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Gary Edwards

Google News - 0 views

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Obama-Muslim-Brotherhood Obama-Bribes

shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 09 Sep 13
     
    An incredible story is unfolding in Egypt where the new military government is digging through volumes of documents seized in raids on the Muslim Brotherhood. The documents are said to show that Barak Obama has been funneling Billions of dollars into the Muslim Brotherhood. excerpt: "Bare Naked Islam has done extensive reporting on the "bribes." The ... Evidence we have obtained lends credibility to the charges of "gifts" (bribes) being taken in U.S. dollars from the U.S. Embassy in Cairo" that were distributed to top ministerial level officials in the Mursi government. Via Almesryoon: "A judicial source stated that over the past few days, a number of complaints have beenfiled with the Attorney General Hisham Barakat. These complaints accuse the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood and leaders of the centrist party of receiving gifts from the American embassy in Cairo. The sponsors of these complaints stated that among these leaders are Mohamed Badie, General Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, Khairat Al-Shater, deputy leader and businessman, Mohamed Beltagy leading the group, Essam el-Erian, deputy head of the Freedom and Justice Party of, and Abu Ela Mady, head of the Wasat Party, Essam Sultan, deputy head of the Wasat Party." The strength of these allegations is seemingly bolstered by another case alluded to by the newspaper in which a document is referenced. This document reportedly reveals monthly "gifts" being paid to Muslim Brotherhood leaders in Egypt by the Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabor Al Thani, Minister of Foreign Affairs to the Mursi government. These monthly payments were said to be denominated in U.S. dollars to each leader. Evidence for such allegations are substantiated by a document we have obtained. It includes the names of several recipients of funds and even includes their signatures acknowledging receipt of the funds. This ledger, obtained from inside the Mursi government, lends additional credibility to the rep
Paul Merrell

FBI Informant Has Video Of Russian Agents With Briefcases Of Bribe Money In Clinton-Ura... - 0 views

ibankcoin.com/...ney-in-clinton-uranium-scandal

Hillary Uranium-One corruption

shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Nov 17 - No Cached
  • An undercover FBI informant in the Russian nuclear industry who was made to sign an “illegal NDA” by former AG Loretta Lynch, claims to have video evidence showing Russian agents with briefcases full of bribe money related to the controversial Uranium One deal – according to The Hill investigative journalist John Solomon and Circa‘s Sara Carter. The informant, whose identity was revealed by Reuters as energy industry consultant William D. Campbell – and is very ill battling cancer –  is testifying before congress next week after the NDA which carried the threat of prison time was lifted. As previously reported, Campbell was deeply embedded in the Russian nuclear industry where he gathered extensive evidence of a racketeering scheme involving bribes and kickbacks. “The Russians were compromising American contractors in the nuclear industry with kickbacks and extortion threats, all of which raised legitimate national security concerns. And none of that evidence got aired before the Obama administration made those decisions,” a person who worked on the case told The Hill, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution by U.S. or Russian officials. –The Hill Campbell’s attorney, former Regan Justice Department official Victoria Toensing, previously told Fox Business host Lou Dobbs “He can tell what all the Russians were talking about during the time that all these bribery payments were made.”
Paul Merrell

The Greatest Danger to Israel is the Stupidity of Its Leaders » CounterPunch:... - 0 views

