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Paul Merrell

Loopholes, Filing Failures, and Lax Enforcement: How the Foreign Agents Registration Ac... - 0 views

www.pogo.org/...istration-act-falls-short.html

Congress corruption foreign-agents-registration

shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • Why This Matters The Foreign Agents Registration Act requires American lobbyists working on behalf of foreign clients to disclose significantly more information about their activities than what is required of domestic lobbyists. This includes the actual documents used to influence policy makers, called informational materials. These materials include draft legislation, speeches, press releases and more, all created to influence U.S. policy. But the lobbyists do not always follow the letter of the law and enforcement by the Justice Department has been lax in recent years. Furthermore, the law itself seems to have loopholes that make enforcement difficult if not impossible. The Foreign Agents Registration Act is intended to bring transparency into the world of foreign lobbying. But when American lobbyists working on behalf of foreign interests fail to follow the law, or the Justice Department fails to enforce it, the American people are left in the dark.
  • Why This Matters The Foreign Agents Registration Act requires American lobbyists working on behalf of foreign clients to disclose significantly more information about their activities than what is required of domestic lobbyists. This includes the actual documents used to influence policy makers, called informational materials. These materials include draft legislation, speeches, press releases and more, all created to influence U.S. policy. But the lobbyists do not always follow the letter of the law and enforcement by the Justice Department has been lax in recent years. Furthermore, the law itself seems to have loopholes that make enforcement difficult if not impossible. The Foreign Agents Registration Act is intended to bring transparency into the world of foreign lobbying. But when American lobbyists working on behalf of foreign interests fail to follow the law, or the Justice Department fails to enforce it, the American people are left in the dark.
  • Executive Summary The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) requires that all American citizens working to influence U.S. policy on behalf of foreign governments register with the Department of Justice and to disclose information on any and all political activity in which they engaged for foreign clients. This includes filing, within 48 hours, any informational materials disseminated to two or more people.
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  • Table of Contents Executive SummaryIntroductionBackgroundWhat the Foreign Influence Database ShowsEgypt: A Case Study Of Foreign InfluenceSame-Day ContributionsSystemic Foreign InfluenceQuid Pro Quo or Coincidence?Foreign Money and the LawLax Compliance with and Enforcement of FARAEnforcementConclusionRecommendationsEndnotes
  • The law requires lobbyists for foreign interests to plainly and conspicuously identify themselves as such in any materials distributed in the course of their lobbying—for example, emails, other correspondence, or publications. We found that many documents filed with the Justice Department lack this identification statement; furthermore, many lobbyists admitted that they did not comply with this requirement. More than half (51 percent) of the registrants we examined in a sample from 2010 checked a box on a the semi-annual Justice Department questionnaire saying they had filed informational materials, and checked another box saying they had not met the legal requirement that they identify themselves in those materials as working on behalf of foreign interests. Toby Moffett, a former Member of Congress from Connecticut who is now Chairman of the Moffett Group and one of its registered lobbyists, told POGO that “Around the edges there’s a lot of loosey-goosey stuff going on. People representing foreign interests and not reporting.”[4] But even when lobbyists do report to the Justice Department, the information they provide is not easily accessible to the public. Astonishingly, informational materials are not available online, despite the fact that the Justice Department has an electronic filing system. Instead, these documents are kept in an office at the Justice Department that is only open for four hours each weekday. Hard copies of the documents are kept in folders that are often disorganized and susceptible to misfiling. This archaic system undermines the intended transparency of the law.
  • The Project On Government Oversight examined thousands of these materials spanning four years, as well as additional public records related to the Justice Department’s oversight of lobbyists for foreign interests. We found that lobbyists for foreign interests have routinely failed to comply with the law—a failure that prevents journalists and watchdogs from scrutinizing the lobbying activities while foreign interests are trying to influence U.S. policy. We found a pattern of lax enforcement of FARA requirements by the Justice Department. We found that the Justice Department office responsible for administering the law is a record-keeping mess. And we found loopholes in the law that often makes it difficult if not impossible for the government to police compliance or to discipline lobbyists who fail to comply. Here are some highlights of our investigation:
  • Though federal law bars foreign money from U.S. political campaigns, there appears to be a gray area in the law that can let in such money indirectly. POGO found many instances in which members of lobbying firms made political contributions to Members of Congress on the same day that those firms were lobbying the Members of Congress or their legislative staffs on behalf of foreign clients.[1] Lobbyists who fail to comply with certain FARA requirements may have little to fear from the Justice Department. “The cornerstone of the Registration Unit’s enforcement efforts is encouraging voluntary compliance,” a Justice Department website says.[2] When lobbyists do not voluntarily comply, the Justice Department rarely uses one of the key tools at its disposal to enforce the law—seeking a court injunction. A representative of the Department’s FARA unit told POGO: “While the FARA statute and regulations authorize the pursuit of formal legal proceedings, such as injunctive remedy options, the FARA Unit [has] not pursued injunctive remedy options recently and has instead utilized other mechanisms to achieve compliance.”[3] It appears that some registered foreign agents have been distributing materials but not filing them with the Justice Department. It’s unclear the extent to which that illustrates a lack of compliance with the law or loopholes in the law. In the process of researching this report, POGO noticed that many more lobbyists were registering as foreign agents than had filed informational materials that we could locate at the FARA office. To determine what was happening, we looked at a sampling of questionnaires that the Justice Department requires registered agents to complete every six months. Some checked one box indicating they had distributed materials and another box stating they did not file them with the FARA office.
  • We set out to determine the extent to which lobbyists for foreign interests were filing lobbying materials at the Justice Department within the required time frame. Based on a review of filings made in 2012, in those instances where it was possible to answer the question, POGO estimates that almost half—46 percent—were filed late. Fifteen percent were filed more than 30 business days after they were distributed, and 12 percent were filed more than 100 business days after they were distributed. In many instances, the Justice Department would be hard pressed to enforce the filing deadline. Based on the records the Department maintains to enforce the law, we found that in more than a quarter (26 percent) of the 2012 filings, it was impossible to determine whether the lobbyists complied. For example, in many cases, the records did not show when the lobbyists disseminated the materials to the targets of their lobbying. In a glaring omission, the law does not require lobbyists to provide that information. Without it, there may be no way for the government or the public to know whether lobbying materials were filed on time.
  • When lobbyists for foreign interests do not follow the law, when the U.S. government fails to enforce it, and when the Justice Department makes it difficult for the American people to access records to which they are legally entitled, the public is left in the dark. To bring more transparency to this opaque realm, POGO has made four years of informational materials available for the first time online with our Foreign Influence Database, allowing the public to see how lobbyists attempt to influence American policies on behalf of their foreign clients.
  • With the release of the Foreign Influence Database, the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) is making years of documents from this key set of FARA filings electronically available for the first time. The materials were previously only available in hard copy at the FARA Registration Unit in Washington, DC, which is only open to the public from 11am to 3pm on weekdays.[12] In this digital age it is surprising that these materials could not be read online and are instead stored in file folders, where they are disorganized and susceptible to misfiling. Even those that were electronically filed by the registrants are not available to the public in an electronic format. POGO’s database includes informational materials filed in 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012.[13]
  • Paul Merrell on 20 Dec 14
     
    POGO does thorough work and doesn't let up until it gets results. Forcing DoJ to puts its foreign agents registration materials online should be a fairly trivial battle. The real war, though, will be forcing better enforcement. The new database is at http://www.pogo.org/tools-and-data/foreign-influence-database/ I punched up the word "Israel" and came up with 113 documents in the search results. Each search hit lists the name of the nation involved that the lobbying was done for. Of those 113 document hits, only two were for the nation of Israel, both for its Ministry of Tourism. The rest were by other nations who had mentioned Israel in their lobbying materials.  Now that is fairly incredible, given that Israel outright controls Congress when it comes to Middle East policy.  The last administration to attempt to do something about Israeli lobbyists not registering was the the Kennedy Administration. The result was that the major Israeli lobbying group disbanded and was promptly reformed under a new corporate charter and name. That was the very last attempt at enforcing the Foreign Agents Registration Act against Israel's lobbyists in the U.S., despite the fact that the reformed group, AIPAC, has even been caught more than once being passed highly classified U.S. documents by double agents working inside the U.S. military establishment. The leakers went to prison but the AIPACers were never prosecuted. AIPAC rules.  
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.
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  • 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. :-)
Paul Merrell

