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Paul Merrell

Dianne Feinstein, Strong Advocate of Leak Prosecutions, Demands Immunity For David Petr... - 0 views

  • David Petraeus, the person who Feinstein said has “suffered enough,” was hired last year by the $73 billion investment fund KKR to be Chairman of its newly created KKR Global Institute, on top of the $220,000/year pension he receives from the U.S. Army and the teaching position he holds at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. Let us all pause for a moment to lament the deep suffering of this man, and the grave injustice of inflicting any further deprivation upon him. In 2011, I wrote a book, With Liberty and Justice for Some, that examined the two-tiered justice system prevailing in the U.S.: how the U.S. imprisons more of its citizens than any other country in the world (both in absolute numbers and proportionally) often for trivial transgressions, while immunizing its political and economic elites for even the most egregious crimes. Matt Taibbi’s book, The Divide, examines the same dynamic with a focus on the protection of economic elites and legal repression of ordinary citizens in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. This latest example from Feinstein is one of the most vivid yet. She wanted Julian Assange – who isn’t even a U.S. citizen and never served in the U.S. Government – prosecuted for espionage for exposing war crimes, and demanded that Edward Snowden be charged with “treason” for exposing illegal eavesdropping which shocked the world. But a four-star general who leaked classified information not for any noble purpose but to his mistress for personal reasons should be protected from any legal consequences.
  • Long-standing mavens of DC political power literally believe that they and their class-comrades are too noble, important and elevated to be subjected to the rule of law to which they subject everyone else. They barely even disguise it any more. It’s the dynamic by which the Obama administration prosecuted leakers with unprecedented aggression who disclose information that embarrasses them politically while ignoring or even sanctioning the leaks of classified information which politically glorify them. It is, of course, inconceivable that someone like Dianne Feinstein would urge the release of ordinary convicts from prison on the ground that their actions are “in the past” or that they have “suffered enough.” This generous mentality of mercy, forgiveness and understanding - like Obama’s decree that we Look Forward, Not Backward to justify immunity for American torturers - is reserved only for political officials, Generals, telecoms, banks and oligarchs who reside above and beyond the rule of law.
Paul Merrell

Asia Times Online :: Middle East News, Iraq, Iran current affairs - 2 views

  • There is nothing tragic about the Obama presidency, capable of drawing the analytical talents of a neo-Plutarch or a neo-Gibbon. This is more like a Pirandello farce, a sort of Character in Search of An Author. Candidates to Author are well documented - from the Israel lobby to the House of Saud, from a select elite of the industrial-military-security complex to, most of all, the rarified banking/financial elite, the real Masters of the Universe. Poor Barack is just a cipher, a <a href='http://asianmedia.com/GAAN/www/delivery/ck.php?n=a9473bc7&cb=%n' target='_blank'><img src='http://asianmedia.com/GAAN/www/delivery/avw.php?zoneid=36&cb=%n&n=a9473bc7&ct0=%c' border='0' alt='' ></a> functionary of empire, whose ''deciding'' repertoire barely extends to what trademark smile to flash at the requisite photo-ops. There's nothing ''tragic'' about the fact that during this week - marking the 12th anniversary of 9/11 - this presidency will be fighting for its bombing ''credibility'' trying to seduce Republican hawks in the US Congress while most of the warmongers du jour happen to be Democrats.
  • Republicans are torn between supporting the president they love to hate and delivering him a stinging rebuke - as much as they are aching to follow the orders of their masters, ranging from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to military contractors. Once again, this is farce - caused by the fact that a man elected to finish off wars is eager to start yet another one. And once again without a United Nations vote. The White House ''strategy'' in this crucial negotiating week boils down to this; to convince the US Congress that the United States must start a war on Syria to punish an ''evil dictator'' - once again, as bad as Hitler - for gassing children. The evidence? It's ''indisputable''. Well, it's not ''irrefutable''. It's not even ''beyond-a-reasonable-doubt''. As Obama's Chief of Staff Denis McDonough admitted, with a straight face, it boils down to ''a quite strong common sense test, irrespective of the intelligence, that suggests that the regime carried this out''. So if this is really about ''common sense'', the president is obviously not being shown by his close coterie of sycophants this compendium of common sense, compiled by a group of top, extremely credible former US intelligence officials, which debunks all the ''evidence'' as flawed beyond belief. To evoke a farce from 12 years ago, this clearly seems to be a case of ''facts being fixed around the policy''.
  • The Arab street doesn't buy it because they clearly see through the hypocrisy; the desperate rush to ''punish'' the Bashar al-Assad government in Syria while justifying everything the apartheid state of Israel perpetrates in occupied Palestine. The Muslim world doesn't buy it because it clearly sees the demonization only applies to Muslims - from Arafat to bin Laden to Saddam to Gaddafi and now Assad. It would never apply to the military junta in Myanmar, which was clever enough to engineer an ''opening''; the next day Westerners were lining up to kiss the hem of Burmese longyis. It would never apply to the Islam Karimov dictatorship in Uzbekistan because ''we'' always need to seduce him as one of our bastards away from Russia and China. It eventually applies, on and off, to the Kim dynasty in North Korea, but with no consequences - because these are badass Asians who can actually respond to an US attack. Informed public opinion across the developing world does not buy it because they clearly see, examining the historical record, that Washington would never really be bothered with the sorry spectacle of Arabs killing Arabs, or Muslims killing Muslims, non-stop. The 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war is a prime piece of evidence.
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  • Then there's the ''credibility'' farce. The Obama administration has convoluted the whole world in its own self-spun net, insisting that the responsibility for the ''red line'' recklessly drawn by the president is in fact global. Yet the pesky ''world'' is not buying it.
  • At the Group of 20 summit last week, the BRICS group of emerging powers - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - as well as Indonesia and Argentina, clearly stressed that a war on Syria without UN Security Council approval would qualify Obama as a war criminal. Even among the European poodles ''support'' for the White House is extremely qualified. Germany's Angela Merkel and even France's attack dog Francois Hollande said the primacy is with the UN. The European Union as a whole wants a political solution. It's enlightening to remember that the EU in Brussels can issue arrest warrants for heads of EU governments guilty of war crimes. Someone in Paris must have warned attack dog Hollande that he would not welcome the prospect of slammer time. ''Evil'' as a political category is something worthy of the brain dead. The key question now revolves around the axis of warmongers - Washington, Israel and the House of Saud. Will the Israel lobby, the more discreet but no less powerful Saudi lobby, and the Return of the Living Dead neo-cons convince the US Congress to fight their war?
  • And then there's the curioser and curioser case of al-Qaeda - essentially the Arabic denomination for a CIA database of US-Pakistani-Saudi trained mujahideen during the 1980s: the oh so convenient transnational bogeyman that ''legitimized'' the Global War On Terror (GWOT) of the George W Bush years; the ''opening'' for al-Qaeda to move to Iraq; and now, no middle men; the CIA and the Obama administration fighting side-by-side with al-Qaeda in Syria. No wonder the denomination ''al-CIAeda'' has gone viral. With farce after farce after farce piling up in their own Tower of Babel, the much-vaunted ''US credibility'' is in itself the biggest farce of all. Politically, no one knows how the vacuum will be filled. It won't be via the UN. It won't be via the BRICS. It won't be via the G-20 - which is seriously divided; at least new multipolar players are carrying way more weight than US poodles. Much would be made to restore ''US credibility'' if the Obama administration had the balls to force both the House of Saud and Qatar (''300 people and a TV station'', in the epic definition of Saudi Arabia's Prince Bandar Sultan - aka Bandar Bush) to end once and for all their weaponizing of hardcore ''rebels'' and ultimately hardcore jihadis, and accept Iran in the negotiating table for a real Geneva II peace process in Syria. It won't happen because this bypasses farce. Once again; helpless Barack is just a paperboy. The plutocrats in charge are getting extremely nervous. The system is melting - and they need to act fast.
  • They need a Syria as docile as the Arab petro-monarchies. They want to hit Russia bad - and then discuss missile defense and Russian influence in Eastern Europe from a position of force. They want to hit Iran bad - and then continue to issue ultimatums from a position of force. They want to facilitate yet another Israeli attempt to capture southern Lebanon (it's the water, stupid). They want a monster gas pipeline from Qatar for European customers bypassing Iran and Syria as well as Gazprom. Most of all, this is all about control of natural resources and channels of distribution. These are real motives - and they have nothing to do with farce. Farce is only deployed to kill any possibility of real diplomacy and real political discussion. Farce is a theatrical mask - as in ''humanitarian'' imperialism - the ''acceptable'' version of the Dick Cheney-run years. It's as if Dick Cheney had never left the building; paperboy Barack is Dick Cheney with a ''human'' face. The only good outcome in this multi-sorrowful tale is that the real ''international community'', all around the world, has seen the naked Emperor in all its (farcical) glory.
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    What can I say? The iconoclastic Pepe Escobar strikes again. 
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    Outstanding article Paul. Wow! Watching the 911 link now. But here's one for you: Massimo Mazzucco's new 5-hour documentary "September 11- The New Pearl Harbor" summarizes 12 years of public debate on 9-11, looking at the events from all sides. Watch a trailer for the film here: http://goo.gl/M5c0dj Full five hours available here: http://www.luogocomune.net/site/modules/sections/index.php?op=viewarticle&artid=167 I listened to a two hour interview with Massimo last night. Awesome stuff.
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    A 5-hour documentary will have to wait for tomorrow. I'm about 7 hours away from a deadline for the current development cycle's Help file. :-) I do think Pepe is a off on a couple of details in this article. The Neocons were mostly silent on this one and Rumsfeld came out against the intervention, saying that Obama hadn't made a valid case for war. That's most likely because the Neocons are joined at the hip with Israeli government and that government is a house divided this time around, with only factions supporting the military strike. The current thinking in Tel Aviv/Jerusalem is, in line with the Israeli right's long term strategy, that it's just fine with them to have Muslims running around killing each other in Syria. That long-term strategy is to destabilize Israel's Arab neighbor states while Israel builds its economic empire and military hegemony in the region. Israeli government isn't exactly thrilled by the prospect of Obama delivering fulfillment of the Saudi goal of transforming Syria from a secular state into a non-secular Islamic state run by Wahabi extremists. Such a state, armed to the teeth by the U.S. and/or the Saudi-Qatari zillionaires could be very bad news for Israel. Notably, the very strongest case thus far that the August 21 chemical attack was conducted by the opposition forces with the U.S. and Syria in on it to create a false flag attack, has been delivered in installments by Yossef Bodansky, an Israeli-American uber-scholar of Islamic "terrorism" and Soviet/Russian weaponry who is incapable of criticising Israel's decades-long terrorism inflicted on the Palestinian people and Israel's continuing unlawful occupation of Palestine plus parts of Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. Bodanysky sits at the center of an intelligence web of intelligence professionals from nations worried about Islamic "terrorism." In other words, he's extremely pro-Israeli and to boot, very close to Mossad and Israel's IDF intelligence forces. Israel's AIPAC lobby d
Paul Merrell

