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Paul Merrell

In U.S., Four in 10 Say Party Control of Congress Matters - 0 views

www.gallup.com/...-control-congress-matters.aspx

polls Repubs Dems Independs Auction-2014

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • Two months ahead of the midterm elections that may very well change the balance of power in Congress, four in 10 Americans say the specific party that controls Congress matters a great deal to them, while 29% say it matters a moderate amount and another 30% say it generally doesn't matter to them.
  • The 40% of national adults now highly concerned about control of Capitol Hill equals what Gallup found a month before the 2002 midterms, but is lower than the 49% seen in late October 2010. While the views of Democrats (including independents who lean Democratic) on this question have been steady across the three midterms -- roughly 45% each year have said the party in control mattered a great deal to them -- Republicans' concern has varied. Currently, 43% of Republicans (including Republican leaners) say party control matters a great deal. It was a whopping 61% in 2010, but that was up from 42% in 2002.
  • The 2002 and 2010 elections were favorable to Republicans, as the GOP retained majority control of the U.S. House of Representatives and regained control of the Senate in 2002, and recaptured control of the House in 2010 with an enormous seat gain. Thus, while rank-and-file Republicans' concern about party control is not nearly as high today as it was in 2010, when Democrats controlled both houses, it is comparable to 2002 -- which could suggest that conditions are still favorable for the GOP. Missing from this midterm trend, however, is 2006, which was a strong Democratic year. Therefore, it is not entirely clear how levels of concern on this question relate to each party's performance.
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  • The same poll asked respondents to identify the party currently holding a majority of seats in the U.S. Senate as well as in the U.S. House of Representatives. About half of Americans can correctly identify the majority party for each: 49% say the Democrats control the Senate, and 51% say the Republicans control the House. Somewhat fewer -- 36% -- can correctly identify the majority in both chambers, although this knowledge is somewhat higher, at 41%, among registered voters. Another 14% of Americans are aware that party control of Congress is divided, but match each party to the wrong chamber, believing Republicans control the Senate and Democrats control the House.
  • A relatively large subset of Americans, 28%, can correctly identify the majority party for only one chamber (while being wrong or unsure about the other), while 22% are either unsure about both, or name the wrong party for one chamber and are unsure about the other.
  • Americans who are knowledgeable about who controls each house of Congress are significantly more likely than others to say party control of Congress matters greatly to them: 55% of the well-informed group say this, versus about a third or less of those who can't properly identify party control. This highlights the divide in midterm politics between the politically concerned and informed subset of Americans -- a proportion similar to the typical midterm turnout rate, near 40% -- and the rest of the population that is less engaged politically.
  • For results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.
Paul Merrell

Intel Contractors Give Millions to Lawmakers Overseeing Government Surveillance | MapLi... - 0 views

maplight.org/73373

surveillance state contractors lobbying donations Congressional-committees

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • In response to documents leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden, the congressional committees in charge of overseeing the government's intelligence operations have come to the defense of the surveillance and data collection programs, and the agencies that administer them. The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence have rejected attempts to reform the programs while advancing legislation to bolster their legal status and providing a funding boost to the National Security Agency (NSA) to protect their secrecy. The U.S. intelligence budget for 2013 is $52.6 billion. According to the Washington Post, "top secret spending" is divided into four main spending categories: data collection, data analysis, management, facilities and support, and data processing and exploitation. Seventy percent of the intelligence budget is used to pay private contractors. Several of the companies receiving intelligence contracts are major donors to members of the intelligence committees, including L-3 Communications, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Honeywell International. Data: MapLight analysis of campaign contributions from political action committees (PACs) and individuals from the top 20 intelligence services contractors working with the Department of Defense, ranked by total value of contracts received, to members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Data source: Federal Election Commission from January 1, 2005 - October 4, 2013. Department of Defense intelligence services contracts source: USASpending (contract totals as of September 26, 2013)
  • In total, members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence have received $3.7 million from top intelligence services contractors since January 1, 2005. Members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence from Maryland -- home of NSA headquarters -- led the committees in money received from top intelligence contractors. Representative C.A. "Dutch" Ruppersberger, D-Md., is the largest recipient, having received $363,600 since January 1, 2005. Senator Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., is the second largest recipient, having received $210,150. Republican members of House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence have received $1.86 million since January 1, 2005, while Democrat members have received $1.82 million over the same time period. Members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence have received $2.2 million since January 1, 2005 from top intelligence services contractors, while members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence have received $1.5 million. Lockheed Martin has given $798,910 to members the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence since January 1, 2005, more than any of the other top 20 intelligence service contractors. Northrop Grumman has given $753,101, the second highest amount, and Honeywell has given $714,913, the third highest amount.
  • TOP 20 INTELLIGENCE SERVICES CONTRACTORS CONTRIBUTIONS TO CONGRESSIONAL INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEES
Paul Merrell

Asia Times Online :: Middle East News, Iraq, Iran current affairs - 2 views

www.atimes.com/...MID-03-090913.html

war & peace Syria Obama Pipelinestan U.S.-credibility

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Sep 13 - No Cached
Gary Edwards liked it
  • There is nothing tragic about the Obama presidency, capable of drawing the analytical talents of a neo-Plutarch or a neo-Gibbon. This is more like a Pirandello farce, a sort of Character in Search of An Author. Candidates to Author are well documented - from the Israel lobby to the House of Saud, from a select elite of the industrial-military-security complex to, most of all, the rarified banking/financial elite, the real Masters of the Universe. Poor Barack is just a cipher, a <a href='http://asianmedia.com/GAAN/www/delivery/ck.php?n=a9473bc7&cb=%n' target='_blank'><img src='http://asianmedia.com/GAAN/www/delivery/avw.php?zoneid=36&cb=%n&n=a9473bc7&ct0=%c' border='0' alt='' ></a> functionary of empire, whose ''deciding'' repertoire barely extends to what trademark smile to flash at the requisite photo-ops. There's nothing ''tragic'' about the fact that during this week - marking the 12th anniversary of 9/11 - this presidency will be fighting for its bombing ''credibility'' trying to seduce Republican hawks in the US Congress while most of the warmongers du jour happen to be Democrats.
  • Republicans are torn between supporting the president they love to hate and delivering him a stinging rebuke - as much as they are aching to follow the orders of their masters, ranging from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to military contractors. Once again, this is farce - caused by the fact that a man elected to finish off wars is eager to start yet another one. And once again without a United Nations vote. The White House ''strategy'' in this crucial negotiating week boils down to this; to convince the US Congress that the United States must start a war on Syria to punish an ''evil dictator'' - once again, as bad as Hitler - for gassing children. The evidence? It's ''indisputable''. Well, it's not ''irrefutable''. It's not even ''beyond-a-reasonable-doubt''. As Obama's Chief of Staff Denis McDonough admitted, with a straight face, it boils down to ''a quite strong common sense test, irrespective of the intelligence, that suggests that the regime carried this out''. So if this is really about ''common sense'', the president is obviously not being shown by his close coterie of sycophants this compendium of common sense, compiled by a group of top, extremely credible former US intelligence officials, which debunks all the ''evidence'' as flawed beyond belief. To evoke a farce from 12 years ago, this clearly seems to be a case of ''facts being fixed around the policy''.
  • The Arab street doesn't buy it because they clearly see through the hypocrisy; the desperate rush to ''punish'' the Bashar al-Assad government in Syria while justifying everything the apartheid state of Israel perpetrates in occupied Palestine. The Muslim world doesn't buy it because it clearly sees the demonization only applies to Muslims - from Arafat to bin Laden to Saddam to Gaddafi and now Assad. It would never apply to the military junta in Myanmar, which was clever enough to engineer an ''opening''; the next day Westerners were lining up to kiss the hem of Burmese longyis. It would never apply to the Islam Karimov dictatorship in Uzbekistan because ''we'' always need to seduce him as one of our bastards away from Russia and China. It eventually applies, on and off, to the Kim dynasty in North Korea, but with no consequences - because these are badass Asians who can actually respond to an US attack. Informed public opinion across the developing world does not buy it because they clearly see, examining the historical record, that Washington would never really be bothered with the sorry spectacle of Arabs killing Arabs, or Muslims killing Muslims, non-stop. The 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war is a prime piece of evidence.
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  • Then there's the ''credibility'' farce. The Obama administration has convoluted the whole world in its own self-spun net, insisting that the responsibility for the ''red line'' recklessly drawn by the president is in fact global. Yet the pesky ''world'' is not buying it.
  • At the Group of 20 summit last week, the BRICS group of emerging powers - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - as well as Indonesia and Argentina, clearly stressed that a war on Syria without UN Security Council approval would qualify Obama as a war criminal. Even among the European poodles ''support'' for the White House is extremely qualified. Germany's Angela Merkel and even France's attack dog Francois Hollande said the primacy is with the UN. The European Union as a whole wants a political solution. It's enlightening to remember that the EU in Brussels can issue arrest warrants for heads of EU governments guilty of war crimes. Someone in Paris must have warned attack dog Hollande that he would not welcome the prospect of slammer time. ''Evil'' as a political category is something worthy of the brain dead. The key question now revolves around the axis of warmongers - Washington, Israel and the House of Saud. Will the Israel lobby, the more discreet but no less powerful Saudi lobby, and the Return of the Living Dead neo-cons convince the US Congress to fight their war?
  • And then there's the curioser and curioser case of al-Qaeda - essentially the Arabic denomination for a CIA database of US-Pakistani-Saudi trained mujahideen during the 1980s: the oh so convenient transnational bogeyman that ''legitimized'' the Global War On Terror (GWOT) of the George W Bush years; the ''opening'' for al-Qaeda to move to Iraq; and now, no middle men; the CIA and the Obama administration fighting side-by-side with al-Qaeda in Syria. No wonder the denomination ''al-CIAeda'' has gone viral. With farce after farce after farce piling up in their own Tower of Babel, the much-vaunted ''US credibility'' is in itself the biggest farce of all. Politically, no one knows how the vacuum will be filled. It won't be via the UN. It won't be via the BRICS. It won't be via the G-20 - which is seriously divided; at least new multipolar players are carrying way more weight than US poodles. Much would be made to restore ''US credibility'' if the Obama administration had the balls to force both the House of Saud and Qatar (''300 people and a TV station'', in the epic definition of Saudi Arabia's Prince Bandar Sultan - aka Bandar Bush) to end once and for all their weaponizing of hardcore ''rebels'' and ultimately hardcore jihadis, and accept Iran in the negotiating table for a real Geneva II peace process in Syria. It won't happen because this bypasses farce. Once again; helpless Barack is just a paperboy. The plutocrats in charge are getting extremely nervous. The system is melting - and they need to act fast.
  • They need a Syria as docile as the Arab petro-monarchies. They want to hit Russia bad - and then discuss missile defense and Russian influence in Eastern Europe from a position of force. They want to hit Iran bad - and then continue to issue ultimatums from a position of force. They want to facilitate yet another Israeli attempt to capture southern Lebanon (it's the water, stupid). They want a monster gas pipeline from Qatar for European customers bypassing Iran and Syria as well as Gazprom. Most of all, this is all about control of natural resources and channels of distribution. These are real motives - and they have nothing to do with farce. Farce is only deployed to kill any possibility of real diplomacy and real political discussion. Farce is a theatrical mask - as in ''humanitarian'' imperialism - the ''acceptable'' version of the Dick Cheney-run years. It's as if Dick Cheney had never left the building; paperboy Barack is Dick Cheney with a ''human'' face. The only good outcome in this multi-sorrowful tale is that the real ''international community'', all around the world, has seen the naked Emperor in all its (farcical) glory.
  • Paul Merrell on 12 Sep 13
     
