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Paul Merrell

The NSA's Rent Is Too Damn High | Cato @ Liberty - 0 views

www.cato.org/...nsas-rent-too-damn-high

surveillance state NSA NSA-budget

shared by Paul Merrell on 01 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • For months, the American public has received a steady stream of new information detailing the massive scale and scope of the United States’ spying activities. Of course, maintaining a surveillance state powerful enough to reach into the inboxes of world leaders, friend and foe, is not cheap. Indeed, as the Washington Post revealed when it released portions of the so-called Black Budget, this year’s price tag on America’s spook infrastructure comes out to a whopping $52.6 billion. This is, of course, a tremendous sum – more than double the size of the Department of Agriculture, more than triple the size of NASA; the list goes on… But, what really puts this number into perspective is its average cost to each American taxpayer, or what I would call the NSA and associated agencies’ “rent.” Yes, the NSA’s rent, charged to every taxpayer living under its web of surveillance, comes out to an exorbitant $574 per year. If this is the price the federal government is charging American taxpayers to have their own privacy invaded, then I say the NSA’s rent is too damn high. Normally, at the end of one of these blogs, I would ask a rhetorical question like: “Washington, are you listening?” But, in this case, we know Washington is listening, and now we know how much we’re being charged for it.
Gary Edwards

ObamaCare suckers needed, inquire within | RedState - 0 views

www.redstate.com/...-suckers-needed-inquire-within

ObamaCare-TAX ObamaCare-Exchanges Healthcare

shared by Gary Edwards on 21 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • The exchanges need roughly 2.7 million healthy 18-t0-35-year-olds to sign up to be solvent.
  • The majority of that group is nonwhite and male, according to Simas’ data, and a third are located in just three states: California, Texas and Florida.
  • If too few choose to enroll because they don’t know about the law, don’t like it, or feel they don’t need insurance, the exchanges will fail. And so will the law.
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • In other words, ObamaCare needs an army of young dupes to pay through the nose, in order to make this ridiculous program appear solvent while it showers other people with benefits.  
  • It’s a wonder young folks are lining up around the block to pay those 50 to 150 percent increases in their health insurance premiums.
  • he latest Government Accountability Office report says ObamaCare implementation remains months behind schedule, even though the insurance exchanges are supposed to go live in just four months.
  • Under Obamacare, insurance companies can no longer turn away people with preexisting conditions.
  • And so a crucial aspect of implementation is getting enough young, healthy people to enroll to offset the cost of insuring older, less-healthy enrollees.
  • The Congressional Budget Office expects some 7 million people to sign up when the exchanges open on Oct. 1, eventually reaching 22 million.
  •  The embarrassing degeneration of ObamaCare into a wealth transfer program that feeds off healthy people is a perfect inversion of the insurance concept.
  • Normally, the young and hearty folks would pay a low fee for health insurance, because providers would make the reasonable actuarial gamble that most of those customers would not be filing expensive claims.
  • The notion of selling “insurance” to someone with an pre-existing condition, guaranteed to make big claims, would be absurd.  
  •  Older people with higher risks pay more.
  • Instead, we’ve got another corrupt, inefficient redistribution system powered by the liquefied assets of chumps.
  • It’s starting to visibly panic over not being able to pump enough chumps to fill its gas tank.
  • And I do mean corrupt, because it’s not as if most of this money is going to doctors or medical supplies.
  •  Betsy McCaughey, former lieutenant governor of New York, describes the billion dollars flowing into the California health insurance exchange as tax money laundered into Democratic party-building funds:
  • The Obama administration granted a whopping $910 million to California to set up its insurance exchange. That money is not for bandages, surgery, nurses and doctors to care for the sick. Nor is it for insurance plans, though $910 million could buy generous coverage for at least 113,000 people!
  • Shockingly, the $910 million is slated for bureaucracy, including rich compensation packages for exchange employees ($360,000 a year for the executive director) and contracts for computer equipment, public relations and “outreach. “
  • Outreach is the largest expenditure and where the real monkey business occurs.
  • Amazingly, California legislators passed a law that the exchange could keep secret for a year who received the contracts and indefinitely how much they were paid. California’s open-records laws would otherwise prohibit such secrecy.
  • McCaughey describes six- and seven-figure grants to the California NAACP, the Service Employees International Union, the AFL-CIO, and Community Health Councils, “a California organization with a long history of political activism against fracking, for-profit hospitals, state budget cuts and oil exploration.”
  • I can’t imagine why young people are reluctant to plow their money into a racket like this!
  • Gary Edwards on 21 Jun 13
     
    Excellent summary of where ObamaCare sits today.  Obama has to convince millions of young, healthy "chumps" to pay massive amounts of their income into ObamaCare Exchanges if the greatest socialist redistribution plan ever conceived is to continue. "At the White House, health care implementation has become an obsession. Chief of Staff Denis McDonough spends two hours a day on Obamacare implementation, staffers said, and senior aides like Simas and Tara McGuinness, who joined the White House in April as a senior communications adviser, work on the issue nearly full-time. Hardly a week goes by without Obama finding some way to plug the effort as well. The reason: the law is increasingly unpopular. According to an NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll released earlier this month, 49% of Americans now believe the law is a bad idea, the highest percentage recorded, with only 37% saying it is a good thing. Many states have already opted out of key provisions to expand Medicaid. In Washington, Republicans continue to lay siege to the law; they have voted to repeal it 37 times in the U.S. House."
Paul Merrell

Exclusive: Swiss study says polonium found in Arafat's bones | Al Jazeera America - 0 views

america.aljazeera.com/...oniumfoundinarafatasbones.html

war & peace Palestine Arafat polonium poison asassinations

shared by Paul Merrell on 07 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • PARIS — Swiss scientists who conducted tests on samples taken from Yasser Arafat’s body have found at least 18 times the normal levels of radioactive polonium in his remains. The scientists said they were confident up to an 83 percent level that the late Palestinian leader was poisoned with it, a conclusion that they said “moderately supports” polonium as the cause of his death. A 108-page report (PDF) by the University Centre of Legal Medicine in Lausanne, which was obtained exclusively by Al Jazeera, found unnaturally high levels of polonium in Arafat’s ribs and pelvis, and in soil stained with his decaying organs.
  • The Swiss scientists, along with French and Russian teams, obtained the samples last November after Arafat's body was exhumed from a mausoleum in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. Dave Barclay, a U.K. forensic scientist and retired detective, told Al Jazeera that with these results he was wholly convinced that Arafat was murdered. “Yasser Arafat died of polonium poisoning,” he said. “We found the smoking gun that caused his death. What we don’t know is who’s holding the gun at the time. “The level of polonium in Yasser Arafat’s rib … is about 900 millibecquerels,” Barclay said. “That is either 18 or 36 times the average, depending on the literature.”
Paul Merrell