www.counterpunch.org/...s-the-stupidity-of-its-leaders

Israel U.S. foreign policy Israel-politics must-read

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • The greatest danger to Israel is not the putative Iranian nuclear bomb. The greatest danger is the stupidity of our leaders. This is not a uniquely Israeli phenomenon. A great many of the world’s leaders are plain stupid, and always have been. Enough to look at what happened in Europe in July 1914, when an incredible accumulation of stupid politicians and incompetent generals plunged humanity into World War I. But lately, Binyamin Netanyahu and almost the entire Israeli political establishment have achieved a new record in foolishness.
  • Much has been said about the total dependence of Israel on the US in almost all fields. But to grasp the immensity of the folly, one aspect in particular must be mentioned. Israel controls, in effect, the access to the US centers of power. All nations, especially the smaller and poorer ones, know that to enter the halls of the American Sultan, in order to get aid and support, they have to bribe the doorkeeper. The bribe may be political (privileges from their ruler), economic (raw materials). diplomatic (votes in the UN), military (a base or intelligence “cooperation”), or whatever. If it is big enough, AIPAC will help to gain support from Congress. This unparalleled asset rests solely on the perception of Israel’s unique position in the US. Netanyahu’s unmitigated defeat on US relations with Iran has badly damaged, if not destroyed, this perception. The loss is incalculable.
  • I am tempted to boast that more than two years ago I wrote that any military attack on Iran, either by Israel or the US, is impossible But it was not prophesy, inspired by some unknown deity. It was not even very clever. It was just the result of a simple look at the map. The Strait of Hormuz. Any military action against Iran was bound to lead to a major war, something in the category of Vietnam, in addition to the collapse of world oil supplies. Even if the US public had not been so war weary, in order to start such an adventure one would not only have to be a fool, but practically mad. The military option is not “off the table” – it never was “on the table”. It was an empty pistol, and the Iranians knew this well.
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  • The loaded weapon was the sanctions regime. It hurt the people. It convinced the supreme leader, Ali Husseini Khamenei, to completely change the regime and install a new and very different president. The Americans realized this, and acted accordingly. Netanyahu, obsessed with the bomb, did not. Worse, he still does not. If it is a symptom of madness to keep trying something that has failed again and again, we should start to worry about “King Bibi”. To save itself from the image of utter failure, AIPAC has started to order its senators and congressmen to work out new sanctions to be instituted in some indefinite future.
  • Paul Merrell on 30 Nov 13
     
    One of the most astute analyses of current internal Israeli politics I have read in a long time, by an Israeli. He paints a convincing picture of the reasons Obama had to deny Netanyahu the war against Iran that Bibi so desired and why Netanyahu has done such serious harm to Israel itself by demanding what could not be given by Obama. Even the formidable Israel Lobby in the U.S. was not powerful enough to endanger the Straits of Hormuz and the global economy; the banksters and Big Oil trump even the Israel Lobby.  
Paul Merrell

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

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

surveillance state blackmail power-projection empire Obama BushII

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

An Israeli takeover of the Palestine Authority…? - Alan Hart - 0 views

www.alanhart.net/ver-of-the-palestine-authority

war & peace Israel Palestine Egypt U.S.-foreign-policy Abbas Dahlan Palestinian-Authority

