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Paul Merrell

One Map That Explains the Dangerous Saudi-Iranian Conflict - 0 views

  • The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia executed Shiite Muslim cleric Nimr al-Nimr on Saturday. Hours later, Iranian protestors set fire to the Saudi embassy in Tehran. On Sunday, the Saudi government, which considers itself the guardian of Sunni Islam, cut diplomatic ties with Iran, which is a Shiite Muslim theocracy. To explain what’s going on, the New York Times provided a primer on the difference between Sunni and Shiite Islam, informing us that “a schism emerged after the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632” — i.e., 1,383 years ago. But to the degree that the current crisis has anything to do with religion, it’s much less about whether Abu Bakr or Ali was Muhammad’s rightful successor and much more about who’s going to control something more concrete right now: oil.
  • In fact, much of the conflict can be explained by a fascinating map created by M.R. Izady, a cartographer and adjunct master professor at the U.S. Air Force Special Operations School/Joint Special Operations University in Florida. What the map shows is that, due to a peculiar correlation of religious history and anaerobic decomposition of plankton, almost all the Persian Gulf’s fossil fuels are located underneath Shiites. This is true even in Sunni Saudi Arabia, where the major oil fields are in the Eastern Province, which has a majority Shiite population. As a result, one of the Saudi royal family’s deepest fears is that one day Saudi Shiites will secede, with their oil, and ally with Shiite Iran.
  • This fear has only grown since the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq overturned Saddam Hussein’s minority Sunni regime, and empowered the pro-Iranian Shiite majority. Nimr himself said in 2009 that Saudi Shiites would call for secession if the Saudi government didn’t improve its treatment of them.
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  • As Izady’s map so strikingly demonstrates, essentially all of the Saudi oil wealth is located in a small sliver of its territory whose occupants are predominantly Shiite. (Nimr, for instance, lived in Awamiyya, in the heart of the Saudi oil region just northwest of Bahrain.) If this section of eastern Saudi Arabia were to break away, the Saudi royals would just be some broke 80-year-olds with nothing left but a lot of beard dye and Viagra prescriptions. Nimr’s execution can be partly explained by the Saudis’ desperation to stamp out any sign of independent thinking among the country’s Shiites. The same tension explains why Saudi Arabia helped Bahrain, an oil-rich, majority-Shiite country ruled by a Sunni monarchy, crush its version of the Arab Spring in 2011. Similar calculations were behind George H.W. Bush’s decision to stand by while Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons in 1991 to put down an insurrection by Iraqi Shiites at the end of the Gulf War. As New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman explained at the time, Saddam had “held Iraq together, much to the satisfaction of the American allies Turkey and Saudi Arabia.”
  • Of course, it’s too simple to say that everything happening between Saudis and Iranians can be traced back to oil. Disdain and even hate for Shiites seem to be part of the DNA of Saudi Arabia’s peculiarly sectarian and belligerent version of Islam. In 1802, 136 years before oil was discovered in Saudi Arabia, the ideological predecessors to the modern Saudi state sacked Karbala, a city now in present-day Iraq and holy to Shiites. The attackers massacred thousands and plundered the tomb of Husayn ibn Ali, one of the most important figures in Shiite Islam. Without fossil fuels, however, this sectarianism toward Shiites would likely be less intense today. And it would definitely be less well-financed. Winston Churchill once described Iran’s oil – which the U.K. was busy stealing at the time — as “a prize from fairyland far beyond our brightest hopes.” Churchill was right, but didn’t realize that this was the kind of fairytale whose treasures carry a terrible curse.
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    A very interesting map, indeed. It explains a lot the situation in the Mideast. And if Pepe Escobar is right about the U.S. moving to reduce its dependency on Saudi oil with a corresponding tilt toward Iran, the map tells a lot about why the U.S. would do so. But to make it work, I can't see the U.S. pulling it off unless a deal is cut with Iran for it to step into the Saudi's shoes in maintaining the petrodollar, i.e., Iran would have to insist on being paid in U.S. dollars for all of its oil and gas. Was a side deal made to that effect during the negotiations over Iran's nuclear energy development program? If so, that's bad news for the Saudis and for its new ally, the right-wing government of Israel, which has ambitions to be dominant military *and* economic power in the Mideast and to extend its borders from the Nile River in Egypt to the Euphrates River in Iraq and east across the Arabian Peninsula. But what Israel cannot bring to the table is large oil and gas reserves. Iran can.  
Gary Edwards

A Primer for Rich Donors Who Got Taken to the Cleaners by Republican Consultants | RedS... - 0 views

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    Red State Erick Erickson explains the nuts and bolts of "data" and how to use it to run a successful political campaign.  "Data" is not quite what most of us think.  Erick breaks it down, explaining how "voter data" is determined, and then cast against an overlay of consumer data.  You gotta love his explanation of the critical and absolutely essential base line "dead dog" election number that must be established in each voting precinct. Great lesson in how campaign consultants can make or break an election.  Erick sites the "Gravity" program used by Conservative SuperPac groups like "Ending Spending", "FreedomWorks", "Heritage Action for America", "American Majority" and the "Madison Project".   Erick fully explains "Gravity", and mentions the Democrat program called "Catalyst".  Sadly, the big time consultants working for most of the SuperPacs and the Repubican Party did not use "Gravity".  Instead, they tried to kill it.  Erick explains all in this must read primer for political elections.  Awesome.
Gary Edwards

Articles by Mark Dice - 0 views

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    Libertarian writer and researcher, Mark Dice, has provided a list of articles he has written.  Mark's literary works include: ... "The Illuminati: Facts & Fiction" ...... separates and analyzes the various claims and evidence about the Illuminati, their history, beliefs, members, organizations, and activities. This is a supplement for Mark's previous book - ..... "The Resistance Manifesto",  which focuses more on the New World Order, the 9/11 attacks, Big Brother, and how the political agendas of the elite are fulfilling Bible prophecy.   .... "The New World Order" ....   His website, markdice.com has high light summary of his work that's quite interesting: A detailed analysis of the September 11th attacks and evidence they were aided by elements within U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies to be used as a reason to jumpstart the "War on Terror" and the erosion of privacy and personal liberties outlined in the constitution. The Knights Templar, the real Holy Grail, and the role the Templars played in the formation of the Illuminati mafia. Quotes from the original writings of the Illuminati founders and how the organization drew up plans over 200 years ago to take over every major institution of power and influence in the world through deception and criminal activity. An expose on the Bohemian Grove resort including quotes from President Richard Nixon, senator John Decamp, and information from Chris Jones who worked at the club and became an informant on the activities within the compound. The secrets of Freemasonry and a history of the organization and their influence on society and quotes from the bible of Freemasonry on how the organization knowingly deceives lower level members and nonmembers as to the true secrets and goals of the fraternity. The history and meaning of the mysterious Georgia Guidestones monument and why the elite want to reduce world population to 500 million by killing billions of people through wars and plagues. A history of
Gary Edwards

The Lawless President - 0 views

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    Excellent read!  Peter Ferrara walks us through the latest Obama assault on the Constitution, this time his refusal to enforce laws he disagrees with.  Surprisingly, this now includes the employer mandate portion of ObamaCare!!!  Why he has to do this however is a stunning story. Bottom line:  The latest jobs report has the economy producing 195,000 new jobs in the past quarter.  The problem is, 100% of these new jobs are part-time.  Thanks to ObamaCare.   "The duties of the President of the United States are spelled out in Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution, which states, inter alia, that the President "shall take Care that the laws be faithfully executed." As Stanford Law Professor and former federal judge Michael McConnell explained in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, "This is a duty, not a discretionary power. While the president does have substantial discretion about how to enforce a law, he has no discretion about whether to do so." Section 1513(d) of the Unaffordable Care Act (aka "Obamacare") states unequivocally, "The amendments made by this section shall apply to months beginning after December 31, 2013." In other words, the provisions of Obamacare become fully effective in 2014, as a matter of duly enacted federal law. But over the long Fourth of July weekend, in a "Never Mind" moment, the Obama Administration announced, through a Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, that contrary to federal law, the employer mandate of Obamacare shall not become fully effective in months beginning after December 31, 2013, but only in months beginning after December 31, 2014. Making the announcement through such a low level Administration official to me says that Obama has contempt for the American people, and for the rule of law. Barack Obama: Lawbreaker But it does not matter who announces it. The President is the one responsible. And the announcement constitutes the assumption of authoritarian powers by President Obama. McCo
Gary Edwards