    What can I say? The iconoclastic Pepe Escobar strikes again. 
  • Gary Edwards on 12 Sep 13
     
    Outstanding article Paul. Wow! Watching the 911 link now. But here's one for you: Massimo Mazzucco's new 5-hour documentary "September 11- The New Pearl Harbor" summarizes 12 years of public debate on 9-11, looking at the events from all sides. Watch a trailer for the film here: http://goo.gl/M5c0dj Full five hours available here: http://www.luogocomune.net/site/modules/sections/index.php?op=viewarticle&artid=167 I listened to a two hour interview with Massimo last night. Awesome stuff.
  • Paul Merrell on 13 Sep 13
     
    A 5-hour documentary will have to wait for tomorrow. I'm about 7 hours away from a deadline for the current development cycle's Help file. :-) I do think Pepe is a off on a couple of details in this article. The Neocons were mostly silent on this one and Rumsfeld came out against the intervention, saying that Obama hadn't made a valid case for war. That's most likely because the Neocons are joined at the hip with Israeli government and that government is a house divided this time around, with only factions supporting the military strike. The current thinking in Tel Aviv/Jerusalem is, in line with the Israeli right's long term strategy, that it's just fine with them to have Muslims running around killing each other in Syria. That long-term strategy is to destabilize Israel's Arab neighbor states while Israel builds its economic empire and military hegemony in the region. Israeli government isn't exactly thrilled by the prospect of Obama delivering fulfillment of the Saudi goal of transforming Syria from a secular state into a non-secular Islamic state run by Wahabi extremists. Such a state, armed to the teeth by the U.S. and/or the Saudi-Qatari zillionaires could be very bad news for Israel. Notably, the very strongest case thus far that the August 21 chemical attack was conducted by the opposition forces with the U.S. and Syria in on it to create a false flag attack, has been delivered in installments by Yossef Bodansky, an Israeli-American uber-scholar of Islamic "terrorism" and Soviet/Russian weaponry who is incapable of criticising Israel's decades-long terrorism inflicted on the Palestinian people and Israel's continuing unlawful occupation of Palestine plus parts of Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. Bodanysky sits at the center of an intelligence web of intelligence professionals from nations worried about Islamic "terrorism." In other words, he's extremely pro-Israeli and to boot, very close to Mossad and Israel's IDF intelligence forces. Israel's AIPAC lobby d
Gary Edwards

Generals conclude Obama backed al-Qaida - 0 views

www.wnd.com/...conclude-obama-backed-al-qaida

Benghazi

shared by Gary Edwards on 13 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 13 Mar 15
     
    Petrodollars. Obama has lost Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Yemen to Al-Queda / Muslim Brotherhood extremists. He has nearly lost Egypt and Syria. They hang by a thread. We could see this as an Islamic revolution trying to overtake the despots that have ruled the middle East since the WWI break up of the Ottoman Empire, and shamelessly enriched themselves in petrodollars in the process. Or, we could look at this as religious war between Sunni and Shiite Islamic factions, with Iran leading the Shiites, and the Saudis leading the Sunnis. Except, that divide doesn't seem to gel with the idea of a Shiite Muslim Brotherhood alliance with a Sunni Al-Queda. For sure though, Iran has taken over the formerly Sunni led Iraq and is now executing any and all Sunni rebels. Including all of Saddam Hussein's Revolutionary Guard members now fighting in northern Irag and Syria as ISIL. With the help, air cover and weapons provided by Obama, the Muslim Brotherhood has taken over Libya, and nearly took Egypt. The only way of looking at this mess and making sense of it is through the lens of petrodollars and pipelines. Gadafi, Saddam Husein, the Shah of Iran, and Bashir in Syria all have one thing in common: they were selling oil and accepting payment in something other than petrodollars. They were building pipelines for the shipment of non petrodollar oil. I don't expect Iraq or Lybian oil to ever return to market. Civil war will keep that oil in the ground; making the petrodollar bankers and oligarchs very very wealthy, and the USA-NATO military industrial complex very busy profiting from the sale of war making machinery. ..................................... "The Obama White House and the State Department under the management of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton "changed sides in the war on terror" in 2011 by implementing a policy of facilitating the delivery of weapons to the al-Qaida-dominated rebel militias in Libya attempting to oust Moammar Gadhafi from powe
Joseph Skues

Why capitalism can't meet human needs - 0 views

www.workers.org/socialism

jobs capitalism OVERPRODUCTION

shared by Joseph Skues on 14 Aug 10 - Cached
  • This crisis began when the housing bubble burst. Capitalist banks were lending money to profit-seeking real estate developers to build houses. The same banks were lending money to mortgage companies to make as many loans as they could. The goal was to boost profits. Soon there were more houses than the workers and the middle class could buy. The prices of homes fell. Mortgages could not be refinanced. Workers could not pay the steep increases in interest rates built into their loans. Banks stopped lending. Millions of households went into foreclosure. Put simply, people became homeless because there were too many houses! Not too many houses that were needed or already here, but too many houses that can be sold at a profit. Furthermore, the workers who build homes and all the workers who make the things that go into homes are losing their jobs because these homes can no longer be sold at a profit. That is the essence of all the capitalist crises that have occurred since the first crisis in 1825. It is the crisis of overproduction.
  • Now the crisis of overproduction is sweeping the auto industry. From the auto industry and the housing industry it is spreading throughout the economy. The stock markets are plummeting because the financial bailouts, the pumping of trillions of dollars into the banks, cannot stop the capitalist economic crisis.
  • Profits consist of unpaid labor.
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  • Under the system of capitalist exploitation wealth flows to the top, and the level of inequality is obscene.
  • the super-rich who have all the levers of power in society, owned 34.3 percent of the wealth in 2004.
  • Racism and national oppression
  • distribution of wealth under capitalism
  • the median wealth (that is, savings and other assets) of households by race in 2004 was $140,700 for whites, $20,600 for African Americans and $18,600 for Latin@s
  • Oppression and economic discrimination also fall on women and lesbian, gay, bi and trans people under capitalism
  • sex and gender bias as a way to divide and conquer.
  • A system in which people are homeless because there are too many homes must go
  • How else could 1 percent of the population dominate the workers and oppressed
  • As the present crisis engulfs wider and wider sections of the workers, the potential for bringing about that unity is growing stronger.
  • The Pentagon is nothing more than an enforcer for U.S. capitalism
  • The growing witch-hunt against undocumented workers has the same poisonous, divisive goal.
  • in which workers are losing their jobs and being plunged into poverty because they have produced too much wealth
  • which cannot provide jobs and education but imprisons 2.4 million people
  • majority of them Black and Latin@, is bankrupt
  • where production takes place for human need, not for profit. The class that produces the wealth, the multinational working class, should own and distribute that wealth.
  • Trillions of dollars are now being used to bail out the banks and fund the Pentagon under capitalism. Under socialism, that money would guarantee that everyone would have a decent job and income, free health care, affordable housing, free education, low-cost transportation, healthy, reasonably priced food and much more. The well-being of the multinational working class would be the goal of society, not their exploitation as it is under capitalism.
Paul Merrell

