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Paul Merrell

President Obama wants us to argue about the special relationship - 0 views

mondoweiss.net/...president-special-relationship

war & peace Iranian-nukes-myth deal Obama anti-semitism

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Aug 15 - No Cached
  • n the last few days, something remarkable has taken place in American politics. The president of the United States has made a point of taking on the special relationship with Israel and the Israel lobby in his effort to defend the Iran deal, and supporters of the special relationship have struck back hard, accusing him of anti-Semitism. Elliott Abrams, Lee Smith and Tablet magazine for starters. What’s remarkable is that mainstream supporters of the deal have left the president to do this heavy lifting on his own. They have largely ignored his pointed comments: that the Democrats are under pressure from big donors to oppose the Iran Deal, that the same moneyed groups pushed the Iraq war, that it would be an abrogation of his constitutional duty if he sided with Israel’s PM Benjamin Netanyahu, and that Netanyahu’s intervention in American politics is unprecedented. The exceptions are Eli Clifton working hard to expose AIPAC as warmongers at Lobelog, and David Bromwich attacking the Congress-people who are Netanyahu’s “marionettes” at Huffington Post. But generally the liberal press has been embarrassed by Obama’s comments or tried to wish them away. The New York Times put AIPAC on its front page the other day, but allowed David Makovsky, an ardent supporter of Israel, to say that some of Obama’s statements are “dangerous.” David Rothkopf, the editor of Foreign Policy, is supporting the deal, but he has said on twitter that the emphasis on the Israel lobby is disturbing to him. Dahlia Scheindlin, an Israeli-American, tries to dispose of the criticisms of Obama by arguing that he can’t have any objection to dual loyalty in this day and age: The very idea that there’s something wrong with dual loyalty is obsolete. It’s a fossilized relic of single-identity patriotism to the patria from centuries past. Nowadays, people migrate, have mixed heritage, multiple citizenships, meta-state communities and even multiple sexualities
  • Ali Gharib backs her up, saying that conservative critics of Obama are attributing ideas he doesn’t have to him. While Jonathan Chait at New York Magazine says much the same; he denies that Obama was talking about Jewish pro-Israel donors when it was reported in the New York Times that the president was lobbying Democratic senators to stick with him: The president said he understood the pressures that senators face from donors and others, but he urged the lawmakers to take the long view rather than make a move for short-term political gain, according to the senator. Elliott Abrams seized on that same report to say that the president was mining anti-Semitism, by talking about the Israel lobby.
  • So the president is out there on his own. I believe he wants us, the American people, to talk about the Israel lobby and whose interests it’s supporting at this critical moment, so that he can solidify the most important foreign policy move of his administration; but the conversation isn’t really happening. Last night on Hardball, Steve Kornacki led a discussion of Chuck Schumer’s opposition to the deal in which he and Michael Tomasky acknowledged “political” pressures on Schumer from his constituents, but they left it at that. They didn’t say what those pressures are– Israel. They didn’t say that Schumer calls himself Israel’s Shomer, or guardian, didn’t even say that he is Jewish, something that the networks have been reporting because it’s relevant. Just as Laura Rozen of al Monitor cites Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz’s Jewishness in embracing his support of the deal yesterday. I want the president’s conversation to happen. I want Americans to talk about the Israel lobby’s influence due to wealthy donors and talk about pro-Israeli activists’ loyalty to Netanyahu over the president. I think this important discussion can happen without anti-Semitism for a simple reason. Zionism is not Judaism. Jewish Americans do not all support Netanyahu. Some of us don’t even support Israel. Anti-Zionists don’t believe in the idea of a Jewish state any more than they’d support a Christian state in the U.S. Myself, I became an anti-Zionist in recent years because my liberal American values impelled me to demand that Palestinians living under Israeli rule should have the right to vote for their government.
  • Paul Merrell on 12 Aug 15
     
    So now it's anti-semitic to even discuss the Israel lobby, according to the Israel-firsters. 
Gary Edwards