'Clinton death list': 33 spine-tingling cases - 0 views

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    "(Editor's note: This list was originally published in August 2016 and has gone viral on the web. WND is running it again as American voters cast their ballots for the nation's next president on Election Day.) How many people do you personally know who have died mysteriously? How about in plane crashes or car wrecks? Bizarre suicides? People beaten to death or murdered in a hail of bullets? And what about violent freak accidents - like separate mountain biking and skiing collisions in Aspen, Colorado? Or barbells crushing a person's throat? Bill and Hillary Clinton attend a funeral Apparently, if you're Bill or Hillary Clinton, the answer to that question is at least 33 - and possibly many more. Talk-radio star Rush Limbaugh addressed the issue of the "Clinton body count" during an August show. "I swear, I could swear I saw these stories back in 1992, back in 1993, 1994," Limbaugh said. He cited a report from Rachel Alexander at Townhall.com titled, "Clinton body count or left-wing conspiracy? Three with ties to DNC mysteriously die." Limbaugh said he recalled Ted Koppel, then-anchor of ABC News' "Nightline," routinely having discussions on the issue following the July 20, 1993, death of White House Deputy Counsel Vince Foster. In fact, Limbaugh said, he appeared on Koppel's show. "One of the things I said was, 'Who knows what happened here? But let me ask you a question.' I said, 'Ted, how many people do you know in your life who've been murdered? Ted, how many people do you know in your life that have died under suspicious circumstances?' "Of course, the answer is zilch, zero, nada, none, very few," Limbaugh chuckled. "Ask the Clintons that question. And it's a significant number. It's a lot of people that they know who have died, who've been murdered. "And the same question here from Rachel Alexander. It's amazing the cycle that exists with the Clintons. [Citing Townhall]: 'What it
Gary Edwards

NSA Whistleblower William Binney Explains NSA Surveillance - Business Insider - 0 views

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    Wow.  I watched this short film and listened carefully to what William Binney had to say.  This is incredible stuff and his explanation of how it cam to be is easy enough to follow.  I hope Americans will pay attention and in the ground swell to take back our country will forcefully oppose the requthorization of NSA in December 2012.  Just a month after elections. excerpt: "National Security Agency whistleblower William Binney explains how the secretive agency run its pervasive domestic spying apparatus in a new piece by Laura Poitras in The New York TImes. Binney-one of the best mathematicians and code breakers in NSA history-worked for the Defense Department's foreign signals intelligence agency for 32 years before resigning in late 2001 because he "could not stay after the NSA began purposefully violating the Constitution." In a short video called "The Program," Binney explains how the agency took part of one of the programs he built and started using it to spy on virtually every U.S. citizen without warrants under the code-name Stellar Wind. Binney details how the top-secret surveillance program, the scope of which has never been made public, can track electronic activities-phone calls, emails, banking and travel records, social media-and map them to collect "all the attributes that any individual has" in every type of activity and build a profile based on that data."
Gary Edwards

Five pieces of evidence suggesting that California drought may be a HAARP-manufactured ... - 0 views

  • For years, many of those who've been paying attention have wondered what the purpose is of these clearly artificial chemtrails. Well, based on the extensive research findings by The HAARP Report, it seems as though these fake sprayings are helping to redirect and alter weather patterns -- in this case, to steer rain away from California."Chemtrails create a hot air layer at 30,000 feet, capping inversion," explains the report. "They [the powers that be] want that to overrun this low pressure area and prevent this low pressure from forming," as low pressure is what produces precipitation, explains the report.
  • Fukushima: a cover for HAARP and chemtrail-induced atmospheric damage killing our planet
  • A HAARP Report video posted to YouTube on April 19, 2015, lists the following five pieces of evidence suggesting that California's drought is a man-made attack on Californians:1) Low pressure areas out in the Pacific Ocean that would normally move in a counterclockwise direction have been detected moving in an anomalous clockwise direction. The HAARP Report, highlighting exclusive imagery captured on April 10, 2015, shows a "burst" of clockwise, high pressure cloud movement that would never occur naturally, and that clearly suggests weather manipulation activity meant to break up cloud formation and prevent precipitation.More on how this is accomplished through ionospheric heating is explained in the video report:YouTube.com.
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  • 2) After breaking up the areas of low pressure that would have produced rain for California, HAARP's weather weaponry and associated chemtrails generate areas of very dry air that, under normal circumstances, would be humid. Satellite imagery captured in the days following April 10 show this dry air sitting stagnant rather than rotating, breaking up the potential formation of thunderstorms.3) As it turns out, HAARP's weather manipulation machines can only operate when the D layer in the ionosphere has formed, which occurs after the sun has been up for three or four hours and ends in the evening. In the video, The HAARP Report shows how a storm that starts to pop up during this window of time is literally pushed to the right and destroyed. Dry air is pressed down, and once again the center is not moving in a counterclockwise direction as it should.
  • 4) Looking again at a massive area of dry air brought about by HAARP and chemtrails, the report points out how satellite imagery of a ring of rising air and a central column of falling air captured at 10 a.m. in California on April 9 proves that a HAARP downburst sent high pressure descending air into the jet stream, once again preventing rain.5) As this air descends, it just keeps getting bigger and bigger in the satellite imagery. And as it begins to reform, another HAARP downburst is observed on the north side of the front, with a signature clockwise flow around a high pressure area as it's sent downward. Put simply, the developing storm was basically broken up by HAARP, where it later reformed around Mexico and sent rain over New Mexico and Texas rather than California."Don't think for a minute that this drought in California is natural. They're using a variety of techniques to maintain this drought," warns The HAARP Report."The oceans are dying because of increasing ultraviolet-B. The modern HAARP transmitters punch holes in the ozone layer, since they must drive a plasmoid from 30 miles high down to the jet stream... mixing the chemtrails vertically, which breaks down the protective ozone layer.""The Pacific is dying because the base of the food chain, phyto-plankton, are being killed by the high UV-B, created by ionospheric heaters. Radiation from Fukushima is killing the Pacific, but not as fast as the lack of plankton, which can't survive the high UV-B. Fukushima is being used as a 'cover' for the excess UV-B caused by HAARP and chemtrails. That would explain the complete lack of action to stop the radiation from leaking into the Pacific."
  • Be sure to watch the full HAARP Report video here:
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    Excellent article with video demonstration explaining the drought in California, and how chemtrails are used to break up a low pressure zone. Amazing stuff. Using chemtrails, the counter clockwise spinning rotation of a low pressure zone is neutralized and even reversed, with the low pressure zone breaking up and dispersing. After watching this video, I noticed that three low pressure zones off the mid and southern coast of California were broken up with the clouds dispersing as they passed over California, Arizona and New Mexico. And guess what? The clouds came together in a new giant low pressure zone over Texas - where four days of thunderstorms and tornadados wrecked havoc. The farm land in California is being laid waste, and farm land in Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska and Iowa is getting more water than the land can handle. "California is embroiled in a crisis of epic proportions as it continues to struggle through one of the worst droughts in state history. But emerging evidence suggests that the Golden State's water woes aren't a natural occurrence at all, and that a covert military operation involving "chemtrails" and other weather modification weaponry may be to blame. A recent episode of The HAARP Report, which tracks the activities of the U.S. military's so-called "High Frequency Auroral Research Program" (which the federal government falsely claims has been shut down), provides five pieces of compelling evidence from recently captured satellite imagery that points to deliberate weather modification as the cause of California's drought. You may have heard of "chemtrails" before -- those unnatural-looking cloud trails occasionally produced by airplanes that don't dissipate normally, and that end up blanketing the skies with a hazy muck. They differ entirely from water vapor contrails produced when water vapor condenses and freezes around small aerosol particles released from aircraft exhaust. The following image shows a sky filled with chemtrails:"
Gary Edwards

