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Gary Edwards

Gonzalo Lira: Why Democracies Will Always Go Bankrupt - 1 views

gonzalolira.blogspot.com/...s-will-always-go-bankrupt.html

socialist-bankruptcy gonzalo-lira USA-debt sovereign-debt

shared by Gary Edwards on 14 Jan 11 - No Cached
  • once a democracy’s debt reaches a point of unsustainability—either because it cannot borrow more, or it cannot service the debt it already has—the democracy becomes bankrupt.
  • Gary Edwards on 14 Jan 11
     
    It's an overall concept I've designated as the Democratic Bankruptcy Paradox: The paradox by which every democracy eventually goes bankrupt-regardless of the people's will and intention of keeping it from going bankrupt. That's why it's a paradox: The citizens of a democratic state are supposed to control its destiny. They obviously do not want their nation to suffer bankruptcy-yet in spite of their will and intent, democratic states always go bankrupt. Always. This post will outline my proof of why this is so. I will first explain the logic of my Democratic Bankruptcy Paradox theory, and how it is derived from a rather recently articulated problem in philosophy called the discursive dilemma, or sometimes the doctrinal dilemma; an aspect of group agency that has been used primarily in legal theory, but which I've realized has some fairly interesting-and radical-applications to macro-economics and public finance in representative democracies. I will then explain how the discursive dilemma, when applied to macro-economics and fiscal policy in a democratic regime, leads to the Democratic Bankruptcy Paradox. It is here that I will prove two general conclusions: * One: Democracies always act in a fiscally incoherent manner. * Two: Democracies always go bankrupt-without exception.  Finally, I will show how my Democratic Bankruptcy Paradox theory applies to the American case, and explain why the U.S. governments at the local, State and Federal level spend more than they bring in-even as their citizens uniformly oppose this state of affairs.
Gary Edwards

What the Founders Thought About Democracy | Eric Peters Autos - 1 views

epautos.com/...ounder-thought-about-democracy

liberty-tyranny democracy-republic

shared by Gary Edwards on 13 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 13 Dec 11
     
    Good explanation of the difference between democracy and a republic, and why the founding fathers were adamantly against democracy.  Many foundign fathers believing that democracy was the first step towards tyranny.  So they chose ordered liberty in the form of a constitutional republic.  NOT democracy!!!!
Paul Merrell

The U.S. Is Not a Democracy, It Is an Oligarchy | Global Research - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5377765

U.S. oligarchy democracy study

shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • A study, to appear in the Fall 2014 issue of the academic journal Perspectives on Politics, finds that the U.S. is no democracy, but instead an oligarchy, meaning profoundly corrupt, so that the answer to the study’s opening question, “Who governs? Who really rules?” in this country, is:
  • “Despite the seemingly strong empirical support in previous studies for theories of majoritarian democracy, our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts. Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association, and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But, …” and then they go on to say, it’s not true, and that, “America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened” by the findings in this, the first-ever comprehensive scientific study of the subject, which shows that there is instead “the nearly total failure of ‘median voter’ and other Majoritarian Electoral Democracy theories [of America]. When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.” To put it short: The United States is no democracy, but actually an oligarchy.
  • this is the first-ever scientific study of the question of whether the U.S. is a democracy. “Until recently it has not been possible to test these contrasting theoretical predictions [that U.S. policymaking operates as a democracy, versus as an oligarchy, versus as some mixture of the two] against each other within a single statistical model. This paper reports on an effort to do so, using a unique data set that includes measures of the key variables for 1,779 policy issues.” That’s an enormous number of policy-issues studied. What the authors are able to find, despite the deficiencies of the data, is important: the first-ever scientific analysis of whether the U.S. is a democracy, or is instead an oligarchy, or some combination of the two. The clear finding is that the U.S. is an oligarchy, no democratic country, at all. American democracy is a sham, no matter how much it’s pumped by the oligarchs who run the country (and who control the nation’s “news” media). The U.S., in other words, is basically similar to Russia or most other dubious “electoral” “democratic” countries. We weren’t formerly, but we clearly are now. Today, after this exhaustive analysis of the data, “the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.” That’s it, in a nutshell.
  • Paul Merrell on 14 Apr 14
     
    Looking forward to reading the study when published. 
Paul Merrell

How 'Free Markets' Defame 'Democracy' | Consortiumnews - 0 views

consortiumnews.com/...-free-markets-defame-democracy

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy U.S.-front-groups NED Freedom-House CIA BIden