Netanyahu-Mossad Split Divides U.S. Congress on Iran Sanctions - Bloomberg View - 0 views

www.bloombergview.com/...u-s-congress-on-iran-sanctions

war & peace Iranian-nukes-myth sanctions legislation

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • The Israeli intelligence agency Mossad has broken ranks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, telling U.S. officials and lawmakers that a new Iran sanctions bill in the U.S. Congress would tank the Iran nuclear negotiations. Already, the Barack Obama administration and some leading Republican senators are using the Israeli internal disagreement to undermine support for the bill, authored by Republican Mark Kirk and Democrat Robert Menendez, which would enact new sanctions if current negotiations falter. Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee  -- supported by Republican Senators Lindsay Graham and John McCain -- is pushing for his own legislation on the Iran nuclear deal, which doesn't contain sanctions but would require that the Senate vote on any pact that is agreed upon in Geneva. The White House is opposed to both the Kirk-Menendez bill and the Corker bill; it doesn't want Congress to meddle at all in the delicate multilateral diplomacy with Iran.
  • Israeli intelligence officials have been briefing both Obama administration officials and visiting U.S. senators about their concerns on the Kirk-Menendez bill, which would increase sanctions on Iran only if the Iranian government can't strike a deal with the so-called P5+1 countries by a June 30 deadline or fails to live up to its commitments. Meanwhile, the Israeli prime minister’s office has been supporting the Kirk-Menendez bill, as does the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, ahead of what will be a major foreign policy confrontation between the executive and legislative branches of the U.S. government in coming weeks. Evidence of the Israeli rift surfaced Wednesday when Secretary of State John Kerry said that an unnamed Israeli intelligence official had said the new sanctions bill would be “like throwing a grenade into the process.” But an initial warning from Israeli Mossad leaders was also delivered last week in Israel to a Congressional delegation -- including Corker, Graham, McCain and fellow Republican John Barrasso; Democratic Senators Joe Donnelly and Tim Kaine; and independent Angus King -- according to lawmakers who were present and staff members who were briefed on the exchange. When Menendez (who was not on the trip) heard about the briefing, he quickly phoned Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer to seek clarification. Barrasso told us Tuesday that different parts of the Israeli government told the delegation different things. “We met with a number of government officials from many different parts of the government. There’s not a uniform view there,” he said.
  • Menendez is so livid at the administration, he decried its efforts to avert Congressional action on Iran at the hearing, telling Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken: “You know, I have to be honest with you, the more I hear from the administration in its quotes, the more it sounds like talking points that come straight out of Tehran.” Tuesday night, Obama threatened to veto the Kirk-Menendez bill if it passes Congress. Wednesday morning, House Speaker John Boehner responded by announcing that Netanyahu has accepted his invitation to address a joint session of Congress on Feb. 11, just as Congress is likely to be embroiled in a legislative fight over both bills. Boehner told fellow Republicans that he was specifically inviting Netanyahu to address the threat posed by radical Islam and Iran. Netanyahu is expected to deliver full-throated support for sanctions. The administration is upset that Netanyahu accepted Boehner’s invitation without notifying them, the latest indication of the poor relationship between the Israeli government and the White House. Two senior U.S. officials tell us that the Mossad has also shared its view with the administration that if legislation that imposed a trigger leading to future sanctions on Iran was signed into law, it would cause the talks to collapse.
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  • The Israeli view shared with Corker and other senators also mirrors the assessment from the U.S. intelligence community. “We’ve had a standing assessment on this,” one senior administration official told us. “We haven’t run the new Kirk-Menendez bill through the process, but the point is that any bill that triggers sanctions would collapse the talks. That’s what the assessment is.” Another intelligence official said that the Israelis had come to the same conclusion.  This is not the first time Israel’s Mossad has been at odds with Netanyahu on Iran. In December 2010, former Mossad chief Meir Dagan told Israeli reporters that he had openly opposed an order from Netanyahu to prepare a military attack on Iran. At the time, Obama was also working to persuade the Israeli prime minister to hold off on attacking Iran. Iranian diplomats have also routinely threatened to leave the talks if new sanctions were imposed. Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, at the end of December said new sanctions would “violate the spirit” of the negotiations that have been going on for more than a year now. Despite the intelligence analyses, however, predicting Iranian behavior is no exact science. There is still much about Iran’s program that U.S. spies do not know. In November, former CIA director Michael Hayden told Congress that U.S. intelligence assessments do not have a “complete picture” of the extent of Iran’s nuclear program.
  • On Capitol Hill, the fight over how to proceed against the administration is far from over. The Senate Banking Committee was supposed to mark up the Kirk-Menendez bill on Thursday, but the session was delayed by one week. Some Senate staffers told us that Democrats asked for the delay because Menendez wants to get more Democrats to commit to his bill before he goes public. A main pitch of the Kirk-Menendez bill is that is could garner bipartisan -- even perhaps veto-proof -- support in the face of Obama's disapproval. So far, most Democrats have stayed on the sidelines, especially after Obama and Menendez got into a heated argument over the bill at last week’s private Democratic retreat. Kirk and Menendez softened their proposal to make it more palatable to Democrats, by giving the president more flexibility than the previous version and providing the administration waivers after the fact. Corker, Graham and McCain are trying to woo Democrats to their side by arguing that avoiding sanctions language altogether and simply mandating that the Senate get a vote is a more bipartisan approach. There are only a handful of Democrats that will support any Iran bill, so competition for these votes is heated.
  • Update, 12 p.m. Jan. 22:  The Israeli prime minister's office released a statement Thursday about Mossad chairman Tamir Pardo’s meeting with the U.S. Senate delegation last weekend. The statement said Pardo didn’t oppose new sanctions on Iran but acknowledged that Pardo used the term “hand grenade” to describe the effect new sanctions would have on the nuclear negotiations with Iran. “He used this term to describe the possibility of creating a temporary breakdown in the talks, at the end of which the negotiations will be restarted under better conditions,” the statement said. “The Mossad chairman explicitly pointed out that the agreement that is being reached with Iran is bad, and may lead to a regional arms race.”
  • Paul Merrell on 22 Jan 15
     
    My advice to Obama: tell John Kerry  to change Netanyahu's visa to impose travel restrictions, allowing him to travel only  to New York City  (where the U.N. is located). within the U.S. The U.S. did that routinely with Soviet Union officials during the Cold War days. That will teach Netanyahu a lesson he will remember, that  in the U.S. the Executive Branch has control of diplomatic relations. Netanyahu has already faced heavy criticism in Israel for straining relations with Obama. He's currently facing heavy criticism for forcing his way  into the Charlie Hebdo march in Paris after President Hollande had specifically requested that he not take part and for having the idocy to tell French Jews that they could never have a home if they did not emigrate to Israel. If  the Obama Administration makes a public issue out of Netanyahu's latest affront, it might well cost Netanyahu re-eloection as Prime Minister next month. That decision lies in the hands of a single Israeli official who will choose which party is to try to form a new ruling coalition of parties. Mr. Netanyahu's Likud Party has no guarantee of getting that nod.  
Paul Merrell

Pelosi says Iran deal has the votes, and Podhoretz urges Israel to attack Iran - Mondow... - 0 views

mondoweiss.net/...pelosi-podhoretz-israel

war & peace Iranian-nukes-myth Iran-negotiations Congress Pelosi

shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Aug 15 - No Cached
  •      House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is “confident” that the House would be able to uphold the president’s veto of a potential Republican-backed bill to kill the deal. “More and more of them have confirmed to me that they will be there to sustain the veto,” Pelosi said at her weekly press conference, referring to members of the Democratic caucus. “They’ve done this not blindly but thoroughly,” as they examined the agreement over recent weeks.
  • House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is “confident” that the House would be able to uphold the president’s veto of a potential Republican-backed bill to kill the deal. “More and more of them have confirmed to me that they will be there to sustain the veto,” Pelosi said at her weekly press conference, referring to members of the Democratic caucus. “They’ve done this not blindly but thoroughly,” as they examined the agreement over recent weeks.
  • The fear among major Jewish organizations that they will be drawn into the domestic U.S. political fray over the nuclear deal is prominent in statements released by both the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the American Jewish Committee (AJC). Both organizations have refrained from strongly attacking the nuclear agreement and defining it as a disaster, instead leading the public to believe that they instead have misgivings over large parts of the agreement, and that they hope that Congress will review it in depth. The U.S. Reform movement, too, issued a convoluted statement that fell short of taking a decisive stance on the agreement. Norman Podhoretz has never had this problem. He became a neoconservative because he wanted a big U.S. military budget to support Israel. Now he sees the writing on the wall and calls for an Israeli attack on Iran, in Wall Street Journal: I remain convinced that containment is impossible, from which it follows that the two choices before us are not war vs. containment but a conventional war now or a nuclear war later.
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  • Israelis are waking up to their abandonment by the majority of US Jewry. Sort of the anti-67 War. Haaretz says the lobby is in crisis. Boldface mine: Israel’s consul general in Philadelphia, Yaron Sideman, warned Jerusalem this week that the American Jewish community is divided over the nuclear agreement with Iran, and does not stand united behind Israel in the controversy. The problem is that Israel has burned up its influence over the White House, and US Jews don’t want to be exposed as Israel supporters: a CEO of one of the Jewish federations in the Philadelphia region told [Sideman] that in his view, Israel’s status vis-à-vis the Obama administration is at a low point, which could adversely affect the Jewish community. He cited the Jewish leader telling him, “In the next year and a half (until the end of President Barack Obama’s term) Israel’s and the Jewish communities’ maneuvering space regarding advancing Israel’s interests is extremely limited to non existent.” Even those who oppose the deal are reluctant to come forward because they will be seen to be advancing Israel’s interest over the U.S. interest. Nice play, Netanyahu.
  • Given how very unlikely it is that President Obama, despite his all-options-on-the-table protestations to the contrary, would ever take military action, the only hope rests with Israel. If, then, Israel fails to strike now, Iran will get the bomb. And when it does, the Israelis will be forced to decide whether to wait for a nuclear attack and then to retaliate out of the rubble, or to pre-empt with a nuclear strike of their own. But the Iranians will be faced with the same dilemma. Under these unprecedentedly hair-trigger circumstances, it will take no time before one of them tries to beat the other to the punch. And so my counsel to proponents of the new consensus is to consider the unspeakable horrors that would then be visited not just on Israel and Iran but on the entire region and beyond. The destruction would be far worse than any imaginable consequences of an Israeli conventional strike today when there is still a chance to put at least a temporary halt, and conceivably even a permanent one, to the relentless Iranian quest for the bomb
  • Oh and here is the ultimate chutzpah, right up there with killing your parents and asking for a light sentence because you’re an orphan. In a call to Israel supporters, Bret Stephens says that lawmakers should kill the Iran deal because if they support it, it will haunt them the same way voting for the Iraq war has haunted them. Stephens pushed that disastrous war. Oh and Stephens threatens their financial contributions, too. Glenn Greenwald has the clip:
Paul Merrell