Newest Remote Car Hacking Raises More Questions About Reporter's Death - WhoWhatWhy - 0 views

whowhatwhy.org/...uestions-about-reporters-death

Dark-State car-hacking Hastings

shared by Paul Merrell on 25 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • As readers of WhoWhatWhy know, our site has been one of the very few continuing to explore the fiery death two years ago of investigative journalist Michael Hastings, whose car left a straight segment of a Los Angeles street at a high speed, jumped the median, hit a tree, and blew up.Our original report described anomalies of the crash and surrounding events that suggest cutting-edge foul play—that an external hacker could have taken control of Hastings’s car in order to kill him. If this sounds too futuristic, a series of recent technical revelations has proven that “car hacking” is entirely possible. The latest just appeared this week.
  • Hackers, seeking to demonstrate the vulnerability of automobiles to remote attacks, were able to largely take over the Jeep Cherokee driven by a writer for the tech magazine Wired:Their code is an automaker’s nightmare: software that lets hackers send commands through the Jeep’s entertainment system to its dashboard functions, steering, brakes, and transmission, all from a laptop that may be across the country.They were able to make his car decelerate suddenly, causing the writer to “narrowly avert death” at the hands of a semi-trailer coming up behind him.In an earlier demonstration, they had been able to do similar things with other vehicles:In the summer of 2013, I drove a Ford Escape and a Toyota Prius around a South Bend, Indiana, parking lot while they sat in the backseat with their laptops, cackling as they disabled my brakes, honked the horn, jerked the seat belt, and commandeered the steering wheel.
  • All of this is increasingly drawing the attention—and action— of the authorities. U.S. Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Edward J. Markey (D-MA), members of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, introduced legislation Tuesday seeking to establish federal standards for security and privacy of drivers in today’s computer-laden cars.What we do not hear is any discussion about whether the risk has gone beyond the realm of possibility…to a reality.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Back when Michael Hastings died, former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke—by all accounts a sober, no-nonsense man—said that the Hastings’s crash was “consistent with a car cyber attack” and that it was likely that intelligence agencies knew “how to remotely seize control of a car.”It is worth noting, too, that the day before his death, Hastings had “urgently” requested to borrow his neighbor’s car—he wanted to get out of town, but he feared his own car was being tampered with.How is it then that “mainstream” publications, including even Wired, do not talk about the very odd circumstances surrounding the death of a journalist who had made powerful enemies? Did the fact that he had caused a famed general to be fired, that he was investigating the CIA chief, that he told colleagues he himself was being investigated by the FBI—did none of this at least raise the slightest suspicion on the part of our journalistic community? How about the fiery explosion when his car hit a palm tree—which automotive experts say should not normally take place; what about the fact that the engine flew out of the vehicle and landed a considerable distance away–which, again, we are told, is highly unusual?
  • As with so many of these things, the authorities raced to conclude that it was all an unfortunate accident and that there was no more to the story. And virtually the entirety of journalism—Left, Right and Center, Mainstream and “Alternative”—accepted this conclusion without so much as a hint of skepticism.So, now that it has been dramatically demonstrated that accidents can be caused remotely by those targeting a driver, will we see other media stepping up to take a good hard look at the key question: What really happened to Michael Hastings? We hope so, but we aren’t taking any bets.
Paul Merrell

Noam Chomsky Says US Turned to Cuba Due to Increasing Isolation | News | teleSUR English - 0 views

www.telesurtv.net/...g-Isolation-20150721-0004.html

war & peace Latin-America Summit-of-the-Americas Cuba Chomsky Obama

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • Internationally renowned intellectual Noam Chomsky told Mexican newspaper La Jornada Monday it was because Washington was becoming increasingly isolated from “their own backyard” of Latin America, that the U.S. decided to normalize relations with Cuba. Chomsky said the fourth Summit of the Americas of 2012 in Colombia was a major turning point for the United States, as it saw itself, along with Canada, completely marginalized from all the crucial issues being debated, including Cuba.
  • “As the summit in Panama (April 2015) neared, something had to be done, because the United States face the possibility of being excluded from the hemisphere all together,” he said in an exclusive interview with the leftist Mexican newspaper. The U.S. political commentator and writer said it was then that Barack Obama “dramatically preached that the United States policies to take democracy and human rights to Cuba had not worked.” Chomsky added that it was at that point that President Obama decided new measures and strategies had to be implemented in the case of Cuba, in order that Washington achieve its objectives, and therefore decided out of convenience to allow Cuba “escape, slightly, from international isolation.” So, for Chomsky, the change of U.S. foreign policy toward Cuba was the result of the notable changes occurring in Latin America in the last few years, which isolated Washington more and more from its own “backyard,” as Latin America has frequently been referred to by the Untited States over the years, which has forced the government to change its position regarding the island nation.
Gary Edwards

The Daily Bell - Doug Casey on the Continuing Debasement of Money, Language and Banking... - 0 views

