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Recognition for a journalist whose articles I often bookmark on Diigo.

Paul Craig Roberts reviews the recently published Patrick Buchanan book, "The Suicide of Liberty".

Paul Craig Roberts hasn't caught up with the fact that a German prosectuor is doing just what Roberts suggests, finding that there is sufficient evidence to open a criminal investigation of NSA tapping Angela Merkel's cellphone. 

Paul Craig Roberts thinks he has spotted Europe's jugular vein in the sanctions war over Ukraine. I'll need some time to think about this. Roberts is correct on the location of the jugular vein. But how might the Empire of Chaos with its capitol in Washington, D.C. respond? We've got rabid neocons in control of the Dark State.

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.

Gates' remarks follow similar warnings by several retired U.S. generals that the outcome of war with Syria would be unpredictable. This is a proxy war being waged by the U.S., which is providing "humanitarian" aid to the "rebels," whilst Saudi Arabia and Qatar ostensibly provide their weapons. (Ostensibly, because most of their weapons are being transported by U.S. proxies from Libya and most of the "rebels" are non-Syrian foreign fighters, largely al Queda, infiltrated into Syria via Turkey.) The U.S. has moved anti-aircraft missile teams into areas of Turkey and Jordan that border Syria, a move that was met by Russia moving its own advanced anti-aircraft missile teams into Syria itself and repositioning a sizeable part of the Russian Navy in Syria and ramping up its naval presence in the Mediterranean.   Meanwhile, Lebanon's Hezbollah has pledged unity with Syria's existing government and is adding soldiers to the Syrian Army's forces. Israel has responded with two air assaults on Syria, ostensibly to deny advanced weaponry to Hezbollah. Iran has also pledged military involvement if needed to preserve the existing Syrian government.  In sum, Syria is a very large powder keg with a very short fuse that could easily erupt into a larger war with Russia and Iran too, with the resulting closing of the Straits of Hormuz and thereby plunging the world into economic disaster resulting from severe oil shortages. Nonetheless, Neocons and Zionists in the U.S. are pushing hard for the U.S. to directly wade in militarily.  Civilian casualties in the so-called Syrian "civil war" are estimated to be between 80,000 and 120,000 thus far.   

Thank you Thomas DiLorenzo for having the courage to set the record straight.  IMHO, Lincoln should be remembered for freeing the slaves and standing up to the International Bankster Cartel and Wall Street.  But what he did to the USA Constitution and the Bill of Rights was an unprecedented assault on individual liberty.  Good thing the guy could write beautifully on liberty and freedom because his actions amounted to a historic assault on everything the founding fathers held near and dear. excerpt:    "confronting academic "Lincoln revisionism." "Who was Lincoln really and why have you spent so much of your career trying to return Lincoln's academic profile to reality? Thomas DiLorenzo: Lincoln mythology is the ideological cornerstone of American statism. He was in reality the most hated of all American presidents during his lifetime according to an excellent book by historian Larry Tagg entitled The Unpopular Mr. Lincoln: America's Most Reviled President. He was so hated in the North that the New York Times editorialized a wish that he would be assassinated. This is perfectly understandable: He illegally suspended Habeas Corpus and imprisoned tens of thousands of Northern political critics without due process; shut down over 300 opposition newspapers; committed treason by invading the Southern states (Article 3, Section 3 of the Constitution defines treason as "only levying war upon the states" or "giving aid and comfort to their enemies," which of course is exactly what Lincoln did). He enforced military conscription with the murder of hundreds of New York City draft protesters in 1863 and with the mass execution of deserters from his army. He deported a congressional critic (Democratic Congressman Clement Vallandigham of Ohio); confiscated firearms; and issued an arrest warrant for the Chief Justice when the jurist issued an opinion that only Congress could legally suspend Habeas Corpus. He waged an unnecessary war (all other countries ended slavery