Saudi Arabia warns of shift away from U.S. over Syria, Iran | Reuters - 1 views

www.reuters.com/...audi-usa-idUSBRE99L0K120131022

shared by Paul Merrell on 23 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • (Reuters) - Upset at President Barack Obama's policies on Iran and Syria, members of Saudi Arabia's ruling family are threatening a rift with the United States that could take the alliance between Washington and the kingdom to its lowest point in years. Saudi Arabia's intelligence chief is vowing that the kingdom will make a "major shift" in relations with the United States to protest perceived American inaction over Syria's civil war as well as recent U.S. overtures to Iran, a source close to Saudi policy said on Tuesday.Prince Bandar bin Sultan told European diplomats that the United States had failed to act effectively against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, was growing closer to Tehran, and had failed to back Saudi support for Bahrain when it crushed an anti-government revolt in 2011, the source said."The shift away from the U.S. is a major one," the source close to Saudi policy said. "Saudi doesn't want to find itself any longer in a situation where it is dependent."It was not immediately clear whether the reported statements by Prince Bandar, who was the Saudi ambassador to Washington for 22 years, had the full backing of King Abdullah.
  • Saudi Arabia's intelligence chief is vowing that the kingdom will make a "major shift" in relations with the United States to protest perceived American inaction over Syria's civil war as well as recent U.S. overtures to Iran, a source close to Saudi policy said on Tuesday.Prince Bandar bin Sultan told European diplomats that the United States had failed to act effectively against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, was growing closer to Tehran, and had failed to back Saudi support for Bahrain when it crushed an anti-government revolt in 2011, the source said."The shift away from the U.S. is a major one," the source close to Saudi policy said. "Saudi doesn't want to find itself any longer in a situation where it is dependent."It was not immediately clear whether the reported statements by Prince Bandar, who was the Saudi ambassador to Washington for 22 years, had the full backing of King Abdullah.The growing breach between the United States and Saudi Arabia was also on display in Washington, where another senior Saudi prince criticized Obama's Middle East policies, accusing him of "dithering" on Syria and Israeli-Palestinian peace.
  • In unusually blunt public remarks, Prince Turki al-Faisal called Obama's policies in Syria "lamentable" and ridiculed a U.S.-Russian deal to eliminate Assad's chemical weapons. He suggested it was a ruse to let Obama avoid military action in Syria."The current charade of international control over Bashar's chemical arsenal would be funny if it were not so blatantly perfidious. And designed not only to give Mr. Obama an opportunity to back down (from military strikes), but also to help Assad to butcher his people," said Prince Turki, a member of the Saudi royal family and former director of Saudi intelligence.The United States and Saudi Arabia have been allies since the kingdom was declared in 1932, giving Riyadh a powerful military protector and Washington secure oil supplies.The Saudi criticism came days after the 40th anniversary of the October 1973 Arab oil embargo imposed to punish the West for supporting Israel in the Yom Kippur war.That was one of the low points in U.S.-Saudi ties, which were also badly shaken by the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. Most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi nationals.
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  • Saudi Arabia gave a clear sign of its displeasure over Obama's foreign policy last week when it rejected a coveted two-year term on the U.N. Security Council in a display of anger over the failure of the international community to end the war in Syria and act on other Middle East issues.Prince Turki indicated that Saudi Arabia will not reverse that decision, which he said was a result of the Security Council's failure to stop Assad and implement its own decision on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."There is nothing whimsical about the decision to forego membership of the Security Council. It is based on the ineffectual experience of that body," he said in a speech to the Washington-based National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations.
  • Prince Bandar is seen as a foreign policy hawk, especially on Iran. The Sunni Muslim kingdom's rivalry with Shi'ite Iran, an ally of Syria, has amplified sectarian tensions across the Middle East.A son of the late defense minister and crown prince, Prince Sultan, and a protégé of the late King Fahd, he fell from favor with King Abdullah after clashing on foreign policy in 2005.But he was called in from the cold last year with a mandate to bring down Assad, diplomats in the Gulf say. Over the past year, he has led Saudi efforts to bring arms and other aid to Syrian rebels."Prince Bandar told diplomats that he plans to limit interaction with the U.S.," the source close to Saudi policy said."This happens after the U.S. failed to take any effective action on Syria and Palestine. Relations with the U.S. have been deteriorating for a while, as Saudi feels that the U.S. is growing closer with Iran and the U.S. also failed to support Saudi during the Bahrain uprising," the source said.The source declined to provide more details of Bandar's talks with the diplomats, which took place in the past few days.
  • But he suggested that the planned change in ties between the energy superpower and the United States would have wide-ranging consequences, including on arms purchases and oil sales.Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter, ploughs much of its earnings back into U.S. assets. Most of the Saudi central bank's net foreign assets of $690 billion are thought to be denominated in dollars, much of them in U.S. Treasury bonds."All options are on the table now, and for sure there will be some impact," the Saudi source said.He said there would be no further coordination with the United States over the war in Syria, where the Saudis have armed and financed rebel groups fighting Assad.The kingdom has informed the United States of its actions in Syria, and diplomats say it has respected U.S. requests not to supply the groups with advanced weaponry that the West fears could fall into the hands of al Qaeda-aligned groups.Saudi anger boiled over after Washington refrained from military strikes in response to a poison gas attack in Damascus in August when Assad agreed to give up his chemical weapons arsenal.
  • Paul Merrell on 23 Oct 13
     
    This lengthy article from Reuters deserves attention. The peace initiatives by Russia/Syria and by Iran are forcing realignment of foreign policies throughout the Mideast. The U.S. is no longer perceived as being on the side of only Sunni Muslim states. One of the most visible changes (after cancellation of the U.S. military strike on Syria) is a go-it-alone declaration by the House of Saud that parallels the stance taken by Israel's ruling right-wing coalition. Both Israel and the Saudis had very successfully isolated the U.S. from the non-Sunni Arab nations, fueling and deepening a religious divide within the Arab nations. It remains to be seen whether the declarations by the House of Saud and Bibi Netanyahu will translate into effective military action against Iran and Syria, although Saudi money and weapons will continue to flow into Syria for the foreseeable future. Both nations will continue attempts to undo the looming Iran-U.S. thaw in relations. Predictably, the Zionist/Neocon hawks in Congress are pushing legislation to put a big freeze back on the Iran-U.S. thaw in relations, including a bill to stiffen economic sanctions on Iran and authorize military strikes against Syria. But that legislation seems to be going nowhere; the mood of the U.S. population (and thus of those up for election next year) has shifted to profoundly anti-war, at least as applied to Syria and Iran. It would be ironic if Russia/Syria and Iran's peace initiatives actually resulted in a lasting U.S. shift away from the Zionist/Neocon strategy to destabilize all of Israel's neighboring states except Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan (those three have already been destabilized and swept into Israel's influence). If so, Obama might yet leave a positive legacy.
Paul Merrell

Putin signs "undesirable NGOs" Bill into Law | nsnbc international - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...desirable-ngos-bill-into-law-2

war & peace Russia legislation NGOs U.S.-foreign-policy color-revolutions Dark-State

shared by Paul Merrell on 25 May 15 - No Cached
  • Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a bill, enabling the designation of foreign and foreign-funded NGOs as undesirables after the bill passed both the Lower and Upper House of Parliament.
  • The bill authorizes the designation of foreign and foreign funded non-profit as well as for profit NGOs as “undesirables” on grounds of “national security. The bill passed the second reading in Russia’s Lower House of Parliament (State Duma), last week and was approved by the Upper House of Parliament, the Federation Council. The bill had been proposed by legislators of the governing United Russia party of President Vladimir Putin, The passing of the bill in both houses of parliament and the signing of the bill by Putin was no surprise since United Russia has a majority in both chambers. The bill has been heavily criticized by foreign, particularly western media, western politicians and primarily western-based or funded NGOs, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, among many others. One of the NGOs that is certain to fall under the provisions of the bill is USAID.
  • he new law follows up on a law that was adopted in 2012 that obliged foreign-funded non-governmental organizations to register as “foreign agents”. The law provides for declaring foreigners and foreign-funded NGOs as“undesirable”. Persons who are violating the newly adopted law could face a fine up to 10,000 dollar to be paid in local currency and up to six years imprisonment. Supporters of the bill are referring to the risk that foreign-funded NGOs could pose to the Russian Federation’s national security while critics maintain that the wording of the legislation and especially the term “undesirable” is ambiguous and opens the floodgates for the abuse of the law to crack down on legal and legitimate dissent.
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  • While the wording and the use of “undesirable” is ambiguous and does pose legal problems as much as it opens the floodgates for the abuse of the legislation, there may be a good reason for keeping the wording ambiguous. Internationally acting NGOs have increasingly become “weaponized”; That is, that they have increasingly been utilized as tool for everything from supporting legitimate dissent to the organization of political violence and coup d’état. Another disturbing fact is that this pattern includes UN organizations such as the UN Interagency Framework Team for Preventive Action (Framework Team). Examples? Doctors Without Borders (MSF) played a key role in accusing the Syrian government for the use of chemical weapons, stating MSF sources. Later on the NGO had to admit that it had no staff in Damascus and exclusively relied on statements by “partners” in “rebel-held territories”.
  • Amnesty International for its part issued a report about alleged war crimes committed during NATO’s bombing of Libya in 2011. A 2012 report by Amnesty International claimed that Operation Unified Protector, authorized by UNSC Resolution 1973 has resulted in 55 documented cases of named civilian casualties, including 16 children and 14 women that were killed in air strikes in the capital Tripoli and the towns of Zliten, Majer, Sirte, and Brega. The low figure is utterly inconsistent with casualty figures provided by local NGOs as well as documented eyewitness reports. Two things are worth considering with regard to the Amnesty report. During the first night of the operation NATO forces launched over 100 cruise missiles into Tripoli alone.
  • The Director of Amnesty International at that time was Suzanne Nozzel, who also worked as adviser on U.S. government – NGO relations for the then U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
  • While Human Right Watch does, indeed, engage in justified human rights advocacy, it has also been engaged in issuing strongly biased reports, in politicizing that “representatives are denied entry to e.g. Egypt”, while failing to mention that proper visa procedures had not been followed, and so forth. The most disturbing NGO may, however, be the UN Interagency Framework Team for Preventive Action. The Framework Team is largely privately funded with George Soros as one of the primary sponsors. The NGO under UN cover is “coordinating UN, governmental and non-governmental initiatives”.
  • The UN organization could undoubtedly be useful but it has also been sharply criticized for “fanning the flames” of the inter-communal violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, and for its active role in creating rather than preventing ethnic and sectarian disputes and violence in Nepal. In both the case of Myanmar and in the case of Nepal it is easy to establish ties between the Framework Team and Western or Western allied intelligence services. Criticism of the ambiguous wording of the new Russian legislation is, in other words, as justified as criticism of NGOs who prostitute themselves and the best intentions of the members at their base as pawns in geopolitical chess-games.
  • Paul Merrell on 25 May 15
     