Why the United States Always Loses Its Wars | Global Research - 0 views

  • America loses all its wars because it seems we’ve always been on the wrong side of history. Morally nor legally should any nation have the right to invade and occupy another sovereign nation, much less believe it can achieve victory in long, protracted wars. Yet in violation of all ethical precepts and all international laws, the sole global superpower citing its impunity through exceptionalism hypocritically insists it can maintain its moral high ground in its relentless pursuit of regime changes anywhere it so chooses on earth. We are the global village bully that’s hated by much of the world. And it’s pure self-aggrandizing bullshit to perpetrate the myth that America is hated because of our “freedom,” another rhetorical brainwashing lie. We now live in a fascist totalitarian police state run by a globalized crime syndicate of the central banking cabal. As of last April per a Princeton-Northwestern study the US has officially been designated an oligarchy. Last year after a group of ethnic Russians living in Crimea voted to become part of Russia, the Russian military claimed control over its own naval base there that the US-NATO had been lusting to steal after the unlawful overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected sovereign government. Ever since it’s been nonstop lies and propaganda propagated to demonize Putin as the aggressor when in fact all along it’s the American Empire that’s been recklessly pushing what could end up World War III against nuclear powered Russia. With US-NATO missiles installed on Russia’s doorstep in virtually every former Soviet eastern bloc nation, hemming Russia in, who’s really the aggressor here?
  • Meanwhile, despite costing US taxpayers up to six trillion dollars and counting in Iraq alone and another trillion so far in Afghanistan in this age of increasing austerity, the albeit detached reverence for the US military and its abysmal losing war record fail to draw much notice or reflection, much less any real criticism or troubleshooting that might correct the same pattern of mistakes being repeated indefinitely. Another article in the same issue calls for resurrecting the draft as the feeble answer, something my ex-West Point roommate-former Afghan Ambassador-retired general and current Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) member Karl Eikenberry has also publicly advocated. They are all missing the point, unwilling or unable to address the pink elephant in the global room. Respected author-activist David Swanson wrote an incisive rebuttal also confronting the Atlantic article for not answering the obvious question of why America loses at war. He makes the excellent point: The U.S. has killed huge numbers of men, women, and children, made itself hated, made the world more dangerous, destroyed the environment, discarded civil liberties, and wasted trillions of dollars that could have done a world of good spent otherwise. A draft would do nothing to make people aware of that situation. But Swanson merely glides over as a passing fact that the ruling elite is the only entity that stands to gain from war. He fails to emphasize that it is the elite’s power, money and influence that both initiates, but then by calculated design, willfully sabotages the chance of any US military victory after World War II. The reason is simple. If the US triumphed in war it would only delay the totalitarian New World Order from materialization. Only a weakened United States would expeditiously promote a one world government.
  • As a brief historical review tracing events from the dawn of the twentieth century, media mogul Randolph Hearst used the false flag of the Spanish American War to “remember the USS Maine” sinking in the 1898 Havana harbor as its deceitful justification to ruthlessly, violently colonize Cuba and the Philippines, committing ethnic cleansing with estimates as high as near a half million dead Filipinos in that bloodbath. Then it was the “great” English statesman Winston Churchill who plotted the sinking of the Lusitania killing nearly 1200 of his own British citizens (along with 128 Americans) as the baited sacrifice secretly carrying arms to ignite the First World War that was supposed to end all wars.
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  • Then several years later the US encouraged South Korean incursions into Communist North Korea in order to manipulate North Korea into responding in kind. Guaranteeing South Korea full UN support, when the baited North Koreans retaliated by moving two miles inside the South Korean border, that June 1950 “transgression” immediately became the false pretense used to initiate the Korean War.
  • in August 1964 President Johnson lied to the American people with the bogus claim that a US Navy ship was attacked by North Vietnamese gunboats in the Gulf of Tonkin to launch America’s longest running war in history (that is until this century’s everlasting war of terror). That false flag cost near 60,000 American lives and over 3 million dead Southeast Asians, in addition to being the first US humiliating war defeat in its history, marking the first of many consecutive losses.
  • The smaller, less intensive military campaigns of Grenada, Panama, Nicaragua and El Salvador, the First Gulf War, Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo were all jingoistic saber rattling manipulations of imperialistic Empire overpowering far weaker opponents to take down former US allied dictators (or in the case of Saddam Hussein a preliminary step to the father-son neocon tag team), balkanizing a divide and conquer strategy for global hegemony and imperial war profiteering from the always lucrative drug trafficking trade.
  • Meanwhile, the only true winners of all wars is the oligarch owned and controlled central banking cabal and its Wall Street 500. Once American Empire wreaks military havoc to achieve another ravaged failed state, be it Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, a second invasion that becomes the permanent occupation arrives in the form of IMF and World Bank loans. When the war destroyed nation cannot pay the bankster cabal’s loan shark extortion, privatization through transnational corporations rapidly descends as economic hit men-vultures move in for the final kill. The game’s been rigged, set up so no one but the filthy, gluttonous, bloodthirsty, psychopathic vampires comprising the ruling elite can possibly win from all this rigged warring death and destruction.
  • The Zionist neocon creation with a little help from their Saudi-Israeli evil axis friends pulled off the coup of the century on 9/11, massacring 3,000 Americans as their sacrificial lambs, setting into motion the fabricated war on terror masking their actual war on Islam to ensure that a constant fresh supply of made-by-the-USA enemy materializes to justify permanent global violence. During the near ten years that Americans fought in Iraq near a half million Iraqis lost their life, mostly innocent civilians. That toll has only since risen with war still raging. The Islamic State jihadists that the US-Saudi-Israeli unholy alliance secretly created, trained, armed and has funded (just as it did al Qaeda for decades) invaded Iraq last June and is currently in control of more area in Iraq than the weak US puppet government in Baghdad with no end of sectarian violence in sight. Afghanistan looks no better with the puppet Kabul government holding less territory than the surging Taliban that has been waiting for the US military exodus by December 2014 leaving 10,800 US military advisors still remaining behind.
  • The proxy wars leaving Libya as a corrupt and lawlessly violent failed state and Syria a stalemated quagmire with Islamic State mercenaries our not-so-secret friendly boots on the ground still unable to topple and remove Assad from power. Meanwhile, near a quarter of a million people have died in the war in Syria and an astounding 6.5 million have been displaced in that colossal human tragedy supported and caused by the United States.
Gary Edwards

