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Paul Merrell

Democratic Pundits Downplay Serious Ethical Issues Raised by the Clinton Foundation - 0 views

theintercept.com/...clinton-foundation-spin

Auction 2016 Hillary Clinton-Foundation corruption bribery

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Aug 16 - No Cached
  • The Associated Press story this week revealing that as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton frequently met with donors to the Clinton Foundation, set off a firestorm in the media. Many Democrats and sympathetic pundits are criticizing the article — and have made the sweeping claim that, contrary to many deeply reported investigations, there is no evidence that well-heeled backers of the foundation received favorable treatment from the State Department. While there are some legitimate criticisms of the AP story — its focus, for instance, on a Nobel Peace Prize winner meeting with Clinton distracts from the thesis of the piece — it is nonetheless a substantive investigation based on calendars that the State Department has fought to withhold from the public. The AP took the agency to court to obtain a partial release of the meeting logs. Other commentators took issue with a tweet promoting the AP piece, which they said might confuse readers because the AP story reflected private sector meetings, not overall meetings. But in challenging the overall credibility of the AP story, Clinton surrogates and allies are going well beyond a reasoned critique in an effort to downplay the serious ethical issues raised by Clinton Foundation activities.
  • The assertions above obscure the problems unearthed through years of investigative reporting on the foundation. Journalist David Sirota, who has reported extensively on the Clinton Foundation, rounded up a sample of the stories that provide a window into Clinton Foundation issues: The Washington Post found that two months after Secretary Clinton encouraged the Russian government to approve a $3.7 billion deal with Boeing, the aerospace company announced a $900,000 donation to the Clinton Foundation. The Wall Street Journal found that Clinton made an “unusual intervention” to announce a legal settlement with UBS, after which the Swiss bank increased its donations to, and involvement with, the Clinton Foundation. The New York Times reported that a Russian company assumed control of major uranium reserves in a deal that required State Department approval, as the chairman of the company involved in the transaction donated $2.35 million to the Clinton Foundation.
  • The Intercept has also reported on the Clinton Foundation and the conduct of the State Department under Clinton. Leaked government documents obtained by The Intercept revealed that the Moroccan government lobbied Clinton aggressively to influence her and other officials on the Moroccan military occupation of Western Sahara, which holds some of the world’s largest reserves of phosphate, a lucrative export for the kingdom. As part of its strategy for influence, the Moroccan government and companies controlled by the kingdom donated to the Bill Clinton presidential library, the Clinton Foundation, and hired individuals associated with the Clinton political network. Despite a statement by the Obama administration that suggested it would reverse the previous Bush administration support for the Moroccan government and would back a U.N.-negotiated settlement for the conflict in Western Sahara, Clinton announced there would be “no change” in policy — and has gone on to praise the Moroccan government’s human rights record. As recently as Monday, we learned that after being denied an official meeting with the State Department, Peabody Energy, the worlds largest coal company, used a consultant who donated heavily to the Clinton Foundation to back channel and attempt to set up a meeting with Clinton via her aide Huma Abedin. The consultant, Joyce Aboussie, wrote that “It should go without saying that the Peabody folks” reached out to her because of her “relationship with the Clinton’s [sic].” Peabody and Aboussie have declined to comment, and it is unclear if the meeting took place.
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  • There may be many other potential influence-peddling stories, but the State Department has not released all of the emails from Clinton’s private server and other meeting log documents, while redacting identifying information that could shed light on other stories. For example, Mother Jones and The Intercept have reported that Clinton used the State Department to promote fracking development across the globe, and in particular her agency acted to benefit particular companies such as a Chevron project in Bulgaria and ExxonMobil’s efforts in Poland. Both ExxonMobil and Chevron are major donors to the Clinton Foundation. The release of more meeting log documents and emails would certainly reveal a better picture of potential influence.
  • Earlier this year, in similar fashion to the questions raised about the Clinton Foundation, Democrats in Arizona raised influence peddling concerns regarding the reported $1 million donation from the Saudi Arabian government to the McCain Institute for International Leadership, a nonprofit group closely affiliated with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. As chairman of the Armed Services Committee, McCain oversees a range of issues concerning Saudi Arabia, including arms sales. But none of the pundits rushing to the defense of the Clinton Foundation defended McCain. In fact, the more Clinton’s allies have worked to defend big money donations to the Clinton Foundation, the more closely they resemble the right-wing principles they once denounced. In one telling argument in defense of the Clinton Foundation, Media Matters, another group run by David Brock, argued this week that there was “no evidence of ethics breaches” because there was no explicit quid pro quo cited by the AP. The Media Matters piece mocked press figures for focusing on the “optics” of corruption surrounding the foundation. Such a standard is quite a reversal for the group. In a piece published by Media Matters only two years ago, the organization criticized conservatives for focusing only on quid pro quo corruption — the legal standard used to decide the Citizens United and McCutcheon Supreme Court decisions — calling such a narrow focus a “new perspective of campaign finance” that dismisses “concerns about institutional corruption in politics.” The piece notes that ethics laws concerning the role of money in politics follow a standard, set forth since the Watergate scandal, in which even the appearance, or in other words, the “optics” of corruption, is cause for concern.
Paul Merrell

UAW Charges Romney With Profiteering From Auto Bailout - 0 views

www.truth-out.org/...profiteering-from-auto-bailout

Auction 2012 Romney corporate welfare

shared by Paul Merrell on 04 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • For Mitt Romney, it's one scary Halloween.  The Presidential candidate has just learned that tomorrow afternoon (November 1) he will be charged by the United Automobile Workers (UAW) and other public interest groups with violating the federal ethics in government law by improperly concealing his multi-million dollar windfall from the auto industry bailout. At a press conference in Toledo, Bob King, President of the United Automobile Workers, will announce that his union and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)  have filed a formal complaint with the US Office of Government Ethics in Washington stating that Gov. Romney improperly hid a profit of $15.3 million to $115.0 million in Ann Romney's so-called "blind" trust. The union chief says, "The American people have a right to know about Gov. Romney’s potential conflicts of interest, such as the profits his family made from the auto rescue. It’s time for Gov. Romney to disclose or divest.” “While Romney was opposing the rescue of one of the nation’s most important manufacturing sectors, he was building his fortunes with his Delphi investor group, making his fortunes off the misfortunes of others,” King added.
  • The Romneys' gigantic windfall was hidden inside an offshore corporation inside a limited partnership inside a trust which both concealed the gain and reduces taxes on it.   The Romneys' windfall was originally exposed in Nation Magazine (and reposted on Truthout,) Mitt Romney's Bail-out Bonanza after a worldwide investigation by our crew at The Guardian, the Nation Institute and the Palast Investigative Fund.  
  • According to ethics law expert Dr. Craig Holman of Public Citizen -- who serves as an advisor on the charge -- Ann Romney does not have a federally-approved blind trust.  An approved "blind" trust may not be used to hide a major investment which could be affected by Romney if he were to be elected President.
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  • In 2009, Ann Romney partnered with her husband's key donor, billionaire Paul Singer, who secretly bought a controlling interest in Delphi Auto, the former GM auto parts division.  Singer's hedge fund, Elliott Management, threatened to cut off GM's supply of steering columns unless GM and the government's TARP auto bailout fund provided Delphi with huge payments.  While the US treasury complained this was "extortion," the hedge funds received, ultimately, $12.9 billion in taxpayer subsidies.   As a result, the shares Singer and Romney bought for just 67 cents are today worth over $30, a 4,000% gain.  Singer's hedge fund made a profit of $1.27 billion and the Romney's tens of millions.   The UAW complaint calls for Romney to reveal exactly how much he made off Delphi -- and continues to make.  The Singer syndicate, once in control of Delphi, eliminated every single UAW job --25,000-- and moved almost all auto parts production to Mexico and China where Delphi now employs 25,000 auto parts workers.
Gary Edwards

The worst rise to the top - Mises Economic Blog - 0 views

feeds.mises.org/...Z1MQ3qC2Jaw

Hayek Road-toSerfom Politics Mises-Economic-Institute

shared by Gary Edwards on 04 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 04 Jan 12
     
