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Gary Edwards

The Libertarian View: Are Tariffs Bad? - 1 views

www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php

Libertarian Austrian-Economics Tariffs-NAFTA China Ron-Paul

shared by Gary Edwards on 26 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 26 Jan 12
     
    As many know, i spent quite a bit of time working for a Chinese Company seeking to enter the USA-European software market.  My task was to research the market, discover and define a market opportunity, design the product, and then work as product manager to get that service to market.  I took this job to better understand the Chinese marketplace and how sovereign Chinese companies work.  What i learned is how the Chinese seek to exploit and totally dominate open markets.  Software is just a category whose time has come.  and there are thousands of Chinese companies lining up.  The first step though is to fine tune the existing blueprint used by other Sina sovereigns.  amazing stuff. My take away from this experience is that the USA MUST set up a 30% tariff on ALL imports, and do so IMMEDIATELY!!!  Yesterday is not soon enough! As a newly minted libertarian, i wondered about the obvious conflict with Austrian Economics and their dedication to free markets and free trade?  I found the answer at this Libertarian forum, where many members were in heated discussion.  Comment #7 sums it up best i think.  Including a link to Ron Paul's Tariff-NAFTA speech. The thing is, the 30% Tariff should be part of an overall TAX REDUCTION PLAN.  I support the FAIR TAX and the Balanced Budget Amendment.  As an alternative to the Fair Tax, I would also support a 17% flat tax with no exceptions.  The ideal situation being an immediate, uncompromising, no exceptions 30% tariff on ALL imports coupled with the Fair Tax and the Balanced Budget Amendment.   And yes, i do believe this plan is consistent with the Founding Fathers Constitution.  But it took some kind of research to establish that opinion.   I've also concluded that "conservatism" is a convenient philosophical vehicle for the corrupt crony corporatism of both the military-industrial-complex, banksters and, international corporations.  Free trade and open markets concepts are perverted to become a thin veil
Gary Edwards

Oliver Stone : 'US has become an Orwellian state' - RT - 0 views

rt.com/...oliver-stone-us-orwellian-022

Oliver-Stone Globalists Banksters TV-Series

shared by Gary Edwards on 29 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 29 Dec 12
     
    Interview with Oliver Stone and author Peter Kuznick.  They answer questions related to Oliver Stone's "Show Time" television series, "The Untold History of the United States".  Good stuff - essential information for anyone seeking to understand why the US Constitution and the principles of individual liberty as defined in the Declaration of Independence are being disregarded and discarded by the ruling elites.  The final stages of the New World Feudalism, er "Order", are now unfolding.  Right before our eyes.  And we seem helpless bystanders as the Globalist cabal of banksters, corporatists and ruling elites make their final assault on the world's last best hope for individual liberty. "Americans are living in an Orwellian state argue Academy Award-winning director Oliver Stone and historian Peter Kuznick, as they sit down with RT to discuss US foreign policy and the Obama administration's disregard for the rule of law. Both argue that Obama is a wolf in sheep's clothing and that people have forgiven him a lot because of the "nightmare of the Bush presidency that preceded him." "He has taken all the Bush changes he basically put them into the establishment, he has codified them," Stone told RT. "It is an Orwellian state. It might not be oppressive on the surface, but there is no place to hide. Some part of you is going to end up in the database somewhere." According to Kuznick, American citizens live in a fish tank where their government intercepts more than 1.7 billion messages a day. "That is email, telephone calls, other forms of communication." RT's Abby Martin in the program Breaking the Set discusses the Showtime film series and book titled The Untold History of the United States co-authored by Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick. "Obama was a great hope for change""
Gary Edwards

And just like that,1.2 million workers vanished - 0 views

www.westernfreepress.com/...at1-2-million-workers-vanished

Obammunism unemployment-numbers

shared by Gary Edwards on 07 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 07 Feb 12
     
    The Potemkin Village that is the foundation of Obammunomics is starting to crumble. What happened to the missing 1.2 million workers? Were they abducted by alien invaders? Or black bagged in the dark by NDAA night riders and trucked off to the gulag? Simon Black and Zero Hedge have been shouting loudly for years that the emperor has no clothes. Now, to poach a phrase from that great Obammunist, the Revered Jeremiah Wright, "the chickens are coming home to roost." The numbers can only be fudged so far. And out money shot is: "the end result is that in January, those "not in the labor force" did in fact rise by 1.2 million (whether compared to December or to 2011 - please, go ahead and check as many times as needed), and the labor force participation rate dropped to a new 30 year low of 63.7%, a number which incidentally only has to drop by 5% more for the BLS to report zero, or even a negative, unemployment rate." Incredible.
Gary Edwards

2001 Obama WBEZ Interview Redistribution Wealth Warren Court - YouTube - 1 views

www.youtube.com/watch

Obama-Radio-Interview Obammunism redistribution-of-wealth Marxism Socialism

shared by Gary Edwards on 15 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 15 Nov 11
     
    Obama outlines his new Bill of Rights, very similar to the 1944 new Bill of Rights Roosevelt proposed, guaranteeing the right to food, shelter, clothing, healthcare, travel and education - among many things.  Obama demands a radically new interpretation of the Constitution where the Marxist Redistribution of Wealth is carried out as an Administrative function, by-passing the Courts, Congress, Taxpaying citizens, the legislative process and the Constitution itself.  Incredible!
Paul Merrell