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

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

Banksters American-Empire Lawrence-Wilkerson

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

Noam Chomsky: The Real Reasons the U.S. Enables Israeli Crimes and Atrocities | World |... - 0 views

www.alternet.org/..._israeli_crimes_and_atrocities

chomsky

shared by Joseph Skues on 17 Aug 10 - Cached
  • But the major change in relationships took place in 1967. Just take a look at USA aid to Israel. You can tell that right off. And in many other respects, it’s true, too. Similarly, the attitude towards Israel on the part of the intellectual community -- you know, media, commentary, journals, and so on -- that changed very sharply in 1967, from either lack of interest or sometimes even disdain, to almost passionate support. So what happened in 1967?
  • And Nasserite secular nationalism was considered a serious threat, because it was recognized that it might seek to take control of the immense resources of the region and use them for regional interest, rather than allow them to be centrally controlled and exploited by the United States and its allies. So that was a major issue.
  • While the U.S. was mired in Southeast Asia at the time -- it was right at the time, a little after the Cambodia invasion and everything was blowing up -- the U.S. couldn't do a thing about it. So, it asked Israel to mobilize its very substantial military forces and threaten Syria so that Syria would withdraw. Well, Israel did it. Syria withdrew. That was another gift to U.S. power and, in fact, U.S. aid to Israel shot up very sharply -- maybe quadrupled or something like that -- right at that time. Now at that time, that was the time when the so-called Nixon Doctrine was formulated.
  • ...43 more annotations...
  • which will protect the Arab dictatorships from their own populations or any external threat.
  • what were called “cops on the beat” by Melvin Laird, Secretary of Defense
  • A part of the Nixon Doctrine was that the U.S., of course, has to control Middle-East oil resources -- that goes much farther back -- but it will do so through local, regional allies
  • military industry is very close to Israeli
  • Pakistan
  • Israel
  • that was sometimes called the periphery strategy: non-Arab states protecting the Arab dictatorships from any threat,
  • primarily the threat of what was called radical nationalism -- independent nationalism -- meaning taking over the armed resources for their own purposes.
  • But, anyway, that “cop” [Iran] was lost and Israel's position became even stronger in the structure that remained.
  • through the '80s Congress, under public pressure, was imposing constraints on Reagan's support for vicious and brutal dictatorship
  • Congress blocked i
  • which the Reagan administration was strongly supporting
  • So] that it [could] support South-African apartheid and the Guatemalan murderous dictatorship and other murderous regimes, Reagan needed a kind of network of terrorist states to help out, to evade the congressional and other limitations, and he turned to, at that time, Taiwan, but, in particular, Israel. Britain helped out. And that was another major service.
  • By far the most rabid pro-Israel newspaper in the country is the Wall Street Journal
  • the journal of the business community, and it reflects the support of the business world for Israel, which is quite strong
  • high-tech investment in Israe
  • a whole network
  • probably it's carried out terrorist acts, but by the standards of the U.S. and Israel, they're barely visible
  • Intel, for example, is building its next facility for construct development of the next generation of chips in Israel.
  • Most Jewish money goes to Democrats and most Jews vote Democratic
  • Republican Party is much more strongly supportive of Israeli power and atrocities than the Democrats are
  • AIPAC, which is a very influential lobby
  • there's Christian Zionism
  • they're facing virtually no opposition. Who's calling for support of the Palestinians?  
  • the occupation and the blockade on Gaz
  • , the occupation of East Jerusalem
  • the West Bank
  • here were free elections in Palestine in January 2006
  • recognized to be free
  • Israel and the United States instantly, within days, undertook perfectly public policies to try to punish the Palestinians for voting the wrong way in a free election
  • you couldn't see a more dramatic illustration of hatred and contempt for democracy unless it comes out the right way.    
  • tried to carry out a military coup to overthrow the elected government. Well, it failed. Hamas won and drove Fatah out of the Gaza Strip. Now, here, that's described as a demonstration of Hamas terror or something. What they did was preempt and block a U.S.-backed military coup
  • The terrorist list has been a historic joke, in fact, a sick joke
  • Up until 1982, Iraq -- Saddam Hussein's Iraq -- was on the terrorist list. 
  • 1982, the Reagan administration removed Iraq from the terrorist list. Why? Because they were moving to support Iraq, and, in fact, the Reagan administration and, in fact, the first Bush administration strongly supported Iraq right through its worst – Saddam, right through his worst atrocities. In fact, they tried to ... they succeeded, in fact, in preventing even criticism of condemnation of the worst atrocities, like the Halabja massacre -- and others
  • So they removed Iraq from the terrorist list because they wanted to support one of the worst monsters and terrorists in the region, namely Saddam Hussein.
  • Turkey
  • The main reason why Hezbollah is on the terrorist list is because it resisted Israeli occupation of Southern Lebanon and, in fact, drove Israel out of Southern Lebanon after 22 years of occupation -- that's called terrorism. In fact, Lebanon has a national holiday, May 25th, which is called Liberation Day. That's the national holiday in Lebanon commemorating, celebrating the Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon in year 2000, and largely under Hezbollah attack.  
  • which would be a major competitor in Egypt's elections, if Egypt permitted democratic elections,
  • The Egyptian dictatorship -- which the U.S. strongly backs, Obama personally strongly backs -- doesn't permit anything remotely like elections and is very brutal and harsh
  • I mean, Europe, the non-aligned countries -- the Arab League, the Organization of Islamic States, which includes Iran -- have all accepted the international consensus on the two-state settlement
  • They chose expansion.  The crucial question is what would the United States do? Well, there was an internal bureaucratic battle in the U.S., and Henry Kissinger won out. He was in favor of what he called “stalemate.” A stalemate meant no negotiations, just force.
  • So, sure, if Israel continues to settle in the occupied territories -- illegally, incidentally, as Israel recognized in 1967 (it's all illegal; they recognized it) -- it's undermining the possibilities for the viable existence of any small Palestinian entity. And as long as the United States and Israel continue with that, yes, there will be insecurity
Joseph Skues