    Very interesting post from Douglas French concerning the repubican primaries and F.A. Hayek's "Road to Serfom" comments on modern politics. Fascinating stuff. Hayek argues that, in politics, "the worst rise to the top", and he outlines three reasons why: .... Choosing is the problem. Informed people are more "nuanced" - they have many divergent opinions and views. Uniformity however drives the group dynamics behind a democratic process. Uniformity of opinion rules, and the less informed a person is, the more uniform and drawn to larger groups they will be. The "lowest common denominator" rule rules the democratic process. Mobocracy at work. .... Those on top, pursuing the political leadership positions, must appeal to the masses and weave together the groups driven by the "lowest common denominator" rule. The docile and gullible "are ready to accept whatever values and ideology drummed into them". Advantage to big media, the socialist assemblage ruling public education, and public workers unions. ..... Third, political leaders "don't promote a positive agenda, but a negative one of hating an enemy and envy of the wealthy. To appeal to the masses, leaders preach an "us" against "them" program." The great unwashed and uninformed being guided and driven "by emotion and passion rather than critical thinking." Not sure i agree with any of this, much as i admire and recognize the importance of Hayek and his seminal, game changing "Road to Serfdom". One reason is that some of the most informed people i know are goose stepping socialist hell bent on ending individual liberty - as in "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness", in exchange for Marxist social equality. Another reason i would disagree is that the salt of the earth "bitter clingers" Reagan Conservatives that rock the Tea Party movement are exactly what the establishment elites call the "uninformed masses". Not sure if that's what Hayek meant, but his viewpoint does look a
Paul Merrell

Spying by N.S.A. Ally Entangled U.S. Law Firm - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...nsnared-american-law-firm.html

surveillance state NSA ASD NSA-targets law-firms

shared by Paul Merrell on 21 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • The list of those caught up in the global surveillance net cast by the National Security Agency and its overseas partners, from social media users to foreign heads of state, now includes another entry: American lawyers. A top-secret document, obtained by the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden, shows that an American law firm was monitored while representing a foreign government in trade disputes with the United States. The disclosure offers a rare glimpse of a specific instance in which Americans were ensnared by the eavesdroppers, and is of particular interest because lawyers in the United States with clients overseas have expressed growing concern that their confidential communications could be compromised by such surveillance. Related Coverage Text: Document Describes Eavesdropping on American Law FirmFEB. 15, 2014 The government of Indonesia had retained the law firm for help in trade talks, according to the February 2013 document. It reports that the N.S.A.’s Australian counterpart, the Australian Signals Directorate, notified the agency that it was conducting surveillance of the talks, including communications between Indonesian officials and the American law firm, and offered to share the information.
  • The Australians told officials at an N.S.A. liaison office in Canberra, Australia, that “information covered by attorney-client privilege may be included” in the intelligence gathering, according to the document, a monthly bulletin from the Canberra office. The law firm was not identified, but Mayer Brown, a Chicago-based firm with a global practice, was then advising the Indonesian government on trade issues. On behalf of the Australians, the liaison officials asked the N.S.A. general counsel’s office for guidance about the spying. The bulletin notes only that the counsel’s office “provided clear guidance” and that the Australian agency “has been able to continue to cover the talks, providing highly useful intelligence for interested US customers.” The N.S.A. declined to answer questions about the reported surveillance, including whether information involving the American law firm was shared with United States trade officials or negotiators.
  • Most attorney-client conversations do not get special protections under American law from N.S.A. eavesdropping. Amid growing concerns about surveillance and hacking, the American Bar Association in 2012 revised its ethics rules to explicitly require lawyers to “make reasonable efforts” to protect confidential information from unauthorized disclosure to outsiders.Last year, the Supreme Court, in a 5-to-4 decision, rebuffed a legal challenge to a 2008 law allowing warrantless wiretapping that was brought in part by lawyers with foreign clients they believed were likely targets of N.S.A. monitoring. The lawyers contended that the law raised risks that required them to take costly measures, like traveling overseas to meet clients, to protect sensitive communications. But the Supreme Court dismissed their fears as “speculative.”The N.S.A. is prohibited from targeting Americans, including businesses, law firms and other organizations based in the United States, for surveillance without warrants, and intelligence officials have repeatedly said the N.S.A. does not use the spy services of its partners in the so-called Five Eyes alliance — Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand — to skirt the law.
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  • Still, the N.S.A. can intercept the communications of Americans if they are in contact with a foreign intelligence target abroad, such as Indonesian officials. The N.S.A. is then required to follow so-called minimization rules to protect their privacy, such as deleting the identity of Americans or information that is not deemed necessary to understand or assess the foreign intelligence, before sharing it with other agencies. An N.S.A. spokeswoman said the agency’s Office of the General Counsel was consulted when issues of potential attorney-client privilege arose and could recommend steps to protect such information. “Such steps could include requesting that collection or reporting by a foreign partner be limited, that intelligence reports be written so as to limit the inclusion of privileged material and to exclude U.S. identities, and that dissemination of such reports be limited and subject to appropriate warnings or restrictions on their use,” said Vanee M. Vines, the spokeswoman.
  • The N.S.A.’s protections for attorney-client conversations are narrowly crafted, said Stephen Gillers, an expert on legal ethics at New York University’s School of Law. The agency is barred from sharing with prosecutors intercepted attorney-client communications involving someone under indictment in the United States, according to previously disclosed N.S.A. rules. But the agency may still use or share the information for intelligence purposes. Andrew M. Perlman, a Suffolk University law professor who specializes in legal ethics and technology issues, said the growth of surveillance was troubling for lawyers. He helped create the bar association’s ethics code revisions that require lawyers to try to avoid being overheard by eavesdroppers. “You run out of options very quickly to communicate with someone overseas,” he said. “Given the difficulty of finding anything that is 100 percent secure, lawyers are in a difficult spot to ensure that all of the information remains in confidence.” 
  • In justifying the agency’s sweeping powers, the Obama administration often emphasizes the N.S.A.’s role in fighting terrorism and cyberattacks, but disclosures in recent months from the documents leaked by Mr. Snowden show the agency routinely spies on trade negotiations, communications of economic officials in other countries and even foreign corporations.
  • Other documents obtained from Mr. Snowden reveal that the N.S.A. shares reports from its surveillance widely among civilian agencies. A 2004 N.S.A. document, for example, describes how the agency’s intelligence gathering was critical to the Agriculture Department in international trade negotiations. “The U.S.D.A. is involved in trade operations to protect and secure a large segment of the U.S. economy,” that document states. Top agency officials “often rely on SIGINT” — short for the signals intelligence that the N.S.A. eavesdropping collects — “to support their negotiations.”
  • Paul Merrell on 21 Feb 14
     
    Outrageous.
Paul Merrell

The Surveillance State's Legalism Isn't About Morals, It's About Manipulating the Rules... - 0 views

justsecurity.org/...lism-morals-manipulating-rules

surveillance state morality ethics civil-liberties

shared by Paul Merrell on 15 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • Margo Schlanger has written a great article forthcoming in the Harvard National Security Journal about intelligence legalism, an ethical framework she sees underlying NSA surveillance. Margo makes the case that NSA and the executive branch haven’t been asking what the right surveillance practices should be, but rather what surveillance practices are allowed to be. She takes the concept of legalism from political theorist Judith Shklar: “the ethical attitude that holds moral conduct to be a matter of rule following, and moral relationships to consist of duties and rights determined by rules.” In the model of legalism that Margo sees the NSA following, any spying that is not legally prohibited is also right and good because ethics is synonymous with following the rules. Her critique of “intelligence legalism” is that the rules are the bare minimum, and merely following the rules doesn’t take civil liberties concerns seriously enough.
  • My question is whether legalism serves as a moral code for US Intelligence Community (IC) leadership, or only as a smokescreen. I believe the evidence shows that since 9/11,the IC, and specifically the NSA has not followed the rules. Rather, the agency has resorted to legalistic justifications in pursuit of other goals—namely whatever might be useful in countering terrorism. Before 9/11, the agency may have been focused on complying with FISA. But afterthat day, the NSA’s approach was that it “could circumvent federal statutes and the Constitution so long as there was some visceral connection to looking for terrorists.” In other words, since 9/11, the moral center of gravity in the surveillance world has focused on doing whatever is necessary for hunting terrorists, not following the rules. 
Gary Edwards

Obama Playing America For a Fool on Second Amendment | Tea Party - 0 views

www.teaparty.org/fool-on-second-amendment-18901

Jerome-Corsi Executive-Orders Guns Gun-Control second-amendment

shared by Gary Edwards on 22 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 22 Jan 13
     