shared by Paul Merrell on 25 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • On the face of it that’s a silly question and the speculation it represents – that Palestinian “President” Abbas could replaced by an Israeli agent or asset – is not worthy of discussion. But before dismissing it readers might do what I did and consider two things. The first is that Mohammed Dahlan, formerly one of the most powerful Fatah leaders and almost certainly the one who administered for Israel the polonium that killed Arafat, is now putting a big effort into getting rid of Abbas by one means or another and replacing him with – guess who? – himself. In passing it is interesting to note that according to a recent report in the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv, Netanyahu’s special envoy, Yitzhak Molcho, is in a secret dialogue with Dahlan who spends his time shuttling between Cairo and the U.A.E. where he currently lives. One assumption has to be that Netanyahu is hoping that if Dahlan became “President” of the PA he would go much further than collaborator Abbas in delivering for Israel. (Also worth noting is that Dahlan speaks fluent Hebrew. He learned to do so during his 11 spells in Israeli jails between 1981 and 1986).
  • The second consideration is Israel’s track record in successfully placing its agents inside Arab institutions and organizations at very high levels.
  • My speculation (repeat speculation) is that if Mohammed Dahlan became the “President”, he would be prepared to use force as necessary to impose Israel’s terms for peace on the Palestinians. Dahlan demonstrated his enthusiasm for doing Israeli and American dirty work when, at the request of the Bush administration, he agreed to lead a military campaign to destroy Hamas after its election victory in 2006. The Bush administration provided Dahlan with money and arms and trained his Fatah fighters in a number of Arab countries. But it all went badly wrong for Dahlan and his sponsors. Hamas got wind of what Dahlan (fronting for the Bush administration and Israel) was intending and launched an Israeli-like pre-emptive strike. It destroyed Fatah’s security forces based in the Gaza Strip (which had been Dahlan’s base) and put Fatah politically out of business there. Commenting on what had happened in the Gaza Strip, Hani al-Hassan, for many years Arafat’s crisis manager and one of his two most trusted advisers, said it was “not a war between Fatah and Hamas but between Hamas and Fatah collaborators who served the Americans and the Israelis.”
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  • Subsequently the Bush administration exerted heavy pressure on Abbas (which he resisted) to appoint Dahlan as his deputy. And some Palestinian officials said that the U.S. and a number of European countries had made it clear that they would like Dahlan to succeed Abbas as head of the P.A. They presumably believed then, as Netanyahu might well do today, that Dahlan as “President” would use whatever means were necessary to compel the Palestinians to make peace on Israel’s terms. Shortly after his forces were expelled from the Gaza Strip, Dahlan re-established himself in the West Bank. And thereafter tensions between his Fatah supporters and opponents grew and grew. In June 2011 he was expelled from Fatah because of the assumption that he had delivered for Israel whatever it was that poisoned Arafat. Three months later Abbas ordered a raid on Dahlan’s house and the arrest of his private armed guards. Today in exile, and consulting with his allies in Sisi’s Egypt and some Arab Gulf states as well as Israel and America, Dahlan is plotting his comeback to replace Abbas by one means or another.
  • The Ma’ariv article I mentioned above said that Dahlan has claimed that he and not Abbas can be counted on to bring peace, and that in 2010 he reportedly sent a letter to the Obama administration in which he said, “There is no choice but to replace Abbas with someone who can deliver results.” Because Dahlan must know that Israel’s leaders are not remotely interested in peace on terms the Palestinians could accept, I think it is reasonable to assume that the result he has in mind is peace imposed on Israel’s terms – effectively a Palestinian surrender to Zionism’s will. Is a Dahlan/Israeli takeover of the PA really possible? An indication that Abbas seems to think it cannot be ruled out was his request to President Obama that he press Israel to include Marwan Barghouti in the fourth and final batch of Palestinian prisoners due to be released at the end of this month. (Prisoner release was one of the inducements to secure Abbas’s green light for Secretary of State Kerry to launch his “peace process”. But today Netanyahu is under mounting pressure from the neo-fascist tendency to the right of him to say “No” to any further prisoner releases).
  • Barghouti is by far the most popular Palestinian leader and would easily win an election to replace Abbas as “President”. And that, of course, is precisely why Israel won’t release him. So if Abbas can be bullied and bribed by Israel and the U.S. into lifting the ban on Dahlan’s return from exile to the occupied West Bank, he, Dahlan, could be in with a chance. In my view a victory for him would be the final betrayal of the Palestinian cause.
Paul Merrell

Greg Palast: 25 Years After Exxon Valdez, BP Was the Hidden Culprit - Truthdig - 0 views

www.truthdig.com/...hidden_culprit_was_bp_20140323

environment pipelinestan Obama BP Exxon-Valdez Deepwater-Horizon deep-water-drilling

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • Two decades ago I was the investigator for the legal team that sold you the bullshit that a drunken captain was the principal cause of the Exxon Valdez disaster, the oil tanker crackup that poisoned over a thousand miles of Alaska’s coastline 25 years ago on March 24, 1989. The truth is far uglier, and the real culprit—British Petroleum, now BP—got away without a scratch to its reputation or to its pocketbook. And because BP’s willful negligence, prevarications and fraud in the Exxon Valdez spill cost the company nothing, its disdain for the law, for the environment and for the safety of its workers was repeated in the Gulf of Mexico with deadly consequences, resulting, two decades later, in the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Just this month, the Obama administration authorized BP to return to drilling in the Gulf.
  • It would be worth the time of our ever-trusting regulators to take a look at my Exxon Valdez BP files. They would see a decades-long pattern of BP’s lies, bribes and cover-ups that led, inexorably, to the Deepwater Horizon blowout—and that continue today within BP’s worldwide oil operations. Advertisement <a href='http://www.truthdig.com/banners/www/delivery/ck.php?n=abee66dc&cb=453495791' target='_blank'><img src='http://www.truthdig.com/banners/www/delivery/avw.php?zoneid=8&cb=453495791&n=abee66dc' border='0' alt='' /></a> Here is a sample from my files on BP from the original Exxon Valdez fraud and racketeering investigation:
Paul Merrell