U.S. Wages Have Fallen EVERY Quarter of the 'Recovery' - Jeff Nielson | Sprott Money - 0 views

www.sprottmoney.com/...the-recovery-jeff-nielson.html

economy U.S. stats

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Aug 15 - No Cached
  • For 6 ½ long years, we have been bombarded with the mythology known as “the U.S. economic recovery” by the mainstream media. Exposing this fantasy is simple, since the gulf between myth and reality has grown to such absurd proportions.There is no better starting point than the farcical claim by Barack Obama that “10 million new jobs” have been created during this non-existent recovery. In fact, the U.S. government’s own numbers show that the total number of employed Americans has fallen by more than 3 million over that span, in spite of the population growth over those past 6 ½ years.
  • Updated, the U.S. civilian participation rate has now fallen to a 36-year low, and as the chart clearly shows, it has fallen at a faster rate since the start of this mythical recovery.The lie: “10 million new jobs created”. The fact: more than 3 million jobs lost. This is a reality-gap of 13 million jobs, or exactly 2 million jobs per year. The U.S. economy hasn’t been “creating” 1.5 million new jobs per year. It’s been losing roughly ½ million jobs every year of this fantasy-recovery.Then we have the “heartbeat” of the U.S. economy, its velocity of money. A chart of this heartbeat shows that it has plummeted far lower than at any other time in the 56-year history of this data series. This doesn’t merely show a dying economy, it shows a dead economy.
  • As for the supposed “GDP growth” over this 6 ½ year span, falsifying this statistic requires nothing more than lying about the rate of inflation. Here again, the lie is obvious. The U.S. (and other Western governments) pretend that inflation is near-zero, while in the real world, food and housing prices have been soaring at the fastest rate in our lifetime over the past 10 – 15 years.Then we have U.S. energy consumption. Again the picture is clear. Overall U.S. energy consumption peaked in 2007 and has been falling since then, while official gasoline consumption has been plummeting for several years. Growing economies use more energy. Shrinking economies use less energy. Case closed.All this is old news to regular readers, however. What has been less easy to document in any sort of definitive way has been the fall in U.S. wages. The problem is that to express wages meaningfully, we must use “real dollars”, i.e. we must adjust these wages for inflation. With the U.S. government only providing nominal data about U.S. wages, and consistently lying about the actual inflation rate; we have lacked the data to make any conclusive statement.A recent boast by the U.S. government/Corporate media (i.e. another false claim) has now provided us with a clearer picture here, going back to the beginning of this imaginary recovery. In trying to downplay the absence of any wage-growth in the U.S. in Q2 of this year; the propaganda machine made this claim:…That is down from a 2.6 percent increase in the first quarter [of 2015], which was the biggest in 6 ½ years. [emphasis mine]
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  • The claim is that nominal wages in the U.S. rose at the fastest rate “in 6 ½ years” in the first quarter of 2015, i.e. the highest rate during the entire pseudo-recovery. Now let’s discount that number with the (real) rate of inflation, in order to get a real-dollar number for U.S. wages.
  • Thus the U.S. government itself has now provided us with a definitive picture on U.S. wages. During Q1 of this year, the high-water mark for U.S. wage “growth” during the entire Recovery; U.S. wages were still falling. Ipso facto, U.S. wages have been falling every quarter of this recovery.Now we begin to see the whole truth in the U.S. labour market, versus the absurd, official claim of lots of “new jobs” and “rising wages”. U.S. employment has been falling, not rising, every quarter, every year. U.S. wages have been falling, not rising, every quarter, every year. But that picture is still incomplete.The total number of hours worked by the Working Poor is also falling, and in 18 out of 20 of the U.S.’s industrial sectors, total number of hours worked is still lower than during the so-called Great Recession. This is also reflected in the fall in the percentage of full-time employees.
  • To summarize: since the beginning of the imaginary U.S. economic recovery, there are millions fewer Americans who are now employed. Their wages have been falling for every quarter of the “recovery”, and they are also working fewer hours. Growing economies create more jobs; shrinking economies lose jobs. Strong economies have rising (real) wages; weak economies have falling wages. Once again we see the supposed U.S. recovery is pure mythology.However, with respect to the destruction of the U.S. standard of living, to truly appreciate what has been done to the U.S. population (and the populations of nearly all of the Corrupt West), we must look at the picture over a much longer term. In the 40 years before the beginning of this imaginary recovery, the wages of the Average American fell by roughly 50% (in real dollars).
  • Now the descent of the majority of the U.S. population to Third World status becomes crystal clear. From 1970 to the beginning of 2009 (i.e. the current “recovery”), U.S. wages fell roughly 50%. Then came the mythical Recovery, and U.S. wages have continued to fall, quarter after quarter after quarter. The Great Recovery has been worse than the Great Recession which came before it.What do we call it when a nation experiences a “great recession”, and then the economy continues to crumble at an even faster rate after that, year after year? We call it a Greater Depression.Shrinking economy. Losing jobs. Falling wages. Declining energy consumption. No “heartbeat”. Has anything been left out, in describing this U.S. economic Armageddon? Certainly.The U.S. government is obviously bankrupt. The U.S. dollar is obviously worthless. The U.S. economy has been run completely into the ground. When the current, assorted bubbles are deliberately popped (almost certainly in 2016, or late-2015), and Old-Man Buffett goes on a massive shopping spree with the $60+ billion he is now currently hoarding; there will be nothing left but economic rubble. And Milton Friedman will be smiling, from (way) down in his final, resting place.
Gary Edwards

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

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

Banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 08 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 08 Jan 14
     
    Incredible must read analysis. Take away: the world is going to go "medevil". It's the only way out of this mess. Since the zero hedge layout is so bad, i'm going to post as much of the article as Diigo will allow: Jim Kunstler's 2014 Forecast - Burning Down The House Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/06/2014 19:36 -0500 Submitted by James H. Kunstler of Kunstler.com , Many of us in the Long Emergency crowd and like-minded brother-and-sisterhoods remain perplexed by the amazing stasis in our national life, despite the gathering tsunami of forces arrayed to rock our economy, our culture, and our politics. Nothing has yielded to these forces already in motion, so far. Nothing changes, nothing gives, yet. It's like being buried alive in Jell-O. It's embarrassing to appear so out-of-tune with the consensus, but we persevere like good soldiers in a just war. Paper and digital markets levitate, central banks pull out all the stops of their magical reality-tweaking machine to manipulate everything, accounting fraud pervades public and private enterprise, everything is mis-priced, all official statistics are lies of one kind or another, the regulating authorities sit on their hands, lost in raptures of online pornography (or dreams of future employment at Goldman Sachs), the news media sprinkles wishful-thinking propaganda about a mythical "recovery" and the "shale gas miracle" on a credulous public desperate to believe, the routine swindles of medicine get more cruel and blatant each month, a tiny cohort of financial vampire squids suck in all the nominal wealth of society, and everybody else is left whirling down the drain of posterity in a vortex of diminishing returns and scuttled expectations. Life in the USA is like living in a broken-down, cob-jobbed, vermin-infested house that needs to be gutted, disinfected, and rebuilt - with the hope that it might come out of the restoration process retaining the better qualities of our heritage.
Gary Edwards

"The Burning Platform" by James Quinn. FSO Editorial 02/18/2009 - 0 views

www.financialsense.com/...0218.html

financial-crisis housing-prices james-quinn burning-platform david-walker banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 22 Feb 09 - Cached
  • “Basically what happens is that after a period of time, economies go through a long-term debt cycle -- a dynamic that is self-reinforcing, in which people finance their spending by borrowing and debts rise relative to incomes and, more accurately, debt-service payments rise relative to incomes. At cycle peaks, assets are bought on leverage at high-enough prices that the cash flows they produce aren't adequate to service the debt. The incomes aren't adequate to service the debt. Then begins the reversal process, and that becomes self-reinforcing, too. In the simplest sense, the country reaches the point when it needs a debt restructuring. We will go through a giant debt-restructuring, because we either have to bring debt-service payments down so they are low relative to incomes -- the cash flows that are being produced to service them -- or we are going to have to raise incomes by printing a lot of money.
  • Gary Edwards on 22 Feb 09
     