    "In pursing this political agenda, Obama will certainly neglect credible and important research demonstrating the psycho-active drugs being prescribed wholesale by psychiatrists in the nation's public schools cause suicidal tendencies and violent behavior by the underage children who are forced to take these drugs. Writing in Ethical Human Sciences and Services, a peer-reviewed scholarly journal, in 2003, Dr. Peter R. Breggin, a Harvard-trained psychiatrist and former full-time consultant at the National Institute of Mental Health, concluded SSRI drugs (Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitors) could relate in suicide, violence, and other forms of extreme abnormal behavior, as evidenced in case reports, controlled clinical trials, and epidemiological studies in children and adults. Readers are invited to examine a long list of school-related violent incidents that are fully documented to be related to psychoactive medications that psychiatrists and other medical doctors have prescribed for children in schools. The evidence that Dr. Breggin is right is overwhelming, even though the scientific research proving drugs cause violence is completely ignored in the politically motivated gun law debate the White House is pushing on the American people. Obama and the Democrats will never consider that school shooters themselves are the victims of teacher union-imposed social control measures that depend on dispensing these drugs without any appreciation of the risk." ................ Incredible list of psychoactive medications responsible for violent shootings and mass murder:   http://ssristories.com/index.php
Gary Edwards

Still the Law of the Land? - The Constitution - 0 views

www.constitution.org/...stlotl.htm

Alexis-de-Tocqueville freedom-liberty Globalist-Elites The-Constitution

shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 09 Jul 13
     
    Heritage Foundation white paper: Forward: The commemoration of the bicentennial of the United States Constitution should be an occasion of festivity tempered by solemn gratitude for the gift our Founding Fathers bequeathed to us. But if the Constitution is to survive as something more than an abstract symbol - a parchment counterpart of the Statue of Liberty - the celebration must also be the occasion for broadened public awareness of the principles of constitutional government. For the anniversary comes at a time of grave crisis in our constitutional history. The federal judiciary, originally designed as part of a carefully balanced mechanism in which it shared guardianship of the Constitution with the executive, the two houses of Congress, and the state governments, has gradually taken sole custody unto itself, proclaiming that its decisions and not the Constitution are the supreme law of the land. What is even more dangerous, the Supreme Court has, during the last two or three decades, become progressively more blatant in disregarding the Constitution and arriving at decisions on the basis of the justices' ideological predilections in regard to "social progress" and "human dignity." These usurpations are compatible neither with the idea of constitutional government nor with the ideal of a government of laws. All the essays in this volume are, in one way or another, addressed to this problem, its ramifications, and its implications. They are the product of long, deep, and careful research and reflection; but, though they are appropriately cast in the muted tones of scholarship, collectively they sound an alarm bell in the night. Every thinking and public-spirited American can learn from their message. For two centuries the Constitution has provided the American people with a framework of limited government, designed for liberty. It is up to us to preserve that framework for our posterity, even as the Founders created it for theirs. Next year we will celebr
Paul Merrell

Congress Can Now Cut the Pay of Individual Civil Servants - 0 views

nymag.com/...individual-civil-servants.html

Congress legislation civil-service

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • This week, congressional Republicans gave themselves the power to slash the annual salary of any individual federal worker to as low as $1 — and the budget of any individual federal program right down to zero. They executed this attack on the independence of the civil service by reviving an obscure provision enacted by Congress in 1876: The Holman Rule, named after the Indiana congressman who devised it, empowers any member of Congress to submit an amendment to an appropriations bill that targets the funding of a specific government program or employee. The rule was devised before the advent of a nonpolitical, career civil service and was rarely invoked in the modern era. In 1983, Democratic speaker Tip O’Neill laid it to rest. For the past three decades, Congress has had the power to slash any agency’s overall budget, but not to target specific projects or civil servants for funding cuts or downsizing. @media (min-width: 1024px) { .ad.vp-1024-plus { display: block; } } Until now. “This is a big rule change inside there that allows people to get at places they hadn’t before,” House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy told reporters this week. “All agencies should be held accountable and tested in a manner and this is an avenue to allow them to do it.” This big change flew under the radar when it was enacted Tuesday, as congressional Republicans’ (quickly forfeited) attempt to gut the House ethics office sucked up all available media attention. But the Holman Rule could prove more consequential, particularly if the GOP proves eager to deploy its new weapon.
  • Paul Merrell on 27 Jan 17
     
    That will last until the first case hits the federal courts. Huge separation of powers issue along with the Equal Protection Clause.
Gary Edwards

Comey has Long History of Cases Ending Favorable to Clintons - Tea Party News - 0 views

www.teaparty.org/ding-favorable-clintons-174947

Clinton Hillary

shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Jul 16 - No Cached
  • Messages found stored on Clinton’s private email server show that Berger – a convicted thief of classified documents – had been advising Clinton while she served as secretary of state and had access to emails containing classified information. For example, in an email dated Sept. 22, 2009, Berger advised Clinton advised how she could leverage information to make Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu more cooperative in discussions with the Obama administration over a settlement freeze.
  • Law firm ties Berger, Lynch, Mills Berger worked as a partner in the Washington law firm Hogan & Hartson from 1973 to 1977, before taking a position as the deputy director of policy planning at the State Department in the Carter administration. When Carter lost his re-election bid, Berger returned to Hogan & Hartson, where he worked until he took leave in 1988 to act as foreign policy adviser in Gov. Michael Dukakis’ presidential campaign. When Dukakis was defeated, Berger returned to Hogan & Hartson until he became foreign policy adviser for Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign in 1992. On March 28, WND reported Lynch was a litigation partner for eight years at Hogan & Hartson, from March 2002 through April 2010. Mills also worked at Hogan & Hartson, for two years, starting in 1990, before she joined then President-elect Bill Clinton’s transition team, on her way to securing a position as White House deputy counsel in the Clinton administration. According to documents Hillary Clinton’s first presidential campaign made public in 2008, Hogan & Hartson’s New York-based partner Howard Topaz was the tax lawyer who filed income tax returns for Bill and Hillary Clinton beginning in 2004. In addition, Hogan & Hartson in Virginia filed a patent trademark request on May 19, 2004, for Denver-based MX Logic Inc., the computer software firm that developed the email encryption system used to manage Clinton’s private email server beginning in July 2013. A tech expert has observed that employees of MX Logic could have had access to all the emails that went through her account.
  • In 1999, President Bill Clinton nominated Lynch for the first of her two terms as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, a position she held until she joined Hogan & Hartson in March 2002 to become a partner in the firm’s Litigation Practice Group. She left Hogan & Hartson in 2010, after being nominated by President Obama for her second term as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, a position she held until Obama nominated her to serve in her current position as attorney general. A report published April 8, 2008, by The American Lawyer noted Hogan & Hartson was among Hillary Clinton’s biggest financial supporters in the legal industry during her first presidential campaign. “Firm lawyers and staff have donated nearly $123,400 to her campaign so far, according to campaign contribution data from the Center for Responsive Politics,” Nate Raymond observed in The American Lawyer article. “Christine Varney, a partner in Hogan’s Washington, D.C., office, served as chief counsel to the Clinton-Gore Campaign in 1992.” While there is no evidence that Lynch played a direct role either in the tax work done by the firm for the Clintons or in linking Hillary’s private email server to MX Logic, the ethics of the legal profession hold all partners jointly liable for the actions of other partners in a business. “If Hogan and Hartson previously represented the Clintons on tax matters, it is incumbent upon U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch to [disclose] what, if any, role she had in such tax matters,” said Tom Fitton, president of Washington-based Judicial Watch.
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  • HSBC link When Lynch’s nomination as attorney general was considered by the Senate one year ago, as WND reported, the Senate Judiciary Committee examined her role in the Obama administration’s decision not to prosecute the banking giant HSBC for laundering funds for Mexican drug cartels and Middle Eastern terrorists. WND was first to report in a series of articles beginning in 2012 money-laundering charges brought by John Cruz, a former HSBC vice president and relationship manager, based on his more than 1,000 pages of evidence and secret audio recordings. The staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee focused on Cruz’s allegations that Lynch, acting then in her capacity as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, engaged in a Department of Justice cover-up. Obama’s attorney general nominee allowed HSBC in December 2011 to enter into a “deferred prosecution” settlement in which the bank agreed to pay a $1.9 billion fine and admit “willful criminal conduct” in exchange for dropping criminal investigations and prosecutions of HSBC directors or employees. Cruz called the $1.92 billion fine the U.S. government imposed on HSBC “a joke” and filed a $10 million lawsuit for “retaliation and wrongful termination.” From 2002 to 2003, Comey held the position of U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, the same position held by Lynch. On March 4, 2013, he joined the HSBC board of directors, agreeing to serve as an independent non-executive director and a member of the bank’s Financial System Vulnerabilities Committee, positions he held until he resigned on Aug. 3, 2013, to become head of the FBI.
  • Comey, Fitzgerald and Valerie Plame On Jan. 1, 2004, the Washington Post reported that after Attorney General John Aschroft recused himself and his staff from any involvement in the investigation of who leaked the name of CIA employee Valerie Plame after journalist Robert Novak named her in print as a CIA operative, Comey assumed the role of acting attorney general for the purposes of the investigation. Comey appointed Patrick J. Fitzgerald, a U.S. attorney in Chicago, to act as special counsel in conducting the inquiry into what became known as “Plamegate.” At the time Comey made the appointment, Fitzgerald was already godfather to one of Comey’s children. On April 13, 2015, co-authoring a USA Today op-ed piece, Plame and her husband, retired ambassador Joseph Wilson, made public their support for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, openly acknowledging their political closeness to both Hillary and Bill Clinton. The first two paragraphs of the editorial read: We have known Hillary Clinton both professionally and personally for close to 20 years, dating back to before President Bill Clinton’s first trip to Africa in 1998 — a trip that they both acknowledge changed their lives, and gave considerable meaning to their post-White House years and to the activities of the Clinton Foundation. Joe, serving as the National Security Council Senior Director for African Affairs, was instrumental in arranging that historic visit. Our history became entwined with Hillary further after Valerie’s identity as a CIA officer was deliberately exposed. That criminal act was taken in retribution for Joe’s article in The New York Times in which he explained he had discovered no basis for the Bush administration’s justification for the Iraq War that Saddam Hussein was seeking yellowcake uranium to develop a nuclear weapon.
  • In January 2016, Chuck Ross in the Daily Caller reported that Hillary Clinton emails made public made clear that one of her “most frequent favor-seekers when she was secretary of state was former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a longtime Clinton friend, an endorser of Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, and an Africa expert with deep business ties on the continent.” Ross noted that Wilson emailed Clinton on Dec. 22, 2009, seeking help for Symbion Power, an American engineering contractor for whom Wilson consulted, in the company’s bid to pursue a U.S. Agency of International Development contract for work in Afghanistan. In the case of the Afghanistan project, Ross noted, Clinton vouched for Wilson and Symbion as she forwarded the request to Jack Lew, who served then as deputy secretary of state for management and resources. Ross further reported Wilson’s request might also have been discussed with President Obama, as one email indicates. In 2005, Fitzgerald prosecuted Libby, a prominent adviser to then Vice President Dick Cheney, in the Plame investigation, charging him with two counts of perjury, two counts of making false statements to federal prosecutors and one count of obstruction of justice. On March 6, 2007, Libby was convicted of four of the five counts, and on June 5, 2007, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton to two and a half years in federal prison. On April 6, 2015, the Wall Street Journal reported the publication of New York Times reporter Judith Miller’s memoir “The Story: A Reporter’s Journey” exposed “unscrupulous conduct” by Fitzgerald in the 2007 trial of Libby.
  • WSJ reporter Peter Berkowitz noted Miller “writes that Mr. Fitzgerald induced her to give what she now realizes was false testimony.” “By withholding critical information and manipulating her memory as he prepared her to testify, Ms. Miller relates, Mr. Fitzgerald ‘steered’ her ‘in the wrong direction.’” http://www.wnd.com/2016/07/comey-has-long-history-of-clinton-related-cases/
  • Gary Edwards on 09 Jul 16
     
