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Paul Merrell

America Is Guilty if We Don't Prosecute Obama Washington's Blog - 0 views

  • I write both as a Democrat (which Barack Obama merely claims to be, but shows by his actions that he is not) and as an American (which he, unfortunately, actually is, but which Republicans often deny), in the hope of preserving the honor not just of my Country, but of my Party, both of which he violates routinely. When President Obama refused to allow the prosecution of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for their manifest crimes, after they had been in office (their having lied this country into invading a country that was no imminent threat to the United States, tortured people, violated the 4th Amendment by unleashing the NSA against the American public, unleashed Wall Street crooks against the American people via MBS frauds, etc.), Obama thereby took upon himself Bush’s and Cheney’s crimes, as being his own. Those crimes still need to be prosecuted — now by America prosecuting Obama himself, for his covering them up: he still does it, after all of these years. Those crimes are no less heinous and, indeed, no less treasonous, now that a so-called “Democrat” is hiding them, than they were when his self-acknowledged Republican predecessors, and now in some cases even the fake “Democrat” Obama himself, were and have been and still are perpetrating them.
  • On 11 July 2014, Rebecca Gordon at rinf.com bannered, “America: Where the ‘Good Guys’ Torture,” and she noted that: There are several important reasons why the resurgence of torture remains a possibility in post-Bush America:     Torture did not necessarily end when Obama took office.     We have never had a full accounting of all the torture programs in the “war on terror.”     Not one of the senior government officials responsible for activities that amounted to war crimes has been held accountable, nor were any of the actual torturers ever brought to court. She documented each one of her points, the last two of which are urgent indicators of the necessity for Democrats (yes, Democrats, since Obama claims to be one of us) to bring forth in the U.S. House of Representatives an impeachment resolution and proceedings against the worst “Democratic” President in U.S. history, or else we shall be implicitly accepting his crimes as being unpunished crimes by our Party, in the person of Obama, just like the Republican Party accepts Bush’s and Cheney’s crimes as being unpunished crimes by their Party, in the persons of Bush and Cheney. And, if Obama’s crimes are acceptable by our Party, then our Party is an embarrassment to our country and should be dissolved,
  • However, there are two more reasons why Obama needs to be impeached, removed from office, and then prosecuted for treason: PROTECTING BANKSTERS:
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  • PERPETRATING ETHNIC CLEANSING ABROAD: Finally, just as President Bush defiled the Presidency by unwarrantedly invading Iraq in 2003 and lying through his teeth all the way there and afterward about it, Obama has defiled the Presidency in 2014 by overthrowing the democratically elected President of Ukraine and lying through his teeth all the way and afterward, about that. And Obama’s crime in Ukraine is even worse than Bush’s crime in Iraq, because it’s much more dangerous, with even bigger stakes and risks (all of which are purely downside for both the American and the Ukrainian peoples — much as Bush’s Iraq-invasion also was, for both Americans and Iraqis).
  • DO-OR-DIE TIME FOR DEMOCRATS: If Democrats don’t initiate impeachment proceedings against Obama, then the Democratic Party will be at least as dishonored as the Republican Party is after George W. Bush, for their protecting him; and I, for one, will quit it and urge its replacement, hoping for a leader like Abraham Lincoln to emerge, who had quit the Whig Party and who succeeded at replacing it by the new (and, tragically, only briefly progressive) Republican Party (which tragically then became taken over by northern aristocrats the very moment when Lincoln was assassinated). Either Democrats need to retake our Party, or else to end it, now. We have tolerated Obama’s outrages too long, as it is. For Democrats to retake the Party, requires Democrats to impeach President Obama.
Paul Merrell