Gonzalo Lira: Why Democracies Will Always Go Bankrupt - 1 views

  • once a democracy’s debt reaches a point of unsustainability—either because it cannot borrow more, or it cannot service the debt it already has—the democracy becomes bankrupt.
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    It's an overall concept I've designated as the Democratic Bankruptcy Paradox: The paradox by which every democracy eventually goes bankrupt-regardless of the people's will and intention of keeping it from going bankrupt. That's why it's a paradox: The citizens of a democratic state are supposed to control its destiny. They obviously do not want their nation to suffer bankruptcy-yet in spite of their will and intent, democratic states always go bankrupt. Always. This post will outline my proof of why this is so. I will first explain the logic of my Democratic Bankruptcy Paradox theory, and how it is derived from a rather recently articulated problem in philosophy called the discursive dilemma, or sometimes the doctrinal dilemma; an aspect of group agency that has been used primarily in legal theory, but which I've realized has some fairly interesting-and radical-applications to macro-economics and public finance in representative democracies. I will then explain how the discursive dilemma, when applied to macro-economics and fiscal policy in a democratic regime, leads to the Democratic Bankruptcy Paradox. It is here that I will prove two general conclusions: * One: Democracies always act in a fiscally incoherent manner. * Two: Democracies always go bankrupt-without exception.  Finally, I will show how my Democratic Bankruptcy Paradox theory applies to the American case, and explain why the U.S. governments at the local, State and Federal level spend more than they bring in-even as their citizens uniformly oppose this state of affairs.
Paul Merrell

UN Report Finds Mass Surveillance Violates International Treaties and Privacy Rights - ... - 0 views

  • The United Nations’ top official for counter-terrorism and human rights (known as the “Special Rapporteur”) issued a formal report to the U.N. General Assembly today that condemns mass electronic surveillance as a clear violation of core privacy rights guaranteed by multiple treaties and conventions. “The hard truth is that the use of mass surveillance technology effectively does away with the right to privacy of communications on the Internet altogether,” the report concluded. Central to the Rapporteur’s findings is the distinction between “targeted surveillance” — which “depend[s] upon the existence of prior suspicion of the targeted individual or organization” — and “mass surveillance,” whereby “states with high levels of Internet penetration can [] gain access to the telephone and e-mail content of an effectively unlimited number of users and maintain an overview of Internet activity associated with particular websites.” In a system of “mass surveillance,” the report explained, “all of this is possible without any prior suspicion related to a specific individual or organization. The communications of literally every Internet user are potentially open for inspection by intelligence and law enforcement agencies in the States concerned.”
  • Mass surveillance thus “amounts to a systematic interference with the right to respect for the privacy of communications,” it declared. As a result, “it is incompatible with existing concepts of privacy for States to collect all communications or metadata all the time indiscriminately.” In concluding that mass surveillance impinges core privacy rights, the report was primarily focused on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a treaty enacted by the General Assembly in 1966, to which all of the members of the “Five Eyes” alliance are signatories. The U.S. ratified the treaty in 1992, albeit with various reservations that allowed for the continuation of the death penalty and which rendered its domestic law supreme. With the exception of the U.S.’s Persian Gulf allies (Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar), virtually every major country has signed the treaty. Article 17 of the Covenant guarantees the right of privacy, the defining protection of which, the report explained, is “that individuals have the right to share information and ideas with one another without interference by the State, secure in the knowledge that their communication will reach and be read by the intended recipients alone.”
  • The report’s key conclusion is that this core right is impinged by mass surveillance programs: “Bulk access technology is indiscriminately corrosive of online privacy and impinges on the very essence of the right guaranteed by article 17. In the absence of a formal derogation from States’ obligations under the Covenant, these programs pose a direct and ongoing challenge to an established norm of international law.” The report recognized that protecting citizens from terrorism attacks is a vital duty of every state, and that the right of privacy is not absolute, as it can be compromised when doing so is “necessary” to serve “compelling” purposes. It noted: “There may be a compelling counter-terrorism justification for the radical re-evaluation of Internet privacy rights that these practices necessitate. ” But the report was adamant that no such justifications have ever been demonstrated by any member state using mass surveillance: “The States engaging in mass surveillance have so far failed to provide a detailed and evidence-based public justification for its necessity, and almost no States have enacted explicit domestic legislation to authorize its use.”
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  • Instead, explained the Rapporteur, states have relied on vague claims whose validity cannot be assessed because of the secrecy behind which these programs are hidden: “The arguments in favor of a complete abrogation of the right to privacy on the Internet have not been made publicly by the States concerned or subjected to informed scrutiny and debate.” About the ongoing secrecy surrounding the programs, the report explained that “states deploying this technology retain a monopoly of information about its impact,” which is “a form of conceptual censorship … that precludes informed debate.” A June report from the High Commissioner for Human Rights similarly noted “the disturbing lack of governmental transparency associated with surveillance policies, laws and practices, which hinders any effort to assess their coherence with international human rights law and to ensure accountability.” The rejection of the “terrorism” justification for mass surveillance as devoid of evidence echoes virtually every other formal investigation into these programs. A federal judge last December found that the U.S. Government was unable to “cite a single case in which analysis of the NSA’s bulk metadata collection actually stopped an imminent terrorist attack.” Later that month, President Obama’s own Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies concluded that mass surveillance “was not essential to preventing attacks” and information used to detect plots “could readily have been obtained in a timely manner using conventional [court] orders.”
  • That principle — that the right of internet privacy belongs to all individuals, not just Americans — was invoked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden when he explained in a June, 2013 interview at The Guardian why he disclosed documents showing global surveillance rather than just the surveillance of Americans: “More fundamentally, the ‘US Persons’ protection in general is a distraction from the power and danger of this system. Suspicionless surveillance does not become okay simply because it’s only victimizing 95% of the world instead of 100%.” The U.N. Rapporteur was clear that these systematic privacy violations are the result of a union between governments and tech corporations: “States increasingly rely on the private sector to facilitate digital surveillance. This is not confined to the enactment of mandatory data retention legislation. Corporates [sic] have also been directly complicit in operationalizing bulk access technology through the design of communications infrastructure that facilitates mass surveillance. ”
  • The report was most scathing in its rejection of a key argument often made by American defenders of the NSA: that mass surveillance is justified because Americans are given special protections (the requirement of a FISA court order for targeted surveillance) which non-Americans (95% of the world) do not enjoy. Not only does this scheme fail to render mass surveillance legal, but it itself constitutes a separate violation of international treaties (emphasis added): The Special Rapporteur concurs with the High Commissioner for Human Rights that where States penetrate infrastructure located outside their territorial jurisdiction, they remain bound by their obligations under the Covenant. Moreover, article 26 of the Covenant prohibits discrimination on grounds of, inter alia, nationality and citizenship. The Special Rapporteur thus considers that States are legally obliged to afford the same privacy protection for nationals and non-nationals and for those within and outside their jurisdiction. Asymmetrical privacy protection regimes are a clear violation of the requirements of the Covenant.
  • Three Democratic Senators on the Senate Intelligence Committee wrote in The New York Times that “the usefulness of the bulk collection program has been greatly exaggerated” and “we have yet to see any proof that it provides real, unique value in protecting national security.” A study by the centrist New America Foundation found that mass metadata collection “has had no discernible impact on preventing acts of terrorism” and, where plots were disrupted, “traditional law enforcement and investigative methods provided the tip or evidence to initiate the case.” It labeled the NSA’s claims to the contrary as “overblown and even misleading.” While worthless in counter-terrorism policies, the UN report warned that allowing mass surveillance to persist with no transparency creates “an ever present danger of ‘purpose creep,’ by which measures justified on counter-terrorism grounds are made available for use by public authorities for much less weighty public interest purposes.” Citing the UK as one example, the report warned that, already, “a wide range of public bodies have access to communications data, for a wide variety of purposes, often without judicial authorization or meaningful independent oversight.”
  • The latest finding adds to the growing number of international formal rulings that the mass surveillance programs of the U.S. and its partners are illegal. In January, the European parliament’s civil liberties committee condemned such programs in “the strongest possible terms.” In April, the European Court of Justice ruled that European legislation on data retention contravened EU privacy rights. A top secret memo from the GCHQ, published last year by The Guardian, explicitly stated that one key reason for concealing these programs was fear of a “damaging public debate” and specifically “legal challenges against the current regime.” The report ended with a call for far greater transparency along with new protections for privacy in the digital age. Continuation of the status quo, it warned, imposes “a risk that systematic interference with the security of digital communications will continue to proliferate without any serious consideration being given to the implications of the wholesale abandonment of the right to online privacy.” The urgency of these reforms is underscored, explained the Rapporteur, by a conclusion of the United States Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board that “permitting the government to routinely collect the calling records of the entire nation fundamentally shifts the balance of power between the state and its citizens.”
Paul Merrell