www.thedailybell.com/...-and-Banking-in-the-Modern-Age

Banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • This isn't going to last because the way you get wealthy is by producing more than you consume and saving the difference – not by consuming more than you produce, and borrowing the difference. With the Fed keeping interest rates at artificially low levels, hoping to increase consumption, they're making it very foolish to save – when you get ½% or 1% on your savings. So people are saving less and they're borrowing more than they otherwise would. This is a formula for making things worse, not better.
  • They are, idiotically, doing exactly the opposite of what they should be.
  • In point of fact, the Fed should be abolished; the market, not bureaucrats, should determine interest rates. We wouldn't be in this pickle to start with if the government wasn't involved in the economy.
  • ...35 more annotations...
  • The Chinese, the Japanese – everybody is selling, trying to pass the Old Maid card of US Government debt, which represents return–free risk. Nobody other than the Fed is buying, and interest rates would skyrocket if they stopped. The more QE there is, the more distortions it will cause, however, making for a bigger disaster the longer it goes on.
  • Will the Fed continue to inflate the money supply? Doug Casey: They have to, because with the huge amount of debt in the world – and the amount of debt in the world has increased something like 40 or 50% just since the Greater Depression started – if they don't keep increasing the amount of money in the world then nobody's going to be able to service the huge amount of debt that is out there. So I don't see anything changing in the years to come. They've truly painted themselves into a corner. They're caught between Scylla and Charybdis, and we don't have Odysseus steering the ship of state.
  • Let me say, again, that the Fed serves no useful purpose and it should be abolished. Central banks create "super money" by buying government or other debt with new currency units that they credit to the sellers' accounts at commercial banks. That's the actual engine of inflation.
  • But it's greatly compounded in the commercial banking system through fractional reserve lending – which would not be possible without a central bank. Fractional reserve lending allows banks to multiply the money supply several times.
  • If $100 of Fed super money, freshly created, is deposited in a commercial bank like Chase or Citibank, then $90 can be lent out with a 10% reserve, the current number. That money is redeposited. They'll then lend out 90% of that $90, or $81, and then 90% of that $81, so it multiplies.
  • Central banking and fractional reserve lending go hand-in-hand.
  • Without a central bank, any bank that engaged in fractional reserve banking would be considered guilty of fraud and, when discovered, would be punished by a bank run, followed by criminal charges. The point to be made here is that the entire banking system today is totally unsound and totally corrupt.
  • In a sound banking system you have two types of deposits – checking account (or demand) deposits, and savings account (or time) deposits. They are completely different businesses. With demand deposits, you pay the bank to store your money securely, and write checks against it. A bank should no more lend out demand deposit money than Allied Storage should lend out the furniture you're paying them to store.
  • Savings accounts are completely different. Here you lend money to a bank, perhaps at 3%, and they relend it at 6%, making 3% to cover costs, risks and profits. A sound bank not only has to match the maturities of its deposits with the maturities of its loans, but must insure loans are both highly secured and self-liquidating.
  • These principles have been totally lost. Today banks operate as hedge funds.
  • As an aside, if someone were to set up a well-capitalized 100% reserve bank in a tax haven, especially using gold as an alternative currency, it would be immensely successful in the years to come – when most all conventional banks will fail.
  • By all historical, normal parameters, the stock market is greatly overvalued.
  • The trillions of new currency units that the Fed is creating are creating bubbles, and one of them is in the stock market. The biggest bubble, of course, is in the bond market – that's a super bubble.
  • Not only does the dollar have no real value but the banks you keep it in are all insolvent.
  • There are few sound investments out there. Today there are no investments; there are only speculations.
  • From the economist's point of view, the bubbles created by central banking are a disaster, but from a speculator's point of view they're a godsend. It's becoming harder and harder to be an investor; I define an investor as someone who allocates capital to productive business. It's hard to be an investor because you now have to spend more money on lawyers than on engineers and workers if you want to produce something. You're increasingly forced to be a speculator in today's climate.
  • Stock and bond markets all over the world are overpriced – with the exception of Russian stocks right now; they could be a very interesting speculation. I wouldn't touch anything in China yet, because all the Chinese banks are going to go bust.
  • The Chinese have been more profligate inflating the yuan than the Americans have been with the dollar. It's fantastic what the Chinese have done since Deng liberalized the economy in the early '80s, but now's not a time to be in their markets.
  • You've got to remember there are two types of people in the world: people who want to control material reality and people who want to control other people.
  • It's that second type who go into politics. They play games – here it's called the Great Game, which dignifies it in a way it shouldn't be – with other people's lives and property. It's been this way ever since the state was created about 5,000 years ago, and I don't think you should play games with other people's lives.
  • On the bright side, there are more scientists and engineers alive today than in all of human history put together, and so technology is advancing more rapidly than ever for that reason. That's a huge plus.
  • The second good thing is that the average person, at least those who aren't on welfare, tries to produce more than he consumes. That creates capital.
  • But I'm afraid that Western civilization reached its peak before World War I. World War I destroyed a huge amount of capital and, more importantly, it changed the moral bases of so many things.
  • Then World War II institutionalized the State as the most important part of society – which is perverse, because the state is actually the enemy of civil society.
  • I think Western civilization reached its peak in 1913, when it reached its maximum geographical extent. That was coincidental with the peak of its technological and philosophical influence on the world, much the way the Roman Empire reached its peak at about the end of the first century, then went down, slowly at first and then quickly. That's what's happening to the West.
  • Relative to the rest of the world, and contribution to world production, our piece of the economic pie is getting smaller and smaller. If we have another serious war it would be absolutely smaller, and the final nail in the coffin. Meanwhile, the US, with its bloated military, is just itching for another war. It's out of control, and unlikely to change at this point. That's a big trend that is in motion that I think is going to stay in motion.
  • Europe is in particularly bad shape. The place is a fascist/socialist disaster.
  • It was possible for the average European to keep his head above water through tax evasion in the past, but now those governments have broken bank secrecy everywhere, and it will destroy a lot of capital.
  • The "nation-state" is a really stupid and dysfunctional idea, and I'm glad it's on its way out.
  • That said, even the US, which from a cultural point of view is as much of a country as any place in the world, should actually break up into at least five or six regions.
  • Canada should break up into at least five or six regions initially.
  • I don't think politically; politics is the problem, not the solution. I think that the ideal solution is for every individual to opt out of the current system. When they give a war, you don't come. When they give a tax, you don't pay. When they give an election, you don't vote. You even try not to use their currency and their banking system. T
  • he ideal thing is to let the system collapse under its own weight as opposed to starting a new political party and then continuing to act politically, which is to say to use force on other people.
  • Market risk is huge today, but political risk is even bigger. One indication of that was, when the banks in Cyprus went bust some months ago, the government essentially confiscated everybody's account above 100,000 euros, in what they called a "bail-in."
  • You need several options. It seems like people haven't learned anything from what happened in Russia in 1917, Germany in 1933, China in 1948, Cuba in 1959, or Vietnam in 1975. Rwanda, Cambodia, Yugoslavia, Zimbabwe, Ukraine, Syria ... there are lots of examples and these things can and will eventually happen almost everywhere. When the chimpanzees go crazy, you don't want to be where they are. You've got to have a Plan B. You've got to have a crib out of that political jurisdiction. Acting like a plant, and staying put, isn't a good survival strategy for a human.
  • Gary Edwards on 09 Jul 15
     
    "Doug Casey: I don't see a real recovery until they stop debasing the currency, radically cut government spending and taxation and eliminate most regulation. In other words, cease doing the things that caused this depression. And that's not going to happen until there's a collapse of the current order. Things have cyclically improved since the height of the crisis of 2008-09. The trillions of currency units created by the Federal Reserve have jammed the stock market higher and kept the big banks from going under. What surprises me is that retail prices have not moved as significantly as I would have expected. The reason, I believe, is that most of that money is still sitting in financial institutions. It has gone into cash out of fear, into stocks because they represent real wealth with earning power and into various speculative assets like artwork and collectible cars. Real estate has recovered somewhat, not because of strong fundamentals but strictly because of money creation. This isn't going to last because the way you get wealthy is by producing more than you consume and saving the difference - not by consuming more than you produce, and borrowing the difference. With the Fed keeping interest rates at artificially low levels, hoping to increase consumption, they're making it very foolish to save - when you get ½% or 1% on your savings. So people are saving less and they're borrowing more than they otherwise would. This is a formula for making things worse, not better. They are, idiotically, doing exactly the opposite of what they should be. Although, I hasten to add, I hate to pontificate on what the Fed "should" do. In point of fact, the Fed should be abolished; the market, not bureaucrats, should determine interest rates. We wouldn't be in this pickle to start with if the government wasn't involved in the economy. In fact, if it wasn't for the state, I suspect we'd all have a vastly higher standard of living, and would be colonizing the Moon, Mars and
Paul Merrell

Sloppy Cyber Threat Sharing Is Surveillance by Another Name | Just Security - 0 views

justsecurity.org/...er-threat-sharing-surveillance

surveillance state legislation CISA cyberthreat-reporting emails

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • Imagine you are the target of a phishing attack: Someone sends you an email attachment containing malware. Your email service provider shares the attachment with the government, so that others can configure their computer systems to spot similar attacks. The next day, your provider gets a call. It’s the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and they’re curious. The malware appears to be from Turkey. Why, DHS wants to know, might someone in Turkey be interested in attacking you? So, would your email company please share all your emails with the government? Knowing more about you, investigators might better understand the attack. Normally, your email provider wouldn’t be allowed to give this information over without your consent or a search warrant. But that could soon change. The Senate may soon make another attempt at passing the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, a bill that would waive privacy laws in the name of cybersecurity. In April, the US House of Representatives passed by strong majorities two similar “cyber threat” information sharing bills. These bills grant companies immunity for giving DHS information about network attacks, attackers, and online crimes.
  • Sharing information about security vulnerabilities is a good idea. Shared vulnerability data empowers other system operators to check and see if they, too, have been attacked, and also to guard against being similarly attacked in the future. I’ve spent most of my career fighting for researchers’ rights to share this kind of information against threats from companies that didn’t want their customers to know their products were flawed. But, these bills gut legal protections against government fishing expeditions exactly at a time when individuals and Internet companies need privacy laws to get stronger, not weaker. 
  • Worse, the bills aren’t needed. Private companies share threat data with each other, and even with the government, all the time. The threat data that security professionals use to protect networks from future attacks is a far more narrow category of information than those included in the bills being considered by Congress, and will only rarely contain private information. And none of the recent cyberattacks — not Sony, not Target, and not the devastating grab of sensitive background check interviews on government employees at the Office of Personnel Management — would have been mitigated by these bills.
Paul Merrell

