymakers an edge in obtaining results favorable to U.S. goals.”
  • Indicating Washington’s need for incriminating information in bilateral negotiations, the State Department pressed its Bahrain embassy in 2009 for details, damaging in an Islamic society, on the crown princes, asking: “Is there any derogatory information on either prince? Does either prince drink alcohol? Does either one use drugs?” Indeed, in October 2012, an NSA official identified as “DIRNSA,” or Director General Keith Alexander, proposed the following for countering Muslim radicals: “[Their] vulnerabilities, if exposed, would likely call into question a radicalizer’s devotion to the jihadist cause, leading to the degradation or loss of his authority.” The agency suggested that such vulnerabilities could include “viewing sexually explicit material online” or “using a portion of the donations they are receiving… to defray personal expenses.” The NSA document identified one potential target as a “respected academic” whose “vulnerabilities” are “online promiscuity.”
  • Just as the Internet has centralized communications, so it has moved most commercial sex into cyberspace. With an estimated 25 million salacious sites worldwide and a combined 10.6 billion page views per month in 2013 at the five top sex sites, online pornography has become a global business; by 2006, in fact, it generated $97 billion in revenue. With countless Internet viewers visiting porn sites and almost nobody admitting it, the NSA has easy access to the embarrassing habits of targets worldwide, whether Muslim militants or European leaders. According to James Bamford, author of two authoritative books on the agency, “The NSA's operation is eerily similar to the FBI's operations under J. Edgar Hoover in the 1960s where the bureau used wiretapping to discover vulnerabilities, such as sexual activity, to ‘neutralize’ their targets.”
  • Indeed, whistleblower Edward Snowden has accused the NSA of actually conducting such surveillance.  In a December 2013 letter to the Brazilian people, he wrote, “They even keep track of who is having an affair or looking at pornography, in case they need to damage their target's reputation.” If Snowden is right, then one key goal of NSA surveillance of world leaders is not U.S. national security but political blackmail -- as it has been since 1898. Such digital surveillance has tremendous potential for scandal, as anyone who remembers New York Governor Eliot Spitzer’s forced resignation in 2008 after routine phone taps revealed his use of escort services; or, to take another obvious example, the ouster of France’s budget minister Jérôme Cahuzac in 2013 following wire taps that exposed his secret Swiss bank account. As always, the source of political scandal remains sex or money, both of which the NSA can track with remarkable ease.
  • By starting a swelling river of NSA documents flowing into public view, Edward Snowden has given us a glimpse of the changing architecture of U.S. global power. At the broadest level, Obama’s digital “pivot” complements his overall defense strategy, announced in 2012, of reducing conventional forces while expanding into the new, cost-effective domains of space and cyberspace. While cutting back modestly on costly armaments and the size of the military, President Obama has invested billions in the building of a new architecture for global information control. If we add the $791 billion expended to build the Department of Homeland Security bureaucracy to the $500 billion spent on an increasingly para-militarized version of global intelligence in the dozen years since 9/11, then Washington has made a $1.2 trillion investment in a new apparatus of world power.
  • So formidable is this security bureaucracy that Obama’s recent executive review recommended the regularization, not reform, of current NSA practices, allowing the agency to continue collecting American phone calls and monitoring foreign leaders into the foreseeable future. Cyberspace offers Washington an austerity-linked arena for the exercise of global power, albeit at the cost of trust by its closest allies -- a contradiction that will bedevil America’s global leadership for years to come. To update Henry Stimson: in the age of the Internet, gentlemen don't just read each other’s mail, they watch each other’s porn. Even if we think we have nothing to hide, all of us, whether world leaders or ordinary citizens, have good reason to be concerned.
Paul Merrell

$100B withdrawal from US Treasury bills hints at Russian move | New York Post - 0 views

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war & peace Russia U.S. Treasury-securities

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • A record $100 billion in withdrawals of Treasury bills is raising speculation that the Kremlin and Russian oligarchs are yanking their money out of the United States to avoid upcoming sanctions over Ukraine. The massive outflow over the past week came as President Obama and other top US officials repeatedly warned Russia would face a “cost” if it didn’t reverse course in Ukraine. The total amount of foreign-held US Treasury securities dropped to $2.86 trillion — lowest in more than a year. Last year, the most moved out in a week was $32 billion.
  • Analysts said that if the switch was made by Russia, it would represent about 80 percent of that nation’s US Treasury holdings. “This is only speculation on our part, but it seems likely that the Russian authorities had more than $100 billion of Treasury debt in custody at the Fed, and it doesn’t seem implausible that they moved it to a jurisdiction where it would be less vulnerable to a US asset freeze,” Lou Crandall at Wrightson ICAP LLC told The Wall Street Journal.
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