    As Congressional moron after Congressional moron goes on the usual Sunday talk show circuit and says we must stop home prices from falling, I wonder whether these people took basic math in high school. Are they capable of looking at a chart and understanding a long-term average? The median value of a U.S. home in 2000 was $119,600. It peaked at $221,900 in 2006. Historically, home prices have risen annually in line with CPI. If they had followed the long-term trend, they would have increased by 17% to $140,000. Instead, they skyrocketed by 86% due to Alan Greenspan's irrational lowering of interest rates to 1%, the criminal pushing of loans by lowlife mortgage brokers, the greed and hubris of investment bankers and the foolishness and stupidity of home buyers. It is now 2009 and the median value should be $150,000 based on historical precedent. The median value at the end of 2008 was $180,100. Therefore, home prices are still 20% overvalued. Long-term averages are created by periods of overvaluation followed by periods of undervaluation. Prices need to fall 20% and could fall 30%. Instead of allowing the housing market to correct to its fair value, President Obama and Barney Frank will attempt to "mitigate" foreclosures. Mr. Frank has big plans for your tax dollars, "We may need more than $50 billion for foreclosure [mitigation]". What this means is that you will be making your monthly mortgage payment and in addition you will be making a $100 payment per month for a deadbeat who bought more house than they could afford, is still watching a 52 inch HDTV, still eating in their perfect kitchens with granite countertops and stainless steel appliances. Barney thinks he can reverse the law of supply and demand by throwing your money at the problem. He will succeed in wasting billions of tax dollars and home prices will still fall 20% to 30%. Unsustainably high home prices can not be sustained. I would normally say that even a 3rd grader could understand this conce
Gary Edwards

Porter Stansberry: Get ready... The worst is yet to come - 0 views

www.thedailycrux.com/...eml

Banksters Inflation Federal-Reserve-Bankster-Cartel banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 26 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 26 Oct 11
     
    Porter discusses inflation and the disastrous impact the Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel is having on the wealth of Americans.  An interesting chart he provides is the one pricing the Stock Market in GOLD.  Everything should be priced and evaluated in terms of GOLD instead of Federal Reserve paper.  The world would be a better place. there are only two repubican presidential candidates calling for an end of the Bankster Cartel; Ron Paul and Rick Perry.  The rest are with Obama, deep in the Bankster pocket.  Very sad.  But then, the Occupy Wall Street movement is camped out on Wall Street, while the Tea Party movement is Occupying the heart of the Bankster criminal empire - the Federal Reserve Banks.  Both movements seem to be protesting the same criminal Bankster problem.  But OWS has been fooled by the ol "nothing up my sleeve" illusion. excerpt: Here's the fact: America's standard of living is falling at a faster pace today than at any time since the Great Depression. Specifically, the real median income is down 9.8% since the fall of 2008. Additionally, Americans have lost roughly $5.5 trillion in asset value, or about 8.6% of their wealth. When you talk about a depression, what you're really talking about is a collapse in the standard of living. That's what's happening today, right now, in our country. But people continue to go about their lives as though nothing is happening. Certainly, our politicians don't want to draw attention to the problem. Instead, they are behind the campaign to "paper over" these losses with schemes like "quantitative easing." These schemes do nothing to make our economy more productive. They're designed instead to make prices rise so people (hopefully) won't notice how poor they're becoming. If you've been reading my newsletters since 2008, none of this is a surprise to you. I've been warning month after month, year after year, that the government's efforts to paper over our bad debts won't work. And they won't work for tw
Paul Merrell

Letter Calls Plea Deal for David Petraeus a 'Profound Double Standard' - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-profound-double-standard.html

Dark-State leaks litigation plea-bargain double standards

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • The plea deal given to retired Gen. David H. Petraeus, which spares him prison time even though he gave military secrets to his mistress, reveals a “profound double standard” in the way the Obama administration treats people who leak classified information, a lawyer for an imprisoned government contractor wrote in a letter to prosecutors.
  • Paul Merrell on 17 Mar 15
     
    Interesting article that explores double standards in plea bargains for low and high ranking U.S. officials who leak classified information. In the Petraeus case, I recall a statement by Diane Feinstein, who praised Petreus for excellent service to the government in the same interview, to the effect that Petraeus deserved leniency because his fall from such a high position in the government was sufficient punishment.  That's a recurring canard when a high official gets a slap on the wrist rather than prison time: [i] "falling into prison" is a much higher fall than a fall from power; [ii] a high official with greater power should be held to a higher standard of public trust than lower level officials, not a lower standard; and [iii] certainty of not doing prison time because of one's power encourages misconduct rather than deterring it. But double standards for the very  rich and the very powerful are far from a recent development and hardly unique to the U.S.  
Paul Merrell

Neither US nor Russia want Assad to Fall: Churkin | nsnbc international - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...sia-want-assad-to-fall-churkin

war & peace Russia Syria Assad U.S.-foreign-policy

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • The Russian UN Envoy Vitaly Churkin told the press that the neither Russia nor the United States want Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad to fall. If the words of Russia’s top-diplomat hold true, this surprising consensus has been reached after over four years of war and US calls for the ousting of Assad. 
  • On Tuesday, Russian UN Envoy Vitaly Churkin told the US-American CBS that the government of the United States no longer wants the fall of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad. The Russian top-diplomat told CBS: “I think this is one thing we share now with the United States, with the US government: They do not want the Assad government to fall. They do not want it to fall. They want to fight (Islamic State a.k.a. ISIS, ISIL or Daesh) in a way which is not going to harm the Syrian government. … On the other hand, they do not want the Syrian government to take advantage of their campaign against (IS). But they do not want to harm the Syrian government by their action. This is very complex,” Noting that Russia and the United States are getting closer to reaching a consensus about the situation in Syria, Churkin added: “They [US authorities] have made a lot great progress in understanding the complexities of the situation. To me, it is absolutely clear that … one of the very serious concerns of the American government now is that the Assad regime will fall and (IS) will take over Damascus and the United States will be blamed for that. “
  • As late as last week US President Barack Obama described Russia’s support for President Al-Assad as well as the limited Russian military presence in Syria as “a big mistake”. Some analysts would note that the presence of Russian “military advisers” plus additional arms deliveries to Syria have been a game changer in a period where US, Turkish and others increasingly discussed the “forming of a coalition of the willing” while circumventing the UN Security Council to oust “the Syrian dictator”. Churkin’s statement to CBS comes as a surprise after the US’ UN Envoy Samantha Power, on Monday, told CNN that: “doubling down on a regime that gases its people, that barrel bombs its people, that tortures people who it arrests simply for protesting and for claiming their rights – that’s just not going to work.  … Even if you were Machiavelli and all you cared about was ISIL [Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – former name of IS], to support a regime like this and to not take account of the views of the vast majority of the Syrian people who want to go in a different direction is not going to either bring peace or actually succeed in defeating terrorism.”
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  • Churkin, for his part, stressed that Russia as well as Iran bear the biggest responsibility for the deterioration of the situation in Syria. He noted in turn, that it is pointless to point fingers and blame anyone for the Syrian crisis, adding that: “Everybody’s responsible. It is easy for me to point the finger but I think simply the situation was misjudged from the outset and then it was allowed to degenerate and how far it will go, I do not know.” Should Churkin’s statement about an US – Russian consensus about President Al-Assad hold true, than the war in Syria and Iraq could, potentially enter a new phase in which Turkey, whom Pakistani Major (r) Agha H. Amin described as “NATO’s odd wolf” could become NATO’s next target. Thus far, the development of the war in Syria has been largely consistent with the assessment Agha H. Amin made in a February 2013 interview with nsnbc ( see related article below).
Gary Edwards