Maduro: "US Human Rights Abusers Not Welcome in Venezuela" | nsnbc international - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...users-not-welcome-in-venezuela

war & peace Venezuela U.S.-foreign-policy counter-sanctions coup-attempts

shared by Paul Merrell on 04 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • The Venezuelan government has responded to increased pressure from Washington by revoking visa rights for former US politicians such as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, described by President Nicolas Maduro as “terrorists against the peoples of the world” on Saturday. “I have decided on a prohibition list for people who will not be permitted visas and who can never enter Venezuela, for a set of chief US politicians who have committed human rights violations. They have bombed the people of Iraq, the people of Syria, the people of Vietnam… It is an anti-terrorist list,” declared the head of state to an impassioned crowd.
  • The statements were part of a rousing speech delivered by the president on Saturday to thousands of marchers who had taken to the streets of Caracas to reject White House interference in the South American country. The march was a direct response to a string of further US sanctions enacted against the Venezuelan government in early February and to what Maduro characterised as a “moment of increased aggression” from the Obama administration. The head of state went on to call for a “global rebellion against US imperialism”. “The US thinks it is the boss, the police of the world… Something happens somewhere, let’s say in Asia, and a spokesperson for the US comes out saying that the US government thinks that such and such a government shouldn’t do such and such a thing in Asia… Are we going to accept a global government? Enough of imperialism in the world!” stated an incensed Maduro. During his speech, the head of state also announced a slew of new diplomatic measures against the US which include the implementation of visa requirements for all US citizens visiting Venezuela.
  • “They must pay what Venezuelans pay when they want to travel to the United States,” said the president. Maduro explained that the changes were designed to “protect” Venezuelans, after a number of US citizens were discovered to be taking part in acts of espionage by Venezuelan authorities. One of the most recent detections includes the pilot of a US airplane who was stopped and questioned by authorities on the border last week. A number of US citizens were also detained last year for their participation in the armed barricades or Guarimbas which sought to bring down the government and led to the deaths of at least 43 Venezuelans. Despite the latest measures, Maduro emphasised that Venezuela continued to value its relationship with US citizens.
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  • The new measures will see the number of staff at the US embassy in Caracas significantly reduced and US representatives obliged to inform Venezuelan authorities of any meetings that they intend to hold. The diplomatic institution currently has over 100 employees, in comparison to just 17 who work at the Venezuelan embassy in Washington. Venezuelan Foreign Minister, Delcy Rodriguez, has explained that the US diplomatic mission will be obliged to reduce its staffing numbers to 17 over the next 2 weeks.
  • Recently the US embassy in Caracas has become embroiled in a diplomatic altercation with the Maduro administration which has intensified since the discovery of a planned coup against the government in February. The Venezuelan head of state has accused the White House of conspiring against his government and charged embassy personnel with having advanced knowledge of the coup plot, which was allegedly being funded in US dollars from Miami. Prior to the discovery of the coup, the US embassy was reported to have attempted to bribe senior military and government officials to partake in insurrectionist actions against the government. US Vice-president Joe Biden also made a series of statements accusing the Venezuelan government of repression following a meeting with the wife of jailed opposition leader, Liliana Tintori. Current opinion polls suggest significant support amongst the population for government actions against the US. According to a February poll conducted by opposition aligned think tank, Hinerlaces, 92% of Venezuelans oppose any kind of foreign intervention while 62% think that the US should not be allowed to pass judgement on the country’s internal affairs. In 2014, the US government issued 103 statements against Venezuela and another 65 since the start of the year. Just a few weeks ago, the Obama administration also approved increased funding for Venezuelan opposition groups and Non-Governmental Organisations.
Paul Merrell

Pakistan seeks $1 million per day to allow Afghan war supply route - Pittsburgh Post-Ga... - 0 views

www.post-gazette.com/...ay-to-supply-afghan-war-636083

cost of foreign wars U.S. Foreign Policy bribery of foreign officials

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 May 12 - No Cached
    • Paul Merrell
      Paul Merrell on 17 May 12
       