Ukraine's Oligarchs Turn on Each Other | Consortiumnews - 0 views

  • n the never-never land of how the mainstream U.S. press covers the Ukraine crisis, the appointment last year of thuggish oligarch Igor Kolomoisky to govern one of the country’s eastern provinces was pitched as a democratic “reform” because he was supposedly too rich to bribe, without noting that his wealth had come from plundering the country’s economy.In other words, the new U.S.-backed “democratic” regime, after overthrowing democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych because he was “corrupt,” was rewarding one of Ukraine’s top thieves by letting him lord over his own province, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, with the help of his personal army.
  • Last year, Kolomoisky’s brutal militias, which include neo-Nazi brigades, were praised for their fierce fighting against ethnic Russians from the east who were resisting the removal of their president. But now Kolomoisky, whose financial empire is crumbling as Ukraine’s economy founders, has turned his hired guns against the Ukrainian government led by another oligarch, President Petro Poroshenko.Last Thursday night, Kolomoisky and his armed men went to Kiev after the government tried to wrest control of the state-owned energy company UkrTransNafta from one of his associates. Kolomoisky and his men raided the company offices to seize and apparently destroy records. As he left the building, he cursed out journalists who had arrived to ask what was going on. He ranted about “Russian saboteurs.”It was a revealing display of how the corrupt Ukrainian political-economic system works and the nature of the “reformers” whom the U.S. State Department has pushed into positions of power. According to BusinessInsider, the Kiev government tried to smooth Kolomoisky’s ruffled feathers by announcing “that the new company chairman [at UkrTransNafta] would not be carrying out any investigations of its finances.”
  • Yet, it remained unclear whether Kolomoisky would be satisfied with what amounts to an offer to let any past thievery go unpunished. But if this promised amnesty wasn’t enough, Kolomoisky appeared ready to use his private army to discourage any accountability.On Monday, Valentyn Nalyvaychenko, chief of the State Security Service, accused Dnipropetrovsk officials of financing armed gangs and threatening investigators, Bloomberg News reported, while noting that Ukraine has sunk to 142nd place out of 175 countries in Transparency International’s Corruptions Perception Index, the worst in Europe.The see-no-evil approach to how the current Ukrainian authorities do business relates as well to Ukraine’s new Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko, who appears to have enriched herself at the expense of a $150 million U.S.-taxpayer-financed investment fund for Ukraine.
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  • Regarding Kolomoisky’s claim about “Russian saboteurs,” the government said that was not the case, explaining that the clash resulted from the parliament’s vote last week to reduce Kolomoisky’s authority to run the company from his position as a minority owner. As part of the shakeup, Kolomoisky’s protégé Oleksandr Lazorko was fired as chairman, but he refused to leave and barricaded himself in his office, setting the stage for Kolomoisky’s arrival with armed men.On Tuesday, the New York Times reported on the dispute but also flashed back to its earlier propagandistic praise of the 52-year-old oligarch, recalling that “Mr. Kolomoisky was one of several oligarchs, considered too rich to bribe, who were appointed to leadership positions in a bid to stabilize Ukraine.”Kolomoisky also is believed to have purchased influence inside the U.S. government through his behind-the-scenes manipulation of Ukraine’s largest private gas firm, Burisma Holdings. Last year, the shadowy Cyprus-based company appointed Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, to its board of directors. Burisma also lined up well-connected lobbyists, some with ties to Secretary of State John Kerry, including Kerry’s former Senate chief of staff David Leiter, according to lobbying disclosures.
  • Jaresko, a former U.S. diplomat who received overnight Ukrainian citizenship in December to become Finance Minister, had been in charge of the Western NIS Enterprise Fund (WNISEF), which became the center of insider-dealing and conflicts of interest, although the U.S. Agency for International Development showed little desire to examine the ethical problems – even after Jaresko’s ex-husband tried to blow the whistle. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Ukraine Finance Minister’s American ‘Values.’”]Passing Out the BillionsJaresko will be in charge of dispensing the $17.5 billion that the International Monetary Fund is allocating to Ukraine, along with billions of dollars more expected from U.S. and European governments.
  • 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.”According to investigative journalism in Ukraine, the ownership of Burisma has been traced to Privat Bank, which is controlled by Kolomoisky.So, it appears that Ukraine’s oligarchs who continue to wield enormous power inside the corrupt country are now circling each other over what’s left of the economic spoils and positioning themselves for a share of the international bailouts to come.
  • As for “democratic reform,” only in the upside-down world of the State Department’s Orwellian “information war” against Russia over Ukraine would imposing a corrupt and brutal oligarch like Kolomoisky as the unelected governor of a defenseless population be considered a positive.(Early Wednesday morning, President Poroshenko dismissed Kolomoisky from his post as Dnipropetrovsk regional governor.)
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    Another of the greatest U.S. exports: corruption.
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    Corporate oligarchs leading private but well armed armies in raids against the Ukrainian government holdings - controlled by other corporate oligarchs? This article dives into the mess that the USA and European NATO allies have stirred in the Ukraine, and through this lens we get to see what the world will look like when corporate oligarchs and their Bankster masters rule the world. The article is revealing, but it fails to connect the corporatist to the Banks that are sending in billions of dollars. The connection instead is made to the democratic governments intent on pushing the world into world war 3. Nor is there much mention of the oil and natural gas pipeline and supply geographics that dominate battlefields from the Ukraine, to Syria, Iraq and Lybia. The New World Order needs a third World War if it's to truly overturn the fragile post World War II economic order loosely based on free market capitalism, individual liberty and democratic governance. The end of national sovereignty, religious and cultural identities has one more hurdle. And there is no doubt in my mind that the elites are ready to jump that hurdle. World War III has spread from the middle east to middle Europe. Best we all hold on. .................. "Exclusive: Ukraine's post-coup regime is facing what looks like a falling-out among thieves as oligarch-warlord Igor Kolomoisky, who was given his own province to rule, brought his armed men to Kiev to fight for control of the state-owned energy company, further complicating the State Department's propaganda efforts, reports Robert Parry. In the never-never land of how the mainstream U.S. press covers the Ukraine crisis, the appointment last year of thuggish oligarch Igor Kolomoisky to govern one of the country's eastern provinces was pitched as a democratic "reform" because he was supposedly too rich to bribe, without noting that his wealth had come from plundering the country's economy. In other words, the new U.S.-b
Paul Merrell