ACTA Open Must Read Analysis: Why Markets Are Still Falling . . . The Shadow Financial ... - 0 views

www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/...analysis_why_ma.php

acta foremski cds credit-default-swaps finacial-crisis politics economy

shared by Gary Edwards on 24 Nov 08 - Cached
  • evidence suggests more credit default swaps are traded in London than in the United States according to the US Federal Reserve, so US action alone cannot address perceived problems.
  • As corporations, home owners and credit card holders go into default -- stop making payments -- many financial institutions are being hit twice on their balance sheet -- once by the bad loan and then by the associated CDS default or obligation.
  • CDS trading has expanded 100-fold since 2001 as financial institutions including insurance companies and hedge funds as well as investors have used the contracts to protect against bond losses and speculate on companies' ability to repay debt.
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  • Unlike most financial markets, credit default swaps are unregulated and at USD 54.6 trillion, they are one of the largest unregulated markets in the world.
  • Lawmakers are also considering the introduction of new regulations to curb CDS abuse as engines of speculation, but many financial experts are also encouraging the creation of public exchanges for these shadow markets. An exchange would establish an arms length price. As that price was transparent and moved, the market would see that a credit was deteriorating. A centralised clearing market would help shine a clear light on these transactions and since every trade would be backed up by the members of the clearing house, chances of default would greatly be reduced.
  • Chicago Mercantile Exchange
  • In response to the coming derivatives and deleveraging Tsunami, which has already begun, the world GDP may have to shrink drastically -- some estimates suggest between 30% and 50% -- over the coming years of The Great Unwind. This is the severe recession the markets fear as they go into free fall.
  • Gary Edwards on 24 Nov 08
     
    Why are Markets still Falling? The Tsunami caused by Derivatives and Deleveraging The invisible elephant in the room causing continuous falls in global financial markets is the link to the privately traded Credit Default Swaps (CDS) and the financial uncertainty they have created whilst synchronised deleveraging takes place across the world. ... Credit default swaps are unregulated financial derivatives which act as debt insurance on risky assets like mortgages, corporate and government bonds. But unlike a normal insurance policy, financial institutions that sell credit default swaps are not required to have enough funds in reserve should those risky loans turn bad. Since the US Congress in 2000 declined to regulate these contracts as it does insurance, the companies that guarantee the assets are not required by law to keep enough capital on hand to pay them off in the event of a default.
Paul Merrell

Netanyahu speech scandal blows up, and 'soiled' Dermer looks like the fall guy - 0 views

mondoweiss.net/...netanyahu-scandal-soiled

war & peace Netanyahu Congress Republicans backlash Iranian-nukes-myth

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Jan 15 - No Cached
  •      In the last 24 hours the controversy over the planned speech by Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu to both houses of Congress on March 3 to rebut the president’s policy on Iran has blown up to a new level. Muted outrage over the invitation has turned into open rage. The opposition to the speech by major Israel supporters across the political spectrum, liberal J Street, center-right Jeffrey Goldberg, and hard-right Abraham Foxman, all of whom say the speech-planners have put the US-Israel relationship at risk by making it a political controversy in the U.S., has been conveyed to the Democratic establishment. The New York Times and Chris Matthews both landed on the story last night, a full week after it broke, to let us know what a disaster the speech would be if it’s ever delivered. So these media are acting to protect the special relationship by upping the pressure to cancel the speech. With even AIPAC washing its hands of the speech, it sure looks as if Israel supporters want an exit from this fiasco. Jettisoning Israeli ambassador Ron Dermer or cancelling the speech would seem like a small price to pay in the news cycle next to a spectacle in which leading Democrats are forced to line up against Netanyahu in Washington, even as they file in and out of the AIPAC policy conference and praise Israel to the skies.
  • n the last 24 hours the controversy over the planned speech by Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu to both houses of Congress on March 3 to rebut the president’s policy on Iran has blown up to a new level. Muted outrage over the invitation has turned into open rage. The opposition to the speech by major Israel supporters across the political spectrum, liberal J Street, center-right Jeffrey Goldberg, and hard-right Abraham Foxman, all of whom say the speech-planners have put the US-Israel relationship at risk by making it a political controversy in the U.S., has been conveyed to the Democratic establishment. The New York Times and Chris Matthews both landed on the story last night, a full week after it broke, to let us know what a disaster the speech would be if it’s ever delivered. So these media are acting to protect the special relationship by upping the pressure to cancel the speech. With even AIPAC washing its hands of the speech, it sure looks as if Israel supporters want an exit from this fiasco. Jettisoning Israeli ambassador Ron Dermer or cancelling the speech would seem like a small price to pay in the news cycle next to a spectacle in which leading Democrats are forced to line up against Netanyahu in Washington, even as they file in and out of the AIPAC policy conference and praise Israel to the skies. Here are the developments
  • Paul Merrell on 30 Jan 15
     
    Bibi's s**t is hitting the fan. I've been wondering since the day his planned speech was announced whether it might boomerang so strongly that he would find an excuse not to speak to Congress this go-round. It's starting to look more and more like that is the way it will play out. I' betting that it will be an excuse rather than an apology because Bibi is the kind of guy who would rather choke than admit that he's made a mistake.   But how this will play out will be better reflected in likely-voter polls in the run-up to the Israeli election. If those polls show strong signs that the speech will cost him the election, then watch Bibi withdraw from the speech. 
Paul Merrell

No, Obama, Russia's Economy Isn't 'in Tatters' - Bloomberg View - 0 views

www.bloombergview.com/...ia-s-economy-isn-t-in-tatters-

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Russia sanctions oil-prices economy

shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Western politicians and pundits should be more careful with their predictions for the Russian economy: Reports of its demise may prove to be premature. Bashing the Russian economy has lately become a popular pastime. In his state of the nation address last month, U.S. President Barack Obama said it was "in tatters." And yesterday, Anders Aslund of the Peterson Institute for International Economics published an article predicting a 10 percent drop in gross domestic product this year -- more or less in line with the apocalyptic predictions that prevailed when the oil price reached its nadir late last year and the ruble was in free fall. Aslund's forecast focuses on Russia's shrinking currency reserves, some of which have been earmarked for supporting government spending in difficult times. At $364.6 billion, they are down 26 percent from a year ago and $21.6 billion from the beginning of this year. Aslund expects $166 billion to be spent on infrastructure investments and bailing out companies, and another $100 billion to exit via capital flight and other currency outflows. As a result, given foreign debts of almost $600 billion, "Russia's reserve situation is approaching a critical limit," he says.
  • What this argument ignores is that Russia's foreign debts are declining along with its reserves -- that's what happens when the money is used to pay down state companies' obligations. Last year, for example, the combined foreign liabilities of the Russian government and companies dropped by $129.4 billion, compared with a $124.3 billion decline in foreign reserves. Beyond that, a large portion of Russian companies' remaining foreign debt is really part of a tax-evasion scheme: By lending themselves money from abroad, the companies transfer profits to lower-tax jurisdictions. Such loans can easily be extended if sanctions prevent the Russian side from paying. The declining price of oil is also less of a threat than many have warned. True, the Russian government's revenues from energy exports will fall in dollar terms. But because Russia's central bank has allowed the ruble's value against the dollar to decline, the ruble value of the revenues will be higher than they otherwise would be. As a result, Russia no longer requires $100 oil to balance its budget -- and the effect of lower oil prices on the broader economy will be muted.
  • Economists at the respected Gaidar Institute, for example, expect the floating of the ruble to roughly halve the negative GDP impact of the decline in oil prices. They estimate that Russian GDP will shrink by a moderate 2.7 percent this year, even if Brent oil trades at $40 (it traded at $61 today). That's just a bit more optimistic than the consensus among 39 economists polled by Bloomberg between Feb. 20 and Feb. 25: On average, they see a decline of 4 percent. Economic sanctions, which most forecasts assume will continue this year, are having less impact that many in the West would like to believe. Sergei Tsukhlo of the Gaidar Institute estimates that the sanctions have affected only 6 percent of Russian industrial enterprises. "Their effect remains quite insignificant despite all that's being said about them," he wrote, noting that trade disruptions with Ukraine have been more important.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Granted, there's no avoiding a significant drop in Russians' living standards because of accelerating inflation. The economics ministry in Moscow predicts real wages will fall by 9 percent this year -- which, Aslund wrote, means that "for the first time after 15 years in power," Russian President Vladimir Putin "will have to face a majority of the Russian people experiencing a sharply declining standard of living." So far, though, Russians have taken the initial shock of devaluation and accompanying inflation largely in stride. The latest poll from the independent Levada Center, conducted between Feb. 20 and Feb. 23, actually shows an uptick in Putin's approval rating -- to 86 percent from 85 percent in January.  It's time to bury the expectation that Russia will fall apart economically under pressure from falling oil prices and economic sanctions, and that Russians, angered by a drop in their living standards, will rise up and sweep Putin out of office. Western powers face a tough choice: Settle for a lengthy siege and ratchet up the sanctions despite the progress in Ukraine, or start looking for ways to restart dialogue with Russia, a country that just won't go away.
Gary Edwards