State Dept. recommends removing Cuba from terrorism list - CNN.com - 0 views

edition.cnn.com/...index.html

U.S.-foreign-policy Cuba normalization

shared by Paul Merrell on 09 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • The State Department has sent a recommendation to the White House that Cuba be removed from the State Sponsors of Terrorism List, paving the way for the White House to announce its intent to de-list Cuba as early as Thursday, two administration officials tell CNN. In making the recommendation, the State Department has certified Cuba has not provided support to terrorist groups within the last 6 months.
Gary Edwards

Daniel Pearl and the Normalization of Evil - or, Carter's an Idiot! - WSJ.com - 0 views

online.wsj.com/...SB123362422088941893.html

carter appeasement hate-america daniel-pearl gitmo

shared by Gary Edwards on 04 Feb 09 - Cached
  • Bill Moyers was quick to lend Hamas legitimacy as a "resistance" movement, together with honorary membership in PBS's imaginary "cycle of violence." In his Jan. 9 TV show, Mr. Moyers explained to his viewers that "each [side] greases the cycle of violence, as one man's terrorism becomes another's resistance to oppression." He then stated -- without blushing -- that for readers of the Hebrew Bible "God-soaked violence became genetically coded." The "cycle of violence" platitude allows analysts to empower terror with the guise of reciprocity, and, amazingly, indict terror's victims for violence as immutable as DNA.
  • Gary Edwards on 04 Feb 09
     
    But the clearest endorsement of terror as a legitimate instrument of political bargaining came from former President Jimmy Carter. In his book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," Mr. Carter appeals to the sponsors of suicide bombing. "It is imperative that the general Arab community and all significant Palestinian groups make it clear that they will end the suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism when international laws and the ultimate goals of the Road-map for Peace are accepted by Israel." Acts of terror, according to Mr. Carter, are no longer taboo, but effective tools for terrorists to address perceived injustices. Mr. Carter's logic has become the dominant paradigm in rationalizing terror. When asked what Israel should do to stop Hamas's rockets aimed at innocent civilians, the Syrian first lady, Asma Al-Assad, did not hesitate for a moment in her response: "They should end the occupation." In other words, terror must earn a dividend before it is stopped.
Gary Edwards

Obama and 'Redistributive Change' - Victor Davis Hanson - National Review Online - 1 views

article.nationalreview.com/...victor-davis-hanson

Obammunism statist

shared by Gary Edwards on 08 Apr 10 - Cached
  • in the president’s own language, the government must equalize the circumstances of the “waitress” with those of the “lucky.” It is thus a fitting and proper role of the new federal government to rectify imbalances of compensation — at least for those outside the anointed Guardian class.
  • In a 2001 interview Obama in fact outlined the desirable political circumstances that would lead government to enforce equality of results when he elaborated on what he called an “actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change.”
  • Instead, the notion that the state will assume control, in Canada-like fashion, and level the health-care playing field was the real concern. “They” (the few) will now have the same care as “we” (the many). Whether the result is worse or better for everyone involved is extraneous, since sameness is the overarching principle
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  • The president believes that a select group of affluent, highly educated technocrats — cosmopolitan, noble-minded, and properly progressive — supported by a phalanx of whiz-kids fresh out of blue-chip universities with little or no experience in the marketplace, can direct our lives far better than we can ourselves. By “better” I do not mean in a fashion that, measured by disinterested criteria, makes us necessarily wealthier, happier, more productive, or freer.
  • equality-of-results thinking
  • Gary Edwards on 08 Apr 10
     
    When radical leaders over the last 2,500 years have sought to enforce equality of results, their prescriptions were usually predictable: redistribution of property; cancellation of debts; incentives to bring out the vote and increase political participation among the poor; stigmatizing of the wealthy, whether through the extreme measure of ostracism or the more mundane forced liturgies; use of the court system to even the playing field by targeting the more prominent citizens; radical growth in government and government employment; the use of state employees as defenders of the egalitarian faith; bread-and-circus entitlements; inflation of the currency and greater national debt to lessen the power of accumulated capital; and radical sloganeering about reactionary enemies of the new state. The modern versions of much of the above already seem to be guiding the Obama administration - evident each time we hear of another proposal to make it easier to renounce personal debt; federal action to curtail property or water rights; efforts to make voter registration and vote casting easier; radically higher taxes on the top 5 percent; takeover of private business; expansion of the federal government and an increase in government employees; or massive inflationary borrowing. The current class-warfare "them/us" rhetoric was predictable. Usually such ideologies do not take hold in America, given its tradition of liberty, frontier self-reliance, and emphasis on personal freedom rather than mandated fraternity and egalitarianism. At times, however, the stars line up, when a national catastrophe, like war or depression, coincides with the appearance of an unusually gifted, highly polished, and eloquent populist. But the anointed one must be savvy enough to run first as a centrist in order later to govern as a statist.
Gary Edwards

The Storm After The Calm - 0 views

www.businessinsider.com/he-storm-after-the-calm-2011-7

Banksters Federal-Reserve-Bank-Cartel financial-collapse

shared by Gary Edwards on 28 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • it is now clear that governments prevented a full-scale collapse of the financial system in 2008 by transforming toxic private debt into public debt.
  • But the rule ultimately had the terrifying result of obliging countries to borrow from private banks at market prices to guarantee their treasuries’ integrity.
  • This created powerful barriers to public investment, as government spending was siphoned into massive profits for banks and their shareholders.
  • Gary Edwards on 28 Jul 11
     
    excerpt:  Indeed, it is now clear that governments prevented a full-scale collapse of the financial system in 2008 by transforming toxic private debt into public debt. It worked then, but it cannot work now, in large part because it contributed to the new, looming crisis in financial markets brought on by countries' soaring public-debt burdens. We cannot blame today's emerging crisis solely on our current and recent governments' actions. For more than 20 years, the world's major capitalist economies have been led to borrow heavily and unabashedly, in large by a new rule, adopted worldwide beginning in the 1970's and 1980's, that tied monetary policy to targets for price growth. This dangerous idea - proposed in France by Jacques Rueff in 1958, adopted throughout Europe over the following two decades, and extended to the European Central Bank - was intended to limit the tendency of capitalist economies to aggravate inflation as soon as they hit full employment. But the rule ultimately had the terrifying result of obliging countries to borrow from private banks at market prices to guarantee their treasuries' integrity. This created powerful barriers to public investment, as government spending was siphoned into massive profits for banks and their shareholders.
Paul Merrell