Being sick in France ; French social security ; retirement in France - 0 views

www.understandfrance.org/...Sick.html

sick in france healthcare financial-oligarchs finacial-crisis OBAMA Banksters banksters

shared by Joseph Skues on 07 Aug 10 - Cached
  • the system is very efficient : the administrative cost of the health system is around 4,5% (for US private insurance companies : 10 to 13%) and 1,2% for the retirement system (vs. around 10% for most pension funds). The health system reimburses very quickly (after four days).
  • 22 Euros
  • "three best symbols of the French nation" are the flag, the health and the Marseillaise
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • each regional organization (Caisse) is managed by a board composed 50/50 of representatives of labor unions on one side, employers associations on the other side, with the State playing the role of a referee
  • it is not accurate to call it a "socialized
  • when a family is expecting a child, it gets approximately 2,000 Euros in three installments (the first two of them corresponding to a mandatory medical visit, the third to the birth) ; then the family receives a monthly allowance till the child is 20 (for two children or more, around 100 Euros/month/child) ;
  • minimal pension (in the range of 750 Euros/month) to any person who has worked 40 years
  • For the French, it is just unthinkable that, if you lose your job, you also lose your health plan
  • This is a typical example of what the French call their "social model" and one of the few where, in my opinion, the USA could learn something from the French experience. Read my opinion about it "Socialized medicine : give me a break".
  • all companies, whatever their size, must provide their staff with an annual visit to a doctor ; in big companies it is a in-house doctor, in small companies an external doctor who comes for the annual controls
  • (otherwise, you'll be reimbursed a little less)
  • SOS Medecin tel. 01 47 07 77 77 : very reasonably priced (around 70 Euros) and efficient, a doctor in your house in less than an hour
  • Basic tips for tourists you can see any doctor (they also make house calls for a small supplement) for a cost of around 22 Euros ($ 30) but you will not be reimbursed by Social Security if you are not part of the French Social Security system you can be treated by any French hospital in case of emergency (they will talk about money AFTER treating you...) you can buy certain drugs over the counter in a pharmacy but a lot of them require a doctor's prescription ; don't be surprised if you do not find US drug brand names, you are in another country ! If your French isn't good, there are two hospitals with English-speaking staff : the American Hospital, 63 blvd Victor Hugo 92202 Neuilly, Tel. 33-(0)1 46 41 25 25 ; Email : patient@ahp-paris.com the British Hospital, 3 rue Barbès 92300 Levallois Tel. 33-(0)1 46 39 22 22 Public or private ? For a serious case, it is often wiser to go to a public hospital, especially a CHU (Centre Hospitalo-Universitaire). In case of a (real) emergency call SAMU (this is a day and night emergency service tel. 15) or les pompiers (fire-brigade) who provide 24 hour-emergency service (tel. 18). Useful numbers for emergencies (other than 15) :
  • The World Health Organization (WHO) has ranked the health system of its 191 member countries and France tops the list for providing the best overall health care (UK ranks 18 and USA ranks 37) (source : International Herald Tribune June 21,2000).
  • Health coverage by Social Security ("Sécurité Sociale") is mandatory and paid both by the employee (1/4) and the employer (3/4).
  • In the USA the Emergency staff is a driver whose job is to take you as fast as possible to the hospital, whatever your condition, in a fast ambulance. In France, the SAMU team includes a MD whose job is to do as much as he can before taking you to the hospital in a more heavily-equipped ambulance. Both ways have their pros and cons, but dont be horrified if you see an ambulance NOT moving....
  • DID YOU KNOW THAT....? In France, the maternity leave is 16 weeks minimum (of course paid 100% of the salary!), plus one month minimum if the baby is breast-fed ; "paternity" leave is two weeks ; new mothers spend 3 to 6 days in the hospital.
  • To related pages : a column of the Health system (#2), an American article on the French health system (#3), etc....
  • French doctors are not very different from American doctors, except they make much less money (three or four times?) and are probably much more accessible, less protected by a dragon-secretary.
  • All expenses are paid by the company and of course the employee does not pay a cent. The 20-minute visit includes whatever check-up seems appropriate (heart, eyes, stress, depression...). The doctor cannot prescribe medecine but can prescribe a visit to the doctor is something new that is wrong or needs a more thorough check is detected.
  • You have to pay ONE Euro more (not reimbursable) for every visit to the doctor
  • The system is threefold : Health, Family and Retirement, each of them has different structures and financing ; each of them is financially autonomous (no taxpayer's money -
  • The system is threefold : Health, Family and Retirement, each of them has different structures and financing ; each of them is financially autonomous ( no taxpayer's money
Gary Edwards