History's Path To Tyranny - Google Docs - 0 views

docs.google.com/...edit

Ron-Kilmartin godfather-politics Obammunism Obamunists Liberty-Tryanny Liberty-in-the-breach executive-orders

shared by Gary Edwards on 17 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 17 Jun 12
     
    Nice article written by Ron Kilmartin and published to the Bay Area Patriots Group listmail.  Republished here for the purposes of Diigo bookmarking. Ron compares the Obama tyranny methods to those used by Hitler to subjugate the German people and take over the German Republic.  His observations are based on the historical work of William L. Shirer, "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich". excerpt: Over the past year I have been reading a few pages a day of William L. Shirer's history of Nazism, "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" - Nearly 1200 pages and I have finally finished. It is a masterpiece of journalism history based on Shirer's own observations beginning in the 1920s. It is centered of course on Adolf Hitler, his cronies, and his generals. As I read this I began mentally comparing it with our current leader and our current administration's edicts  from the EPA and other agencies. I found that there are many similarities between Hitler's rise to power and Obama's, as well as the tyranny of the Nazi administration. So I decided to write up my comparative observations, as given below. It is not that Obama is following a path to Nazism, but that he seems to be following a path to a tyranny that is all his own: racist, anti-rich,  pro-socialist, anti-industry, anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, , anti-Israel,  pro-Islam, anti-Constitution, anti-First Amendment anti-Second Amendment, anti-Fourth Amendment, anti-Tenth Amendment and anti-America, to name a few of the tyrannical tenants of Obamunism. There are many other historical examples of tyrannical leaders besides Hitler, but for now he will do just fine as a model tyrant, and Shirir's tomb provides a ready means of comparison. ...........
Gary Edwards

Conventional fuels from concentrated sunlight | Discover | University of Minnesota - 0 views

discover.umn.edu/...al-fuels-concentrated-sunlight

syngas energy Clean-Energy

shared by Gary Edwards on 23 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 23 Feb 14
     
    "Simulated sun, authentic opportunity" At the University's Solar Energy Laboratory, the process begins with an indoor solar simulator in the form of seven mirrored, 6,500-watt lamps that concentrate the light on a 10-centimeter spot with an irradiance of 3,000 suns. (One "sun" equals 1,000 watts of solar energy falling per square meter of surface.) With this concentrated radiant energy, one can generate temperatures of more than 3,600 F in a chemical reactor. There, carbon dioxide and water are split to form carbon monoxide and hydrogen, the two components of syngas. Davidson, along with mechanical engineering professor Tom Chase and their students, have developed two prototype reactors to split water and CO2. Deploying these technologies in the Earth's sunbelt could yield enough renewable energy to significantly exceed the world's current needs, the researchers say. "More sun falls on Earth in one hour than is consumed globally in a year," Davidson notes. "Harvesting the sun to meet our energy needs is a challenge with a huge payoff." Of course, it's a little more complicated than focusing concentrated sunlight into a reactor filled with carbon dioxide and water. The key to the technology rests with using metal oxides in a reduction/oxidation cycle to reduce the temperature required to split water and carbon dioxide. "Metal oxides allow you to split water and carbon dioxide at temperatures achievable with modern solar concentrating devices," Davidson explains. In the reactor, the metal oxides go through cycles in which they strip oxygen alternately from carbon dioxide or water-forming carbon monoxide or hydrogen, respectively-then release the oxygen as a byproduct. The syngas formed from the carbon monoxide and hydrogen can be converted into gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, methane (natural gas), or other products. Davidson and her colleagues have produced syngas this way in their laboratory. They have moved from bench top experiments to demonstration in proto
Gary Edwards

The Daily Bell - Are Big Banks Using Derivatives To Suppress Bullion Prices? - 0 views

www.thedailybell.com/...ves-To-Suppress-Bullion-Prices

GOLD Banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 09 Jul 15
     
    "During 2015 the attack on bullion prices has intensified, driving the prices lower than they have been for years. During the first quarter of this year there was a huge upward spike in the quantity of precious metal derivatives. If these were long positions hedging the banks' Comex shorts, why did the price of gold and silver decline? More evidence of manipulation comes from the continuing fall in the prices of gold and silver as set in paper future markets, although demand for the physical metals continues to rise even to the point that the US Mint has run out of silver coins to sell. Uncertainties arising from the Greek No vote increase systemic uncertainty. The normal response would be rising, not falling, bullion prices. The circumstantial evidence is that the unregulated OTC derivatives in gold and silver are not really hedges to short positions in Comex but are themselves structured as an additional attack on precious metal prices. If this supposition is correct, it indicates that seven years of bailing out the big banks that control the Federal Reserve and US Treasury at the expense of the US economy has threatened the US dollar to the extent that the dollar must be protected at all cost, including US regulatory tolerance of illegal activity to suppress gold and silver prices."
Paul Merrell

The Engineered Destruction and Political Fragmentation of Iraq. Towards the Creation of... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5386998