From Energy War to Currency War: America's Attack on the Russian Ruble | Global Research - 0 views

  • Putin announced that Russia has cancelled the South Stream project on December 1, 2014. Instead the South Stream pipeline project has been replaced by a natural gas pipeline that goes across the Black Sea to Turkey from the Russian Federation’s South Federal District. This alternative pipeline has been popularly billed the «Turk Stream» and partners Russian energy giant Gazprom with Turkey’s Botas. Moreover, Gazprom will start giving Turkey discounts in the purchase of Russian natural gas that will increase with the intensification of Russo-Turkish cooperation. The natural gas deal between Ankara and Moscow creates a win-win situation for both the Turkish and Russian sides. Not only will Ankara get a discount on energy supplies, but Turk Stream gives the Turkish government what it has wanted and desired for years. The Turk Stream pipeline will make Turkey an important energy corridor and transit point, complete with transit revenues. In this case Turkey becomes the corridor between energy supplier Russia and European Union and non-EU energy customers in southeastern Europe. Ankara will gain some leverage over the European Union and have an extra negotiating card with the EU too, because the EU will have to deal with it as an energy broker.
  • For its part, Russia has reduced the risks that it faced in building the South Stream by cancelling the project. Moscow could have wasted resources and time building the South Stream to see the project sanctioned or obstructed in the Balkans by Washington and Brussels. If the European Union really wants Russian natural gas then the Turk Stream pipeline can be expanded from Turkey to Greece, the former Yugoslav Republic (FYR) of Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary, Slovenia, Italy, Austria, and other European countries that want to be integrated into the energy project. The cancellation of South Stream also means that there will be one less alternative energy corridor from Russia to the European Union for some time. This has positive implications for a settlement in Ukraine, which is an important transit route for Russian natural gas to the European Union. As a means of securing the flow of natural gas across Ukrainian territory from Russia, the European Union will be more prone to push the authorities in Kiev to end the conflict in East Ukraine.
  • From the perspective of Russian Presidential Advisor Sergey Glazyev, the US is waging its multi-spectrum war against Russia to ultimately challenge Moscow’s Chinese partners. In an insightful interview, Glazyev explained the following points to the Ukrainian journalist Alyona Berezovskaya — working for a Rossiya Segodnya subsidiary focusing on information involving Ukraine — about the basis for US hostility towards Russia: the bankruptcy of the US, its decline in competitiveness on global markets, and Washington’s inability to ultimately save its financial system by servicing its foreign debt or getting enough investments to establish some sort of innovative economic breakthrough are the reasons why Washington has been going after the Russian Federation. [13] In Glazyev’s own words, the US wants «a new world war». [14] The US needs conflict and confrontation, in other words. This is what the crisis in Ukraine is nurturing in Europe. Sergey Glazyev reiterates the same points months down the road on September 23, 2014 in an article he authors for the magazine Russia in Global Affairs, which is sponsored by the Russian International Affairs Council — a think-tank founded by the Russian Foreign Ministry and Russian Ministry of Education 2010 — and the US journal Foreign Affairs — which is the magazine published by the Council on Foreign Relation in the US. In his article, Glazyev adds that the war Washington is inciting against Russia in Europe may ultimately benefit the Chinese, because the struggle being waged will weaken the US, Russia, and the European Union to the advantage of China. [15] The point of explaining all this is to explain that Russia wants a balanced strategic partnership with China. Glazyev himself even told Berezovskaya in their interview that Russia wants a mutually beneficial relationship with China that does reduce it to becoming a subordinate to Beijing. [16]
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  • It is because of the importance of Irano-Turkish and Russo-Turkish trade and energy ties that Ankara has had an understanding with both Russia and Iran not to let politics and their differences over the Syrian crisis get in the way of their economic ties and business relationships while Washington has tried to disrupt Irano-Turkish and Russo-Turkish trade and energy ties like it has disrupted trade ties between Russia and the EU. [9] Ankara, however, realizes that if it lets politics disrupt its economic ties with Iran and Russia that Turkey itself will become weakened and lose whatever independence it enjoys Masterfully announcing the Russian move while in Ankara, Putin also took the opportunity to ensure that there would be heated conversation inside the EU. Some would call this rubbing salt on the wounds. Knowing that profit and opportunity costs would create internal debate within Bulgaria and the EU, Putin rhetorically asked if Bulgaria was going to be economically compensated by the European Commission for the loss.
  • It is clear that Russian business and trade ties have been redirected to the People’s Republic of China and East Asia. On the occasion of the Sino-Russian mega natural gas deal, this author pointed out that this was not as much a Russian countermove to US economic pressure as it was really a long-term Russian strategy that seeks an increase in trade and ties with East Asia. [10] Vladimir Putin himself also corroborated this standpoint during the December 18 press conference mentioned earlier when he dismissed — like this author — the notion that the so-called «Russian turn to the East» was mainly the result of the crisis in Ukraine. In President Putin’s own words, the process of increasing business ties with the Chinese and East Asia «stems from the global economic processes, because the East – that is, the Asia-Pacific Region – shows faster growth than the rest of the world». [11] If this is not convincing enough that the turn towards East Asia was already in the works for Russia, then Putin makes it categorically clear as he proceeds talking at the December 18 press conference. In reference to the Sino-Russian gas deal and other Russian projects in East Asia, Putin explained the following: «The projects we are working on were planned long ago, even before the most recent problems occurred in the global or Russian economy. We are simply implementing our long-time plans». [12]
  • According to Presidential Advisor Sergey Glazyev, Washington is «trying to destroy and weaken Russia, causing it to fragment, as they need this territory and want to establish control over this entire space». [18] «We have offered cooperation from Lisbon to Vladivostok, whereas they need control to maintain their geopolitical leadership in a competition with China,» he has explained, pointing out that the US wants lordship and is not interested in cooperation. [19] Alluding to former US top diplomat Madeline Albright’s sentiments that Russia was unfairly endowed with vast territory and resources, Putin also spoke along similar lines at his December 18 press conference, explaining how the US wanted to divide Russia and control the abundant natural resources in Russian territory. It is of little wonder that in 2014 a record number of Russian citizens have negative attitudes about relations between their country and the United States. A survey conducted by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center has shown that of 39% of Russian respondents viewed relations with the US as «mostly bad» and 27% as «very bad». [20] This means 66% of Russian respondents have negative views about relations with Washington. This is an inference of the entire Russian population’s views. Moreover, this is the highest rise in negative perceptions about the US since 2008 when the US supported Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili in Tbilisi’s war against Russia and the breakaway republic of South Ossetia; 40% viewed them as «mostly bad» and 25% of Russians viewed relations as «very bad» and at the time. [21]
  • In more ways than one the Turk Stream pipeline can be viewed as a reconfigured of the failed Nabucco natural gas pipeline. Not only will Turk Stream court Turkey and give Moscow leverage against the European Union, instead of reducing Russian influence as Nabucco was originally intended to do, the new pipeline to Turkey also coaxes Ankara to align its economic and strategic interests with those of Russian interests. This is why, when addressing Nabucco and the rivalries for establishing alternate energy corridors, this author pointed out in 2007 that «the creation of these energy corridors and networks is like a two-edged sword. These geo-strategic fulcrums or energy pivots can also switch their directions of leverage. The integration of infrastructure also leads towards economic integration». [8] The creation of Turk Stream and the strengthening of Russo-Turkish ties may even help placate the gory conflict in Syria. If Iranian natural gas is integrated into the mainframe of Turk Stream through another energy corridor entering Anatolia from Iranian territory, then Turkish interests would be even more tightly aligned with both Moscow and Tehran. Turkey will save itself from the defeats of its neo-Ottoman policies and be able to withdraw from the Syrian crisis. This will allow Ankara to politically realign itself with two of its most important trading partners, Iran and Russia.
  • Whatever Washington’s intentions are, every step that the US takes to target Russia economically will eventually hurt the US economy too. It is also highly unlikely that the policy mandarins in Beijing are unaware of what the US may try to be doing. The Chinese are aware that ultimately it is China and not Russia that is the target of the United States.
  • The United States is waging a fully fledged economic war against the Russian Federations and its national economy. Ultimately, all Russians are collectively the target. The economic sanctions are nothing more than economic warfare. If the crisis in Ukraine did not happen, another pretext would have been found for assaulting Russia. Both US Assistant-Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and US Assistant-Secretary of the Treasury Daniel Glaser even told the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US House of Representatives in May 2014 that the ultimate objectives of the US economic sanctions against Russia are to make the Russian population so miserable and desperate that they would eventually demand that the Kremlin surrender to the US and bring about «political change». «Political change» can mean many things, but what it most probably implies here is regime change in Moscow. In fact, the aims of the US do not even appear to be geared at coercing the Russian government to change its foreign policy, but to incite regime change in Moscow and to cripple the Russian Federation entirely through the instigation of internal divisions. This is why maps of a divided Russia are being circulated by Radio Free Europe. [17]
  • Without question, the US wants to disrupt the strategic partnership between Beijing and Moscow. Moscow’s strategic long-term planning and Sino-Russian cooperation has provided the Russia Federation with an important degree of economic and strategic insulation from the economic warfare being waged against the Russian national economy. Washington, however, may also be trying to entice the Chinese to overplay their hand as Russia is economically attacked. In this context, the price drops in the energy market may also be geared at creating friction between Beijing and Moscow. In part, the manipulation of the energy market and the price drops could seek to weaken and erode Sino-Russian relations by coaxing the Chinese into taking steps that would tarnish their excellent ties with their Russian partners. The currency war against the Russian ruble may also be geared towards this too. In other words, Washington may be hoping that China becomes greedy and shortsighted enough to make an attempt to take advantage of the price drop in energy prices in the devaluation of the Russian ruble.
  • Russia can address the economic warfare being directed against its national economy and society as a form of «economic terrorism». If Russia’s banks and financial institutions are weakened with the aim of creating financial collapse in the Russian Federation, Moscow can introduce fiscal measures to help its banks and financial sector that could create economic shockwaves in the European Union and North America. Speaking in hypothetical terms, Russia has lots of options for a financial defensive or counter-offensive that can be compared to its scorched earth policies against Western European invaders during the Napoleonic Wars, the First World War, and the Second World War. If Russian banks and institutions default and do not pay or delay payment of their derivative debts and justify it on the basis of the economic warfare and economic terrorism, there would be a financial shock and tsunami that would vertebrate from the European Union to North America. This scenario has some parallels to the steps that Argentina is taken to sidestep the vulture funds.
  • The currency war eventually will rebound on Washington and Wall Street. The energy war will also reverse directions. Already, the Kremlin has made it clear that it and a coalition of other countries will de-claw the US in the currency market through a response that will neutralize US financial manipulation and the petro-dollar. In the words of Sergey Glazyev, Moscow is thinking of a «systemic and comprehensive» response «aimed at exposing and ending US political domination, and, most importantly, at undermining US military-political power based on the printing of dollars as a global currency». [22] His solution includes the creation of «a coalition of sound forces advocating stability — in essence, a global anti-war coalition with a positive plan for rearranging the international financial and economic architecture on the principles of mutual benefit, fairness, and respect for national sovereignty». [23] The coming century will not be the «American Century» as the neo-conservatives in Washington think. It will be a «Eurasian Century». Washington has taken on more than it can handle, this may be why the US government has announced an end to its sanctions regime against Cuba and why the US is trying to rekindle trade ties with Iran. Despite this, the architecture of the post-Second World War or post-1945 global order is now in its death bed and finished. This is what the Kremlin and Putin’s presidential spokesman and press secretary Dmitry Peskov mean when they impart—as Peskov stated to Rossiya-24 in a December 17, 2014 interview — that the year 2014 has finally led to «a paradigm shift in the international system».
Paul Merrell

