Skip to main content

Home/ Socialism and the End of the American Dream/ Group items tagged economic-indicators

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Paul Merrell

Central asset bubbles, currency wars are destroying emerging markets | Sunday Guardian - 0 views

www.sundayguardianlive.com/...re-destroying-emerging-markets

economy Fed Bank-of-England European-Central-Bank hdge-funds bubbles real-estate

shared by Paul Merrell on 31 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • as the out-of-control cabal of central banks inflated grotesque asset bubbles in global property, stock, and fixed-income markets? Or are we to believe traditional media’s “fake news” mantra of “it’s different this time?” Well, bad news, folks. It’s never different, not this time, not anytime, never.  Capitalism is being destroyed The US Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, and the European Central Bank have become gargantuan, out-of-control, rogue hedge funds. They are loaded with non-elected academics operating in opaque groupthink bubble chambers, repeating the broken Keynesian economic mantra of “whatever it takes, more debt is good”. They have magicked-up 100s of trillions in debt and guarantees, while the US Federal Reserve has gobbled up over 90% of the US mortgage market. Global stock market valuations are buoyed by stock buybacks, funded by record corporate debt, and enabled by reckless central bank zero-interest-rate policies. Pay no attention to the fact that in the past few years, US stock indices have surged over 70% to new all-time highs, while profits have only risen an anaemic 2%. Today’s record amount of corporate debt is cannibalising corporations, by bringing future earnings forward, which makes future stagnation and collapse into bankruptcy a certainty. For the near term, CEOs will continue to receive record pay packets for out-performing the market, as their stock prices bubble like a rocket ship into outer space, while these actions decimate any long-term growth prospects.
  • In 2005, preceding the credit crisis and the subsequent nationwide property price collapse, US Federal Reserve chairman, Dr Ben Bernanke was asked about risks associated with a dangerous subprime housing bubble that could destabilise the economy.  Bernanke stated that “I disagree with your premise. We’ve never had a decline in house prices on a nationwide basis. So, what I think is more likely is that house prices will slow, maybe stabilise: might slow consumption spending a bit. I don’t think it’s going to drive the economy too far from its full employment path, though.” So, what led to history’s biggest financial crisis in 2006? Too much debt, credit, and leverage—proving that Fed Chair Ben Bernanke was dead wrong. What did we learn? Nothing, a big fat zero. In fact, property prices have recently eclipsed previous 2006 highs, bubbling to frothy new all-time highs, while real wages declined and high-paying jobs have disappeared. 
  • Real estate is an asset but not an asset class because it lacks liquidity. It takes time to sell property and the difference between what a buyer is willing to pay and what a seller is willing to sell for may be huge. For example, a buyer may be willing to pay $750,000, but the seller will only sell at $900,000. In good times, frenzied buyers create “bidding wars” on coveted properties, sometimes rocketing the price 30% above the original offer. This is terrific if you are a property owner or property seller, but not so much if you are a first-time buyer. In bad times, prices collapse and the only price a buyer is willing to pay for the $900,000 home above is $90,000. Great for buyers, but not so great for the owner, who holds a mortgage of $700,000 that must be repaid to a bank.  During these boom times, optimism bias creeps into the minds of buyers, allowing them to pay off the charts, wildly inflated, irrational prices for fear of “missing out”. Optimism bias is a cognitive bias that causes a person to (mistakenly) believe nothing negative could ever happen to them. It is a “close your eyes and buy at new all-time highs” belief system. If the prices collapse, the banks can require more capital. If you do not have more capital, the bank can take your property. If the government wants to increase your taxes, you must pay or they will confiscate your property. In fact, property confiscations are already happening in Greece and Italy.  Commercial and residential real estate are now grotesque asset bubbles ready to explode. 
Paul Merrell

In Keeping Grip on Data Pipeline, Obama Does Little to Reassure Industry - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ttle-to-reassure-industry.html

surveillance state NSA Obama Obama-speech sound-of-silence

shared by Paul Merrell on 18 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Google, which briefly considered moving all of its computer servers out of the United States last year after learning how they had been penetrated by the National Security Agency, was looking for a public assurance from President Obama that the government would no longer secretly suck data from the company’s corner of the Internet cloud.Microsoft was listening to see if Mr. Obama would adopt a recommendation from his advisers that the government stop routinely stockpiling flaws in its Windows operating system, then using them to penetrate some foreign computer systems and, in rare cases, launch cyberattacks.
  • Intel and computer security companies were eager to hear Mr. Obama embrace a commitment that the United States would never knowingly move to weaken encryption systems. They got none of that.
  • Perhaps the most striking element of Mr. Obama’s speech on Friday was what it omitted: While he bolstered some protections for citizens who fear the N.S.A. is downloading their every dial, tweet and text message, he did nothing, at least yet, to loosen the agency’s grip on the world’s digital pipelines. White House officials said that Mr. Obama was committed to studying the complaints by American industry that the revelations were costing them billions of dollars in business overseas, by giving everyone from the Germans to the Brazilians to the Chinese an excuse to avoid American hardware and cloud services. “The most interesting part of this speech was not how the president weighed individual privacy against the N.S.A.,” said Fred H. Cate, the director of the Center of Applied Cybersecurity Research at Indiana University, “but that he said little about what to do about the agency’s practice of vacuuming up everything it can get its hands on.”
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • In fact, behind the speech lies a struggle Mr. Obama nodded at but never addressed head on. It pits corporations that view themselves as the core of America’s soft power around the world — the country’s economic driver and the guardians of its innovative edge — against an intelligence community 100,000 strong that regards its ability to peer into any corner of the digital world, and manipulate it if necessary, as crucial to the country’s security.In public, the coalition was polite if unenthusiastic about the president’s speech. His proposals, the companies said in a statement, “represent positive progress on key issues,” even while “crucial details remain to be addressed on these issues, and additional steps are needed on other important issues.” But in the online chat rooms that users and employees of those services inhabit each day, the president’s words were mocked. “If they really cared about the security of US infrastructure, they’d divulge the vulnerabilities they found or bought from the black market that exploit the security of these systems, so those systems can be fixed, and no one else can exploit them with these exploits,” wrote a user called “higherpurpose” on Hacker News.
  • In an interview, a senior administration official acknowledged that the administration had weighed what the president could say in public about the delicate problems of encryption, or the N.S.A.’s use of “zero day” flaws in software, the name for security holes that have never been seen before. It is a subject the intelligence agencies have refused to discuss in public, and Mr. Obama determined that it was both too secret, and too fluid, to discuss in the speech, officials said.In response to questions, the White House said the president had asked his special assistant for cybersecurity, Michael Daniel, and the president’s office of science and technology policy to study a recent advisory panel’s recommendation that the government get out of the business of corrupting the encryption systems created by American companies.
  • It will not be an easy task. One of the recent disclosures, first reported by Reuters, indicated that the N.S.A. paid millions of dollars to RSA, a major encryption firm, to incorporate a deliberately weakened algorithm into some of its products, giving the government a “back door” to read whatever it wanted. But when the advisory panel concluded that the United States should not “in any way subvert, weaken or make vulnerable generally available commercial software,” the intelligence agencies protested.“Some in the intelligence community saw that as a call for the N.S.A. to get out of cryptography, which is the reason they were created,” the senior official said. He added: “We’ve said that we are very much supportive of U.S. industry and making sure that U.S. industry remains competitive, and able to produce really good products. And N.S.A. has been out there saying they have no interest in breaking encryption that guards global commerce.”
  • But as Mr. Obama himself acknowledged, the United States has a credibility problem that will take years to address. The discovery that it had monitored the cellphone of Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, or that it has now found a way to tap into computers around the world that are completely disconnected from the Internet — using covert radio waves — only fuels the argument that American products cannot be trusted.That argument, heard these days from Berlin to Mexico City, may only be an excuse for protectionism. But it is an excuse that often works.
Paul Merrell