Michael Lewis | The Big Money - 0 views

www.thebigmoney.com/...michael-lewis

michael-lewis liars-poker financial-crisis panic banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 07 Feb 09 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 07 Feb 09
     
    this financial crisis has solidified Michael Lewis' position as America's money laureate. And it's not just because he happened-as some critics would construe it-to be in the right place at the right time. Nor is it because he's sold a ton of books-1.2 million copies since 2001, to be precise. It's because Michael Lewis is by far the best business journalist in the country. His assessment of the country's economic situation-and thus the country's economic mood-has provided some of the finest, most accessible prose available. Lewis serves as translator for the confused, financially illiterate masses. Which makes his secret to success all the more intriguing: His writing isn't actually about money.
Gary Edwards

American Thinker: Wrecks, Lies and Barney Frank - 0 views

www.americanthinker.com/...cks_lies_and_barney_frank.html

politics bailout barney-frank fannie-freddie

shared by Gary Edwards on 29 Oct 08 - Cached
  • But then a caller challenged Frank's continued insistence that the meltdown was brought on by Republican deregulation, citing the 1999 NY Times article concerning Clinton Administration efforts to force Fannie to ease mortgage standards in order to provide more minority and lower-income lending. The caller reminded Barney of his own words as ranking member from a 2003 Times piece reporting Bush's initiative to reign in Fannie and Freddie by creating new oversight under the Treasury Department:
  • "The recklessness of government is a primary culprit here. For years, Congress has been pushing banks to make risky, subprime loans. Using the authority of the Community Reinvestment Act, the big push for subprime mortgages began in earnest during the Clinton years. Banks that didn't play ball were subject to serious fines and lawsuits, and regulatory obstacles were placed in their way. While expanding access to the American Dream is a worthy goal, by blindly pursuing that goal and allowing the end to justify any means, we put millions of Americans at financial risk."
  • In truth, the Bill that would have likely averted the Fannie/Freddy failure -- the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005 (S. 190) -- was Republican legislation introduced by Sen. Charles Hagel [R-NE] in January of 2005. 
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • What's more, the "regulation" Frank now takes credit for was not his (H.R.1427 passed the House last year but never escaped Senate committee) but rather Nancy Pelosi's (H.R. 3221 - The Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008). And Pelosi's version, not surprisingly and unlike its Republican predecessors, was signed marked up with over 66 pages of Liberal wealth redistribution wish-fulfillment under the guise of assuring "affordable housing."  While it did establish (and way too late, Barney) the Federal Housing Finance Agency, with regulatory authority over Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Federal Home Loan Banks, and the Office of Finance, it's bogged down with tons of pork-fat. This oinker even increased the national debt limit from $9.82 trillion to $10.62 trillion, and commissioned a boatload of programs for low income families to spend it on.
  • Frank did, however, introduce legislation of his own in October of last year. Would you believe that H.R. 3838 was actually an attempt to temporarily increase the caps on Fannie/Freddie portfolios and to mandate the "use of 85% of such increase for refinancing subprime mortgages at risk of foreclosure?
  • Gary Edwards on 29 Oct 08
     
