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Gary Edwards

The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever - and the VESTS Solution - 0 views

www.thedailybell.com/...l-Ever--and-the-VESTS-Solution

Banksters matt-taibbi LiBOR

shared by Gary Edwards on 28 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 28 Apr 13
     
    excerpt: Uber financial investigative journalist Matt Taibbi has discovered what we too realized when we began to scrutinize the financial industry. In his latest article, he writes, "Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever." The article's cut line is, "The Illuminati were amateurs. The second huge financial scandal of the year reveals the real international conspiracy: There's no price the big banks can't fix." Taibbi's incredulity is evident throughout the article, as well it should be. The interest-rate swap market is part of the larger derivatives market that totals over one billion TRILLION dollars............................... "Given the endless financial scandals that keep sweeping across the industry, it is fairly obvious that this regulatory system needs a good deal of improvement. In fact, I think that it may be no coincidence that so much is being revealed now. The idea is surely to create the conditions for another international regulatory effort that will end up further controlling what is left of free-market capital raising. It is a global game for globalists. The game is to regulate everything and then to position oneself above the regulations and above the governments that wield them. This gives you tremendous power over everyone else. One of the tools being used to whip up sentiment for a larger regulatory revisiting is scandal and more scandal. There have been revelations of so-called crooked practices in a number of areas lately, mostly in the area of industry pricing. It turns out that many standard prices are set via indications of interest rather than outright competition. We can see the same system at work in the gold market, where a small group of wise men set the price for physical gold every day. And now, as Taibbi and others have revealed, the dysfunctional system also affects interest rate swaps. This has incensed Taibbi, who opens his article as follows: Conspiracy theorists of the world, believers in the
Paul Merrell

Responding to Failure: Reorganizing U.S. Policies in the Middle East | Middle East Poli... - 0 views

mepc.org/...nizing-us-policies-middle-east

war & peace Mideast Israel Arabs Shia-nations U.S.-foreign-policy recommendations

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • I want to speak with you today about the Middle East. This is the region where Africa, Asia, and Europe come together. It is also the part of the world where we have been most compellingly reminded that some struggles cannot be won, but there are no struggles that cannot be lost. It is often said that human beings learn little useful from success but can learn a great deal from defeat. If so, the Middle East now offers a remarkably rich menu of foreign-policy failures for Americans to study. • Our four-decade-long diplomatic effort to bring peace to the Holy Land sputtered to an ignominious conclusion a year ago. • Our unconditional political, economic, and military backing of Israel has earned us the enmity of Israel’s enemies even as it has enabled egregiously contemptuous expressions of ingratitude and disrespect for us from Israel itself.
  • • Our attempts to contain the Iranian revolution have instead empowered it. • Our military campaigns to pacify the region have destabilized it, dismantled its states, and ignited ferocious wars of religion among its peoples. • Our efforts to democratize Arab societies have helped to produce anarchy, terrorism, dictatorship, or an indecisive juxtaposition of all three. • In Iraq, Libya, and Syria we have shown that war does not decide who’s right so much as determine who’s left. • Our campaign against terrorism with global reach has multiplied our enemies and continuously expanded their areas of operation. • Our opposition to nuclear proliferation did not prevent Israel from clandestinely developing nuclear weapons and related delivery systems and may not preclude Iran and others from following suit.
  • • At the global level, our policies in the Middle East have damaged our prestige, weakened our alliances, and gained us a reputation for militaristic fecklessness in the conduct of our foreign affairs. They have also distracted us from challenges elsewhere of equal or greater importance to our national interests. That’s quite a record.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • One can only measure success or failure by reference to what one is trying achieve. So, in practice, what have U.S. objectives been? Are these objectives still valid? If we’ve failed to advance them, what went wrong? What must we do now to have a better chance of success? Our objectives in the Middle East have not changed much over the course of the past half century or more. We have sought to 1. Gain acceptance and security for a Jewish homeland from the other states and peoples of the region; 2. Ensure the uninterrupted availability of the region’s energy supplies to sustain global and U.S. security and prosperity; 3. Preserve our ability to transit the region so as to be able to project power around the world; 4. Prevent the rise of a regional hegemon or the deployment of weapons of mass destruction that might threaten any or all of these first three objectives; 5. Maximize profitable commerce; and 6. Promote stability while enhancing respect for human rights and progress toward constitutional democracy. Let’s briefly review what’s happened with respect to each of these objectives. I will not mince words.
  • Israel has come to enjoy military supremacy but it remains excluded from most participation in its region’s political, economic, and cultural life. In the 67 years since the Jewish state was proclaimed, Israel has not made a single friend in the Middle East, where it continues to be regarded as an illegitimate legacy of Western imperialism engaged in racist removal of the indigenous population. International support for Israel is down to the United States and a few of the former colonial powers that originally imposed the Zionist project on the Arabs under Sykes-Picot and the related Balfour Declaration. The two-state solution has expired as a physical or political possibility. There is no longer any peace process to distract global attention from Israel’s maltreatment of its captive Arab populations. After years of deference to American diplomacy, the Palestinians are about to challenge the legality of Israel’s cruelties to them in the International Criminal Court and other venues in which Americans have no veto, are not present, or cannot protect the Jewish state from the consequences of its own behavior as we have always been able to do in the past. Israel’s ongoing occupation of the West Bank and siege of Gaza are fueling a drive to boycott its products, disinvest in its companies, and sanction its political and cultural elite. These trends are the very opposite of what the United States has attempted to achieve for Israel.
  • In a stunning demonstration of his country’s most famous renewable resource — chutzpah — Israel’s Prime Minister chose this very moment to make America the main issue in his reelection campaign while simultaneously transforming Israel into a partisan issue in the United States. This is the very opposite of a sound survival strategy for Israel. Uncertainties about their country’s future are leading many Israelis to emigrate, not just to America but to Europe. This should disturb not just Israelis but Americans, if only because of the enormous investment we have made in attempts to gain a secure place for Israel in its region and the world. The Palestinians have been silent about Mr. Netanyahu’s recent political maneuvers. Evidently, they recall Napoleon’s adage that one should never interrupt an enemy when he is making a mistake. This brings me to an awkward but transcendently important issue. Israel was established as a haven from anti-Semitism — Jew hatred — in Europe, a disease of nationalism and Christian culture that culminated in the Holocaust. Israel’s creation was a relief for European Jews but a disaster for the Arabs of Palestine, who were either ethnically cleansed by European Jewish settlers or subjugated, or both.  But the birth of Israel also proved tragic for Jews throughout the Middle East — the Mizrahim. In a nasty irony, the implementation of Zionism in the Holy Land led to the introduction of European-style anti-Semitism — including its classic Christian libels on Jews — to the region, dividing Arab Jews from their Muslim neighbors as never before and compelling them to join European Jews in taking refuge in Israel amidst outrage over the dispossession of Palestinians from their homeland. Now, in a further irony, Israel’s pogroms and other injustices to the Muslim and Christian Arabs over whom it rules are leading not just to a rebirth of anti-Semitism in Europe but to its globalization.
  • The late King `Abdullah of Saudi Arabia engineered a reversal of decades of Arab rejectionism at Beirut in 2002. He brought all Arab countries and later all 57 Muslim countries to agree to normalize relations with Israel if it did a deal — any deal — with the Palestinians that the latter could accept. Israel spurned the offer. Its working assumption seems to be that it does not need peace with its neighbors as long as it can bomb and strafe them. Proceeding on this basis is not just a bad bet, it is one that is dividing Israel from the world, including Jews outside Israel. This does not look like a story with a happy ending. It’s hard to avoid the thought that Zionism is turning out to be bad for the Jews. If so, given the American investment in it, it will also have turned out to be bad for America. The political costs to America of support for Israel are steadily rising. We must find a way to divert Israel from the largely self-engineered isolation into which it is driving itself, while repairing our own increasing international ostracism on issues related to Israel.  
  • Despite Mr. Netanyahu’s recent public hysteria about Iran and his efforts to demonize it, Israel has traditionally seen Iran’s rivalry with the Arabs as a strategic asset. It had a very cooperative relationship with the Shah. Neither Israelis nor Arabs have forgotten the strategic logic that produced Israel's entente with Iran. Israel is very much on Daesh’s list of targets, as is Iran. For now, however, Israel’s main concern is the possible loss of its nuclear monopoly in the Middle East. Many years ago, Israel actually did what it now accuses Iran of planning to do. It clandestinely developed nuclear weapons while denying to us and others that it was doing so. Unlike Iran, Israel has not adhered to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or subjected its nuclear facilities to international inspection. It has expressed no interest in proposals for a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. It sees its ability to bring on nuclear Armageddon as the ultimate guarantee of its existence.
  • To many, Israel now seems to have acquired the obnoxious habit of biting the American hand that has fed it for so long. The Palestinians have despaired of American support for their self-determination. They are reaching out to the international community in ways that deliberately bypass the United States. Random acts of violence herald mayhem in the Holy Land. Daesh has proclaimed the objective of erasing the Sykes-Picot borders and the states within them. It has already expunged the border between Iraq and Syria. It is at work in Lebanon and has set its sights on Jordan, Palestine, and Israel. Lebanon, under Saudi influence, has turned to France rather than America for support. Hezbollah has intervened militarily in Iraq and Syria, both of whose governments are close to Iran. Egypt and Turkey have distanced themselves from the United States as well as from each other. Russia is back as a regional actor and arms supplier. The Gulf Arabs, Egypt, and Turkey now separately intervene in Libya, Syria, and Iraq without reference to American policy or views. Iran is the dominant influence in Iraq, Syria, parts of Lebanon, and now Yemen. It has boots on the ground in Iraq. And now Saudi Arabia seems to be organizing a coalition that will manage its own nuclear deterrence and military balancing of Ir
  • To describe this as out of control is hardly adequate. What are we to do about it? Perhaps we should start by recalling the first law of holes — “when stuck in one, stop digging.” It appears that “don’t just sit there, bomb something” isn’t much of a strategy. When he was asked last summer what our strategy for dealing with Daesh was, President Obama replied, “We don’t yet have one.” He was widely derided for that. He should have been praised for making the novel suggestion that before Washington acts, it should first think through what it hopes to accomplish and how best to do it. Sunzi once observed that “tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat." America’s noisy but strategy-free approach to the Middle East has proven him right. Again the starting point must be what we are trying to accomplish. Strategy is "the discipline of achieving desired ends through the most efficient use of available means" [John Lewis Gaddis].Our desired ends with respect to the Middle East are not in doubt. They have been and remain to gain an accepted and therefore secure place for Israel there; to keep the region's oil and gas coming at reasonable prices; to be able to pass through the area at will; to head off challenges to these interests; to do profitable business in the markets of the Middle East; and to promote stability amidst the expansion of liberty in its countries. Judging by results, we have been doing a lot wrong. Two related problems in our overall approach need correction. They are “enablement” and the creation of “moral hazard.” Both are fall-out from  relationships of codependency.
  • Enablement occurs when one party to a relationship indulges or supports and thereby enables another party’s dysfunctional behavior. A familiar example from ordinary life is giving money to a drunk or a drug addict or ignoring, explaining away, or defending their subsequent self-destructive behavior.  Moral hazard is the condition that obtains when one party is emboldened to take risks it would not otherwise take because it knows another party will shoulder the consequences and bear the costs of failure. The U.S.-Israel relationship has evolved to exemplify codependency. It now embodies both enablement and moral hazard. U.S. support for Israel is unconditional.  Israel has therefore had no need to cultivate relations with others in the Middle East, to declare its borders, or to choose peace over continued expansion into formerly Arab lands. Confidence in U.S. backing enables Israel to do whatever it likes to the Palestinians and its neighbors without having to worry about the consequences. Israel is now a rich country, but the United States continues to subsidize it with cash transfers and other fiscal privileges. The Jewish state is the most powerful country in the Middle East. It can launch attacks on its neighbors, confident that it will be resupplied by the United States. Its use of U.S. weapons in ways that violate both U.S. and international law goes unrebuked. 41 American vetoes in the United Nations Security Council have exempted Israel from censure and international law. We enable it to defy the expressed will of the international community, including, ironically, our own.
  • We Americans are facilitating Israel's indulgence in denial and avoidance of the choices it must make if it is not to jeopardize its long-term existence as a state in the Middle East. The biggest contribution we could now make to Israel's longevity would be to ration our support for it, so as to cause it to rethink and reform its often self-destructive behavior. Such peace as Israel now enjoys with Egypt, Jordan, and the Palestinians is the direct result of tough love of this kind by earlier American administrations. We Americans cannot save Israel from itself, but we can avoid killing it with uncritical kindness. We should support Israel when it makes sense to do so and it needs our support on specific issues, but not otherwise. Israel is placing itself and American interests in jeopardy. We need to discuss how to reverse this dynamic.
  • Moral hazard has also been a major problem in our relationship with our Arab partners. Why should they play an active role in countering the threat to them they perceive from Iran, if they can get America to do this for them? Similarly, why should any Muslim country rearrange its priorities to deal with Muslim renegades like Daesh when it can count on America to act for it? If America thinks it must lead, why not let it do so? But responsible foreign and defense policies begin with self-help, not outsourcing of military risks. The United States has the power-projection and war-fighting capabilities to back a Saudi-led coalition effort against Daesh. The Saudis have the religious and political credibility, leadership credentials, and diplomatic connections to organize such an effort. We do not. Since this century began, America has administered multiple disappointments to its allies and friends in the Middle East, while empowering their and our adversaries. Unlike the Gulf Arabs, Egypt, and Turkey, Washington does not have diplomatic relations with Tehran. Given our non-Muslim identity, solidarity with Israel, and recent history in the Fertile Crescent, the United States cannot hope to unite the region’s Muslims against Daesh.  Daesh is an insurgency that claims to exemplify Islam as well as a governing structure and an armed force. A coalition led by inhibited foreign forces, built on papered-over differences, and embodying hedged commitments will not defeat such an insurgency with or without boots on the ground.
  • When elections have yielded governments whose policies we oppose, we have not hesitated to conspire with their opponents to overthrow them. But the results of our efforts to coerce political change in the Middle East are not just failures but catastrophic failures. Our policies have nowhere produced democracy. They have instead contrived the destabilization of societies, the kindling of religious warfare, and the installation of dictatorships contemptuous of the rights of religious and ethnic minorities. Frankly, we have done a lot better at selling things, including armaments, to the region than we have at transplanting the ideals of the Atlantic Enlightenment there. The region’s autocrats cooperate with us to secure our protection, and they get it. When they are nonetheless overthrown, the result is not democracy or the rule of law but socio-political collapse and the emergence of  a Hobbesian state of nature in which religious and ethnic communities, families, and individuals are able to feel safe only when they are armed and have the drop on each other. Where we have engineered or attempted to engineer regime change, violent politics, partition, and ethno-religious cleansing have everywhere succeeded unjust but tranquil order. One result of our bungled interventions in Iraq and Syria is the rise of Daesh. This is yet another illustration that, in our efforts to do good in the Middle East, we have violated the principle that one should first do no harm.
  • Americans used to believe that we could best lead by example. We and those in the Middle East seeking nonviolent change would all be better off if America returned to that tradition and forswore ideologically motivated hectoring and intervention. No one willingly follows a wagging finger. Despite our unparalleled ability to use force against foreigners, the best way to inspire them to emulate us remains showing them that we have our act together. At the moment, we do not. In the end, to cure the dysfunction in our policies toward the Middle East, it comes down to this. We must cure the dysfunction and venality of our politics. If we cannot, we have no business trying to use an 8,000-mile-long screwdriver to fix things one-third of the way around the world. That doesn’t work well under the best of circumstances. But when the country wielding the screwdriver has very little idea what it’s doing, it really screws things up.
  • Paul Merrell on 17 Mar 15
     