I've been reading Paul Craig Roberts since high school, when i used to clip his backpage columns in NewsWeek magazine. These days, you have to go to his blog to get the truth. But what a truth it is! Incredible, forceful but presented only as PCR can do. His wake up call to America is not about Republicans or Democrats. It's about our liberty and the all out assault our government, socialist and conservatives alike, has launched on the Constitution. Amerika! This is what it comes to. It's also why i'm a libertarian. Read it and weep. Excerpt is from the 9/11 section. excerpt: In a real investigation, the 9/11 evidence would not have been illegally destroyed, and the investigation would have been conducted by experts, not by government agencies assigned a cover-up and by political hacks. The NIST report is abject nonsense. It explains nothing. It is a fabricated computer simulation of a non-event. The co-chairmen and legal counsel of the 9/11 Commission later wrote books in which they stated that information was withheld from the commission, the military lied to the commission, and the commission "was set up to fail." Yet, these astounding admissions by the leaders of the 9/11 Commission had no impact on Congress, the presstitute media, or the public. All heads were in the sand. Please, whatever you do, don't make us emotional weaklings face the facts. More than one hundred firefighters, police, first responders, and building maintenance personnel report hearing and experiencing scores of explosions in the twin towers, including powerful explosions in the sub-basements prior to the collapse of the towers. Distinguished scientists, authors of many peer-reviewed scientific papers, report finding unreacted nano-thermite in the dust from the towers, tested it for its explosive and high-heat producing ability, and reported the unequivocal results. Seventeen hundred architects and engineers have testified in a petition to Congress that the th

For a detailed and fully referenced study of how 9-11 Commission Executive Director Philip Zelikow's conflict of interest and how he kept Commission members in the dark and sabotaged the Commission report, see http://tinyurl.com/6tdfc56

Nice grab by Marbux.   The old maxim holds true and is more important today than ever before: "Don't listen to what they say.  Watch carefully what they do!" excerpt: We've already made our choice for the best headline of the year, so far: "Citigroup Replaces JPMorgan as White House Chief of Staff." When we saw it on the website Gawker.com we had to smile - but the smile didn't last long. There's simply too much truth in that headline; it says a lot about how Wall Street and Washington have colluded to create the winner-take-all economy that rewards the very few at the expense of everyone else. The story behind it is that Jack Lew is President Obama's new chief of staff - arguably the most powerful office in the White House that isn't shaped like an oval. He used to work for the giant banking conglomerate Citigroup. His predecessor as chief of staff is Bill Daley, who used to work at the giant banking conglomerate JPMorgan Chase, where he was maestro of the bank's global lobbying and chief liaison to the White House. Daley replaced Obama's first chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who once worked as a rainmaker for the investment bank now known as Wasserstein & Company, where in less than three years he was paid a reported eighteen and a half million dollars. The new guy, Jack Lew - said by those who know to be a skilled and principled public servant - ran hedge funds and private equity at Citigroup, which means he's a member of the Wall Street gang, too. His last job was as head of President Obama's Office of Management and Budget, where he replaced Peter Orzag, who now works as vice chairman for global banking at - hold on to your deposit slip - Citigroup. Still with us? It's startling the number of high-ranking Obama officials who have spun through the revolving door between the White House and the sacred halls of investment banking.

Diigo is screwing up the URL AGAIN!!!!! WTF!!! The correct title is "Larry Summers and the Secret "End-Game" Memo :: http://goo.gl/wDhDhL From the marbux treasure trove of truth we have financial expert Greg Palast describing how the Banksters engineered the 2008 World Financial Collapse. Greg names names, sighting an important 1997 memo signed by then Deputy Treasury Secretary, Larry Summers. The memo describes the Banksters "end game", and authorizes pulling the trigger on a process of forcing the world's financial institutions to accept the game of derivative roulette where high risk financial schemes and casino bets had to be accepted as "financial assets". Good story and as from everything I know, the absolute truth. Read it carefully because these same Banksters control the Obama Administration and seek to continue the great shakedown. One item of note is the recent resignation of Larry Summers as Obama nominee to head the Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel. Summers is one of the architects of the 2008 financial collapse, but is seen be Wall Street as hesitant to continue with the current Bernake flooding of the money markets with $85 Billion per month in freshly minted paper. Even the hint of rolling back the Bankster bailout a bit is enough to do in Summers. alternative Fed Banster Czar Janette Yellin promises to up the $85 Billion monthly bailout, and Wall Street celebrated with a near doubling of trades. We're so screwed! We started the "Socialism and the End of the American Dream" Diigo group in September of 2008 as an effort to understand the financial collapse. In this short article, Greg Palast summarizes the story and places the important facts on the table for all to see. Pray with me for his health and safety. excerpt: "The year was 1997.  US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin was pushing hard to de-regulate banks.  That required, first, repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act to dismantle the barrier between commercial ba

Related link: Summers Withdraws From Consideration for Fed Chairmanship, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-15/obama-said-he-accepted-summers-decision-to-withdraw-his-name.html