Wall Street is Taking Over America's Pension Plans - The Intercept - 0 views

  • Coverage of the midterm elections has, understandably, focused on the shift in political power from Democrats toward Republicans. But behind the scenes, another major story has been playing out. Wall Street spent upwards of $300M to influence the election results. And a key part of its agenda has been a plan to move more and more of the $3 trillion dollars in unguarded government pension funds into privately managed, high-fee investments — a shift that may well constitute the biggest financial story of our generation that you’ve never heard of.
  • But Wall Street’s agenda goes beyond any one election cycle. It has been fighting to turn public pensions into private profits for quite some time, steering retirement nest eggs into investments that are complex, charge hefty fees, and that generate big profits for management firms. And it has been succeeding. Of the $3 trillion in public assets currently in pension funds throughout the country, almost a quarter of that has already found its way into so-called “alternative investments” like hedge funds, private equity and real estate. That translates to roughly $660 billion of public money now under private management, invested in assets that are often arcane and opaque but that offer high management and placement fees to Wall Street financiers.
  • If all this wasn’t egregious enough, a huge preponderance of evidence suggests that this massive transfer of wealth from public to private management is having a corrupting effect on the political process. Sirota’s reporting seems to have particularly touched a nerve with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who has described Sirota as “a hack” and “not a journalist”. It’s not difficult to see why Christie isn’t a fan. Earlier this year, Sirota wrote that… 43 financial firms managing New Jersey pension money have spent a total of $11.6 million on contributions to New Jersey politicians… Many of those donations have gone directly to Gov. Christie’s election campaign … Additionally, many of the contributions came either just before or just after the Christie administration awarded the firms multi-million-dollar pension management contracts. Those 43 firms ended up managing around $14 billion dollars of state pension money, a take that serves as a timeless reminder of the great rewards that can derive from catering to the needs of receptive politicians.
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  • Christie’s tenure as New Jersey governor has been particularly emblematic of the extent of Wall Street’s reach into the public sphere. Among other things, he installed a private equity investor as the state’s pension overseer and publicly lied about the manner in which pension fund investment decisions are made. Ironically enough, he’s defended these practices in his own state while criticizing Democrats for utilizing them through his position as chair of the Republican Governor’s Association.
Paul Merrell

Gallup CEO: Number of Full-Time Jobs as Percent of Population Is Lowest It's Ever Been ... - 0 views

  •     Gallup CEO and Chairman Jim Clifton doubled-down on his comments earlier in the week on the misleading Obama unemployment rate. Obama says the unemployment rate is 5.6% which is very misleading.
  • Clifton went on America’s Newsroom today to explain the misleading government numbers. “The number of full-time jobs, and that’s what everybody wants, as a percent of the total population, is the lowest it’s ever been… The other thing that is very misleading about that number is the more people that drop out, the better the number gets. In the recession we lost 13 million jobs. Only 3 million have come back. You don’t see that in that number. “
Gary Edwards

Why GOP Bigwigs Fear Trump - Consortiumnews - 0 views

  • An even bigger disjunction represented by the Republican Party is between the economic interests of a wealthy elite and the fears, xenophobia, and social-issue fixations of the hoi polloi whose votes the elite relies on to put its preferred economic policies in place. Not only is there no logical, substantive connection between these two aspects of what has come to be the Republican agenda; the economic policies are contrary to the interests of most of the ordinary citizens who are casting the votes.
  • The basic divide underlying this part of the Republican disjunction is between the one percent that provides the money to political candidates and that portion of the 99 percent that is the target of the campaigns that this money finances and who have been voting for those candidates.
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    "A desperate Republican establishment is going all out to stop Donald Trump who has rallied the GOP "base" that the bigwigs have long manipulated and sold out, explains ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar. By Paul R. Pillar The Donald Trump phenomenon and the suddenly frantic efforts within the Republican Party to try to stop Trump have led some observers to believe American politics are at a major inflection point, one where a familiar line-up of political parties and their backers could be substantially revised. Even some commentators who generally support the Republican Party are talking seriously about the possibility of the party breaking up. There is some valid basis for such talk, given that this party has come to embrace positions and interests that have no business sticking together. The political coalition has more or less worked, but it has not rested on substantive logic. So a destabilizing iconoclast with just enough political cleverness, as Trump has, can expose the artificiality of it rather easily. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Foreign policy is not the main front on which the exposure is taking place, but it may be among the first places where exposure becomes too obvious to ignore. Neoconservatives, whose realization of their earlier plans, culminating in the launching of a major offensive war in the Middle East, was made possible by infiltrating the foreign policy of a Republican administration, already are looking for a new home. That process may accelerate if Marco Rubio loses the Florida primary. The fragility of this part of what has been the Republican coalition is demonstrated by how little Trump has had to do to cause the neoconservative alarm bells to sound. He has not even advanced a coherent alternative foreign policy to shoot down. All he has done is to stray slightly from neoconservative orthodoxy: pointing out that the Iraq War was a big mistake and - even though Trump declares himself to be a strong supporte
Paul Merrell