    Chas Freeman served as US ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the war to liberate Kuwait and as Assistant Secretary of Defense from 1993-94. He was the editor of the Encyclopedia Britannica entry on "diplomacy" and is the author of five books, including "America's Misadventures in the Middle East" and "Interesting Times: China, America, and the Shifting Balance of Prestige."  I have largely omitted highlighting portions of the speech dealing with Muslim nations because Freeman has apparently lost touch with the actual U.S., Saudi, UAE, Kuwait, and Turish roles in creating and expanding ISIL. But his analysis of Israel's situation and recommendations for curing it seem quite valid, as well as his overall Mideast recommendation to heed the First Law of Holes: "when stuck in one, stop digging."   I recommend reading the entire speech notwithstanding his misunderstanding of ISIL. There is a lot of very important history there ably summarized.
Gary Edwards

Why we are on the brink of the greatest Depression of all time  | Fox News - 0 views

www.foxnews.com/...k-greatest-depression-all-time

Wayne-Allen-Root Great-Depression Obammunism financial-collapse

shared by Gary Edwards on 18 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 18 Sep 12
     
    Another one of those must read articles.  This time from -libertarian Wayne Allen Root.  Examining the facts and connecting the dots - big time. "Everywhere from FoxNews.0com to CNBC.com, I suddenly see commentators warning of pe0nding doom, economic collapse, and a new Great Depression. Weslcome to my club. Perhaps America's politicians and economists should have paid attention to an entrepreneur and small businessman that has been warning of economic collapse and a new Great Depression publicly for over two years.  More importantly, none of the current commentaries mention the "why's" of this slow motion economic collapse...beyond the obvious -- mountains of deficit and debt. None of them mention the dysfunctional structure of the current U.S. economy and the massive changes in the work ethic and mindset of the average American.  I am a successful small businessman and a patriot who loves America and always sees its greatness. I am also an optimistic, positive thinker who always sees the glass half full.  But not this time.  This time we are in such deep trouble, the only solution is a radical restructuring of the politicians, the economy, and the way we view personal responsibility versus government handouts. If those changes don't come then we are facing a long decline and the eventual end of America.  The economy is crumbling. The situation is turning more hopeless by the hour. The more government gets involved, the worse it gets. Coincidence? - This time the results are going to be dramatically worse than 1929. This time we are facing The Greatest Depression ever."
Gary Edwards

The List: Unnecessarily Shut Down by Obama to Inflict Public Pain - 0 views

www.breitbart.com/...st-obama-closures-for-shutdown

government-shutdown Obammunism financial-crisis

shared by Gary Edwards on 08 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 08 Oct 13
     
    "The media may or may not report on these individual occurrences, but what they will never do is provide the American people with the full context and scope of Obama's shrill pettiness. Below is a list of illogical, unnecessary, and shockingly spiteful moves our government is making in the name of essential and non-essential. This list will be regularly updated, and if you have something you feel should be added, please email me at jnolte@breitbart.com or tweet me @NolteNC.Please include a link to the news source. -- 1. Treatments for Children Suffering From Cancer - The GOP have agreed to a compromise by funding part of the government, including the National Institutes of Health, which offers children with cancer last-chance experimental treatment. Obama has threatened to veto this funding. 2. The World War II Memorial - The WWII memorial on the DC Mall is a 24/7 open-air memorial that is not regularly staffed. Although the White House must have known that WWII veterans in their eighties and nineties had already booked flights to visit this memorial, the White House still found the resources to spitefully barricade the attraction.  The Republican National Committee has offered to cover any costs required to keep the memorial open. The White House refused. Moreover, like the NIH, the GOP will pass a compromise bill that would fund America's national parks. Obama has threatened to veto that bill. 3. Furloughed Military Chaplains Not Allowed to Work for Free - Furloughed military chaplains willing to celebrate Mass and baptisms for free have been told they will be punished for doing so. 4. Business Stops In Florida Keys - Although the GOP have agreed to compromise in the ongoing budget stalemate and fund the parks, Obama has threatened to veto that funding. As a result, small businesses, hunters, and commercial fisherman can't practice their trade. While the feds have deemed the personnel necessary to keep this area open "non-essential," the "enforcement office
Gary Edwards

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

www.zerohedge.com/...14-forecast-burning-down-house

Banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 08 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 08 Jan 14
     
    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.
Gary Edwards

The Daily Bell - Richard Ebeling on Higher Interest Rates, Collectivism and the Coming ... - 0 views