The Fed caused 93% of the entire stock market's move since 2008: Analysis - Yahoo Finance - 0 views

  • The bull market just celebrated its seventh anniversary. But the gains in recent years – as well as its recent sputter – may be explained by just one thing: monetary policy. The factors behind that and previous bubbles can be illuminated using simple visual analysis of a chart. The S&P 500 (^GSPC) doubled in value from November 2008 to October 2014, coinciding with the Federal Reserve Bank’s “quantitative easing” asset purchasing program. After three rounds of “QE,” where the Fed poured billions of dollars into the bond market monthly, the Fed’s balance sheet went from $2.1 trillion to $4.5 trillion. This isn’t just a spurious correlation, according to economist Brian Barnier, principal at ValueBridge Advisors and founder of FedDashboard.com. What’s more, he says previous bull runs in the market lasting several years can also be explained by single factors each time.
  • Barnier first compiled data on the total value of publicly-traded U.S. stocks since 1950. He then divided it by another economic factor, graphing the ratio for each one. If the chart showed horizontal lines stretching over long periods of time, that meant both the numerator (stock values) and the denominator (the other factor) were moving at the same rate. “That's the beauty of the visual analysis,” he said. “All we have to do is find straight, stable lines and we know we've got something good.”
  • Scouring hundreds of different factors, Barnier ultimately whittled it down to just four factors: GDP data five years into the future, household and nonprofit liabilities, open market paper, and the Fed’s assets. At different stretches of time, just one of those was the single biggest driver of the market and was confirmed with regression analyses.
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  • He isolated each factor in a separate chart, calling them “eras” for the stock market. From after World War II until the mid-1970s, future GDP outlook explained 90% of the stock market’s move, according to statistical analysis by Barnier. GDP growth lost its sway on the market in the early 1970s with the rise of credit cards and consumer debt. Household liabilities grew with plastic first, followed by home mortgages, until the real estate crash of the early 1990s. Barnier’s analysis shows debt explained 95% of the entire market’s move during this time. The period between the mid- to late-1990s until 2000 was, of course, marked by the tech bubble. While stocks took much of the headline, that time also saw heightened activity in the commercial paper market. Startups and young companies sought cash beyond their stratospheric share values to fund their operations. Barnier’s regression analysis shows commercial paper increases could explain as much as 97% of the tech bubble. Shortly after the tech bubble burst, a housing bubble began, once more in the form of mortgages and other debt. That drove 94% of the market’s move for the first several years of the current century.
  • As the financial crisis reached a fevered pitch in 2008, the Federal Reserve took to flooding the financial market with dollars by buying up bonds. Simultaneously, interest rates fell dramatically, as bond yields move in the opposite direction of bond prices. Barnier sees the Fed as responsible for over 93% of the market from the start of QE until today. During the first half of 2013, the Fed caused the entire market’s growth, he said. Since the Fed stopped buying bonds in late 2014, the S&P 500 has been batted around in a 16% range and is more or less where it was when the QE came to a close. Investors need to anticipate the next driver, said Barnier. “Quantitative easing has stopped, but now we're into the interest rate world,” he said. “That means for any investor trying to figure out what to do, step one is starting with a macro strategy.”
Paul Merrell