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Venezuela seems to be following Ukraine on the neocon hit list for “regime change” as Washington punishes Caracas for acting against a perceived coup threat. But a broader problem is how the U.S. conflates “free markets” with “democracy,” giving “democracy” a bad name, writes Robert Parry.
  • The one common thread in modern U.S. foreign policy is an insistence on “free market” solutions to the world’s problems. That is, unless you’re lucky enough to live in a First World ally of the United States or your country is too big to bully.So, if you’re in France or Canada or – for that matter – China, you can have generous health and educational services and build a modern infrastructure. But if you’re a Third World country or otherwise vulnerable – like, say, Ukraine or Venezuela – Official Washington insists that you shred your social safety net and give free reign to private investors.
  • If you’re good and accept this “free market” domination, you become, by the U.S. definition, a “democracy” – even if doing so goes against the wishes of most of your citizens. In other words, it doesn’t matter what most voters want; they must accept the “magic of the market” to be deemed a “democracy.”Thus, in today’s U.S. parlance, “democracy” has come to mean almost the opposite of what it classically meant. Rather than rule by a majority of the people, you have rule by “the market,” which usually translates into rule by local oligarchs, rich foreigners and global banks.Governments that don’t follow these rules – by instead shaping their societies to address the needs of average citizens – are deemed “not free,” thus making them targets of U.S.-funded “non-governmental organizations,” which train activists, pay journalists and coordinate business groups to organize an opposition to get rid of these “un-democratic” governments.
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  • If a leader seeks to defend his or her nation’s sovereignty by such means as requiring these NGOs to register as “foreign agents,” the offending government is accused of violating “human rights” and becomes a candidate for more aggressive “regime change.”Currently, one of the big U.S. complaints against Russia is that it requires foreign-funded NGOs that seek to influence policy decisions to register as “foreign agents.” The New York Times and other Western publications have cited this 2012 law as proof that Russia has become a dictatorship, while ignoring the fact that the Russians modeled their legislation after a U.S. law known as the “Foreign Agent Registration Act.”So, it’s okay for the U.S. to label people who are paid by foreign entities to influence U.S. policies as “foreign agents” – and to imprison people who fail to register – but not for Russia to do the same. A number of these NGOs in Russia and elsewhere also are not “independent” entities but instead are financed by the U.S.-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
  • There is even a circular element to this U.S. complaint. Leading the denunciation of Russia and other governments that restrain these U.S.-financed NGOs is Freedom House, which marks down countries on its “freedom index” when they balk at letting in this back-door U.S. influence. However, over the past three decades, Freedom House has become essentially a subsidiary of NED, a bought-and-paid-for NGO itself.
  • That takeover began in earnest in 1983 when CIA Director William Casey was focused on creating a funding mechanism to support Freedom House and other outside groups that would engage in propaganda and political action that the CIA had historically organized and financed covertly. Casey helped shape the plan for a congressionally funded entity that would serve as a conduit for this U.S. government money.But Casey recognized the need to hide the CIA’s strings. “Obviously we here [at CIA] should not get out front in the development of such an organization, nor should we appear to be a sponsor or advocate,” Casey said in one undated letter to then-White House counselor Edwin Meese III – as Casey urged creation of a “National Endowment.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “CIA’s Hidden Hand in ‘Democracy’ Groups.”]Casey’s planning led to the 1983 creation of NED, which was put under the control of neoconservative Carl Gershman, who remains in charge to this day. Gershman’s NED now distributes more than $100 million a year, which included financing scores of activists, journalists and other groups inside Ukraine before last year’s coup and now pays for dozens of projects in Venezuela, the new emerging target for “regime change.”
  • But NED’s cash is only a part of how the U.S. government manipulates events in vulnerable countries. In Ukraine, prior to the February 2014 coup, neocon Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland reminded Ukrainian business leaders that the United States had invested $5 billion in their “European aspirations.”Nuland then handpicked who would be the new leadership, telling U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt that “Yats is the guy,” referring to “free market” politician Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who not surprisingly emerged as the new prime minister after a violent coup ousted elected President Viktor Yanukovych on Feb. 22, 2014.The coup also started a civil war that has claimed more than 6,000 lives, mostly ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine who had supported Yanukovych and were targeted for a ruthless “anti-terrorist operation” spearheaded by neo-Nazi and other far-right militias dispatched by the U.S.-backed regime in Kiev. But Nuland blames everything on Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Nuland’s Mastery of Ukraine Propaganda.”]On top of Ukraine’s horrific death toll, the country’s economy has largely collapsed, but Nuland, Yatsenyuk and other free-marketeers have devised a solution, in line with the wishes of the Washington-based International Monetary Fund: Austerity for the average Ukrainian.
  • Before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday, Nuland hailed “reforms” to turn Ukraine into a “free-market state,” including decisions “to reduce and cap pension benefits, increase work requirements and phase in a higher retirement age; … [and] cutting wasteful gas subsidies.”In other words, these “reforms” are designed to make the hard lives of average Ukrainians even harder – by slashing pensions, removing work protections, forcing people to work into their old age and making them pay more for heat during the winter.‘Sharing’ the Wealth In exchange for those “reforms,” the IMF approved $17.5 billion in aid that will be handled by Ukraine’s Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko, who until last December was a former U.S. diplomat responsible for a U.S. taxpayer-financed $150 million investment fund for Ukraine that was drained of money as she engaged in lucrative insider deals – deals that she has fought to keep secret. Now, Ms. Jaresko and her cronies will get a chance to be the caretakers of more than 100 times more money. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Ukraine’s Finance Minister’s American ‘Values.’”]
  • Other prominent Americans have been circling around Ukraine’s “democratic” opportunities. For instance, Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter was named to the board of directors of Burisma Holdings, Ukraine’s largest private gas firm, a shadowy Cyprus-based company linked to Privat Bank.Privat Bank is controlled by the thuggish billionaire oligarch Ihor Kolomoysky, who was appointed by the Kiev regime to be governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, a south-central province of Ukraine. In this tribute to “democracy,” the U.S.-backed Ukrainian authorities gave an oligarch his own province to rule. Kolomoysky also has helped finance paramilitary forces killing ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine.Burisma has been lining up well-connected American lobbyists, too, some with ties to Secretary of State John Kerry, including Kerry’s former Senate chief of staff David Leiter, according to lobbying disclosures.As Time magazine reported, “Leiter’s involvement in the firm rounds out a power-packed team of politically-connected Americans that also includes a second new board member, Devon Archer, a Democratic bundler and former adviser to John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign. Both Archer and Hunter Biden have worked as business partners with Kerry’s son-in-law, Christopher Heinz, the founding partner of Rosemont Capital, a private-equity company.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Whys Behind the Ukraine Crisis.”]
Gary Edwards

Is democracy a trade barrier? | European Public Affairs - 0 views

www.europeanpublicaffairs.eu/is-democracy-a-trade-barrier

TTIP

shared by Gary Edwards on 08 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • The United States and the European Union (EU) are negotiating a trade agreement, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). The aim is to lower trade barriers. Unfortunately those ‘barriers’ include not just traditional trade tariffs and quotas, but also the laws your elected representatives make.
  • This is why the fight against TTIP is a fight for democracy. It is not about protectionism, but rather the protection of our democratic laws over their business interests.
  • Gary Edwards on 08 Jan 15
     
    "In a democracy, elected representatives make laws. But with new trade agreements, businesses could co-write legislation. The United States and the European Union (EU) are negotiating a trade agreement, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). The aim is to lower trade barriers. Unfortunately those 'barriers' include not just traditional trade tariffs and quotas, but also the laws your elected representatives make. For example, Pierre Defraigne, former Deputy Director-General in the EU Commission Department responsible for Trade, sees the core battle of TTIP is over "the norms and standards in terms of environmental, health and consumer protection". This is why the fight against TTIP is a fight for democracy. It is not about protectionism, but rather the protection of our democratic laws over their business interests. If TTIP was to be signed, two new doors will be opened for businesses to influence legislation: 1. Firstly, regulatory co-operation will give access to industry before laws are to be signed. This means regulators and stakeholders work together for the convergence of laws across the Atlantic. 2. And secondly, once laws are enacted, private investors can sue the EU or US in private tribunals, outside of national courts (known as ISDS or investor-state dispute settlement). The example of the chemical Bisphenol A illustrates what both these 'open doors' for business could mean in practice. Used in everything from water bottles to the lining of food cans, Bisphenol A is one of the most ubiquitous endocrine disruptors. As such, it disrupts the hormonal system of the body, which is responsible for all vital features such as growth, sexual development, and even behaviour. Its presence in the natural world is already felt: two out of three fish caught in Austrian rivers are now female. Bisphenol A has been banned in France since 1st January 2015. This ban goes further than the existing EU ban. Meanwhile, Bisphenol A is stil
Paul Merrell

Eurozone crosses Rubicon as Portugal's anti-euro Left banned from power - Telegraph - 0 views