www.thedailybell.com/...tivism-and-the-Coming-Collapse

Richard-Ebeling The-Daily-Bell Austrian-Economics Liberty-Tryanny

shared by Gary Edwards on 17 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • The "larger dysfunction," as you express it, arises out of a number of factors. The primary one, in my view, is a philosophical and psychological schizophrenia among the American people.
  • While many on "the left" ridicule the idea, there is a strong case for the idea of "American exceptionalism," meaning that the United States stands out as something unique, different and special among the nations of the world.
  • the American Founding Fathers constructed a political system in the United States based on a concept on which no other country was consciously founded:
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  • But the American Revolution and the US Constitution hailed a different conception of man, society and government.
  • n the rest of the world, and for all of human history, the presumption has been that the individual was a slave or a subject to a higher authority. It might be the tribal chief; or the "divinely ordained" monarch who presumed to rule over and control people in the name of God; or, especially after the French Revolution and the rise of modern socialism, "the nation" or "the people" who laid claim to the life and work of the individual.
  • the idea of individual rights.
  • That is, as long as the individual did not violate the equal rights of others to their life, liberty and property, each person was free to shape and guide his own future, and give meaning and value to his own life as he considered best in the pursuit of that happiness that was considered the purpose and goal of each man during his sojourn on this Earth.
  • Governments did not exist to give or bestow "rights" or "privileges" at its own discretion.
  • Governments were to secure and protect each individual's rights, which he possessed by "the nature of things."
  • The individual was presumed to own himself. He was "sovereign."
  • The real and fundamental notion of "self-government" referred to the right of each individual to rule over himself.
  • Each individual, by his nature and his reason, had a right to his life, his liberty and his honestly acquired property.
  • during the first 150 years of America's history there was virtually no Welfare State and relatively few government regulations, controls and restrictions on the choices and actions of the free citizen.
  • But for more than a century, now, an opposing conception of man, society and government has increasingly gained a hold over the ideas and attitudes of people in the US.
  • It was "imported" from Europe in the form of modern collectivism.
  • The individual was expected to see himself as belonging to something "greater" than himself. He was to sacrifice for "great national causes."
  • He was told that if life had not provided all that he desired or hoped for, it was because others had "exploited" him in some economic or social manner, and that government would redress the "injustice" through redistribution of wealth or regulation of the marketplace.
  • If he had had financial and material success, the individual should feel guilty and embarrassed by it, because, surely, if some had noticeably more, it could only be because others had been forced to live with noticeably less.
  • left on its own, free competition tends to evolve into harmful monopolies and oligopolies, with the wealthy "few" benefiting at the expense of the "many."
  • They are the crises of the Interventionist-Welfare State: the attempt to impose reactionary collectivist policies of political paternalism and redistributive plunder on a society still possessing parts of its original individualist and rights-based roots.
  • it is in the form of communism's and socialism's critique of capitalism.
  • Unregulated capitalism leads to "unearned" and "excessive" profits; unbridled markets generate the business cycle and the hardships of recessions and depressions;
  • These two conflicting conceptions of man, society and government have been and are at war here in the United States.
  • And if it cannot be gotten and guaranteed through the redistributive mechanisms of the European Union and the euro, well, maybe we should return power to our own nation-states to provide the jobs, the social "safety nets" and the financial means to pay for it through, once again, printing our own national paper currencies.
  • This is the political-philosophical bankruptcy of the West and the dead ends of the collectivist promises of the last 100 years.
  • Ludwig von Mises's book, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, originally published in 1922, demonstrated how and why a socialist, centrally planned system was inherently unworkable.
  • The nationalization of productive property, the abolition of markets and the prohibition of all competitive exchange among the members of society would prevent the emergence and operation of a price system, without which it is impossible to know people's demands for desired goods and the relative value they place on them.
  • It also prevents the emergence of prices for the factors of production (land, labor, capital) and makes it impossible to know their opportunity costs – the value of those factors of production in alternative competing uses among entrepreneurs desiring to employ them.
  • Without such a price system the central planners are flying blind, unable to rationally know or decide how best to utilize labor, capital and resources in productively efficient ways to make the goods and services most highly valued by the consuming public.
  • Thus, Mises concluded, comprehensive socialist central planning would lead to "planned chaos."
  • And, therefore, there is no guarantee that the amount of investments undertaken and their time horizons are compatible with the available resources not also being demanded and used for more immediate consumer goods production in the society.
  • As a consequence, financial markets do not work like real markets.
  • Thus, the interventionist state leads to waste, inefficiency and misuses of resources that lower the standards of living that we all, otherwise, could have enjoyed.
  • We cannot be sure what the amount of real savings may be in the society to support real and sustainable investment and capital formation.
  • Government intervention prevents prices from "telling the truth" about the real supply and demand conditions thus leading to imbalances and distortions in the market.
  • We cannot know what the "real cost" of borrowing should be, since interest rates are not determined by actual, private sector savings and investment decisions.
  • Government production regulations, controls, restrictions and prohibitions prevent entrepreneurs from using their knowledge, ability and capital in ways that most effectively produce the goods consumers actually want and at the most cost-competitive prices possible.
  • This is why countries around the world periodically experience booms and busts, inflations and recessions − not because of some inherent instabilities or "irrationalities" in financial markets, but because of monetary central planning through central banking that does not allow market-based financial intermediation to develop and work as it could and would in a real free-market setting.
  • But in the United States and especially in Europe, government "austerity" means merely temporarily reducing the rate of increase in government spending, slowing down the rate at which new debt is accumulating and significantly raising taxes in an attempt to close the deficit gap.
  • The fundamental problem is that over the decades, the size and scope of governments in the Western world have been growing far more than the rates at which their economies have been expanding, so that the "slice" of the national economic "pie" eaten by government has been growing larger and larger, even when the "pie" in absolute terms is bigger than it was, say, 30 or 40 years ago.
  • European governments, in general, take the view that "austerity" means squeezing the private sector more through taxes and other revenue sources to avoid any noticeable and significant cuts in what government does and spends.
  • So there is "austerity" for the private sector and a mad rush for financial "safety nets" for the government and those who live off the State.
  • In reality, of course, it is the burdens of government regulation, taxation and impediments to more flexible labor and related markets that have generated the high unemployment rates and the retarded recovery from the recession.
  • Instead, the "common market" ideal has been transformed into the goal of a European Union "Super-State" to which the individual countries and their citizens would be subservient and obedient.
  • Keynesian policies offer people and politicians what they want to hear. Claiming that any sluggish business or lost jobs are due to a lack of "aggregate demand," Keynes argued that full employment and profitable business could only be reestablished and maintained through "activist" government monetary and fiscal policy – print money and run budget deficits.
  • What Britain and Europe should have as its goal is the ideal of the classical liberal free traders of the 19th century – non-intervention by governments in people's lives, at home and abroad. That is, a de-politicization of society, so people may freely work, trade and travel as they peacefully wish, with government merely the protector of people's individual rights.
  • Take the benefits away and tell people they are free to come and work to support themselves and their families. Restore more flexibility and competitiveness to labor markets and reduce taxes and business regulations.
  • Then those who come to Britain's shores will be those wanting freedom and opportunity without being a burden upon others.
  • What was needed was a change in ideas from the statist mentality to one of individual freedom and unhampered free markets.
  • In an epoch of collectivist ideas, don't be surprised if governments regulate, control, intervene and redistribute wealth.
  • The tentacle of regulations, restrictions and politically-correct social controls are spreading out in every direction from Brussels and its European-wide manipulating and mismanaging bureaucracy.
  • In the name of assuring "national prosperity," politicians could spend money to buy the votes that get them elected and reelected to government offices.
  • And every special interest group could make the case that government-spending programs that benefitted them were all reasonable and necessary to assure a fully employed and growing economy.
  • Furthermore, the Keynesian rationale for government deficit spending enabled politicians to seem to be able to offer something for nothing. They could offer, say, $100 of government spending to voters and special interest groups but the tax burden imposed in the present might only be $75, since the remainder of the money to pay for that government spending was borrowed. And that borrowed money would not have to be repaid until some indefinite time in the future by unspecific taxpayers when that "tomorrow" finally arrived.
  • instability
  • Keynes argued that the market economy's inherent
  • arose from the
  • who were subject to irrational and unpredictable waves of "optimism" and "pessimism."
  • animal spirits" of businessmen
  • Mises argued that there was nothing inherent in the market economy to bring about these swings of economic booms followed by periods of depression and unemployment.
  • If markets got out of balance with the necessity of an eventual correction in the economy to, once again, set things right, the source of this instability was government monetary policy.
  • Central banks too often followed a policy of trying to create "good times" in the economy by expanding the money supply through the banking system.
  • With new, excess funds created by the central bank available for lending, banks lower rates of interest to attract borrowers.
  • But this throws savings and investment out of balance, since the rate of interest no longer serves as a reliable indicator and signal concerning the availability of real savings in the economy in relation to those wanting to borrow funds for various investment purposes.
  • The economic crisis comes when it is discovered that all the claims on resources, capital and labor for all the attempted consumption and investment activities in the economy are greater than the actual and available amounts of such scarce resources.
  • The recession period, in Mises's view, is the necessary "correction" period when in the post-boom era, people must adapt and adjust to the newly discovered "real" supply and demand conditions in the market.
  • Any interference with the "rebalancing" of the economy by government raising taxes, imposing more regulations, or new artificial government "stimulus" activities merely makes it more difficult and time-consuming for people in the private sector to get the economy back on an even keel.
  • Friedrich A. Hayek, once observed, unemployment is not "caused" by stopping an inflation, but rather inflation induces the artificial employments that cannot be sustained and which inevitably disappear once the inflation is reined in.
  • The recession of 2008-2009 was the result of several years of central bank stimulus.
  • From 2003 to 2008, the Federal Reserve increased the money supply by about 50 percent.
  • Interest rates for much of this time, when adjusted for inflation, were either zero or negative.
  • Awash in cash, banks extended loans to virtually anyone, with no serious and usual concern about the borrower's credit-worthiness.
  • This was most notably true in the housing market, where government agencies like Fannie May and Freddie Mac were pressuring banks to make mortgage loans by promising a guarantee that they would make good on any bad home loans.
  • Since 2008-2009, the Federal Reserve has, again, turned on the monetary spigot, increasing its own portfolio by almost $3 trillion, by buying US Treasuries, US mortgages and other assets.
  • So why has there not been a complementary explosion of price inflation?
  • In some areas there has been, most clearly in the stock market and the bond market, But the reason why all that newly created money has not brought about a higher price inflation is due to the fact that a large part of all newly created money is sitting as unlent reserves in banks.
  • This is because the Federal Reserve has been paying banks a rate of interest slightly above the market interest rates to induce banks not to lend.
  • (a) general "regime uncertainty," that is, no one knows what government policy will be tomorrow; will ObamaCare be fully implemented after January 2014?;
  • Among the reasons for the sluggish jobs growth in the US are:
  • (b) what will taxes be for the rest of the current president's term in the White House
  • (c) what will the regulatory environment be like for the next three years – in 2012, the government implemented around 80,000 pages of regulations as printed in the Federal Registry;
  • (d) how will the deficit and debt problems play out between Congress and the White House and will it threaten the general financial situation in the country; an
  • (e) what wars, if any, will the government find itself involved in, in places like the Middle East?
  • China
  • is still a controlled and commanded society, with a government that works hard to try to determine what people read, see and think.
  • All these building projects have been brought into existence by a government that not only controls the money supply and manipulates interest rates but also heavy-handedly tells banks whom to specifically loan to and for what investment activities.
  • Central planning is alive and well in China, with the motives being both power and profits for those inside and outside the Communist Party having the most influence and connections in "high" places.
  • In my opinion, China is heading for a great economic crisis, resulting from a highly imbalanced and distorted economic system still guided far more by politics than sound market decision-making.
  • global financial markets in any foreseeable future. It is a money that still primarily exists to serve the political purposes of those who sit in the "inner circles" of power in Beijing.
  • One hundred years ago, in 1913, how many could have predicted that a year later a European-wide war would break out that would lead to the destruction of great European empires and set the stage for the rise of totalitarian collectivism that resulted in an even worse global war two decades later?
  • Thus, whether, at the end of the day, freedom triumphs and the future is one of liberty and prosperity is partly on each one of us.
  • Near the end of his great book, Socialism, Ludwig von Mises said:
  • "Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders; no one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others. And no one can find a safe way out for himself if society is sweeping towards destruction. Therefore, everyone, in his own interest, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. None can stand aside with unconcern; the interests of everyone hang on the result. Whether he chooses or not, every man is drawn into the great historical struggle, the decisive battle into which our epoch has plunged us . . . Whether society shall continue to evolve or where it shall decay lies . . . in the hands of man."
  • In my view, the idea of a "soft landing" is an illusion based on the idea held by central bankers, themselves, that they have the wisdom and ability to know how to "micro-manage" the all the changes and adjustments resulting from their own manipulations of the monetary aggregates. They do not have this wisdom and ability. So hold on for what is most likely to be another rocky road.
  • It was Mises's clear vision that once society has broken the relationship between value and payment, sooner or later people would not know the price of anything.
  • At this point, investment ceases and business becomes furtive and transactional.
  • People cannot plan for the future because they do not understand the reality of the present.
  • Society begins to sink.
  • Gary Edwards on 17 Jun 13
     
    Incredible.  A simple explanation that explains everything.  Rchard Ebeling's "Unified Theory of Everything" is something every American can understand.  If only they would take a break from "Dancing with the Stars" and pay attention to the future of their country and the world.  It's a future where either "individual freedom", as defined by our Constitution and Declaration of Independence, will win out; or, the forces of fascist socialism / marxism will continue to roll and rule.  Incredible read!!!!
Paul Merrell

How Barack Obama turned his back on Saudi Arabia and its Sunni allies | Middle East | N... - 0 views

www.independent.co.uk/...ia-jihadism-isis-a6927646.html

war & peace Mideast Obama U.S.-foreign-policy

shared by Paul Merrell on 18 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • Commentators have missed the significance of President Barack Obama’s acerbic criticism of Saudi Arabia and Sunni states long allied to the US for fomenting sectarian hatred and seeking to lure the US into fighting regional wars on their behalf. In a series of lengthy interviews with Jeffrey Goldberg published in The Atlantic magazine, Mr Obama explains why it is not in the US’s interests to continue the tradition of the US foreign policy establishment, whose views he privately disdains, by giving automatic support to the Saudis and their allies.  Obama’s arguments are important because they are not off-the-cuff remarks, but are detailed, wide ranging, carefully considered and leading to new departures in US policy. The crucial turning point came on 30 August 2013 when he refused to launch air strikes in Syria. This would, in effect, have started military action by the US to force regime change in Damascus, a course of action proposed by much of the Obama cabinet as well by US foreign policy specialists.  Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the Gulf monarchies were briefly convinced that they would get their wish and the US was going to do their work for them by overthrowing President Bashar al-Assad. They claimed this would be easy to do, though it would have happened only if there had been a full-scale American intervention and it would have produced a power vacuum that would have been filled by fundamentalist Islamic movements as in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. Mr Goldberg says that by refusing to bomb Syria, Obama “broke with what he calls, derisively, ‘the Washington Playbook’. This was his liberation day”.
  • It will be important to know after the US election if the new president will continue to rebalance US foreign policy away from reliance on Sunni powers seeking to use American military and political “muscle” in their own interests. Past US leaders have closed their eyes to this with disastrous consequences in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. Mr Goldberg says that President Obama “questioned, often harshly, the role that America’s Sunni Arab allies play in fomenting anti-American terrorism. He is clearly irritated that foreign policy orthodoxy compels him to treat Saudi Arabia as an ally”.  What is truly strange about the new departures in US foreign policy is that they have taken so long to occur. Within days of 9/11, it was known that 15 out of the 19 hijackers were Saudi, as was Osama bin Laden and the donors who financed the operation. Moreover, the US went on treating Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan and the Gulf monarchies as if they were great powers, when all the evidence was that their real strength and loyalty to the West were limited. 
  • Though it was obvious that the US would be unable to defeat the Taliban so long as it was supported and given sanctuary by Pakistan, the Americans never confronted Pakistan on the issue. According to Goldberg, Obama “privately questions why Pakistan, which he believes is a disastrously dysfunctional country, should be considered an ally of the US at all”. As regards Turkey, the US President had hopes of its President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but has since come to see him as an authoritarian ruler whose policies have failed.
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  • A striking feature of Obama’s foreign policy is that he learns from failures and mistakes. This is in sharp contrast to Britain where David Cameron still claims he did the right thing by supporting the armed opposition that replaced Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, while George Osborne laments Parliament’s refusal to vote for the bombing of Syria in 2013. 
  • It will become clearer after November’s presidential election how far Obama’s realistic take on Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan and other US allies and his scepticism about the US foreign policy establishment will be shared by the new administration. The omens are not very good since Hillary Clinton supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003, intervention in Libya in 2011 and bombing Syria in 2013. If she wins the White House, then the Saudis and the US foreign policy establishment will breathe more easily. 
  • Paul Merrell on 18 Mar 16
     