    Bend over and grab your ankles. The rats nest of Clinton operatives in Washington DC is far deeper than anyone ever imagined. "FBI Director James Comey has a long history of involvement in Department of Justice actions that arguably ended up favorable to the Clintons. In 2004, Comey, then serving as a deputy attorney general in the Justice Department, apparently limited the scope of the criminal investigation of Sandy Berger, which left out former Clinton administration officials who may have coordinated with Berger in his removal and destruction of classified records from the National Archives. The documents were relevant to accusations that the Clinton administration was negligent in the build-up to the 9/11 terrorist attack. On Tuesday, Comey announced that despite evidence of "extreme negligence by Hillary Clinton and her top aides regarding the handling of classified information through a private email server, the FBI would not refer criminal charges to Attorney General Loretta Lynch and the Justice Department. Curiously, Berger, Lynch and Cheryl Mills all worked as partners in the Washington law firm Hogan & Hartson, which prepared tax returns for the Clintons and did patent work for a software firm that played a role in the private email server Hillary Clinton used when she was secretary of state. Lynch and Comey both served as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. They crossed paths in the investigation of HSBC bank, which avoided criminal charges in a massive money-laundering scandal for which the bank paid a $1.9 billion fine. After Attorney General John Aschroft recused himself in the Valerie Plame affair in 2004, Comey appointed as special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald, who ended up convicting "Scooter" Libby, a top aide to then Vice President Dick Cheney, of perjury and obstruction of justice. The charge affirmed the accusations of Plame and her former ambassador husband, Joe Wilson - both partisan supporters of Bill and
  • Paul Merrell on 10 Jul 16
     
    The "ethical" situation is far worse than described. Attorney disciplinary rules require that a lawyer, including all lawyers in the same firm, owe a lifetime duty of loyalty to a client, a duty that does not end with representation in a particular matter. Accordingly, Lynch had what the disciplinary rules refer to as an "actual conflict of interest" between her duties of loyalty to both Hillary and the U.S. government that required her withdrawal from representing either in the decision whether to prosecute Hillary. Saying that she would rubber stamp what Comey recommended was not the required withdrawal. Comey is an investigator, not a prosecutor. This was a situation for appointment of a special counsel to represent the Department of Justice in the decision whether to prosecute, not satisfied by rubber stamping Comey's recomendation,.
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 US government has betrayed the internet. We need to take it back | Bruce Schneier |... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...t-betrayed-internet-nsa-spying

internet guardian NSA-Patriot-Act-NDAA Bruce-Schneier Liberty-Tryanny

shared by Gary Edwards on 06 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 06 Sep 13
     
    "The USA Government has betrayed the Internet. We need to take it back. The NSA has undermined a fundamental social contract. We engineers built the Internet - and now we have to fix it and take it back." "Government and industry have betrayed the internet, and us. By subverting the internet at every level to make it a vast, multi-layered and robust surveillance platform, the NSA has undermined a fundamental social contract. The companies that build and manage our internet infrastructure, the companies that create and sell us our hardware and software, or the companies that host our data: we can no longer trust them to be ethical internet stewards. This is not the internet the world needs, or the internet its creators envisioned. We need to take it back. And by we, I mean the engineering community. Yes, this is primarily a political problem, a policy matter that requires political intervention. But this is also an engineering problem, and there are several things engineers can - and should - do."
Paul Merrell

CIA Seeks More Time to Declassify Interrogation Documents - Secrecy News - 0 views

blogs.fas.org/...cia-more-time

war & peace CIA torture declassification FOIA litigation Senate-Intelligence_Committee-Report

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 May 14 - No Cached
  • The Central Intelligence Agency today asked a court to allow more time to declassify its response to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on CIA rendition, detention and interrogation (RDI) activities, which itself is undergoing a time-consuming declassification review. “This complex process requires the careful review of over 500 pages of highly classified material. In addition, sufficient time must be allowed not only for coordination with other agencies, but — after completion of declassification review — for implementation of security measures to ensure the safety of U.S. personnel and facilities overseas,” according to a May 15 motion filed by the government in a FOIA lawsuit brought by the ACLU. “Due to the fluid nature of this process, aspects of which are beyond the CIA’s control, the Agency does not yet have a firm date by which it can complete the processing of the CIA Response [to the SSCI report] and the so-called Panetta Report, although it hopes the declassification review and accompanying processing of those documents can be completed this summer.” The CIA therefore requested an extension of time to respond, to which the ACLU plaintiffs did not consent.
  • With respect to the Senate Intelligence Committee report itself, the government promised an “expeditious” declassification review of the executive summary, findings, and conclusions. “While all declassification decisions are guided by the need to protect national security interests, the President has expressed a clear intent to declassify as much of the executive summary, findings, and conclusions of the SSCI Report as possible, and intends the declassification process to be expeditious,” the government motion said. According to an April 18 letter from then-White House counsel Katherine Ruemmler, appended to the new motion, “The President supports making public the Committee’s important review of the historical RDI program, as he believes that public scrutiny and debate will help to inform the public understanding of the program and to ensure that such a program will not be contemplated by a future administration.
  • Paul Merrell on 16 May 14
     