Swiss in Forefront With Basic Income Proposal | Global Research - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5353952

financial-collapse income inequality income gap Switzerland EU

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Within the European Union, a profound awakening of public consciousness is taking place as organizers seek to obtain one million signatures on a petition in favor of a basic income guarantee for all citizens. Under the EU constitution, this number of signatures is required for the proposal to undergo formal study and debate by the European parliament. In Switzerland, however, voters have seized the initiative through their own petition to have the Swiss government vote on a basic income guarantee of $2,500 Swiss francs per month, equivalent to $2,800 U.S. dollars.
  • Paul Merrell on 13 Oct 13
     
    Interesting response to the financial collapse and income equality. Compatible with the U.N. Declarationof Universal Human Rights, Art. 25: "(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control." http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml#a25
Paul Merrell

CIA 'tortured al-Qaeda suspects close to the point of death by drowning them in water-f... - 0 views

www.telegraph.co.uk/...hem-in-water-filled-baths.html

war & peace CIA torture

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • The CIA brought top al-Qaeda suspects close “to the point of death” by drowning them in water-filled baths during interrogation sessions in the years that followed the September 11 attacks, a security source has told The Telegraph. The description of the torture meted out to at least two leading al-Qaeda suspects, including the alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, far exceeds the conventional understanding of waterboarding, or “simulated drowning” so far admitted by the CIA. “They weren’t just pouring water over their heads or over a cloth,” said the source who has first-hand knowledge of the period. “They were holding them under water until the point of death, with a doctor present to make sure they did not go too far. This was real torture.” The account of extreme CIA interrogation comes as the US Senate prepares to publish a declassified version of its so-called Torture Report – a 3,600-page report document based on a review of several million classified CIA documents.
  • A second source who is familiar with the Senate report told The Telegraph that it contained several unflinching accounts of some CIA interrogations which – the source predicted – would “deeply shock” the general public. Dianne Feinstein, the Democrat chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee that authored the report has promised that it will expose “brutality that stands in stark contrast to our values as a nation”. The Senate report is understood to accuse the CIA of lying and of grossly exaggerating the usefulness of torture. It is being angrily opposed by many senior Republicans, former CIA operatives and Bush-era officials, including the former US vice president Dick Cheney, who argue that is it poorly researched and politically motivated. The CIA has previously admitted that it used black sites to subject at least three high-value al-Qaeda detainees to “enhanced interrogation” – namely Mohammed, the alleged USS Cole bomber Abd al Rahim al Nashiri and alleged senior Bin Laden aide Abu Zubaydah.
  • The CIA brought top al-Qaeda suspects close “to the point of death” by drowning them in water-filled baths during interrogation sessions in the years that followed the September 11 attacks, a security source has told The Telegraph. The description of the torture meted out to at least two leading al-Qaeda suspects, including the alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, far exceeds the conventional understanding of waterboarding, or “simulated drowning” so far admitted by the CIA. “They weren’t just pouring water over their heads or over a cloth,” said the source who has first-hand knowledge of the period. “They were holding them under water until the point of death, with a doctor present to make sure they did not go too far. This was real torture.”
  • Paul Merrell on 13 Sep 14
     
    If this report is accurate, there are some CIA types desperately in need of being confined to a prison for the rest of their lives, as well as all superiors who knew of it but did not act to stop it. They need to be removed from humanity's gene pool. And for my money, anyone who was tortured should be set free and paid hefty damages. 
Paul Merrell

You're More Likely to Die from Brain-Eating Parasites, Alcoholism, Obesity, Medical Err... - 0 views

www.washingtonsblog.com/...o-be-killed-by-terrorists.html

war & peace war on terror™ terrorism causes-of-death stats

shared by Paul Merrell on 11 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • We noted in 2011: – You are 17,600 times more likely to die from heart disease than from a terrorist attack – You are 12,571 times more likely to die from cancer than from a terrorist attack — You are 11,000 times more likely to die in an airplane accident than from a terrorist plot involving an airplane — You are 1048 times more likely to die from a car accident than from a terrorist attack –You are 404 times more likely to die in a fall than from a terrorist attack — You are 87 times more likely to drown than die in a terrorist attack – You are 13 times more likely to die in a railway accident than from a terrorist attack –You are 12 times more likely to die from accidental suffocation in bed than from a terrorist attack –You are 9 times more likely to choke to death on your own vomit than die in a terrorist attack –You are 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist –You are 8 times more likely to die from accidental electrocution than from a terrorist attack – You are 6 times more likely to die from hot weather than from a terrorist attack Let’s look at some details from the most recent official statistics.
  • The U.S.  Department of State reports that only 17 U.S. citizens were killed worldwide as a result of terrorism in 2011. That figure includes deaths in Afghanistan, Iraq and all other theaters of war. In contrast, the American agency which tracks health-related issues – the U.S. Centers for Disease Control – rounds up the most prevalent causes of death in the United States:
  • (Keep in mind when reading this entire piece that we are consistently and substantially understating the risk of other causes of death as compared to terrorism, because we are comparing deaths from various causes within the United States against deaths from terrorism worldwide.)
  • Paul Merrell on 11 Nov 13
     
    Reminds of a quote: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron." - Dwight D. Eisenhower, From a speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors (16 April 1953)
Paul Merrell