    Patrick Cockburn, one of the very best Mideast investigative reporters, riffs on Obama's foreign policy changes and questions whether Obama's realist foreign policy will survive a new resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Paul Merrell

Cut Off the NSA's Juice | Global Research - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5366575

surveillance state NSA NSA-blowback legislation states

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • The National Security Agency depends on huge computers that guzzle electricity in the service of the surveillance state. For the NSA’s top executives, maintaining a vast flow of juice to keep Big Brother nourished is essential — and any interference with that flow is unthinkable. But interference isn’t unthinkable. And in fact, it may be doable. Grassroots activists have begun to realize the potential to put the NSA on the defensive in nearly a dozen states where the agency is known to be running surveillance facilities, integral to its worldwide snoop operations. Organizers have begun to push for action by state legislatures to impede the electric, water and other services that sustain the NSA’s secretive outposts.
  • Those efforts are farthest along in the state of Washington, where a new bill in the legislature — the Fourth Amendment Protection Act — is a statutory nightmare for the NSA. The agency has a listening post in Yakima, in the south-central part of the state. The bill throws down a challenge to the NSA, seeking to block all state support for NSA activities violating the Fourth Amendment. For instance, that could mean a cutoff of electricity or water or other state-government services to the NSA site. And the measure also provides for withholding other forms of support, such as research and partnerships with state universities. Here’s the crux of the bill: “It is the policy of this state to refuse material support, participation, or assistance to any federal agency which claims the power, or with any federal law, rule, regulation, or order which purports to authorize, the collection of electronic data or metadata of any person pursuant to any action not based on a warrant that particularly describes the person, place, and thing to be searched or seized.” If the windup of that long sentence has a familiar ring, it should. The final dozen words are almost identical to key phrases in the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
  • In recent days, more than 15,000 people have signed a petition expressing support for the legislation. Launched by RootsAction.org, the petition is addressed to the bill’s two sponsors in the Washington legislature — Republican Rep. David Taylor, whose district includes the NSA facility in Yakima, and Democrat Luis Moscoso from the Seattle area. Meanwhile, a similar bill with the same title has just been introduced in the Tennessee legislature — taking aim at the NSA’s center based in Oak Ridge, Tenn. That NSA facility is a doozy: with several hundred scientists and computer specialists working to push supercomputers into new realms of mega-surveillance capacities. A new coalition, OffNow, is sharing information about model legislation. The group also points to known NSA locations in other states including Utah (in Bluffdale), Texas (San Antonio), Georgia (Augusta), Colorado (Aurora), Hawaii (Oahu) and West Virginia (Sugar Grove), along with the NSA’s massive headquarters at Fort Meade in Maryland. Grassroots action and legislative measures are also stirring in several of those states.
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  • “By working together to tackle the erosion of the Fourth Amendment presented by bulk data collection,” Kellegrew said, “people from across partisan divides are resurrecting the lost art of collaboration and in the process, rehabilitating the possibility of a functional American political dialogue denied to the people by dysfunction majority partisan hackery.” From another vantage point, this is an emerging faceoff between reliance on cynical violence and engagement in civic nonviolence.
  • Serving the warfare state and overall agendas for U.S. global dominance to the benefit of corporate elites, the NSA persists in doing violence to the Constitution’s civil-liberties amendments — chilling the First, smashing the Fourth and end-running the Fifth. Meanwhile, a nascent constellation of movements is striving to thwart the surveillance state, the shadowy companion of perpetual war. This is a struggle for power over what kind of future can be created for humanity. It’s time to stop giving juice to Big Brother.
Paul Merrell

Asia Times Online :: The self-beheading House of Saud - 0 views

www.atimes.com/...MID-02-221013.html

war & peace Saudis U.S. Syria UAE Bahrain

shared by Paul Merrell on 23 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • By Pepe Escobar Don't count on a female Saudi playwright writing a 21st century remix of John Osborne's Look Back in Anger starring a bunch of non-working class Saudi royals. But anger it is - from King Abdullah downwards; not only at the UN's "double standards" but especially - hush hush - at the infidel Obama administration. This is the official Saudi explanation for spurning a much-coveted two-year term at the UN Security Council, only hours after its nomination. No wonder the House of Saud's unprecedented self-beheading move was praised only by the usual minion suspects; petro-monarchies of the Gulf Counter-revolution Club, aka Gulf <a href='http://asianmedia.com/GAAN/www/delivery/ck.php?n=a9473bc7&cb=%n' target='_blank'><img src='http://asianmedia.com/GAAN/www/delivery/avw.php?zoneid=36&cb=%n&n=a9473bc7&ct0=%c' border='0' alt='' ></a> Cooperation Council (GCC) as well as Egypt, who now depends on Saudi money to pay its bills and barely survive. Kuwait shared Riyadh's pain, enough to send "a message to the world". The UAE said the UN now had the "historical responsibility" to review its role. Bahrain - invaded by the Saudis in 2001 - stressed the "clear and courageous stand". Cairo said the whole thing was "brave".
  • How brave, indeed, to lobby Arab and Pacific nations for two years, and to spend a fortune training a dozen diplomats in New York for months just to say "no" when you get the prize. The House of Saud would have replaced Pakistan with a Pacific seat; Morocco stays until 2015, in an African seat. As early as five months ago the Saudi seat was considered a done deal at the UN.
  • Apart from a few Middle Eastern spots, no one is seriously losing sleep over the adolescent Saudi move - which displays a curious notion of leverage, as in choosing a PR spin reinventing the corrupt petro-monarchy as the "principled" champions of a cause (UN reform) just as they might have a crack at trying to influence it from within. That would have implied more scrutiny. For instance, this Monday the Human Rights Council, another UN institution, duly blasted Saudi Arabia on its sterling record of discrimination against women and sectarianism, following reports by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. As a member of the UN Security Council, the discrepancy between the medievalist reality inside Saudi Arabia and its lofty "reformist" agenda would be even more glaring.
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  • The perennial Saudi Foreign Minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal had lunch with US Secretary of State John Kerry at the Prince's very private luxury digs in Paris this Monday. The mystery is which kafir fluid was consumed; no doubts though in the official, harmless spin; they agreed on a nuclear-free Iran, an end to the war in Syria and a "stable" Egypt. Before the Paris bash, during the weekend, Bandar Bush was already in his trademark full gear, openly announcing to European diplomats in Riyadh that he will buy his Syria-bound weapons somewhere else, will dissociate his scheme from the CIA, and will train "his" rebels with other players, mostly France and Jordan. The Wall Street Journal has the story, which predictably has not surfaced in Arab media (90% of it controlled by different branches of the House of Saud). Even more interesting is two other pieces of information leaked by diplomats. The House of Saud wanted the US to provide them with targets to be hit inside Syria when Obama's kinetic whatever would start. Washington adamantly refused.
  • Better yet; Washington allegedly told Riyadh the US would not be able to defend the Shi'ite majority, oil-rich Eastern Province if the Tomahawks started flying over Syria. Imagine the horror show in Riyadh; after all, mob protection against petrodollars recycled/invested in the US economy is the basis of this dysfunctional marriage for nearly seven decades. So that should lead us to the now much hyped "independent Saudi foreign policy posture" to be implemented in relation to Washington. Don't hold your breath. As much as the House of Saud is completely paranoid regarding the Obama administration's latest moves, throwing a fit will not change the way the geopolitical winds are blowing. Iran's geopolitical ascent is inevitable. A Syrian solution is on the horizon. No one wants batshit crazy jihadis roaming free from Syria to Iraq to the wider Middle East. The Saudi spin about creating "a new security arrangement for the Arab world" is a joke - as depicted by Saudi-financed shills such as this.
  • The bottom line is that an angry, fearful House of Saud does not have what it takes to confront benign protector Washington. Throwing a fit - as in crying to attract attention - is for geopolitical babies. Without the US - or "the West" - who's gonna run the Saudi energy industry? PhD-deprived camels? And who's gonna sell (and maintain) those savory weapons? Who's going to defend them for smashing the true spirit of the Arab Spring, across the GCC and beyond? Perennial Foreign Minister Prince Saud is gravely ill. He will be replaced by a recently appointed deputy prime minister. Guess who? Prince Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, the king's son. Instead of a "principled" stance against "double standards", the House of Saud move at the UN feels more like nepotism.
Paul Merrell

And The Benghazi Media Circus Plays On… | Global Research - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5380682