| The Archived Columns of Conn M. Hallinan - 0 views

  • Almost before the votes were counted in the recent Greek elections, battle lines were being drawn all over Europe. While Alexis Tsipras, the newly elected Prime Minister from Greece’s victorious Syriza Party, was telling voters, “Greece is leaving behind catastrophic austerity, fear and autocratic government,” Jens Weidmann, president of the German Bundesbank, was warning the new government not to “make promises it cannot keep and the country cannot afford.”   On Feb. 12 those two points of view will collide when European Union (EU) heads of state gather in Brussels. Whether the storm blowing out of Southern Europe proves an irresistible force, or the European Council an immovable object, is not clear, but whatever the outcome, the continent is not likely to be the same after that meeting.   The Jan 25 victory of Greece’s leftwing Syriza Party was, on one hand, a beacon for indebted countries like Spain, Portugal, Italy and Ireland. On the other, it is a gauntlet for Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, and the “troika”—the European Central bank, the European Commission, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF)—the designers and enforcers of loans and austerity policies that have inflicted a catastrophic economic and social crisis on tens of millions of Europeans.
  • The troika’s policies were billed as “bailouts” for countries mired in debt—one largely caused by the 2008 financial speculation bubble over which indebted countries had little control—and as a way to restart economic growth. In return for the loans, the EU and the troika demanded massive cutbacks in social services, huge layoffs, privatization of pubic resources, and higher taxes.   However, the “bailouts” did not go toward stimulating economies, but rather to repay creditors, mostly large European banks. Out of the $266 billion loaned to Greece, 89 percent went to investors. After five years under the troika formula, Greece was the most indebted country in Europe. Gross national product dropped 26 percent, unemployment topped 27 percent (and over 50 percent for young people), and one-third of the population lost their health care coverage.   Given a chance to finally vote on the austerity strategy, Greeks overwhelmingly rejected the parties that went along with the troika and elected Syriza.
  • Gerry Adams of Sinn Fein—now the third largest party in the Irish Republic—hailed the vote as opening “up the real prospect of democratic change, not just for the people of Greece, but for citizens right across the EU.” Unemployment in Ireland is 10.7 percent, and tens of thousands of jobless young people have been forced to emigrate.   The German Social Democrats are generally supportive of the troika, but the Green Party hailed the Syriza victory and Die Linke Party members marched with signs reading, “We start with Greece. We change Europe.”   Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi—who has his own issues with the EU’s rigid approach to debt—hailed the Greek elections, and top aide Sandro Gozi said that Rome was ready to work with Syriza. The jobless rate in Italy is 13.4 percent, but 40 percent among youth.
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  • In short, there are a number of currents in the EU and a growing recognition even among supporters of the troika that prevailing approach to debt is not sustainable.   One should have no illusions that Syriza will easily sweep the policies of austerity aside, but there is a palpable feeling on the continent that a tide is turning. It did not start with the Greek elections, but with last May’s European Parliament elections, where anti-austerity parties made solid gains. While some right-wing parties that opportunistically donned a populist mantle also increased their vote, they could not do so where they were challenged by left anti-austerity parties. For instance, the right did well in Denmark, France, and Britain, but largely because there were no anti-austerity voices on the left in those races. Elsewhere the left generally defeated their rightist opponents.   If Syriza is to survive, however, it must deliver, and that will be a tall order given the power of its opponents.
  • The French Communist Party hailed the Greek elections as “Good news for the French people,” and Jean-Luc Melenchon of the Parti de Gauche called for a left-wing alliance similar to Syriza. French President Francois Hollande made a careful statement about “growth and stability,” but the Socialist leader is trying to quell a revolt by the left flank of his own party over austerity, and Paris is closer to Rome than it is to Berlin on the debt issue.   While the conservative government of Portugal was largely silent, Left Bloc Member of Parliament Marisa Matias told a rally, “A victory for Syriza is a victory for all of Europe.”
  • As convoluted as Greek politics are, the main obstacle for Syriza will come from other EU members and the Troika.   Finnish Prime Minister Alex Stubb made it clear “that we would say a resounding ‘no’ to forgive loans.” Merkel’s chief of staff, Peter Altmaier, says, “We have pursued a policy which works in many European countries, and we will stick to in the future.” IMF head Christine Lagarde chimed in that “there are rules that must be met in the euro zone,” and that “we cannot make special exceptions for specific countries.”   But Tsipras will, to paraphrase the poet Swinburne, not go entirely naked into Brussels, but “trailing clouds of glory.” Besides the solid support in Greece, a number of other countries and movements will be in the Belgian capital as well.   Syriza is closely aligned in Spain with Podemos, now polling ahead of the ruling conservative People’s Party. “2015 will be the year of change in Spain and Europe,” tweeted Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias in the aftermath of the election, “let’s go Alexis, let’s go!” Unemployment in Spain is 24 percent, and over 50 percent for young people.
  • At home, the Party will have to take on Greece’s wealthy tax-dodging oligarchs if it hopes to extend democracy and start refilling the coffers drained by the troika’s policies. It will also need to get a short-term cash infusion to meet its immediate obligations, but without giving in to yet more austerity demands by the troika.   For all the talk about Syriza being “extreme”—it stands for Coalition of the Radical Left— its program, as Greek journalist Kia Mistilis points, is “classic ‘70s social democracy”: an enhanced safety net, debt moratorium, minimum wage raise, and economic stimulus.   Syriza is pushing for a European conference modeled on the 1953 London Debt Agreement that pulled Germany out of debt after World War II and launched the “wirtschaftswunder,”or economic miracle that created modern Germany. The Agreement waved more than 50 percent of Germany’s debt, stretched out payments over 50 years, and made repayment of loans dependent on the country running a trade surplus.
  • The centerpiece of Syriza’s Thessaloniki program is its “four pillars of national reconstruction,” which include “confronting the humanitarian crisis,” “restarting the economy and promoting tax justice,” “regaining employment,” and “transforming the political system to deepen democracy.”   Each of the “pillars” is spelled out in detail, including costs, income and savings, and, while it is certainly a major break with the EU’s current model, it is hardly the October Revolution.   The troika’s austerity model has been quite efficient at smashing trade unions, selling off public resources at fire sale prices, lowering wages and starving social services. As a statement by the International Union of Food Workers argues, “Austerity is not the produce of a deficient grasp of macroeconomics or a failure of ‘social dialogue,’ it is a conscious blueprint for expanding corporate power.”
  • Under an austerity regime, the elites do quite well, and they are not likely to yield without a fight.   But Syriza is poised to give them one, and “the little party that could” is hardly alone. Plus a number of important elections are looming in Estonia, Finland, and Spain that will give anti-austerity forces more opportunities to challenge the policies of Merkel and the troika.   The spectre haunting Europe may not be the one that Karl Marx envisioned, but it is putting a scare into the halls of the rich and powerful.
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    I'm struck again by the poltical brilliance of Russia's decision to drop the South Stream Pipeline in favor of a new pipeline through Turkey to the border with Greece. Russia has gained an ally in Greece in terms of fighting economic sanctions on Russia and reinstating trade between Russia and the EU. Greece has veto power in the EU on any new sanctions or renewal of existing sanctions, at least most of which have sunset provisions. Russia also made allies of two NATO members, Greece and Turkey. And Greece is positioned by its threat of refusal to repay debt to the troika banksters to break the absolute hold the banksters have on monetary policy in the Eurozone. Russia magnifies that threat by saying that it is open to a proposal to bail out the Greek government. Not yet known is whether a condition would be abandoning the Euro as Greece's own currency. Greece might conceivably reinstate the drachma with its value pegged to a basket of foreign currencies, including the ruble and yuan. In other words, Greece leaving the EU and NATO and joining BRICS is conceivable.
Gary Edwards

Why Progressives Don't Understand And Are Enemies Of Liberty | Western Free Press - 0 views