war & peace Iraq ISIL Mosul U.S.-foreign-policy

shared by Paul Merrell on 15 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • The Capture of Mosul:  US-NATO Covert Support to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) Something unusual occurred in Mosul which cannot be explained in strictly military terms. On June 10, the insurgent forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) captured Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, with a population of close to 1.5 million people.  While these developments were “unexpected” according to the Obama administration, they were known to the Pentagon and US intelligence, which were not only providing weapons, logistics and financial support to the ISIS rebels, they were also coordinating, behind the scenes, the ISIS attack on the city of Mosul. While ISIS is a well equipped and disciplined rebel army when compared to other Al Qaeda affiliated formations, the capture of Mosul, did not hinge upon ISIS’s military capabilities. Quite the opposite: Iraqi forces which outnumbered the rebels by far, equipped with advanced weapons systems could have easily repelled the ISIS rebels. There were 30,000 government forces in Mosul as opposed to 1000 ISIS rebels, according to reports. The Iraqi army chose not to intervene. The media reports explained without evidence that the decision of the Iraqi armed forces not to intervene was spontaneous characterized by mass defections.
  • Iraqi officials told the Guardian that two divisions of Iraqi soldiers – roughly 30,000 men – simply turned and ran in the face of the assault by an insurgent force of just 800 fighters. Isis extremists roamed freely on Wednesday through the streets of Mosul, openly surprised at the ease with which they took Iraq’s second largest city after three days of sporadic fighting. (Guardian, June 12, 2014, emphasis added) The reports point to the fact that Iraqi military commanders were sympathetic with the Sunni led ISIS insurgency: Speaking from the Kurdish city of Erbil, the defectors accused their officers of cowardice and betrayal, saying generals in Mosul “handed over” the city over to Sunni insurgents, with whom they shared sectarian and historical ties. (Daily Telegraph,  13 June 2014) What is important to understand, is that both sides, namely the regular Iraqi forces and the ISIS rebel army are supported by US-NATO. There were US military advisers and special forces including operatives from private military companies on location in Mosul working with Iraq’s regular armed forces. In turn, there are Western special forces or mercenaries within ISIS (acting on contract to the CIA or the Pentagon) who are in liaison with US-NATO (e.g. through satellite phones).
  • Under these circumstances, with US intelligence amply involved, there would have been routine communication, coordination, logistics and exchange of intelligence between a US-NATO military and intelligence command center, US-NATO military advisers forces or private military contractors on the ground assigned to the Iraqi Army and Western special forces attached to the ISIS brigades. These Western special forces operating covertly within the ISIS could have been dispatched by a private security company on contract to US-NATO.
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • In this regard, the capture of Mosul appears to have been a carefully engineered operation, planned well in advance. With the exception of a few skirmishes, no fighting took place. Entire divisions of the Iraqi National Army –trained by the US military with advanced weapons systems at their disposal– could have easily repelled the ISIS rebels. Reports suggest that they were ordered by their commanders not to intervene. According to witnesses, “Not a single shot was fired”. The forces that had been in Mosul have fled — some of which abandoned their uniforms as well as their posts as the ISIS forces swarmed into the city. Fighters with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), an al-Qaeda offshoot, overran the entire western bank of the city overnight after Iraqi soldiers and police apparently fled their posts, in some instances discarding their uniforms as they sought to escape the advance of the militants. http://hotair.com/archives/2014/06/10/mosul-falls-to-al-qaeda-as-us-trained-security-forces-flee/
  • A contingent of one thousand ISIS rebels take over a city of more than one million? Without prior knowledge that the US controlled Iraqi Army (30,000 strong) would not intervene, the Mosul operation would have fallen flat, the rebels would have been decimated. Who was behind the decision to let the ISIS terrorists take control of Mosul? Had the senior Iraqi commanders been instructed by their Western military advisers to hand over the city to the ISIS terrorists? Were they co-opted?
  • The formation of the caliphate may be the first step towards a broader conflict in the Middle East, bearing in mind that Iran is supportive of the Al Maliki government and the US ploy may indeed be to encourage the intervention of Iran. The proposed redivision of Iraq is broadly modeled on that of the Federation of Yugoslavia which was split up into seven “independent states” (Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia (FYRM), Slovenia, Montenegro, Kosovo). According to Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, the re division of Iraq into three separate states is part of a broader process of redrawing the Map of the Middle East.
  • US forces could have intervened. They had been instructed to let it happen. It was part of a carefully planned agenda to facilitate the advance of the ISIS rebel forces and the installation of the ISIS caliphate. The whole operation appears to have been carefully staged.
  • In Mosul, government buildings, police stations, schools, hospitals, etc are formally now under the control of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). In turn, ISIS has taken control of military hardware including helicopters and tanks which were abandoned by the Iraqi armed forces. What is unfolding is the installation of a US sponsored Islamist ISIS caliphate alongside the rapid demise of the Baghdad government. Meanwhile, the Northern Kurdistan region has de facto declared its independence from Baghdad. Kurdish peshmerga rebel forces (which are supported by Israel) have taken control of the cities of Arbil and Kirkuk. (See map above) Concluding Remarks There were no Al Qaeda rebels in Iraq prior to the 2003 invasion. Moreover, Al Qaeda was non-existent in Syria until the outset of the US-NATO-Israeli supported insurgency in March 2011. The ISIS is not an independent entity. It is a creation of US intelligence. It is a US intelligence asset, an instrument of non-conventional warfare.
  • The ultimate objective of this ongoing US-NATO engineered conflict opposing Maliki government forces to the ISIS insurgency is to destroy and destabilize Iraq as a Nation State. It is part of an intelligence operation, an engineered process of  transforming countries into territories. The break up of Iraq along sectarian lines is a longstanding policy of the US and its allies. The ISIS is a caliphate project of creating a Sunni Islamist state. It is not a project of the Sunni population of Iraq which historically has been committed to a secular system of government. The caliphate project is a US design. The advances of ISIS forces is intended to garnish broad support within the Sunni population directed against the Al Maliki government The division of Iraq along sectarian-ethnic lines has been on the drawing board of the Pentagon for more than 10 years.
  • Was the handing over of Mosul to ISIS part of a US intelligence agenda? Were the Iraqi military commanders manipulated or paid off into allowing the city to fall into the hands of the ISIS rebels without “a single shot being fired”. Shiite General Mehdi Sabih al-Gharawi who was in charge of the Mosul Army divisions “had left the city”. Al Gharawi had worked hand in glove with the US military. He took over the command of Mosul in September 2011, from US Col Scott McKean. Had he been co-opted, instructed by his US counterparts to abandon his command?
  • The above map was prepared by Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters. It was published in the Armed Forces Journal in June 2006, Peters is a retired colonel of the U.S. National War Academy. (Map Copyright Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters 2006). Although the map does not officially reflect Pentagon doctrine, it has been used in a training program at NATO’s Defense College for senior military officers”. (See Plans for Redrawing the Middle East: The Project for a “New Middle East” By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, Global Research, November 2006)
  • The Western media in chorus have described the unfolding conflict in Iraq as a “civil war” opposing the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham against the Armed forces of the Al-Maliki government. (Also referred to as Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) or Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)) The conflict is casually described as “sectarian warfare” between Radical Sunni and Shia without addressing “who is behind the various factions”.  What is at stake is a carefully staged US military-intelligence agenda. Known and documented, Al Qaeda affiliated entities have been used by US-NATO in numerous conflicts as “intelligence assets” since the heyday of the Soviet-Afghan war. In Syria, the Al Nusrah and ISIS rebels are the foot-soldiers of the Western military alliance, which oversees and controls the recruitment and training of paramilitary forces.
  • The Al Qaeda affiliated Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) re-emerged in April 2013 with a different name and acronym, commonly referred to as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The formation of a terrorist entity encompassing both Iraq and Syria was part of a US intelligence agenda. It responded to geopolitical objectives. It also coincided with the advances of Syrian government forces against the US sponsored insurgency in Syria and the failures of both the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and its various “opposition” terror brigades. The decision was taken by Washington to channel its support (covertly) in favor of a terrorist entity which operates in both Syria and Iraq and which has logistical bases in both countries. The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham’s Sunni caliphate project coincides with a longstanding US agenda to carve up both Iraq and Syria into three separate territories: A Sunni Islamist Caliphate, an Arab Shia Republic, and a Republic of Kurdistan.
  • Whereas the (US proxy) government in Baghdad purchases advanced weapons systems from the US including F16 fighter jets from Lockheed Martin, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham –which is fighting Iraqi government forces– is supported covertly by Western intelligence. The objective is to engineer a civil war in Iraq, in which both sides are controlled indirectly by US-NATO. The scenario is to arm and equip them, on both sides, finance them with advanced weapons systems and then “let them fight”.
  • The Islamic caliphate is supported covertly by the CIA in liaison with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkish intelligence. Israel is also involved in channeling support to both Al Qaeda rebels in Syria (out of the Golan Heights) as well to the Kurdish separatist movement in Syria and Iraq.
  • First published by GR on June 14, 2014.  President Barack Obama has initiated a series of US bombing raids in Iraq allegedly directed towards the rebel army of the Islamic State (IS). The Islamic State terrorists are portrayed as an enemy of America and the Western world. Amply documented, the Islamic State is a creation of Western intelligence, supported by the CIA and Israel’s Mossad and financed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. We are dealing with a diabolical military agenda whereby the United States is targeting a rebel army which is directly funded by the US and its allies. The incursion into Iraq of the Islamic State rebels in late June was part of a carefully planned intelligence operation. The rebels of the Islamic state, formerly known as the ISIS, were covertly supported by US-NATO-Israel  to wage a terrorist insurgency against the Syrian government of Bashar Al Assad.  The atrocities committed in Iraq are similar to those committed in Syria. The sponsors of IS including Barack Obama have blood on their hands.
  • The killings of innocent civilians by the Islamic state terrorists create a pretext and the justification for US military intervention on humanitarian grounds. Lest we forget, the rebels who committed these atrocities and who are a target of US military action are supported by the United States. The bombing raids ordered by Obama are not intended to eliminate the terrorists. Quite the opposite, the US is targeting the civilian population as well as the Iraqi resistance movement. The endgame is to destabilize Iraq as a nation state and trigger its partition into three separate entities.
  • Paul Merrell on 15 Jun 14
     