Is someone pinching pennies at Guantánamo prison? | Miami Herald - 0 views

www.miamiherald.com/...article38223438.html

war & peace GITMO-detainees mistreatment

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Could the people at the Most Expensive Prison on Earth be pinching pennies?
  • Attorneys for the last 114 captives at the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, say they have been increasingly providing their clients with everything from T-shirts and socks and shoes to shampoo and vitamins to fill a long-term, unexplained need at the war on terror prison.Lawyers who have visited the prison as recently as this month say the captives’ U.S. military issue uniforms are faded, torn or tattered and their shoes have holes. In other instances, detainees tell their lawyers, personal hygiene supplies are cheap and simply don’t do the job. A case-in-point: When attorney Ramzi Kassem met detainee Shaker Aamer to share the news that the long-held Saudi prisoner was approved for transfer to Britain after Oct. 24, the captive was brought to their meeting in prison-issue canvas shoes held together by duct tape.
  • “Stuff’s just not getting replaced,” said attorney George Clarke who in late September spent about $300 on slip-on canvas shoes, plastic sandals, T-shirts and towels for his two detainee clients — both approved for repatriation, if the political situation improves in Yemen. “They say the stuff they get is crap. Or they’re not getting it.”Recently, he said, the detention center staff has been more accepting of contributions from the attorneys, suggesting prison commanders are confronted with a cash crunch or have realized they can pass along costs of basics to the private sector.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • At the prison, a spokesman declined to say whether the raggedy clothing reflected a new policy or budget cutbacks but dismissed a question on whether there was a supply issue. Detainee provisions “have not changed,” Navy Capt. Christopher Scholl said tersely by email. The prison would not provide a list of what constitutes basic issue prisoner provisions these days. Nor would Scholl address a question about whether the quality of prison-issue items had degraded.
  • The International Committee of the Red Cross would not say whether delegates have raised the issue in confidential talks with the prison commander. The Miami Herald spoke, separately, with 12 attorneys who have met captives in recent months and describe detainees showing up at legal meetings looking disheveled and needing replacement footwear or clothes. The attorneys say the appearance is noteworthy because through the years all but mentally ill captives have tried to tidy up for their legal meetings.“They’re looking pretty threadbare,” attorney Cori Crider of the nonprofit Reprieve legal defense group said from the U.S. Navy base Tuesday after she bought shampoo and socks for one prisoner. “It’s an escalating complaint that people are being left in rags.”The lawyers quote their clients as saying some supplies have disappeared entirely at the prison, which boasts Muslim sensitivity and humane treatment. Some just aren’t replaced frequently enough, they claim.
  • Into this vacuum attorneys who represent the detainees at no charge have for about nine months routinely spent hundreds of dollars on each trip to buy their clients basic provisions at the base commissary, the Navy Exchange, or NEX.In March, Chicago attorney Patricia Bronte, a solo practitioner, spent $136.25 on shoes and Gold Toe socks for her two Yemeni clients. She left them with a prison lawyer, who got them to the clients after she left the base — something she knows because she got thank-you notes via the prison’s legal mail system.
  • “I have noticed that sometimes the client appears at the meetings with shoes that look pretty beaten up. So I went to the NEX and I bought shoes and socks.” Also $6.12 in toothbrushes and toothpaste, according to her commissary receipt.“Understand, I’m not complaining. I don’t mind buying my clients shoes to improve their conditions,” she said. “It’s the gall of this country. To detain these guys for little or no reason for 14 years and not provide them with shoes is offensive.”
  • Prison officials had already stopped spending taxpayers’ money on books, videos and electronic games for the detainee diversion program, according to media visits in the past year, leaving it to the Red Cross and lawyers to donate to the Detainee Library. Kassem, the attorney, said his clients quoted guards and other prison staff as blaming budget cuts at the prison where the Pentagon maintains a 2,000-plus staff for 114 captives and has spent more than $5 billion. “Sometimes it’s a problem of poor toiletries — soap that doesn’t lather, toothpaste that doesn’t froth, deodorant that doesn’t prevent body odor,” said Kassem, a professor at the City University of New York School of Law whose legal clinic represents five Guantánamo detainees. Captives he sees in the prison’s iconic orange prison uniform are wearing old, torn and much less orange jumpsuits, he said.The prisoners are perplexed, Kassem said. “They’ve heard how much it costs per prisoner. They wonder, where’s all the money?”“Somebody’s pinching pennies, it seems,” he said, describing the prison-issue footwear on Aamer, the next detainee to be released, as “Oliver Twist tattered” despite repeated pleas for a replacement pair.
  • Over at the secret prison for former long-held CIA captives, Camp 7, the detainees are taking vitamin D furnished by defense attorneys Cheryl Bormann and Air Force Capt. Michael Schwartz.Walid bin Attash spent years without exposure to sunlight in a so-called CIA black site before he got to Camp 7 in 2006. Now, he’s told his lawyers, his medical record shows a severe vitamin D deficiency. He asked his defense team for a halal version of the supplement, which the prison doesn’t provide. One attorney, who asked not to be identified, quoted a prison medical officer as telling detainees “there’s no money for that.”So bin Attash’s lawyers ordered kosher vitamin D — no forbidden products in those gel caps — and gave it to the military staff attorney assigned to Camp 7. The prison’s medical officer has apparently doled them out to other former CIA black site captives because bin Attash needs a resupply sooner than a one-a-day distribution would require, Bormann said.“We’ve been having to purchase vitamin D for our client,” said Bormann, a criminal defense attorney with death-penalty experience. “It’s crazy.” At a civilian prison, she said, the lawyers wouldn’t have to buy and furnish it. They’d go to a federal or state judge, who would order the prison to provide it.
  • Lists of purchases provided by more than a dozen attorneys include toothbrushes, toothpaste, bar soap, shampoo, deodorant, slip-on sandals that double as slippers, white socks, white T-shirts, towels, no-lace sneakers, canvas slip-on shoes, pillows, books, individual DVD players, video games and audio tapes. Those reached the clients after a guard inspection — as did tahini, ginger, allspice, mint oil, mint tea, ginger tea, Nesquik, olive oil, ground cloves, henna and almonds, around Ramadan. Lawyers also said they have submitted other items that were rejected — notably black socks, hairbrushes, combs and aftershave (probably for its taboo alcohol content).
Gary Edwards