NSA Spied on Chinese Government and Networking Firm Huawei - SPIEGEL ONLINE - 0 views

www.spiegel.de/...king-firm-huawei-a-960199.html

surveillance state NSA China Huawei NSA-targets

shared by Paul Merrell on 23 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • According to documents viewed by SPIEGEL, America'a NSA intelligence agency put considerable efforts into spying on Chinese politicians and firms. One major target was Huawei, a company that is fast becoming a major Internet player.
  • The American government conducted a major intelligence offensive against China, with targets including the Chinese government and networking company Huawei, according to documents from former NSA worker Edward Snowden that have been viewed by SPIEGEL. Among the American intelligence service's targets were former Chinese President Hu Jintao, the Chinese Trade Ministry, banks, as well as telecommunications companies. But the NSA made a special effort to target Huawei. With 150,000 employees and €28 billion ($38.6 billion) in annual revenues, the company is the world's second largest network equipment supplier. At the beginning of 2009, the NSA began an extensive operation, referred to internally as "Shotgiant," against the company, which is considered a major competitor to US-based Cisco. The company produces smartphones and tablets, but also mobile phone infrastructure, WLAN routers and fiber optic cable -- the kind of technology that is decisive in the NSA's battle for data supremacy. A special unit with the US intelligence agency succeeded in infiltrating Huwaei's network and copied a list of 1,400 customers as well as internal documents providing training to engineers on the use of Huwaei products, among other things.
  • According to a top secret NSA presentation, NSA workers not only succeeded in accessing the email archive, but also the secret source code of individual Huwaei products. Software source code is the holy grail of computer companies. Because Huawei directed all mail traffic from its employees through a central office in Shenzhen, where the NSA had infiltrated the network, the Americans were able to read a large share of the email sent by company workers beginning in January 2009, including messages from company CEO Ren Zhengfei and Chairwoman Sun Yafang. "We currently have good access and so much data that we don't know what to do with it," states one internal document. As justification for targeting the company, an NSA document claims that "many of our targets communicate over Huawei produced products, we want to make sure that we know how to exploit these products." The agency also states concern that "Huawei's widespread infrastructure will provide the PRC (People's Republic of China) with SIGINT capabilities." SIGINT is agency jargon for signals intelligence. The documents do not state whether the agency found information indicating that to be the case.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The operation was conducted with the involvement of the White House intelligence coordinator and the FBI. One document states that the threat posed by Huawei is "unique". The agency also stated in a document that "the intelligence community structures are not suited for handling issues that combine economic, counterintelligence, military influence and telecommunications infrastructure from one entity."
  • Editor's note: A longer version of this story will appear in German in the issue of SPIEGEL to be published on Monday.
Paul Merrell

Fracking pushing U.S. oil production above Saudi Arabia's - Nature & Environment Israel... - 1 views

www.haaretz.com/...1.579651

pipelinestan fracking environment

shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • Fracking remains enormously controversial, but the report that the oil-extraction technique is about to lift the United States' oil production beyond that of mega-producer Saudi Arabia means it's probably here to stay. The practice, which involves injecting water into the ground in order to fracture the rock and allow oil and gas to escape, has been associated by critics with earthquakes and heightened pollution, to name just two problems. Just today, Thursday, Ohio authorities shut down a local fracking operation while geological detectives investigate whether it could be behind the 11 quakes recorded there in a few days.
  • But an indication of just how crucial fracking has become to the American economy comes from next-door Tennessee, where lawmakers voted down proposals to ban the practice (and mountaintop mining, while about it). As The Independent reported today, thanks to the practice, the United States is about to become a bigger oil producer than Saudi Arabia.
  • Proponents of the technique point mainly at economic benefits, not least achieving American independence from imported oil. Opponents bewail contamination of ground-water, depletion of fresh water supplies, and ground contamination from the rising hydrocarbons. More recently concerns have arisen that like mining, fracking can stabilize local geology and cause quakes. The United Kingdom had banned fracking but later lifted the prohibition, favoring regulation instead. In the United States, legislation on the matter depends on the state, and Germany frowns on the practice but hasn't outlawed it. France has, becoming one of the countries to adopt the position of opponents and ban fracking outright, in 2011. Just today a French court voided a drilling license held by the American energy company Hess for fear that it would frack.
  • Paul Merrell on 14 Mar 14
     
    Related: The public comment period just closed on the State Department's environmental impact statement for the Keystone Pipeline. Environmental organizations filed the objections of over 2 million Americans just before the deadline, an amazing achievement in the annals of environmental activism. On the other hand, Big Oil almost invariably gets what it wants from the Feds, regardless of the environmental consequences. E.g., the BP oil disaster in the Gulf hadn't even been plugged before the Obama Administration resumed granting permits for deep ocean drilling, without any new required preventive measures.   
Paul Merrell