Exclusive: U.S. may use secrets act to stop suit against Iran sanctions group | Reuters - 0 views

  • (Reuters) - The U.S. government is considering using a powerful national security law to halt a private lawsuit against a non-profit group, United Against A Nuclear Iran, according to a source familiar with the case. Greek businessman and ship owner Victor Restis last year sued UANI for defamation after the New York-based group, whose advisors include former intelligence officials from the United States, Europe and Israel, accused him of violating sanctions on Iran by exporting oil from the country.Earlier this year, U.S. government lawyers declared their interest in the lawsuit, warning that information related to UANI could jeopardize law enforcement activities.An intervention by the government in a private civil lawsuit is rare, and its use of a privilege under state secrets statutes to clamp down on the case would be a highly unusual move. Other cases where the government has invoked the privilege include lawsuits filed against the National Security Agency in the wake of leaks to journalists by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
  • Restis' lawyer, Abbe Lowell, also declined to comment, but pointed to court filings in which he argued that the state secrets privilege could not be used without the government first explaining the true nature of its relationship to UANI.Restis denies doing illegal business with Iran. As part of the lawsuit, his lawyers have demanded that UANI produce whatever evidence it had that Restis was violating the sanctions and explain where it came from.Iran denies Western accusations that it has been seeking the capability to assemble nuclear weapons. Diplomatic talks between Iran and the United States, France, Russia, Britain, China and Germany are expected to resume in September, with the aim of reaching a settlement by Nov. 24 that would scale back Iran's nuclear program in exchange for lifting sanctions. An effort by government lawyers to mediate a settlement between UANI and Restis appears to have failed, the source said.
  • UANI advocates economic pressure on Iran to keep the country from building a nuclear arsenal. One of the group's tactics is to name and shame companies and people who do business in Iran.UANI has a small budget. It spent $1.5 million in 2013, according to its tax filings. The group, however, uses sources such as commercially sold satellite imagery for its campaigns.Among its advisory board members are Meir Dagan, the former director of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, and August Hanning, the former director of Germany's Federal Intelligence Service.Its chief executive, Mark Wallace, is also the CEO of Tigris Financial Group, an investment company backed by the billionaire American gold investor Thomas Kaplan. Restis did not originally name Kaplan in the defamation lawsuit, but his lawyer is seeking to depose Kaplan as part of the proceedings.
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  • The government and lawyers for UANI have previously sought to delay evidence gathering in the case. UANI lawyers have told the court they could not produce certain documents requested by Restis because they would reveal U.S. government secrets.In March, a Justice Department lawyer wrote to U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos, who is presiding over the case in Manhattan, confirming the government's interest and requesting a temporary halt to proceedings while the government decided what to do. Ramos granted the stay, but ordered the government to explain why it wanted the material suppressed.In an April 9 letter, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Byars wrote that the material in question could be protected under a privilege designed to prevent the public release of law enforcement techniques, confidential sources, undercover operatives and active investigations. But if it invoked the powerful state secrets privilege, the government would be claiming the information would not only interfere with law enforcement efforts but also jeopardize national security.
  • The government has until Sept. 12 to decide whether to use the state secrets privilege.The privilege can be used to block the release of information in a lawsuit, but the government has also used it to force the dismissal of lawsuits. It is unclear whether the privilege would be applied only to certain information in the Restis case or whether it would cause the case to be closed completely.The case is Restis et al v. American Coalition Against Nuclear Iran Inc, (dba United Against A Nuclear Iran) et al, in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, No. 13-05032.
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    More detail on the very interesting Restis case against UANI. The normal rule is that a privilege, once the privileged information is disclosed to one who is not entitled to the privilege, is deemed waived. So Restis' lawyer is correct in stating that the state secrets privilege cannot be used without the government explaining the true nature of its relationship to UANI, assuming the information was not stolen by UANI. The disclosure is new of UANI having former directors of Israeli and German intelligence services on its advisory board. This case looks like a cyst on the verge of rupturing and spewing forth a whole bunch of Dark Government pus.   
Paul Merrell