Obama to Call for End to N.S.A.'s Bulk Data Collection - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...eek-nsa-curb-on-call-data.html

surveillance state NSA call-metadata NSA-reform Obama legislation

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • The Obama administration is preparing to unveil a legislative proposal for a far-reaching overhaul of the National Security Agency’s once-secret bulk phone records program in a way that — if approved by Congress — would end the aspect that has most alarmed privacy advocates since its existence was leaked last year, according to senior administration officials.Under the proposal, they said, the N.S.A. would end its systematic collection of data about Americans’ calling habits. The bulk records would stay in the hands of phone companies, which would not be required to retain the data for any longer than they normally would. And the N.S.A. could obtain specific records only with permission from a judge, using a new kind of court order. In a speech in January, President Obama said he wanted to get the N.S.A. out of the business of collecting call records in bulk while preserving the program’s abilities. He acknowledged, however, that there was no easy way to do so, and had instructed Justice Department and intelligence officials to come up with a plan by March 28 — Friday — when the current court order authorizing the program expires.
  • As part of the proposal, the administration has decided to ask the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to renew the program as it exists for at least one more 90-day cycle, senior administration officials said. But under the plan the administration has developed and now advocates, the officials said, it would later undergo major changes. The new type of surveillance court orders envisioned by the administration would require phone companies to swiftly provide records in a technologically compatible data format, including making available, on a continuing basis, data about any new calls placed or received after the order is received, the officials said. They would also allow the government to swiftly seek related records for callers up to two phone calls, or “hops,” removed from the number that has come under suspicion, even if those callers are customers of other companies.
  • The N.S.A. now retains the phone data for five years. But the administration considered and rejected imposing a mandate on phone companies that they hold on to their customers’ calling records for a period longer than the 18 months that federal regulations already generally require — a burden that the companies had resisted shouldering and that was seen as a major obstacle to keeping the data in their hands. A senior administration official said that intelligence agencies had concluded that the operational impact of that change would be small because older data is less important.The N.S.A. uses the once-secret call records program — sometimes known as the 215 program, after Section 215 of the Patriot Act — to analyze links between callers in an effort to identify hidden terrorist associates, if they exist. It was part of the secret surveillance program that President George W. Bush unilaterally put in place after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, outside of any legal framework or court oversight.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, called the administration’s proposal a “sensible outcome, given that the 215 program likely exceeded current legal authority and has not proved to be effective.” While he said that he would like to see more overhauls to other surveillance authorities, he said the proposal was “significant” and addressed the major concerns with the N.S.A.’s bulk records program. Jameel Jaffer of the American Civil Liberties Union said, “We have many questions about the details, but we agree with the administration that the N.S.A.’s bulk collection of call records should end.” He added, “As we’ve argued since the program was disclosed, the government can track suspected terrorists without placing millions of people under permanent surveillance.”
  • In recent days, attention in Congress has shifted to legislation developed by leaders of the House Intelligence Committee. That bill, according to people familiar with a draft proposal, would have the court issue an overarching order authorizing the program, but allow the N.S.A. to issue subpoenas for specific phone records without prior judicial approval.
  • The Obama administration proposal, by contrast, would retain a judicial role in determining whether the standard of suspicion was met for a particular phone number before the N.S.A. could obtain associated records.The administration’s proposal would also include a provision clarifying whether Section 215 of the Patriot Act, due to expire next year unless Congress reauthorizes it, may in the future be legitimately interpreted as allowing bulk data collection of telephone data.The proposal would not, however, affect other forms of bulk collection under the same provision. The C.I.A., for example, has obtained orders for bulk collection of records about international money transfers handled by companies like Western Union.
  • The government has been unable to point to any thwarted terrorist attacks that would have been carried out if the program had not existed, but has argued that it is a useful tool.
  • Paul Merrell on 26 Mar 14
     
    "The N.S.A. uses the once-secret call records program ... to analyze links between callers in an effort to identify hidden terrorist associates, if they exist." Correction: "The N.S.A. *claims* to use the ..." 
Paul Merrell

47 Senators Take AIPAC's Word Over U.S. Intel Community « LobeLog.com - 0 views

www.lobelog.com/-word-over-u-s-intel-community

war & peace Iranian-nukes-myth Iraeli-lobby

shared by Paul Merrell on 05 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has published the list of senators who so far have agreed to co-sponsor the Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act of 2013, aka the Wag the Dog Act of 2014. You’ll recall that the initial list, which was introduced by its principal engineers, Sens. Mark Kirk and Robert Menendez, Dec 19, included 26 co-sponsors equally divided between Democrats and Republicans, to which newly elected New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker quickly added his name. Since then, 20 other senators — all Republicans, unsurprisingly — have added their names, for a grand total of 47 — still short of a majority, let alone one that could survive an Obama veto that the White House has already committed the president to cast if the bill is passed in its present form. According to the AIPAC list, which is reproduced below, 53 senators, including 36 Democrats and the two independents who normally vote with the Democratic caucus, have not agreed to co-sponsor the bill, or, in the dreaded moniker used by AIPAC to score lawmakers’ voting records (presumably for the benefit of the “pro-Israel” PACs that decide how to dole out campaign cash), are labeled “DNC.” They will undoubtedly be the top targets for AIPAC’s legendary powers of persuasion when the Senate reconvenes early next week.
  • What is remarkable about this list, however, is that very few of the 47 co-sponsors have chosen to publicize their support for the bill to their constituents through local media or other means. A handful of the original co-sponsors put out press releases, as did Rob Portman, a late joiner. Lamar Alexander, another late-comer, courageously “tweeted” his backing for the bill. “If this were a bill senators were excited about; that is, something they thought they’d earn a lot of credit for — and not draw a lot of heat — from their voters, you’d think all of the co-sponsors would be proudly touting their support,” one veteran Hill observer told me. “Clearly, even for the Republican [co-sponsors], that doesn’t seem to be the case with this bill.” In other words, the co-sponsors appear to be targeting a very narrow constituency — AIPAC, which is now touting their names — rather than  their voters back home, most of whom probably have no idea of what their senator’s position is or what may be at stake. Which raises an interesting question: If the folks back home knew that their senator was supporting a bill that would make another war in the Middle East more, rather than less likely, would there be an outcry as there was after Obama (and AIPAC) asked Congress to approve military action against Syria? Would some senators feel compelled to reassess their support?
  • One other point: others — most recently and convincingly, Colin Kahl and Paul Pillar — have argued just how counter-productive and potentially dangerous this bill is, and we have republished their arguments for the benefit of LobeLog readers in recent days. But it should be stressed that the 47 co-sponsors of this bill, most notably the 14 Democrats who have signed on to it, have effectively decided that Bibi Netanyahu and AIPAC are more credible sources about Iran and what it is likely to do in the P5+1 negotiations if this sanctions bill becomes law than either the U.S. diplomats who are directly involved in the talks or the U.S. intelligence community. Which is a rather startling fact, especially given, for example, Bibi’s predictive record on Iraq in the run-up to the U.S. invasion and his quarrels with his own intelligence community with respect to Iran. U.S. officials beginning at the top with Obama, then running through John Kerry and Wendy Sherman have stated repeatedly that the passage of a new sanctions bill — even one that would take effect prospectively — would not only violate the spirit, if not the letter, of the Nov. 24 agreement; it would also call into serious question Washington’s good faith; quite possibly isolate the U.S. within the P5+1 with disastrous results for the existing sanctions regime; and sufficiently strengthen hardliners in Tehran to force its government to toughen its demands at the negotiating table, if not abandon the diplomatic path altogether (and with it the chances of a peaceful diplomatic settlement). As the most recent assessment by the intelligence community, for which these same 47 senators have approved annual budgets ranging as high as 70 billion dollars in recent years, concluded: “[N]ew sanctions would undermine the prospects for a successful comprehensive nuclear agreement with Iran.” Of course, that’s precisely why Netanyahu and AIPAC are pushing the new sanctions package.
  • Paul Merrell on 05 Jan 14
     
    It's not about nukes; it's about the U.S. invading Iraq and destroying it. Israel (and the Saudis) desperately want to blow up the negotiations with Iran. Shamefully, 47 senators have signed on so far, with the real lobbying set to begin tomorrow, when Congress returns from the Holidays. 
Paul Merrell