How a Court Secretly Evolved, Extending U.S. Spies' Reach - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...tion-extended-spies-reach.html

surveillance state NSA CIA FBI FISA-Court legalres must-read

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • Previously, with narrow exceptions, an intelligence agency was permitted to disseminate information gathered from court-approved wiretaps only after deleting irrelevant private details and masking the names of innocent Americans who came into contact with a terrorism suspect. The Raw Take order significantly changed that system, documents show, allowing counterterrorism analysts at the N.S.A., the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. to share unfiltered personal information.
  • The leaked documents that refer to the rulings, including one called the “Large Content FISA” order and several more recent expansions of powers on sharing information, add new details to the emerging public understanding of a secret body of law that the court has developed since 2001. The files help explain how the court evolved from its original task — approving wiretap requests — to engaging in complex analysis of the law to justify activities like the bulk collection of data about Americans’ emails and phone calls.“These latest disclosures are important,” said Steven Aftergood, the director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists. “They indicate how the contours of the law secretly changed, and they represent the transformation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court into an interpreter of law and not simply an adjudicator of surveillance applications.”
  • The number of Americans whose unfiltered personal information has been shared among agencies is not clear. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the court has approved about 1,800 FISA orders each year authorizing wiretaps or physical searches — which can involve planting bugs in homes or offices, or copying hard drives — inside the United States. But the government does not disclose how many people had their private conversations monitored as a result.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The new disclosures come amid a debate over whether the surveillance court, which hears arguments only from the Justice Department, should be restructured for its evolving role. Proposals include overhauling how judges are selected to serve on it and creating a public advocate to provide adversarial arguments when the government offers complex legal analysis for expanding its powers.
  • The Raw Take order, back in 2002, also relaxed limits on sharing private information about Americans with foreign governments. The bar was higher for sharing with outsiders: Raw information was not provided, and even information deemed relevant about a terrorism issue required special approval. Under procedures described in a 1984 report, only the attorney general could authorize such dissemination. But on Aug. 20, 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft, citing the recent order, secretly issued new procedures allowing the N.S.A. to provide information to foreign governments without his clearance. “If the proposed recipient(s) of the dissemination have a history of human rights abuses, that history should be considered in assessing the potential for economic injury, physical harm, or other restriction of movement, and whether the dissemination should be made,” he wrote.
  • Paul Merrell on 12 Mar 14
     
    NYT publishes a new treasure trove of Snowden documents. This lead article links to documents and links to other articles that link documents. A must-read for those interested in how the FISA Court and Congress "grew" the law governing the scope of permissible surveillance and the scope of who would be given access to the fruits of that surveillance. 
Paul Merrell

Revealed: How the Nsa Targets Italy - 0 views

espresso.repubblica.it/...the-nsa-targets-italy-1.144428

surveillance state NSA NSA-targets Italy

shared by Paul Merrell on 09 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • A special unit operating under cover and protected by diplomatic immunity, assigned to a very sensitive mission: to spy on the communication of the Italian leadership. That is what top secret documents leaked by Edward Snowden and published in Italy exclusively by l'Espresso in collaboration with "la Repubblica" reveal. A file mentions the "Special Collection Service " (SCS) sites in Rome and in Milan, the very same service which, according to the German weekly "Der Spiegel ", spied on the mobile phone of the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel. "Special Collection Sites", reads the file published today by l'Espresso, "provide considerable perishable intelligence on leadership communications largely facilitated by site presence within a national capital". These documents are very important because they contradict recent statements by the Italian Prime Minister reassuring the Italian Parliament. Speaking to the Chamber of Deputies four weeks ago, Enrico Letta said: "Based on the analysis conducted by our intelligence services and our international contacts, we are not aware that the security of the communications of the Italian government and embassies has been compromised, nor are we aware that the privacy of Italian citizens has been compromised". These top secret documents tell a different story, however.
  • The Special Collection Service is likely one of the most sensitive units in U.S. intelligence. The service deploys teams under diplomatic cover, operating in US embassies around the world to control friendly and enemy governments. The top secret NSA document examined by l'Espresso reveals that "in 1988 [SCS] had 88 sites, our peak". The SCS is assigned to a special mission: monitoring the communications of the political, and likely economical, leaders of host nations. For this reason, SCS teams operate within the heart of power: in embassies and consulates, working in close collaboration with the CIA. Also in Rome, in the US embassy located in via Veneto, from those very same roofs which witnessed the Dolce Vita. Snowden's files reveal that, at least until 2010, the Special Collection Service maintained two sites in Italy: one in Rome, a base staffed with agents, and one in Milan, the capital of the Italian economy where, according to a file dated 2010 and originally published in Der Spiegel, the SCS would run an unmanned site. Two sites in a relatively small country like Italy is unusual: only in Germany -- a prime target for NSA in Europe -- does SCS maintain two bases.
  • NSA's mass spying activities did not target our leadership and diplomacy alone, but it possibly also targeted millions of Italian citizens. A file on the top secret programme "Boundless Informant" that is labeled "Italy" reveals that between December 10, 2012 and January 9, 2013, the NSA collected the metadata for 45.893.570 telephone calls. Estimates close to this figure had already circulated, but now the actual document indicates the penetration of this monitoring. All of the metadata gathered in our country between December 10^th and January 9^th 2013 as reflected on this slide relate to phone communication, unlike the slides published in Germany and France, where internet communication metadata were targeted as well.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • The Snowden file examined by l'Espresso reveals that the collection of phone metadata in Italy between December 10, 2012 and January 9, 2013 reached over four million metadata per day during the period of political crisis that culminated in the resignation of the Mario Monti government.
Paul Merrell