    Horse puckey. The quoted article is misleading, attempting to conflate two distinct sets of documents that the Court ordered the CIA to disclose after removing all properly classified information. The duty to disclose segregable portions of  records that are not classified has been in place since the early 70s. It should have been done without a lawsuit having been filed and litigated. I.e.,it was a court order the CIA knew was coming since it first received the FOIA request from the ACLU. One set is the CIA response to the Senate Committee. The other set is the DoJ's Office of Legal Counsel memoranda on the legality of torture techniques. not documents documenting the torture itself and not the CIA response to the Senate Committee. Even if he CIA really needed more time for the documents in the Senate group, the legal memoranda could be shorn of classified information in a mater of hours, not days, weeks, or months.  It's the legal memoranda disclosure that CIA and DOJ are really trying to delay. At least two of them were written and/or signed by a former head of the DoJ Office of Legal Counsel whose nomination to the First Circuit Court of Appeals is now pending in Congress. And it's crystal clear that he signed memoranda arguing that torture was legal, which bears directly on his fitness to become a federal appellate judge. It takes a lawyer without ethics or morality to argue that torture is legal. It's not, under either U.S. law or the Geneva Conventions governing warfare. Neither  is grabbing people and turning them over to other governments for torture.  Those memoranda will establish that the nominee is a war criminal. We know this because we have already had a preview in the form of a white paper on the topic released by the White House last year that it's known the same nominee had worked on. And the legal arguments in that white paper are preposterous.   The delay attempt is transparently in aid of pushing that nomination through Congress before
Paul Merrell

Corbyn Says ISIS Partly Created by Western Intervention | nsnbc international - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...reated-by-western-intervention

war & peace UK-foreign-policy Corbyn

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • Jeremy Corbyn delivered his uncompromising stance on Western warmongering from the back of a London taxi last week. As the cab raced through the streets of the capital, the new Labour leader revealed his vision for an ethical foreign policy in his 17-minute interview with Middle East Eye.
  • Asked how he would deal with ISIS, the anti-war campaigner was uncompromising. “ISIS (a.k.a. ISIL & Daesh, edt.) didn’t come from nowhere, they’ve got a lot of money that’s come from somewhere. They have a huge supply of arms that have come from somewhere and they are, not in total but in part, a creation of western interventions in the region,” he said. According to Corbyn, he would deal with the terror group by economically isolating its members. He says he would attempt to unite other groups in the region and stressed the importance of supporting autonomy for Kurdish groups. On the rise of ISIS, he pointed to the vast amount of arms that Britain sells, particularly to Saudi Arabia, declaring they must have ended up somewhere and are now being used. Corbyn was vehemently opposed to the 2013 Parliamentary vote on military intervention in Syria and remains adamant that bombing the country now would create more mayhem. He told Middle East Eye it would be very unclear who the alliances would be with.
  • On the region in general, he referred to Israel and Palestine as a massive issue. Unlike his British counterparts, he expressed grave concern at the illegal Israeli settlements, military occupation of the West Bank, and lack of reconstruction in Gaza. Praising the recent agreement with Iran, he said he wished it had included the issue of human rights,
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  • On Britain’s relationship with Saudi Arabia, Corbyn expressed concern on what he referred to as a “huge number of issues,” naming the treatment of women, the frequent use of the death penalty — including public beheadings — and the treatment of migrant workers. At a recent Parliamentary debate, Corbyn raised the question of whether British arms sales to Saudi Arabia are more important than genuine concerns about human rights. Most of us already know the answer to this question. “We need to be a constant irritant on human rights,” he said. Asked how Britain can make itself safer, both at home and abroad, Corbyn was frank: “We make ourselves safer by not being part of U.S. foreign policy at every single turn. And we become a force for human rights rather than military intervention.”
  • Describing what an ethical foreign policy under a Corbyn-lead British government would look like, he said, “My basis would be that I want to see the protection and preservation of human rights around the world, deal with issues of global hunger and global inequality, and the environmental disaster that is facing this planet.” He added, “I think that should be the basis rather than what it is at the moment which seems to be to see what the White House wants, and how we can deliver it for them.”
  • Paul Merrell on 24 Sep 15
     
    Sounds like things will be different in the UK when the new PM, Jeremy Corbyn, takes office. Query, does this make him a legitimate target for U.S. drone attack?
Gary Edwards

Feds confiscate investigative reporter's confidential files during raid | The Daily Caller - 3 views

dailycaller.com/...confidential-files-during-raid

Audrey-Hudson Whistleblower-Protection-Act

shared by Gary Edwards on 26 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • A veteran Washington D.C. investigative journalist says the Department of Homeland Security confiscated a stack of her confidential files during a raid of her home in August — leading her to fear that a number of her sources inside the federal government have now been exposed. In an interview with The Daily Caller, journalist Audrey Hudson revealed that the Department of Homeland Security and Maryland State Police were involved in a predawn raid of her Shady Side, Md. home on Aug. 6. Hudson is a former Washington Times reporter and current freelance reporter. A search warrant obtained by TheDC indicates that the August raid allowed law enforcement to search for firearms inside her home.
  • But without Hudson’s knowledge, the agents also confiscated a batch of documents that contained information about sources inside the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration, she said. Outraged over the seizure, Hudson is now speaking out. She said no subpoena for the notes was presented during the raid and argues the confiscation was outside of the search warrant’s parameter. “They took my notes without my knowledge and without legal authority to do so,” Hudson said this week. “The search warrant they presented said nothing about walking out of here with a single sheet of paper.”
  • After the search began, Hudson said she was asked by an investigator with the Coast Guard Investigative Service if she was the same Audrey Hudson who had written a series of critical stories about air marshals for The Washington Times over the last decade. The Coast Guard operates under the Department of Homeland Security.
  • Paul Merrell on 26 Oct 13
     
    If reality is as stated, the reporter has a pretty strong civil rights case against the government officials who knowingly participated in the theft and retention of the reporter's notes, two distinct conspiracies. Under the 4th Amendment, officers executing a search and seizure warrant may lawfully seize the items particularly described in the warrant and any other evidence of crime that is in plain view during the search. It's a big push of credibility to argue that reading documents stored in a bag in search for a gun falls within the "plain view" doctrine. The officer could instead just reach his hand into the bag and feel around for a gun. Quite a few extra steps involved in removing the documents and reading them simply to determine whether the bag contains a gun. Add in the facts that: [i] the supposed recognition of government documents argument does not explain why the officers seized personal handwritten notes too; and [ii] the evidence that the officer who discovered the docs had learned that the reporter was one who had called the conduct of his agency into question, and it comes out smelling a lot more like an attempt to discover the reporters' sources than a legitimate search for guns when the bag was searched.   Only one side heard from so far, of course. But this sounds more like low-level government officials who were ignorant of their legal obligations than a White House-driven scandal. But I wouldn't want to be the government lawyer who authorized the retention of the seized notes and other documents. They should have been returned without retaining copies the instant the lawyer learned of the circumstances of their seizure. There's not only a 4th Amendment liberty interest but also a 1st Amendment freecdom to communicate anonymously right protecting those documents and notes. 
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  • Gary Edwards on 26 Oct 13
     
    I listened to an interview with Audrey Hudson last night. It seems to me the key fact is in this clip; "But without Hudson's knowledge, the agents also confiscated a batch of documents that contained information about sources inside the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration, she said." Audrey had written a series of articles describing how the Homeland Security and Transportation agency had been lying about air marshalls and the post 911 program to secure passenger flights. The documents that were stolen listed her sources - the whistle blowers inside the Homeland Security administration who leaked information about the lies and the many problems with the program that the Obama administration was covering up. This sounds to me like another example of Obama hunting down and persecuting whistleblowers. A direct violation of the 1989 - 2007 Whistleblower Protection Act. Not surprisingly, Ms Hudson had not tried to contact any of her whistleblowing sources for fear that the NSA would be watching and that this persecution would happen. Interestingly, the warrant was to seize a "potato launcher". No kidding! It seems Ms. Hudson's husband had, at one time been a licensed arms dealer. He lost that license having sold a gun with faulty paperwork. This event had occurred years earlier, and Mr. Hudson had long since moved on and was currently working for the Coast Guard as an outside contractor/consultant. So they seized the toy "potato launcher", as described in the warrant. But they also ransacked the home looking for the key documents that listed Ms Hudson's inside Homeland Security sources behind her air marshal scandal articles. These documents were the only items seized - other than the "potato launcher" that was the only item listed in the warrant. Seems we've been here before. From wikipedia, the story of Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller: ........................... Arrested on 1 July 1937, N
  • Gary Edwards on 26 Oct 13
     
    "But without Hudson's knowledge, the agents also confiscated a batch of documents that contained information about sources inside the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration, she said."
  • Paul Merrell on 26 Oct 13
     