  • For a classical liberal, freedom means that each individual possesses as a human being certain inviolable rights, those being rights to his life, liberty and honestly acquired property. And that human relationships should be based on voluntary consent and mutual agreement. For my interlocutor, freedom means “empowerment” or the ability to do or achieve certain things, without which “freedom” is not complete. These include a minimum or “decent” standard of living and the ability to attain certain potentials in life, which are everyone’s “right” as a member of society.
  • For my fellow conversationalist, society is a shared “community” of human beings each of whom owes certain things to the others, just as the others owe certain things to us. Society might be viewed as an extended family, from this perspective, all the members of which have certain required obligations to support and give assistance to their social “relatives.” I suggested that society is a network of human relationships formed between individuals based upon opportunities for mutual betterment, including both the economic and the cultural in the widest sense, the fundamental foundation of which derives from those essential individual rights.
  • French eighteenth century philosopher, Jean-Jacque Rousseau, who reasoned that man began as savages in the wild threatened by both beast and other men. Everyone entered into a social contract and formed society for mutual safety and betterment by giving up a portion of their complete and unrestrained “freedom” in that earlier setting of savagery for the order and security of shared community. The freedom given up is compensated by safety and the security of mutual aid, including the modern welfare state.
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  • British philosopher, John Locke, who argued that rights are not bestowed upon man by government or the community but belong to him by his nature as a human being. Government, in Locke’s social contract, is to provide individuals with a tool for the common defense against the violence of some of their fellow men. The role of government is the securer of liberty by protecting each individual’s rights to his life, liberty and property, and not as a guarantor of a certain standard of living or desired access to various material things.
  • The reason, I said, was that if the government undertook this latter responsibility of “social safety nets” and “positive” access to various other desired states of affairs, it can do so only by imposing through police power an obligation on others to provide the material means that some others are to be guaranteed. By doing so, government would be violating its original purpose for being brought into existence: the protecting of liberty (including people’s property rights to their own honestly earned income and wealth) rather than a violator that takes from some without their consent for the asserted benefits of others.
  • The world is to be reduced to and confined within a narrow corridor of forms of “good behavior” that people will be either penalized for violating or subsidized for doing through government regulation and spending.
  • Progressives Cling to Collectivism Here, in my opinion, are some of the essential issues and dilemmas facing the advocate of individual liberty, free markets, and constitutionally limited government. Too many of our fellow citizens do not believe that individuals have a right to live for themselves. They truly and honestly believe that “society,” “community,” the collective, is something independent of the distinct individuals who comprise it, and for which the individual is morally, politically and legally obligated to serve and sacrifice for. Police power is a legitimate and appropriate tool of enforcing these obligations and duties, if resistance or indifference is experienced among the citizens in the undertaking of these activities.
  • For the “progressive,” government is “society’s” agent to undertake the tasks of “social justice” and “entitlement” that are owed to each member and to which everyone is required to provide their contribution.  Police power is the means by which everyone is made to contribute their “social dues” in the form of either obedience to government regulations or payment of taxes for redistributive purposes.
  • Liberty and the Meaning of Society and the “Social” For the classical liberal or libertarian, on the other hand, government is considered an agency for the protection of each individual’s rights. “Society” is comprised of the networks of relationships and associations formed by individuals and in which they interact for various fulfillments of human happiness and well-being.
  • The purpose of government in the classical liberal or libertarian perspective is to assure the security and protection from private plunder and violence that would disrupt or disturb the peaceful pursuits that individuals find it useful and enjoyable and fulfilling to follow through various and diverse associations of civil society.
  • Furthermore, the interventionist-welfare state undermines people’s personal and financial ability to participate in those acts and associations of benevolence towards others that they are called by their conscience to pursue in the ways they consider best and most likely of success. The redistributive state arrogantly replaces each person’s personal judgment and decision with that of the self-appointing “experts” who claim to speak and know best for society through the coercive arm of government.
  • Matching these ethical issues of the rights of the individual to live and act peacefully for himself as he sees best, the “progressive” often demonstrates a blinding degree of ignorance and misinformation about the workings of a competitive market economy, the nature of the profit and loss system, and the “invisible hand” of competitive cooperation through the peaceful and the voluntarist pursuit of self-interest. He suffers from a confused, garbled, and contradictory grab bag of ideas derived from Marxism, Fabian socialism, nationalism, fascism, and, though it would be radically and vehemently denied, often-subtle forms of racism, as well.
  • Through all the progressive’s rhetoric about “democracy” and “equality” and “social justice” and “diversity,” theirs is a political philosophy and public policy ideology of elitism, hubris, and authoritarianism dominated by the idea and ideal of remaking human beings, human relationships and the structure and order of society into redesigned patterns and shapes that reflect their notion of how people should live, work, associate and earn a living.
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    "Conflicting Meanings of Freedom For a classical liberal, freedom means that each individual possesses as a human being certain inviolable rights, those being rights to his life, liberty and honestly acquired property. And that human relationships should be based on voluntary consent and mutual agreement. For my interlocutor, freedom means "empowerment" or the ability to do or achieve certain things, without which "freedom" is not complete. These include a minimum or "decent" standard of living and the ability to attain certain potentials in life, which are everyone's "right" as a member of society. For my fellow conversationalist, society is a shared "community" of human beings each of whom owes certain things to the others, just as the others owe certain things to us. Society might be viewed as an extended family, from this perspective, all the members of which have certain required obligations to support and give assistance to their social "relatives." I suggested that society is a network of human relationships formed between individuals based upon opportunities for mutual betterment, including both the economic and the cultural in the widest sense, the fundamental foundation of which derives from those essential individual rights. The "Social Contract": Individualist or Collectivist? My dinner companion raised the issue of "the social contract," to which we are all participants and benefactors, he said. He referenced the famous French eighteenth century philosopher, Jean-Jacque Rousseau, who reasoned that man began as savages in the wild threatened by both beast and other men. Everyone entered into a social contract and formed society for mutual safety and betterment by giving up a portion of their complete and unrestrained "freedom" in that earlier setting of savagery for the order and security of shared community. The freedom given up is compensated by safety and the security of mutual aid, including the modern welf
Paul Merrell

What Is To Be Done? -- Paul Craig Roberts - PaulCraigRoberts.org - 0 views

  • Dispossessed Americans rose up. They ignored the presstitute media, or perhaps were driven to support Trump by the hostility of the media. Trump was elected by dispossessed America, by the working class. The working class is out of favor with the elite liberal/progressive/left which abhors the working class as racist, misogynist, homophobic, gun nuts who oppose transgendered toilet facilities. Thus, the working class, and their chosen representative, Donald Trump, are under full assault by the presstitutes. “Trump Must Go” is their slogan. And well he might. Trump, in a fit of stupidity, dismissed his National Security Advisor, Gen. Flynn, because Flynn did what he should have done and spoke with the Russian ambassador in order to avoid a Russian response to Obama’s provocation of expelling Russian diplomats at Christmas. Russians have been demonized and ascribed demonic powers. If you speak to a Russian, you fall under suspicion and become a traitor to your country. This is the story according to the CIA, the Democratic Party, the military/security complex, and the presstitute media. Once Trump put Flynn’s blood in the water, he set the situation for the sacrifice of other of his appointees, ending with himself. At the present time, “the Russian connection” black mark is operating against Trump’s Attorney General, Jeff Sessions. If Sessions falls, Trump is next.
  • Despite the facts, the Washington Post, New York Times, CNN and all the rest of the CIA’s media whores are consciously and intentionally misrepresenting the facts. Americans do not need any more evidence that the entirety of the American media is totally devoid of integrity and respect for truth. The American media is a collection of whores who lie for a living. The presstitutes are despicable, the scum of the earth.
  • But if President Trump wants to defuse the extremely dangerous tensions that the reckless Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama regimes have resurrected with a powerful thermo-nuclear state that only wants peace with the US, President Trump and any of his appointees who spoke to a Russian are unfit for office! This madness is the position of the idiot liberal/progressive/left, the CIA, the Democratic Party, the right-wing morons of the Republican Party such as Lindsey Graham and John McCain, and the two-bit whores that comprise the Western media. Dear reader, ask yourself, how did communications with Russians in the interest of peace and the reduction of tensions become a criminal act? Have laws been passed that it is forbidden for US officials to speak with Russian officials? Are you so utterly stupid that a presstitute media that has never in your entire life told you anything that was truthful can convince you that those who seek to avoid a conflict between thermo-nuclear powers are “Russian agents”?
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  • The entirety of the world has been put on the knife edge of existence by the arrogance, stupidity, and hubris of the neoconservative pursuit of American world hegemony. The neoconservative ideology is perfect cover for the material interest of the military/security Deep State that is driving the world to destruction.
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    Paul Craig Roberts, in fine form. It looks to me that Sessions will go, not because of Russian contacts although that may be the excuse, but because of his anti-civil rights/anti-marijuana positiions. A powerful coalition is coming together to force his outster.
Gary Edwards

The Daily Bell - 1 views

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    ""If one understands that Socialism is not a 'share the wealth' program but is in reality a method to consolidate and control the wealth, then the seeming paradox of super rich men promoting Socialism becomes no paradox at all. Instead it becomes logical, even the perfect tool of power-seeking megalomaniacs. Communism, or more accurately Socialism, is not a movement of the down-trodden masses but of the economic elite." Gary Allen"
Gary Edwards

Benghazi report: Trinkets of treason - 1 views

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    The truth is dribbling out, thn=anks to Douglas J. Hagmann and Canada Free Press .....................  We've been aligned and hostage to the Saudi Royal Family ever since FDR met with King Ibn Saud, Feb 14th, 1945 near the end of WWII.  It was at this meeting that FDR promised protection for the Saudi family in exchange for the right to develop Saudi oil and sell that oil exclusively in dollars.  Hence the "petro dollar" - backed by Saudi oil instead of GOLD. That agreement, and our subsequent history of our military and state departments acting to further Saudi interests has dominated America.  Our troops and military resources ae mercenaries fighting for Saudi dominance of the Globalist ruling elites.  Our politicians are bought and paid for by the Saudi Globalist Alliance.  They have sold their souls for power and money, with the destruction of the USA Constitution the only thing standing between the Globalist and their quest to rule the world. excerpt: We are witnessing one of the biggest government cover-ups since Watergate. A cover-up that involves murder, arms trafficking, and lies by high ranking officials under oath. It involves the murderous attacks in Benghazi, and congressional investigators just released a 46-page interim progress report that at least exposes Hillary Rodham Clinton and the White House lying under oath. Where's the accountability? Where's the outrage? Where's the media? A 46-page interim progress report of an ongoing investigation across five House Committees by the U.S. House of Representatives was released on Tuesday, April 23, 2013. The executive summary states that former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton signed off on a reduction of diplomatic security forces suggesting that this reduction of security was, in large part, to blame for the attack in Benghazi on September 11, 2012.  The report emphasizes that this is "inconsistent" with her sworn testimony of January 23, 2013. Simply stated, Hillary Rod
Gary Edwards