Furious Russia, Downgraded To Just Above Junk By S&P, Proposes "Scorched Earth" Retalia... - 0 views

www.zerohedge.com/...scorched-earth-retaliation-aga

war & peace sanctions Russia U.S.-foreign-policy monetary-policy BRICS

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • a few hours ago that joke of a rating agency, Standard & Poor's, which also earlier announced it was "affirming" France at an AA rating making it very clear it will no longer accept being sued for telling the truth and downgrading sovereigns or otherwise have its offices abroad raided, not only upgraded Cyprus from B- to B (please deposits your funds in Cyprus banks now: they are safe, S&P promises), but - far more importantly - delivered a political message to the Kremlin, and downgraded Russia from BBB to BBB-, one short notch away from junk status. This was the first downgrade of Russia by S&P since December 2008.
  • Russia's response was prompt. First, in retaliation to the downgrade, Russian economy minister Alexei Ulyukaev said S&P’s downgrade of Russia’s rating was expected by investors, won’t significantly change their behavior, adding the obvious that the decision to cut Russia’s rating was partly political, partly based on economic situation. In other words, entirely symbolic - it is not as if Russia has access to bond markets anyway, plus as we wrote earlier this week in "Why Putin Is Smiling At The Bond Market's Blockade Of Russia", it is not as if it needs them. But far more importantly, and ahead of yet another round of western sanctions which appears imminent unless Obama is to look even more powerless than he currently is (granted, a difficult achievement), Russian presidential adviser Sergei Glazyev proposed plan of 15 measures to protect country’s economy if sanctions applied, Vedomosti newspaper reports, citing Glazyev’s letter to Finance Ministry. According to Vedomosti as Bloomberg reported, Glazyev proposed:
  • Russia should withdraw all assets, accounts in dollars, euros from NATO countries to neutral ones Russia should start selling NATO member sovereign bonds before Russia’s foreign-currency accounts are frozen Central bank should reduce dollar assets, sell sovereign bonds of countries that support sanctions Russia should limit commercial banks’ FX assets to prevent speculation on ruble, capital outflows Central bank should increase money supply so that state cos., banks may refinance foreign loans Russia should use national currencies in trade with customs Union members, other non-dollar, non-euro partners In other words, a full-blown scorched earth campaign by Russia.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Granted, Russian holdings of US Treasurys are not that substantial (and could be monetized entirely in three months of POMO by the Fed), and western financial linkages to Russia, aside from trade routes, are not life-threatening, but if Russia were to take the baton, and other BRIC countries, already furious by the recent US decision to not boost their IMF status, follow suit, then Obama's life is about to become a living nightmare. Especially, if that most important BRIC member - China - does any of the many things it can do to indicate if, in this brand new Cold War, it is with or against the US... Finally, those curious what are the linkages between the west and Russia are, review our recent post on the matter: All You Need To Know About Russia, In Charts.
Paul Merrell

Israel Won't Stop Spying on the U.S. - 0 views

www.newsweek.com/ael-wont-stop-spying-us-249757

war & peace espionage Israel visa-waiver

shared by Paul Merrell on 07 May 14 - No Cached
  • Whatever happened to honor among thieves? When the National Security Agency was caught eavesdropping on German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cell phone, it was considered a rude way to treat a friend. Now U.S. intelligence officials are saying—albeit very quietly, behind closed doors on Capitol Hill—that our Israeli “friends” have gone too far with their spying operations here. According to classified briefings on legislation that would lower visa restrictions on Israeli citizens, Jerusalem’s efforts to steal U.S. secrets under the cover of trade missions and joint defense technology contracts have “crossed red lines.”  Israel’s espionage activities in America are unrivaled and unseemly, counterspies have told members of the House Judiciary and Foreign Affairs committees, going far beyond activities by other close allies, such as Germany, France, the U.K. and Japan. A congressional staffer familiar with a briefing last January called the testimony “very sobering…alarming…even terrifying.” Another staffer called it “damaging.”  The Jewish state’s primary target: America’s industrial and technical secrets. 
  • “No other country close to the United States continues to cross the line on espionage like the Israelis do,” said a former congressional staffer who attended another classified briefing in late 2013, one of several in recent months given by officials from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the State Department, the FBI and the National Counterintelligence Directorate. 
  • “I don’t think anyone was surprised by these revelations,” the former aide said. “But when you step back and hear…that there are no other countries taking advantage of our security relationship the way the Israelis are for espionage purposes, it is quite shocking. I mean, it shouldn’t be lost on anyone that after all the hand-wringing over [Jonathan] Pollard, it’s still going on.” Israel and pro-Israel groups in America have long lobbied U.S. administrations to free Pollard, a former U.S. naval intelligence analyst serving a life sentence since 1987 for stealing tens of thousands of secrets for Israel. (U.S. counterintelligence officials suspect that Israel traded some of the Cold War-era information to Moscow in exchange for the emigration of Russian Jews.) After denying for over a decade that Pollard was its paid agent, Israel apologized and promised not to spy on U.S. soil again. Since then, more Israeli spies have been arrested and convicted by U.S. courts. 
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • I.C. Smith, a former top FBI counterintelligence specialist during the Pollard affair, tells Newsweek, “In the early 1980s, dealing with the Israelis was, for those assigned that area, extremely frustrating. The Israelis were supremely confident that they had the clout, especially on the Hill, to basically get [away] with just about anything. This was the time of the Criteria Country List—later changed to the National Security Threat List—and I found it incredible that Taiwan and Vietnam, for instance, were on [it], when neither country had conducted activities that remotely approached the Pollard case, and neither had a history of, or a comparable capability to conduct, such activities.” While all this was going on, Israel was lobbying hard to be put on the short list of countries (38 today) whose citizens don’t need visas to visit here.  Until recently, the major sticking point was the Jewish state’s discriminatory and sometimes harsh treatment of Arab-Americans and U.S. Palestinians seeking to enter Israel. It has also failed to meet other requirements for the program, such as promptly and regularly reporting lost and stolen passports, officials say—a problem all the more pressing since Iranians were found to have boarded the missing Malaysia Airlines flight with stolen passports. 
  • “But this is the first time congressional aides have indicated that intelligence and national security concerns also are considerations in weighing Israel’s admission into the visa waiver program,” Jonathan Broder, the foreign and defense editor for CQ Roll Call, a Capitol Hill news site, wrote last month. He quoted a senior House aide as saying, “The U.S. intelligence community is concerned that adding Israel to the visa waiver program would make it easier for Israeli spies to enter the country.” The Israelis “thought they could just snap their fingers” and get friends in Congress to legislate visa changes, a Hill aide said, instead of going through the required hoops with DHS.
  • Congressional aides snorted at the announcement. “The Israelis haven’t done s**t to get themselves into the visa waiver program,” the former congressional aide said, echoing the views of two other House staffers working on the issue. “I mean, if the Israelis got themselves into this visa waiver program and if we were able to address this [intelligence community] concern—great, they’re a close ally, there are strong economic and cultural links between the two countries, it would be wonderful if more Israelis could come over here without visas. I’m sure it would spur investment and tourist dollars in our economy and so on and so forth. But what I find really funny is they haven’t done s**t to get into the program. They think that their friends in Congress can get them in, and that’s not the case. Congress can lower one or two of the barriers, but they can’t just legislate the Israelis in.” The path to visa waivers runs through DHS and can take years to navigate.
  • Israel is not even close to meeting those standards, a congressional aide said. “You’ve got to have machine-readable passports in place—the e-passports with a data chip in them. The Israelis have only just started to issue them to diplomats and senior officials and so forth, and that probably won’t be rolled out to the rest of their population for another 10 years.” But U.S. counterspies will get the final word. And since Israel is as likely to stop spying here as it is to give up matzo for Passover, the visa barriers are likely to stay up. As Paul Pillar, the CIA’s former national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia, told Newsweek, old habits are hard to break: Zionists were dispatching spies to America before there even was an Israel, to gather money and materials for the cause and later the fledgling state. Key components for Israel’s nuclear bombs were clandestinely obtained here. “They’ve found creative and inventive ways,” Pillar said, to get what they want. “If we give them free rein to send people over here, how are we going to stop that?” the former congressional aide asked. “They’re incredibly aggressive. They’re aggressive in all aspects of their relationship with the United States. Why would their intelligence relationship with us be any different?”
Paul Merrell