    What troubles me the most about this event, assuming the truth of what's reported, is how well known the limitations on execution of a search warrant are within the law enforcement community. If it happened as described, it seems very unlikely that the officer who grabbed the documents did not know he was violating the 4th Amendment. Ditto for the lawyer or other official(s) who learned of what went down shortly thereafter, but kept the documents anyway. There's an arrogance that goes with government and corporate officials who don't have to personally pay damage awards. With no personal monetary liability (in reality, since the government or corporation picks up the tab), it becomes a matter of personal ethics and whether the misbehavior will anger or please the boss. If the ethics are weak, that becomes a pretty simple choice.
Gary Edwards

REVEALING QUOTES ON THE GOALS OF PSYCHIATRY AND PSYCHOLOGY - 0 views

www.psychquotes.com

psychquotes psychiatry psychiatric

shared by Gary Edwards on 29 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • Psychiatry's Views on Conservatives "In August 2003, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced the results of their $1.2 million taxpayer-funded study. It stated, essentially, that traditionalists are mentally disturbed. Scholars from the Universities of Maryland, California at Berkeley, and Stanford had determined that social conservatives, in particular, suffer from ‘mental rigidity,’ ‘dogmatism,’ and ‘uncertainty avoidance,’ together with associated indicators for mental illness."
  • Psychiatry's Views on Education "Every child in America entering school at the age of five is insane because he comes to school with certain allegiances to our founding fathers, toward our elected officials, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being, and toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity. It’s up to you as teachers to make all these sick children well – by creating the international child of the future"
  • Teaching school children to read was a "perversion" and high literacy rate bred "the sustaining force behind individualism."
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  • You see, one of the effects of self-esteem (Values Clarification) programs is that you are no longer obliged to tell the truth if you don’t feel like it. You don’t have to tell the truth because if the truth you have to tell is about your own failure then your self-esteem will go down and that is unthinkable."
  • The social psychologist of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. Various results will soon be arrived at: first, that influences of the home are 'obstructive' and verses set to music and repeatedly intoned are very effective ..
  • When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for more than one generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen."
  • "…through schools of the world we shall disseminate a new conception of government – one that will embrace all of the collective activities of men; one that will postulate the need for scientific control and operation of economic activities in the interests of all people."
  • "Education does not mean teaching people to know what they do not know – it means teaching them to behave as they do not behave." 
  • "This is the idea where we drop subject matter and we drop Carnegie Unites (grading from A-F) and we just let students find their way, keeping them in school until they manifest the politically correct attitudes.
  • "I regard myself as one of the most dangerous enemies of religion" Sigmund Freud
  • "Education is thus a most power ally of humanism, and every public school is a school of humanism. What can the theistic Sunday school, meeting for an hour once a week, and teaching only a fraction of the children, do to stem the tide of a five-day program of humanistic teachings?"
  • "Despite rapid progress in the right direction, the program of the average elementary school has been primarily devoted to teaching the fundamental subjects, the three R’s, and closely related disciplines… Artificial exercises, like drills on phonetics, multiplication tables, and formal writing movements, are used to a wasteful degree. Subjects such as arithmetic, language, and history include content that is intrinsically of little value. Nearly every subject is enlarged unwisely to satisfy the academic ideal of thoroughness… Elimination of the unessential by scientific study, then, is one step in improving the curriculum."
  • "We can therefore justifiably stress our particular point of view with regard to the proper development of the human psyche, even though our knowledge be incomplete. We must aim to make it permeate every educational activity in our national life…. We have made a useful attack upon a number of professions. The two easiest of them naturally are the teaching profession and the Church: the two most difficult are law and medicine."
  • "...a student attains 'higher order thinking' when he no longer believes in right or wrong"
  • "A large part of what we call good teaching is a teacher´s ability to obtain affective objectives by challenging the student's fixed beliefs.  …a large part of what we call teaching is that the teacher should be able to use education to reorganize a child's thoughts, attitudes, and feelings."  
  • "Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their school masters would have wished
  • Psychiatry's Views on Religion "Religion (is) a universal obsessional neurosis." Sigmund Freud, defining spiritual belief
  • "The educational system should be a sieve, through which all the children of a country are passed. It is highly desirable that no child escape inspection."
  • "The soul or consciousness, which played the leading part in the past, now is of very little importance; in any case both are deprived of their main functions and glory to such an extent that only the names remain. Behaviorism sang their funeral dirge while materialism – the smiling heir – arranges a suitable funeral for them.
  • "…humanists still believe that traditional theism, especially faith in the prayer-hearing God, assumed to love and care for persons, to hear and understand their prayers, and to be able to do something about them, is an unproved and outmoded faith." "
  • "We can therefore justifiably stress our particular point of view with regard to the proper development of the human psyche, even though our knowledge be incomplete. We must aim to make it permeate every educational activity in our national life…. We have made a useful attack upon a number of professions. The two easiest of them naturally are the teaching profession and the Church: the two most difficult are law and medicine."
  • We shall not solve the problems of alcoholism and juvenile delinquency by increasing a sense of responsibility. It is the environment which is 'responsible' for the objectionable behavior, and it is the environment, not some attribute of the individual, which must be changed.
  • Psychiatry's Views on Creating a Slave Society "We can choose to use our growing knowledge to enslave people in ways never dreamed of before, depersonalizing them, controlling them by means so carefully selected that they will perhaps never be aware of their loss of personhood."
  • Teaching school children to read was a "perversion" and high literacy rate bred "the sustaining force behind individualism."
  • "It will of course, be understood that directly or indirectly, soon or late, every advance in the sciences of human nature will contribute to our success in controlling human nature and changing it to the advantage of the common wheel." Edward Thorndike, Key Psychology Theorist, member of the "Eugenics Committee of the USA"
  • "We need a program of psychosurgery for political control of our society. The purpose is physical control of the mind. Everyone who deviates from the given norm can be surgically mutilated.
  • The individual may think that the most important reality is his own existence, but this is only his personal point of view. . . Man does not have the right to develop his own mind. . . . We must electronically control the brain. Someday armies and generals will be controlled by electronic stimulation of the brain." 
  • "Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their school masters would have wished
  • "One of the least understood strategies of the world revolution now moving rapidly toward its goal is the use of mind control as a major means of obtaining the consent of the people who will be subjects of the New World Order."
  • "Those of us who work in this field see a developing potential for nearly a total control of human emotional status, mental functioning, and will to act. These human phenomena can be started, stopped or eliminated by the use of various types of chemical substances. What we can produce with our science now will affect the entire society." A "utopia" could be found – providing "a sense of stability and certainty, whether realistic or not."
  • "To achieve world government, it is necessary to remove from the minds of men their individualism, loyalty to family traditions, national patriotism and religious dogmas..."
  • Some packages even include instructions on how to deal with parents and others who object. Stripping away psychological defenses can be done through assignments to keep diaries to be discussed in group sessions, and through role-playing assignments, both techniques used in the original brainwashing programs in China under Mao. Thomas Sowell, writing in Forbes, 1991
  • "The State is the absolute reality and the individual himself has objective existence, truth and morality only in his capacity as a member of the State." Hegel (who influenced Karl Marx)
  • Psychiatry's Views on America "America is a mistake, admittedly a gigantic mistake, but a mistake nevertheless." Sigmund Freud America is the most grandiose experiment the world has seen, but, I am afraid, it is not going to be a success. Sigmund Freud
  • "To achieve world government, it is necessary to remove from the minds of men their individualism, loyalty to family traditions, national patriotism and religious dogmas...
  • "One of the least understood strategies of the world revolution now moving rapidly toward its goal is the use of mind control as a major means of obtaining the consent of the people who will be subjects of the New World Order."
  • Freud on Marxism "The strength of Marxism obviously does not lie in its view of history or in the prophecies about the future which it bases upon that view, but in its clear insight into the determining influence which is exerted by the economic conditions of man upon his intellectual, ethical and artistic reactions." Sigmund Freud
  • Basically, all that is necessary to revoke all the constitutional rights of any citizen is to accuse him of being mentally-ill."
  • John A. Stormer, "None Dare Call it Treason"
  • "Old conventions, customs and values… to be challenged… The aim should be to control not only nature, but human nature." He recommended two slogans for "spreading world-wide the gospel of mental hygiene": "To learn to think internationally" and "The necessity to disarm the mind." Dr. J.R. Lord, psychiatrist
  • "Public life, politics and industry should all of them be within our sphere of influence…. If we are to infiltrate the professional and social activities of other people I think we must imitate the Totalitarians and organize some kind of fifth column activity!  If better ideas on mental health are to progress and spread we, as the salesmen, must lose our identity… Let us all, therefore, very secretly be ‘fifth columnists.’"
  • The techniques of brainwashing developed in totalitarian countries are routinely used in psychological conditioning programs imposed on school children.
  • These include emotional shock and desensitization, psychological isolation from sources of support, stripping away defenses, manipulative cross-examination of the individual’s underlying moral values by psychological rather than rational means. These techniques are not confined to separate courses or programs...they are not isolated idiosyncracies of particular teachers. They are products of numerous books and other educational materials in programs packaged by organizations that sell such curricula to administrators and teach the techniques to teachers.
  • "If all else fails, punishable behavior may be made less likely by changing physiological conditions. Hormones may be used to change sexual behavior, surgery (as in lobotomy) to control violence, tranquilizers to control aggression, and appetite depressants to control overeating." Harvard psychologist B.F. Skinner in "Beyond Freedom and Dignity"
  • We must learn to recognize them for what they are - possessors of no special knowledge of the human psyche, who have, nonetheless, chosen to earn their living from the dissemination of the myth that they do indeed know how the mind works". Psychiatrist Garth Wood, M.D., in "The Myth of Neurosis", 1986
  • These terms indicate only approval or disapproval of some aspect of a person's mentality (thinking, emotions, or behavior). Psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey, in "The Death of Psychiatry", 1974
  • "The very term ['mental disease'] is nonsensical, a semantic mistake. The two words cannot go together except metaphorically; you can no more have a mental 'disease' than you can have a purple idea or a wise space". Similarly, there can no more be a "mental illness" than there can be a "moral illness." The words "mental" and "illness" do not go together logically. Mental "illness" does not exist, and neither does mental "health."
  • By calling the harmless 'insane', (who statistics prove to be no more violence-prone than the average citizen, unless hopelessly deranged by damaging psychiatric 'treatment'), dangerous and justifying their own existence by the 'need' to deal with that inflated 'danger', the mad-doctors themselves pose the greatest threat to liberty, property and democracy in our times."
  • Citizens for Higher Ethical Standards in Medicine
  • "Mental illness is often used as an ad homonym to discredit the individual. This has been a common use of psychiatric diagnosis in psychiatry in Russia. " ... there are two main groups [of schizophrenia patients] ... 1) people admitted to the mental hospital long before they had been political dissenters ... 2. others who ... have put forward complex social and economic theories as alternatives to orthodox Marxism..."  Wing, cited in "Pseudoscience in Psychology", by Dr. Szasz, p. 126
  • "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.." J. Krishnamurti
  • "...the subject which will be of most importance politically is Mass Psychology.... The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for a generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen. As yet there is only one country which has succeeded in creating this politician’s paradise."   The Impact of Science on Society by Bertrand Russell
  • "A Trojan horse full of dangerous psycho-fantasies has been professionally prepared for us by Christian psychiatrists and psychologists...  At the base, such therapies stand upon dogma, not scientific observations, and the dogma is the odious one of Freud and his followers who were some of the century's most anti-Christ teachers.  No amount of well-intentioned refinement of deadly doctrines will make them clean for Christians." Dr. Hilton P. Terrell, M.D
  • "Contrary to the popular public conception, this happenstance is NOT a form of health care, but the result of a fraudulent system being granted police powers by the State.
  • "Psychotherapy may be known in the future as the greatest hoax of the twentieth century."
  • "Nearly half a century has passed since Watson proclaimed his manifesto. Today, apart from a few minor reservations, the vast majority of psychologists, both in this country and in America, still follow his lead. The result, as a cynical onlooker might be tempted to say, is that psychology, having first bargained away its soul and then gone out of its mind, seems now, as it faces an untimely end, to have lost all consciousness." 
  • "Advocates of psychiatric drugs often claim that the medications improve learning and the ability to benefit from psychotherapy, but the contrary is true.  There are no drugs that improve mental function, self-understanding, or human relations.  Any drug that affects mental processes does so by impairing them."
  • "In the 14-year period between 1950 and 1964, more American deaths occurred in state and county mental institutions than in all of the nation's armed conflicts beginning with the Revolutionary War and ending with the Persian Gulf War.  Between 1965 and 1990, the total number of mental-hospital inpatient deaths exceeded the number of battle deaths in the same wars by 70 percent.  Inpatient deaths topped out at 1,103,000 during this 25-year period, compared with 650,563 recorded deaths in battles."
  • Kelly Patricia O’Meara: "The Forgotten Dead of St. Elizabeth's", Insight Magazine, June 16, 2001
  • "The similarities between street drug abuse and psychotropic prescription drug use are disturbing. Both types are toxic. Both can cause psychosis, damage the brain and other organs, and even cause death. And neither type of mind-altering drugs, legal or illegal, treats disease. It's important to recognize that the only significant difference between many prescription psychotropic drugs and street drugs such as "speed" and "downers" is that prescription drugs are legal."
  • Neuro-psychiatrist Sydney Walker in "Dose of Sanity"
  • "Clearly this business of treating minds, particularly this big business of treating young minds, has not policed itself, and has no incentive to put a stop to the kinds of fraudulent and unethical practices that are going on."
Paul Merrell