war & peace Benghazi Obama Hillary lies

shared by Paul Merrell on 07 May 14 - No Cached
  • A recent article written by this writer for Global Research posted last Saturday – “The Benghazi Scandal Is Obama’s Watergate But Worse” – was written in an effort to seek and uncover the truth. Accurate reporting on major world events is a challenge in today’s world where propaganda and disinformation are mainstream media norms and where virtually all major players in American politics simply lie through their teeth every time they open their mouths in constant effort to look good and cover up the truth. The American public knows this pathetic and sobering fact that deception has come to rule in the world of both politics and the media. People today neither believe their newscasters nor their political leaders. That is why examining the content of the tidal wave of assertions and opinions spewing forth from politicians and pundits in the aftermath of the latest Benghazi revelations must be taken with a grain of salt. Again, truth in today’s world is hard to come by. But as an investigative reporter, presenting a brief overview of recent comments and statements for any informed citizen to process and digest seems a worthwhile and important enterprise.
  • A timeline of recently unfolding events: On 10/12/12 exactly one month after the Benghazi incident, the legal conservative group Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking documents related to the Benghazi attack on September 11th, 2012 that killed the US Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. Obama, who had campaigned on a promise of transparency in the criminal wake of the Bush regime, has proven to be anything but open and transparent. Having to sue the US government for access to the records, on April 18th, 2014, a full year and a half later, the Obama administration’s stonewalling ultimately failed and Judicial Watch successfully got hold of 41 State Department Benghazi related documents. Emails between high level White House officials discussing damage control strategies in the immediate aftermath of the Benghazi assault were released last week. Jubilant Republicans are now calling one of those emails their “smoking gun,” believing it is so incriminating that it will do in their would-be opponent Hillary Clinton from potentially competing in the 2016 presidential election.
  • The newly declassified email written by Obama’s then Deputy Strategic Communications Adviser Ben Rhodes specifically directed then UN Ambassador Susan Rice in preparation for her Sunday morning talk show appearances on September 16th, 2012 to explain the administration’s take on what it knew of the Benghazi murders. Rhodes advised Rice to attribute the Benghazi uprising as “rooted in an Internet video, and not a failure of policy,” pushing talking points designed to bolster Obama’s presidential image as a cool-as-a-cucumber-under-fire kind of wise and benevolent leader and statesman. The major emphasis of the email instructed Rice to blame the bogus anti-Moslem video as inciting a spontaneous protest like in other countries in the region that apparently grew violently out of control, of course all the while knowing that that was a boldface lie. This crucial piece of evidence proves that President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton both knew that the video did not cause the attack but that they chose to willfully deceive the American public in order to protect their own political careers and hence was born the infamously never ending Benghazi cover-up. Obama and Hillary withheld this damning email evidence even from the House Oversight Committee led by Congressman Darrel Issa (R-CA) requesting all documents pertaining to Benghazi more than a year ago. With the presidential election less than two months away at the time of the attack, Obama and Hillary were determined at all cost to keep hidden from Americans the real truth of criminal Benghazi activity they were guilty of engaging in during the months leading up to the attack. Last Thursday an angry Issa subpoenaed current Secretary of State John Kerry to appear before the committee on May 21st to further explain why those critical State Department records recently given to Judicial Watch were not among the 3200 documents originally handed over to his committee well over a year ago.
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  • Investigative reporter Kenneth R. Timmerman as author of a new forthcoming book entitled ‘Dark Forces: The Truth About What Happened in Benghazi’ states: We know that orders were issued, then recalled, to deploy a 50-man Special Forces unit from Croatia that could have reached Benghazi within hours.Timmerman concludes that to date no documents revealing the person who ordered that unit to stand down have yet to surface.
  • Within hours of the general’s testimony came rebukes from both the senior Republican and Democrat on the powerful House Armed Services Committee making claims backing the administration’s that the military was incapable of responding in time to assist the ill-fated Americans in Benghazi. Because they represent the military in Congress that had already drawn the conclusion that nothing tactically could have been done to save the four Americans, they were quick to rebut the general’s testimony. Yet the day before 9/11 every year since 9/11/01 including on 9/10/11, the president meets with top military and security personnel to ensure that US embassies around the globe are bolstered with much needed extra security for 9/11 readiness. Yet the Benghazi compound was so insecure despite repeated requests, both Obama and the military apparently failed to have any military units on standby that could reach Benghazi to be of service on the night of 9/11/12. And this comes after intelligence sources have been reporting insufficient security at the Benghazi embassy compound.
  • Another disclosure at last Thursday’s House Oversight Committee hearing further damaging the credibility and actions of the Obama administration came from retired Air Force General Robert Lovell who at the time of Benghazi was in Germany serving as the senior African Command deputy director for intelligence. Lovell testified, “We should have sent help,” adding that the White House decision not to attempt military assistance due to the time factor was unacceptable. Lovell also stated unequivocally that the military knew that the Benghazi attack had nothing to do with the video falsely used by the administration to explain away the tragedy. The ex-general felt his military should have intervened and was waiting all night long for the call that never came from his bosses in Washington. Clearly he feels a sense of remorse and regret over the passivity imposed on him by his commander-in-chief Obama and State Department head Clinton.
  • Meanwhile, last week in a heated exchange with ABC correspondent Jon Karl a visibly agitated White House Press Secretary Jay Carney insisted that Rhodes’ email was not related to Benghazi at all but referred to the Moslem protests generally taking place in the region in response to the video. The next day Fox reporter Ed Henry engaged Carney on the same issue, eliciting the same haranguing reaction. All this appears to be yet more desperate lies in a feeble attempt to cover his bosses’ Obama and Hillary’s asses called criminal guilt, and by so doing committing his own. Carney had been among the original recipients of Rhodes’ email. Carney further explained that the same Rhodes talking points echoed those delivered earlier to Congress and the White House by deputy CIA director Mike Morell who a month ago claimed he received no pressure or influence from anyone in the Obama administration in coming up with his version of what most likely transpired on 9/11/12 based on all CIA intelligence sources available at the time. Yet on his own Morell admitted to toning down the intelligence reports leading up to the Benghazi attack purposely so as to not appear to be an “I told you so” gesture that would offend Hillary and her State Department. That said, Hillary’s underling and rising star Victoria Nuland (the later promoted to profanity-speaking Assistant Secretary of State who played such a key role in the recent US backed fascist Ukrainan coup) objected to Morell’s talking points that in her mind leaned too heavily toward blaming her boss and their State Department for insufficient security at the Benghazi compound. Her words:
  • Why do we want Hill to start fingering Ansar Al Sharia [the known al Qaeda affiliated attackers that murdered the four Americans], when we aren’t doing that ourselves until we have the investigation results…and the penultimate point could be abused by Members to beat the State Department for not paying attention to Agency warnings so why do we want to feed that?… Concerned.Observe how the exclusive focus of all post-Benghazi interdepartmental correspondence from Rhodes’ to Morell’s to Nuland’s all center on appearance and potential perception to avoid CYA blame. Furthest down on their priority list is honest and truthful disclosure and self-accountability. Again, the name of the game in the world of politics is passing the buck whenever possible to minimize potential heat that comes with looking bad and maximizing looking good by any means or lies necessary. Benghazi perfectly illustrates all of this.
  • Based on the information finally coming to light all last week, last Friday House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) called for a special select committee not unlike the one for Watergate to further investigate Benghazi. Representative Trey Gowdy (SC-R) has already been selected as its lead investigator. This grandstanding ploy seems a bit superfluous and redundant since the House Oversight Committee has ostensibly been trying to get to the bottom of Benghazi for nearly a year and a half, albeit thus far ineffective in its results, no help from the State Department’s prior email omissions. Not only is Benghazi the hot topic buzzing here in America, on that same day last Friday, more bullets was buzzing in Benghazi as well. Nine police security soldiers were gunned down by, you guessed it, the same murderers still remaining at large that were behind the 9/11/12 Benghazi attack – the militant group the US has for years labeled an al Qaeda affiliated terrorist organization Ansar al-Sharia. After massacring 31 peaceful demonstrators protesting outside the militants’ headquarters last June, last week’s massacre is a powerful statement showing that the terrorists are still in charge in Benghazi and immune from any accountability from the US installed puppet government either in Tripoli or Washington. They remain free men at large despite Obama’s promise to hunt them down and bring them to justice.
  • The senior Democratic House Intel Committee Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) typifies the partisan Obama-Hillary politics games of each side racing to the media to point fingers at each other in their same old, same old blame game. On Sunday Schiff stated he does not want any Democrats to participate in the newly forming select committee that the Republican House Speaker Boehner has just recently called for, already naming its GOP chair. That is simply a game the Dems will refuse to play. Why? Because Republicans cannot make them. Sound familiar? Perhaps your 7-year old child might employ this same game strategy. Insider Dems like former White House advisor turned ABC analyst (and another original recipient of Rhodes’ infamous email) David Plouffe conveniently took to ABC’s Sunday morning On This Week with George Stephanopoulos crying foul even louder with their familiar “conspiracy” chant they customarily use to discredit any criticism leveled at the Obama administration. His cries reaching desperation this week accuse a “very loud, delusional minority” of Republicans of an obsessive politics game over Benghazi. Another all too familiar grade school tactic, whatever misbehavior you are accused of, simply accuse your enemy of the same offense, an old early childhood trick that you never need outgrow in the world of politics.
  • Still another indignant reaction hardcore defenders of Hillary and Obama are now quick to cite are the thirteen embassy attacks that occurred as so called “Benghazi’s on Bush’s watch” when not a peep was ever heard from the press. This straw house strategy is designed to show how Republicans and Fox News are hypocritical in their obsession to find dirt on Benghazi where they deny any exists. Yet this accusation seems to omit one very significant fact. Not one of those embassy attacks during the Bush regime resulted in any murdered Americans, much less four of them and one being a US Ambassador, something that has not happened in the last 32 years before Benghazi. The media circus demonizing partisan politics players on both sides epitomizes why the US government is so utterly broken, horribly dysfunctional, morally bankrupt and totally ineffective in addressing any and all of the most pressing problems facing America and the world today. The blame game is all they know. Yet in all their exaggeration, lies, name calling and finger pointing, not one of them is even addressing the pink elephant in the room.
  • Obama, Hillary and then CIA Director retired General Betrayus Petraeus were/are international gun running criminal outlaws of the worst kind, working with the very same al Qaeda terrorist bunch that murdered those four nearly forgotten Americans. US tax dollars were/are going into the pockets of Ansar al-Sharia and al Qaeda mercenaries that looted Muammar Kaddafi’s gold cache and enormous weapon arsenal that included chemical weapons as well as surface to air missiles. And Obama, Petraeus and 2016 presidential heir apparent Hillary were in deep over their heads under Hillary and Stevens’ State Department cover, shipping them from Benghazi through Turkey to Syria to covertly fight a war by proxy against Assad’s government forces. After more than three bloody years, to this day the US is still bent on destroying another sovereign nation posing absolutely no security threat to America. These are the war crimes constantly being committed by Obama, Petraeus and Hillary and their lies upon lies are unraveling at an accelerated clip with each passing month. Thus, expect to see more desperate acts of aggression from desperate despots who know that their jig is up. Yet desperate despots do not care how many humans they will take down with them. But justice for these longtime perpetrators of multiple crimes against humanity will be served in the end.
Paul Merrell

Hackers Stole Secrets of U.S. Government Workers' Sex Lives - The Daily Beast - 0 views

www.thedailybeast.com/...ernment-workers-sex-lives.html

surveillance state OPM-computer-breach Snowden China

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • It was already being described as the worst hack of the U.S. government in history. And it just got much worse.A senior U.S. official has confirmed that foreign hackers compromised the intimate personal details of an untold number of government workers. Likely included in the hackers’ haul: information about workers’ sexual partners, drug and alcohol abuse, debts, gambling compulsions, marital troubles, and any criminal activity.Those details, which are now presumed to be in the hands of Chinese spies, are found in the so-called “adjudication information” that U.S. investigators compile on government employees and contractors who are applying for security clearances. The exposure suggests that the massive computer breach at the Office of Personnel Management is more significant and potentially damaging to national security than officials have previously said.
  • Three former U.S. intelligence officials told The Daily Beast that the adjudication information would effectively provide dossiers on current and former government employees, as well as contractors. It gives foreign intelligence agencies a roadmap for finding people with access to the government’s most highly classified secrets.Obama administration officials had previously acknowledged the breach of information that applicants voluntarily disclose on a routine questionnaire, called Standard Form 86, but the theft of the more detailed and wide-ranging adjudication information appears to have gone overlooked.
  • “Whoever compromised the adjudication information is going to have clear knowledge, beyond what’s in the SF86, about who the best targets for espionage are in the United States,” Michael Adams, a computer security expert who served more than two decades in the U.S. Special Operations Command, told The Daily Beast. “This is the most successful cyber attack in the history of the United States,” owing to the amount and quality of the information that was stolen, Adams said. U.S. intelligence officers spend years trying to recruit foreign spies to gather the kinds of details and insights that are contained in adjudication information, one former senior U.S. official said. This official, who requested anonymity, added that adjudication information would give foreign intelligence services “enormous leverage” over U.S. personnel whom they might forcibly interrogate for information or try to recruit.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • The adjudication process had a broad scope, taking into account the SF86 questionnaire, reports from background investigations, interviews with the applicant's family members and associates, his or her employment history, and for people seeking high-level clearances, the results of polygraph investigations.Seymour said such records “span an employee’s career” and could stretch back as far as 30 years. Officials have said that as many as 18 million people may have been affected by the breach. Asked specifically what information the hackers had obtained, Seymour told lawmakers that she preferred to answer later in a “classified session.” Seymour didn’t specify how many people’s information was stolen. But the OPM oversees background investigations, which comprise a key part of the adjudication process, for more than 90 percent of security clearance applicants, according to the Congressional Research Service. An OPM spokesman didn’t respond to a request for comment in time for publication.
  • A former senior U.S. intelligence official, who asked to remain anonymous, said the OPM breach would cause more damage to national security operations and personnel than the leaks by Edward Snowden about classified surveillance by the National Security Agency.“This is worse than Snowden, because at least programs that were running before the leaks could be replaced or rebuilt,” the former official said. “But OPM, that’s the gift that keeps on giving. You can’t rebuild people.”Adjudicators are in a powerful position because in deciding whether to recommend granting a security clearance, they have access to the entire scope of an applicant’s file and are told to make a subjective analysis.“The adjudication process is the careful weighing of a number of variables known as the whole-person concept,” according to official guidelines. “Available, reliable information about the person, past and present, favorable and unfavorable, should be considered in reaching a determination.”
  • By design, adjudication is an invasive process, meant to unearth risk factors including drug and alcohol abuse, extramarital affairs, a history of violence, and other events that speak to a person’s “trustworthiness” and their susceptibility to blackmail or being recruited to spy for a foreign government.For instance, “compulsive gambling is a concern, as it may lead to financial crimes including espionage,” the guidelines say. Adjudicators are told to note “a pattern of compulsive, self-destructive, or high risk sexual behavior,” “relapse after diagnosis of alcohol abuse,” and “emotionally unstable, irresponsible, dysfunctional, violent, paranoid, or bizarre behavior,” among other warning signs in 13 categories. Some of the embarrassing personal details found in some adjudications have been made public. That’s what happens after an applicant who was denied a security clearance launched an appeal.
  • Armed with such intimate details of a person’s worst moments, foreign spies would have unprecedented advantage against their U.S. adversaries. And the news is especially bad for people who hold the highest levels of clearance, which require more rigorous background checks, noted Adams, the computer security expert. “The higher up you go in your sensitivity levels, the more data that’s in your adjudication file,” he said.
Gary Edwards