      Because Obama agreed with Afghanistan to extend our military presence there until 2024 (without submitting the treaty to the Senate for ratification), this bribe to the Pakistani government works out to about $4 billion. Over $4 Trillion spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan so far; I guess this extra $4 billion is just chump change.    
  • ISLAMABAD -- The cost of the U.S.-led war effort in Afghanistan is about to rise by $365 million annually under an agreement that would reopen a key NATO supply route through Pakistan that has been closed for nearly six months.The accord, which the Pakistani government announced late Tuesday, would revive the transport of vital supplies of food and equipment from Pakistani ports overland to land-locked Afghanistan. In return, the U.S.-led coalition will pay Pakistan a still-to-be-fixed fee of $1,500 to $1,800 for each truck carrying supplies, a tab that officials familiar with negotiations estimated would run nearly $1 million a day. The officials requested anonymity because they weren't authorized to reveal agreement details.
Paul Merrell

'Almost All' Opposition Leaders Knew About Venezuelan Coup Plot | News | teleSUR - 0 views

www.telesurtv.net/...n-Coup-Plot-20150215-0006.html

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

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • In a televised address Saturday night, Venezuela's president Nicolas Maduro revealed new information on the foiled coup attempt against his government, including accusations that the country’s opposition leaders were aware of the plans. “Almost all of the MUD leaders knew about this plan, this ambush, almost all of them, including the four-time losing candidate,” said the Venezuelan leader, referring to opposition presidential candidate, Henrique Capriles Radonski. “I'm not saying all of them were actively involved. But it was a rumor circulating amongst them, that something was about to happen,” Maduro explained. Maduro also said that those detained have confessed to the plot and have provided new information which authorities are investigating. In addition to attempting to bribe officials and politicians with cash and visas to enter the United States, the Venezuelan president expanded on the role played by the U.S. Embassy in the country, saying that the script read by coup plotters in a video they planned to air once the plan had been initiated was crafted by an advisor at the Embassy.
  • Maduro called on U.S. president Barack Obama to stop his officials from meddling in Venezuelan affairs. “In your name, they are organizing coup plots against democratically-elected government, such as Venezuela,” Maduro said. According to Venezuelan intelligence and testimonies, the coup was set have taken place on Feb. 12, one day after opposition leaders Leopoldo Lopez, Maria Corina Machada and Antonio Ledezma published a “Transition” program which outlined measures including the privatization of oil, deregulation of the economy and agreements with International Monetary Fund.. The plan included targetted assassinations and bombing a series of targets – including teleSUR's headquarters in Caracas – while opposition activists staged violent protests in the streets to mark one year since the start of opposition-led protests that claimed 43 lives.
Paul Merrell

Britain and Canada Involved in Foiled US Venezuelan Coup Plot | Global Research - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5431523