What 1946 Can Tell Us About 2010 - The American, A Magazine of Ideas - 0 views

www.american.com/...at-1946-can-tell-us-about-2010

michael-barone fdr truman 1946

shared by Gary Edwards on 06 Apr 10 - No Cached
  • In both cases a Democratic president was proposing and a Democratic Congress was considering proposals to substantially increase the size and scope of government beyond previous peacetime limits.
  • The second similarity is that the Democrats in 1945–1946 were closely allied with labor unions, which were deeply involved in politics and were avidly seeking more members and more bargaining power.
  • The Wagner Act passed in 1935 stimulated the growth of Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) unions, which through sitdown strikes (which were plainly illegal) and other tactics organized the major auto, steel, and tire manufacturers between 1937 and 1941.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Unions also emerged as a political force in the war years—and as a political force entangled with the Communist Party.
  • the stimulus package passed in February 2009 allotted one-third of its funds to state and local governments, which helped preserve the jobs of many public sector union members—and the flow of dues money to public-sector union leaders.
  • 1946. The Republican slogan was “Had enough?”—enough inflation, enough high taxes, enough price controls, enough coddling of unions with their frequent strikes and their entanglement with Communists. The Republicans promised to end controls, lower taxes, and restrict labor unions—an unusually coherent program for a party out of power.
  • Gary Edwards on 06 Apr 10
     
    There are some intriguing similarities between the political situation in 1946 and the political situation today. In the off-year election of 1946, Republicans gained 13 seats in the Senate and emerged with a 51-45 majority there, the largest majority that they enjoyed between 1930 and 1980. They gained 55 seats in the House, giving them a 246-188 majority in that body, the largest majority they have held since 1930. First, Democrats were promising (or threatening) to vastly increase the size and scope of government. Government's share of gross domestic product had risen to over 40% in World War II, and it was obvious that there would be some scaling back. At the same time, the Allied victory in World War II had enhanced the prestige of the state, just as the 1930s Depression weakened faith in free markets. In Britain, the 1942 Beveridge Report urged creating a welfare state after the war, and the Labour Party won a resounding victory in the July 1945 election and promptly proceeded to adopt the Beveridge recommendations and more. In the United States, Franklin Roosevelt in his January 1944 State of the Union address echoed the Beveridge Report. As I pointed out in my 1990 book Our Country: The Shaping of America from Roosevelt to Reagan, he called for "steeply graduated taxes, government controls on crop prices and food prices [and] continued controls on wages . . . Government should guarantee everyone a job, an education, and clothing, housing, medical care, and financial security against the risks of old age and sickness." "True individual freedom," Roosevelt said, "cannot exist without economic security and independence." The similarities between the policy choices facing Congress in 1945-1946 and those facing it in 2009-2010 are obviously far from exact. Nevertheless, there are some. In both cases a Democratic president was proposing and a Democratic Congress was considering proposals to substantially increase the size and scope of gov
Gary Edwards

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

www.zerohedge.com/...14-forecast-burning-down-house

Banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 08 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 08 Jan 14
     
    Incredible must read analysis. Take away: the world is going to go "medevil". It's the only way out of this mess. Since the zero hedge layout is so bad, i'm going to post as much of the article as Diigo will allow: Jim Kunstler's 2014 Forecast - Burning Down The House Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/06/2014 19:36 -0500 Submitted by James H. Kunstler of Kunstler.com , Many of us in the Long Emergency crowd and like-minded brother-and-sisterhoods remain perplexed by the amazing stasis in our national life, despite the gathering tsunami of forces arrayed to rock our economy, our culture, and our politics. Nothing has yielded to these forces already in motion, so far. Nothing changes, nothing gives, yet. It's like being buried alive in Jell-O. It's embarrassing to appear so out-of-tune with the consensus, but we persevere like good soldiers in a just war. Paper and digital markets levitate, central banks pull out all the stops of their magical reality-tweaking machine to manipulate everything, accounting fraud pervades public and private enterprise, everything is mis-priced, all official statistics are lies of one kind or another, the regulating authorities sit on their hands, lost in raptures of online pornography (or dreams of future employment at Goldman Sachs), the news media sprinkles wishful-thinking propaganda about a mythical "recovery" and the "shale gas miracle" on a credulous public desperate to believe, the routine swindles of medicine get more cruel and blatant each month, a tiny cohort of financial vampire squids suck in all the nominal wealth of society, and everybody else is left whirling down the drain of posterity in a vortex of diminishing returns and scuttled expectations. Life in the USA is like living in a broken-down, cob-jobbed, vermin-infested house that needs to be gutted, disinfected, and rebuilt - with the hope that it might come out of the restoration process retaining the better qualities of our heritage.
Paul Merrell

WPost Seeks US-Patrolled 'Safe Zone' in Syria | Consortiumnews - 0 views

consortiumnews.com/...s-patrolled-safe-zone-in-syria

war & peace neocons WaPo Syria WMD de-fudding-war-propaganda must-read

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 May 14 - No Cached
  • Neocons never blush at their own hypocrisies, demanding Russia respect international law and do nothing to protect eastern Ukrainians, while demanding President Obama ignore international law and create a rebel “safe zone” in Syria, writes ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern. By Ray McGovern The Washington Post’s neocon editors have made another strident appeal for President Barack Obama to “abandon his passivity and do something to help” the rebels in Syria, complaining that they “continue to receive far too little help from the United States.” The Post ups the ante by boldly asserting that “Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad … continues to launch chemical attacks … in rebel-controlled neighborhoods.” Yet, even premier Bashar-basher John Kerry has been more discreet in inching that dubious claim into the public arena.
  • In effect, the Post’s editors on Saturday called on the Obama administration to undertake a “responsibility to protect” – or R2P – mission by violating the sovereignty of Syria, i.e., by breaking international law through military action inside Syria’s borders to establish and patrol a “safe zone” for the rebels.
  • Indeed, I define a neocon as one who has difficulty distinguishing between the national interests of Israel, on the one hand, and those of the United States, on the other.
  • Paul Merrell on 27 May 14
     