    But then a caller challenged Frank's continued insistence that the meltdown was brought on by Republican deregulation, citing the 1999 NY Times article concerning Clinton Administration efforts to force Fannie to ease mortgage standards in order to provide more minority and lower-income lending. The caller reminded Barney of his own words as ranking member from a 2003 Times piece reporting Bush's initiative to reign in Fannie and Freddie by creating new oversight under the Treasury Department:
Gary Edwards

Tom Coburn: The Health Bill Is Scary - WSJ.com - 0 views

online.wsj.com/...3514404574588842779569168.html

health-care-hoax obammunism

shared by Gary Edwards on 17 Dec 09 - Cached
  • the Reid bill (in sections 3403 and 2021) explicitly empowers Medicare to deny treatment based on cost. An Independent Medicare Advisory Board created by the bill—composed of permanent, unelected and, therefore, unaccountable members—will greatly expand the rationing practices that already occur in the program. Medicare, for example, has limited cancer patients' access to Epogen, a costly but vital drug that stimulates red blood cell production. It has limited the use of virtual, and safer, colonoscopies due to cost concerns. And Medicare refuses medical claims at twice the rate of the largest private insurers.
  • The bill explicitly states, on page 17, that health insurance plans "shall provide coverage for" services approved by the task force. This chilling provision represents the government stepping between doctors and patients. When the government asserts the power to provide care, it also asserts the power to deny care.
  • Gary Edwards on 17 Dec 09
     
    That's Dr. Tom Coburn.  The same Dr. Tom Coburn who managed to force the public reading of Socialist Bernie Sanders health care amendment proposal designed to force government run health care on all Americans. excerpt: Every American, not just seniors, should know that the rationing provisions in the Reid bill will not only reduce their quality of life, but their life spans as well. My 25 years as a practicing physician have shown me what happens when government attempts to practice medicine: Doctors respond to government coercion instead of patient cues, and patients die prematurely. Even if the public option is eliminated from the bill, these onerous rationing provisions will remain intact.
Gary Edwards

Putting the Freud in Fraud: Focus on the Human Element | Crowe Horwath LLP - 0 views

www.crowehorwath.com/3-column-page.aspx

fraud michael-barron virtual-realty crowe-horwath

shared by Gary Edwards on 02 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 02 Jun 11
     
    Excellent study of corporate fraud, with advice on how to detect it. excerpt: By taking a closer look at high-profile individuals who have perpetrated massive corporate fraud at Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, and the like and instances of fraud identified in practice, as well as some recent research, we can identify a pattern of similar behavioral elements common to white-collar crooks and cultural elements common to their environments. Following are some key elements often associated with individuals who are more likely than others to commit fraud as well as settings in which fraud is more likely to occur than elsewhere. The presence in a company of any single element is not enough to indicate fraud. But the combination - any combination - of these elements increases the risk of fraud. Behavioral Elements Individuals who exhibit or have a combination of the following social characteristics might be more likely than others to stray from the straight and narrow. Detecting fraud is further complicated by the fact that many of these behavioral elements are the same ones that tend to make executives successful.
Gary Edwards

