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Gary Edwards

Jim Kunstler's 2014 Forecast - Burning Down The House | Zero Hedge - 0 views

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    Incredible must read analysis. Take away: the world is going to go "medevil". It's the only way out of this mess. Since the zero hedge layout is so bad, i'm going to post as much of the article as Diigo will allow: Jim Kunstler's 2014 Forecast - Burning Down The House Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/06/2014 19:36 -0500 Submitted by James H. Kunstler of Kunstler.com , Many of us in the Long Emergency crowd and like-minded brother-and-sisterhoods remain perplexed by the amazing stasis in our national life, despite the gathering tsunami of forces arrayed to rock our economy, our culture, and our politics. Nothing has yielded to these forces already in motion, so far. Nothing changes, nothing gives, yet. It's like being buried alive in Jell-O. It's embarrassing to appear so out-of-tune with the consensus, but we persevere like good soldiers in a just war. Paper and digital markets levitate, central banks pull out all the stops of their magical reality-tweaking machine to manipulate everything, accounting fraud pervades public and private enterprise, everything is mis-priced, all official statistics are lies of one kind or another, the regulating authorities sit on their hands, lost in raptures of online pornography (or dreams of future employment at Goldman Sachs), the news media sprinkles wishful-thinking propaganda about a mythical "recovery" and the "shale gas miracle" on a credulous public desperate to believe, the routine swindles of medicine get more cruel and blatant each month, a tiny cohort of financial vampire squids suck in all the nominal wealth of society, and everybody else is left whirling down the drain of posterity in a vortex of diminishing returns and scuttled expectations. Life in the USA is like living in a broken-down, cob-jobbed, vermin-infested house that needs to be gutted, disinfected, and rebuilt - with the hope that it might come out of the restoration process retaining the better qualities of our heritage.
Paul Merrell

Tech giants oppose NSA reform bill for timid safeguards against spying - RT USA - 0 views

  • Ahead of Thursday’s US House vote on a bill sold as reform of a major US government spying program, top technology firms like Google have joined civil liberties and privacy groups in calling the legislation inadequate in fighting mass surveillance. The Reform Government Surveillance coalition – AOL, Apple, Dropbox, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter, and Yahoo – offered a statement on Wednesday denouncing the USA Freedom Act as a weak attempt at ending the government’s bulk storage of domestic phone metadata.
  • The USA Freedom Act would take the mass storage of phone records away from the government. Instead, telecommunications companies would be required to store the data. The bill would require the National Security Agency to get approval to search the telecoms’ cache of records from the often-compliant Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Last-minute changes to the bill rankled privacy groups on Tuesday, leading many of them to decry the backdoor dealings as responsible for a “weakened,” “watered down” bill compared to what had previously passed the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees earlier this month. On Wednesday, the tech coalition echoed these concerns, calling the amended legislation a move “in the wrong direction” of needed reform regarding mass surveillance. "The latest draft opens up an unacceptable loophole that could enable the bulk collection of Internet users' data," the coalition said. "While it makes important progress, we cannot support this bill as currently drafted and urge Congress to close this loophole to ensure meaningful reform." The loophole referred to by the coalition pertains to the USA Freedom Act’s definition for how and when government officials can search collected phone metadata records.
  • The new language – approved by House leaders and the Obama administration in recent days – modifies the prohibitions on bulk collection of domestic data to allow government officials to search for Americans’ phone records using a “a discrete term, such as a term specifically identifying a person, entity, account, address, or device, used by the Government to limit the scope of the information or tangible things sought.” This revised standard for the USA Freedom Act’s reform of surveillance is too broad and leaves privacy protections at risk, civil liberties groups said on Tuesday. In addition, the legislation’s new language also weakens the bill’s transparency provisions which outlined how much technology companies can disclose to customers about the extent of government requests of user data.
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  • In addition to the tech coalition’s protest, the Computer & Communications Industry Association – whose members include Pandora, Samsung, Sprint, and others – said Wednesday it would “not support consideration or passage of the USA Freedom Act in its current form." The Obama administration publicly threw its support behind the amended USA Freedom Act, saying the bill would “provide the public greater confidence in our programs and the checks and balances in the system.” “The bill ensures our intelligence and law enforcement professionals have the authorities they need to protect the nation, while further ensuring that individuals’ privacy is appropriately protected when these authorities are employed,” the White House included.
  • Lawmakers opposed to the secretive negotiations attempted on Tuesday to counter the weakened surveillance reform bill by offering an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that is “materially identical” to the version of the USA Freedom Act that was advanced by the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees earlier this month. Yet the amendment was denied by the House Rules Committee late Tuesday. The House is now scheduled to vote on the USA Freedom Act on Thursday under closed rules, which forbids adding amendments before the final vote.
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    The Obama Administration and NSA supporters in the House of Representatives resort to a successful last-minute ambush attack to eviscerate the modest reforms proposed in the USA Freedom Act. 
Gary Edwards

Fears of a New Bubble as Cash Pours In - WSJ.com - 0 views

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    Those bastard banks have taken over $2 Trillion from the taxpayers, and are using this cash to invest in emerging markets instead of the USA.  The Feds are providing interest free money to central banks, which then are used to invest in emerging economies.  The bankers get the profits and USA taxpayers get stuck with the cost.   There is no possible upside for USA taxpayers unless of course you agree with Obama that the USA standard of living and extraordinary economic prosperity must be lowered before global economic equality can be achieved.  This isn't just about greedy bankers and self interested international corporations.  Wealth redistribution is now the official policy of our government.  And the Federal Reserve is carrying it out with unexpected zeal. The numbers are coming in.  The facts are on the table.  The USA is being gutted. excerpt:  Asian stock prices are shooting up, in part due to low interest rates in the U.S. Investors looking for higher yields are borrowing in U.S. dollars and then pouring that money "into countries that are growing more rapidly," said Stephen Cecchetti, chief economist at the Bank for International Settlements, the central banks' central bank, which warned early of the last asset bubble and is beginning to do so again. "That runs the risk of creating property and equity booms in those countries." About $53 billion has gone into emerging-market stock funds this year, according to data collector EPFR Global. Through Monday's trading, the broad MSCI Barra Emerging Markets Index this year was up 60.7%. Brazil was up 100%, and Indonesia had gains of 102.7%. Over the same period, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 11.5%.
Paul Merrell

DEA Global Surveillance Dragnet Exposed; Access to Data Likely Continues - The Intercept - 0 views