www.telegraph.co.uk/...ro-Left-banned-from-power.html

banksters Portugal coup-government

shared by Paul Merrell on 25 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Portugal has entered dangerous political waters. For the first time since the creation of Europe’s monetary union, a member state has taken the explicit step of forbidding eurosceptic parties from taking office on the grounds of national interest. Anibal Cavaco Silva, Portugal’s constitutional president, has refused to appoint a Left-wing coalition government even though it secured an absolute majority in the Portuguese parliament and won a mandate to smash the austerity regime bequeathed by the EU-IMF Troika.
  • He deemed it too risky to let the Left Bloc or the Communists come close to power, insisting that conservatives should soldier on as a minority in order to satisfy Brussels and appease foreign financial markets.
  • Democracy must take second place to the higher imperative of euro rules and membership. “In 40 years of democracy, no government in Portugal has ever depended on the support of anti-European forces, that is to say forces that campaigned to abrogate the Lisbon Treaty, the Fiscal Compact, the Growth and Stability Pact, as well as to dismantle monetary union and take Portugal out of the euro, in addition to wanting the dissolution of NATO,” said Mr Cavaco Silva.
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  • “This is the worst moment for a radical change to the foundations of our democracy. "After we carried out an onerous programme of financial assistance, entailing heavy sacrifices, it is my duty, within my constitutional powers, to do everything possible to prevent false signals being sent to financial institutions, investors and markets,” he said. Mr Cavaco Silva argued that the great majority of the Portuguese people did not vote for parties that want a return to the escudo or that advocate a traumatic showdown with Brussels. This is true, but he skipped over the other core message from the elections held three weeks ago: that they also voted for an end to wage cuts and Troika austerity. The combined parties of the Left won 50.7pc of the vote. Led by the Socialists, they control the Assembleia.
  • The conservative premier, Pedro Passos Coelho, came first and therefore gets first shot at forming a government, but his Right-wing coalition as a whole secured just 38.5pc of the vote. It lost 28 seats.
  • The Socialist leader, Antonio Costa, has reacted with fury, damning the president’s action as a “grave mistake” that threatens to engulf the country in a political firestorm. “It is unacceptable to usurp the exclusive powers of parliament. The Socialists will not take lessons from professor Cavaco Silva on the defence of our democracy,” he said. Mr Costa vowed to press ahead with his plans to form a triple-Left coalition, and warned that the Right-wing rump government will face an immediate vote of no confidence. There can be no fresh elections until the second half of next year under Portugal’s constitution, risking almost a year of paralysis that puts the country on a collision course with Brussels and ultimately threatens to reignite the country’s debt crisis. The bond market has reacted calmly to events in Lisbon but it is no longer a sensitive gauge now that the European Central Bank is mopping up Portuguese debt under quantitative easing.
  • Paul Merrell on 25 Oct 15
     
    The banksters just dropped the pretense of democracy in Portugal.  For additional analysis, see http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-pantomime-of-democracy-portugals-coup-against-anti-austerity/5484375
Paul Merrell

Suppressing Key Facts, How the American Public Is Deceived by the "News" | Global Research - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5435800

propaganda MSM U.S.

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • If the public is systematically lied-to by the Government and by a virtually uniformly cooperative press suppressing key facts in order to pump that lie, such as was the case during 2002 and 2003 in the lead-up to America’s invasion of Iraq, then there can’t possibly be an authentic democracy, because democracy is founded upon a truthfully informed public, and so any ‘news’ institution that violates its solemn public trust of reporting the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, is traitorous to democracy itself.  That’s why the press has been called “the fourth estate” of government. The first three “estates” are the aristocracy, the clergy, and the public. If the press represent not the public, but instead one of the two other classes — the aristocracy and/or the clergy — then what exists is a dictatorship by that actually ruling class against the public, not a democracy by the public. The public cannot rule in such a country. They instead are manipulated in it. They may be manipulated to believe that they rule, but it’s only a manipulated illusion then; it’s not real; it’s a fraud, of the most massive type. Such a country cannot possibly be a real democracy; it’s a fraudulent ‘democracy.’ Evidence will be presented here that democracy no longer exists in the United States. Part of this evidence is personal, something that I always prefer to avoid, but which happens to be integral to this particular news-report and analysis. So: it’s necessary, in this case.
Paul Merrell

Hong Kong "Occupy Central" Protest Scripted in Washington. Leaders Mislead Grassroots |... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5406352

war & peace Hong Kong Occupy-Central China NED

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • The slogans, leaders, and agenda of the “Occupy Central” movement are supposedly the manifestations of Hong Kong’s desire for “total democracy,” “universal suffrage,” and “freedom.” In reality, the leaders of “Occupy Central” are verified to be directly backed, funded, and directed by the US State Department, its National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and its subsidiary, the National Democratic Institute (NDI). Despite admitting this overwhelming evidence, many “Occupy Central” supporters still insist the protests are genuine and now some propose that the “Occupy Central” leadership does not truly represent the people of Hong Kong. While the leadership of “Occupy Central” indeed in no way represent the people of Hong Kong, the fact still remains that the protest itself was prearranged at least as early as April 2014, revealed by “Occupy Central” co-organizers Martin Lee and Anson Chan before NED in Washington DC.
  • The talk titled, “Why Democracy in Hong Kong Matters,” spanned an hour, with NED regional vice president Louisa Greve leading the duo through a full introduction of the “Occupy Central” movement, its characters, agenda, demands, and talking points. Anson Chan – Hong Kong’s Chief Secretary under British rule – in particular, with her perfect British accent, insisted repeatedly that the issue was China’s apparent backtracking on “deals” made with the UK over the handover of Hong Kong in the late 1990′s. Lee, as well as members of the audience, repeatedly stated that Hong Kong’s role was to “infect” mainland China with its Western-style institutions, laws, and interests. Lee also repeatedly appealed to Washington specifically to ensure they remained committed to defending American interests in Hong Kong. Both Lee and Chan would also state that since China appears to be concerned over global perception of how it rules its people, this could be exploited to excise from Beijing concessions over Hong Kong’s governance. This included mention of previous protests, including those led by “activist” Joshua Wong and his suspicious “Scholarism” organization that has been tracked since at least 2012 by the US State Department’s NDI. And of course, future destabilization was submitted as a viable solution to bending Beijing toward Western concessions.
  • For those able to listen to the entire 1 hour interview as well as questions and answers, the entire “Occupy Central” narrative is laid bare, verbatim, in Washington DC months before demonstrations began in the streets of Hong Kong. For a supposed “pro-democracy” protest seeking self-governance and self-determination and denouncing “interference” from Beijing, that their leaders are funded by foreign interests, and the plans for “Occupy Central” laid in a foreign capital is ironic at best – utter and very intentional deceit at worst.
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  • Laid bare is “Occupy Central’s” true agenda. It is not about having Hong Kong vote for who they desire to see in power, it is about getting the foreign-backed political cabal behind “Occupy Central” into power, and disarming Beijing of any means to prevent what is for all intents and purposes the “soft” recolonization of Hong Kong, and a further attempt to divide and destabilize China as a whole.
Paul Merrell

Hong Kong's People Have Spoken - End the Protests | nsnbc international - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...ngs-people-spoken-end-protests

war & peace color-revolutions Hong-Kong false-flag

shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • Despite an ongoing media circus in the West portraying a “popular uprising” in Hong Kong, China – in reality the Chinese people and particularly the citizens of Hong Kong have grown tired of the unrest.
  • After popular demand, the Public Opinion Programme (HKU POP) of the University of Hong Kong conducted a poll asking whether or not the “Occupy Central” movement should come to an end. An overwhelming 80% said yes with HKU POP stating specifically, “almost 80% called for an end to the occupation.” Bloomberg in their article, “Most Hong Kong People Want Pro-Democracy Protests to End Now,” would also admit: About 68 percent of 513 respondents said the government should clear the protesters immediately, according to a survey conducted by the University of Hong Kong Nov. 17-18.
  • Surely, with “Occupy Central” claiming to be a “pro-democracy” movement, it will heed the will of the people and voluntarily withdraw from Hong Kong’s streets indefinitely. However, despite the wording of Bloomberg’s headline, those blocking up Hong Kong’s streets are not “pro-democracy.” The backlash against “Occupy Central” is not the Hong Kong public turning on “pro-democracy” protesters but rather the Hong Kong public understanding “Occupy Central” has nothing at all to do with democracy in the first place. The degree to which the “Occupy Central” has been exposed as a foreign-backed political destabilization is so complete that there is little likelihood that such a destabilization will be possible in Hong Kong, or anywhere else inside of China well into the foreseeable future. Leaders including Benny Tai and Joshua Wong have all been linked to US State Department funded organizations, projects, and campaigns. “Occupy Central” leaders including Martin Lee and Anson Chan literally were in Washington D.C. earlier this year lobbying for US support in front of the very organizations funding the political activity of virtually every prominent “Occupy Central” leader. Even HKU POP has been implicated in “dirty money” used to qualify an ad hoc referendum carried out by “Occupy Central” ahead of the recent protests.
Paul Merrell