The Daily Bell - Doug Casey on the Continuing Debasement of Money, Language and Banking... - 0 views

www.thedailybell.com/...-and-Banking-in-the-Modern-Age

Banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • This isn't going to last because the way you get wealthy is by producing more than you consume and saving the difference – not by consuming more than you produce, and borrowing the difference. With the Fed keeping interest rates at artificially low levels, hoping to increase consumption, they're making it very foolish to save – when you get ½% or 1% on your savings. So people are saving less and they're borrowing more than they otherwise would. This is a formula for making things worse, not better.
  • They are, idiotically, doing exactly the opposite of what they should be.
  • In point of fact, the Fed should be abolished; the market, not bureaucrats, should determine interest rates. We wouldn't be in this pickle to start with if the government wasn't involved in the economy.
  • ...35 more annotations...
  • The Chinese, the Japanese – everybody is selling, trying to pass the Old Maid card of US Government debt, which represents return–free risk. Nobody other than the Fed is buying, and interest rates would skyrocket if they stopped. The more QE there is, the more distortions it will cause, however, making for a bigger disaster the longer it goes on.
  • Will the Fed continue to inflate the money supply? Doug Casey: They have to, because with the huge amount of debt in the world – and the amount of debt in the world has increased something like 40 or 50% just since the Greater Depression started – if they don't keep increasing the amount of money in the world then nobody's going to be able to service the huge amount of debt that is out there. So I don't see anything changing in the years to come. They've truly painted themselves into a corner. They're caught between Scylla and Charybdis, and we don't have Odysseus steering the ship of state.
  • Let me say, again, that the Fed serves no useful purpose and it should be abolished. Central banks create "super money" by buying government or other debt with new currency units that they credit to the sellers' accounts at commercial banks. That's the actual engine of inflation.
  • But it's greatly compounded in the commercial banking system through fractional reserve lending – which would not be possible without a central bank. Fractional reserve lending allows banks to multiply the money supply several times.
  • If $100 of Fed super money, freshly created, is deposited in a commercial bank like Chase or Citibank, then $90 can be lent out with a 10% reserve, the current number. That money is redeposited. They'll then lend out 90% of that $90, or $81, and then 90% of that $81, so it multiplies.
  • Central banking and fractional reserve lending go hand-in-hand.
  • Without a central bank, any bank that engaged in fractional reserve banking would be considered guilty of fraud and, when discovered, would be punished by a bank run, followed by criminal charges. The point to be made here is that the entire banking system today is totally unsound and totally corrupt.
  • In a sound banking system you have two types of deposits – checking account (or demand) deposits, and savings account (or time) deposits. They are completely different businesses. With demand deposits, you pay the bank to store your money securely, and write checks against it. A bank should no more lend out demand deposit money than Allied Storage should lend out the furniture you're paying them to store.
  • Savings accounts are completely different. Here you lend money to a bank, perhaps at 3%, and they relend it at 6%, making 3% to cover costs, risks and profits. A sound bank not only has to match the maturities of its deposits with the maturities of its loans, but must insure loans are both highly secured and self-liquidating.
  • These principles have been totally lost. Today banks operate as hedge funds.
  • As an aside, if someone were to set up a well-capitalized 100% reserve bank in a tax haven, especially using gold as an alternative currency, it would be immensely successful in the years to come – when most all conventional banks will fail.
  • By all historical, normal parameters, the stock market is greatly overvalued.
  • The trillions of new currency units that the Fed is creating are creating bubbles, and one of them is in the stock market. The biggest bubble, of course, is in the bond market – that's a super bubble.
  • Not only does the dollar have no real value but the banks you keep it in are all insolvent.
  • There are few sound investments out there. Today there are no investments; there are only speculations.
  • From the economist's point of view, the bubbles created by central banking are a disaster, but from a speculator's point of view they're a godsend. It's becoming harder and harder to be an investor; I define an investor as someone who allocates capital to productive business. It's hard to be an investor because you now have to spend more money on lawyers than on engineers and workers if you want to produce something. You're increasingly forced to be a speculator in today's climate.
  • Stock and bond markets all over the world are overpriced – with the exception of Russian stocks right now; they could be a very interesting speculation. I wouldn't touch anything in China yet, because all the Chinese banks are going to go bust.
  • The Chinese have been more profligate inflating the yuan than the Americans have been with the dollar. It's fantastic what the Chinese have done since Deng liberalized the economy in the early '80s, but now's not a time to be in their markets.
  • You've got to remember there are two types of people in the world: people who want to control material reality and people who want to control other people.
  • It's that second type who go into politics. They play games – here it's called the Great Game, which dignifies it in a way it shouldn't be – with other people's lives and property. It's been this way ever since the state was created about 5,000 years ago, and I don't think you should play games with other people's lives.
  • On the bright side, there are more scientists and engineers alive today than in all of human history put together, and so technology is advancing more rapidly than ever for that reason. That's a huge plus.
  • The second good thing is that the average person, at least those who aren't on welfare, tries to produce more than he consumes. That creates capital.
  • But I'm afraid that Western civilization reached its peak before World War I. World War I destroyed a huge amount of capital and, more importantly, it changed the moral bases of so many things.
  • Then World War II institutionalized the State as the most important part of society – which is perverse, because the state is actually the enemy of civil society.
  • I think Western civilization reached its peak in 1913, when it reached its maximum geographical extent. That was coincidental with the peak of its technological and philosophical influence on the world, much the way the Roman Empire reached its peak at about the end of the first century, then went down, slowly at first and then quickly. That's what's happening to the West.
  • Relative to the rest of the world, and contribution to world production, our piece of the economic pie is getting smaller and smaller. If we have another serious war it would be absolutely smaller, and the final nail in the coffin. Meanwhile, the US, with its bloated military, is just itching for another war. It's out of control, and unlikely to change at this point. That's a big trend that is in motion that I think is going to stay in motion.
  • Europe is in particularly bad shape. The place is a fascist/socialist disaster.
  • It was possible for the average European to keep his head above water through tax evasion in the past, but now those governments have broken bank secrecy everywhere, and it will destroy a lot of capital.
  • The "nation-state" is a really stupid and dysfunctional idea, and I'm glad it's on its way out.
  • That said, even the US, which from a cultural point of view is as much of a country as any place in the world, should actually break up into at least five or six regions.
  • Canada should break up into at least five or six regions initially.
  • I don't think politically; politics is the problem, not the solution. I think that the ideal solution is for every individual to opt out of the current system. When they give a war, you don't come. When they give a tax, you don't pay. When they give an election, you don't vote. You even try not to use their currency and their banking system. T
  • he ideal thing is to let the system collapse under its own weight as opposed to starting a new political party and then continuing to act politically, which is to say to use force on other people.
  • Market risk is huge today, but political risk is even bigger. One indication of that was, when the banks in Cyprus went bust some months ago, the government essentially confiscated everybody's account above 100,000 euros, in what they called a "bail-in."
  • You need several options. It seems like people haven't learned anything from what happened in Russia in 1917, Germany in 1933, China in 1948, Cuba in 1959, or Vietnam in 1975. Rwanda, Cambodia, Yugoslavia, Zimbabwe, Ukraine, Syria ... there are lots of examples and these things can and will eventually happen almost everywhere. When the chimpanzees go crazy, you don't want to be where they are. You've got to have a Plan B. You've got to have a crib out of that political jurisdiction. Acting like a plant, and staying put, isn't a good survival strategy for a human.
  • Gary Edwards on 09 Jul 15
     
    "Doug Casey: I don't see a real recovery until they stop debasing the currency, radically cut government spending and taxation and eliminate most regulation. In other words, cease doing the things that caused this depression. And that's not going to happen until there's a collapse of the current order. Things have cyclically improved since the height of the crisis of 2008-09. The trillions of currency units created by the Federal Reserve have jammed the stock market higher and kept the big banks from going under. What surprises me is that retail prices have not moved as significantly as I would have expected. The reason, I believe, is that most of that money is still sitting in financial institutions. It has gone into cash out of fear, into stocks because they represent real wealth with earning power and into various speculative assets like artwork and collectible cars. Real estate has recovered somewhat, not because of strong fundamentals but strictly because of money creation. This isn't going to last because the way you get wealthy is by producing more than you consume and saving the difference - not by consuming more than you produce, and borrowing the difference. With the Fed keeping interest rates at artificially low levels, hoping to increase consumption, they're making it very foolish to save - when you get ½% or 1% on your savings. So people are saving less and they're borrowing more than they otherwise would. This is a formula for making things worse, not better. They are, idiotically, doing exactly the opposite of what they should be. Although, I hasten to add, I hate to pontificate on what the Fed "should" do. In point of fact, the Fed should be abolished; the market, not bureaucrats, should determine interest rates. We wouldn't be in this pickle to start with if the government wasn't involved in the economy. In fact, if it wasn't for the state, I suspect we'd all have a vastly higher standard of living, and would be colonizing the Moon, Mars and
Paul Merrell

'Foreigners' land top minister posts in Ukraine - fastFT: Market-moving news and views,... - 0 views

www.ft.com/...and-top-minister-posts-ukraine

war & peace Ukraine coup-government appointments

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • Two foreign-born investment fund managers and a reform-minded former official from the Caucasus republic of Georgia have been given top ministerial posts in Ukraine's newly-formed, pro-EU integration coalition government. The unorthodox appointment of the three "foreigners" swiftly granted Ukrainian citizenship on Tuesday is seen as a desperate attempt by the war-torn and recession-battered country to jump-start reforms, crack corruption and unlock billions of dollars in bailout funds from the International Monetary Fund, reports Roman Olearchyk. US-born Natalie Jaresko, a former US State Department official and investment fund manager with Ukrainian roots who has resided in Kiev for some 20 years, will join the government of prime minister Arseniy Yatseniuk as finance minister. In this role, the former head of Horizon Capital and economic section chief at the US Embassy will lead bailout and reform talks with the IMF and other creditors.
  • Working closely with her as economy minister will be Lithuanian Aivaras Abromavicius. Formerly a top executive at East Capital, a Swedish asset manager, he has in recent years been based in Ukraine. His wife is Ukrainian. Pledging to adopt anti-corruption and pro-business reforms, Mr Abromavicius addressed Ukrainian lawmakers on Tuesday saying: "I'm from Europe. We will work together European style." US-educated Alexander Kvitashvili, who reformed Georgia's healthcare system, will now be health minister in Ukraine and be tasked with the grim job of overhauling the country's dysfunctional healthcare system.
  • Explaining the need for foreigners to enter the government, Ukraine's president Petro Poroshenko speaking before lawmakers approved the new cabinet said: Ukraine faces outstanding challenges – an incredibly difficult economic situation, aggression from the side of Russia, the need for radical reforms and tackling of corruption. This all requires non-standard decisions …. These decisions require a search for candidates for the new government not only from within in Ukraine, but also from across its borders, specifically from the countries which have experience in coming out of systemic crisis of foreign and domestic nature.
Paul Merrell