WW3 - What is the New World Order (NWO)? - 0 views

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    So, i'm researching Albert Pike and his 1871 Luciferian dream wher a plan for three world wars set the stage for the rule of a New World Order is laid out and described.  And i find this incredible piece of research.  This is actually page 3 in a series of Web articles that begins with "The Conspiracy", leads to Albert Pike and how the Illuminati Luciferians infiltrated many gorups and organizations, clipping off the leadership and subsuming those select individuals into a super secret Luciferian order.  Incredible.  This page describes "The New World Order".  Chilling. excerpt: Introduction The following article is extracted from an excellent analysis of the New World Order by author Ken Adachi which can be found at educate-yourself.org . The term New World Order (NWO) has been used by numerous politicians through the ages , and is a generic term used to refer to a worldwide conspiracy being orchestrated by an extremely powerful and influential group of genetically-related individuals (at least at the highest echelons) which include many of the world's wealthiest people, top political leaders, and corporate elite, as well as members of the so-called Black Nobility of Europe (dominated by the British Crown) whose goal is to create a One World (fascist) Government, stripped of nationalistic and regional boundaries, that is obedient to their agenda. Listen to the Zionist* banker, Paul Warburg: "We will have a world government whether you like it or not. The only question is whether that government will be achieved by conquest or consent." (February 17, 1950, as he testified before the US Senate). Their intention is to effect complete and total control over every human being on the planet and to dramatically reduce the world's population by two thirds. While the name New World Order is the term most frequently used today to loosely refer to anyone involved in this conspiracy, the study of exactly who makes up this group is a complex and intricate
Gary Edwards

What Is or Should Be the Law? essay on Frederik Bastiat's "The Law" - 1 views

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    Jeffrey Tucker at The Daily Reckoning wonders about all those Presidential Executive Orders that make Law while by-passing the Congressional process and making mockery of the USA Constitution.  He ends up referencing the great libertarian, Frederick Bastiat's seminal work, The Law - written in 1849.    
    excerpt: One party gets annoyed when the other party's president enacts laws without regard to any constitutional conventions.
    But what is the law, and what should it be? These are the bigger questions that are not part of public consciousness.
    The same was true in the time of Frédéric Bastiat (1801-50). At the very end of his life, he wrote an impassioned plea on the topic. He tried to get people to think hard about what was happening and how law had become an instrument of plunder, rather than a protector of property.
    He writes:
    ...... "It is not true that the function of law is to regulate our consciences, our ideas, our wills, our education, our opinions, our work, our trade, our talents or our pleasures. The function of law is to protect the free exercise of these rights, and to prevent any person from interfering with the free exercise of these same rights by any other person." .......
    This is from Bastiat's The Law, one of the great political essays to emerge from the whole Continental world of the 19th century. It vanished into obscurity in France, was resurrected in late 19th century English, and then disappeared again, only to reappear in the United States in the 1950s, thanks to the efforts of the Foundation of Economic Education.
    This essay asks fundamental questions that most people go through life never having thought about.
    The problem is that most people accept the law as a given, a fundamental fact. As a member of society, you obey or face the consequences. It is not safe to question why. This is because the enforcement arm of the law is the state, that peculiar agency with a unique power in society to
Gary Edwards

The Problem with Socialism is Socialism! | Devil At My Doorstep's Blog - 0 views

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    Big Government, totalitarianism, power, greed, central planning, redistribution of wealth, restrictions on personal freedom, no ownership of personal property, no self determination, government entitlements, no secret ballot elections, lack of incentive to succeed, government watchdogs, political elitism, government control and intervention, sameness, tyranny, violence, intimidation, coercion, pressure and social engineering are all characteristics of Socialism. History is replete with socialist regimes, like Nazi Germany and socialist Russia, which have imploded and failed. The simple problem is government or institutions created in or morphed into this likeness cannot create or invent and eventually fail. The free markets of Capitalism are the inverse of the above. It is the only system that has lifted all of mankind, at every level, to a higher standard of living. It is the only system that allows individuals the opportunity for self determination based on their abilities and effort. It promotes ingenuity, self-reliance, diversity, innovation, creation, prosperity and, yes, wealth. It continues to advance the prosperity of all individuals unless destroyed from within, like Greece and Rome when they moved towards totalitarianism and away from democracy!
Gary Edwards

Breakaway Civilizations/ Rethinking History - Shows - Coast to Coast AM - 0 views

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    "Date: 03-16-14 Host: George Knapp Guests: Joseph P. Farrell, Brad Olsen In the first half, George Knapp was joined by author Joseph Farrell, who detailed his research into the possibility that a secret, breakaway civilization was formed by American elites following World War II. He explained that, after the war, the United States was faced with three formidable challenges: escaped Nazis bent on recreating their empire elsewhere, the Cold War, and the UFO phenomenon. In turn, Farrell surmised, a secret system was put into place to develop defenses against these dangers facing the country. He theorized that, in order to surreptitiously fund such a massive undertaking, the United States used the vast wealth that had been plundered by Japan during WWII to bankroll various projects. Farrell suggested that, over time, similar secret infrastructures were created by other technologically advanced countries such as England, Russia, and China. In the ensuing years since its creation, Farrell said, the American organization likely developed amazing technological capabilities far beyond what is known to the general population, hence the concept of a 'breakaway civilization,' which shares our planet but exists within a world of knowledge far different from our own. Manmade UFOs, weather control, and zero point energy may be achievements that have secretly been accomplished, but remain classified for fear of revealing technologies which could be weaponized and used against the United States. Farrell pointed to the emergence of 3D printing and the push for mining in space as potential signs of previously accomplished breakthroughs which are now slowly being introduced to the public. --------------------------------- In the latter half, author Brad Olsen discussed flaws in modern history and how conspiracy theories, esoteric insights, and fringe subjects can be used to help change a dead-end course for humanity. He contended that nearly every facet of human life, from science,
Gary Edwards

Liberty's backlash -- why we should be grateful to Edward Snowden | Fox News - 1 views

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    Liberty's backlash -- why we should be grateful to Edward Snowden By Judge Andrew P. Napolitano Published August 01, 2013 FoxNews.com Last week, Justin Amash, the two-term libertarian Republican congressman from Michigan, joined with John Conyers, the 25-term liberal Democratic congressman from the same state, to offer an amendment to legislation funding the National Security Agency (NSA). If enacted, the Amash-Conyers amendment would have forced the government's domestic spies when seeking search warrants to capture Americans' phone calls, texts and emails first to identify their targets and produce evidence of their terror-related activities before a judge may issue a warrant. The support they garnered had a surprising result that stunned the Washington establishment. It almost passed. The final vote, in which the Amash-Conyers amendment was defeated by 205 to 217, was delayed for a few hours by the House Republican leadership, which opposed the measure. The Republican leadership team, in conjunction with President Obama and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, needed more time for arm-twisting so as to avoid a humiliating loss. But the House rank-and-file did succeed in sending a message to the big-government types in both parties: Nearly half of the House of Representatives has had enough of government spying and then lying about it, and understands that spying on every American simply cannot withstand minimal legal scrutiny or basic constitutional analysis. The president is deeply into this and no doubt wishes he wasn't. He now says he welcomed the debate in the House on whether his spies can have all they want from us or whether they are subject to constitutional requirements for their warrants. Surely he knows that the Supreme Court has ruled consistently since the time of the Civil War that the government is always subject to the Constitution, wherever it goes and whatever it does. As basic as that sounds, it is not a universally held belief am
Gary Edwards

The Beholden State by Steven Malanga, City Journal Spring 2010 - 1 views

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    The video, "The Beholden State", has become a sensation among California taxpayer groups for its vivid depiction of the audacious power that public-sector unions wield in their state. The unions' political triumphs have molded a California in which government workers thrive at the expense of a struggling private sector. The state's public school teachers are the highest-paid in the nation. Its prison guards can easily earn six-figure salaries. State workers routinely retire at 55 with pensions higher than their base pay for most of their working life. Meanwhile, what was once the most prosperous state now suffers from an unemployment rate far steeper than the nation's and a flood of firms and jobs escaping high taxes and stifling regulations. This toxic combination-high public-sector employee costs and sagging economic fortunes-has produced recurring budget crises in Sacramento and in virtually every municipality in the state. How public employees became members of the elite class in a declining California offers a cautionary tale to the rest of the country, where the same process is happening in slower motion. The story starts half a century ago, when California public workers won bargaining rights and quickly learned how to elect their own bosses-that is, sympathetic politicians who would grant them outsize pay and benefits in exchange for their support. Over time, the unions have turned the state's politics completely in their favor. The result: unaffordable benefits for civil servants; fiscal chaos in Sacramento and in cities and towns across the state; and angry taxpayers finally confronting the unionized masters of California's unsustainable government.
Paul Merrell