Land Destroyer: Entire "Occupy Central" Protest Scripted in Washington - 0 views

landdestroyer.blogspot.com/...-central-protest-scripted.html

war & peace Hong-Kong U.S.-foreign-policy destabilization-activities

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • The slogans, leaders, and agenda of the "Occupy Central" movement are supposedly the manifestations of Hong Kong's desire for "total democracy," "universal suffrage," and "freedom." In reality, the leaders of "Occupy Central" are verified to be directly backed, funded, and directed by the US State Department, its National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and its subsidiary, the National Democratic Institute (NDI). Despite admitting this overwhelming evidence, many "Occupy Central" supporters still insist the protests are genuine and now some propose that the "Occupy Central" leadership does not truly represent the people of Hong Kong. While the leadership of "Occupy Central" indeed in no way represent the people of Hong Kong, the fact still remains that the protest itself was prearranged at least as early as April 2014, revealed by "Occupy Central" co-organizers Martin Lee and Anson Chan before NED in Washington DC.
  • The talk titled, "Why Democracy in Hong Kong Matters," spanned an hour, with NED regional vice president Louisa Greve leading the duo through a full introduction of the "Occupy Central" movement, its characters, agenda, demands, and talking points. Anson Chan - Hong Kong’s Chief Secretary under British rule - in particular, with her perfect British accent, insisted repeatedly that the issue was China's apparent backtracking on "deals" made with the UK over the handover of Hong Kong in the late 1990's. Lee, as well as members of the audience, repeatedly stated that Hong Kong's role was to "infect" mainland China with its Western-style institutions, laws, and interests. Lee also repeatedly appealed to Washington specifically to ensure they remained committed to defending American interests in Hong Kong. Both Lee and Chan would also state that since China appears to be concerned over global perception of how it rules its people, this could be exploited to excise from Beijing concessions over Hong Kong's governance. This included mention of previous protests, including those led by "activist" Joshua Wong and his suspicious "Scholarism" organization that has been tracked since at least 2012 by the US State Department's NDI. And of course, future destabilization was submitted as a viable solution to bending Beijing toward Western concessions.
  • For those able to listen to the entire 1 hour interview as well as questions and answers, the entire "Occupy Central" narrative is laid bare, verbatim, in Washington DC months before demonstrations began in the streets of Hong Kong. For a supposed "pro-democracy" protest seeking self-governance and self-determination and denouncing "interference" from Beijing, that their leaders are funded by foreign interests, and the plans for "Occupy Central" laid in a foreign capital is ironic at best - utter and very intentional deceit at worst. Democracy indeed assumes self-governance and self determination. If the US State Department is colluding with, funding, and directing the politicians and protest leaders behind "Occupy Central," the people of Hong Kong are governing and determining nothing - Washington and Wall Street are. Martin Lee and collaborator Anson Chan complain about Beijing dictating policy in Hong Kong, while they sit together in a room full of foreign interests who would dictate Hong Kong's governance instead.  Laid bare is "Occupy Central's" true agenda. It is not about having Hong Kong vote for who they desire to see in power, it is about getting the foreign-backed political cabal behind "Occupy Central" into power, and disarming Beijing of any means to prevent what is for all intents and purposes the "soft" recolonization of Hong Kong, and a further attempt to divide and destabilize China as a whole.
Paul Merrell

Evo Morales Slams Washington During Speech at Summit | News | teleSUR - 0 views

www.telesurtv.net/...h-at-Summit-20150411-0026.html

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy criticism Summit-of-the-Americas Bolivia Morales

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • Bolivian president Evo Morales harshly condemned the United States Government for creating chaos, for promoting destabilization, and for attacking the sovereignty of nations as it continues to move forward with imperialist attitudes against countries around the world. Morales also spoke about poverty in Latin America, saying that it was important to point out that the causes of the problem lie in Washington and their imposition of neoliberal measures in the region. “The United States continues to see Latin America and the Caribbean as its backyard and the people of the region as its slaves, and this is the cause of extreme poverty in the region,” Morales said. The Bolivian president accused Washington of all the military coups that affected Latin America during the second half of the 20th century. “It is important to remember,” he stated, “that in the relations between the U.S. and Latin America and the Caribbean there are more failures than successes. The relations are loaded with armed interventions by the United States, invasions and constant aggressions.”
  • He criticized the United States for labeling the countries of the region as villains, when all these nations want to do is defend their people, their sovereignty, their right to freedom and democracy. “I want to tell [President Barack] Obama that empires disappear, while democracies last for ever,” he stated. “I want to express that mistake the U.S. makes when calling the Latin American and Caribbean countries the evil ones, when all they want to do is defend their sovereignty, their resources and their people.” Morales rejected the attacks by Washington and its allies against the region, accusing them of promoting wars, terrorism and poverty around the world. “I ask the United States what have we done to deserve being treated as slaves in our own countries?” he said. “We want to tell you Obama that Latin America has changed forever.” He called on Obama to stop extorting and attacking the countries of Latin America.
  • The president also state that, “Latin America has been kidnapped by the United States and we no longer want this. We no longer want presidential decrees that call us a threat to their country, we no longer want to be spied on … we want to live in peace.” Morales, therefore, called on Obama to engage in peaceful talks with the countries of region and to leave its double standards behind. “The United States should dispose of that double morale, because, for example, it is the country that resorts to torture more than any other country,” he said, questioning the human rights discourse of Washington when justifying interventionist policies against another nation. “We ask that (The United States) stop destroying complete civilizations and to stop looking for ghosts … we want to live in peace because it is less painful and more satisfying.”
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  • Morales also questioned Washington's discourse of democracy. “How can you speak of democracy when you label countries of peace and democracy a threat to your security? … How can you speak of democracy when you send troops around the world menacing the sovereignty of other nations … How can you speak of threats to your security when your country is the largest producer of weapons in the world … weapons that are killing hundreds of thousands.” Morales also questioned Washington's discourse on human rights, saying it is the country that resorts to torture more than any other around the world, and when in the United States they have a grave crisis of racial discrimination and a serious human rights issue involving police against minorities. Evo Morales told Obama that the United States doesn't need to help Cuba, “what it needs to do is repair all the damages it has caused in that country.” Toward the end of his speech during the second day of the Summit of the Americas in Panama City, Morales criticized the United States for insisting on the aggressions against Venezuela despite the fact that 33 countries in the region have rejected them, while only two have agreed with them.
Paul Merrell

The Arab Spring: Made in the USA | Global Research - Centre for Research on Globalization - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5484950