    Ray McGovern, of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) fame, administers some serious whup-ass on editors of The Washington Post for its editorial reviving neocon ambition for the U.S. to go to war against Syria, as in American boots on the ground and handing over air-to-ground missiles to the Jihadi-dominated Opposition. As though the U.S. were not already heavily involved in a war-by-proxies against Syria. McGovern dumps gallons of cold water on wild new claims that the Assad government waged chemical warfare in mid-April. Then he bluntly confronts the neocon nature of the Post editorial, which by the way can be found at http://goo.gl/DNg7BL This is McGovern at his finest, a well-written essay that goes right to the heart of the matter, usefully defining a "neocon" as "one who has difficulty distinguishing between the national interests of Israel, on the one hand, and those of the United States, on the other." For as he explains, it is in the psychotic Israeli government's interest, not in the U.S. interest, to prolong the violence in Syria, but sadly the U.S. State Department, and now The Washington Post, are dominated by neocons. All in all, a truly inspired essay by a Citizen who dares to tell the crowd that the Emperor wears no clothes.  Buck naked, caught in the act. A must-read.    
Paul Merrell

Court Accepts DOJ's 'State Secrets' Claim to Protect Shadowy Neocons: a New Low - The I... - 0 views

firstlook.org/...busing-state-secrets-privilege

Dark-State state-secrets Restis litigation

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • A truly stunning debasement of the U.S. justice system just occurred through the joint efforts of the Obama Justice Department and a meek and frightened Obama-appointed federal judge, Edgardo Ramos, all in order to protect an extremist neocon front group from scrutiny and accountability. The details are crucial for understanding the magnitude of the abuse here. At the center of it is an anti-Iranian group calling itself “United Against Nuclear Iran” (UANI), which is very likely a front for some combination of the Israeli and U.S. intelligence services. When launched, NBC described its mission as waging “economic and psychological warfare” against Iran. The group was founded and is run and guided by a roster of U.S., Israeli and British neocon extremists such as Joe Lieberman, former Bush Homeland Security adviser (and current CNN “analyst”) Fran Townsend, former CIA Director James Woolsey, and former Mossad Director Meir Dagan. One of its key advisers is Olli Heinonen, who just co-authored a Washington Post Op-Ed with former Bush CIA/NSA Director Michael Hayden arguing that Washington is being too soft on Tehran.
  • This group of neocon extremists was literally just immunized by a federal court from the rule of law. That was based on the claim — advocated by the Obama DOJ and accepted by Judge Ramos — that subjecting them to litigation for their actions would risk disclosure of vital “state secrets.” The court’s ruling was based on assertions made through completely secret proceedings between the court and the U.S. government, with everyone else — including the lawyers for the parties — kept in the dark. In May 2013, UANI launched a “name and shame” campaign designed to publicly identify — and malign — any individuals or entities enabling trade with Iran. One of the accused was the shipping company of Greek billionaire Victor Restis, who vehemently denies the accusation. He hired an American law firm and sued UANI for defamation in a New York federal court, claiming the “name and shame” campaign destroyed his reputation.
  • Up until that point, there was nothing unusual about any of this: just a garden-variety defamation case brought in court by someone who claims that public statements made about him are damaging and false. That happens every day. But then something quite extraordinary happened: In September of last year, the U.S. government, which was not a party, formally intervened in the lawsuit, and demanded that the court refuse to hear Restis’s claims and instead dismiss the lawsuit against UANI before it could even start, on the ground that allowing the case to proceed would damage national security. When the DOJ intervened in this case and asserted the “state secrets privilege,” it confounded almost everyone. The New York Times’s Matt Apuzzo noted at the time that “the group is not affiliated with the government, and lists no government contracts on its tax forms. The government has cited no precedent for using the so­-called state­ secrets privilege to quash a private lawsuit that does not focus on government activity.” He quoted the ACLU’s Ben Wizner as saying: “I have never seen anything like this.” Reuters’s Allison Frankel labeled the DOJ’s involvement a “mystery” and said “the government’s brief is maddeningly opaque about its interest in a private libel case.”
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  • But in this case, there is no apparent U.S. government conduct at issue in the lawsuit. At least based on what they claim about themselves, UANI is just “a not-for-profit, non-partisan, advocacy group” that seeks to “educate” the public about the dangers of Iran’s nuclear program. Why would such a group like this even possess “state secrets”? It would be illegal to give them such material. Or could it be that the CIA or some other U.S. government agency has created and controls the group, which would be a form of government-disseminated propaganda, which happens to be illegal? What else could explain the basis for the U.S. government’s argument that allowing UANI to be sued would risk the disclosure of vital “state secrets” besides a desire to cover up something quite untoward if not illegal? What “state secrets” could possibly be disclosed by suing a nice, little “not-for-profit, non-partisan, advocacy group”?
  • This sham worked. This week, Judge Ramos issued his ruling dismissing the entire lawsuit (see below). As a result of the DOJ’s protection, UANI cannot be sued. Among other things, it means this group of neocon extremists now has a license to defame anyone they want. They can destroy your reputation with false accusations in a highly public campaign, and when you sue them for it, the DOJ will come in and whisper in the judge’s ear that national security will be damaged if — like everyone else in the world — UANI must answer in a court of law for their conduct. And subservient judicial officials like Judge Ramos will obey the U.S. government’s dictates and dismiss your lawsuit before it begins, without your having any idea why that even happened. Worse, in his written ruling, the judge expressly acknowledges that dismissal of the entire lawsuit at the start on secrecy grounds is what he calls a “harsh sanction,” and also acknowledges that “it is particularly so in this case because Plaintiffs not only do not get their day in court, but cannot be told why” (emphasis added). But he does it anyway, in a perfunctory 18-page opinion that does little other than re-state some basic legal principles, and then just concludes that everything the government whispered in his ear should be accepted.
  • Paul Merrell on 27 Mar 15
     