​Ready, reset, go! ...to Cold War 2.0 - RT Op-Edge - 0 views

rt.com/...068-eurasia-new-great-game-war

U.S.-foreign-policy sanctions Russia EU Germany BRICS

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • Enter a fragile Europe. Russia is the EU’s third-largest trading partner. Top economies such as Germany, France and Italy are vastly integrated with the Russian economy. A key plank of Washington’s strategy is to de-link Europe from Russia, part of a much larger agenda of preventing by all means Eurasia’s trade/commercial/economic development integration. It all hinges on Germany. That’s the key debate in Berlin nowadays. German business – and even conservative politicians – are reaching a stark conclusion; they do not want a heavily dysfunctional relationship with Russia. Public opinion, at 57 percent, wants a foreign policy more independent from the US. The US Orwellian/Panopticon complex intrusions in Germany have been instrumental as a game-changer.
  • The real, no-holds-barred reason for the Empire of Chaos’s obsessive economic war on Russia is that Moscow, as a BRICS member, alongside especially China and Brazil, is at the leading edge of emerging powers challenging the global financial/political (dis)order – wallowing in the mire of casino capitalism – dictated by the Empire of Chaos. And it gets ‘curiouser and curiouser’, because the effect of the sanctions hysteria has been to accumulate even more sympathy from the developing world towards Russia. The typical Washington rumbling about “the world” united to “isolate” Russia – in a replay of the Iran case – only applies to NATO. I have closely followed the latest chapters in Eurasia integration, from the Russia-China gas ‘deal of the century’ clinched in Shanghai to the St. Petersburg Economic Forum and then closer Eurasia-South America integration at the BRICS summit in Brazil, which created the New Development Bank and advanced the BRICS drive to develop their own parallel global institutions. President Putin even proposed a BRICS energy coalition, complete with nuclear power agreements and its own “fuel reserve bank and an energy policy institute.” Moscow – as well as Beijing - is actively strengthening energy deals across South America, as in Rosatom signing with both Argentina and Brazil to build nuclear power plants.
  • Eurasia integration, on the Asian front, proceeds unabated. Russia will sell more gas at lower prices not only to China, but also, in the near future, to Japan and South Korea as well. Beijing, meanwhile, is carefully moving its financial, economic and geopolitical pieces on the chessboard, and now on full red alert regarding the sanctions hysteria; the collective leadership very well knows that the target one day may be Russia because of Ukraine, but the next day may be China, because of the South China Sea or even a Hong Kong currently moving towards an impasse; should candidates for Hong Kong chief executive be chosen by direct democracy, or by committee, as Beijing prefers? The key point is, forget about a US-Russia reset. The Russia-China strategic partnership will strengthen. China is preparing itself for its turn in the sanction hysteria show. And for the foreseeable future, the new game in the chessboard is Cold War 2.0.
  • Paul Merrell on 27 Aug 14
     
    The U.S. throws its weight around expecting Germany (and the EU) to commit economic suicide by honoring U.S. sanctions on Russia and sticking with the sinking dollar. The U.S. invests in guns and projection of military power while Russia and the other BRICS nations just offer to do business. Methinks the U.S. has the losing strategy. 
Paul Merrell

Fukushima Coverup: Sick US Navy Sailors' Class Action Law Suit, US Government, Doctors ... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5435745

nuclear-industry Fukushima U.S.-Navy radiation-sickness litigation GE TEPCO Toshiba Hitachi Ebasco

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • U.S. Navy sailors exposed to radioactive fallout from the Fukushima nuclear disaster have been falling ill, even as the Defense Department insists that they were not exposed to dangerous levels of radiation. Many of the sailors have now joined in a class action lawsuit against Fukushima operators and builders Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), Toshiba, Hitachi, Ebasco and General Electric. Even if they wanted to — which many do not — the sailors would be unable to sue the Navy. According to a Supreme Court ruling from the 1950s known as the Feres Doctrine, soldiers cannot sue the government for injuries resulting directly from their military service.
  • Yet in the four years since the disaster, at least 500 sailors have fallen ill, and 247 of them have joined the class-action suit. The 100-page legal complaint chronicles their symptoms: an airplane mechanic suffering from unexplained muscle wasting; a woman whose baby was born ill; a sailor told his health problems must be genetic, even though his identical twin is perfectly healthy; and case after case of cancer, internal bleeding, abscesses, thyroid dysfunction and birth defects.
  • The defendants initially claimed that they could not be sued in a U.S. court, so plaintiffs’ attorney Paul Garner asked the sailors to come to a court hearing in San Diego, to offer moral support. Nearly all of them refused, for fear of public attack. Initial plaintiff Lindsey Cooper, for example, had already been mocked by atomic energy experts on CNN and by conservative radio hosts. Others were afraid of being perceived as anti-military, or un-American.
Paul Merrell

Pambazuka - Egypt is calling the West's bluff over its phony war on ISIS - 1 views

www.pambazuka.net/...94051

war & peace Libya Egypt U.S.-foreign-policy ISIL

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • As Egyptian President Sisi calls for more support in the fight against NATO-funded militias in Libya, the West’s refusal to back him raises the question of their ultimate aims in entering the region. The West is complicity in enabling ISIS to gain a strong foothold and further destabilise Libya, Syria and, potentially, Egypt.Western states are trumpeting ISIS as the latest threat to civilisation, claiming total commitment to their defeat, and using the group’s conquests in Syria and Iraq as a pretext for deepening their own military involvement in the Middle East. Yet as Libya seems to be following the same path as Syria – of ‘moderate’ anti-government militias backed by the West paving the way for ISIS takeover – Britain and the US seem reluctant to confront them there, immediately pouring cold water on Egyptian President Sisi’s request for an international coalition to halt their advances. By making the suggestion – and having it, predictably, spurned – Sisi is making clear Western duplicity over ISIS and the true nature of NATO policy in Libya.
  • On 29th August 2011, two months before the last vestiges of the Libyan state were destroyed and its leader executed, I was interviewed on Russia Today about the country’s future. I told the station: “There’s been a lot of talk about what will happen [in Libya after the ouster of Gaddafi] – will there be Sharia law, will there be a liberal democracy? What we have to understand is that what will replace the Libyan state won’t be any of those things. What will replace the Libyan state will be the same as what has replaced the state in Iraq and Afghanistan, which is a dysfunctional government, complete lack of security, gang warfare and civil war. And this is not a mistake from NATO. They would prefer to see failed states than states that are powerful and independent and able to challenge their hegemony. And people who are fighting for the TNC, fighting for NATO, really need to understand that this is NATO’s vision for their country.” Friends at the time told me I was being overly pessimistic and cynical. I said I hoped to God that they were right. But my experiences over a decade following the results of my own country (Britain)’s wars of aggression in places like Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq long after the mainstream media had lost interest, led me to believe otherwise.
  • Of course, it was not only me who was making such warnings. On March 6th 2011, several weeks before NATO began seven months of bombing, Gaddafi gave a prophetic interview with French newspaper Le Monde du Dimanche, in which he stated: “I want to make myself understood: if one threatens [Libya], if one seeks to destabilize [Libya], there will be chaos, Bin Laden, armed factions. That is what will happen. You will have immigration, thousands of people will invade Europe from Libya. And there will no longer be anyone to stop them. Bin Laden will base himself in North Africa and will leave Mullah Omar in Afghanistan and Pakistan. You will have Bin Laden at your doorstep.”
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  • his is the state of affairs NATO bequeathed to Libya, reversing the country’s trajectory as a stable, prosperous pan-African state that was a leading player in the African Union, and a thorn in the side of US and British attempts to re-establish military domination. And it is not only Libya that has suffered; the power vacuum resulting from NATO’s wholesale destruction of the Libyan state apparatus has dragged the whole region into the vortex. As Brendan O Neill has shown in detail, the daily horrors being perpetrated in Mali, Nigeria and now Cameroon are all a direct result of NATO’s bloodletting, as death squads from across the entire Sahel-Sahara region have been given free reign to set up training camps and loot weapons across the giant zone of lawlessness which NATO have sculpted out of Libya.
  • The result? African states that in 2010 were forging ahead economically, greatly benefitting from Chinese infrastructure and manufacturing investment, moving away from centuries of colonial and neo-colonial dependence on extortionate Western financial institutions, have been confronted with massive new terror threats from groups such as Boko Haram, flush with new weaponry and facilities courtesy of NATO’s humanitarianism. Algeria and Egypt, too, still governed by the same independent-minded movements which overthrew European colonialism, have seen their borders destabilised, setting the stage for ongoing debilitating attacks planned and executed from NATO’s new Libyan militocracy. This is the context in which Egypt is launching the regional fightback against NATO’s destabilisation strategy.
  • Over the past year in particular, Egyptians have witnessed their Western neighbour rapidly descending down the same path of ISIS takeover as Syria. In Syria, a civil war between a Western-sponsored insurgency and an elected secular government has seen the anti-government forces rapidly fall under the sway of ISIS, as the West’s supposed ‘moderates’ in the Free Syrian Army either join forces with ISIS (impressed by their military prowess, hi-tech weaponry, and massive funding) or find themselves overrun by them. In Libya, the same pattern is quickly developing. The latest phase in the Libyan disaster began last June when the militias who dominated the previous parliament (calling themselves the ‘Libya Dawn’ coalition) lost the election and refused to accept the results, torching the country’s airport and oil storage facilities as opening salvos in an ongoing civil war between them and the newly elected parliament. Both parliaments have the allegiance of various armed factions, and have set up their own rival governments, each controlling different parts of the country. But, starting in Derna last November, areas taken by the Libya Dawn faction have begun falling to ISIS. Last weekend’s capture of Sirte was the third major town to be taken by them, and there is no sign that it will be the last. This is the role that has consistently been played by the West’s proxies across the region – paving the way and laying the ground for ISIS takeover. Egyptian President Sisi’s intervention – airstrikes against ISIS targets in Libya - aims to reverse this trajectory before it reaches Iraqi-Syrian proportions.
  • The internationally-recognised Libyan government based in Tobruk – the one appointed by the House of Representatives that won the election last summer - has welcomed the Egyptian intervention. Not only, they hope, will it help prevent ISIS takeover, but will also cement Egyptian support for their side in the ongoing civil war with ‘Libya Dawn’. Indeed, Egypt could, with some justification, claim that winning the war against ISIS requires a unified Libyan government committed to this goal, and that the Dawn’s refusal to recognise the elected parliament , not to mention their ‘ambiguous’ attitude towards ISIS, is the major obstacle to achieving such an outcome. Does this mean that the Egyptian intervention will scupper the UN’s ‘Libya dialogue’ peace talks initiative? Not necessarily; in fact it could have the opposite effect. The first two rounds of the talks were boycotted by the General National Congress (GNC) - the Libya Dawn parliament- safe in the knowledge that they would continue to receive weapons and financing from NATO partners Qatar and Turkey whilst the internationally-recognised Tobruk government remained under an international arms embargo. As the UK’s envoy to the Libya Dialogue, Jonathan Powell, noted this week, the “sine qua non for a [peace] settlement” is a “mutually hurting stalemate”. By balancing up the scales in the civil war, Egyptian support military support for the Tobruk government may show the GNC that taking the talks seriously will be more in their interests than continuation of the fight.
  • Sisi’s call for the military support of the West in his intervention has effectively been rejected, as he very likely expected it to be. A joint statement by the US and Britain and their allies on Tuesday poured cold water on the idea, and no wonder – they did not go to all the bother of turning Libya into the centre of their regional destabilisation strategy only to then try to stabilise it just when it is starting to bear fruit. However, by forcing them to come out with such a statement, Sisi has called the West’s bluff. The US and Britain claim to be committed to the destruction of ISIS, a formation which is the product of the insurgency they have sponsored in Syria for the past four years, and Sisi is asking them to put their money where their mouth is. They have refused to do so. In the end, the Egyptian resolution to the UN Security Council (UNSC) on Wednesday made no mention of calling for military intervention by other powers, and limited itself to calling for an end to the one-sided international arms embargo which prevents the arming of the elected government but does not seem to deter NATO’s regional partners from openly equipping the ‘Libya Dawn’ militias. Sisi has effectively forced the West to show its hand: their rejection of his proposal to support the intervention makes it clear to the world the two-faced nature of their supposed commitment to the destruction of ISIS.
  • There are, however, deep divisions on this issue in Europe. France is deepening its military presence in the Sahel-Sahara region, with 3000 troops based in Chad, Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali and a massive new base opened on the Libyan border in Niger last October, and would likely welcome a pretext to extend its operations to its historic protectorate in Southern Libya. Italy, likewise, is getting cold feet about the destabilisation it helped to unleash, having not only damaged a valuable trading partner, but increasingly being faced with hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing the horror and destitution that NATO has gifted the region. But neither are likely to do anything without UNSC approval, which is likely to continue to be blocked by the US and Britain, who are more than happy to see countries like Russian-allied Egypt and Chinese-funded Nigeria weakened and their development retarded by terror bombings. Sisi’s actions will, it is hoped, not only make abundantly clear the West’s acquiescence in the horrors it has created – but also pave the way for an effective fightback against them.
  • Paul Merrell on 27 Feb 15
     