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Arab Spring NED Soros

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Arabesque$: Enquête sur le rôle des États-Unis dans les révoltes arabes (Investigation into the US Role in the Arab Uprisings) is an update of Ahmed Bensaada’s 2011 book L’Arabesque Américaine. It concerns the US government role in instigating, funding and coordinating the Arab Spring “revolutions.” Most of this history has been carefully suppressed by the western media.The new book devotes much more attention to the personalities leading the 2011 uprisings. Some openly admitted to receiving CIA funding. Others had no idea because it was deliberately concealed from them. A few (in Egypt and Syria) were officially charged with espionage. In Egypt, seven sought refuge in the US embassy in Cairo and had to be evacuated by the State Department.
  • According to Bensaada, the MENA Arab Spring revolutions have four unique features in common: None were spontaneous – all required careful and lengthy (5+ years) planning, by the State Department, CIA pass through foundations, George Soros, and the pro-Israel lobby.1 All focused exclusively on removing reviled despots without replacing the autocratic power structure that kept them in power. No Arab Spring protests made any reference whatsoever to powerful anti-US sentiment over Palestine and Iraq. All the instigators of Arab Spring uprisings were middle class, well educated youth who mysteriously vanished after 2011.
  • Follow the Money Relying mainly on Wikileaks cables and the websites of key CIA pass through foundations (which he reproduces in the appendix), Bensaada methodically lists every State Department conference and workshop the Arab Spring heroes attended, the dollar amounts spent on them by the State Department and key “democracy” promoting foundations3, the specific involvement of Google, Facebook, Twitter and Obama’s 2008 Internet campaign team in training Arab Spring cyperactivists in encryption technologies and social media skills, US embassy visits, and direct encounters with Hillary Clinton,  Condoleezza Rice, John McCain, Barack Obama and Serbian trainers from CANVAS (the CIA-backed organization that overthrew Slobodan Milosevic in 2000). Bensaada focuses most heavily on the Tahrir Square uprising in Egypt. TheWashington Post has estimated approximately 10,000 Egyptians took part in NED and USAID training in social media and nonviolent organizing techniques. For me the most astonishing information in this chapter concerned the role of an Egyptian exile (a former Egyptian policeman named Omar Afifi Suleiman) in coordinating the Tahrir Square protests from his office in Washington DC. According to Wikileaks, NED paid Suleiman a yearly stipend of $200,000+ between 2008-2011.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • When Nonviolence Fails Arabesques$ devotes far more attention to Libya, Syria and Yemen than Bensaada’s first book. In the section on Libya, Bensaada zeroes in on eleven key US assets who engineered the overthrow of Gaddafi. Some participated in the same State Department trainings as the Middle East opposition activists and instigated nonviolent Facebook and Twitter protests to coincide with the 2011 uprisings in Tunisian and Egypt. Others, in exile, underwent guerrilla training sponsored by the CIA, Mossad, Chad and Saudi Arabia. A few months after Gaddafi’s assassination, some of these same militants would lead Islamic militias attempting to overthrow Assad in Syria. Between 2005 and 2010, the State Department funneled $12 million to opposition groups opposed to Assad. The US also financed Syrian exiles in Britain to start an anti-government cable TV channel they beamed into Syria. In the section on Syria, Bensaada focuses on a handful of Syrian opposition activists who received free US training in cyberactivism and nonviolent resistance beginning in 2006. One, Ausama Monajed, is featured in the 2011 film How to Start a Revolution about a visit with Gene Sharp in 2006. Monajed and others worked closely with the US embassy, funded by the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI). This is a State Department program that operates in countries (such as Libya and Syria) where USAID is banned. In February 2011, these groups posted a call on Twitter and Facebook for a Day of Rage. Nothing happened. When Sharpian techniques failed to produce a sizable nonviolent uprising, as in Libya, they and their allies (Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and Jordan) were all set up to introduce Islamic mercenaries (many directly from Libya) to declare war on the Assad regime.
  • Dr. Bramhall is a retired American psychiatrist and political refugee in New Zealand. She has published a free, downloadable non-fiction ebook 21st Century Revolution.
  • Paul Merrell on 29 Oct 15
     
    Alas, the book is apparently available only in French. 
Gary Edwards

Professor Hoppe's new book: "The Competition of Crooks") | The God That Failed - 0 views

thegodthatfailed.org/...uner-the-competition-of-crooks

Hans-Hermann-Hoppe Libertarian Democracy

shared by Gary Edwards on 29 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • And perhaps then, finally, will come the realization that democracy – in whose name all these dirty tricks have been done – is nothing more than an especially insidious form of communism, and that the politicians who have wrought this immoral and economic madness and who have thereby enriched themselves personally (never, of course, being liable for the damages they have caused!), are nothing more than a despicable bunch of communist crooks.
  • democracy which is causally responsible for the fatal conditions afflicting us now
  • The number of productive people is constantly decreasing, and the number of people parasitically consuming the income and wealth of this dwindling number of productive people is increasing steadily. This can’t work in the long run.
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • That the whole democratic house of cards has not yet completely collapsed speaks volumes about the still tremendous creative power of capitalism, even in the face of ever-increasing governmental strangulation.
  • And this fact also allows us to conjecture about what economic ‘miracles’ would be possible if we had unimpeded capitalism liberated from such parasitism.
  • the correct realization becomes generally accepted that the only antagonistic conflict of interest in society is the one between tax-payers, i.e. the exploited, and tax-consumers, i.e. the exploiters.:
  • In other words, between the class of people on the one hand who earn their income and assets by producing something that is bought voluntarily and valued accordingly by others; and the class of those on the other hand who produce nothing considered to be of value, but who live instead by living off and enriching themselves from the incomes and assets of other, productive people, forcibly taken via taxation – that is to say all government employees and all recipients of government “welfare assistance”, subsidies and monopolistic privileges.
  • book’s thesis is that the government is a monopolist of ultimate justice and law enforcement and that every monopoly is always bad from the perspective of the consumer – in this case the citizen. Your alternative solution is a private law society.
  • The basic idea is quite simple. Abolish monopoly and encourage competition.
  • I can only go to a state court of law, staffed by judges who themselves are paid from taxes to enforce government regulations.
  • In this way, government-staged robbery, assault, manslaughter, murder, war is “legally” sanctioned.
  • In a private law society, if we had such a conflict, we would instead approach arbitrators who are independent of both parties, and who are competing with other arbitrators for voluntarily paying customers.
  • We would not use an inherently biased judge working for and paid directly by the state, who is therefore partisan, but rather a neutral third party, to adjudicate the normal human legal conflicts arising between existing and recognized property rights and private contract law.
  • the mediation market.
  • My income from my work is my property (not the state’s) and the restaurant is my property (not the state’s).
  • Therefore, any government-imposed tax upon me or use restrictions upon my property (such as a smoking ban) would therefore be judged unlawful, as robbery and expropriation.
  • the state is nothing but a “great band of robbers,” a mafia, only a much larger, more overwhelming and dangerous one.
  • the subject of class consciousness
  • “there’s absolutely no reason in any case why the state should have anything at all to do with the production of money.”
  • And every newly printed bill causes a redistribution of social wealth.
  • More paper money doesn’t make a society richer overall. It’s just more paper. But every new piece of printed paper reduces the purchasing power of all the other previously-existing paper bills
  • these machinations, taking place every day on an almost unimaginable scale, are nothing more than a gigantic case of fraudulent theft.
  • in a competitive environment, a better kind of money would be produced. Why? Because there’ll always be a demand for means of exchange.
  • Gary Edwards on 29 Dec 12
     