    The destabilization and fragmentation of Israel's neighboring nations has indeed been on the Zionist/Neocon drawing board for a very long time. http://goo.gl/Z1gdoA In the Mideast, it's important to remember that there are no significant Islamist forces that are not under the control of the U.S. or its allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The Iraqi Army's withdrawal of the two divisions from the defense of Mosul is indeed curious. In that regard, Col. Peters' map of a future Mideast is almost certainly more than a coincidence. 
Paul Merrell

US's Saudi Oil Deal from Win-Win to Mega-Loose | nsnbc international - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...eal-from-win-win-to-mega-loose

must-read banksters big oil Saudis Russia shale-oil U.S.-foreign-policy

shared by Paul Merrell on 09 Aug 15 - No Cached
  • Who would’ve thought it would come to this? Certainly not the Obama Administration, and their brilliant geo-political think-tank neo-conservative strategists. John Kerry’s brilliant “win-win” proposal of last September during his September 11 Jeddah meeting with ailing Saudi King Abdullah was simple: Do a rerun of the highly successful State Department-Saudi deal in 1986 when Washington persuaded the Saudis to flood the world market at a time of over-supply in order to collapse oil prices worldwide, a kind of “oil shock in reverse.” In 1986 was successful in helping to break the back of a faltering Soviet Union highly dependent on dollar oil export revenues for maintaining its grip on power. So, though it was not made public, Kerry and Abdullah agreed on September 11, 2014 that the Saudis would use their oil muscle to bring Putin’s Russia to their knees today.
  • It seemed brilliant at the time no doubt. On the following day, 12 September 2014, the US Treasury’s aptly-named Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, headed by Treasury Under-Secretary David S. Cohen, announced new sanctions against Russia’s energy giants Gazprom, Gazprom Neft, Lukoil, Surgutneftgas and Rosneft. It forbid US oil companies to participate with the Russian companies in joint ventures for oil or gas offshore or in the Arctic. Then, just as the ruble was rapidly falling and Russian major corporations were scrambling for dollars for their year-end settlements, a collapse of world oil prices would end Putin’s reign. That was clearly the thinking of the hollowed-out souls who pass for statesmen in Washington today. Victoria Nuland was jubilant, praising the precision new financial warfare weapon at David Cohen’s Treasury financial terrorism unit. In July, 2014 West Texas Intermediate, the benchmark price for US domestic oil pricing, traded at $101 a barrel. The shale oil bonanza was booming, making the US into a major oil player for the first time since the 1970’s. When WTI hit $46 at the beginning of January this year, suddenly things looked different. Washington realized they had shot themselves in the foot.
  • They realized that the over-indebted US shale oil industry was about to collapse under the falling oil price. Behind the scenes Washington and Wall Street colluded to artificially stabilize what then was an impending chain-reaction bankruptcy collapse in the US shale oil industry. As a result oil prices began a slow rise, hitting $53 in February. The Wall Street and Washington propaganda mills began talking about the end of falling oil prices. By May prices had crept up to $62 and almost everyone was convinced oil recovery was in process. How wrong they were.
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  • Since that September 11 Kerry-Abdullah meeting (curious date to pick, given the climate of suspicion that the Bush family is covering up involvement of the Saudis in or around the events of September 11, 2001), the Saudis have a new ageing King, Absolute Monarch and Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Salman, replacing the since deceased old ageing King, Abdullah. However, the Oil Minister remains unchanged—79-year-old Ali al-Naimi. It was al-Naimi who reportedly saw the golden opportunity in the Kerry proposal to use the chance to at the same time kill off the growing market challenge from the rising output of the unconventional USA shale oil industry. Al-Naimi has said repeatedly that he is determined to eliminate the US shale oil “disturbance” to Saudi domination of world oil markets. Not only are the Saudis unhappy with the US shale oil intrusion on their oily Kingdom. They are more than upset with the recent deal the Obama Administration made with Iran that will likely lead in several months to lifting Iran economic sanctions. In fact the Saudis are beside themselves with rage against Washington, so much so that they have openly admitted an alliance with arch foe, Israel, to combat what they see as the Iran growing dominance in the region—in Syria, in Lebanon, in Iraq.
  • This has all added up to an iron Saudi determination, aided by close Gulf Arab allies, to further crash oil prices until the expected wave of shale oil company bankruptcies—that was halted in January by Washington and Wall Street manipulations—finishes off the US shale oil competition. That day may come soon, but with unintended consequences for the entire global financial system at a time such consequences can ill be afforded. According to a recent report by Wall Street bank, Morgan Stanley, a major player in crude oil markets, OPEC oil producers have been aggressively increasing oil supply on the already glutted world market with no hint of a letup. In its report Morgan Stanley noted with visible alarm, “OPEC has added 1.5 million barrels/day to global supply in the last four months alone…the oil market is currently 800,000 barrels/day oversupplied. This suggests that the current oversupply in the oil market is fully due to OPEC’s production increase since February alone.” The Wall Street bank report adds the disconcerting note, “We anticipated that OPEC would not cut, but we didn’t foresee such a sharp increase.” In short, Washington has completely lost its strategic leverage over Saudi Arabia, a Kingdom that had been considered a Washington vassal ever since FDR’s deal to bring US oil majors in on an exclusive basis in 1945.
  • That breakdown in US-Saudi communication adds a new dimension to the recent June 18 high-level visit to St. Petersburg by Muhammad bin Salman, the Saudi Deputy Crown Prince and Defense Minister and son of King Salman, to meet President Vladimir Putin. The meeting was carefully prepared by both sides as the two discussed up to $10 billion of trade deals including Russian construction of peaceful nuclear power reactors in the Kingdom and supplying of advanced Russian military equipment and Saudi investment in Russia in agriculture, medicine, logistics, retail and real estate. Saudi Arabia today is the world’s largest oil producer and Russia a close second. A Saudi-Russian alliance on whatever level was hardly in the strategy book of the Washington State Department planners.…Oh shit! Now that OPEC oil glut the Saudis have created has cracked the shaky US effort to push oil prices back up. The price fall is being further fueled by fears that the Iran deal will add even more to the glut, and that the world’s second largest oil importer, China, may cut back imports or at least not increase them as their economy slows down. The oil market time bomb detonated in the last week of June. The US price of WTI oil went from $60 a barrel then, a level at which at least many shale oil producers can stay afloat a bit longer, to $49 on July 29, a drop of more than 18% in four weeks, tendency down. Morgan Stanley sounded loud alarm bells, stating that if the trend of recent weeks continues, “this downturn would be more severe than that in 1986. As there was no sharp downturn in the 15 years before that, the current downturn could be the worst of the last 45+ years. If this were to be the case, there would be nothing in our experience that would be a guide to the next phases of this cycle…In fact, there may be nothing in analyzable history.”
  • October is the next key point for bank decisions to roll-over US shale company loans or to keep extending credit on the (until now) hope that prices will slowly recover. If as strongly hinted, the Federal Reserve hikes US interest rates in September for the first time in the eight years since the global financial crisis erupted in the US real estate market in 2007, the highly-indebted US shale oil producers face disaster of a new scale. Until the past few weeks the volume of US shale oil production has remained at the maximum as shale producers desperately try to maximize cash flow, ironically, laying the seeds of the oil glut globally that will be their demise. The reason US shale oil companies have been able to continue in business since last November and not declare bankruptcy is the ongoing Federal Reserve zero interest rate policy that leads banks and other investors to look for higher interest rates in the so-called “High Yield” bond market. Back in the 1980’s when they were first created by Michael Millken and his fraudsters at Drexel Burnham Lambert, Wall Street appropriately called them “junk bonds” because when times got bad, like now for Shale companies, they turned into junk. A recent UBS bank report states, “the overall High-Yield market has doubled in size; sectors that witnessed more buoyant issuance in recent years, like energy and metals mining, have seen debt outstanding triple or quadruple.”
  • Assuming that the most recent downturn in WTI oil prices continues week after week into October, there well could be a panic run to sell billions of dollars of those High-Yield, high-risk junk bonds. As one investment analyst notes, “when the retail crowd finally does head for the exits en masse, fund managers will be forced to come face to face with illiquid secondary corporate credit markets where a lack of market depth…has the potential to spark a fire sale.” The problem is that this time, unlike in 2008, the Federal Reserve has no room to act. Interest rates are already near zero and the Fed has bought trillions of dollars of bank bad debt to prevent a chain-reaction US bank panic. One option that is not being discussed at all in Washington would be for Congress to repeal the disastrous 1913 Federal Reserve Act that gave control of our nation’s money to a gang of private bankers, and to create a public National Bank, owned completely by the United States Government, that could issue credit and sell Federal debt without the intermediaries of corrupt Wall Street bankers as the Constitution intended. At the same time they could completely nationalize the six or seven “Too Big To Fail” banks behind the entire financial mess that is destroying the foundations of the United States and by extension of the role of the dollar as world reserve currency, of most of the world.
  • Paul Merrell on 09 Aug 15
     