    Now why would the U.S. and European powers oppose military intervention against ISIL in Libya if ISIL is in fact this force of unmitigated evil we hear about so often in American politics? Or is it a matter of who actually controls ISIL?  
Paul Merrell

Launching in 2015: A Certificate Authority to Encrypt the Entire Web | Electronic Front... - 0 views

www.eff.org/...e-authority-encrypt-entire-web

surveillance-state Web-fights-back Let's-Encrypt https

shared by Paul Merrell on 05 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • Today EFF is pleased to announce Let’s Encrypt, a new certificate authority (CA) initiative that we have put together with Mozilla, Cisco, Akamai, IdenTrust, and researchers at the University of Michigan that aims to clear the remaining roadblocks to transition the Web from HTTP to HTTPS.Although the HTTP protocol has been hugely successful, it is inherently insecure. Whenever you use an HTTP website, you are always vulnerable to problems, including account hijacking and identity theft; surveillance and tracking by governments, companies, and both in concert; injection of malicious scripts into pages; and censorship that targets specific keywords or specific pages on sites. The HTTPS protocol, though it is not yet flawless, is a vast improvement on all of these fronts, and we need to move to a future where every website is HTTPS by default.With a launch scheduled for summer 2015, the Let’s Encrypt CA will automatically issue and manage free certificates for any website that needs them. Switching a webserver from HTTP to HTTPS with this CA will be as easy as issuing one command, or clicking one button.
  • The biggest obstacle to HTTPS deployment has been the complexity, bureaucracy, and cost of the certificates that HTTPS requires. We’re all familiar with the warnings and error messages produced by misconfigured certificates. These warnings are a hint that HTTPS (and other uses of TLS/SSL) is dependent on a horrifyingly complex and often structurally dysfunctional bureaucracy for authentication.
  • The need to obtain, install, and manage certificates from that bureaucracy is the largest reason that sites keep using HTTP instead of HTTPS. In our tests, it typically takes a web developer 1-3 hours to enable encryption for the first time. The Let’s Encrypt project is aiming to fix that by reducing setup time to 20-30 seconds. You can help test and hack on the developer preview of our Let's Encrypt agent software or watch a video of it in action here:
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  • Let’s Encrypt will employ a number of new technologies to manage secure automated verification of domains and issuance of certificates. We will use a protocol we’re developing called ACME between web servers and the CA, which includes support for new and stronger forms of domain validation. We will also employ Internet-wide datasets of certificates, such as EFF’s own Decentralized SSL Observatory, the University of Michigan’s scans.io, and Google's Certificate Transparency logs, to make higher-security decisions about when a certificate is safe to issue.The Let’s Encrypt CA will be operated by a new non-profit organization called the Internet Security Research Group (ISRG). EFF helped to put together this initiative with Mozilla and the University of Michigan, and it has been joined for launch by partners including Cisco, Akamai, and Identrust.
Paul Merrell

Busted Stuff: America's Disastrous Iran Policy | The National Interest - 0 views

nationalinterest.org/...s-disastrous-iran-policy-12500

war & peace Iranian-nukes-myth Obama U.S.-foreign-policy Leveretts must-read

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Stakes in the nuclear talks between Iran and the P5+1 couldn’t be higher for the countries involved—especially for the United States. After nearly a decade and a half of disastrously self-damaging wars, “counter-terrorism campaigns,” and military occupations in the Middle East, the dysfunction and incoherence of U.S. policy is now on full display, from Iraq to Libya, Syria, and now Yemen. To recover, Washington must accept on-the-ground realities: U.S. efforts to dominate the region have failed and the Islamic Republic of Iran is now a rising power with which America must come to terms.              But President Obama has yet to explain why the United States—for its own interests, not as a favor to Iran, or simply because Americans are war-weary—needs rapprochement with the Islamic Republic. Absent such advocacy, his administration may still reach a nuclear deal with Iran. But it will lose the political fight at home over a new Iran policy, squandering the chance for a broader strategic opening with Tehran and locking the United States into increasingly steep strategic decline in the Middle East and globally.   
  • Today, America cannot achieve any of its high-priority goals in the Middle East—e.g., combatting the Islamic State, forestalling another violent Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, and resolving conflicts in Syria and Yemen—without better ties with Iran. Under any political order, Iran is a pivotal country, given its demographic and territorial size, its geostrategic location, its identity as a civilizational state with a history as long as China’s, and its hydrocarbon resources. But, under the Islamic Republic—which, since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, has worked to forge an indigenously-designed political system combining participatory politics and elections with elements of Islamic governance, and to pursue foreign policy independence—Iran enjoys a powerful legitimacy that bolsters its regional impact.
  • For too many Americans, thirty-five years of demonizing caricature mask an essential fact:  the Islamic Republic of Iran, as the Middle East’s only successful participatory Islamist order, has been able to pursue an independent foreign policy that has steadily bolstered its influence in critical arenas across the Middle East. If America is to recover its strategic position, it must devise a fundamentally different relationship with this rising power. It must do so not only because of Iran’s unique importance, but also as a first step toward coming to terms with Middle Eastern Muslims’ manifest desire—reflected in polls and in electoral outcomes whenever they get to vote in a reasonably open way—to define their political futures in terms of participatory Islamism and foreign policy independence.      Ignoring these realities, the Obama administration treats a nuclear deal as, at most, a “nice to have” option. Obama rarely identifies potential U.S. gains from realigning relations with Iran; instead, he stresses how Washington is providing Tehran with an “opportunity” to “benefit from rejoining the international community.”  
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  • Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett are co-authors of Going to Tehran: Why America Must Accept the Islamic Republic of Iran; both served as Middle East experts in the U.S. government under Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. Flynt is professor of international affairs at Penn State.
  • Paul Merrell on 29 Mar 15
     
    A must-read.
Paul Merrell

US Invasion of Syria Begins | nsnbc international - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...us-invasion-of-syria-begins

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Syria boots-on-the-ground

shared by Paul Merrell on 31 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • As previously warned about in June of 2015, the United States has announced that it will officially begin ground operations in Syria through the use of special forces. The Washington Post in its article, “Obama seeks to intensify operations in Syria with Special Ops troops,”would report that:
  • President Obama is sending a small number of Special Operations troops to northern Syria, marking the first full-time deployment of U.S. forces to the chaotic country.  The mission marks a major shift for Obama, whose determination to defeat the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has been balanced by an abiding worry that U.S. troops not be pulled too deeply into the in­trac­table Syrian conflict.  The latest deployment will involve fewer than 50 Special Operations advisers, who will work with resistance forces battling the Islamic State in northern Syria but will not engage in direct combat, Obama administration officials said.
  • Unfortunately for US policymakers, it is no longer only Syria that US special forces and accompanying airpower must worry about. Russia, by invitation of Damascus, is now operating militarily across Syria, including along Turkey’s border where the US has long sought to establish its “safe zones.” The US has openly committed to the invasion and occupation of Syrian territory. It does so with the intent of carving Syria up into a series of dysfunctional, weak zones to literally “deconstruct” Syria as a functioning nation-state. It is doing this unable to cite any credible threat Syria poses to US national security and without any semblance of a mandate granted by the United Nations. It also does so with the prospect of triggering direct war with nuclear-armed Russia in a region Russia is operating legally.
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  • While the US claims this move is to “defeat the Islamic State (ISIS),” it is instead clearly a move to establish long-sought “buffer zones” or “safe zones” in Syria where the Syrian government can no longer operate. US airpower will also undoubtedly be used to cover these special forces, creating a defacto no-fly-zone wherever they operate. The map accompanying the Washington Post article clearly shows ISIS territory straddling the last remaining supply corridor being used to supply the terror group as well as others including Al Qaeda’s al Nusra Front from NATO-member Turkey’s territory. US special forces will likely begin operating in these areas, and zones carved out as US operations expand. The eventual outcome, if these operations are successful, will be the division and destruction of Syria as a nation-state. This is more than mere speculation – this is a conclusion drawn by signed and dated policy papers produced by the Brookings Institution, who has called for such zones since as early as 2012, but under different contrived pretexts.
  • America’s latest actions are a desperate move sought by an increasingly hysterical political and corporate-financier establishment in Washington and on Wall Street. Recent hearings conducted by the US Senate Committee on Armed Services have struggled to produce a credible response to America’s unraveling criminal conspiracy aimed at Syria, particularly in the wake of Russia’s recent intervention. The committee and witnesses brought before it, have struggled to formulate a response – however – no-fly-zones and US troops on the ground have been discussed at length. It is a poorly calculated bluff. The presence of US special forces and US airpower operating illegally in and above Syria, meant to deny Syria access to its own territory will take time to implement. The official number of US special forces being sent into Syria is said to not exceed 50. Syria and its allies could insert an equal or larger number of forces into these same areas to essentially create a “safe zone” from “safe zones.” Bringing America’s illegal actions before the UN would also be a sound measure ahead of potential confrontations with US forces operating uninvited in Syria. The premise that ISIS must be fought and defeated by striking them in Iraq and Syria is betrayed by America’s own admission that the organization has already spread far beyond the borders of either nation. ISIS is clearly not supporting itself on the limited resources found within either country. Were the US truly interested in stopping ISIS, it would strike at its sponsors in Ankara and Riyadh. Of course, it was clear, well over a year ago, that the appearance of ISIS would be used intentionally to accomplish US geopolitical objectives in both Syria and Iraq, serving as a pretext for wider, long-sought after direct Western military intervention.
  • The myth that dividing and destroying Syria while deposing its sitting government will somehow alleviate the violence in Syria and reduce the ongoing migrant crisis Europe faces, is betrayed by the fact that a similar premise used to sell intervention in Libya has only led to greater chaos in North Africa, and the creation of the migrant crisis in the first place. If the world, including Europe, seeks to prevent the spread of ISIS and the expansion of an already growing migrant crisis, stopping the United States and its partners before they create another “Libya” in the Levant must become top priority. And while it is unlikely that Europe will show any resolve in doing so, it would be hoped that Syria and its allies realize the consequences of failing now, at this juncture, and to whom’s borders the chaos will attempt to cross over into next.
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