    More than understandable given the long history of the U.S. weaponizing NGOs in aid of its "color revolutions" strategy to overthrow governments in secular states and left-leaning democracies. The most recent examples are the successful U.S. coup in Ukraine and the thrice-failed coup attempts in Venezuela.  U.S. NGOs have been attempting to provoke such a coup in Russia for some time but have failed thus far because of Putin's immense popularity and a perhaps better-informed Russian public. The Russian people know they are under attack and have wisely closed ranks rather than falling for a divide-and-conquer strategy. Venezuela recently enacted similar legislation.  
Paul Merrell

Gallup: Congress' approval ratings 'sickly,' divided control a big factor - Politics Wi... - 0 views

www.miamiherald.com/...congress-approval-ratings.html

Congress polls approval ratings

shared by Paul Merrell on 28 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Congress’ approval ratings remain at historic lows--and because different parties run the Senate and House of Representatives, chances of the image improving aren’t good.That’s Gallup’s analysis after its new poll found 15 percent approve of how Congress is doing its job.“Divided control has contributed to Congress's sickly approval ratings, as it denies the Hill the usual reservoir of partisan support that traditionally comes with one-party control,” Gallup found. It noted Republicans and Democrats approve of Congress at similarly low levels. Democrats have a Senate majority, while Republicans control the House.
  • Reinforcing those views is floor action. “The parties in control of each chamber are pushing through legislative priorities their base supports,” Gallup found.Among them: The House Republican leadership's plan to file a lawsuit saying President Barack Obama overreached hhis authority, and the Senate plan to take a key procedural vote Wednesday to ease the impact of the Supreme Court’s June birth control rulig.The public isn’t pleased, Gallup said.“That so many advocate voting into office a completely new Congress is perhaps a sign of anti-incumbency fervor,” it found. “Others want to see bipartisan cooperation take over the Hill, an unlikely event as election-year agendas become front and center. This mixture of disapproval and disappointment that so many Americans feel toward Congress could produce unpredictable results this fall.”
Paul Merrell

Is Open-Ended Chaos the Desired US-Israeli Aim in the Middle East? » CounterP... - 0 views

www.counterpunch.org/...israeli-aim-in-the-middle-east

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy MENA destabilization divide-and-conquer

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • During the last week we have seen Sunni militias take control of ever-greater swathes of eastern Syria and western Iraq. In the mainstream media, the analysis of this emerging reality has been predictably idiotic, basically centering on whether: a) Obama is to blame for this for having removed US troops in compliance with the 2008 Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) negotiated and signed by Bush. b) Obama is “man enough” to putatively resolve the problem by going back into the country and killing more people and destroying whatever remains of the country’s infrastructure. This cynically manufactured discussion has generated a number of intelligent rejoinders on the margins of the mainstream media system. These essays, written by people such as Juan Cole, Robert Parry, Robert Fisk and Gary Leupp, do a fine job of explaining the US decisions that led to the present crisis, while simultaneously reminding us how everything occurring  today was readily foreseeable as far back as 2002.
  • What none of them do, however, is consider whether the chaos now enveloping the region might, in fact, be the desired aim of policy planners in Washington and Tel Aviv. Rather, each of these analysts presumes that the events unfolding in Syria and Iraq are undesired outcomes engendered by short-sighted decision-making at the highest levels of the US government over the last 12 years. Looking at the Bush and Obama foreign policy teams—no doubt the most shallow and intellectually lazy members of that guild to occupy White House in the years since World War II—it is easy to see how they might arrive at this conclusion. But perhaps an even more compelling reason for adopting this analytical posture is that it allows these men of clear progressive tendencies to maintain one of the more hallowed, if oft-unstated, beliefs of the Anglo-Saxon world view.
  • What is that? It is the idea that our engagements with the world outside our borders—unlike those of, say, the Russians and the Chinese—are motivated by a strongly felt, albeit often corrupted, desire to better the lives of those whose countries we invade. While this belief seems logical, if not downright self-evident within our own cultural system, it is frankly laughable to many, if not most, of the billions who have grown up outside of our moralizing echo chamber. What do they know that most of us do not know, or perhaps more accurately, do not care to admit?
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  • First, that we are an empire, and that all empires are, without exception, brutally and programmatically self-seeking. Second, that one of the prime goals of every empire is to foment ongoing internecine conflict in the territories whose resources and/or strategic outposts they covet. Third, that the most efficient way of sparking such open-ended internecine conflict is to brutally smash the target country’s social matrix and physical infrastructure. Fourth, that ongoing unrest has the additional perk of justifying the maintenance and expansion of the military machine that feeds the financial and political fortunes of the metropolitan elite. In short, what of the most of the world understands (and what even the most “prestigious” Anglo-Saxon analysts cannot seem to admit) is that divide and rule is about as close as it gets to a universal recourse the imperial game and that it is, therefore, as important to bear it in mind today as it was in the times of Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, the Spanish Conquistadors and the British Raj.
  • To those—and I suspect there are still many out there—for whom all this seems too neat or too conspiratorial, I would suggest a careful side-by side reading of: a) the “Clean Break” manifesto generated by the Jerusalem-based Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS) in 1996 and b) the “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” paper generated by The Project for a New American Century (PNAC) in 2000, a US group with deep personal and institutional links to the aforementioned Israeli think tank, and with the ascension of  George Bush Junior to the White House, to the most exclusive  sanctums of the US foreign policy apparatus.
  • To read the cold-blooded imperial reasoning in both of these documents—which speak, in the first case, quite openly of the need to destabilize the region so as to reshape Israel’s “strategic environment” and, in the second of the need to dramatically increase the number of US “forward bases” in the region—as I did twelve years ago, and to recognize its unmistakable relationship to the underlying aims of the wars then being started by the US in Afghanistan and Iraq, was a deeply disturbing experience. To do so now, after the US’s systematic destruction of Iraq and Libya—two notably oil-rich countries whose delicate ethnic and religious balances were well known to anyone in or out of government with more than passing interest in history—, and after the its carefully calibrated efforts to generate and maintain murderous and civilization-destroying stalemates in Syria and Egypt (something that is easily substantiated despite our media’s deafening silence on the subject), is downright blood-curdling.
  • And yet, it seems that for even very well-informed analysts, it is beyond the pale to raise the possibility that foreign policy elites in the US and Israel, like all virtually all the ambitious hegemons before them on the world stage, might have quite coldly and consciously fomented open-ended chaos in order to achieve their overlapping strategic objectives in this part of the world.
  • Paul Merrell on 17 Jun 14
     
    This is the most succinct distillation of U.S. (and Israeli) foreign policy in the Mideast and Northern Africa ("MENA") areas that I have read to date. And it's absolutely spot on. The only major portion omitted is the Israeli ambition to expand its territory drastically to encompass from the Nile River in Egypt to the Jordan River in Southwest Asia and eastward throughout the Arabian Peninsula, whilst becoming the empirical economic and military center of MENA.  
Paul Merrell

Obama will not meet US-bound Netanyahu - Yahoo News - 0 views

news.yahoo.com/rip-white-house-174947742.html

war & peace Iranian-nukes-myth Netanyahu Congress

shared by Paul Merrell on 23 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • US President Barack Obama has refused to meet Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who will make a controversial visit to the United States in early March as he fights for re-election.
  • It is a "matter of long-standing practice and principle" that the president does not meet foreign leaders engaged in an electoral campaign, a White House spokeswoman, Bernadette Meehan, said Thursday.Netanyahu will address a joint session of Congress in early March -- just a few weeks before Israelis go to the polls on March 17.But the focus of Netanyahu's address -- Iran -- as much as his timing is giving the White House heartburn.Obama's allies fear the trip could be used by Israel and by the US Republicans, who control Congress and issued the invitation, to undercut nuclear talks with Tehran just as they appear poised to bear fruit.
  • The White House initially gave an icy response to news of Netanyahu's trip, saying it had not been informed -- a break with protocol.Twenty-four hours later, the Obama administration announced that neither the president nor his Secretary of State John Kerry would meet Netanyahu.- Battle over new Iran sanctions -The Israeli prime minister -- and his Republican Congressional hosts -- have expressed deep skepticism about a brokered deal, believing Iran cannot be trusted to keep its side of the bargain. US lawmakers have even sketched plans to impose fresh sanctions on Iran, legislation Obama has said would wreck talks and which he has pledged to veto."The president has been clear about his opposition to Congress passing new legislation on Iran that could undermine our negotiations and divide the international community," said Meehan.
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  • Four European foreign policy chiefs issued a joint call in support of Obama's position Thursday."Introducing new hurdles at this critical stage of the negotiations," they wrote in the Washington Post, "would jeopardize our efforts at a critical juncture." Negotiators hope to have a framework deal in place by March 31, leaving the last technical details to be worked out by June 30.
  • Paul Merrell on 23 Jan 15
     
    I was hoping for something a bit stronger from the Obama administration. So the tail continues to wag the dog. Such is the relation of the American  and Israeli governments. 
Paul Merrell