Madaya: West Engineer Another 'Humanitarian' Media Hoax in Syria | Global Research - Ce... - 0 views

  • This last month has seen a tidal wave of western propaganda regarding the “Siege of Madaya” in Syria. Some of the mainstream media efforts have centered around the use of old or fake photo images of starving children and residents in the small Syrian town of Madaya.The object of this western government-media-human-rights ring is to provide PR backing for ‘regime change’ in Syria by blaming this humanitarian disaster on Syrian president Bashar al Assad. Here are just a few exhibits of mainstream deception…
Paul Merrell

ISIL Oil Smugglers Play Hide and Seek with Russian Bombers En Route to Turkey - nsnbc i... - 0 views

  • Terrorists in Syria, primarily ISIL are changing smuggling routes for oil from Syria to Turkey in an attempt to avoid Russian bombs. The Russian air forces in Syria have destroyed over 2,000 tanker trucks used for smuggling oil since Russia launched its air campaign in Syria. 
  • The Chief of Staff of the Russian General Staff Main Operations Department Sergei Rudskoy said on Friday that terrorist linked smugglers are changing logistics and laying new routes for crude oil smuggling to avoid Russian air strikes. The smuggling route is running from Syria’s oil-rich Deir Ez-Zor, controlled by the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS / ISIL Daesh) through the border settlements of Guna and Tell-Sfuk in Syria towards the communities of Mosul and Zaho in Iraq, he added. Convoys of tanker trucks reportedly follow the shortest route towards the Syrian-Iraqi border, which they cross in the area of the settlement of Tell-Sfuk. Rudskoy stressed that Turkey remains the final destination point of oil smuggling adding that oil is smuggled into Turkey through the checkpoint in the area of Zaho. Russian reconnaissance reportedly detects almost 12,000 fuel tanker trucks on the Turkey-Iraq border, especially in the area of the settlement of Zaho on the Turkey-Iraq border. The Zaho area is part of the eastern route used by the Islamic State terrorist organization for illegal oil trade, added Rudoski. The Chief od Staff of the Russian General Staff Main Operations Department noted:
  • “As of the moment of surveillance in the Zaho area, there were 11,775 fuel tanker trucks on both sides of the Turkish-Iraqi border. As many as 4,530 of them were on the territory of Turkey and 7,245 in Iraq.” Rudskoi presented enlarged photos of the area by grids, noting that specifically, there are 3,850 fuel tanker and large-duty trucks in Grid A on the Turkish side, with 200 of them moving towards the Iraqi border and the rest amassed in parking areas. Russia’s reconnaissance has also spotted 980 fuel tanker trucks in Iraq and 680 in Turkey in Gird B in close vicinity to the border, Rudskoi said. About another 4,900 fuel tanker trucks are amassed in Grid B and about 1,350 in Grid D, the chief of the Russian General Staff Main Operations Department said, adding that: “It is necessary to note that this checkpoint is used to transport oil extracted both in Iraq and Syria,” he added. Oil tank trucks continue moving from Syria to Turkey According to the official, heavy-load vehicles continue to move from Syrian territory to Turkey. “Oil tank trucks continue crossing the Syrian-Turkish border,”
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  • Rudskoy stressed that Russian air forces continued giving priority to undermining the sources of terrorists’ revenues in Syria, noting that: “We carefully analyzed foreign media reports, comments of experts and officials that appeared after the Russian Defense Ministry made public information on the routes of smuggling the oil illegally produced by ISIS This information on where and how oil is smuggled from the areas controlled by militants did not become a revelation for many. The photo and video footage that we provided just confirmed the existing guesses and versions about who covers up the sources of terrorists’ criminal revenues.” The Turkish government vehemently denies that it facilitates the oil smuggling despite a growing body of evidence to the contrary. It is noteworthy that some of the stolen and smuggled oil from Syria has ended up in European countries including Norway. Chemical analysis of oil has proven that the oil, coming from Turkey, is stolen Syrian oil. On April 22, 2013, the EU lifted its ban on the import of Syrian oil from what it designated as “rebel-held territories”.
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    "As of the moment of surveillance in the Zaho area, there were 11,775 fuel tanker trucks on both sides of the Turkish-Iraqi border. As many as 4,530 of them were on the territory of Turkey and 7,245 in Iraq." So why isn't the U.S. taking out the tankers on the Iraqi side of the border? 
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