  • Secret mass surveillance conducted by the Drug Enforcement Administration is falling under renewed scrutiny after fresh revelations about the broad scope of the agency’s electronic spying. On Tuesday, USA Today reported that for more than two decades, dating back to 1992, the DEA and the Justice Department “amassed logs of virtually all telephone calls from the USA to as many as 116 countries linked to drug trafficking.” Citing anonymous current and former officials “involved with the operation,” USA Today reported that Americans’ calls were logged between the United States and targeted countries and regions including Canada, Mexico, and Central and South America.
  • The DEA’s data dragnet was apparently shut down by Attorney General Eric Holder in September 2013. But on Wednesday, following USA Today’s report, Human Rights Watch launched a lawsuit against the DEA over its bulk collection of phone records and is seeking a retrospective declaration that the surveillance was unlawful. The latest revelations shine more light on the broad scope of the DEA’s involvement in mass surveillance programs, which can be traced back to a secret program named “Project Crisscross” in the early 1990s, as The Intercept previously revealed. Documents from National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, published by The Intercept in August last year, showed that the DEA was involved in collecting and sharing billions of phone records alongside agencies such as the NSA, the CIA and the FBI.
  • The vast program reported on by USA Today shares some of the same hallmarks of Project Crisscross: it began in the early 1990s, was ostensibly aimed at gathering intelligence about drug trafficking, and targeted countries worldwide, with focus on Central and South America. It is also reminiscent of the so-called Hemisphere Project, a DEA operation revealed in September 2013 by The New York Times, which dated as far back as 1987, and used subpoenas to collect vast amounts of international call records every day. There is crossover, too, with a DEA database called DICE, revealed by Reuters in August 2013, which reportedly contains phone and Internet communication records gathered by the DEA through subpoenas and search warrants nationwide. The precise relationship between Crisscross, DICE, Hemisphere and the surveillance program revealed by USA Today is unclear. Whether or not they were part of a single overarching operation, the phone records and other data collected by each were likely accessible to DEA agents through the same computer interfaces and search and analysis tools.
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  • A Justice Department spokesman told Reuters Wednesday that “all of the information has been deleted” and that the DEA was “no longer collecting bulk telephony metadata from U.S. service providers.” What the spokesman did not say is that the DEA has access to troves of phone records from multiple sources — and not all of them are obtained from U.S. service providers. As The Intercept’s reporting on Project Crisscross revealed, the DEA has had large-scale access to data covertly collected by the NSA, CIA and other agencies for years. According to NSA documents obtained by Snowden, the DEA can sift through billions of metadata records collected by other agencies about emails, phone calls, faxes, Internet chats and text messages using systems named ICREACH and CRISSCROSS/PROTON.
  • Notably, the DEA spying reported by USA Today encompassed phone records collected by the DEA using administrative subpoenas to obtain data from phone companies without the approval of a judge. The phone records collected by the agency as part of Project Hemisphere and the data stored on the DICE system were also collected through subpoenas and warrants. But ICREACH alone was designed to handle two to five billion new records every day — the majority of them not collected using any conventional search warrant or a subpoena. Instead, most of the data accessible to the DEA through ICREACH is vacuumed up by the NSA using Executive Order 12333, a controversial Reagan-era presidential directive that underpins several NSA bulk surveillance operations that monitor communications overseas. The 12333 surveillance takes place with no court oversight and has received minimal Congressional scrutiny because it is targeted at foreign, not domestic, communication networks.
  • This means that some of the DEA’s access to mass surveillance data — records collected in bulk through subpoenas or warrants — may have been shut down by Holder in 2013. But it is likely that the agency still has the ability to tap into other huge data repositories, and questions remain about how that access is being used.
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    How many ways do I love thee? ... Just a few minutes. I have to consult my haystacks.  'Twas on August 20, 1982 when Ronald Reagan formally declered "War on Drugs," thereby sweeping U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration records under the umbrella of "national security" secrets. Concurrently, a document was produced by the White House that mentioned that the forerunners of today's "fusion centers" would be created to begin trawling government databases for information to wage that war, including medical records held by the then-Veterans Administration. I''ve been keeping an eye on those rascals ever since. Believe me, we have merely scratched the surface of a very few of the Feds' "haystacks." There are very many to go before they're all rooted out into the sunlight.  
Paul Merrell

USA Freedom Act Passes: What We Celebrate, What We Mourn, and Where We Go From Here | E... - 0 views

  • The Senate passed the USA Freedom Act today by 67-32, marking the first time in over thirty years that both houses of Congress have approved a bill placing real restrictions and oversight on the National Security Agency’s surveillance powers. The weakening amendments to the legislation proposed by NSA defender Senate Majority Mitch McConnell were defeated, and we have every reason to believe that President Obama will sign USA Freedom into law. Technology users everywhere should celebrate, knowing that the NSA will be a little more hampered in its surveillance overreach, and both the NSA and the FISA court will be more transparent and accountable than it was before the USA Freedom Act. It’s no secret that we wanted more. In the wake of the damning evidence of surveillance abuses disclosed by Edward Snowden, Congress had an opportunity to champion comprehensive surveillance reform and undertake a thorough investigation, like it did with the Church Committee. Congress could have tried to completely end mass surveillance and taken numerous other steps to rein in the NSA and FBI. This bill was the result of compromise and strong leadership by Sens. Patrick Leahy and Mike Lee and Reps. Robert Goodlatte, Jim Sensenbrenner, and John Conyers. It’s not the bill EFF would have written, and in light of the Second Circuit's thoughtful opinion, we withdrew our support from the bill in an effort to spur Congress to strengthen some of its privacy protections and out of concern about language added to the bill at the behest of the intelligence community. Even so, we’re celebrating. We’re celebrating because, however small, this bill marks a day that some said could never happen—a day when the NSA saw its surveillance power reduced by Congress. And we’re hoping that this could be a turning point in the fight to rein in the NSA.
Paul Merrell

Congress Is Irrelevant on Mass Surveillance. Here's What Matters Instead. - The Intercept - 0 views

  • The “USA Freedom Act”—the proponents of which were heralding as “NSA reform” despite its suffocatingly narrow scope—died in the august U.S. Senate last night when it attracted only 58 of the 60 votes needed to close debate and move on to an up-or-down vote. All Democratic and independent senators except one (Bill Nelson of Florida) voted in favor of the bill, as did three tea-party GOP Senators (Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and Dean Heller). One GOP Senator, Rand Paul, voted against it on the ground that it did not go nearly far enough in reining in the NSA. On Monday, the White House had issued a statement “strongly supporting” the bill. The “debate” among the Senators that preceded the vote was darkly funny and deeply boring, in equal measure. The black humor was due to the way one GOP senator after the next—led by ranking intelligence committee member Saxby Chambliss of Georgia (pictured above)—stood up and literally screeched about 9/11 and ISIS over and over and over, and then sat down as though they had made a point.
  • So the pro-NSA Republican senators were actually arguing that if the NSA were no longer allowed to bulk-collect the communication records of Americans inside the U.S., then ISIS would kill you and your kids. But because they were speaking in an empty chamber and only to their warped and insulated D.C. circles and sycophantic aides, there was nobody there to cackle contemptuously or tell them how self-evidently moronic it all was. So they kept their Serious Faces on like they were doing The Nation’s Serious Business, even though what was coming out of their mouths sounded like the demented ramblings of a paranoid End is Nigh cult. The boredom of this spectacle was simply due to the fact that this has been seen so many times before—in fact, every time in the post-9/11 era that the U.S. Congress pretends publicly to debate some kind of foreign policy or civil liberties bill. Just enough members stand up to scream “9/11″ and “terrorism” over and over until the bill vesting new powers is passed or the bill protecting civil liberties is defeated.
  • Eight years ago, when this tawdry ritual was still a bit surprising to me, I live-blogged the 2006 debate over passage of the Military Commissions Act, which, with bipartisan support, literally abolished habeas corpus rights established by the Magna Carta by sanctioning detention without charges or trial. (My favorite episode there was when GOP Sen. Arlen Specter warned that “what the bill seeks to do is set back basic rights by some nine hundred years,” and then voted in favor of its enactment.) In my state of naive disbelief, as one senator after the next thundered about the “message we are sending” to “the terrorists,” I wrote: “The quality of the ‘debate’ on the Senate floor is so shockingly (though appropriately) low and devoid of substance that it is hard to watch.” So watching last night’s Senate debate was like watching a repeat of some hideously shallow TV show. The only new aspect was that the aging Al Qaeda villain has been rather ruthlessly replaced by the show’s producers with the younger, sleeker ISIS model. Showing no gratitude at all for the years of value it provided these senators, they ignored the veteran terror group almost completely in favor of its new replacement. And they proceeded to save a domestic surveillance program clearly unpopular among those they pretend to represent.
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  • Ever since the Snowden reporting began and public opinion (in both the U.S. and globally) began radically changing, the White House’s strategy has been obvious. It’s vintage Obama: Enact something that is called “reform”—so that he can give a pretty speech telling the world that he heard and responded to their concerns—but that in actuality changes almost nothing, thus strengthening the very system he can pretend he “changed.” That’s the same tactic as Silicon Valley, which also supported this bill: Be able to point to something called “reform” so they can trick hundreds of millions of current and future users around the world into believing that their communications are now safe if they use Facebook, Google, Skype and the rest. In pretty much every interview I’ve done over the last year, I’ve been asked why there haven’t been significant changes from all the disclosures. I vehemently disagree with the premise of the question, which equates “U.S. legislative changes” with “meaningful changes.” But it has been clear from the start that U.S. legislation is not going to impose meaningful limitations on the NSA’s powers of mass surveillance, at least not fundamentally. Those limitations are going to come from—are now coming from —very different places:
  • All of that illustrates what is, to me, the most important point from all of this: the last place one should look to impose limits on the powers of the U.S. government is . . . the U.S. government. Governments don’t walk around trying to figure out how to limit their own power, and that’s particularly true of empires. The entire system in D.C. is designed at its core to prevent real reform. This Congress is not going to enact anything resembling fundamental limits on the NSA’s powers of mass surveillance. Even if it somehow did, this White House would never sign it. Even if all that miraculously happened, the fact that the U.S. intelligence community and National Security State operates with no limits and no oversight means they’d easily co-opt the entire reform process. That’s what happened after the eavesdropping scandals of the mid-1970s led to the establishment of congressional intelligence committees and a special FISA “oversight” court—the committees were instantly captured by putting in charge supreme servants of the intelligence community like Senators Dianne Feinstein and Chambliss, and Congressmen Mike Rogers and “Dutch” Ruppersberger, while the court quickly became a rubber stamp with subservient judges who operate in total secrecy.
  • There is a real question about whether the defeat of this bill is good, bad, or irrelevant. To begin with, it sought to change only one small sliver of NSA mass surveillance (domestic bulk collection of phone records under section 215 of the Patriot Act) while leaving completely unchanged the primary means of NSA mass surveillance, which takes place under section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, based on the lovely and quintessentially American theory that all that matters are the privacy rights of Americans (and not the 95 percent of the planet called “non-Americans”). There were some mildly positive provisions in the USA Freedom Act: the placement of “public advocates” at the FISA court to contest the claims of the government; the prohibition on the NSA holding Americans’ phone records, requiring instead that they obtain FISA court approval before seeking specific records from the telecoms (which already hold those records for at least 18 months); and reducing the agency’s “contact chaining” analysis from three hops to two. One could reasonably argue (as the ACLU and EFF did) that, though woefully inadequate, the bill was a net-positive as a first step toward real reform, but one could also reasonably argue, as Marcy Wheeler has with characteristic insight, that the bill is so larded with ambiguities and fundamental inadequacies that it would forestall better options and advocates for real reform should thus root for its defeat.
  • 1) Individuals refusing to use internet services that compromise their privacy.
  • 2) Other countries taking action against U.S. hegemony over the internet.
  • 4) Greater individual demand for, and use of, encryption.
  • 3) U.S. court proceedings.
  • The “USA Freedom Act”—which its proponents were heralding as “NSA reform” despite its suffocatingly narrow scope—died in the august U.S. Senate last night when it attracted only 58 of the 60 votes needed to close debate and move on to an up-or-down vote. All Democratic and independent senators except one (Bill Nelson of Florida) voted in favor of the bill, as did three tea-party GOP Senators (Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and Dean Heller). One GOP Senator, Rand Paul, voted against it on the ground that it did not go nearly far enough in reining in the NSA. On Monday, the White House had issued a statement “strongly supporting” the bill.
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    Glenn Greenwald on why the death of the USA Freedom Act is actually a Very Good Thing. I couldn't agree more.
Paul Merrell