Democrats' sympathy for Israel has crashed nearly 25 percent in last nine months -- Pew - 0 views

mondoweiss.net/...democrats-sympathy-crashed

polls U.S. sympathies Israel Palestine

shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • A new Pew Research Center poll from January 4-9 of American views on foreign policy shows that Democratic Party sympathies for Israel are crashing, down ten points in the last 9 months, from 43 percent to 33 percent. That’s a 23 percent crash. If this was the stock market, Israel would be considered a tanking stock. Liberal Democrats now sympathize with Palestinians over Israelis by two-to-one, while Democrats overall are now virtually tied in sympathies for Israel or Palestine, 33 to 31 respectively. While Republicans are overwhelmingly on Israel’s side. The gap of 41 points between parties in sympathies, for either Israel or the Palestinians, is at widest since 1978. Again, notice the numbers crashing for Israel among Dems: Nearly three-quarters of Republicans (74%) say they sympathize more with Israel than the Palestinians… Democrats are divided – 33% sympathize more with Israel, 31% more with the Palestinians, while 35% sympathize with neither, both or don’t express an opinion. While Republicans’ views of the Mideast conflict have changed little over the last few years, the share of Democrats sympathizing more with Israel has fallen 10 points since April 2016, when 43% said they sympathized more with Israel.
  • enjamin Netanyahu is driving the trend: Half of Republicans like him, but Democrats and Democratic leaners don’t care for him:  21% view [of Dems] Netanyahu favorably, while 45% have an unfavorable opinion and 34% do not express a view. Pew polled 1500 people, and it says Israel/Palestine is considered the eighth most threatening issue for the U.S. (after ISIS, cyberattacks, North Korea, Russian power and influence, climate change, Chinese power and influence, Iraqi and Syrian refugees). Democratic politicians who are bashing the U.N. Security Council vote on settlements? The public isn’t with them: The survey finds that the United Nations – which along with Israel has been a focal point of political debate since the election – is viewed positively by the public.  Currently, 62% view the United Nations favorably, while only half as many (31%) have an unfavorable opinion.
  • So the issue is dividing the Democratic Party, between liberals and moderates; and that means it is bound to be politicized, at last. During the Keith Ellison party chair campaign, and on into congressional races. Note to the base: House Democrats just voted overwhelmingly to condemn the president’s decision to abstain on the Security Council resolution that called all settlements, including of East Jerusalem, a flagrant violation of international law.
Paul Merrell

Trump, Kissinger and Ma playing on a crowded chessboard | Asia Times - 0 views

www.atimes.com/...-ma-playing-crowded-chessboard

geopolitics U.S.-foreign-policy China Russia Jack-Ma Kissinger Trump

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • And that brings us once again to Henry Kissinger, the putative dalang — puppet master — of Trump’s foreign policy. As leaked late last year in Germany’s Bild Zeitung newspaper, Kissinger has drafted a plan to officially recognize Crimea as part of Russia and lift the Obama administration’s economic sanctions.
  • The plan fits into Kissinger’s overall strategy — call it a traditional British Balance of Power, or Divide and Rule, approach — of breaking up the Eurasian front (Russia-China-Iran) that constitutes the real “threat” to what Mattis defines as the “established world order.” The strategy consists in seducing the alleged weaker top “threat” (Russia) away from the stronger (China), while keeping on antagonizing/harassing the third and weakest pole, Iran. Kissinger is certainly more sophisticated than predictable US Think Tankland in his attempt to dismember the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, one of key nodes of the Russia-China strategic partnership. The SCO has been on the go for a decade and a half now. Iran, an observer, will soon become a full member, as will India and Pakistan; and Turkey — after the failed coup against Erdogan — is being courted by Moscow. German analyst Peter Spengler adds a juicy teaser — if Kissinger’s “Metternichian approach would include some degree of ‘harmonization’ with Russia, how will a Trump presidency then manage to contain the re-engineered ally Germany?” After all, a key priority for sanctions-averse German industrialists is to vastly expand business with Russia.
  • Kissinger’s strategy essentially tweaks the early 1970s Trilateral Commission, largely advanced by his rival dalang Dr Zbigniew “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski, according to which geopolitics is to be managed by North America, Western Europe and Japan.
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  • The US deep state plutocracy never sleeps. Admitting both Russia and China, linked by a strategic partnership, as equal stakeholders in the “established world order” is anathema; that would imply the end of US hegemony. And that’s where the top Western would-be dalangs diverge, as they look for the most efficient Divide and Rule opening. Kissinger privileges Russia; Dr Zbig privileges China, painting it as a threat to Russia. Meanwhile, Russian Eurasianists — in frontal opposition to the Atlanticists — visualize the US, China and Russia on an equal geopolitical footing. It will be fascinating to watch how the New Great Game develops in the Central Asian “stans”. That’s a privileged theater in which to see the Russia-China strategic partnership, or division of labor, in action: China goes no holds barred on investment — via One Belt, One Road, aka the New Silk Roads — while Russia remains paramount in politics and security.
  • The bottom line: Moscow feels no existential “threat” from Beijing because for China, Central Asia and the Russian Far East register essentially as economic/investment opportunities along the New Silk Roads.
  • Once again, Kissinger’s strategy will run into a solidified Russia-China strategic partnership — already manifested in Pipelineistan (multibillion-dollar oil and gas projects); security deals; the SCO; cooperation inside BRICS; exchange of cutting-edge military technology; and the progressive interlocking of the New Silk Roads and the Eurasian Economic Union. When the New Silk Roads hit the next level, by the start of the next decade, the Eurasian heartland, as well as the rimland, will be deeply immersed in a connectivity frenzy. Welcome to Mackinder and Spykman revisited — and there’s no “offer” Washington can come up with to make it go away.
  • Into this crucial juncture steps Jack Ma. The Trump-Ma meeting at Trump Tower was niskala disguised as sekala. The House That Ma Built — Alibaba — is no less than the New Great Wall, resisting the assault of behemoth Amazon.com in the ultimate commercial arena of the 21st century: e-commerce. Ma also happens to be very close to Chinese President Xi Jinping. Like an upgraded we-mean-business Deng Xiaoping, Ma proposed, on the record, the creation of 1 million US jobs. That’s an offer Trump cannot possibly refuse. And this after shadow US Secretary of State Jared Kushner had a Chateau Lafite Rothschild-inundated lunch with another Chinese tycoon, Anbang Insurance Group’s Wu Xiahoui, who married Deng’s niece and whose company owns the Waldorf Astoria hotel in Manhattan.
  • Ma’s business firepower should not be underestimated. Alibaba is involved in a massive project to modernize even rural China. He’s the face of Chinese business not only internally but globally. Xi Jinping knows this all too well — who better than Ma as China’s top business ambassador? This is not, as Japanese interests spin it, about the “death” of Made in China; it is about globalized China exporting business and jobs to the West. All of the above points to a very crowded chessboard. Trump will do business and clinch deals with China, while his deep state-tinged cabinet barks the usually explosive national security rhetoric, dalang Kissinger plots a Russia-China split, and Moscow-Beijing secretly concoct concerted moves. Place your bets on who will be the major partner in the Trump, Kissinger and Ma law firm.
Paul Merrell

NBC News poll: Pessimism defines the state of the union - NBC Politics - 0 views

nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/...defines-the-state-of-the-union

polls Obama Congress economy

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • As President Barack Obama enters his sixth year in the White House, 68 percent of Americans say the country is either stagnant or worse off since he took office, according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.Just 31 percent say the country is better off, and a deep pessimism continues to fuel the public's mood. Most respondents used words like “divided,” “troubled,” and “deteriorating” to describe the current state of the nation. On the eve of Tuesday’s State of the Union address, more than six-in-10 Americans believe that the nation is headed in the wrong direction and 70 percent are dissatisfied with the economy. 
  • In more tough numbers for the president, only a combined 40 percent say they are “optimistic and confident” or “satisfied and hopeful” about the president’s remaining time in office. By contrast, a combined 59 percent say they are “uncertain and wondering” or “pessimistic and worried.”  Advertise | AdChoices And by a 39 percent to 31 percent margin, Americans believe the country is currently worse off compared with where it was when Obama first took office; 29 percent say it’s in the same place. 
  • Also, for the third-straight survey, those who view Obama negatively (44 percent) outnumber those who view him positively (42 percent). According to GOP pollster McInturff, the president’s net-negative personal rating makes it more challenging for him to boost his overall job-performance number. “His personal standing has taken a … hit that makes trying to restore your job approval very difficult.”
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  • It’s not just Obama under fire. A whopping 81 percent disapprove of Congress and twice as many Americans now hold negative views about the Republican Party as positive ones. Democratic pollster Fred Yang, whose firm conducted this survey with Republican pollster Bill McInturff, compares these findings to the 1993 movie “Groundhog Day,” in which the protagonist finds himself living the same day over and over. “It seems like we’ve been re-living the same basic dynamics -- a public that is anxious, dissatisfied and dismayed -- in a continuous loop,” he said. 
  • Only 28 percent believe the country is headed in the right direction, while 63 percent say it’s on the wrong track. What’s more, 71 percent are dissatisfied with the state of the economy (although more than 60 percent say they’re satisfied with their own financial situation).  Advertise | AdChoices And when respondents were asked which one or two words best describe the current state of the nation, the top answers were all negative: “divided” (37 percent), “troubled” (23 percent), and “deteriorating” (21 percent). 
  • Those answers were followed by “recovering” (19 percent), “broken” (14 percent), and “hopeful” (13 percent). And just 3 percent of all respondents picked “strong.” 
  • According to poll, just 13 percent approve of Congress’ job – 1 point off the all-time low in the poll – while 81 percent disapprove. The Republican Party’s favorable/unfavorable score stands at an upside-down 24 percent to 47 percent rating (versus the Democratic Party’s 37 percent to 40 percent favorable/unfavorable score). And a majority of Americans -- 51 percent -- say Republicans in Congress are too inflexible in their dealings with Obama, while 39 percent say the same of the president. 
Paul Merrell