    Unless the district court decision is overturned by a higher court, the Restis case looks to be over. The secrecy concerns of the Dark State trump justice, again. It should be noted that the Constitution is silent on the issue of state secrets (the so-called "state secrets privilege" was manufactured from whole cloth by the Supreme Court in the early 1950s). On the other hand, several provisions of the Constitution expressly require that justice be done, not the least of which is the Due Process clause.  
Paul Merrell

Kagan Endorses Hillary: Clinton in Lockstep with Neocons | Global Research - Centre for... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5510497

Auction 2016 Hillary Kagan neocons

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • Prominent neocon Robert Kagan has endorsed Democrat Hillary Clinton for president, saying she represents the best hope for saving the United States from populist billionaire Donald Trump, who has repudiated the neoconservative cause of U.S. military interventions in line with Israel’s interests. In a Washington Post op-ed published on Thursday, Kagan excoriated the Republican Party for creating the conditions for Trump’s rise and then asked, “So what to do now? The Republicans’ creation will soon be let loose on the land, leaving to others the job the party failed to carry out.” Then referring to himself, he added, “For this former Republican, and perhaps for others, the only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton. The [Republican] party cannot be saved, but the country still can be.”
  • While many of Kagan’s observations about the Republican tolerance – and even encouragement – of bigotry are correct, the fact that a leading neocon, a co-founder of the infamous Project for the New American Century, has endorsed Clinton raises questions for Democrats who have so far given the former New York senator and Secretary of State mostly a pass on her pro-interventionist policies. The fact is that Clinton has generally marched in lock step with the neocons as they have implemented an aggressive “regime change” strategy against governments and political movements that don’t toe Washington’s line or that deviate from Israel’s goals in the Middle East. So she has backed coups, such as in Honduras (2009) and Ukraine (2014); invasions, such as Iraq (2003) and Libya (2011); and subversions such as Syria (from 2011 to the present) – all with various degrees of disastrous results.
  • Paul Merrell on 27 Feb 16
     
    Neocons jump back from Republican clothing to Democratic. I gather that the Zionististas lack sufficient confidence in Donald Trump submitting to their leash or in Trump being stopped from getting the Republican nod. Hillary is now officially the War Party candidate.
Paul Merrell

Russia questions Syrian chemical weapons evidence | The Times of Israel - 0 views

www.timesofisrael.com/rian-chemical-weapons-evidence

war & peace syria WMD Russia chain of custody

shared by Paul Merrell on 15 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Russia’s foreign minister said Saturday that the evidence put forth by the United States of chemical weapons use in Syria apparently doesn’t meet stringent criteria for reliability
  • In Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the material does not include guarantees that it meets the requirements of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. He said the organization specifies that samples taken from blood, urine and clothing can be considered reliable evidence only if supervised by organization experts from the time they are taken up to delivery to a laboratory. The OPCW is the autonomous body for implementing the international Chemical Weapons Convention that went into effect in 1997.
  • Lavrov, after meeting with his Italian counterpart Emma Bonino, scoffed at suggestions that Assad’s regime would use chemical weapons now in light of its apparent growing advantage against the rebels. “The regime doesn’t have its back to the wall. What would be the sense of the regime using chemical weapons, moreover at such a small quantity?” he said.
  • Paul Merrell on 15 Jun 13
     
    No chain of custody evidence? This is "evidence" that no U.S. court would allow to be admitted into evidence.
Paul Merrell

Qods Force commander Qassem Soleimani rallies Iranian officers, Hezbollah in Syria | Th... - 0 views