The new European 'arc of instability' - RT Op-Edge - 0 views

  • The European Council on Foreign Relations and Berlin think-tank Friedrich Ebert Stiftung have just reached more or less the same conclusion. If the dangerous stand-off between the EU and Russia over Ukraine is not solved, the EU could face, up to 2030, a military build-up in eastern Europe; a new arms race with NATO as a protagonist; and a semi-permanent “zone of instability” from the Baltic to the Balkans and the Black Sea. What these two think-tanks don’t – and won’t – ever acknowledge is that a new European “arc of instability” – from the Baltic to the Black Sea, as myself and other independent analysts have stressed – is exactly what the Empire of Chaos and its weaponized arm – NATO – are working on to prevent closer Eurasia integration. By the way, the Pentagon excels in fabricating “arcs of instability.” The previous one was – and remains – massive, stretching from the Maghreb to Xinjiang in western China across the Middle East and Central Asia.
  • Moscow has totally identified the plot; Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, once again, has made it crystal clear, in detail. And crucially, some influential sectors in Germany also did, as in members of the cultural elite destroying the notion of a new war in Europe: “Not in our name.” The same applies to those that always preach more transatlantic cooperation, extol the US’s “defining” role in Germany, and effusively praise Germany as the most American country in Europe; that’s the case of the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper – which stands for the core of the political and economic establishment in Germany. It’s still in an embryonic stage, and has not yet made Chancellor Angela Merkel see the light; but a reverse reengineering of Atlanticist relations is already in progress in Germany.
  • Meanwhile, the proverbial group of extremist US senators, plus the notorious poodles/vassals of Britain and Poland, haven’t stopped lobbying to shut Russia off from SWIFT – just as they did with Iran. This would be nothing but yet another declaration of (economic) war – or the economic counterpoint to NATO hysteria. In fairness, a great deal of the EU – especially Germany – knows this is madness. Germany’s top financial paper Handelsblatt recently published a key interview with head of VTB-Bank Andrei Kostin, which has still not been translated into any major English-language paper.
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  • Kostin went straight to the point: “Of course, there is a plan B [in the case of Russia being shut off from the SWIFT bank system], but in my personal opinion it would mean war – if this type of sanction will be introduced. America and Europe did that against Iran but with Iran at that time there were no diplomatic relations, only military containment...if Russian banks’ access to SWIFT will be prohibited, the US ambassador to Moscow should leave the same day. Diplomatic relations must be finished. Banking is the most vulnerable part of the Russian economy because the system is based so strongly on the dollar and the euro.” Next May, Russia’s Central Bank is planning to introduce an analogue to SWIFT – after key consultations with China. It’s always important to keep in mind that China set up a parallel SWIFT to do business with Iran under sanctions. But still there will be a window of four months for a lot of nasty things to happen after a Republican-controlled US Senate is empowered in January.
  • And then there’s the golden rule. Why is Russia buying so much gold? With the US dollar forced upward and gold downward, it makes total business sense to sell gas for inflated dollars and then buy cheap depressed gold; that’s what the Chinese call a “win-win.” And of course on both counts, the West loses. The Washington/Wall Street elites are fully aware that both Moscow and Beijing won’t accumulate US dollars anymore. As for the Masters of the Universe plutocrats who manipulate/control the value of the US dollar, a case can be made that one of their purposes is wrecking the US’s industrial base and the nation’s middle classes. Moscow, meanwhile, has adjusted to the new “instability.” The weak ruble has a positive effect – already stressed by President Putin – by forcing Russia to diversify its manufacturing and become more self-sufficient.
  • Of course, the problem remains for Russia to pay the foreign interest on its debt in US dollars. Moscow could always declare a moratorium in debt repayments. The ruble might go down even more. But as everyone from Lukoil to Rosneft converts more US dollars into rubles, that will drive the ruble back up. Not to mention that the ruble is shorted as it stands. The bottom line is that Moscow has learned yet another lesson for the immediate future: never become indebted to the West. What’s certain is that the Empire of Chaos won’t relent in its strategy of heating up the new arc of instability – inside Europe, across the economic/financial spectrum – and instrumentalizing its pre-fabricated New Iron Curtain from the Baltic to the Black Sea. The Kremlin seems to know exactly how high the stakes are. As The Saker told me in an email, “Putin is telling both the West and the Russian people that there is a long war in progress and that the Russian people have to morally be prepared to accept sacrifices for the survival of Russia. This is one more step in the 'coming-out' of what I call the ‘Eurasian Sovereignists’ in which the US [has] now openly declared as a Russophobic (Russia-hating and Russia-fearing) enemy, and the Europeans as a powerless colony. Military power is not directly a factor in this, the internal power balance between the pro-Western ‘Atlantic Integrationists’ and the ‘Eurasian Sovereignists’ is.” It’s all here – from the debacle of a regime (Bretton Woods) to the current, provoked crisis, all brilliantly explained by Mikhail Khazin. Russia is getting ready to rock. Is the West?
Gary Edwards

How the CIA made Google - Medium - 0 views

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    "INSURGE INTELLIGENCE, a new crowd-funded investigative journalism project, breaks the exclusive story of how the United States intelligence community funded, nurtured and incubated Google as part of a drive to dominate the world through control of information. Seed-funded by the NSA and CIA, Google was merely the first among a plethora of private sector start-ups co-opted by US intelligence to retain 'information superiority.' The origins of this ingenious strategy trace back to a secret Pentagon-sponsored group, that for the last two decades has functioned as a bridge between the US government and elites across the business, industry, finance, corporate, and media sectors. The group has allowed some of the most powerful special interests in corporate America to systematically circumvent democratic accountability and the rule of law to influence government policies, as well as public opinion in the US and around the world. The results have been catastrophic: NSA mass surveillance, a permanent state of global war, and a new initiative to transform the US military into Skynet."
Paul Merrell

Libya: From Africa's Richest State Under Gaddafi, to Failed State After NATO Interventi... - 0 views