From the marbux treasure trove of truth we have financial expert Greg Palast describing how the Banksters engineered the 2008 World Financial Collapse. Greg names names, sighting an important 1997 memo signed by then Deputy Treasury Secretary, Larry Summers. The memo describes the Banksters "end game", and authorizes pulling the trigger on a process of forcing the world's financial institutions to accept the game of derivative roulette where high risk financial schemes and casino bets had to be accepted as "financial assets". Good story and as from everything I know, the absolute truth. Read it carefully because these same Banksters control the Obama Administration and seek to continue the great shakedown. One item of note is the recent resignation of Larry Summers as Obama nominee to head the Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel. Summers is one of the architects of the 2008 financial collapse, but is seen be Wall Street as hesitant to continue with the current Bernake flooding of the money markets with $85 Billion per month in freshly minted paper. Even the hint of rolling back the Bankster bailout a bit is enough to do in Summers. alternative Fed Banster Czar Janette Yellin promises to up the $85 Billion monthly bailout, and Wall Street celebrated with a near doubling of trades. We're so screwed! We started the "Socialism and the End of the American Dream" Diigo group in September of 2008 as an effort to understand the financial collapse. In this short article, Greg Palast summarizes the story and places the important facts on the table for all to see. Pray with me for his health and safety. excerpt: "The year was 1997.  US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin was pushing hard to de-regulate banks.  That required, first, repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act to dismantle the barrier between commercial banks and investment banks.  It was like replacing bank vaults with roulette wheels. Second, the banks wanted the right to play a new high-risk game:  "d

Paul Craig Roberts goes on record as a 9-11 Truther and as a deep sceptic of Obama's claim that Seal Team 6 killed Osama bin Laden in 2011. 

Robert Parry takes a break from the nuts and bolts of U.S. foreign proxy wars, steps back, and provides a broader view of what is happening to the balance of power within the Obama administration, and sees the neocons as regaining lost influence.

There's an old saying in the Anglo legal tradition, "justice delayed is justice denied." To delay a habeas corpus proceeding is the antithesis of what that writ is all about; promptly freeing those unlawfully held. 

And if anyone had any doubts that the CDS market is officially backstopped, look no further than the Bear Stearns and AIG rescues. To put not too find a point on it, the industry understands full well who is the ultimate bagholder: United States commercial banks, those with insured deposits, held $13 trillion in notional value of credit derivatives at the end of the third quarter last year, according to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The biggest players in this world are JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs. All of those firms fall squarely into the category of institutions that are too politically connected to fail. Because of the implicit taxpayer backing that accompanies such lofty status, derivatives become exceedingly dangerous, said Robert Arvanitis, chief executive of Risk Finance Advisors, a corporate advisory firm specializing in insurance. "If companies were not implicitly backed by the taxpayers, then managements would get very reluctant to go out after that next billion of notional on swaps," he said. "They'd look over their shoulder and say, 'This is getting dangerous.'" Morgenson is positively tame compared to Munchau. I'm quoting him more liberally, because the tone of his remarks are remarkably pointed for him and the FT generally. Notice that he explicitly, and repeatedly, says the use of naked credit default swaps looks an awful lot like a crime:

Robert Parry dismantles The New York Times' cover-up of the coup in Ukraine. 

For many years, Israel has taxed Gaza residents, then paid the Gaza government the collected taxes. But Israel began reducing the payments then finally cut it off entirely. Doctors and medical staff in Gaza have had no pay for five months and had been on half-pay for eight months prior to that. Before the rockets began flying, medical supplies and equipment in Gaza were already severely depleted.  Qatar wants to send Gaza $20 million so the Gaza government employees can be paid. Now Israel threatens to expel the special U.N. envoy for the Mideast Peace Process because he offered to transfer the funds.  The Israeli hubris explodes in faux anger. Not a bright move because Gaza and the West Bank are classified as Occupied Territories Israel under the Fourth Geneva Convention. As the occupying power, Israel is required to maintain the elected Gaza government and is responsible for the well being of all Gaza residents. But Israel has been ignoring U.N. decisions including Security Council decisions from the moment the Israeli government was formed in 1948.   Making an enemy of the international human rights officials will prove doubly dumb when Israeli officials are inevitably seated in the dock of the International Criminal Court facing charges for war crimes, crimes against peace, and crimes against humanity. Human rights lawyers and judges pull no punches.   

Paul Craig Roberts dismantles the latest employment stats.