www.longwarjournal.org/...fficers-hezbollah-in-syria.php

war & peace Syria boots-on-the-ground Iran Hezbollah militias Russia

shared by Paul Merrell on 15 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Major General Qassem Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps – Qods Force, has been seen addressing Iranian military officers and members of Lebanese Hezbollah in western Syria. In the past, the leader of Iran’s expeditionary special operations forces has been spotted on key battlefields in Iraq and Syria prior to the launch of major operations against jihadist groups such as the Islamic State. Recent images of Soleimani (above) appeared on social media sites such as Twitter. His presence in the western province of Latakia in Syria was confirmed by Reuters. According to the news service, Soleimani was “addressing Iranian officers and Hezbollah fighters with a microphone, wearing dark clothes as he spoke to the men in camouflage.” In the photographs, Soleimani is flanked by by a handful of men wearing military fatigues. The faces of the individuals standing next to him are digitally altered to prevent their identity from being disclosed. A crowd of armed fighters who appear to be wearing US Marine Corps desert camouflage uniforms listens to his speech.
  • Latakia is a western coastal province that has long been a stronghold for the Assad family. Jihadists from the Jaysh al Fateh alliance, which is led by Al Nusrah Front, al Qaeda’s official branch in Syria, and its close ally, Ahrar al Sham, have launched attacks in the province in an effort to break Assad’s power base. Just two days ago, Abu Muhammad al Julani, Al Nusrah’s emir, threatened to indiscriminately shell villages in the province to avenge regime attacks, including airstrikes and barrel bombs dropped from helicopters, on Sunni villages, towns, and cities controlled by jihadist groups and allied rebel forces. Iran is reported to have deployed significant forces, estimated at thousands of troops, to support the Assad regime’s offensive to retake areas controlled by Jaysh al Fateh in Hama and Aleppo. But Omran al Zoubi, Syria’s Information Minister, has denied a large Iranian presence in Syria. “Only some Iranian military advisers, whose mission is to provide consultations and nothing more, are present in Syria,” Zoubi said, according to Iran’s Tasnim News Agency. Soleimani is instrumental in organizing Syrian and Iraqi militias, as well as Hezbollah, to battle Sunni jihadists and allied rebels in Syria. He has played a similar role in Iraq, where he has organized, trained, and equipped Shiite militias along the lines of Lebanese Hezbollah to fight the Islamic State. The leaders of some of these militias are listed by the US as Specially Designated Global Terrorists, and remain hostile to the US. Soleimani is occasionally photographed with these militia leaders.
  • Hezbollah has also committed a large force to back the government’s offensive in Hama and Idlib in western Syria. Thousands of the group’s fighters are said to be involved in the operation. In the past week, a senior Hezbollah leader known as Hassan al Haj was killed during the offensive. A senior Lebanese government official told Reuters that Haj was “the most important [Hezbollah] figure killed in battles in Syria since the start of the war.” Russia has also committed an expeditionary military force to back the Assad regime’s offensive. After building up its forces in Syria, the Russian military launched airstrikes on Sept. 30 and have primarily targeted Jaysh al Fateh and allied rebel groups in the northwest. Russia entered the fight under the guise of attacking the Islamic State, but few of its airstrikes have hit the jihadist group. In addition to warplanes and attack helicopters, the Russian military has deployed “marines, paratroopers, and special forces” to Syria, and even executed a sea-launched cruise missile strike from the Caspian Sea. Russia very likely coordinated its entry into the Syrian civil war with Iran and Soleimani. In July, Soleimani is reported to have visited Russia and met with met President Vladimir Putin and Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, despite a United Nations travel ban.
Paul Merrell

Euphemisms Away! A World in Which Truth is a Dying Species - 0 views

www.informationclearinghouse.info/article32920.htm

security state euphamisms lily pads war & peace defese budget foreign policy

shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • Hidden away somewhere within the labyrinth of the Pentagon there must be a top secret euphemism department engaged in the invention of the Orwellian surrogate words that have crept surreptitiously into the American English vocabulary and from there translated into many other languages. In my mind I see a unit of studiously serious executives, coffee mugs in their hands and their neckties awry, devising senseless terms for terrible things and used unthinkingly by people today from New York to California, from Maine to Texas. The goal of my imaginary secret unit is to render ugly terms meaningless or to transform them into their opposite. To quote the perceptive Scottish writer, Candia McWilliam, “plain words are always under threat.” There are words that don’t say what they mean and there are words that say what they don’t mean. Intensified or enhanced interrogation sounds oh so much more genteel than the hideous word TORTURE.
  • The point to keep in mind is that the names of things, issues, objects of life change, but the substance of the object itself remains—torture will always be torture, no matter what the gnomes propose and the media parrot. Today, though generally unknown among the public, the relatively new term, “lily pad”, is making its way forward to describe not that beautiful manifestation of nature but the new version of America’s over 1000 military bases and garrisons spreading across some 150 countries of planet Earth. You can always count on those Pentagon gnomes. They regularly come up with something new. It remains unclear however if they first invent the terms and the military executes their implications or if the military experiments with a new lethal strategy and the gnomes then give it a purified label. In the case of the “lily pad”, this linguistic version of the sheep in wolf’s clothing, was allegedly conceived to spread the U.S. footprint into every corner of our planet and to make military bases more effective and comprehensive while giving the impression that the government is both protecting “our way of life”, while also saving taxpayer money—money then used for more weapons and the hiring of more mercenaries and for payoffs to eager satraps of the Empire’s vassal states; some nations, peoples, and even minor empires can be more easily bought than subdued militarily.
Paul Merrell

The Battle for Mosul turns into Regional War - ISIL allowed to flee to Syria - nsnbc in... - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...-isil-allowed-to-flee-to-syria

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

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • Iraqi government forces, US-led coalition air forces, Iranian-backed Iraqi militia, Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga and Turkish troops are engaged in a major battle against ISIL in Mosul.  The offensives against ISIL have the potential to result in a major conflagration between several of the forces involved in the operations while ISIL fighters are allowed to flee to Deir Ez-Zor, Syria, without being attacked by the US-led coalition.
  • Turkish President R. Tayyip Erdogan, on Saturday rebuffed once demands by Iraqi Prime Minister Abadi to withdraw the about 2,000 Turkish troops, allegedly “military advisers” from a base 20 kilometers from Mosul, where they have been training local Sunni fighters in a militia called Hashd al-Watani. Erdogan insists that Mosul should be controlled by Sunni Muslims.
  • Erdogan also directly warned Iranian-backed Iraqi Shi’ite militia to stay clear of Mosul. Erdogan also warned against any involvement of Turkish – Kurdish PKK fighters in the campaign.
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  • There have been reports about mass desertations of ISIL fighters who reportedly “shaved off their beards and got rid of their Afghan uniform”. A local source told nsnbc that a large contingent of ISIL fighters in plain clothes and their families are fleeing toward Deir Ez-Zor in Syria where ISIL has a stronghold.
  • It was, in fact, the accidental one-hour-long bombing of Syrian troops in Deir Ez-Zor by US-led coalition forces that killed about 90 Syrian soldiers and enabled ISIL to briefly recapture a key position near Deir Ez-Zor Airport. It was this “accident” that, among others, led to the collapse of US – Russian talks on Syria. The leader of the predominantly Christian Al-Hashd al-Shaabi militia a.k.a. the Babylon Brigades, stressed on Monday that the US-led international coalition air forces did not target ISIS convoys as they fled from Mosul towards Syria. Ryan al-Kildani the group’s Secretary-General, stressed his astonishment about the fact that the US-led coalition air forces let ISIL fighters slip away to Syria.
Paul Merrell