The Neocons and the "deep state" have neutered the Trump Presidency, it's over folks! (... - 0 views

  • Less than a month ago I warned that a ‘color revolution ‘ was taking place in the USA.  My first element of proof was the so-called “investigation” which the CIA, FBI, NSA and others were conducting against President Trump’s candidate to become National Security Advisor, General Flynn.  Tonight, the plot to get rid of Flynn has finally succeeded and General Flynn had to offer his resignation.  Trump accepted it. Now let’s immediately get one thing out of the way: Flynn was hardly a saint or a perfect wise man who would single handedly saved the world.  That he was not.  However, what Flynn was is the cornerstone of Trump’s national security policy.  For one thing, Flynn dared the unthinkable: he dared to declare that the bloated US intelligence community had to be reformed.  Flynn also tried to subordinate the CIA and the Joint Chiefs to the President via the National Security Council.  Put differently, Flynn tried to wrestle the ultimate power and authority from the CIA and the Pentagon and subordinate them back to the White House.  Flynn also wanted to work with Russia. Not because he was a Russia lover, the notion of a Director of the DIA as a Putin-fan is ridiculous, but Flynn was rational, he understood that Russia was no threat to the USA or to Europe and that Russia had the West had common interests.  That is another absolutely unforgivable crimethink in Washington DC. The Neocon run ‘deep state’ has now forced Flynn to resign under the idiotic pretext that he had a telephone conversation, on an open, insecure and clearly monitored, line with the Russian ambassador. And Trump accepted this resignation. Ever since Trump made it to the White House, he has taken blow after blow from the Neocon-run Ziomedia, from Congress, from all the Hollywood doubleplusgoodthinking “stars” and even from European politicians.  And Trump took each blow without ever fighting back.  Nowhere was his famous “you are fired!” to be seen.  But I still had hope.  I wanted to hope.  I felt that it was my duty to hope. But now Trump has betrayed us all.
  • Remember how Obama showed his true face when he hypocritically denounced his friend and pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.?  Today, Trump has shown us his true face.  Instead of refusing Flynn’s resignation and instead of firing those who dared cook up these ridiculous accusations against Flynn, Trump accepted the resignation.  This is not only an act of abject cowardice, it is also an amazingly stupid and self-defeating betrayal because now Trump will be alone, completely alone, facing the likes of Mattis and Pence – hard Cold Warrior types, ideological to the core, folks who want war and simply don’t care about reality. Again, Flynn was not my hero.  But he was, by all accounts, Trump’s hero.  And Trump betrayed him. The consequences of this will be immense.  For one thing, Trump is now clearly broken. It took the ‘deep state’ only weeks to castrate Trump and to make him bow to the powers that be.  Those who would have stood behind Trump will now feel that he will not stand behind them and they will all move back away from him.  The Neocons will feel elated by the elimination of their worst enemy and emboldened by this victory they will push on, doubling-down over and over and over again. It’s over, folks, the deep state has won.
  • Where does all this leave us – the millions of anonymous ‘deplorables’ who try as best we can to resist imperialism, war, violence and injustice? I think that we were right in our hopes because that is all we had – hopes.  No expectations, just hopes.  But now we objectively have very little reasons left to hope.  For one thing, the Washington ‘swamp’ will not be drained.  If anything, the swamp has triumphed.  We can only find some degree of solace in two undeniable facts: Hillary would have been far worse than any version of a Trump Presidency. In order to defeat Trump, the US deep state has had to terribly weaken the US and the AngloZionist Empire.  Just like Erdogan’ purges have left the Turkish military in shambles, the anti-Trump ‘color revolution’ has inflicted terrible damage on the reputation, authority and even credibility of the USA.
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  • The first one is obvious.  So let me clarify the second one.  In their hate-filled rage against Trump and the American people (aka “the basket of deplorables”) the Neocons have had to show they true face.  By their rejection of the outcome of the elections, by their riots, their demonization of Trump, the Neocons have shown two crucial things: first, that the US democracy is a sad joke and that they, the Neocons, are an occupation regime which rules against the will of the American people.  In other words, just like Israel, the USA has no legitimacy left.  And since, just like Israel, the USA are unable to frighten their enemies, they are basically left with nothing, no legitimacy, no ability to coerce.  So yes, the Neocons have won.  But their victory is removes the last chance for the US to avoid a collapse. Trump, for all his faults, did favor the US, as a country, over the global Empire.  Trump was also acutely aware that ‘more of the same’ was not an option.  He wanted policies commensurate with the actual capabilities of the USA.  With Flynn gone and the Neocons back in full control – this is over.  Now we are going to be right back to ideology over reality.
  • Flynn was very much the cornerstone of the hoped-for Trump foreign policy.  There was a real chance that he would reign in the huge, bloated and all-powerful three letter agencies and that he would focus US power against the real enemy of the West: the Wahabis.  With Flynn gone, this entire conceptual edifice has now come down.  We are going to be left with the likes of Mattis and his anti-Iranian statements.  Clowns who only impress other clowns. Today Neocon victory is a huge event and it will probably be completely misrepresented by the official media.  Ironically, Trump supporters will also try minimize it all.  But the reality is that barring a most unlikely last-minute miracle, it’s over for Trump and the hopes of millions of people in the USA and the rest of the world who had hoped that the Neocons could be booted out of power by means of a peaceful election.  That is clearly not going to happen. I see very dark clouds on the horizon.
Paul Merrell

USA Freedom Act Passes House, Codifying Bulk Collection For First Time, Critics Say - T... - 0 views