Losing public opinion on BDS, activists turn to 'lawfare' - 0 views

mondoweiss.net/...lawfare-against-divestment

war & peace Palestine BDS Ilinois legislation 1st Amendment

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 May 15 - No Cached
  •      Champions of proposed Senate Bill SB1761, which passed both houses of the Illinois General Assembly May 18th, say it’s designed to fight anti-Semitic activism and protects Israel from the existential threat posed by the Boycott, Divestment, & Sanctions movement (BDS). Opponents of the bill say it places the economic welfare of Israel before U.S. interests, tacitly endorses the full annexation of the West Bank into Israel, and violates our country’s First Amendment rights. The bill’s opponents are right. But a potential threat of this legislation, edging closer to the criminalization of advocating for Palestinian rights and against occupation, threatens our core First Amendment rights and has been relatively absent from the discourse surrounding this bill.
  • And that’s not just here in the United States. Israeli lawmakers sought to criminalize public support of boycotts against Israel back in 2010 through their “Law for Prevention of Damage to the State of Israel through Boycott.” When I spoke with a staffer for Illinois State Rep. Sara Feigenholtz, one of the bill’s primary sponsors, inquiring if SB1761 was modeled after the 1977 amendments to the Export Administration Act (regarding the Arab League boycott of Israel), I was informed “These ‘antiboycott’ laws are the 1977 amendments to the Export Administration Act (EAA) and the Ribicoff Amendment to the 1976 Tax Reform Act (TRA). I hope this helps.…SB1761 falls in line with these federal laws”
  • Referencing EAA is another indication of the move toward weakening our First Amendment rights, as that amendment was meant to criminalize people who adhered to the Arab League’s boycott of Israel. Melissa Redmiles writes of the 70’s legislation in International Boycott Reports, 2003 and 2004 (pdf), from the IRS.gov website: “Those U.S persons who agree to participate in such boycotts are subject to criminal and civil penalties.” SB1761 seems to be the latest manifestation of a trend toward enacting a kind of trickle-down suppression. From the Center For Constitutional Rights website for Palestine Solidarity Legal Support: “These bills must be opposed in order to protect the right to engage in boycotts that reflect collective action to address a human rights issue, which the US Supreme Court has declared is protected speech… These bills would make it state policy to discourage support of human rights boycotts against Israel… and have the potential to stifle expressions of political beliefs…”
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • SB1761 requires all five public retirement benefits systems of the Illinois Pension Code to divest “all direct holdings” from any company which engages in boycotting Israel. This is designed to financially punish companies which participate in BDS; presumably European companies. But it will also burden an already severely crippled,“worst in nation”, Illinois pension system. Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner was quoted by Jewish United Fund News (JUF) earlier this month as saying, “I made a pledge that Illinois would become the first state in America to divest its public pension funds from any company in the world that boycotts Israel.” Rauner includes U.S. companies in his threat of divestment when he says “any company in the world.”
  • Relatedly from SB1761 itself: “It is not the intent [of this bill]… to cause divestiture from any company based in the United States of America.” Not intended? This soft language clearly leaves the door open to require Illinois public retirement systems’ divestiture from U.S. companies that participate in BDS. So, while politicians endorsing this bill can point to this statement of “intent” as some kind of safeguard for American companies, this same sentence simultaneously functions as a veiled threat to those companies.
  • SB1761 characterizes the motivations of the BDS movement as “intending to penalize… Israel.” Similarly, JUF News this month quoted JUF President Steven B. Nasatir saying, “At the core of the BDS movement is a quest to delegitimize Israel as a Jewish state.” That’s like stating that the intent of the Civil Rights Montgomery bus boycott was to “penalize white people.
  • Paul Merrell on 24 May 15
     
    As though ACLU didn't already have enough lawsuits going. But this takes the cake. Although anti-BDS legislation has been introduced several times in Congress but never got off the ground because of the First Amendment barrier. Similar measures pending in Europe too.  The good news here is that Israel's right-wing government is getting desperate. The BDS movement is mushrooming globally and routinely is achieving success in convincing companies (and recording artists, etc.) to pull out of Israel. More so in Europe, but BDS is off to a great start in the U.S. Kerry warned Netanyahu before the latter blew up the last round of negotations with the Palestinians that BDS would soon make it politically impossible for the U.S. to continue providing cover for Israel on the U.N. Security Council. There's a big shift of public opinion in the U.S. about Israel's abuse of Palestinians well under way. It won't be long before introducing Israel Lobby measures in Congress will stop happening. 
Paul Merrell