    Interview with Hoppe where he once again pushes libertarian thinking forward.  Hoppe puts most of the blame on "democracy" itself, caling it "an insidious form of communism".  Good stuff.  Highlighted parts. excerpt: "That the whole democratic house of cards has not yet completely collapsed speaks volumes about the still tremendous creative power of capitalism, even in the face of ever-increasing governmental strangulation. And this fact also allows us to conjecture about what economic 'miracles' would be possible if we had unimpeded capitalism liberated from such parasitism. If, and when, this insight finally bears fruit will depend upon the class consciousness of the population. There is a Marxist myth, eagerly promoted by the state, of an irreconcilable clash of interests between employers (capitalists) and employees (workers), or between the rich and the poor. As long as this myth prevails in public opinion, nothing at all will change and disaster is inevitable. A fundamental change can only occur if, instead of this, the correct realization becomes generally accepted that the only antagonistic conflict of interest in society is the one between tax-payers, i.e. the exploited, and tax-consumers, i.e. the exploiters.: In other words, between the class of people on the one hand who earn their income and assets by producing something that is bought voluntarily and valued accordingly by others; and the class of those on the other hand who produce nothing considered to be of value, but who live instead by living off and enriching themselves from the incomes and assets of other, productive people, forcibly taken via taxation - that is to say all government employees and all recipients of government "welfare assistance", subsidies and monopolistic privileges. Only when the producer class clearly recognises this, and publicly speaks out; when the producers are finally confident to take the moral high ground and reject the insolent admonitions from the po
Gary Edwards

Obsessed by Megalomania: Interview with Hans-Hermann Hoppe - 0 views

lewrockwell.com/...hoppe31.1.html

Hans-Hermann-Hoppe Libertarian Ludwig-Von-Mises Austrian-Economics

shared by Gary Edwards on 29 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • The ‘Occupy’ movement consists of economic ignoramuses who fail to understand that the banks’ dirty tricks, which they rightly deplore, are possible only because there is a state-licensed central bank that acts as a "lender of last resort," and that the current financial crisis therefore is not a crisis of capitalism but a crisis of statism.
  • The ‘Pirates’, with their demand for an unconditional basic income, are well on the way to becoming another ‘free beer for all’ party. They have a single issue: criticism of ‘intellectual property rights’ (IP rights), which could make them very popular – and earn them the enmity in particular of the music, film and pharmaceutical industries. But even there they are clueless wimps.
  • IP has nothing to do with property, but rather with state privileges.
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  • IP rights are not property but, on the contrary, are an attack on property and therefore completely illegitimate.
  • The idea of a monopolistic property protector and law keeper is self-contradictory.
  • In order to guarantee the protection of property and safeguard the law there has to be free competition in the area of law as well. Other institutions apart from the state must be allowed to provide property and law protection services.
  • The state then becomes a normal subject of private law, on an equal footing with all other people. It can’t raise taxes any more or unilaterally enact laws. Its employees will have to finance themselves just the same as everybody else does: by producing and offering something that freely engaging customers consider value for money.
  • States go to war because they can, via taxes, pass on the cost to third parties who are not directly involved.
  • By contrast, for voluntarily financed companies war is economic suicide.
  • There is an interim solution. It’s called secession and political decentralization. Small states must be libertarian, otherwise the productive people will desert them. Desirable therefore is a world made up of thousands of Liechtensteins, Singapores and Hong Kongs.
  • In contrast, a European central government – and even more so a world government – with a ‘harmonized’ tax and regulation policy, is the gravest threat to freedom.
  • All highly-developed forms of religion forbid the coveting of someone else’s property. This prohibition is the foundation of peaceful cooperation. In a democracy, on the other hand, anyone can covet anybody else’s property and act according to his desire – the only precondition being that he can gain access to the corridors of power.
  • Thus, under democratic conditions, everybody becomes a potential threat.
  • No, the state is anything but the result of a contract!
  • Gary Edwards on 29 Dec 12
     
    Jaw dropping libertarian analysis.  Hoppe argues that democracy, or more correctly called "mobocracy" results in "The Competition of Crooks".  Fascinating stuff.  I've highlighted some of the more resounding libertarian bites. excerpt: "Are taxes nothing but protection money? The state a kind of mafia? Democracy a fraud? Philosopher Hans-Hermann Hoppe is not only considered one of the most prominent pioneering intellectuals of the libertarian movement, but also perhaps the sharpest critic of the Western political system. Professor Hoppe: In your essay collection 'Der Wettbewerb der Gauner' ('The Competition of Crooks') you write that '99 percent of citizens, asked if the state was necessary, would answer yes.' Me too! Why am I wrong?"
Paul Merrell