Gangster Bankers: Too Big to Jail | Politics News | Rolling Stone - 0 views

www.rollingstone.com/...nkers-too-big-to-jail-20130214

HSBC USB Libor too-big-to-jail too-big-to-fail

shared by Paul Merrell on 05 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • The deal was announced quietly, just before the holidays, almost like the government was hoping people were too busy hanging stockings by the fireplace to notice. Flooring politicians, lawyers and investigators all over the world, the U.S. Justice Department granted a total walk to executives of the British-based bank HSBC for the largest drug-and-terrorism money-laundering case ever. Yes, they issued a fine – $1.9 billion, or about five weeks' profit – but they didn't extract so much as one dollar or one day in jail from any individual, despite a decade of stupefying abuses. People may have outrage fatigue about Wall Street, and more stories about billionaire greedheads getting away with more stealing often cease to amaze. But the HSBC case went miles beyond the usual paper-pushing, keypad-punching­ sort-of crime, committed by geeks in ties, normally associated­ with Wall Street. In this case, the bank literally got away with murder – well, aiding and abetting it, anyway.
  • Paul Merrell on 05 Jan 14
     
    One I missed from last February by Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi. "An arrestable class and an unarrestable class. We always suspected it, now it's admitted. So what do we do?"
Paul Merrell

Customer proprietary network information - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/...roprietary_network_information

security state call-metadata 4th Amendment

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Customer proprietary network information (CPNI) is the data collected by telecommunications companies about a consumer's telephone calls. It includes the time, date, duration and destination number of each call, the type of network a consumer subscribes to, and any other information that appears on the consumer's telephone bill. Telemarketers working on behalf of telephone companies, attempting to either win back a customer or upsell a customer with more services, must ask the customer's consent before accessing the billing information or before using that information to offer an upsell or any change of services. Usually this is done at the beginning of a call from the telemarketer to the telephone subscriber.
  • Note that as long as an affiliate is "communications" related, the FCC has ruled that CPNI is under an opt-out approach (can be shared without your explicit permission). A phone company is permitted to sell all information on you, such as numbers you call, when you called them, where you were when you called them, or any other personally identifying information. CPNI would normally require a warrant for law enforcement agencies, but it can be freely sold to "communications" related companies. One can verify this by checking rule 64.2007(b)(1) and footnote 137 in the 2007 CPNI order. One can call up a phone company and opt out by requesting that they do not share CPNI information. In the case of
  • The U.S. Telecommunications Act of 1996 granted the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) authority to regulate how customer proprietary network information (CPNI) can be used and to enforce related consumer information privacy provisions. The rules in the 2007 FCC CPNI Order further restrict CPNI use and create new notification and reporting requirements. The rules in the 2007 CPNI Order include: Limits the information which carriers may provide to third-party marketing firms without first securing the affirmative consent of their customers Defines when and how customer service representatives may share call details Creates new notification and reporting obligations for carriers (including identity verification procedures) Verification process must MATCH what is shown with the company placing the call.
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  • The 2007 CPNI Order does not revise all CPNI rules. For example, the rule revisions adopted in the Order do not limit a carrier's ability to use CPNI to perform billing and collections functions, restrict CPNI use to effect maintenance and repair activity, or impact responses to lawful subpoenas. Fines for failure to comply with CPNI rules can be substantial. Since 2006, the FCC, focusing on one rule regarding internal annual compliance certificates, proposed over $1 million in fines and those fines are not necessarily indicative of the fines the FCC could propose. The FCC is authorized to impose fines of up to $150,000 for each rule violation or each day of a continuing violation up to a maximum of $1.5 million for each continuing violation.[1] The rules adopted in the Order are effective either six months after the Order is published in the Federal Register or on receipt of Office of Management and Budget approval of the new rules depending on which event is later. (Order at ¶61)
  • Paul Merrell on 06 Jan 14
     
    A term that may become controversial in the context of pending cases under the 4th Amendment against NSA surveillance, going to the "reasonableness" of a customer's expectation of privacy in call metadata.
Paul Merrell

US v. Davis, 754 F. 3d 1205 - Court of Appeals, 11th Circuit 2014 - Google Scholar - 0 views

scholar.google.com/scholar_case

surveillance state litigation 11th-Cir. cell-site-location-data civil liberties 4th Amendment

shared by Paul Merrell on 04 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • 754 F.3d 1205 (2014) UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Quartavious DAVIS, Defendant-Appellant. No. 12-12928. United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit. June 11, 2014.
  • The prosecution also offered records obtained from cell phone service providers evidencing that Davis and his co-defendants had placed and received cell phone calls in close proximity to the locations of each of the charged robberies around the 1210*1210 time that the robberies were committed, except for the Mayor's Jewelry store robbery. Davis preserved his objection to the cell phone location evidence and his claim that the government's obtaining such evidence without a warrant issued upon a showing of probable cause violated his rights under the Fourth Amendment.
  • The evidence obtained under the order and presented against Davis in the district court consisted of so-called "cell site location information." That location information 1211*1211 includes a record of calls made by the providers' customer, in this case Davis, and reveals which cell tower carried the call to or from the customer. The cell tower in use will normally be the cell tower closest to the customer. The cell site location information will also reflect the direction of the user from the tower. It is therefore possible to extrapolate the location of the cell phone user at the time and date reflected in the call record.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Davis's Fourth Amendment argument raises issues of first impression in this circuit, and not definitively decided elsewhere in the country. The evidence at issue consists of records obtained from cell phone service providers pursuant to the Stored Communications Act ("SCA"), 18 U.S.C. §§ 2703(c) and (d). Under that Act, the government can obtain from providers of electronic communication service records of subscriber services when the government has obtained either a warrant, § 2703(c)(A), or, as occurred in this case, a court order under subsection (d), see § 2703(c)(B). The order under subsection (d) does not require the government to show probable cause.
  • As we suggested above, the question whether cell site location information is protected by the Fourth Amendment guarantees against warrantless searches has never been determined by this court or the Supreme Court. Two circuits have considered the question, but not in the context of the use of the evidence in a criminal proceeding. Also, one of those opinions issued before the Supreme Court's decision in United States v. Jones, ___ U.S. ___, 132 S.Ct. 945, 181 L.Ed.2d 911 (2012), the most relevant Supreme Court precedent.
  • In short, we hold that cell site location information is within the subscriber's reasonable expectation of privacy. The obtaining of that data without a warrant is a Fourth Amendment violation.
  • Paul Merrell on 04 Nov 14
     
    11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (Southeastern U.S.) holds that section 2703(d) of the Stored Communications Act, which purports to allow the obtaining of a search warrant without a showing of probable cause, violates the 4th Amendment warrant requirement as applied to cell tower "site location information." That should also apply to "fake" cell towers, like the Stingray device (IMSI catcher) used to obtain the same type of information. Likely doubly so because such devices trespass on a radio connection assigned by the FCC between the legitimate cell tower and the user's telephone.
Paul Merrell