The Effort to Destroy the Iran Agreement: Chapter Two « LobeLog - 0 views

www.lobelog.com/the-iran-agreement-chapter-two

war & peace Iranian-nukes-myth deal Israel-lobby Republicans Auction 2016

shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • The voting and possible vetoing that will take place later this month thus will mark only the end of one chapter in a continuing political contest. Opponents of the agreement will continue to try to subvert it even after it enters into force. The partisan divide in sentiment on the issue, which, as Jim Lobe points out, has become increasingly sharp as reflected in opinion polls over the past year, will be one of the drivers of continued opposition. The issue has exhibited a familiar pattern in which members of the public who have little substantive knowledge of the matter of question take their cues from leaders of the party with which they most identify. A self-reinforcing cycle of adamant opposition by Republican politicians and consequent opposition by a cue-taking Republican base has put the Iranian nuclear issue on a similar trajectory as the Affordable Care Act—i.e., endless preoccupation by the Congressional portion of half the political spectrum with killing it rather than implementing it, no matter what experience may show is working or not working.
  • Efforts to kill the agreement, after the votes this month that will determine whether the agreement will go into effect, will center on getting the United States not to live up to its end of the agreement. Given that the United States has no obligations under the agreement other than to end some of the punishment it has been inflicting in the form of economic sanctions, the agreement-killing strategy will entail slapping new sanctions on Iran until Tehran is pressed passed the limits of its tolerance for such accord-circumventing behavior. The specific tactics may involve in effect restoring some of the nuclear-related sanctions that are due to be relaxed under the agreement, but under some new label such as terrorism or something having to do with other Iranian behavior. Ideas have already been advanced along these lines. Other creative ideas of opponents include having states rather than the federal government sanction Iran. All such maneuvers will make it difficult for Iranian leaders committed to observance of the agreement to deflect charges from their domestic opponents that the United States snookered Iran and that it is not in Iran’s interests to continue to live up to the agreement.
  • The U.S. presidential election calendar has given diehard opponents of the nuclear agreement added incentive to inflict lethal sabotage on the agreement within the next 16 months. The prospect of a Republican entering the White House in January 2017 may in this respect present more of a vulnerability than an opportunity for opponents. Republican presidential candidates have been competing with each other in telling the primary-voter party base how quickly and peremptorily they would renounce the agreement with Iran—with the only differences being whether it would be on the very first day in office, whether renunciation would take place before or after consulting with advisers, etc. It would be tough for any of these candidates, if elected, to back down from such an oft-repeated pledge. But such a presidential renunciation would be a more direct and blatant unilateral U.S. reneging on a multilateral accord than even some of the more aggressive sanctions-restoring tactics mentioned earlier. And such a renunciation would come after three years (counting from when the JPOA came into effect) of Iran living up to its commitments under the agreement and notmoving to make a nuclear weapon. The discomfort that the future president would be feeling in this situation would reflect what has been the underlying concern of confirmed opponents of the nuclear agreement all along: not that the accord will fail, but that it will succeed.
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

US, China reach cyberespionage agreement | ITworld - 0 views

www.itworld.com/...-cyberespionage-agreement.html

surveillance state China U.S.-foreign-policy cybercrime cyberespionage agreement

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • The U.S. and China have reached their first ever cybercrime and cyberespionage agreement, but the deal is quite general and how it will translate into actions is still unclear.Leaders of both countries announced the deal in Washington on Friday after two days of top-level talks, but both dodged questions on specific hacking incidents or the indictment last year by the U.S. of five Chinese military hackers for cybercrimes."We have agreed that neither the U.S. or the Chinese government will conduct or knowingly support cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property, including trade secrets or other confidential business information for commercial advantage," President Obama said at a White House news conference.And that appears to be the main thrust of the agreement -- government-sponsored cyberespionage for the economic gain of companies. It doesn't cover government espionage and is pretty specific in its definition but, as President Obama indicated: It's a start.
Paul Merrell

After 13 years, 2 wars and trillions in military spending, terrorist attacks are rising... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...ist-attacks-are-rising-sharply

war & peace Defense-spending terrorists™ trend

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • Last year saw the highest number of terrorist incidents since 2000, according to the latest Global Terrorism Index released by the Institute for Economics and Peace. Worldwide, the number of terrorist incidents increased from less than 1,500 in 2000 to nearly 10,000 in 2013. Sixty percent of attacks last year occurred in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria and Syria.
  • The report suggests that U.S. foreign policy has played a big role in making the problem worse: "The rise in terrorist activity coincided with the US invasion of Iraq," it concludes. "This created large power vacuums in the country allowing different factions to surface and become violent." Indeed, among the five countries accounting for the bulk of attacks, the U.S. has prosecuted lengthy ground wars in two (Iraq and Afghanistan), a drone campaign in one (Pakistan), and airstrikes in a fourth (Syria).
  • The U.S. will invest somewhere between $4 and 6 trillion on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, with untold additional resources spent on anti-terrorism efforts elsewhere, according to the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. While we haven't suffered any major terrorist attacks on U.S. soil since 9/11, the Global Terrorism Index numbers cast considerable doubt on whether that money's been well-spent. And they give some credence to the notion that our ham-handed foreign policy is actually a destabilizing factor in world affairs.
  • Paul Merrell on 22 Nov 14
     
    After 13 years, 2 wars and trillions in military spending, terrorist attacks are rising sharply. So what is it we've been paying for, again?
Paul Merrell

U.S. Congress Passes Venezuela Sanctions, Obama Expected to Sign | venezuelanalysis.com - 0 views

venezuelanalysis.com/11065

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy war by proxy Venezuela legislation

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • Late on Wednesday the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill to introduce sanctions against Venezuela. The bill was also passed by the Senate on Monday, and White House officials have indicated that President Barack Obama will sign the bill into law, although it was not specified when. The Venezuelan Defense of Human Rights and Civil Society Act seeks to sanction high ranking Venezuelan officials accused of being responsible for human rights abuses during the opposition unrest movement earlier this year. Primarily, it will sanction such officials with a visa ban and a freeze on any U.S. assets they possess. Democrat senator Robert Menendez, the Act’s main sponsor, said of the bill’s passage that, “The absence of justice and the denial of human rights in Venezuela must end, and the U.S. Congress is playing a powerful part in righting this wrong”. The Act also calls for a U.S. government strategy to increase funding for and availability of anti-government media in Venezuela, including utilizing the Voice of America for this end. The bill states that U.S. foreign policy should aim to “continue to support the development of democratic political processes and independent civil society in Venezuela”.
  • Investigative journalist Eva Golinger has documented how over the last twelve years U.S. government agencies have provided well over $100 million to opposition groups in Venezuela for their activities. The Venezuelan government rejects the Act’s narrative of the opposition’s unrest movement from February to May this year, which led to 43 deaths, including members of security forces and supporters of both sides. It states that the opposition was responsible for violence against civilians and public infrastructure, and that the unrest was aimed at provoking a state coup. Officials also argue that members of security forces accused of abuses against opposition activists were investigated and detained.
  • The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), which counts Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador and Nicaragua among its members, issued a statement on Thursday opposing the proposed U.S. sanctions. “The countries of the ALBA wish to emphasise that they won’t allow the utilisation of old practices already applied in the region which are directed at fomenting a change in political regime. In this sense, we express our deepest support and solidarity with the people and government of Venezuela,” read the strongly worded statement. The Venezuelan officials who would be sanctioned by the bill have not been named, however Republican senator Marco Rubio recently issued a list of 27 names he suggested should be included.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • The diplomatic pressure by the U.S. comes at a difficult economic moment for Venezuela, as a 38% fall in oil prices squeezes the country’s finances and compounds problems of product shortages and high inflation. According to Bloomberg, Venezuelan bond prices have fallen to levels not seen in 16 years, while Wall Street estimates the probability of default at 93%. In response to the high interest rates on borrowing this entails for Venezuela, Maduro said on Monday, “There is a financial blockade against Venezuela meant to impede our access to the financing we need to overcome the decrease in petroleum revenue”. He also denounced the “psychological and political” manipulation of Venezuela’s position in the global market.
  • Paul Merrell on 13 Dec 14
     