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

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • Britain and Canada were co-conspirators in the latest plot to topple Venezuela’s government. TeleSUR provided detailed coverage of Washington’s war on Venezuelan democracy. Its dirty hands manipulate violence and instability worldwide. US funded and supported key opposition fascist figures Antonio Ledezma, Maria Corina Machado and Leopoldo Lopez released a joint February 11 communique a day before the foiled coup. Titled “A Call on Venezuelans for a National Accord for the Transition,” it promoted regime change. Called for Venezuela to be handed back to monied interests. Called Bolivarian fairness “anti-democra(tic)…inefficient and… corrupt.” Run by “an unscrupulous elite (making) the State totalitarian.” Creating “a humanitarian crisis.” “(T)he Maduro government has entered a terminal phase.” Claimed it’s “the duty of every democrat to help resolve the current crisis, to defend freedom…to make the transition…(to restore) democratic order.”
  • Ledezma, Marhado and Lopez want Maduro’s government violently overthrown, democracy crushed. Washington, Britain and Canada hatched the latest plot to return Venezuela to its bad old days. TeleSUR reported new details. “Fresh evidence” showing their involvement, saying: “Many of the individuals being charged, included a military general – whom has confessed to participating in the plans – and a retired lieutenant colonel – have indicated you (fascist Justice Party president Julio Borges) as being a key participant in meetings, which resulted in the decision to carry out a series of bombing attacks as a part of the coup, targeting the Presidential Palace, the National Assembly,” key ministries, TeleSUR’s offices, and other Caracas sites. Venezuelan authorities identified US embassy personnel involved. So were a Royal Canadian Mounted Police official and UK diplomatic core member, according to National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello. They sought information on airport capabilities in case needed in an emergency.
  • Computers seized had detailed coup plans, including maps showing targets to be bombed. A video showed military officials announcing Maduro’s government no longer was recognized. It was scheduled to be aired after planned bombings were launched. Either by a Venezuelan or Miami TV station. Cabello showed a 10-year visa given to one of the plotters days ahead of the planned coup. He noted Obama’s recent statement about “American leadership at times entail(ing) twisting the arms of states which don’t do what we need them to do.” He said coup plotters planned to topple Venezuela’s government forcefully on the anniversary of US-manipulated 2014 street violence. Killing 43. Injuring hundreds. Causing billions of dollars in physical and economic damage. US planned, funded, implemented and directed economic, political, and street warfare continues to topple the hemisphere’s most vibrant democracy. On Saturday, Maduro addressed Venezuelans a second time on national television. Following up on his Thursday coup plot revelations.
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  • Explaining more details of Washington’s scheme to oust him forcefully. “Almost all (opposition) leaders knew about this plan, this ambush, almost all of them, including the four-time losing candidate,” Maduro explained. Referring to Henrique Capriles Radonski. One of many Venezuelan fascists wanting power back the old-fashioned way. “I’m not saying all of them were actively involved,” Maduro said. “But it was a rumor circulating amongst them, that something was about to happen. Figures arrested confessed to the plot, Maduro explained. They provided more evidence of Washington’s scheme. It involved enlisting Venezuelan political and military officials. Bribing them with large cash payments. America’s Caracas embassy was coup plot headquarters. Maduro called on Obama to stop interfering in Venezuelan affairs, saying: “In your name, they are organizing coup plots against (Venezuela’s) democratically elected government…” Bolivian President Evo Morales expressed solidarity with Maduro saying “(w)e all have the obligation to enforce respect for democracy and elections, and if we have a clear conscious, not even the empire can defeat us.”
  • Maduro received numerous other messages of support. Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega condemned the “criminal and futile attempts of the empire to undermine the Bolivarian Revolution.” From Mexico City, the Network of Intellectuals, Artists and Social Movements in Defense of Humanity expressed solidarity in an official statement. It condemned plans to topple Venezuela’s government. TeleSUR reported civil and political organizations worldwide expressing solidarity with Venezuela. Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) Secretary General Ernesto Samper denounced plans to oust Maduro. Venezuelan opposition spokesman Jesus Torrealba lied saying “(t)he government makes up these stories about coups to avoid talking about how the country is breaking down.”
  • State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki lied calling accusations about Washington plotting Maduro’s ouster “ridiculous.” She absurdly added: “(T)he United States does not support political transitions by non-constitutional means.” “Political transitions must be democratic, constitutional, peaceful, and legal.” “We have seen many times that the Venezuelan Government tries to distract from its own actions by blaming the United States or other members of the international community for events inside Venezuela. These efforts reflect a lack of seriousness on the part of the Venezuelan Government to deal with the grave situation it faces.”
Paul Merrell