  • This week marks the three-year anniversary of the Western-backed assassination of Libya’s former president, Muammar Gaddafi, and the fall of one of Africa’s greatest nations. In 1967 Colonel Gaddafi inherited one of the poorest nations in Africa; however, by the time he was assassinated, Gaddafi had turned Libya into Africa’s wealthiest nation. Libya had the highest GDP per capita and life expectancy on the continent. Less people lived below the poverty line than in the Netherlands. After NATO’s intervention in 2011, Libya is now a failed state and its economy is in shambles. As the government’s control slips through their fingers and into to the militia fighters’ hands, oil production has all but stopped. The militias variously local, tribal, regional, Islamist or criminal, that have plagued Libya since NATO’s intervention, have recently lined up into two warring factions. Libya now has two governments, both with their own Prime Minister, parliament and army.
  • For over 40 years, Gaddafi promoted economic democracy and used the nationalized oil wealth to sustain progressive social welfare programs for all Libyans. Under Gaddafi’s rule, Libyans enjoyed not only free health-care and free education, but also free electricity and interest-free loans. Now thanks to NATO’s intervention the health-care sector is on the verge of collapse as thousands of Filipino health workers flee the country, institutions of higher education across the East of the country are shut down, and black outs are a common occurrence in once thriving Tripoli. One group that has suffered immensely from NATO’s bombing campaign is the nation’s women. Unlike many other Arab nations, women in Gaddafi’s Libya had the right to education, hold jobs, divorce, hold property and have an income. The United Nations Human Rights Council praised Gaddafi for his promotion of women’s rights. When the colonel seized power in 1969, few women went to university. Today, more than half of Libya’s university students are women. One of the first laws Gaddafi passed in 1970 was an equal pay for equal work law. Nowadays, the new “democratic” Libyan regime is clamping down on women’s rights. The new ruling tribes are tied to traditions that are strongly patriarchal. Also, the chaotic nature of post-intervention Libyan politics has allowed free reign to extremist Islamic forces that see gender equality as a Western perversion.
  • Hifter’s forces are currently vying with the Al Qaeda group Ansar al-Sharia for control of Libya’s second largest city, Benghazi. Ansar al-Sharia was armed by America during the NATO campaign against Colonel Gaddafi. In yet another example of the U.S. backing terrorists backfiring, Ansar al-Sharia has recently been blamed by America for the brutal assassination of U.S. Ambassador Stevens. Hifter is currently receiving logistical and air support from the U.S. because his faction envision a mostly secular Libya open to Western financiers, speculators, and capital. Perhaps, Gaddafi’s greatest crime, in the eyes of NATO, was his desire to put the interests of local labour above foreign capital and his quest for a strong and truly United States of Africa. In fact, in August 2011, President Obama confiscated $30 billion from Libya’s Central Bank, which Gaddafi had earmarked for the establishment of the African IMF and African Central Bank. In 2011, the West’s objective was clearly not to help the Libyan people, who already had the highest standard of living in Africa, but to oust Gaddafi, install a puppet regime, and gain control of Libya’s natural resources.
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  • On one side, in the West of the country, Islamist-allied militias took over control of the capital Tripoli and other cities and set up their own government, chasing away a parliament that was elected over the summer. On the other side, in the East of the Country, the “legitimate” government dominated by anti-Islamist politicians, exiled 1,200 kilometers away in Tobruk, no longer governs anything. The fall of Gaddafi’s administration has created all of the country’s worst-case scenarios: Western embassies have all left, the South of the country has become a haven for terrorists, and the Northern coast a center of migrant trafficking. Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia have all closed their borders with Libya. This all occurs amidst a backdrop of widespread rape, assassinations and torture that complete the picture of a state that is failed to the bone. America is clearly fed up with the two inept governments in Libya and is now backing a third force: long-time CIA asset, General Khalifa Hifter, who aims to set himself up as Libya’s new dictator. Hifter, who broke with Gaddafi in the 1980s and lived for years in Langley, Virginia, close to the CIA’s headquarters, where he was trained by the CIA, has taken part in numerous American regime change efforts, including the aborted attempt to overthrow Gaddafi in 1996.
  • Three years ago, NATO declared that the mission in Libya had been “one of the most successful in NATO history.” Truth is, Western interventions have produced nothing but colossal failures in Libya, Iraq, and Syria. Lest we forget, prior to western military involvement in these three nations, they were the most modern and secular states in the Middle East and North Africa with the highest regional women’s rights and standards of living. A decade of failed military expeditions in the Middle East has left the American people in trillions of dollars of debt. However, one group has benefited immensely from the costly and deadly wars: America’s Military-Industrial-Complex. Building new military bases means billions of dollars for America’s military elite. As Will Blum has pointed out, following the bombing of Iraq, the United States built new bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Saudi Arabia. Following the bombing of Afghanistan, the United States is now building military bases in Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Following the recent bombing of Libya, the United States has built new military bases in the Seychelles, Kenya, South Sudan, Niger and Burkina Faso.
  • Given that Libya sits atop the strategic intersection of the African, Middle Eastern and European worlds, Western control of the nation, has always been a remarkably effective way to project power into these three regions and beyond. NATO’s military intervention may have been a resounding success for America’s military elite and oil companies but for the ordinary Libyan, the military campaign may indeed go down in history as one of the greatest failures of the 21st century.
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    Indeed, Muammar Gadafi was well on his way to becoming the Simón Bolívar of Africa when the U.S. snuffed out his government and his life to end his efforts to create a United States of Africa with its own gold-backed currency. Were there Justice in this world, Barack Obama would be in prison today for his war crimes against the Libyan people. 
Paul Merrell

Saudi Arabia is on the Brink of Regime Change - nsnbc international | nsnbc international - 0 views

  • It seems that Saudi Arabia has started to undergo the transformation various experts predicted. Those became obvious when the sitting king Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud replaced his deceased elder brother Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud in January 2015, and made a number of quite unusual arrangements within the ruling elite, appointing the head of the Ministry of Interior Muhammad bin Nayef from Abdullah’s clan the Crown Prince, while his 33-year-old son Mohammad bin Salman Al Saudfrom the Sudairy clan received the appointment of Deputy Crown Prince.
  • Now it seems that the wheels of the political machine are moving again. Last week reports from Riyadh indicated that his disease is taking a toll on the king and he wants to renounce his reign in favor of the Crown Prince. But then neighboring states, especially Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, started hinting that the members of the Saudi royal family along with the sheikhs of the strongest tribes, which are the foundation of Al Saud’s rule, are extremely dissatisfied with the sharp deterioration of the economic and social situation in the country, leading to a major drop in their personal incomes. It is no secret that Riyadh increased the volume of oil production to weaken the positions of its main competitors – Russia, Iran and Venezuela. But the kingdom had to take a punch as well, it was forced to unseal its reserve fund and cut the funding of numerous social programs.
  • Now the highly respected Institute for Gulf Affairs is stating that the king of Saudi Arabia Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud is preparing to renounce the throne in favor of his son Mohammad bin Salman Al Saud, and has since brought his country to the brink of a disaster. It means that the 80-year-old Salman is trying desperately hard to persuade his brothers on the succession board to allow him to change the principle of succession of the Saudi throne, since he’s ready to leave, but not so ready for his nephew Mohammad bin Salman Al Saud to rule the country. What the king has been doing is allegedly done “only for the sake of the stability of the kingdom.” Although the reality of the situation is clear – should Salman retain his position, the disintegration of the kingdom is imminent, with certain Shia areas breaking away, while the regions on the border with Yemen which are mostly populated by Yemeni tribes, more than happy to return home. Moreover, the Minister of Interior used to be a habitual cocaine user, so he was only able to “produce” two daughters, and now he’s somewhat incapable of producing more children. Should the king manage to carry out the above described scheme, he will become the first Saudi monarch to leave the throne to his son.
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  • And the fact that there’s a growing crisis in Saudi Arabia was evident from the cuts in subsidies and bonuses that king Salman started at the beginning of this year to reduce the country’s total dependence on oil. After decades of extensive use of oil revenues to subsidize companies’ payment of generous salaries and providing enormous social benefits, falling oil prices struck Saudi Arabia at its heart. It’s enough to say that revenues from oil exports in 2015 alone dropped by half. Ultimately it’s hard to say which country suffers the most from these oil wars – Russia or Saudi Arabia, since the latter has virtually no other sectors to support the economy. Saudi economist Turki Fadaak believes that Saudi Arabia is exiting the policy of “universal welfare”, so there’s an ongoing psychological shift in the minds of the ruling elite of the state. Fadaak is convinced that the ultimate aim of king Salman’s measures is to eliminate the Saudi dependency on oil. But is it really? According to leading international experts – the answer is a resounding “no”, with all the arguments to the contrary nothing more than fantasy.
  • Although initially it seemed that Salman, who came to power after the death of his brother, King Abdullah, will continue his course, after assuming the throne Salman generously spent over 30 billion dollars from the budget on bonuses for civil servants, military personnel, and students. Additionally, prices for basic goods and services, including fuel, electricity and water prices were kept at extremely low levels due to government subsidies from oil revenues. However, due to falling oil prices, under the pressure of such costs the budget started to rupture. The most important thing now for the kingdom is to execute the transition from the extremely lavish social security system to a productive economy, but then the subjects of the king will be forced to cut their costs, and it looks that they do not agree with this notion. And accusations in the imminent economic collapse will go Salman’s way, so it is better for him to leave now, before protests even start.
  • It is curious that Saudi Arabia has been rather realistic about its budget for the year 2016, since it was based on the average price of oil keeping at the level 29 dollars per barrel. Last year, the Saudi budget deficit amounted to almost 98 billion dollars and the costs were considerably higher than it was originally planed due to bonuses for civil servants, military personnel and retirees. In 2016 the authorities decided to put up to 49 billion dollars into a special fund to provide funding for the most important projects in case oil prices drop even further. But it was Saudi Arabia back in 2014 that proposed new tactics for OPEC, that implied that there would be no cuts in the level of production, the tactics that drove oil prices to today’s levels. So we are to learn pretty soon should Riyadh choose the path of the utter and complete collapse of the kingdom, or the path of giving power to the young and pragmatic technocrats who are going to pursue a comprehensive oil policy. Either way, Saudi Arabia will be forced to put an end to the costly military adventures in Syria and Yemen as well as its confrontations with Russia and Iran.
Paul Merrell

Obama says Syria settlement needed to eliminate Islamic State | Reuters - 0 views

  • U.S. President Barack Obama said on Thursday it may take some months for Russia, Iran and the Syrian ruling elite to accept that there can be no end to Syria's civil war or a political settlement while President Bashar al-Assad remains in power.Obama said that Moscow and Tehran recognised Islamic State as a "serious threat" but Russia’s efforts in Syria were aimed at propping up Assad."Bottom line is, I do not foresee a situation in which we can end the civil war in Syria while Assad remains in power," he told reporters in Manila on the sidelines of the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit."What we are doing with our coalition members is recognising that it may take some months for the Russians and the Iranians and frankly some members of the Syrian government and ruling elites within the regime to recognise the truths that I just articulated."
  • Obama added that if he could get all the parties talking on the issue, "that could create space for that pivot".
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    Perhaps it will take some months for Barack Obama to recognize that Bashar al Assad is the elected head of government in Syria. 
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