  • After only one hour of floor debate, and no allowed amendments, the House of Representatives today passed legislation that opponents believe may give brand new authorization to the U.S. government to conduct domestic dragnets. The USA Freedom Act was approved in a 338-88 vote, with approximately equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans voting against. The bill’s supporters say it will disallow bulk collection of domestic telephone metadata, in which the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has regularly ordered phone companies to turn over such data. The Obama administration claims such collection is authorized by Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act, which is set to expire June 1. However, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit recently held that Section 215 does not provide such authorization. Today’s legislation would prevent the government from issuing such orders for bulk collection and instead rely on telephone companies to store all their metadata — some of which the government could then demand using a “specific selection term” related to foreign terrorism. Bill supporters maintain this would prevent indiscriminate collection.
  • However, the legislation may not end bulk surveillance and in fact could codify the ability of the government to conduct dragnet data collection. “We’re taking something that was not permitted under regular section 215 … and now we’re creating a whole apparatus to provide for it,” Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., said on Tuesday night during a House Rules Committee proceeding. “The language does limit the amount of bulk collection, it doesn’t end bulk collection,” Rep. Amash said, arguing that the problematic “specific selection term” allows for “very large data collection, potentially in the hundreds of thousands of people, maybe even millions.” In a statement posted to Facebook ahead of the vote, Rep. Amash said the legislation “falls woefully short of reining in the mass collection of Americans’ data, and it takes us a step in the wrong direction by specifically authorizing such collection in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.”
  • “While I appreciate a number of the reforms in the bill and understand the need for secure counter-espionage and terrorism investigations, I believe our nation is better served by allowing Section 215 to expire completely and replacing it with a measure that finds a better balance between national security interests and protecting the civil liberties of Americans,” Congressman Ted Lieu, D-Calif., said in a statement explaining his vote against the bill.
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  • Not addressed in the bill, however, are a slew of other spying authorities in use by the NSA that either directly or inadvertently target the communications of American citizens. Lawmakers offered several amendments in the days leading up to the vote that would have tackled surveillance activities laid out in Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and Executive Order 12333 — two authorities intended for foreign surveillance that have been used to collect Americans’ internet data, including online address books and buddy lists. The House Rules Committee, however, prohibited consideration of any amendment to the USA Freedom Act, claiming that any changes to the legislation would have weakened its chances of passage.
  • The measure now goes to the Senate where its future is uncertain. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has declined to schedule the bill for consideration, and is instead pushing for a clean reauthorization of expiring Patriot Act provisions that includes no surveillance reforms. Senators Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Rand Paul, R-Ky., have threated to filibuster any bill that extends the Patriot Act without also reforming the NSA.
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    Surprise, surprise. U.S. "progressive" groups are waging an all-out email lobbying effort to sunset the Patriot Act. https://www.sunsetthepatriotact.com/ Same with civil liberties groups. e.g., https://action.aclu.org/secure/Section215 And a coalition of libertarian organizations. http://docs.techfreedom.org/Coalition_Letter_McConnell_215Reauth_4.27.15.pdf
Paul Merrell

Four librarians gagged and threatened with prison time under the Patriot Act | Police S... - 0 views

  • Using the broad powers granted under the USA PATRIOT Act, the FBI demanded that 4 librarians produce private information about library patrons’ reading habits, then used an endless gag order to force them to remain silent about the request for the rest of their lives under penalty of prison time.
  • The FBI was demanding that the library hand over private data on library patrons en masse “to protect against international terrorism.” The document that Mr. Christian was given was a so-called National Security Letter (NSL), a type of administrative subpoena for personal information — self-written by the FBI without any probable cause or judicial oversight.  The legal framework for these powerful NSLs was established by Section 505 of the USA PATRIOT Act in 2001. What’s more, Mr. Christian was placed under a perpetual gag order.  The NSL prohibited the recipient “from disclosing to any person that the F.B.I. has sought or obtained access to information or records under these provisions.”  The gag order was broad enough that it was a crime to discuss the matter to any other person — for life.  The USA PATRIOT Act allows for this suppression of speech, and issues a punishment of up to 5 years in prison for anyone caught violating the endless gag order.
  • The only reason we know about this case today is because Mr. Christian and 3 other library board members fought back in court.  
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  • In fact, the librarians were even barred from attending the court hearings on the very precedent-setting lawsuit with which they were involved. 
  • “Our presence in the courtroom was declared a threat to national security,” Mr. Chase related. The gag served to legally prevent Mr. Christian from personally testifying before Congress about the effects of the USA PATRIOT Act before the law’s reauthorization in March of 2006.   It passed through Congress easily and was signed once again by President George W. Bush. Appellate judges were clearly disturbed by the breadth of the NSL gag provisions.  One appellate judge wrote, “A ban on speech and a shroud of secrecy in perpetuity are antithetical to democratic concepts and do not fit comfortably with the fundamental rights guaranteed American citizens… Unending secrecy of actions taken by government officials may also serve as a cover for possible official misconduct and/or incompetence.” Sensing a potential legal defeat, the government took the steps necessary to preserve its powers.  Only a few weeks after the USA PATRIOT Act was renewed, the FBI abandoned the Library Connection case and voluntarily lifted the librarians’ gag order.  This eliminated the possibility that the NSL provisions could be struck down in court, protecting the USA PATRIOT Act from further judicial scrutiny.  In May 2006, the four librarians broke their silence at last.
  • The result could only be considered a partial victory, however.  While the librarians had regained their freedom to speak, they no longer had legal standing to challenge the NSL provisions, meaning that the sweeping power to subpoena and gag American citizens would remain unchecked in the hands of the government — and continue to be used at an alarming rate; tens of thousands of NSLs and gag orders are issued per year in the name of fighting the so-called War on Terror.
Paul Merrell

Did Russia just "gently" threaten the USA? | The Vineyard of the Saker - 0 views

  • Interesting stuff today.  A major Russian TV channel just aired a report about Putin meeting with his top military commanders.  I don’t have the time to translate what Putin said word for word, but basically he said that the USA had refused every single Russian offer to negotiate about the US anti-missile system in Europe and that while the US had initially promised that the real target of this system was Iran, now that the Iranian nuclear issue had been solved, the US was still deploying the system.  Putin added that the US was clearly attempting to change the world’s military balance.  And then the Russian footage showed this:
  • According to the Kremlin was mistakenly leaked secret document.  And just to make sure that everybody got it, RT wrote a full article in English about this in an article entitled “‘Assured unacceptable damage’: Russian TV accidentally leaks secret ‘nuclear torpedo’ design“. According to RT The presentation slide titled “Ocean Multipurpose System: Status-6” showed some drawings of a new nuclear submarine weapons system. It is apparently designed to bypass NATO radars and any existing missile defense systems, while also causing heavy damage to “important economic facilities” along the enemy’s coastal regions. The footnote to the slide stated that Status-6 is intended to cause “assured unacceptable damage” to an adversary force. Its detonation “in the area of the enemy coast” would result in “extensive zones of radioactive contamination” that would ensure that the region would not be used for “military, economic, business or other activity” for a “long time.” According to the blurred information provided in the slide, the system represents a massive torpedo, designated as “self-propelled underwater vehicle,” with a range of up to 10 thousand kilometers and capable of operating at a depth of up to 1,000 meters. Actually, such ideas are nothing new.  The late Andrei Sakharov had already proposed a similar idea to basically wipe out the entire US East Coast.  The Russians have also look into the possibility to detonate a nuclear device to set off the “Yellowstone Caldera” and basically destroy most of the USA in one shot.  While in the early years following WWII the Soviets did look into all sort of schemes to threaten the USA with destruction, the subsequent development of Soviet nuclear capabilities made the development of this type of “doomsday weapons” useless.  Personally, I don’t believe for one second that the Russians are now serious about developing such system as it would be literally a waste of resources.  So what is going on here?
  • This so-called “leak” of “secret documents” is, of course, no leak at all.  This is a completely deliberate action.  To imagine that a Russian journalist could, just by mistake, film a secret document (helpfully held up for him by a general) and then just walk away, get it passed his editor and air it is laughable.  Any footage taken in a meeting of the President with his senior generals would be checked many times over.  No, this was a deliberate way to remind the USA that if they really are hell-bent on spending billions of dollars in a futile quest to create some kind of anti-missile system Russia could easily develop a cheap weapon system to still threaten the USA with total annihilation.  Because, make no mistake, the kind of long range torpedo being suggested here would be rather cheap to build using only already existing technologies.  I would even add that rather than setting such a weapon off the US coast the system could also be designed to fire off a secondary missile (ballistic or cruise) which could then fly to any inland target.  Again, such technologies already exist in the Russian military and have even been deployed on a smaller scale. See for yourself:
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  • Coming back to the real world, I don’t believe for one second that any type of anti-missile system could be deployed in Europe to shield NATO the EU or the US from a Russian retaliatory strike should the Empire ever decide to attack Russia.  All the East Europeans are doing is painting a cross-hair on themselves as these will be the very first targets to be destroyed in case of a crisis.  How? By use of special forces first and, if needed, by Iskander missile strikes if all else fails.  But the most likely scenario is that key components of the anti-missile system will suddenly experience “inexplicable failures” which will render the entire system useless.  The Russians know that and so do the Americans.  But just to make sure that everybody got the message the Russians have now shown that even a fully functional and survivable US anti-missile system will not protect anybody from a Russian retaliation. The sad thing is that US analysts all fully understand that but they have no say in a fantastically corrupt Pentagon.  The real purpose of the US program is not to protect anybody against a non-existing Russian threat, but to dole out billions of dollars to US corporations and their shareholders.  And if in the process the US destabilizes the entire planet and threatens the Russians – then “to hell with ‘em Russikes!  We are the indispensable nation and f**k the rest of the planet!”  Right? Wrong. What happened today is a gentle reminder of that.
Paul Merrell