Are US Academics Who Cite WikiLeaks Blackballed? - 0 views

www.mintpressnews.com/...212806

Wikileaks censorship academic

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • Speaking to Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine in July 2015, Assange suggested that institutions within the international relations discipline have failed to understand the intersection between current geopolitical and technological developments. Specifically, Assange charged that the US journal International Studies Quarterly (ISQ), published by the prestigious International Studies Association (ISA), would not accept manuscripts based on WikiLeaks’ material. Professor of international politics Daniel W. Drezner hit back on July 30 in The Washington Post, arguing that there were other explanations for why the journal was not publishing WikiLeaks’ material. However, he did concede that it is possible that the “structural forces” opposing WikiLeaks were so powerful that a scholar would eschew WikiLeaks’ publications for “fear of being blackballed”. For the thousands of undergraduate to PhD students, fellows and academic researchers facing a precarious employment market, self-censorship for fear of freezing one’s career is not unlikely. One publicised incident from November 2010 concerning the office of career services at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), which according to The New York Times “grooms future diplomats”, provides the perfect illustration. That year the office sent an email to students warning them against commenting on or posting WikiLeaks’ documents on social media because “engaging in these activities would call into question your ability to deal with confidential information, which is part of most positions with the federal government”. The warning came to the office through a SIPA alumnus working at the State Department.
  • Years later, the tone of the warning continued to reverberate through the halls of one of the most reputable universities in the world. In documenting human rights abuses in June 2013 a Columbia University graduate class produced the anonymous academic paper “WikiLeaks and Iraq Body Count: the sum of parts may not add up to the whole — a comparison of two tallies of Iraqi civilian deaths”. The acknowledgements section of their report refers to the 2010 warning email and states that in light of that email it would be “unwise and perhaps unethical to acknowledge all the participating students by name”. Others participating in a peer-review process have cited additional factors curtailing their use of comprehensive and illuminating WikiLeaks publications. Former US presidential candidate for the Green Party Cynthia McKinney, for example, says that she was forced to scrub her PhD dissertation from any reference of WikiLeaks material. However Drezner, who is an ISA member and on the ISQ’s web advisory board, claims that WikiLeaks’ published diplomatic cables “are not nearly as significant as Assange believes” and that the “academic universe is indifferent to WikiLeaks”. A surprising claim, given that international human rights courts have not been indifferent to evidence derived from WikiLeaks’ published cables, including cables that show the insidious ways in which European officials attempt to conceal CIA torture in secret prisons.
  • To help address the gap in scholarly analysis of the more than 2 million US diplomatic cables and State Department records published by WikiLeaks since 2010, WikiLeaks has produced a new book, The WikiLeaks Files: The World According to US Empire, published September 7, 2015. The book brings together journalists, researchers and experts on international law and foreign policy to examine the current cables and records. The documents are extensive. They expose US efforts —  across Bush and Obama administrations — to use bribes and threats to keep the US protected from facing war crimes allegations, conveying the fading effervescence of concepts such as “international justice” or “rule of law” in the face of a superpower that clearly believes that “might makes right”. Analysts review the efforts US diplomats take to maintain ties with dictators. They examine the meaning of human rights in the context of a global “War on Terror”. Like the cables they seek to illuminate, the 18 chapters of the book touch upon most major regions of the world. Experts on US foreign policy such as Robert Naiman, Stephen Zunes and Gareth Porter examine cables that reveal US meddling in Syria, US acceptance of Israeli violations of international law, and how the US dealt with the International Atomic Energy Agency in relation to Iranian nuclear development. The book offers a user guide written by WikiLeaks’ investigations editor Sarah Harrison on how to research WikiLeaks’ cables including meta data and content.
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  • Writing in the book’s introduction, Assange proposes that the diplomatic cables provide “the vivisection of a living empire, showing what substance flowed from which state organ and when”. Assange notes in his introduction that academic disciplines outside international relations, and where career aspirations do not go hand in hand with patronage by government institutions, have voluminous coverage of the cables. But the ISA does not accept submissions citing WikiLeaks’ material. Although ISA executive director Mark Boyer denies that the association has a formal policy against publishing WikiLeaks’ material, he says that journal editors have discussed the implications of publishing material that is legally prohibited by the US government. According to Gabriel J. Michael, author of the Yale Law School paper Who’s Afraid of WikiLeaks? Missed Opportunities in Political Science Research, the ISQ has adopted a “provisional policy” against handling manuscripts that make use of leaked documents if such use could be interpreted as mishandling “classified” material. According to an ISQ editor quoted in Michael’s paper, this policy prohibits direct quotations as well as data mining, and was developed in consultation with legal counsel. Stating that editors are currently “in an untenable position”. According to the editor, ISQ’s policy will remain in place pending broader action from the ISA, which publishes several other disciplinary journals. The ISA and ISQ concerns about handling material that the US government forbids —  which include WikiLeaks’ cables —  amount to throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The cables go into the heart of an empire, and reflect on matters that affect everyone.
  • Without WikiLeaks, the public would still be in the dark about the Trans-Pacific Partnership “agreement” currently being negotiated. The treaty aims to rewrite the global rules on intellectual property rights and would create spheres of trade which would be protected from judicial oversight. Such agreements have the potential to change the fabric of how states operate, and the leaked cables shed light on how states negotiate significant treaties, aiming to keep citizenship participation in politics out. Where academia bans the use of important leaked documents the public loses out.
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