    Standard Deep State maneuver: provoke violent unrest in a nation that is insufficiently servile then sanction that nation for putting down the violence. 
Paul Merrell

France loans Egypt 3.2B euros for Defense Deal: French U-Turn? | nsnbc international - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...for-defense-deal-french-u-turn

war & peace Egypt France Germany Russia U.S. UK MENA-split

shared by Paul Merrell on 01 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Egyptian President Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi announced on Saturday that the French government of PM Francois Hollande has granted Egypt a 3.2 billion euro loan for deals about military equipment between the two nations. The development comes against the backdrop of an increasingly confident continental European, French – German-led policy that opposes primarily an US/UK driven policy of tension and terrorism in the MENA region and could signal a long-awaited departure from the destructive role France played in Libya.  French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian visited Egypt in February with other French officials to sign a deal on the sale of 24 Rafale fighter jets, a naval frigate and related military equipment, reports The Cairo Post.
  • Egypt has since also signed significant defense deals with Russia. Egypt’s Defense Minister Sedki Sobhi is currently in Russia to discuss further Russian – Egyptian defense cooperation in combating terrorism and the delivery of Russian MiG-35 jets to Egypt.
  • French arms sales to Egypt are not unusual. What, according to some analysts, could suggest the beginning of a French U-Turn with regards to the French role in North Africa and Libya is that the administration of Francois Hollande cannot other than be cognizant of the fact that the French jets and naval vessels will strengthen an Egypt that struggles with countering the aftershocks of the 2011 “Arab Spring” in Egypt, in Libya, as well as in Syria.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Another indicator is, according to several analysts, that France and Germany are increasingly working towards the establishment of a continental European consensus that aims at ending a predominantly US/UK-driven policy of tensions directed against Russia. These trends include closer ties between the European Union and the Eurasian Economic Union as part of a long-term solution for Europe and Ukraine. The question whether the French 3.2 billion euro loan to Egypt is “business as usual” for a major arms exporter as France, or whether it signals a long-awaited U-turn within the French Socialist Party led government of Francois Hollande is not necessarily unjustified. Time will tell whether the warning by the senior French Statesman and former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas, that France has become “the vanguard dog of NATO” has had a long-anticipated effect within the French Socialist Party and Hollande’s administration.
Paul Merrell

A year after Euro-Maidan, Ukraine coming apart at the seams | New Eastern Outlook - 0 views

journal-neo.org/...aine-coming-apart-at-the-seams

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Ukraine economy hyper-inflation

shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • The Ukrainian economy is bleeding out and rapidly approaching insolvency. The national currency, the hryvnia, has depreciated 68 percent in the past 12 months. Reports from Kiev indicate an ongoing disagreement between the central bank, which has tightened controls on capital movement to suppress capital flight, and Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who reportedly opposed capital control measures. The central bank lifted restrictions on capital movements on Yatsenyuk’s orders, sparking a further free-fall of the hryvnia, making it the world’s worst performing currency, according to Bloomberg. Ukrainian bonds have become the worst performing among 58 nations on Bloomberg’s Emerging Market Sovereign Bond Index, having plunged by 25 percent this year. Ukraine is now in the throes of a hyper-inflationary crisis, kept afloat by IMF loans that require gauging structural adjustments and austerity measures. GDP figures have dropped 6.5 percent in the last year, while the unemployment rate has climbed to 9.3 percent in 2014. The minimum wage has hit an all-time low of $43 USD, considerably below the wage equivalents of Bangladesh, Lesotho or Chad. According to reports, residents are considerably panicked as they stock up on foodstuffs in preparation for further economic turbulence. While a lull in fighting has taken place in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, the ceasefire remains extremely fragile. The new authorities in Kiev would likely impose martial law across the country if further fighting breaks out between separatist militias and government forces, backed by quasi-fascist volunteer battalions.First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2015/03/02/a-year-after-euro-maidan-ukraine-coming-apart-at-the-seams/
Paul Merrell

Venezuela Sounds Alarm after Obama Invokes International Emergency Act | nsnbc internat... - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...es-international-emergency-act

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

shared by Paul Merrell on 11 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Venezuelan foreign minister Delcy Rodriguez sent an alert to international solidarity groups this afternoon, indicating that recent actions taken by the US government are meant to justify “intervention,” and do not correspond with international law. The warning came within 24 hours of an address made by US president Barack Obama, in which Venezuela was labeled an “unusual and extraordinary threat to [US] national security”.
  • While slapping a new set of sanctions on the South American nation, Obama declared a national emergency, invoking the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) against Venezuela. Other states which currently have the IEEPA invoked against them include; Iran, Myanmar, Sudan, Russia, Zimbabwe, Syria, Belarus and North Korea. Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro responded to the move yesterday evening by describing it as the most aggressive step the US has taken against Venezuela to date. The Venezuelan leader branded the declarations as “hypocritical,” asserting that the United States poses a much bigger threat to the world. “You are the real threat, who trained and created Osama Bin Laden… “ said Maduro, referring to Bin Laden’s CIA training during the late 1970s to fight the Soviet army in Afghanistan. He also remarked upon “double standards” in the White House’s accusations that Venezuela has violated human rights in its treatment of anti-government protestors.
  • “Defend the human rights of the black U.S. citizens being killed in U.S. cities every day, Mr. Obama,” he said. “I’ve told Mr. Obama, how do you want to be remembered? Like Richard Nixon, who ousted Salvador Allende in Chile? Like President Bush, responsible for ousting President Chavez? … Well President Obama, you already made your choice … you will be remembered like President Nixon,” Maduro declared during a live television broadcast. The South American president went on to outline ways in which the United States has already interfered in Venezuelan affairs, pointing to 105 official statements made by that government in the past year- over half of which demonstrate explicit support for Venezuelan opposition leaders. The Venezuelan government previously accused the United States of playing a direct role in a thwarted coup attempt last month. The president today reminded viewers that the man believed to have financed the coup, Carlos Osuna, is currently “in New York, under the protection of the US government.” Maduro also requested this morning the use of the Enabling Act to pass “a special law to preserve peace in the country” in the face of US threats.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • If the powers are granted by the National Assembly, Maduro plans to draft next Tuesday an “anti-imperialist law to prepare us for all scenarios and to win,” he said today.
Paul Merrell