Russian options against a US attack on Syria | The Vineyard of the Saker - 0 views

  • The tensions between Russia and the USA have reached an unprecedented level. I fully agree with the participants of this CrossTalk show – the situation is even worse and more dangerous than during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Both sides are now going to the so-called “Plan B” which, simply put, stand for, at best, no negotiations and, at worst, a war between Russia and the USA.
  • In theory, these are, very roughly, the possible levels of confrontation: A military standoff à la Berlin in 1961. One could argue that this is what is already taking place right now, albeit in a more long-distance and less visible way. A single military incident, such as what happened recently when Turkey shot down a Russian SU-24 and Russia chose not to retaliate. A series of localized clashes similar to what is currently happening between India and Pakistan. A conflict limited to the Syrian theater of war (say like the war between the UK and Argentina over the Malvinas Islands). A regional or global military confrontation between the USA and Russia. A full scale thermonuclear war between the USA and Russia During my years as a student of military strategy I have participated in many exercises on escalation and de-escalation and I can attest that while it is very easy to come up with escalatory scenarios, I have yet to see a credible scenario for de-escalation. What is possible, however, is the so-called “horizontal escalation” or “asymmetrical escalation” in which one side choses not to up the ante or directly escalate, but instead choses a different target for retaliation, not necessarily a more valuable one, just a different one on the same level of conceptual importance (in the USA Joshua M. Epstein and Spencer D. Bakich did most of the groundbreaking work on this topic).
  • The main reason why we can expect the Kremlin to try to find asymmetrical options to respond to a US attack is that in the Syrian context Russia is hopelessly outgunned by the US/NATO, at least in quantitative terms. The logical solutions for the Russians is to use their qualitative advantage or to seek “horizontal targets” as possible retaliatory options. This week, something very interesting and highly uncharacteristic happened: Major General Igor Konashenkov, the Chief of the Directorate of Media service and Information of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation, openly mentioned one such option. Here is what he said: “As for Kirby’s threats about possible Russian aircraft losses and the sending of Russian servicemen back to Russia in body bags, I would say that we know exactly where and how many “unofficial specialists” operate in Syria and in the Aleppo province and we know that they are involved in the operational planning and that they supervise the operations of the militants. Of course, one can continue to insist that they are unsuccessfully involved in trying to separate the al-Nusra terrorists from the “opposition” forces. But if somebody tries to implement these threats, it is by no means certain that these militants will have to time to get the hell out of there.” Nice, no? Konashenkov appears to be threatening the “militants” but he is sure to mention that there are plenty of “unofficial specialists” amongst these militants and that Russia knows exactly where they are and how many of them there are. Of course, officially, Obama has declared that there are a few hundred such US special advisors in Syria. A well-informed Russian source suggests that there are up to 5’000 foreign ‘advisors’ to the Takfiris including about 4’000 Americans. I suppose that the truth is somewhere between these two figures.
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  • So the Russian threat is simple: you attack us and we will attack US forces in Syria. Of course, Russia will vehemently deny targeting US servicemen and insist that the strike was only against terrorists, but both sides understand what is happening here. Interestingly, just last week the Iranian Fars news agency reported that such a Russian attack had already happened: 30 Israeli, Foreign Intelligence Officers Killed in Russia’s Caliber Missile Attack in Aleppo: “The Russian warships fired three Caliber missiles at the foreign officers’ coordination operations room in Dar Ezza region in the Western part of Aleppo near Sam’an mountain, killing 30 Israeli and western officers,” the Arabic-language service of Russia’s Sputnik news agency quoted battlefield source in Aleppo as saying on Wednesday. The operations room was located in the Western part of Aleppo province in the middle of sky-high Sam’an mountain and old caves. The region is deep into a chain of mountains. Several US, Turkish, Saudi, Qatari and British officers were also killed along with the Israeli officers. The foreign officers who were killed in the Aleppo operations room were directing the terrorists’ attacks in Aleppo and Idlib.” Whether this really happened or whether the Russians are leaking such stories to indicate that this could happen, the fact remains that US forces in Syria could become an obvious target for Russian retaliation, whether by cruise missile, gravity bombs or direct action operation by Russian special forces. The US also has several covert military installations in Syria, including at least one airfield with V-22 Osprey multi-mission tiltrotor aircraft.
  • Another interesting recent development has been the Fox News report that Russians are deploying S-300V (aka “SA-23 Gladiator anti-missile and anti-aircraft system”) in Syria. Check out this excellent article for a detailed discussion of the capabilities of this missile system. I will summarize it by saying that the S-300V can engage ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, very low RCS (“stealth”) aircraft and AWACS aircraft. This is an Army/Army Corps -level air defense system, well capable of defending most of the Syrian airspace, but also reach well into Turkey, Cyprus, the eastern Mediterranean and Lebanon. The powerful radars of this system could not only detect and engage US aircraft (including “stealth”) at a long distance, but they could also provide a tremendous help for the few Russian air superiority fighters by giving them a clear pictures of the skies and enemy aircraft by using encrypted datalinks. Finally, US air doctrine is extremely dependent on the use of AWACS aircraft to guide and support US fighters. The S-300V will forces US/NATO AWACS to operate at a most uncomfortable distance. Between the longer-range radars of the Russian Sukhois, the radars on the Russian cruisers off the Syrian coast, and the S-300 and S-300V radars on the ground, the Russians will have a much better situational awareness than their US counterparts. It appears that the Russians are trying hard to compensate for their numerical inferiority by deploying high-end systems for which the US has no real equivalent or good counter-measures.
  • There are basically two options of deterrence: denial, when you prevent your enemy from hitting his targets and retaliation, when you make the costs of an enemy attack unacceptably high for him. The Russians appear to be pursuing both tracks at the same time. We can thus summarize the Russian approach as such Delay a confrontation as much as possible (buy time). Try to keep any confrontation at the lowest possible escalatory level. If possible, reply with asymmetrical/horizontal escalations. Rather then “prevail” against the US/NATO – make the costs of attack too high. Try to put pressure on US “allies” in order to create tensions inside the Empire. Try to paralyze the USA on a political level by making the political costs of an attack too high-end. Try to gradually create the conditions on the ground (Aleppo) to make a US attack futile To those raised on Hollywood movies and who still watch TV, this kind of strategy will elicit only frustration and condemnation. There are millions of armchair strategists who are sure that they could do a much better job than Putin to counter the US Empire. These folks have now been telling us for *years* that Putin “sold out” the Syrians (and the Novorussians) and that the Russians ought to do X, Y and Z to defeat the AngloZionist Empire. The good news is that none of these armchair strategists sit in the Kremlin and that the Russians have stuck to their strategy over the past years, one day at a time, even when criticized by those who want quick and “easy” solutions. But the main good news is that the Russian strategy is working. Not only is the Nazi-occupied Ukraine quite literally falling apart, but the US has basically run out of options in Syria (see this excellent analysis by my friend Alexander Mercouris in the Duran).
  • The only remaining logical steps left for the USA in Syria is to accept Russia’s terms or leave. The problem is that I am not at all convinced that the Neocons, who run the White House, Congress and the US corporate media, are “rational” at all. This is why the Russians employed so many delaying tactics and why they have acted with such utmost caution: they are dealing with professional incompetent ideologues who simply do not play by the unwritten but clear rules of civilized international relations. This is what makes the current crisis so much worse than even the Cuban Missile Crisis: one superpower has clearly gone insane. Are the Americans crazy enough to risk WWIII over Aleppo? Maybe, maybe not. But what if we rephrase that question and ask Are the Americans crazy enough to risk WWIII to maintain their status as the “world’s indispensable nation”, the “leader of the free world”, the “city on the hill” and all the rest of this imperialistic nonsense? Here I would submit that yes, they potentially are.
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    This is a must-read. We are at a perilous moment in history.
Gary Edwards