The frightening promise of self-tracking pills | The Verge - 0 views

www.theverge.com/...acking-privacy-quantified-self

surveillance state pill-tracking wireless

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Some morning in the future, you take a pill — maybe something for depression or cholesterol. You take it every morning. Buried inside the pill is a sand-sized grain, one millimeter square and a third of a millimeter thick, made from copper, magnesium, and silicon. When the pill reaches your stomach, your stomach acids form a circuit with the copper and magnesium, powering up a microchip. Soon, the entire contraption will dissolve, but in the five minutes before that happens, the chip taps out a steady rhythm of electrical pulses, barely audible over the body's background hum. The signal travels as far as a patch stuck to your skin near the navel, which verifies the signal, then transmits it wirelessly to your smartphone, which passes it along to your doctor. There's now a verifiable record that the pill reached your stomach.
  • This is the vision of Proteus, a new drug-device accepted for review by the Food and Drug Administration last month. The company says it's the first in a new generation of smart drugs, a new source of data for patients and doctors alike. But bioethicists worry that the same data could be used to control patients, infringing on the intensely personal right to refuse medication and giving insurers new power over patients’ lives. As the device moves closer to market, it raises a serious question: Is tracking medicine worth the risk?
  • But not everyone's convinced that the ability to track pills will be good news for patients. The right to refuse treatment is an important, fragile principle in health care. Many are worried that tracking whether a pill is being consumed will be the first step towards punishing patients that don't comply. While doctors can’t force a patient to take a pill, court orders frequently mandate treatments involving specific drug regimens.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Patient's biggest protection are medical privacy laws like HIPAA, which prevent medical data from being shared with anyone outside the hospital system. That would stop your boss or your parents from using Proteus to make sure you haven't fallen behind on your anti-anxiety medication. But those laws won't keep data out of the hands of healthcare providers, and Caplan is concerned the pill could also be used to enforce compliance. Insurers might offer a discounted rate on tracked pills, then hit patients with a $100 co-pay for every treatment they miss. It's not as oppressive as a court order, but the end result would be similar.
  • NYU bioethicist Arthur Caplan says he can imagine a judge using Proteus to enforce medication as part of a sentence: miss a pill, and your parole is revoked. "The temptation in the legal system to say, 'I can monitor you and make sure you're not a threat' is going to be huge," Caplan says. "Maybe that's good, maybe it's bad, but it's a different world than saying I consent to taking these pills." Those court orders are rare at the moment, since there’s no way to ensure a patient is taking medication outside of a controlled treatment facility — but as pill-tracking becomes easier, those measures could become much more common. That's particularly likely given the way Proteus is entering the market. The device's first partnership bundles it with Abilify, a powerful antipsychotic most commonly used to treat mood disorders, schizophrenia, and Tourette's. The most common effects are improved concentration and decreased hallucinations, but it comes with extreme side effects like increased suicide risk and a lower seizure threshold. It's most often prescribed in cases of severe mental illness, often in psychiatric institutions or as part of a court-mandated treatment program — exactly the scenarios bioethicists like Caplan are most worried about.
  • Still, those concerns are unlikely to keep Proteus out of the hands of doctors. The upcoming FDA approval will focus largely on safety and efficacy, leaving the larger ethical challenges to be solved after the drug is released to doctors and patients at large. With the technology available, it will be up to the courts to decide when it’s legal and ethical to use it. As far as Proteus is concerned, the power of the technology outweighs the risks. "There are challenges with bringing digital into any sector," a company representative said. "The reason to embrace the challenge in health care is because the need is so great."
  • Paul Merrell on 13 Oct 15
     