Remarks by President Obama in Address to the United Nations General Assembly | The Whit... - 0 views

www.whitehouse.gov/...nited-nations-general-assembly

war & peace Obama-speech U.N. hypocrisy

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • Remarks by President Obama in Address to the United Nations General Assembly United Nations General Assembly Hall New York City, New York 10:13 A.M. EDT PRESIDENT OBAMA:  Mr. President, Mr. Secretary General, fellow delegates, ladies and gentlemen:  We come together at a crossroads between war and peace; between disorder and integration; between fear and hope. Around the globe, there are signposts of progress.  The shadow of World War that existed at the founding of this institution has been lifted, and the prospect of war between major powers reduced.  The ranks of member states has more than tripled, and more people live under governments they elected. Hundreds of millions of human beings have been freed from the prison of poverty, with the proportion of those living in extreme poverty cut in half.  And the world economy continues to strengthen after the worst financial crisis of our lives. 
  • And yet there is a pervasive unease in our world -- a sense that the very forces that have brought us together have created new dangers and made it difficult for any single nation to insulate itself from global forces.  As we gather here, an outbreak of Ebola overwhelms public health systems in West Africa and threatens to move rapidly across borders.  Russian aggression in Europe recalls the days when large nations trampled small ones in pursuit of territorial ambition.  The brutality of terrorists in Syria and Iraq forces us to look into the heart of darkness.
  • First, all of us -- big nations and small -- must meet our responsibility to observe and enforce international norms.  We are here because others realized that we gain more from cooperation than conquest. 
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  • Recently, Russia’s actions in Ukraine challenge this post-war order.  Here are the facts.  After the people of Ukraine mobilized popular protests and calls for reform, their corrupt president fled.  Against the will of the government in Kyiv, Crimea was annexed.  Russia poured arms into eastern Ukraine, fueling violent separatists and a conflict that has killed thousands.  When a civilian airliner was shot down from areas that these proxies controlled, they refused to allow access to the crash for days.  When Ukraine started to reassert control over its territory, Russia gave up the pretense of merely supporting the separatists, and moved troops across the border. This is a vision of the world in which might makes right -- a world in which one nation’s borders can be redrawn by another, and civilized people are not allowed to recover the remains of their loved ones because of the truth that might be revealed. America stands for something different.  We believe that right makes might -- that bigger nations should not be able to bully smaller ones, and that people should be able to choose their own future.
  • nd these are simple truths, but they must be defended. America and our allies will support the people of Ukraine as they develop their democracy and economy.  We will reinforce our NATO Allies and uphold our commitment to collective self-defense.  We will impose a cost on Russia for aggression, and we will counter falsehoods with the truth.  And we call upon others to join us on the right side of history -- for while small gains can be won at the barrel of a gun, they will ultimately be turned back if enough voices support the freedom of nations and peoples to make their own decisions. Moreover, a different path is available -- the path of diplomacy and peace, and the ideals this institution is designed to uphold.  The recent cease-fire agreement in Ukraine offers an opening to achieve those objectives.  If Russia takes that path -- a path that for stretches of the post-Cold War period resulted in prosperity for the Russian people -- then we will lift our sanctions and welcome Russia’s role in addressing common challenges.  After all, that’s what the United States and Russia have been able to do in past years -- from reducing our nuclear stockpiles to meeting our obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, to cooperating to remove and destroy Syria’s declared chemical weapons.  And that’s the kind of cooperation we are prepared to pursue again -- if Russia changes course. 
  • This speaks to a central question of our global age -- whether we will solve our problems together, in a spirit of mutual interest and mutual respect, or whether we descend into the destructive rivalries of the past.  When nations find common ground, not simply based on power, but on principle, then we can make enormous progress.  And I stand before you today committed to investing American strength to working with all nations to address the problems we face in the 21st century.
  • America is pursuing a diplomatic resolution to the Iranian nuclear issue, as part of our commitment to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and pursue the peace and security of a world without them.  And this can only take place if Iran seizes this historic opportunity.  My message to Iran’s leaders and people has been simple and consistent:  Do not let this opportunity pass.  We can reach a solution that meets your energy needs while assuring the world that your program is peaceful.  America is and will continue to be a Pacific power, promoting peace, stability, and the free flow of commerce among nations.  But we will insist that all nations abide by the rules of the road, and resolve their territorial disputes peacefully, consistent with international law. 
  • In other words, on issue after issue, we cannot rely on a rule book written for a different century.  If we lift our eyes beyond our borders -- if we think globally and if we act cooperatively -- we can shape the course of this century, as our predecessors shaped the post-World War II age.  But as we look to the future, one issue risks a cycle of conflict that could derail so much progress, and that is the cancer of violent extremism that has ravaged so many parts of the Muslim world. Of course, terrorism is not new.  Speaking before this Assembly, President Kennedy put it well:  “Terror is not a new weapon,” he said.  “Throughout history it has been used by those who could not prevail, either by persuasion or example.”  In the 20th century, terror was used by all manner of groups who failed to come to power through public support.  But in this century, we have faced a more lethal and ideological brand of terrorists who have perverted one of the world’s great religions.  With access to technology that allows small groups to do great harm, they have embraced a nightmarish vision that would divide the world into adherents and infidels -- killing as many innocent civilians as possible, employing the most brutal methods to intimidate people within their communities.
  • I have made it clear that America will not base our entire foreign policy on reacting to terrorism.  Instead, we’ve waged a focused campaign against al Qaeda and its associated forces -- taking out their leaders, denying them the safe havens they rely on.  At the same time, we have reaffirmed again and again that the United States is not and never will be at war with Islam.  Islam teaches peace.  Muslims the world over aspire to live with dignity and a sense of justice.  And when it comes to America and Islam, there is no us and them, there is only us -- because millions of Muslim Americans are part of the fabric of our country. So we reject any suggestion of a clash of civilizations. Belief in permanent religious war is the misguided refuge of extremists who cannot build or create anything, and therefore peddle only fanaticism and hate.  And it is no exaggeration to say that humanity’s future depends on us uniting against those who would divide us along the fault lines of tribe or sect, race or religion.
  • But this is not simply a matter of words.  Collectively, we must take concrete steps to address the danger posed by religiously motivated fanatics, and the trends that fuel their recruitment.  Moreover, this campaign against extremism goes beyond a narrow security challenge.  For while we’ve degraded methodically core al Qaeda and supported a transition to a sovereign Afghan government, extremist ideology has shifted to other places -- particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, where a quarter of young people have no job, where food and water could grow scarce, where corruption is rampant and sectarian conflicts have become increasingly hard to contain.   As an international community, we must meet this challenge with a focus on four areas.  First, the terrorist group known as ISIL must be degraded and ultimately destroyed.
  • The second:  It is time for the world -- especially Muslim communities -- to explicitly, forcefully, and consistently reject the ideology of organizations like al Qaeda and ISIL.
  • Later today, the Security Council will adopt a resolution that underscores the responsibility of states to counter violent extremism.  But resolutions must be followed by tangible commitments, so we’re accountable when we fall short.  Next year, we should all be prepared to announce the concrete steps that we have taken to counter extremist ideologies in our own countries -- by getting intolerance out of schools, stopping radicalization before it spreads, and promoting institutions and programs that build new bridges of understanding.
  • Third, we must address the cycle of conflict -- especially sectarian conflict -- that creates the conditions that terrorists prey upon.
  • The good news is we also see signs that this tide could be reversed.  We have a new, inclusive government in Baghdad; a new Iraqi Prime Minister welcomed by his neighbors; Lebanese factions rejecting those who try to provoke war.  And these steps must be followed by a broader truce.  Nowhere is this more necessary than Syria.  Together with our partners, America is training and equipping the Syrian opposition to be a counterweight to the terrorists of ISIL and the brutality of the Assad regime.  But the only lasting solution to Syria’s civil war is political -- an inclusive political transition that responds to the legitimate aspirations of all Syrian citizens, regardless of ethnicity, regardless of creed.
  • My fourth and final point is a simple one:  The countries of the Arab and Muslim world must focus on the extraordinary potential of their people -- especially the youth.
  • We recognize as well that leadership will be necessary to address the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis.  As bleak as the landscape appears, America will not give up on the pursuit of peace.  Understand, the situation in Iraq and Syria and Libya should cure anybody of the illusion that the Arab-Israeli conflict is the main source of problems in the region.  For far too long, that's been used as an excuse to distract people from problems at home.  The violence engulfing the region today has made too many Israelis ready to abandon the hard work of peace.  And that's something worthy of reflection within Israel.
  • Because let’s be clear:  The status quo in the West Bank and Gaza is not sustainable.  We cannot afford to turn away from this effort -- not when rockets are fired at innocent Israelis, or the lives of so many Palestinian children are taken from us in Gaza. So long as I am President, we will stand up for the principle that Israelis, Palestinians, the region and the world will be more just and more safe with two states living side by side, in peace and security. So this is what America is prepared to do:  Taking action against immediate threats, while pursuing a world in which the need for such action is diminished.  The United States will never shy away from defending our interests, but we will also not shy away from the promise of this institution and its Universal Declaration of Human Rights -- the notion that peace is not merely the absence of war, but the presence of a better life. 
  • Paul Merrell on 24 Sep 14
     
    Epic hypocrisy. He bows to international law while waging multiple wars in direct defiance of it. And that's just in the first few paragraphs. It gets worse the farther he gets in his speech.
Paul Merrell

Security Experts Oppose Government Access to Encrypted Communication - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...o-encrypted-communication.html

encryption government-backdoors expert-report

shared by Paul Merrell on 08 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • An elite group of security technologists has concluded that the American and British governments cannot demand special access to encrypted communications without putting the world’s most confidential data and critical infrastructure in danger.A new paper from the group, made up of 14 of the world’s pre-eminent cryptographers and computer scientists, is a formidable salvo in a skirmish between intelligence and law enforcement leaders, and technologists and privacy advocates. After Edward J. Snowden’s revelations — with security breaches and awareness of nation-state surveillance at a record high and data moving online at breakneck speeds — encryption has emerged as a major issue in the debate over privacy rights.
  • That has put Silicon Valley at the center of a tug of war. Technology companies including Apple, Microsoft and Google have been moving to encrypt more of their corporate and customer data after learning that the National Security Agency and its counterparts were siphoning off digital communications and hacking into corporate data centers.
  • Yet law enforcement and intelligence agency leaders argue that such efforts thwart their ability to monitor kidnappers, terrorists and other adversaries. In Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron threatened to ban encrypted messages altogether. In the United States, Michael S. Rogers, the director of the N.S.A., proposed that technology companies be required to create a digital key to unlock encrypted data, but to divide the key into pieces and secure it so that no one person or government agency could use it alone.The encryption debate has left both sides bitterly divided and in fighting mode. The group of cryptographers deliberately issued its report a day before James B. Comey Jr., the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Sally Quillian Yates, the deputy attorney general at the Justice Department, are scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the concerns that they and other government agencies have that encryption technologies will prevent them from effectively doing their jobs.
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  • The new paper is the first in-depth technical analysis of government proposals by leading cryptographers and security thinkers, including Whitfield Diffie, a pioneer of public key cryptography, and Ronald L. Rivest, the “R” in the widely used RSA public cryptography algorithm. In the report, the group said any effort to give the government “exceptional access” to encrypted communications was technically unfeasible and would leave confidential data and critical infrastructure like banks and the power grid at risk. Handing governments a key to encrypted communications would also require an extraordinary degree of trust. With government agency breaches now the norm — most recently at the United States Office of Personnel Management, the State Department and the White House — the security specialists said authorities could not be trusted to keep such keys safe from hackers and criminals. They added that if the United States and Britain mandated backdoor keys to communications, China and other governments in foreign markets would be spurred to do the same.
  • “Such access will open doors through which criminals and malicious nation-states can attack the very individuals law enforcement seeks to defend,” the report said. “The costs would be substantial, the damage to innovation severe and the consequences to economic growth hard to predict. The costs to the developed countries’ soft power and to our moral authority would also be considerable.”
  • Paul Merrell on 08 Jul 15
     