A New Reserve Currency to Challenge the Dollar | Veterans Today - 0 views

  •  
    Author David Malone digs into world events, suggesting that all the saber rattling over Iran and nuclear weapons is really about GOLD!   He argues that the dollar is rapidly being replaced as the world's "settlement" currency.  As a function, "settlement" is different than "reserve", but since WWII and the Basel Conference, the USA Dollar has been both the currency of "reserve" and settlement".  That is now changing, and fast! David further suggests that the Iraqi wars with Saddam Hussein were also about his use of the Euro to "settle" oil purchases.  It could also be argued that Muamma Gaddafi in Lybia was removed because he was organizing all of Africa to "settle" oil and other commodity purchases in GOLD, and not the USA Dollar. Are the Islamic wars really about oil?  Or are they about how oil purchases are "settled"? David further argues that Russia, India, China and Japan are actively pursuing a GOLD based settlement currency agreement series where the Chinese Yuan plays a central role.  Interestingly, all of these countries have cut agreements with Iran.  Which seems to have triggered the December 2011 Obama response banning any banks, both private and government controlled, from dealings with Iran.   It's increasingly looking like it's not the Iranian nuclear weapons program that is upsetting to Obama and his Bankster buddies.  It's the rapid replacement of the worthless paper USA dollar as a settlement currency. One of the interesting points the venerable "Veterans Today" news sight is making is that our military is being used to forcefully prop up an inflationary Bankster Dollar, and force oil producing countries into accepting that inflated Bankster Dollar as payment.  The one thing the International Bankster Cartel doesn't want is for the trade of important commodities, especially energy, to be paid for in GOLD instead of the worthless paper they control. excerpt: I think the stand-off with Iran in the Straits of Hormuz over sanctions is a
Gary Edwards

$29,000,000,000,000: A Detailed Look at the Fed's Bailout by Funding Facility and Recip... - 0 views

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    Stunning stuff.  No need to bailout the European Banks because the Federal Reserve has already done that!!! The Levi Institute of Economics has published the details of the Federal Reserve's International Bankster bailout from late 2007 to 2009.  It's far more than the $16.2 Trillion the GAO audit uncovered in July of 2010.  It's far more than the $7.77 Trillion Bloomberg discovered in their Freedom of Information action against the Federal Reserve.  Researching the "recipients" of the USA Federal reserve Bankster largess, the Levi Institute documents a whopping $29 Trillion has been distributed to Bankster coffers at near zero percent interest.   Note that no debt, and no loans of any kind has been purchased, retired, restructured or otherwise dealt with.  The bad loans remain on the books, including crushing interest payments that continue to escalate and accrue.  Debtors continue to fall deeper into debt.  Foreclosure and default loom over public, private and sovereign debtors.  So where did the money go?  $29 Trill is more than enough to retire the entire USA national debt, with interest, and, every mortgage both public and private in the USA. abstract: There have been a number of estimates of the total amount of funding provided by the Federal Reserve to bail out the financial system. For example, Bloomberg recently claimed that the cumulative commitment by the Fed (this includes asset purchases plus lending) was $7.77 trillion. As part of the Ford Foundation project "A Research and Policy Dialogue Project on Improving Governance of the Government Safety Net in Financial Crisis," Nicola Matthews and James Felkerson have undertaken an examination of the data on the Fed's bailout of the financial system-the most comprehensive investigation of the raw data to date. This working paper is the first in a series that will report the results of this investigation. The extraordinary scope and magnitude of the recent financial crisis of 2007-09 required an
Gary Edwards

GOP immigration plan devised by Communist Party - 0 views

  • Republican support
  • But why would Republicans get behind such a plan? Some astute political observers advise that when politicians appear to be promoting agendas against their own interest, follow the money.
  • So, illegal aliens would be granted legal status immediately, but five years down the road, if the fence still isn’t built and e-verify still isn’t being used, then their legal status would be revoked. Given that the Department of Homeland Security is already allegedly ignoring border security –with immigration and customs agents suing their own agency for failing to enforce the law – many voters place little confidence in political promises of future enforcement.
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  • But even if big business benefits, the cheap labor advantages are only temporary. Once illegal aliens are fully legalized, businesses will be required to provide just as much in pay and benefits as they pay American workers.
  • In the meantime, however, it is widely assumed those workers will take jobs from American citizens, depress wages and increase unemployment. Moreover, in many key swing states, projected amnesties will swamp the rolls of the unemployed (see table)
  • t’s no surprise that the Republicans supporting this thing are the ones with ties to the Chamber of Commerce, not ordinary voters.”
  • In the meantime, Senate and House opponents have been painstakingly highlighting what they consider to be glaring flaws in these proposals: Every single border security provision in the Senate bill, including the hire of 20,000 Border Patrol agents, denying amnesty to criminals, building fences and installing surveillance devices, can be waived by the Homeland Security secretary. Both the House and Senate proposals emphasize the path to citizenship – the centerpiece of communist efforts – while making border security both vague and secondary. Both bills provide a $5,000 incentive for companies to hire the newly legalized illegal aliens instead of Americans, since the aliens would not be subject to the Obamacare coverage mandate.
  • Although politicians and the media have settled on the claim that there are 11 million illegal aliens, the actual number may well be closer to 20 million to 30 million. There were 10 million in 1996, a mere 10 years after Reagan’s amnesty, and it is doubtful only one million more have been added in the ensuing 17 years. Since 1990, Border agents have apprehended on average more than 1 million illegal aliens per year, almost all from Mexico.
  • When the Reagan amnesty became law, the intention was to naturalize only 1.2 million people, but the actual figure turned out to be 2.7 million. Statistics on illegal immigration have longed tended to be underestimated, sometimes vastly so.
  • Thus, current proposals provide a path to citizenship for as many as 20 to 30 million illegal aliens here now, plus relatives who will be brought in through chain migration and at least 75 percent of those who will come in the future – virtually endless amnesty – while efforts to secure the border are almost certain to be insufficient.
  • With polls showing more than two-thirds of Americans don’t believe “immigration laws would be enforced in the future if illegal aliens were given amnesty,” it is clear that passage of the current Republican-backed bill may indeed fulfill the agenda of its communist originators – the creation of a permanent Democrat voting majority, guaranteeing permanent control of the United States government by leftist progressives.
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    Wow.  Documentation up the ying yang .......... "The U.S. Senate's "Gang of Eight" immigration-reform plan, as well as a strikingly similar plan now being backed by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and a bi-partisan House "Gang," both offer the "roadmap to citizenship" originally conceived and carefully developed by members of the Communist Party USA working within the Democratic Party and the radical left activist network for the purpose of using amnestied illegals to build a "permanent progressive majority." That is the inescapable conclusion readers will draw after reading the forthcoming book by acclaimed researcher and blogger Trevor Loudon, titled "The Enemies Within: Communists, Socialists and Progressives in the U.S. Congress." Although not yet published, Loudon agreed to allow WND readers to preview one chapter, titled "Latino Immigrants: Tools to Ensure a 'Governing Coalition' for the Left." Ads by Google Marriage Visa Lawyer $195 Get Your Fiance/Spouse to the USA. Free Consultation. (888) 902-9285 EasyFianceVisa.com/SpousalVisa Canadian Rockies By Train Experience the Rockies By Train. Luxury Mountain Travel By Rail TravelAlberta.us/Train In the book, Loudon exhaustively documents the Left's longtime agenda regarding illegal aliens and how its activists have gone about implementing it. He provides irrefutable proof that the entire immigration-reform movement was the brainchild of American communists and that their goal has long been to establish unchallengeable political supremacy. According to Loudon, the Communist Party USA has influenced U.S. policy toward illegals since at least the 1960s. He traces the history, showing how communists and communist-founded organizations slowly built the movement from the ground up. While other groups certainly joined the effort, the communists were always at the center. For example, he tells the story of CPUSA member Bert Corona, the "Communist Father of the 'Immigrants Rights' move
Gary Edwards