U.S. sees Syria rebels in political, not military solution: Asharq al-Awsat newspaper |... - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...a-rebels-idUSKBN0IG0PV20141027

war & peace Syria ISIL U.S.-foreign-policy Syrian-opposition

shared by Paul Merrell on 01 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • The United States does not expect Syrian rebels it plans to train to fight Islamic State militants to also take on President Bashar al-Assad's forces, but sees them as a crucial part of a political solution to end the war, the Asharq al-Awsat newspaper quoted a senior U.S. official as saying. The United States, which is leading an international coalition bombing Islamic State in Syria, has said it wants to train and equip "moderate" rebels to fight the militant group which has seized tracts of land in Syria and neighboring Iraq.Asked whether those rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) units would ultimately go on to fight Syrian government forces, John Allen, the U.S. representative to the coalition, told the Asharq al-Awsat daily:
  • "No. What we would like to see is for the FSA and the forces that we will ultimately generate, train and equip to become the credible force that the Assad government ultimately has to acknowledge and recognize.""There is not going to be a military solution here," he added, in comments published at the weekend on the newspaper's English language website.
  • Allen said there was a need to build up the credibility of the moderate Syrian opposition at a political level, adding that it was normal for rebel forces to clash with the Syrian military as they seek to defend their territory and families."But the intent is not to create a field force to liberate Damascus — that is not the intent," Allen, a retired U.S. general, told the newspaper."The intent is that in the political outcome, they must be a prominent - perhaps the preeminent voice - at the table to ultimately contribute to the political outcome that we seek," he said at the start of a Middle East tour.U.S. President Barack Obama said last month he wanted to train and equip Free Syrian Army rebels to "strengthen the opposition as the best counterweight to the extremists" and to prevent U.S. troops from being dragged into another ground war.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The Free Syrian Army is a term used to describe dozens of armed groups fighting to overthrow Assad but with little or no central command. They have been widely outgunned by Islamist insurgents such as Islamic State.Rebel fighters have voiced frustration with the U.S.-led approach to fighting Islamic State. They say Washington and its Arab allies are too focused on quashing the militant group at the expense of confronting Syrian government forces, which many rebels still see as the ultimate enemy.The Syrian air force has ramped up its own bombing campaign on insurgent-held areas since the U.S-led air strikes began last month, increasing rebel fears that the government is profiting from the distraction of the coalition campaign.
  • "The outcome that we seek in Syria is akin to the (anti-Islamic State) strategy that fits into a much larger regional strategy and that outcome is a political outcome that does not include Assad," Allen said.The United Nations says more than 191,000 people have been killed since the start of the Syrian uprising against Assad's rule in 2011. Rights groups say the actual figure is higher.
Paul Merrell

How a false witness helped the CIA make a case for torture | Al Jazeera America - 0 views

america.aljazeera.com/...false-witness-ciatorture.html

war & peace CIA torture NSA lies

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • Buried amid details of “rectal rehydration” and waterboarding that dominated the headlines over last week’s Senate Intelligence Committee findings was an alarming detail: Both the committee’s summary report and its rebuttal by the CIA admit that a source whose claims were central to the July 2004 resumption of the torture program  — and, almost certainly, to authorizing the Internet dragnet collecting massive amounts of Americans’ email metadata — fabricated claims about an election year plot. Both the torture program and President Bush's warrantless wiretap program, Stellar Wind, were partly halted from March through June of 2004. That March, Assistant Attorney General Jack Goldsmith prepared to withdraw Pentagon authorization for torture, amid growing concern following the publication of pictures of detainee abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib, and a May 2004 CIA inspector general report criticizing a number of aspects of the Agency's interrogation program. On June 4, 2004, CIA Director George Tenet suspended the use of torture techniques.
  • During the same period, the DOJ lawyers who pushed to stop torture were also persuading President George W. Bush to halt aspects of Stellar Wind, a program that conducted warrantless wiretapping of Americans’ communications inside the U.S., on top of the Internet metadata. After a dramatic confrontation in the hospital room of Attorney General John Ashcroft on March 10, 2004, acting Attorney General Jim Comey and Goldsmith informed Bush there was no legal basis for parts of the program. Ultimately, Bush agreed to modify aspects of it, in part by halting the collection of Internet metadata. But even as Bush officials suspended that part of the program on March 26, they quickly set about finding legal cover for its resumption. One way they did so was by pointing to imminent threats — such as a planned election-season attack — in the United States.
  • The CIA in March 2004 received reporting from a source the torture report calls "Asset Y,” who said a known Al-Qaeda associate in Pakistan, Janat Gul — whom CIA at the time believed was a key facilitator — had set up a meeting between Asset Y and Al-Qaeda's finance chief, and was helping plan attacks inside the United States timed to coincide with the November 2004 elections. According to the report, CIA officers immediately expressed doubts about the veracity of the information they’d been given by Asset Y. A senior CIA officer called the report "vague" and "worthless in terms of actionable intelligence." He noted that Al Qaeda had already issued a statement “emphasizing a lack of desire to strike before the U.S. election” and suggested that since Al-Qaeda was aware that “threat reporting causes panic in Washington” and inevitably results in leaks, planting a false claim of an election season attack would be a good way for the network to test whether Asset Y was working for its enemies. Another officer, assigned to the group hunting Osama bin Laden, also expressed doubts. In its rebuttal to the Senate report, the CIA argues the agency was right to take seriously Asset Y’s reporting , in spite of those initial doubts. The CIA wrote numerous reports about the claim “even as we worked to resolve the inconsistencies.” Reports from detainee Hassan Ghul, who was captured in January 2004, supported the possibility that a cell of Al-Qaeda members in Pakistan’s tribal areas might be planning a plot of which he was unaware. And the CIA corroborated other parts of Asset Y's reporting.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Still, the CIA had one further reason for doubting claims that Gul was at the center of an Al-Qaeda election-year plot. Ghu told the CIA about an attempt by Gul, in the fall of 2003, to sell anti-aircraft missiles to Al-Qaeda; the Qaeda figure in Ghul’s story didn't even want to work with Gul. And Ghul later learned Gul was probably lying about his ability to acquire the missiles.
  • Nevertheless, the CIA took seriously Asset Y’s claim that Gul was involved in an election plot and moved quickly to gain custody of him after his arrest by Pakistan in June 2004. Even before CIA rendered Gul to its custody, Tenet started lobbying to get torture techniques reapproved for his interrogation. On June 29, Tenet wrote National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice seeking approval to once again use some of the techniques whose use he suspended less than four weeks earlier, in the hope of gathering information on the election season plot. "Given the magnitude of the danger posed by the pre-election plot and Gul's almost certain knowledge of any intelligence about that plot” Tenet wrote, relying on Asset Y's claims, “I request the fastest possible resolution of the above issues." On July 20, according to the report, top administration officials gave CIA verbal approval to get back into the torture business. Ashcroft stated that most previously approved interrogation techniques would not violate U.S. law on July 22 (though not waterboarding). And by the end of July, CIA started coaxing DOJ to approve other techniques — such as slapping someone in the stomach or hosing them down with cold water or limiting their food — which had already been used by the CIA but never officially approved by DOJ.
  • At the same time, the government was also using the ostensible election-season plot, among others, to persuade the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) – the secret court that approves domestic spying on Americans – to authorize the Internet dragnet. After Bush halted the Internet dragnet on March 26, his aides began working with FISC presiding judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly to find a way to use FISA authority -- normally been used to access records for a single phone or Internet account -- to collect Internet metadata in bulk. They provided a series of briefings, including one attended by Terrorist Threat Integration Center head John Brennan and CIA Director George Tenet, to explain the threat. In addition, they provided what – under Stellar Wind – analysts called a “scary memo,” summarizing all the threats facing the country to underscore the urgency of the program. Tenet's declaration included as an appendix to an application submitted in the days before July 14, 2004, laid out the threats CIA and others were fighting that summer.
  • Judge Kollar-Kotelly invoked Tenet's material in a redacted section of her opinion authorizing the phone dragnet, pointing to it as a key reason to permit collection of what she called “enormous” amounts of data from innocent Americans.
  • Soon after the reauthorization of the torture and the Internet dragnet, the CIA realized ASSET Y's story wasn't true. By September, an officer involved in Janat Gul's interrogation observed, “we lack credible information that ties him to pre-election threat information or direct operational planning against the United States, at home or abroad.” In October, CIA reassessed ASSET Y, and found him to be deceptive. When pressured, ASSET Y admitted had had made up the story of a meeting set up by Gul. ASSET Y blamed his CIA handler for pressuring him for intelligence, leading him to lie about the meeting. By 2005, CIA had concluded that ASSET Y was a fabricator, and Janat Gul was a “rather poorly educated village man [who is] quite lazy [who] was looking to make some easy money for little work and he was easily persuaded to move people and run errands for folks on our target list” (though the Agency wasn't always forthright about the judgment to DOJ). The torture program, which was resumed in part because of a perceived urgency of extracting information from Gul on a plot that didn't exist, continued for several more years. The Internet dragnet continued under FISC authorization, on and off, until December 2011. And several other still active NSA programs, including the phone dragnet, relied on Kollar-Kotelly's earlier authorization as precedents – the case for which had also been derived, in part, from one long discredited fabricator.
Paul Merrell