American Democracy is Owned by the Rich | Al Jazeera America - 1 views

  • Two new studies by political scientists offer compelling evidence that the rich use their wealth to control the political system and that the U.S. is a democratic republic in name only. In a study of Senate voting patterns, Michael Jay Barber found that “senators’ preferences reflect the preferences of the average donor better than any other group.” In a similar study of the House of Representatives, Jesse H. Rhodes and Brian F. Schaffner found that, “millionaires receive about twice as much representation when they comprise about 5 percent of the district’s population than the poorest wealth group does when it makes up 50 percent of the district.” In fact, the increasing influence of the rich over Congress is the leading driver of polarization in modern politics, with the rich using the political system to entrench wealth by pushing for tax breaks and blocking redistributive policies.
  • At the turn of the decade, political scientists Larry Bartels, Jacob Hacker and Martin Gilens wrote several incredibly influential important books arguing, persuasively, that the preferences of the rich were better represented in Congress than the poor. After the books were published, there was a flurry of research arguing that they had overstated their case. Critics alleged two key defects in Bartels’ and Gilens’ arguments. First, because polling data on the super-wealthy were sparse, it was difficult to prove that there were large differences in opinion. Political scientists often rely on composite measures of policy liberalism, but since the poor tend to be more economically liberal but socially conservative, the differences between the poor and moderately rich can often be obscured. Second, there was no way to show that influence of the wealthy was caused directly by the influence of money. It might well be that the rich are simply opinion leaders or are more likely to vote.
  • Recent research offers compelling answers to these criticisms. The new evidence adds credence to the Bartels-Gilens-Hacker view that money is corrupting American politics. By using a massive database of ideology that includes the super wealthy, Schaffner and Rhodes found that “members of Congress are much more responsive to the wealthy than to their poor constituents.” However, this difference is not equal between both parties; rather, Democrats are far more responsive to the poor than Republicans. (This is not surprising; other research supports this claim.) They find that both parties strongly favor the upper-middle class, those with $100,000 to $300,000 in wealth. But Republicans are not only more responsive to the rich, but particularly to rich donors. Schaffner and Rhodes argue that, “campaign donations, but not voter registration or participation in primary or general election, may help explain the disproportionate influence of the wealthy among Republican representatives.” Barber’s study is the first to directly examine the policy preferences of the donor class. Barber sent 20,500 letters to people who contributed to 22 Senate elections in 2012 and asked about various policy questions. This allowed Barber to examine the differences in representation between donors and non-donors. His finding: Donors’ preferences tend to be far better represented than non-donors’. The chart below measures the ideological differences between various groups, with 0 indicating a perfect fit. The data show that Senators are almost perfectly aligned with their donors, but rather distant from voters.
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  • In fact, politicians are almost perfectly aligned with donors, but less aligned with partisans (people who voted for the Senator and share party affiliation), supporters (people who voted for the Senator) and voters in general. He Barber also finds that donors tend to be far more extreme in their views (see chart below). For instance, while about sixty percent of non-donor Republicans oppose the Affordable Care Act, opposition among donors is “almost unanimous.” Barber also notes that donors tend to be far more extreme than non-donors (see chart). (This is supported by other studies).
  • Such data could explain the rising polarization of Congress, as politicians increasingly respond to their donors, rather than to voters. Political scientists Walter J. Stone and Elizabeth N. Simas have found that challengers raise more money when they take extreme positions, which helps explain why incumbent representatives tend to be more partisan than departing representatives. It certainly explains the intransigence of the last two Congresses: Republicans, who are responding to their rich donor base, are incentivized to oppose any action, particularly those supporting Obama, lest they lose funding. Since Senators have to raise approximately $3,300 a day every year for six years to remain viable, they will inevitably have to succumb to the power of money if they wish to be reelected. This research raises the disturbing thought that our political system is no longer representative. As Barber notes, about half of all donors are from out of state, meaning that politicians are no longer responsive to their voters (though they are slightly more during election years). Given that only .22 percent of Americans made a donation of more than $200 (the level Barber studies) in 2014, we have power evidence that America is now a government of the one percent — indeed, of the one-fifth of one percent.
  • This disturbing trend affects politics at all levels. At the state level, political scientists Gerald Wright and Elizabeth Rigby found that state party platforms are far more influenced by the rich than the poor. Elsewhere, Barber found evidence that presidents are more responsive to donors than non-donors. Recently Griffin and Newman found representation gaps between whites and people of color as well as low-income voters. This finding is supported by Christopher Ellis, who found that donors were better represented than non-donors (although using a less comprehensive method than Barber). In a frank moment, U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy (D – Conn.) said, “I talked a lot more about carried interest inside of that call room than I did in the supermarket.” He’s correct: Donors tending to be far richer and wealthier than non-donors (see chart).
  • There are still unanswered questions. It is possible that politicians cast ideological votes to appease donors and partisans (for instance, the vain attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act dozens of times), while also working to benefit the poor and middle class through less visible means. This might explain why political journalists, who often focus on major legislation, miss the distributional impacts of political appointments and regulatory action. It may be that politicians work to maximize votes, and then political donations follow (though there is strong evidence this isn’t the case). Either way, the most up-to-date evidence strongly suggests that money is distorting our system, and that evidence appears to be growing stronger by the day.
  • The solution, as a recent Demos report suggests, is to help reformist candidates gather donations with a public matching system. Since voters who are non-donors are less ideological, the solution is to balance out the political distortions from the donor class by turning these non-donors into donors. Citizens United has only increased the stranglehold of moneyed interests on our political system, and is daily choking the life of our democracy. Only by restoring influence to all voters will our republic be restored.
Gary Edwards

The Federal Reserve Shows Barack Obama Who The Real Boss Is - BlackListedNews.com - 1 views

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    Excellent article explaining how and why the Federal Reserve ended Obama's nutty plan to produce a Trillion dollar coin.  Short story: the T-Coin threatens the Federal Reserve's monopoly on the just as phony and totally debased dollar.  The author also discusses the dollar's role as the world's reserve currency and what that means.   The author also explains that the US has been borrowing over a Trillion dollars per year to finance the war and welfare Obama machine, PLUS, borrowing even more to finance the near $4 Trillion dollars of past debt that rolls over each and every year!   excerpts: When the Federal Reserve system was initially created back in 1913, the bankers that created it intended for it to be a perpetual debt machine that would extract massive amounts of wealth from the U.S. government (and ultimately from all of us) through the mechanism of compound interest.  Each year, hundreds of billions of dollars of interest are transferred into the pockets of the wealthy bankers and foreign nations that own our debt.  This is one of the reasons why I preach about the evils of government debt until I am blue in the face. The debt-based Federal Reserve system is a way to systematically steal the wealth of the United States, and it is happening right in front of our eyes, but very few people actually understand it well enough to complain about it. Unfortunately, we are rapidly getting to the point where we have accumulated so much debt that it is threatening to collapse our entire financial system.  The following comes from a recent Zero Hedge article...  "Unfortunately, the rest of the world is starting to move away from the U.S. dollar.  Over the past couple of years, a whole host of international currency agreements have been signed that are intended to start reducing the use of the U.S. dollar in international trade.  For much more on this, please see the following article: "The Giant Currency Superstorm That Is Coming To The Shores Of Americ
Gary Edwards

The Daily Bell - What TARP Boss Neil Barofsky Told Me Yesterday Should Shock You - 1 views

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    " The Daily Bell Newswire Editorial FRIDAY, MAY 17, 2013 What TARP Boss Neil Barofsky Told Me Yesterday Should Shock You By Bill Bonner 8 Bill Bonner The financial news is getting boring. The Dow goes only one way - up. But gold fell below $1,400 per ounce yesterday. Rather than trying to figure it out, yesterday evening we drove down to Zombietown. A friend in Washington had promised to introduce us to Neil Barofsky, inspector general of the TARP program. You remember TARP? It was the feds' $700 billion program to rescue the US economy from a correction. Neil Barofsky was in charge of it. So we decided to go down and ask him how it turned out... Meanwhile, in yesterday's International Herald Tribune was a small note: "Economists agree that spending cuts and tax increases have slowed the US recovery." Readers will recognize this as the usual claptrap. Government spending does not bring a genuine "recovery." C'mon... how many times do we have to explain? You take $5 worth of resources and give them to an armed 19-year-old in Afghanistan. He shoots a round or two into a mountainside... poof... the $5 is gone. Or you have an ATF official. He's idling his motor as he stakes out a house believed to be used by a cigarette smuggler. In a few minutes, or even seconds, the $5 has vanished. Or give the money to a disabled person; he buys a MoonPie and a Coke. Economists may record the spending as part of GDP... But how are you better off? You're $5 poorer, not $5 richer. But GDP growth is something economists feel they can control. So they go to work on it like a sex maniac strangling a prostitute. Nothing good comes of it. But at least they get results. And here comes Paul Krugman with more garroting wire! The New York Times Magazine: Keynesian economics rests fundamentally on the proposition that macroeconomics isn't a morality play - that depressions are essentially a technical malfunction. As the Great Depression deepened, Keynes famously declared
Gary Edwards

Guest Post: The Linchpin Lie: How Global Collapse Will Be Sold To The Masses | Zero Hedge - 0 views

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    Stunning guest post at Zero Hedge that attempts to explain it all - Why things happen and who is behind the curtain pulling the strings.  And what are they trying to do?  Excellent piece exposing the Globalists and how they work.  The question of why war and debt is so important to the Globalist one world - new world order viewpoint is also explained. excerpt: "In our modern world there exist certain institutions of power.  Not government committees, alphabet agencies, corporate lobbies, or even standard military organizations; no, these are the mere "middle-men" of power.  The errand boys.  The well paid hitmen of the global mafia.  They are not the strategists or the decision makers.  Instead, I speak of institutions which introduce the newest paradigms.  Who write the propaganda.  Who issue the orders from on high.  I speak of the hubs of elitism which have initiated nearly every policy mechanism of our government for the past several decades.  I am talking about the Council On Foreign Relations, the Tavistock Institute, the Heritage Foundation (a socialist organization posing as conservative), the Bilderberg Group, as well as the corporate foils that they use to enact globalization, such as Monsanto, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, the Carlyle Group, etc. Many of these organizations and corporations operate a revolving door within the U.S. government.  Monsanto has champions, like Donald Rumsfeld who was on the board of directors of its Searle Pharmaceuticals branch, who later went on to help the company force numerous dangerous products including Aspartame through the FDA.  Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan have a veritable merry-go-round of corrupt banking agents which are appointed to important White House and Treasury positions on a regular basis REGARDLESS of which party happens to be in office.  Most prominent politicians are all members of the Council on Foreign Relations, an organization which has openly admitted on multiple occasions that thei
Paul Merrell