Google News - 0 views

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    WOW!!! Incredible presentation concerning the history of Freedom vs. Tyranny. WOW!! If ever there's a MUST Watch, this is it. Very impressive and sweeping comparison of how authoritarian collectivist seize power in a free society and establish their tyrannies. My notes are listed below: How to recognize potential tyrants and keep them from seizing power. The urge to save humanity is always used to justify those who want to rule humanity. - ML Menken Daniel Webster on the Constitution Obstacles to Tyranny : Limited powers of government .... Due Process .... Presumption of Innocence .... Freedom to Dissent .... Armed Populace: The right to be Armed! Due Process .... 5th Amendment .... Emergency powers. there is no authorization in the US Constitution to suspend Due Process or any aspect of the Bill of Rights .... Asset Seizure Laws for criminal activities (alleged - without warrant or court order) .... Eminent Domain: seizure of private property for government uses: 2005 Kelo vs New London seizure based on jobs (economy) and tax revenue possibilities. .... 6th Amendment - right to trial by jury : plea bargaining admonition based on facing the awesome power of the government to prosecute no matter what - intimidation and threat of personal destruction. .... Forced confessions through plea bargaining. .... Indefinite detention without trial or charges: President has power to kill or issue orders without warrant, charges or trial .... Presumption of Innocence: Probable Cause .... Random stops at Border check points. 5th Amendment protections violated .... Sobriety Check Points: 4th and 5th Amendments violated - no presumption of innocence .... Random detention and questioning: airport security pat downs, housing projects, bus transportation .... The Right to Privacy: financial transactions and the IRS audit (without warrant or accusation) .... Warrant-less Spying .... Agents writing their own search warrants .... Snatch and Peek Freedom to Disse
Paul Merrell

Media Blackout over Syria | Global Research - 0 views

  • On April 6, The London Review of Books published in its online journal Seymour Hersh’s “The Red Line and the Rat Line.” Hersh continues to expose details surrounding the staged August 21 chemical attack incident in Syria, which apparently pretty much everyone in Washington’s intelligence bureaucracy suspected was carried out by the rebels as soon as it happened. Seymour Hersh is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist whose 40+ years career includes the exposing of the My Lai Massacre  and its cover-up, as well as the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. His December 19 report, “Whose Sarin?” -was his first report to expose the Syria chemical attack hoax based on close contact with US Intelligence officials. While “Whose Sarin” was originally prepared for the Washington Post, the newspaper rejected it and a media blackout followed in American press. Currently, Hersh’s newest investigative findings are going unacknowledged in mainstream US media.
  • Hersh’s report confirms the following: Obama’s push for attack on Syria was halted last minute when evidence that the Syrian government had nothing to do with the August 21 chemical attack became too overwhelming It had been well known to US government officials throughout the summer of 2013 that Turkish PM Erdogan was supporting al-Nusra Front in attempts to manufacture Sarin US military knew of Turkish and Saudi program for bulk Sarin production inside Syria from the spring of 2013 UN inspectors knew the rebels were using chemical weapons on the battlefield since the spring of 2013 As a result of the staged chemical incident, the White House ordered readiness for a “monster strike” on Syria, which included “two B-22 air wings and two thousand pound bombs” -and a target list which included military and civilian infrastructure targets (note: most of these are in densely populated civilian areas)
  • Full military strike was set for September 2 UK defense officials relayed to their American counterparts in the lead up to planned attack: “We’re being set up here.” CIA, MI6, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey set up a “rat line” back in 2012 to run Libyan weapons into Syria via Turkey, including MANPADS; the Benghazi consulate was headquarters for the operation Obama OK’ed Turkish-Iranian gold export scam (that went from March 2012 to July 2013) which erupted in a Turkish scandal that nearly brought down the Erdogan government US Intelligence community had immediate doubts about Syrian regime responsibility for Aug. 21 attack, yet “reluctant to contradict the president” US government will not expose continued Turkey support of terrorism simply because “they’re a NATO ally”
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  • In addition, last Thursday freelance Middle East journalist Sara Elizabeth Williams broke the story of a CIA/US Military run training camp for Syrian rebels in the Jordanian desert. VICE UK ran her story, “I Learned to Fight Like an American at the FSA Training Camp in Jordan,” yet it too failed to make it across the Atlantic into American reporting. International Syria experts thought her story hugely significant, but it got little attention. Top Syria expert in the US, Joshua Landis, announced on his Twitter account Thursday: “Sara Williams gets the scoop on the top secret FSA Training Camp in Jordan.” This courageous young freelancer revealed, with photos, the ins and outs of this secretive facility -yet the mainstream carefully shielded Americans from knowledge of the explosive report. In email conversation with her this weekend, Williams told me: “The access was tough to get, but I think it was worth the effort: to my mind, it’s important that people know what their government is doing in their name, with their tax dollars.” According to her investigative report:
  • Confirmed: “US-run training camp” for Syrian rebels in Northern Jordan Rebel recruits go “off the grid” while in secretive training camp Rebel fighter: “The Americans who taught us wore military uniforms I did not recognize. We called them by their first names and they spoke English to us.” Camp awash with “American food and American dollars”: recruits eat Kentucky Fried Chicken and live in temporary “pre-fabricated housing” units Recruits sent through intense 40 day program, which includes exercise, training in anti-tank missiles, and boot camp style atmosphere with orders given by US military instructors Upon graduation, US trained insurgents slip back across Syria’s southern border Experts say there are more camps like this one American trained rebel insurgent says: “America is benefiting from the destruction and the killing in order to weaken both sides.”
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    It really says something about mainstream media when a story as explosive as Sy Hersh's new report on Obama's decision to postpone and then cancel military strikes on Syria is ignored by mainstream media. Hersh is one of the most respected of American war and intelligence journalists. 
Paul Merrell

The Latest US and World News - USATODAY.com - 0 views

  • The U.S. government started keeping secret records of Americans' international telephone calls nearly a decade before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, harvesting billions of calls in a program that provided a blueprint for the far broader National Security Agency surveillance that followed.For more than two decades, the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration amassed logs of virtually all telephone calls from the USA to as many as 116 countries linked to drug trafficking, current and former officials involved with the operation said. The targeted countries changed over time but included Canada, Mexico and most of Central and South America.Federal investigators used the call records to track drug cartels' distribution networks in the USA, allowing agents to detect previously unknown trafficking rings and money handlers. They also used the records to help rule out foreign ties to the bombing in 1995 of a federal building in Oklahoma City and to identify U.S. suspects in a wide range of other investigations.The Justice Department revealed in January that the DEA had collected data about calls to "designated foreign countries." But the history and vast scale of that operation have not been disclosed until now.
  • The now-discontinued operation, carried out by the DEA's intelligence arm, was the government's first known effort to gather data on Americans in bulk, sweeping up records of telephone calls made by millions of U.S. citizens regardless of whether they were suspected of a crime. It was a model for the massive phone surveillance system the NSA launched to identify terrorists after the Sept. 11 attacks. That dragnet drew sharp criticism that the government had intruded too deeply into Americans' privacy after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked it to the news media two years ago.More than a dozen current and former law enforcement and intelligence officials described the details of the Justice Department operation to USA TODAY. Most did so on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the intelligence program, part of which remains classified.The DEA program did not intercept the content of Americans' calls, but the records — which numbers were dialed and when — allowed agents to map suspects' communications and link them to troves of other police and intelligence data. At first, the drug agency did so with help from military computers and intelligence analysts
  • The extent of that surveillance alarmed privacy advocates, who questioned its legality. "This was aimed squarely at Americans," said Mark Rumold, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "That's very significant from a constitutional perspective."Holder halted the data collection in September 2013 amid the fallout from Snowden's revelations about other surveillance programs. In its place, current and former officials said the drug agency sends telecom companies daily subpoenas for international calling records involving only phone numbers that agents suspect are linked to the drug trade or other crimes — sometimes a thousand or more numbers a day.Tuesday, Justice Department spokesman Patrick Rodenbush said the DEA "is no longer collecting bulk telephony metadata from U.S. service providers." A DEA spokesman declined to comment.
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  • The system they built ultimately allowed the drug agency to stitch together huge collections of data to map trafficking and money laundering networks both overseas and within the USA. It allowed agents to link the call records its agents gathered domestically with calling data the DEA and intelligence agencies had acquired outside the USA. (In some cases, officials said the DEA paid employees of foreign telecom firms for copies of call logs and subscriber lists.) And it eventually allowed agents to cross-reference all of that against investigative reports from the DEA, FBI and Customs Service.
  • The result "produced major international investigations that allowed us to take some big people," Constantine said, though he said he could not identify particular cases.
  • In 1992, in the last months of Bush's administration, Attorney General William Barr and his chief criminal prosecutor, Robert Mueller, gave the DEA permission to collect a much larger set of phone data to feed into that intelligence operation.Instead of simply asking phone companies for records about calls made by people suspected of drug crimes, the Justice Department began ordering telephone companies to turn over lists of all phone calls from the USA to countries where the government determined drug traffickers operated, current and former officials said
  • The DEA obtained those records using administrative subpoenas that allow the agency to collect records "relevant or material to" federal drug investigations. Officials acknowledged it was an expansive interpretation of that authority but one that was not likely to be challenged because unlike search warrants, DEA subpoenas do not require a judge's approval. "We knew we were stretching the definition," a former official involved in the process said.Officials said a few telephone companies were reluctant to provide so much information, but none challenged the subpoenas in court. Those that hesitated received letters from the Justice Department urging them to comply.
  • A spokesman for AT&T declined to comment. Sprint spokeswoman Stephanie Vinge Walsh said only that "we do comply with all state and federal laws regarding law enforcement subpoenas."Agents said that when the data collection began, they sought to limit its use mainly to drug investigations and turned away requests for access from the FBI and the NSA. They allowed searches of the data in terrorism cases, including the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people in 1995, helping to rule out theories linking the attack to foreign terrorists. They allowed even broader use after Sept. 11, 2001. The DEA's public disclosure of its program in January came in the case of a man charged with violating U.S. export restrictions by trying to send electrical equipment to Iran.At first, officials said the DEA gathered records only of calls to a handful of countries, focusing on Colombian drug cartels and their supply lines. Its reach grew quickly, and by the late 1990s, the DEA was logging "a massive number of calls," said a former intelligence official who supervised the program.
  • At its peak, the operation gathered data on calls to 116 countries, an official involved in reviewing the list said. Two other officials said they did not recall the precise number of countries, but it was more than 100. That gave the collection a considerable sweep; the U.S. government recognizes a total of 195 countries.
Gary Edwards