American Democracy is Owned by the Rich | Al Jazeera America - 1 views

america.aljazeera.com/...he-rich-own-our-democracy.html

U.S. Congress corruption

shared by Paul Merrell on 19 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • Two new studies by political scientists offer compelling evidence that the rich use their wealth to control the political system and that the U.S. is a democratic republic in name only. In a study of Senate voting patterns, Michael Jay Barber found that “senators’ preferences reflect the preferences of the average donor better than any other group.” In a similar study of the House of Representatives, Jesse H. Rhodes and Brian F. Schaffner found that, “millionaires receive about twice as much representation when they comprise about 5 percent of the district’s population than the poorest wealth group does when it makes up 50 percent of the district.” In fact, the increasing influence of the rich over Congress is the leading driver of polarization in modern politics, with the rich using the political system to entrench wealth by pushing for tax breaks and blocking redistributive policies.
  • At the turn of the decade, political scientists Larry Bartels, Jacob Hacker and Martin Gilens wrote several incredibly influential important books arguing, persuasively, that the preferences of the rich were better represented in Congress than the poor. After the books were published, there was a flurry of research arguing that they had overstated their case. Critics alleged two key defects in Bartels’ and Gilens’ arguments. First, because polling data on the super-wealthy were sparse, it was difficult to prove that there were large differences in opinion. Political scientists often rely on composite measures of policy liberalism, but since the poor tend to be more economically liberal but socially conservative, the differences between the poor and moderately rich can often be obscured. Second, there was no way to show that influence of the wealthy was caused directly by the influence of money. It might well be that the rich are simply opinion leaders or are more likely to vote.
  • Recent research offers compelling answers to these criticisms. The new evidence adds credence to the Bartels-Gilens-Hacker view that money is corrupting American politics. By using a massive database of ideology that includes the super wealthy, Schaffner and Rhodes found that “members of Congress are much more responsive to the wealthy than to their poor constituents.” However, this difference is not equal between both parties; rather, Democrats are far more responsive to the poor than Republicans. (This is not surprising; other research supports this claim.) They find that both parties strongly favor the upper-middle class, those with $100,000 to $300,000 in wealth. But Republicans are not only more responsive to the rich, but particularly to rich donors. Schaffner and Rhodes argue that, “campaign donations, but not voter registration or participation in primary or general election, may help explain the disproportionate influence of the wealthy among Republican representatives.” Barber’s study is the first to directly examine the policy preferences of the donor class. Barber sent 20,500 letters to people who contributed to 22 Senate elections in 2012 and asked about various policy questions. This allowed Barber to examine the differences in representation between donors and non-donors. His finding: Donors’ preferences tend to be far better represented than non-donors’. The chart below measures the ideological differences between various groups, with 0 indicating a perfect fit. The data show that Senators are almost perfectly aligned with their donors, but rather distant from voters.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • In fact, politicians are almost perfectly aligned with donors, but less aligned with partisans (people who voted for the Senator and share party affiliation), supporters (people who voted for the Senator) and voters in general. He Barber also finds that donors tend to be far more extreme in their views (see chart below). For instance, while about sixty percent of non-donor Republicans oppose the Affordable Care Act, opposition among donors is “almost unanimous.” Barber also notes that donors tend to be far more extreme than non-donors (see chart). (This is supported by other studies).
  • Such data could explain the rising polarization of Congress, as politicians increasingly respond to their donors, rather than to voters. Political scientists Walter J. Stone and Elizabeth N. Simas have found that challengers raise more money when they take extreme positions, which helps explain why incumbent representatives tend to be more partisan than departing representatives. It certainly explains the intransigence of the last two Congresses: Republicans, who are responding to their rich donor base, are incentivized to oppose any action, particularly those supporting Obama, lest they lose funding. Since Senators have to raise approximately $3,300 a day every year for six years to remain viable, they will inevitably have to succumb to the power of money if they wish to be reelected. This research raises the disturbing thought that our political system is no longer representative. As Barber notes, about half of all donors are from out of state, meaning that politicians are no longer responsive to their voters (though they are slightly more during election years). Given that only .22 percent of Americans made a donation of more than $200 (the level Barber studies) in 2014, we have power evidence that America is now a government of the one percent — indeed, of the one-fifth of one percent.
  • This disturbing trend affects politics at all levels. At the state level, political scientists Gerald Wright and Elizabeth Rigby found that state party platforms are far more influenced by the rich than the poor. Elsewhere, Barber found evidence that presidents are more responsive to donors than non-donors. Recently Griffin and Newman found representation gaps between whites and people of color as well as low-income voters. This finding is supported by Christopher Ellis, who found that donors were better represented than non-donors (although using a less comprehensive method than Barber). In a frank moment, U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy (D – Conn.) said, “I talked a lot more about carried interest inside of that call room than I did in the supermarket.” He’s correct: Donors tending to be far richer and wealthier than non-donors (see chart).
  • There are still unanswered questions. It is possible that politicians cast ideological votes to appease donors and partisans (for instance, the vain attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act dozens of times), while also working to benefit the poor and middle class through less visible means. This might explain why political journalists, who often focus on major legislation, miss the distributional impacts of political appointments and regulatory action. It may be that politicians work to maximize votes, and then political donations follow (though there is strong evidence this isn’t the case). Either way, the most up-to-date evidence strongly suggests that money is distorting our system, and that evidence appears to be growing stronger by the day.
  • The solution, as a recent Demos report suggests, is to help reformist candidates gather donations with a public matching system. Since voters who are non-donors are less ideological, the solution is to balance out the political distortions from the donor class by turning these non-donors into donors. Citizens United has only increased the stranglehold of moneyed interests on our political system, and is daily choking the life of our democracy. Only by restoring influence to all voters will our republic be restored.
Paul Merrell

CIA's Hidden Hand in 'Democracy' Groups | Consortiumnews - 0 views

consortiumnews.com/...idden-hand-in-democracy-groups

war & peace CIA NED Freedom-House domestic-propaganda Reagan Casey Ukraine

shared by Paul Merrell on 23 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • Documents from the Reagan presidential library reveal that two major institutions promoting “democracy” and “freedom” — Freedom House and National Endowment for Democracy — worked hand-in-glove, behind-the-scenes, with a CIA propaganda expert in the 1980s, reports Robert Parry.
  • But the Russian law would impede NED’s efforts to destabilize the Russian government through funding of political activists, journalists and civic organizations, so it was denounced as an infringement of human rights and helped justify Freedom House’s rating of Russia as “not free.”The Russian government’s concerns were not entirely paranoid. On Sept. 26, 2013, Gershman, in effect, charted the course for the crisis in Ukraine and the greater neocon goal of regime change in Russia. In a Washington Post op-ed, Gershman called Ukraine “the biggest prize” and explained how pulling it into the Western camp could contribute to the ultimate defeat of Russian President Vladimir Putin.“Ukraine’s choice to join Europe will accelerate the demise of the ideology of Russian imperialism that Putin represents,” Gershman wrote. “Russians, too, face a choice, and Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.”With NED’s budget now exceeding $100 million a year — and with many NGOs headquartered in Washington — Gershman has attained the status of a major paymaster for the neocon movement with his words carrying extra clout because he can fund or de-fund many a project.
  • Thus, three decades after CIA Director William Casey and his propaganda specialist Walter Raymond Jr. struggled to arrange funding for Freedom House and other organizations that would promote an interventionist agenda, their brainchild – the National Endowment for Democracy – was still around picking up those tabs.
Gary Edwards

Is The US Finally Ready For Revolution? - Democratic Underground - 1 views

www.democraticunderground.com/101970

ready-for-revolution

shared by Gary Edwards on 02 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 02 Jul 13
     
    Written in June of 2012, before the national elections, this commentary remains the ringing truth.  Maybe more Americans are ready to listen this fourth of July? ........................... "Is America Ready For Revolution? I have always strongly believed that it's not possible to be a good Christian without standing up against social injustice and government corruption in all its forms. As I take a look around me today I find a lot of things wrong with our country. In fact, I have been a proponent for radical change for several years now, and I have written and published 2 books on this very topic. Where shall I begin? In God-blessed America, the land of the free where everyone is an economic slave, our founding fathers' sacred idea of a government "of the people, by the people, for the people" has become but a cruel joke. Former president George W. Bush has notoriously called our Constitution - our supreme law of the land - "that (expletive) piece of paper". The federal government is currently spending at least $60 billion per month on military excursions in Afghanistan, the Middle East, and northern and western Africa - including operating between 800 and 1,000 foreign military bases all over the world. Our country's over-used flying drone aircraft kills hundreds daily overseas, many of whom are only innocent bystanders. Meanwhile here on the home front, one in seven people are on food stamps, and at any given time one in four American children are going hungry today. Our country spends more money incarcerating people than it does on education. What's up with that? Our political system is openly rigged against the best interests of the American people. A massive market mechanism is securely entrenched in our political system where political influence is openly bought and sold. Tens of thousands of highly-paid middlemen called "lobbyists" facilitate the legal transfer of billions between moneyed special interests and our so-called "representatives" i
Paul Merrell