Corp Fueling Fentanyl Overdose Epidemic Lobbying to Keep Weed Illegal - 0 views

  • In 2016, cannabis is still illegal in many parts of the country, and pharmaceutical giant Insys Therapeutics Inc., a manufacturer of fentanyl, just demonstrated much of the reason why. Arizona is currently gearing up to vote on legalizing recreational cannabis. Ahead of that vote, Insys just contributed $500,000 in the fight against Proposition 205, U.S. News and other outlets report. The Arizona-based pharmaceutical company recently gave the funds to Arizonans for Responsible Drug Policy, an anti-legalization campaign group actively fighting to defeat the ballot measure. Insys’s contributions are particularly unsettling considering the company currently markets only one product — a spray version of fentanyl, a powerful opiate. Fentanyl has become one of the country’s most dangerous prescription drugs. It is more potent than traditional addictive opiates, which already claim thousands of lives every year and drive addicts to graduate to heroin use. Fentanyl is 50 times stronger than heroin and has been linked to a growing number of deaths in the United States. It isparticularly dangerous when sold on the street and cut with other drugs. Fentanyl has been blamed for worsening the sharp rise in heroin overdoses as dealers across the country have begun adding it to heroin to make it stronger.
  • Colorado has lower rates of teen cannabis consumption than the national average, and studies have shown driving while under the influence of the plant is far less dangerous than alcohol, a legal drug. Colorado has seen a spike intourism, business, and tax revenues as a result of legalization. Interestingly, a study by Johns Hopkins university last year found states with medical marijuana had lower rates of overdose from opiates. In spite of Arizonans for Responsible Drug Policy’s claims they care about communities, it is completely comfortable taking half a million dollars from a company that produces one of the most toxic and addictive drugs on the market. Unsurprisingly, Insys previously sold a synthetic cannabis product and has already gained approval from the FDA to launch a similar one in the near future. These business ventures provide an even deeper understanding of why they oppose legalization.
  • Insys’s donation is the largest any group associated with Proposition 205 has received. Around the country, the pharmaceutical fight against legalization is joined by the tobacco lobby, the alcohol lobby, the private prison lobby, and law enforcement.
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    Interesting to watch the various marijuana legalization measures in different states. The lobby money to oppose it has overwhelmingly come from organizations whose financial oxen would be gored, the pharmaceutical lobby, tobacco lobby, alcohol lobby, private prison lobby, and law enforcement lobby. On the latter, state and local law enforcement get huge federal subsidies for drug law enforcement, plus forfeiture of properties in drug cases are a huge source of revenue for law enforcement.
Gary Edwards

The Cognitive Dissonance Cluster Bomb | Scott Adams' Blog - 0 views

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    "Earlier this week CNN.com listed 24 different theories that pundits have provided for why Trump won. And the list isn't even complete. I've heard other explanations as well. What does it tell you when there are 24 different explanations for a thing? It tells you that someone just dropped a cognitive dissonance cluster bomb on the public. Heads exploded. Cognitive dissonance set in. Weird theories came out. This is the cleanest and clearest example of cognitive dissonance you will ever see. Remember it. This phenomenon is why a year ago I told you I was putting so much emphasis on PREDICTING the outcome of the election using the Master Persuader Filter. I told you it would be easy to fit any theory to the facts AFTER the result. And sure enough, we can fit lots of theories to the facts. At least 24 of them by CNN's count. Generally speaking, the greater the persuasion, the more cognitive dissonance you get. Trump is - in my opinion - the greatest persuader of my lifetime. I expected this level of cognitive dissonance. Next time you see a persuader of this magnitude, you can expect the outcome to be cognitive dissonance in that case too. This brings me to the anti-Trump protests. The protesters look as though they are protesting Trump, but they are not. They are locked in an imaginary world and battling their own hallucinations of the future. Here's the setup that triggered them. 1. They believe they are smart and well-informed. 2. Their good judgement told them Trump is OBVIOUSLY the next Hitler, or something similarly bad. 3. Half of the voters of the United States - including a lot of smart people - voted Trump into office anyway. Those "facts" can't be reconciled in the minds of the anti-Trumpers. Mentally, something has to give. That's where cognitive dissonance comes in. There are two ways for an anti-Trumper to interpret that reality. One option is to accept that if half the public doesn't see Trump as a dangerous monster, pe
Gary Edwards

Taxpayers strike it rich? - Foster Gamble - YouTube - 0 views

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    Excellent video blog/discussion with Foster Gamble of the Thrive Movement.  Foster explains CAFR: The Comprehensive Annual Financial Report that local and State governments must file annually.  The CAFR includes the investments funds that governments control.  For local cities lfiling bankruptcy, ike Stockton, CA, the CAFR's are in the hundreds of millions of dollars.  Foster explains that Stockton is foot dragging on their CAFR, perhaps hoping to break the union pension and healthcare funds through a quick chapter 9 bankruptcy where the CAFR isn't put on the table? This is good stuff, demonstrating fully that governments are in the business of seizing wealth and control of property by hook or by crook.  Nice finish with the Iceland story.  The Icelanders refused to play the Bankster game, and jailed Rothschild-Rockefeller banksters and politicians while refusing to pay both the interest and debt those clowns had racked up. Excerpt: As cities and states struggle to balance their budgets, folks everywhere are losing their jobs, parks are closing and people most in need are getting left in the dust. As Foster describes in this video blog, it doesn't have to be this way. Trillions of dollars of taxpayer money is currently sitting in unpublicized government investment funds and people are organizing to get it back.
Gary Edwards

Can Americans Escape the Deception? - 0 views

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    I've been reading Paul Craig Roberts since high school, when i used to clip his backpage columns in NewsWeek magazine. These days, you have to go to his blog to get the truth. But what a truth it is! Incredible, forceful but presented only as PCR can do. His wake up call to America is not about Republicans or Democrats. It's about our liberty and the all out assault our government, socialist and conservatives alike, has launched on the Constitution. Amerika! This is what it comes to. It's also why i'm a libertarian. Read it and weep. Excerpt is from the 9/11 section. excerpt: In a real investigation, the 9/11 evidence would not have been illegally destroyed, and the investigation would have been conducted by experts, not by government agencies assigned a cover-up and by political hacks. The NIST report is abject nonsense. It explains nothing. It is a fabricated computer simulation of a non-event. The co-chairmen and legal counsel of the 9/11 Commission later wrote books in which they stated that information was withheld from the commission, the military lied to the commission, and the commission "was set up to fail." Yet, these astounding admissions by the leaders of the 9/11 Commission had no impact on Congress, the presstitute media, or the public. All heads were in the sand. Please, whatever you do, don't make us emotional weaklings face the facts. More than one hundred firefighters, police, first responders, and building maintenance personnel report hearing and experiencing scores of explosions in the twin towers, including powerful explosions in the sub-basements prior to the collapse of the towers. Distinguished scientists, authors of many peer-reviewed scientific papers, report finding unreacted nano-thermite in the dust from the towers, tested it for its explosive and high-heat producing ability, and reported the unequivocal results. Seventeen hundred architects and engineers have testified in a petition to Congress that the th
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    For a detailed and fully referenced study of how 9-11 Commission Executive Director Philip Zelikow's conflict of interest and how he kept Commission members in the dark and sabotaged the Commission report, see http://tinyurl.com/6tdfc56
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