    Our system of government does not expect that every criminal will be apprehended and convicted. There are numerous values our society believes are more important. Some examples: [i] a presumption of innocence unless guilt is established beyond any reasonable doubt; [ii] the requirement that government officials convince a neutral magistrate that they have probable cause to believe that a search or seizure will produce evidence of a crime; [iii] many communications cannot be compelled to be disclosed and used in evidence, such as attorney-client communications, spousal communications, and priest-penitent communications; and [iv] etc. Moral of my story: the government needs a much stronger reason to justify interception of communications than saying, "some crooks will escape prosecution if we can't do that." We have a right to whisper to each other, concealing our communicatons from all others. Why does the right to whisper privately disappear if our whisperings are done electronically? The Supreme Court took its first step on a very slippery slope when it permitted wiretapping in Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 48 S. Ct. 564, 72 L. Ed. 944 (1928). https://goo.gl/LaZGHt It's been a long slide ever since. It's past time to revisit Olmstead and recognize that American citizens have the absolute right to communicate privately. "The President … recognizes that U.S. citizens and institutions should have a reasonable expectation of privacy from foreign or domestic intercept when using the public telephone system." - Brent Scowcroft, U.S. National Security Advisor, National Security Decision Memorandum 338 (1 September 1976) (Nixon administration), http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsdm-ford/nsdm-338.pdf   
Paul Merrell

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

www.globalresearch.ca/...5421554

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Russia China de-dollarization blowback

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • 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

Asia Times Online :: Russia, China mock divide and rule - 0 views

www.atimes.com/...WOR-02-231214.html

war & peace economic-warfare China Russia U.S.-foreign-policy

shared by Paul Merrell on 25 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • At the symposium, held in a divinely frescoed former 15th century Dominican refectory now part of the Italian parliament's library, Sergey Glazyev, on the phone from Moscow, gave a stark reading of Cold War 2.0. There's no real "government" in Kiev; the US ambassador is in charge. An anti-Russia doctrine has been hatched in Washington to foment war in Europe - and European politicians are its collaborators. Washington wants a war in Europe because it is losing the competition with China. Glazyev addressed the sanctions dementia: Russia is trying simultaneously to reorganize the politics of the International Monetary Fund, fight capital flight and minimize the effect of banks closing credit lines for many businessmen. Yet the end result of sanctions, he says, is that Europe will be the ultimate losers economically; bureaucracy in Europe has lost economic focus as American geopoliticians have taken over.
  • What he did emphasize was this was outright financial war, helped by a fifth column in the Russian establishment. The only equal component in this asymmetrical war was nuclear forces. And yet Russia would not surrender. Leontyev characterized Europe not as a historical subject but as an object: "The European project is an American project." And "democracy" had become fiction. The run on the rouble came and went like a devastating economic hurricane. Yet you don't threat a checkmate against a skilled chess player unless your firepower is stronger than Jupiter's lightning bolt. Moscow survived. Gazprom heeded the request of President Vladimir Putin and will sell its US dollar reserves on the domestic market. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier went on the record against the EU further "turning the screw" as in more counterproductive sanctions against Moscow. And at his annual press conference, Putin emphasized how Russia would weather the storm.
  • Essentially, the Empire of Chaos is bluffing, using Europe as pawns. The Empire of Chaos is as lousy at chess as it is at history. What it excels in is in upping the ante to force Russia to back down. Russia won't back down.
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  • Russia could outmaneuver Western financial markets by cutting them off from its wealth of oil and natural gas. The markets would inevitably collapse - uncontrolled chaos for the Empire of Chaos (or "controlled chaos", in Putin's own words). Imagine the crumbling of the quadrillion-plus of derivatives. It would take years for the "West" to replace Russian oil and natural gas, but the EU's economy would be instantly devastated. Just this lightning-bolt Western attack on the rouble - and oil prices - using the crushing power of Wall Street firms had already shaken European banks exposed to Russia to the core; their credit default swaps soared. Imagine those banks collapsing in a Lehman Brothers-style house of cards if Russia decided to default - thus unleashing a chain reaction. Think about a non-nuclear MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) - in fact warless. Still, Russia is self-sufficient in all kinds of energy, mineral wealth and agriculture. Europe isn't. This could become the lethal result of war by sanctions.
  • Russia could always deploy an economic "nuclear" option, declaring a moratorium on its foreign debt. Then, if Western banks seized Russian assets, Moscow could seize every Western investment in Russia. In any event, the Pentagon and NATO's aim of a shooting war in the European theater would not happen; unless Washington was foolish enough to start it.
  • To top it off, in 2014 President Xi Jinping has deployed unprecedented diplomatic/geostrategic frenzy - ultimately tied to the long-term project of slowly but surely keeping on erasing US supremacy in Asia and rearranging the global chessboard. What Xi said in Shanghai in May encapsulates the project; "It's time for Asians to manage the affairs of Asia." At the APEC meeting in November, he doubled down, promoting an "Asia-Pacific dream". Meanwhile, frenzy is the norm. Apart from the two monster, US$725 billion gas deals - Power of Siberia and Altai pipeline - and a recent New Silk Road-related offensive in Eastern Europe, [4] virtually no one in the West remembers that in September Chinese Prime Minister Li Keiqiang signed no fewer than 38 trade deals with the Russians, including a swap deal and a fiscal deal, which imply total economic interplay.
  • A case can be made that the geopolitical shift towards Russia-China integration is arguably the greatest strategic maneuver of the last 100 years. Xi's ultimate master plan is unambiguous: a Russia-China-Germany trade/commerce alliance. German business/industry wants it badly, although German politicians still haven't got the message. Xi - and Putin - are building a new economic reality on the Eurasian ground, crammed with crucial political, economic and strategic ramifications. Of course, this will be an extremely rocky road. It has not leaked to Western corporate media yet, but independent-minded academics in Europe (yes, they do exist, almost like a secret society) are increasingly alarmed there is no alternative model to the chaotic, entropic hardcore neoliberalism/casino capitalism racket promoted by the Masters of the Universe.
  • And yet, as much as Lao Tzu, already an octogenarian, gave the young Confucius an intellectual slap on the face, the "West" could do with a wake-up call. Divide et impera? It's not working. And it's bound to fail miserably. As it stands, what we do know is that 2015 will be a hair-raising year in myriad aspects. Because from Europe to Asia, from the ruins of the Roman empire to the re-emerging Middle Kingdom, we all still remain under the sign of a fearful, dangerous, rampantly irrational Empire of Chaos.
Paul Merrell

A New Poll Shows the Public Is Overwhelmingly Opposed to Endless US Military Interventi... - 0 views

www.thenation.com/...less-us-military-interventions

war & peace polls U.S. anti-war

shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Jan 18 - No Cached
  • The headline findings show, among other things, that 86.4 percent of those surveyed feel the American military should be used only as a last resort, while 57 percent feel that US military aid to foreign countries is counterproductive. The latter sentiment “increases significantly” when involving countries like Saudi Arabia, with 63.9 percent saying military aid—including money and weapons—should not be provided to such countries. The poll shows strong, indeed overwhelming, support, for Congress to reassert itself in the oversight of US military interventions, with 70.8 percent of those polled saying Congress should pass legislation that would restrain military action overseas in three specific ways: by requiring “clearly defined goals to authorize military engagement” (78.8 percent); by requiring Congress “to have both oversight and accountability regarding where troops are stationed” (77 percent); by requiring that “any donation of funds or equipment to a foreign country be matched by a pledge of that country to adhere to the rules of the Geneva Convention” (84.8 percent). The results of the J. Wallin Opinion Research survey would seem to track with the results of another study undertaken last year by Francis Shen, a law professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, and Dougas Kriner, a political science professor at Boston University, who found that Hillary Clinton’s loss in the 2016 presidential race might well have been owing to her hawkish foreign-policy positions.
  • The study, “Battlefield Casualties and Ballot Box Defeat: Did the Bush-Obama Wars Cost Clinton the White House?,” which was released last summer, found that “a divide is emerging between communities whose young people are dying to defend the country, and those communities whose young people are not.” That divide, which the authors termed “the casualty gap,” may have contributed to Donald Trump’s surprise victory. Indeed, “even controlling in a statistical model for many other alternative explanations,” the authors found there was “a significant and meaningful relationship between a community’s rate of military sacrifice and its support for Trump.”
  • The survey found that 78 percent of Democrats, 64.5 percent of Republicans, and 68.8 percent of independents supported restraining military action overseas. “Rarely,” noted the report, “does opinion research reveal issues that enjoy shared sentiments on a bi-partisan level.” The poll brings home just how divorced the Beltway—and its think tanks, media outlets, and political class—is from the expressed desire of a large majority of Americans for a responsible and reasonable foreign policy, a policy that, arguably, has been absent since the end of the Cold War. Candidates from both parties running in this year’s midterm election ignore the results of the new survey at their peril.
  • Paul Merrell on 14 Jan 18
     
    Nothing that the pro-war folks can't overcome with a propaganda incident.
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