    Let's not forget that because Congress recently decided to revive Patriot Act sect. 215, the FBI is authorized to gather medical records for foreign intelligence and anti-terrorism purposes and according to ex-NSA chief scientist William Binney, the NSA in fact collects medical records and makes them available to law enforcement agencies without a warrant or court order.  http://motherboard.vice.com/read/i-toured-stasi-hq-with-nsa-whistleblowers  One judge has found that statute unconstitutional and may rule in the next few days. A court of appeals has found that the statute did not authorize bulk collection of telephone metadata records. An Oregon federal judge ruled that the DEA cannot obtain prescription records (in part because they are medical records) without an individualized search warrant, specifically ruling against the bulk collection argument. Maybe someday someone in federal government will get a clue that medical records are not one of the "haystacks" the NSA is permitted to create.  Involuntary medical treatment is another giant legal hairball. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involuntary_treatment   
Gary Edwards

America Is Exhibiting All of the Signs of a Failing Empire Washington's Blog - 1 views

www.washingtonsblog.com/...signs-of-a-failing-empire.html

Banksters American-Empire Lawrence-Wilkerson

shared by Gary Edwards on 14 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • The U.S. is also following the age-old recipe for imperial decline by: Creating unsustainable levels of inequality Destroying upward mobility (and see this) Incurring staggering levels of debt to finance war and luxury goods Debasing its currency Military overspending Runaway corruption Apathy and greed And the decline of the America empire is speeding up due the U.S. falling into the Thucydides trap.
  • The U.S. is also following the age-old recipe for imperial decline by: Creating unsustainable levels of inequality Destroying upward mobility (and see this) Incurring staggering levels of debt to finance war and luxury goods Debasing its currency Military overspending Runaway corruption Apathy and greed And the decline of the America empire is speeding up due the U.S. falling into the Thucydides trap.
  • The U.S. is also following the age-old recipe for imperial decline by: Creating unsustainable levels of inequality Destroying upward mobility (and see this) Incurring staggering levels of debt to finance war and luxury goods Debasing its currency Military overspending Runaway corruption Apathy and greed And the decline of the America empire is speeding up due the U.S. falling into the Thucydides trap.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The U.S. is also following the age-old recipe for imperial decline by: Creating unsustainable levels of inequality Destroying upward mobility (and see this) Incurring staggering levels of debt to finance war and luxury goods Debasing its currency Military overspending Runaway corruption Apathy and greed And the decline of the America empire is speeding up due the U.S. falling into the Thucydides trap.
  • The U.S. is also following the age-old recipe for imperial decline by: Creating unsustainable levels of inequality Destroying upward mobility (and see this) Incurring staggering levels of debt to finance war and luxury goods Debasing its currency Military overspending Runaway corruption Apathy and greed And the decline of the America empire is speeding up due the U.S. falling into the Thucydides trap.
  • Gary Edwards on 14 Oct 15
     
    "America Is Exhibiting All of the Signs of a Failing Empire Posted on October 10, 2015 by WashingtonsBlog The American Empire Is Quickly Declining Consummate insider Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson - former chief of staff to Colin Powell, and now distinguished adjunct professor of Government and Public Policy at William & Mary - notes that the U.S. is exhibiting all of the signs of a failing empire, including: Relying on massive military force (and using gigantic complexes to support it) as the be-all and end-all of power, and belittling diplomacy Maintaining standing armies, instead of disbanding military forces between wars Using more mercenary forces than citizen troops Spending disproportionately large amounts of blood and treasure in order to counter threats on the status quo … which simply exacerbates the threat against the empire Going ethically and morally bankrupt Ending up up having bankers and financiers end up running the real power Suffering great hiccups in finance and trade The leaders no longer really believe in or follow the ideals of the founders"
  • Paul Merrell on 15 Oct 15
     
    The 1 hour-25 minute video talk is well worth listening to. Col. Wilkerson is now a professor who has deeply studied the decline of empires. He speaks from deep knowledge both as a former insider and as a scholar about the state of the American Empire. But notice that the linked page has two copies of the same talk embedded. Don't bother watching both unless you want to hear it twice. :-)
Gary Edwards

Walking Away From Your Mortgage: Is it moral? Or is it a legitamate financial option b... - 0 views

www.businessinsider.com/away-from-your-mortgage-2009-3

financial-crisis obama-socialism banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 05 Mar 09 - Cached
  • MM CA said: Mar. 04, 1:28 PM Borrower_underwater: and your point is? defending the banks and mortgage industry? who said his house was dump? he said it was his dream home... pay attention... either way the man and his fmaily were smart enough to save 300k for a down payment. i live in california and the appreciation of housing the past 10 years was irrational and unsustainbale. he boguht three years ago. there was no crisis then. Why woudlnt he buy. Renting now is smart but then? i think you need to inderstand the crisis better. i understand a little bit more than you think i do: see my list of issues/predcitons i developed 3 mtonhs ago... most are coming true...
  • So here lies the squeeze. Originator gets paid per loan made. People in an iron lung are getting approved for subprime. Bank hopes to package loan into CMO and sell to Helsinki or some such. Who is supposed to make sure that the house is really worth what the guy in the iron lung is willing to pay? The appraiser. Not the Originator. Not the bank (we're clearly not talking the good old commmunity bank days were your loan officer knew your neighborhood).
  • it is easy to see where the bank's first protection against a borrower default, correctly establishing a home's value at the time of purchase, falls to the side. That's where it starts to look like the "pay me to rate you" goons at the rating agencies. The populace and ultimate debt holders have counted on the ratings and home valuation process to be clean but simple economic incentives should tell us otherwise.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • I agree that the argument that "it's priced into the rate" is insufficient, what is sufficient is the fact that the consequences of walking away are actually in the contract! If I stop paying, you take the house. That's why the bank gets to have a lien. It's all part of the deal we signed, remember?. I don't think walking away from the mortgage is even "breaking" the contract. We will simply be exercising a different clause of the contract: foreclosure in lieu of payment.
  • Gary Edwards on 05 Mar 09
     
    Mortgage lenders absolutely hate borrowers who walk away from underwater mortgages, especially those who could actually afford to keep paying off their mortgages but just decide it isn't worth it. They hate them so much that the term-of-art for these borrowers is "ruthless." But the ethics of mortgage lenders don't have much to recommend them. We need to decide for ourselves whether or not there's a moral obligation to keep paying off a mortgage. For some it's practically a patriotic duty. For others it's a matter of being a good neighbor, since foreclosures could hurt their home values also. Still others say it's just a matter of being a moral person who keeps promises. Great comments to this story. Check out the predictions from MM_CA. They have a diigo highlight. At the time of my reading of this story, the DOW was down 200 pts to 6678.95. The Supreme Leader is busy conducting a healthcare summit, claiming that "fixing" (read "nationalizing") the healthcare system will result in so many jobs that the economy will turn around. The comments are well worth the time!
Gary Edwards

5 Signs You're Dealing With Someone Who's A Fraud - 0 views

www.businessinsider.com/be-dealing-with-a-fraud-2011-6

fraud enron michael-barron virtual-realty

shared by Gary Edwards on 02 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 02 Jun 11
     
    exerpt: Just one bad apple can have awful consequences (see Madoff, Bernie or Kozlowski, Dennis). But how to spot the bad apples when you're picking from the tree? On the company's website, Crowe Horwath LLP Partner and Leader of Fraud, Ethics, and Anti-corruption Services, Jonathan T. Marks has published a short paper detailing tell-tale signs that might help someone sort out who will be an asset to their business and who could wreak major havoc and "spoil the bunch." We've combed through it and delved deep to look at what these signs are and how you might be able to use them.
Gary Edwards

Big Lies and Little Facts - The Global Warming Hoax and the lier's who promote it - WSJ... - 0 views

online.wsj.com/...4779704574555904227660272.html

financial-crisis obammunism global-warming-hoax banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 25 Nov 09 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 25 Nov 09
     
    quote from global warming hoax advocate Stephen H. Schneider: "as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but--which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts." So let me get this straight.  Scientist who support the global warming hoax are lying.  That puts them at odds with the most fundamental of scientific requirements - don't lie.  So therefore, global warming hoaxsters have disqualified themselves as legitimate scientists.  At best, they are dissembling practitioners of "political science". So, if we disqualify the scientific posers who are lying about global warming, and then take a look at the consensus of real scientist left (truth tellers), we have an interesting fact.  100% of legitimate scientists do not believe in the global warming hoax.   100% consensus!!! Bastardos.  Potemkin villages.  Show trials. 5 year plans.  Where have we seen this before?
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