    I give a lot of credibility to this article's author when it comes to matters involving the oil market. Remember when reading that the only thing propping up the U.S. dollar is the Saudi (later extended to all OPEC nations) insistence that they be paid for their oil and natural gas in U.S. dollars, which creates artificial demand for the dollar globally. If the Gulf Coast States begin accepting payment in rubles or yuan, it is curtains for the U.S. dollar in global markets.  
Gary Edwards

Fouad Ajami: The Obsolescence of Barack Obama - WSJ.com - 0 views

online.wsj.com/...4164904575421363005578460.html

obammunism

shared by Gary Edwards on 11 Aug 10 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 11 Aug 10
     
    Incredibly elegant writing! excerpt: A broken link with the public, and a war in Afghanistan he neither embraces and sells to his party nor abandons-this is a time of puzzlement for President Obama. His fall from political grace has been as swift as his rise a handful of years ago. He had been hot political property in 2006 and, of course, in 2008. But now he will campaign for his party's 2010 candidates from afar, holding fund raisers but not hitting the campaign trail in most of the contested races. Those mass rallies of Obama frenzy are surely of the past. The vaunted Obama economic stimulus, at $862 billion, has failed. The "progressives" want to double down, and were they to have their way, would have pushed for a bigger stimulus still. But the American people are in open rebellion against an economic strategy of public debt, higher taxes and unending deficits. We're not all Keynesians, it turns out. The panic that propelled Mr. Obama to the presidency has waned. There is deep concern, to be sure. But the Obama strategy has lost the consent of the governed. Mr. Obama could protest that his swift and sudden fall from grace is no fault of his. He had been a blank slate, and the devotees had projected onto him their hopes and dreams. His victory had not been the triumph of policies he had enunciated in great detail. He had never run anything in his entire life. He had a scant public record, but oddly this worked to his advantage. If he was going to begin the world anew, it was better that he knew little about the machinery of government.
Gary Edwards

Flimsy Treasury Auctions Signal the USA Is Heading For A Debt Crisis - 0 views

www.google.com/...view

obammunism obamanomics financial-crisis unsustainable-debt banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Apr 10 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 09 Apr 10
     
    excerpts:  With a $3.83 trillion budget, a $12.3 trillion federal government debt, a $1.35 trillion 2010 budget deficit and $63 trillion in unfunded liabilities, the fiscal condition of the US has come into question and foreign interest in US Treasuries has declined.  In late March, it was reported that the 10-year US Treasury Note yield had risen 30 basis points and that foreign holders of 10-year Notes were selling in record numbers. It seems unlikely that direct bidders within the US can compensate indefinitely, or to an unlimited extent, for falling foreign demand.  Commenting on the ambitious spending plans of the US federal government, Zhu Min, Deputy Governor of the People's Bank of China said in December 2009 that "the world does not have so much money to buy more US Treasuries." It would certainly be unreasonable for the US federal government and Federal Reserve to assume that ambitious deficit spending and ongoing quantitative easing (QE) would have no cumulative impact on US Treasury auctions.  If there is a limit to foreign appetite for US debt, to foreign capacity to lend to the US, or to international tolerance for US dollar devaluation, the US government and Federal Reserve seem determined to find it. It seems unlikely that direct bidders within the US can compensate indefinitely, or to an unlimited extent, for falling foreign demand.  Commenting on the ambitious spending plans of the US federal government, Zhu Min, Deputy Governor of the People's Bank of China said in December 2009 that "the world does not have so much money to buy more US Treasuries." It would certainly be unreasonable for the US federal government and Federal Reserve to assume that ambitious deficit spending and ongoing quantitative easing (QE) would have no cumulative impact on US Treasury auctions.  If there is a limit to foreign appetite for US debt, to foreign capacity to lend to the US, or to international tolerance for US dollar devaluation, the US government and Feder
Gary Edwards

The Gold Report - Porter Stansberry: Bumpy Road Ahead; Go for Blue Chips and Gold - 0 views

theaureport.com/8182

financial-collapse porter-stansberry

shared by Gary Edwards on 10 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 10 Feb 11
     
    Wow.  Porter is one of those people who actually puts their money where their mouth is.  His record of success is extraordinary.  This time though he is sounding an alarm the world should listen to.  The politicians and banksters have taken us down a road of no return, and finally, the facts are clear.  The storm has started. Porter Stansberry: When I talk to people, when I talk to news commentators, when I do interviews, when I talk to investors, when I go to investment conferences, when I talk to very well-known hedge fund managers. . .all of these people have some idea that things are going wrong. Lots of them say they're worried about being on the verge of a big crisis. I think we're in one. So, I ask them, rhetorically, what do they have to see in the markets before they realize the crisis is underway? How high does the price of gold have to go? How far do Treasury bonds and muni bonds have to fall? How far does the dollar have to decline on a trade-weighted basis? How high does unemployment have to go? How big do the fiscal deficits have to grow? They don't have any answers to those questions because all of the thresholds have been violated already. Two years ago, no one would've thought it possible for the muni bond market and the Treasury bond market to both fall as much as they have fallen in the last six weeks at the same time. That just didn't happen ever before.
Gary Edwards

The 25 Billion Dollar Secret: The NY Fed, Goldman & The AIG Cover-Up (GS, AIG) - 1 views

www.businessinsider.com/n-and-the-aig-cover-up-2009-11

obama-socialism financial-crisis financial-oligarchs bankers-suck banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 07 Nov 09 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 07 Nov 09
     
    WOW!  Everyday brings new revelations.  We've been robbed! excerpt:  Now we know: Geithner and Friedman interceded on behalf of Goldman and Wall Street (Merrill received $6.2 billion, Societe General - a whopping $16.5 billion) to deliver a stealth bailout, one that wouldn't need Congressional approval, and even better wouldn't require the counterparties to pay any of it back NOR would it require that they issue shares, warrants or any other instrument to AIG (taxpayers) in return for more than $32 billion in free money. In any other time, a sitting Treasury Secretary who interceded on behalf of Wall Street to screw taxpayers out of tens of billions, would not be sitting long.  But Democrats control both the House and Senate, so there are no investiagtions (Issa's letter aside).  Traditional media is content not to rock the boat for President Banks Obama lest they be shunned by their peers, and ultimately, 99% of TV and print journalists don't understand the issues well enough to complain with any conviciton, especially against the merry backdrop of the Dow rising and their deflated 401ks beginning to show life. They fall prey to fear and weakly submit to duplicitous hyperbole (Paulson threatening martial law and blood in the streets), when they should instead be consulting with the objective, critical voices who foresaw the crisis and were prepared with alternative solutions when it finally came (Stiglitz said instead of TARP, create new banks). A pox on Congress, President Banks Obama, Bush, Paulson, Friedman, Bernanke and Geithner (plus Greenspan and Rubin).  You may have gotten away with it for now, but I would wager there are a few million of us, roughly, who do understand everything that went down last Fall, and we're not amused.  We're not just going to let this one pass, and we will not stop filling the vast interweb with the truth (and our distaste and vitriol for your wretched souls) day after day, week after week, all over message boards and fin
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