Fighting Al Qaeda by Supporting Al Qaeda in Syria: The Obama Administration is a "State... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5339728

war & peace Al-Nusra al-Qaeda Obama terrorists™ state-sponsor-of-terrorism

shared by Paul Merrell on 23 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • First published by GR on June 19, 2013 A major transition in US counter-terrorism doctrine is unfolding. While Barack Obama, following in the footsteps of  George W. Bush, remains firmly committed to waging a “Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT), his administration is now openly supporting selected rebel units in Syria which are part of the Al Qaeda network. Known and documented, Al Qaeda is a creation of the CIA, which has covertly supported the “Islamic Terror Network” since the heyday of the Soviet Afghan war. While Al Qaeda is a US sponsored “intelligence asset”, a “New Normal” has been established. An Al Qaeda affiliated organization, namely Syria’s Al Nusrah, is being supported “overtly” by the US President, rather than “covertly” by the CIA.
  • The support of Al Nusrah, an affiliate of al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), is no longer channeled in secrecy as part of a CIA-MI6 covert operation, it  is now being supported –in a semi-official fashion– as part of a US foreign policy agenda. The latter is also part of America’s diplomatic discourse, implemented in consultation with Britain, Canada, Germany and France. Although Al Nusrah was not mentioned explicitly, “support to the Syrian rebels” was the main topic of debate at the June 2013 G-8 meetings in Northern Ireland. While intelligence covert ops continue to perform an important role, Washington’s support to Al Qaeda in Syria is now “out in the open”, within the public domain. It is no longer part of a secret undertaking. It is part of the mainstay of US foreign policy, carried out under the helm of Secretary of State John Kerry.
  • “Support to the rebels” is also debated in the US Congress. It is the object of a bill which has already been adopted by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  Senator Corker who co-sponsored the bill stated that: “The future for Syria is uncertain, but the U.S. has a vested interest in trying to prevent an extremist takeover, which poses a very real risk for us and the region,” (emphasis added) In a twisted logic, the bill purports to prevent “an extremist takeover” by supporting an Al Qaeda terrorist formation.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • According to the 2001 Patriot Act, those “who pay for the bomb“, namely those who fund affiliates of Al Qaeda, are terrorists. In the words of George W. Bush on September 11, 2001,   “We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.” The Act pertains to the harboring and financing of terrorist organizations. Al Qaeda and its affiliates are defined in the PATRIOT Act as a terror network. Persons and organizations which support or abet Al Qaeda are considered as terrorists. The forbidden question: Does the substance of Executive order 13224 and the PATRIOT  legislation quoted above apply to a US president, a Secretary of State, a Member of the US Congress?
  • Paul Merrell on 23 Aug 14
     
    Well, here is an Obama "high crime and misdemeanor". Subverting the U.S. government to sponsor terrorism. 
Paul Merrell

AP Exclusive: Expert calls for Diablo Canyon shutdown | www.ktvu.com - 0 views

www.ktvu.com/...ng8Tj

Nukes NRC-coverup Diablo-Canyon

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • A senior federal nuclear expert is urging regulators to shut down California's last operating nuclear plant until they can determine whether the facility's twin reactors can withstand powerful shaking from any one of several nearby earthquake faults.Michael Peck, who for five years was Diablo Canyon's lead on-site inspector, says in a 42-page, confidential report that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is not applying the safety rules it set out for the plant's operation.The document, which was obtained and verified by The Associated Press, does not say the plant itself is unsafe. Instead, according to Peck's analysis, no one knows whether the facility's key equipment can withstand strong shaking from those faults — the potential for which was realized decades after the facility was built.
  • Continuing to run the reactors, Peck writes, "challenges the presumption of nuclear safety."Peck's July 2013 filing is part of an agency review in which employees can appeal a supervisor's or agency ruling — a process that normally takes 60 to 120 days, but can be extended. The NRC, however, has not yet ruled. Spokeswoman Lara Uselding said in emails that the agency would have no comment on the document.The NRC, which oversees the nation's commercial nuclear power industry, and Diablo Canyon owner Pacific Gas and Electric Co., say the nearly three-decade-old reactors, which produce enough electricity for more than 3 million people annually, are safe and that the facility complies with its operating license, including earthquake safety standards.
  • The disaster preparedness of the world's nuclear plants came into sharp focus in 2011, when the coastal Fukushima Dai-ichi plant in Japan suffered multiple meltdowns after an earthquake and tsunami destroyed its power and cooling systems. The magnitude-9 earthquake was far larger than had been believed possible. The NRC has since directed U.S. nuclear plants to reevaluate seismic risks, and those studies are due by March 2015.The important of such an analysis came into sharp focus on Sunday when a magnitude 6.0-earthquake struck in Northern California's wine country, injuring scores of residents, knocking out power to thousands and toppling wine bottles at vineyards.
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  • What's striking about Peck's analysis is that it comes from within the NRC itself, and gives a rare look at a dispute within the agency. At issue are whether the plant's mechanical guts could survive a big jolt, and what yardsticks should be used to measure the ability of the equipment to withstand the potentially strong vibrations that could result.The conflict between Peck and his superiors stems from the 2008 discovery of the Shoreline fault, which snakes offshore about 650 yards from the reactors. A larger crack, the Hosgri fault, had been discovered in the 1970s about 3 miles away, after the plant's construction permits had been issued and work was underway. Surveys have mapped a network of other faults north and south of the reactors.According to Peck's filing, PG&E research in 2011 determined that any of three nearby faults — the Shoreline, Los Osos and San Luis Bay — is capable of producing significantly more ground motion during an earthquake than was accounted for in the design of important plant equipment. In the case of San Luis Bay, it is as much as 75 percent more.Those findings involve estimates of what's called peak ground acceleration, a measurement of how hard the earth could shake in a given location. The analysis says PG&E failed to demonstrate that the equipment would remain operable if exposed to the stronger shaking, violating its operating license.
  • The agency should shut the facility down until it is proven that piping, reactor cooling and other systems can meet higher stress levels, or approve exemptions that would allow the plant to continue to operate, according to Peck's analysis.Peck disagreed with his supervisors' decision to let the plant continue to operate without assessing the findings. Unable to resolve his concerns, Peck in 2012 filed a formal objection, calling for PG&E to be cited for violating the safety standards, according to his filing. Within weeks, the NRC said the plant was being operated safely. In 2013 he filed another objection, triggering the current review.
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