Media: US & Saudi Arabia Sending ISIS Terrorists from Mosul to Syria - 0 views

southfront.org/terrorists-from-mosul-to-syria

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

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • According to media, the US and Saudi Arabia have agreed to provide Islamic State (IS) terrorists and members of their families with a safe exit from Iraqi province of Anbar and city of Mosul prior to its assault by the international coalition forces. Evacuated terrorists will be sent to Syria to conduct an offensive on cities, controlled by the Syrian government forces.
  • The special services of the US and Saudi Arabia have reached an agreement, according to which members of the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group can safely leave Anbar province and the Iraqi city of Mosul before start of the assault on it by the international coalition forces, pro-Russian and pro-Iranian media reported on Wednesday. As the Fars news agency reported, citing a senior commander of the Iraqi volunteer forces (the Hashd al-Shaabi), Nazem al-Jaqifi, the western part of Anbar province have already been left by IS emirs and commanders at the order of the US. “The IS commanders and their families have fled Raveh, Ana, al-Qaem, al-Rataba and other areas under their control in western Anbar province,” Fars quoted al-Jaqifi’s words. “The IS commander have fled Anbar province after disguising in Shepherd’s clothes,” he added. Al-Jaqifi also stressed that the evacuation of IS members from the province of Anbar has been held upon an order of Washington. Meanwhile, the RIA Novosti news agency also reported about withdrawal of IS terrorists from the province, citing an unnamed military-diplomatic source in Moscow.
  • According to the source, US President Barack Obama has already decided to carry out the operation to liberate Mosul in October. During the assault, the coalition’s air power would carry out strikes only on detached empty buildings, pre-agreed with terrorists, the source said. According to him, the plan of Washington and Riyadh also provides that terrorists would move from Mosul to Syria in order to conduct an offensive on cities, controlled by the government forces. “More than 9,000 IS terrorists will be transported from Mosul to the eastern regions of Syria for conducting a following major offensive operation, which involves the capture of Deir ez-Zor and Palmyra,” the source added. RIA Novosti does not have any comments of the US or Saudi sides, as well as any official information on this matter. Earlier, it was reported that about 120,000 people will take part in the operation to liberate the Iraqi city of Mosul from IS terrorists.
Paul Merrell

EU-US Personal Data Privacy Deal 'Cracked Beyond Repair' - 0 views

www.mintpressnews.com/...218358

surveillance state EU safe-harbor privacy-shield litigation

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Jul 16 - No Cached
  • Privacy Shield is the proposed new deal between the EU and the US that is supposed to safeguard all personal data on EU citizens held on computer systems in the US from being subject to mass surveillance by the US National Security Agency. The data can refer to any transaction — web purchases, cars or clothing — involving an EU citizen whose data is held on US servers. Privacy groups say Privacy Shield — which replaces the Safe Harbor agreement ruled unlawful in October 2015 — does not meet strict EU standard on the use of personal data. Monique Goyens, Director General of the European Consumer Organization (BEUC) told Sputnik: “We consider that the shield is cracked beyond repair and is unlikely to stand scrutiny by the European Court of Justice. A fundamental problem remains that the US side of the shield is made of clay, not iron.”
  • The agreement has been under negotiation for months ever since the because the European Court of Justice ruled in October 2015 that the previous EU-US data agreement — Safe Harbor — was invalid. The issue arises from the strict EU laws — enshrined in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union — to the privacy of their personal data.
  • The Safe Harbor agreement was a quasi-judicial understanding that the US undertook to agree that it would ensure that EU citizens’ data on US servers would be held and protected under the same restrictions as it would be under EU law and directives. The data covers a huge array of information — from Internet and communications usage, to sales transactions, import and exports.
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  • The case arose when Maximillian Schrems, a Facebook user, lodged a complaint with the Irish Data Protection Commissioner, arguing that — in the light of the revelations by ex-CIA contractor Edward Snowden of mass surveillance by the US National Security Agency (NSA) — the transfer of data from Facebook’s Irish subsidiary onto the company’s servers in the US does not provide sufficient protection of his personal data. The court ruled that: “the Safe Harbor Decision denies the national supervisory authorities their powers where a person calls into question whether the decision is compatible with the protection of the privacy and of the fundamental rights and freedoms of individuals.”
  • Paul Merrell on 12 Jul 16
     
    Off we go for another trip to the European Court of Justice.
Gary Edwards

ILLUSION OF RECOVERY - FEELINGS VERSUS FACTS - Washington's Blog - 1 views

www.washingtonsblog.com/...ery-feelings-versus-facts.html

Obammunism Lies

shared by Gary Edwards on 07 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 07 Feb 12
     
    "There is no means of avoiding a final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as the final and total catastrophe of the currency involved." - Ludwig von Mises
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