Senate committee adopts cybersecurity bill opposed by NSA critics | World news | thegua... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...ty-bill-opposed-by-nsa-critics

surveillance state NSA legislation cyberwar vulnerabilities

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • The Senate intelligence committee voted Tuesday to adopt a major cybersecurity bill that critics fear will give the National Security Agency even wider access to American data than it already has.Observers said the bill, approved by a 12 to 3 vote in a meeting closed to the public, would face a difficult time passing the full Senate, considering both the shortened legislative calendar in an election year and the controversy surrounding surveillance.But the bill is a priority of current and former NSA directors, who warn that private companies’ vulnerability to digital sabotage and economic data exfiltration will get worse without it.Pushed by Dianne Feinstein and Saxby Chambliss, the California Democrat and Georgia Republican who lead the committee, the bill would remove legal obstacles that block firms from sharing information "in real time" about cyber-attacks and prevention or mitigation measures with one another and with the US government.
  • Worrying civil libertarians is that the NSA and its twin military command, US Cyber Command, would receive access to vast amounts of data, and privacy guidelines for the handling of that data are yet to be developed.A draft of the bill released in mid-June would permit government agencies to share, retain and use the information for "a cybersecurity purpose" – defined as "the purpose of protecting an information system or information that is stored on, processed by or transiting an information system from a cybersecurity threat or security vulnerability" – raising the prospect of the NSA stockpiling a catalogue of weaknesses in digital security, as a recent White House data-assurance policy permits.It would also prevent participating companies from being sued for sharing data with each other and the government, even though many companies offer contract terms of service prohibiting the sharing of client or customer information without explicit consent.
  • But digital rights advocates warn that the measure will give the government, including the NSA, access to more information than just that relating to cyberthreats, potentially creating a new avenue for broad governmental access to US data even as Congress and the Obama administration contemplate restricting the NSA's domestic collection.The bill contains "catch-all provisions that would allow for the inclusion of a lot more than malicious code. It could include the content of communications. That's one of the biggest concerns," said Gabriel Rottman, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union.Provisions in the bill are intended to protect American privacy on the front end by having participating companies strike "indicators … known to be personal information of or identifying a United States person" before the government sees it, but the draft version leaves specific guidelines for privacy protection up to the attorney general."Nobody knows whether the flow from the private sector will be a trickle or a river or an ocean. The bill contemplates an ocean, and that's what worries us," said Greg Nojeim of the Center for Democracy and Technology.
Paul Merrell

Five Reasons The Situation in Eastern Ukraine is About to Become Much More Dangerous | ... - 0 views

scgnews.com/-to-become-much-more-dangerous

war & peace Ukraine U.S.-foreign-policy intervention Russia

shared by Paul Merrell on 19 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • This past week the mainstream coverage of the Ukrainian civil war has focused on Kiev's move to encircle Donetsk. However there are reports coming out of the east right now that indicate that the Ukrainian troops may have just walked into a trap. Specifically the separatists claim to have encircled western troops and have completely stalled their advance.
  • Note that this report is coming from those who openly support the separatists, and the claim that Kiev's forces have been encircled has yet to be confirmed by any major outlets, however Reuters does confirm that the Ukrainian troops have suffered heavy casualties in the past 24 hours, and there are separate reports that the separatists have managed to gain control of a new town on the Russian border within that same time period. The big picture here is that Kiev's forces may have overextended their forces and supply lines after being lulled into a false sense of momentum by the withdrawal of separatist forces from Slavyansk. There are some who are even speculating that the retreat was a trap. It's too early to know for sure if this assessment is accurate, but it is plausible. This is a common pattern in armed confrontation (The writings of Erwin Rommel regarding modern military tactics are very educational in this regard). The response from Washington, to lay the blame on Putin and to impose a new round of sanctions against Russia, was so predictable you may have the impression that you're watching a rerun from this Spring. Russia of course, reiterated their previous response: that these economic bully tactics will just have a boomerang effect. All par for the course. This phase in the crisis, however, is far more dangerous than the previous ones for a number of reasons.
  • Reason five: If this situation continues to go south, Washington may double down and push the envelope even farther in terms of covert operations. Indeed we're seeing think tanks like The Stratfor Institute call for an all out thrust to counter Russia (specifically on the issue of Moldova) which they are very clear that covert means should be employed. Anyone who has watched the U.S. State Department at their work, knows that there are very few limits to what this may entail.
Paul Merrell

Leaked email: Save the Children trying to "contain" damage from Tony Blair award | The ... - 0 views

electronicintifada.net/...ontain-damage-tony-blair-award

war & peace Save-the-Children Blair war-criminals

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • Save the Children is trying to tamp down coverage and “contain” the damage from the award given to former UK prime minister Tony Blair by its US arm. A leaked internal email to staff from the international charity’s chief executive Jasmine Whitbread does not indicate, however, that the charity intends to withdraw the “Global Legacy Award” Blair received at a glittering New York gala on 19 November. On Tuesday, The Guardian reported that Save the Children staff were in revolt over the award. “We consider this award inappropriate and a betrayal to Save the Children’s founding principles and values,” more than 200 of the charity’s staff wrote in an internal protest letter sent to management.
  • Blair is widely reviled for his role in the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, which cost hundreds of thousands of lives and left the country devastated. Since stepping down as UK prime minister in 2007, Blair has become notorious for reaping millions in shady deals with shady regimes including the Egyptian dictatorship. He has also been accused of using his role as envoy for the so-called Middle East Quartet as a means to gain access to powerful people to advance his private business interests. More than 110,000 people have signed an online petition calling on Save the Children to revoke the award to Blair.
« First ‹ Previous 61 - 80 of 89 Next ›
Showing 20▼ items per page