Cow Economics & Politics - 1 views

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    Update on that classic economic-political use case; "You have two cows". Hard to joke when the stock market has lost over $2 Trill in one week, and neither the government or the Federal Banksters Reserve show any concern.  Obama's golf game, fund raising and vacation schedule will not miss a beat.  Cape Cod calls and Obama is there.  Bernake and the Banksters met today, with a stock market begging for him to print up some more free fuel.  Bernake decides to stick with the plan and go with the collapse of the USA and the Dollar as scheduled. GOLD today is over $1780 /oz.  It's value in dollars has risen over $120 /oz since the raising of the debt limit to near $17 Trillion. The stock market melted down yesterday, crashing through key support barriers … shattering the confidence of millions of individual investors … and prompting most - who had been trying to turn a blind eye to the carnage - to start heading for the hills. Yesterday, Aug 9 2011 was the worst trading day since December of 2008. Just since the market began falling on July 26th, more than $7.8 trillion in equity has now been erased! Even though the Banksters are flush with $16.1 Trill in Federal Bankster Reserve coupons (GAO Audit of 2009-2010 Bankster books), the market can't seem to sort things out. And Banks stocks got hit hardest of all in yesterdays crash: US Bancorp and Wells Fargo were both down 9%. Huntington Bancshares and JP Morgan Chase declined 8.5% and 9.4% respectively. Fifth Third Bankcorp fell 11.4% and Capital One fell 12.08%. Regions Bank dropped 13.5% and SunTrust lost 13.9% of its value. Saw a National Media special on S&P last night.  These clowns gave Enron, Worldcom, Lehman Brothers, Ireland, Greece and Iceland their highest ratings right up until the eve of their collapse.  And then there's those trillions in garbage mortgage securities and derivatives rated triple A right through the collapse of the World economy
Gary Edwards

The GOP Should Be Mindful Of August And Take Back Up Holding the Line | RedState - 0 views

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    The White House no longer has a commander in chief in charge, but a professional victim. Last week, it was the Arab Spring, those damn Europeans, Mother Nature, etc. Now it is all about those evil tea partiers. For three years, Barack Obama has blamed George W. Bush for all his ills. Yes, it is true, Barack Obama inherited an economy sliding backward. But it is also true Barack Obama inherited a AAA credit rating from George W. Bush. Obama's policies have exacerbated a bad economy and caused us to lose our credit rating. But still, expect a full court press to blame the GOP and Tea Party. So I have some quick advice for the GOP. Back when S&P said it was considering a down grade, it set out two criteria to avoid losing the downgrade: (1) at least $4 trillion in cuts and (2) bipartisan support. Only the tea party movement came up with such a plan - Cut, Cap, and Balance. It received bipartisan support in the House, came within five votes of a majority in the Senate, and not only cut $4 trillion, but put caps on future government spending and balanced the federal budget. No other plan, including the public grand bargain and Barack Obama's own super-double-top-secret plan that no one has ever seen did that. Were I in Republican Leadership in Washington, I would haul my butt back to D.C. right now and start fighting again for Cut, Cap, and Balance. 66% of Americans support the plan. It is the only plan that would have avoided a credit decline. Go back and pick up the fight on the front lines for freedom. And if they just can't, they they better point out to the new Super Committee that it was, in fact, possible to cut $4 trillion without enacting job killing tax increases and encourage them to send back as its package Cut, Cap, and Balance.
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    The Tea Party passed two plans to restore USA crdibility and good standing: The Ryan Balanced Budget and the Cut, Cap & Balance plan. Both plans passed the House with bipartisan support. Both plans were acceptable to the credit rating agencies, including Standard & Poor. Both plans were blocked by the Democrats in the Senate, and, threatened with a veto from Obama. The people with no plan blocked the only plans that would have saved the USA credit rating. Rush made the point this morning that if Obama and the Democrats cared about this country, they would be insisting that both the Tea Party plans, the Ryan Balanced Budget and the Cut, Cap & Balance plans be put forward in the Senate immediately for a vote, with the full backing of Obama. Rush pointed out that if Obama and the Democrats didn't do this, or didn't come forward with a proposal of their own that actually qualified and met the credit ratings agencies $4 Trill - stop the reckless spending criteria debt concerns, then our worst fears would be confirmed. Our worst fears being that Obama and the Democrats are worse than mere incompetent socialist ideologues. That they are in fact out to destroy the goose that laid the golden egg: Constitutional Capitalism, American exceptionalism, and our God given right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness that under-girds the extraordinary story of American prosperity. So Obama has a choice today. He either complies with the demands that the USA Government get it's finances in order by supporting the credit ratings approved Tea Party plans. Or, explain why his vision of a downgraded, prosperity bereft and indentured debt bound America is the way forward. Time to start demanding resignations. The fish rots from the head.
Gary Edwards

US debt problem visualized: Debt stacked in 100 dollar bills - 1 views

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    From USDebt.Kleptocracy.us.  These visual depictions of our national debt are based on Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel numbers and the USdebtclock.org.  Warning; this will wreck your day.  Our government is spending us into a hole future generations will never dig out of.  And they refuse to stop spending. $114,500,000,000,000. - US unfunded liabilities To the right you can see the pillar of cold hard $100 bills that dwarfs the WTC & Empire State Building - both at one point world's tallest buildings. If you look carefully you can see the Statue of Liberty. The 114.5 Trillion dollar super-skyscraper is the amount of money the U.S. Government knows it does not have to fully fund the Medicare, Medicare Prescription Drug Program, Social Security, Military and civil servant pensions. It is the money USA knows it will not have to pay all its bills. If you live in USA this is also your personal credit card bill; you are responsible along with everyone else to pay this back. The citizens of USA created the U.S. Government to serve them, this is what the U.S. Government has done while serving The People. The unfunded liability is calculated on current tax and funding inputs, and future demographic shifts in US Population. Note: On the above 114.5T image the size of the base of the money pile is half a trillion, not 1T as on 15T image. The height is double. This was done to reflect the base of Empire State and WTC more closely.
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