Netanyahu and Trump: A Shared Focus on Terrorism « LobeLog - 0 views

lobelog.com/mp-a-shared-focus-on-terrorism

terrorism™-history Israel Netanyahu

shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • Scholars of terrorism credit a specific 1979 symposium in Jerusalem as a turning point in the U.S. and international usage of “terrorism” as we understand it today. The Jonathan Institute, founded following the death of Benjamin Netanyahu’s brother Yonatan during a raid to rescue hostages from a PLO hijacking, hosted a 1979 conference in Jerusalem— and a follow up in 1984 in Washington—on “International Terrorism.” Directed by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Jonathan Institute maintained close ties to the Israeli government. Current and former Israeli officials across the political spectrum—including Golda Meir, Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Rabin, Ezer Weizman, Moshe Dayan, and Shimon Peres—dominated its administrative committee. Lisa Stampnitsky, in her 2013 book Disciplining Terror, discusses how the Jonathan Institute helped internationalize Israel’s use of the term to describe terrorist violence as both irrational and illegitimate in both means and ends, and as primarily targeting democracies and “the West.” Previously, she notes, terrorism referred largely to rational political violence, either state or individual, and was dealt with as an issue of criminality and law. The shift helped Israel delegitimize the political aims of certain groups, such as the Palestinian resistance to its colonization and territorial occupation. One cannot be a “freedom fighter” if one’s political aims are demonized as illegitimate or irrational. Stampnitsky argues that the shift to using terrorism to describe violence outside the law also set the stage for retaliatory strikes (such as the 1986 U.S. air strikes in Libya in response to a bombing at a Berlin disco that killed an American soldier) and eventually for the doctrine of preemptive force that has characterized the post-9/11 “War on Terror.”
  • Israel’s role in the development of a specifically anti-Muslim discourse of terrorism is deeply intertwined with the foreign policies of American politicians. As Deepa Kumar and others have pointed out, American neocons and Israel’s Likud party jointly developed a shared language around Islamic terrorism. The 1979 Jonathan Institute conference was attended by prominent American officials and political figures, including future President George H.W. Bush and representatives of the American Enterprise Institute, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and Commentary magazine who brought the ideas, and later a follow-up conference, back to the U.S. Intended to serve as an intervention into the international discourse on terrorism, the explicit aim of the Jerusalem conference was to awaken the Western world to the problem of terrorism as defined by the conference organizers. It contributed to entrenching in the minds of American conservatives what was popularized a few years later as the “clash of civilizations,” firmly situating Israel in the category of Western democracies threatened by Soviets and Palestinians. The follow-up conference in the United States in 1984 went further by emphasizing the relationship between Islam and terror. As Netanyahu himself wrote in the book that came out of the conference: “the battle against terrorism was part of a much larger struggle, one between the forces of civilization and the forces of barbarism.” Then, as now, Netanyahu presented Israel as the bulwark against terrorism, a specific kind of illegitimate political violence that threatens not just Israel but all democracies and the Western world.
  • Echoes of this framing of the debate on terrorism can be found in how Western politicians, including Netanyahu and Trump, discuss the issue. Terrorism, which has no single agreed-upon definition in U.S. or international law, now serves as a moniker applied to all violence that established states deem illegitimate. Most often these days, Western democracies use “terrorism” to describe violence committed by Muslims. As journalist Glenn Greenwald writes, “In other words, any violence by Muslims against the West is inherently ‘terrorism,’ even if targeted only at soldiers at war and/or designed to resist invasion and occupation.” The term functions not as a descriptive tool but an ideological one. It doesn’t merely identify a particular kind of violence. It justifies and even requires a particular kind of forceful response by the state. Israel today presents itself as the world’s expert on counterterrorism. It maintains a profitable security industry predicated on selling expertise and technology tested in its interactions with Palestinians. American tax dollars have been funneled into this industry through U.S. military aid, over 25% of which Israel was allowed to spend domestically (the new military aid deal signed by the Obama White House will phase out this allowance over the next 10 years, sending the rest of the $3.8 billion per year to U.S. defense contractors). The United States and Israel collaborate on counterterrorism initiatives, including joint military exercises and police exchange programs. Here tactics and skills are developed and exchanged for surveillance and violent repression of protests that primarily impact Muslims and people of color in the U.S. and Palestinians and Black Jews in Israel.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • In this context, Trump’s framing of his anti-Muslim immigration policies as a national security priority to keep out terrorists is nothing new. What is new in this political moment is the extent to which the U.S. public is seeing straight through this discourse and rallying against discrimination and bigotry. Ahead of Trump and Netanyahu’s meeting this week, there’s an opportunity to pay attention to how these discourses have enabled Israel to justify decades of military occupation and human rights abuses with the discourse of national security and counterterrorism. As the Trump administration goes back to the drawing board to devise restrictive immigration policies that will hold up in court, Netanyahu and Israel’s example shouldn’t be far from mind.
Gary Edwards

The Basic Library - Article V Project To Restore Liberty - 2 views

articlevprojecttorestoreliberty.com/the-basic-library.html

Heritage-of-freedom freedom-liberty

shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 09 Aug 13
     
    "Free Google Book Search (360 B.C.) The Republic - Plato (46 B.C.) Cicero's Brutus - Cicero   (1517) Discourses on Livy - Machiavelli (1553) The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude - Étienne de La Boétie (1690) Two Treatises of Government - John Locke   (1698) Discourses Concerning Government - Algernon Sydney Sidney's Discourses and Locke's Second Treatise were recommended by Jefferson and Madison as containing the "general principles of liberty and the rights of man, in nature and society" (1748) The Spirit of Laws  - Montesquieu (1748) The Principles of Natural and Politic Law - Burlamaqui   (1755) Old Family Letters - John Adams (1758) The Law of Nations- Vattel   (1764-1769) The Writings of Samuel Adams (1765-1769) Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England (1766) The Declaratory Act (1770) The Writings of John Adams V1-2              The Writings of John Adams V3-4              The Writings of John Adams V5-7              The Writings of John Adams V8-10   (1771-1788) The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (1772) The Votes and Proceedings of the Freeholders and other Inhabitants (1774) A Full Vindication of the Measures of Congress - Hamilton (1774) Novanglus - John Adams Principle Controversy between Great Britain and Her Colonies (1776) Common Sense- Thomas Paine One Incident which gave a stimulus to the pamphlet Common Sense was, that it happened to appear on the very day that the King of England's speech reached the United States, in which the Americans were denounced as rebels and traitors, and in which speech it was asserted to be the right of the legislature of England to bind the Colonies in all cases whatsoever. (1776-1783) The Crisis- Thomas Paine (1780) Journal of the Convention for Framing the Massachusetts Bay Constitution (1785) Remarks concerning the Government and Laws of the United States of America: in Four Letters addressed to Mr. Adams (1787) The Anti-Federalist (audio) (1787) The Federalist
Gary Edwards

How Did A Single Unconstitutional Agency Become The Most Powerful Organization In America? - 2 views

www.businessinsider.com/ed-is-unconstitutional-2010-11

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shared by Gary Edwards on 08 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 08 Nov 10
     
    No other country had ever codified the structures and processes of their governing institutions to such an extent in one single document. Many people focus on the Bill of Rights when speaking about the Constitution, but the first four Articles are just as important. They synthesized political ideas that were developed over hundreds of years by some of the most insightful thinkers, such as separation of federal powers, checks and balances, vertical division of powers (federalism), an independent judiciary and, of course, representative democracy. The latter emphasizes the notion that any policies enacted by the federal government must be authorized by the people, through their elected representatives who are held accountable to constituents every few years. So what's the state of our Constitutional democracy today? Simple, it doesn't exist. International corruption surveys typically rank the U.S. higher (less corrupt) than most other countries, but this simply proves how bad these surveys are at capturing the essence of real, hardcore corruption. We could write stacks of books on the prevalence of money in politics and the swarms of lobbyists who descend on Washington every single week, and many people have, but it's simpler to just focus on the most egregious example of corruption. The most powerful, influential economic policy-making institution in the country, the Federal Reserve ("Fed"), is an unelected body that is completely unaccountable to the people. Well, let's back up and start with the fact that this institution's very existence is most likely unconstitutional. Here's why: Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution states that Congress has the power to "coin money" and "regulate the value thereof". The Supreme Court has long held that Congress can delegate its legislative powers to Executive agencies as long as it provides an "intelligible principle" to guide the agencies' acti
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