Our Economic Future: From Best to Worst Case - Casey Research - 0 views

www.caseyresearch.com/editorial.php

Casey-Research Economic-future obammunism financial-collapse

shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 09 Jun 11
     
    This article was sent to me marked URGENT: MUST READ.  Usually that's a hint to delete.  This time however the message was true.  Nicely written article presenting in a historical context three possible futures for the world.   And, a basic plan for anyone trying to guess which future will land on our heads.  Excellent read.  Well written too. excerpt: There is a great deal of uncertainty among investors about what the future of the U.S. economy may look like - so I decided to take a stab at what's likely to happen over the next 20 years. That's enough time for a child to grow up and mature, and it's long enough for major trends to develop and make themselves felt. I'll confine myself to areas that are, as the benighted Rumsfeld might have observed, "known unknowns." I don't want to deal with possibilities of the deus ex machina sort. So we'll rule out natural events like a super-volcano eruption, an asteroid strike, a new ice age, global warming, and the like. Although all these things absolutely will occur sometime in the future, the timing is very uncertain - at least from the perspective of one human lifespan. It's pointless dealing with geological time and astronomical probability here. And, more important, there's absolutely nothing we can do about such things. So let's limit ourselves to the possibilities presented by human action. They're plenty weird and scary, and unpredictable enough.............
Gary Edwards

How JP Morgan Took Over All Kentucky's Financial Services, And Why You Should Be Scared... - 0 views

www.alternet.org/...C_and_why_you_should_be_scared

Banksters JP-Morgan-Chase financial-collapse

shared by Gary Edwards on 06 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • Writing in response to the JP lawsuit on his Rolling Stone blog, Taibbi lamented that big banks were getting away with crimes that, when pulled off by blue-collar muscle outfits like the mob (and they are), result in lengthy jail sentences. Fraud on the part of JP Morgan and other corporate banks, he concluded, is “not going to stop until people start doing hard time for these crimes.”
  • Gary Edwards on 06 Aug 11
     
    On July 1, JP Morgan Chase became the Commonwealth's bank. As the state's official depository, JP now receives all deposits, writes all checks and makes all wire transfers on the $12-15 billion that flow through Kentucky state government in the course of a fiscal year. It will cut payroll checks, receive federal and other funds earmarked for the state, and disburse educational or transportation or any other funds to their appropriate monetary endpoints. For its trouble, the bank will receive $1.3 million in state fees and the ability to re-lend idle state funds out to customers for private gain. Yes, you should be worried. JP's decade A global corporation with more than $2 trillion in assets and operations in 60 countries, JP Morgan Chase has been a major figure in the ongoing global financial crisis. As one of the largest private banks in the U.S., the bank made incredible amounts of money by underwriting many of the questionable loans (sub-prime, zero down, adjustable rate) that fueled the American housing bubble. It then made even more money by packaging hundreds of these shitty loans into a single "product," a mortgage backed security, which it sold like Twinkies to pious religious non-profits, filthy-rich hedge fund managers, municipal fire-fighters, retired auto-workers, and the like, each security effectively putting these groups on the hook-and not JP-for the shitty loans that it had helped create. When, inevitably, individual homeowners began to default on their loans, thereby triggering the stock market collapse of 2008, JP Morgan found a way to make money on that, too, by buying insurance (known as credit default swaps) on the shitty securities of shitty mortgages that it had sold to unwitting investors. For good measure, the U.S. government handed the corporation $25 billion in TARP funds, $30 billion in U.S. treasury backing to purchase bankrupt Bear Stearns (previously a global leader in mortgage backed securities), and the biggest chun
Gary Edwards

Doug Casey Answers The Hard Questions About Hard Times - Casey Research - 1 views

www.caseyresearch.com/editorial.php

capitalism Doug-Casey USA-bankruptcy Banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 28 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 28 Sep 11
     
    No Holds Bared Capitalism  .... Mr. Casey of Casey Research recommends that the USA immediately default on the national debt; bring home all military troops immediately and close oversees military bases;  Close the Federal Reserve!  Move to gold/silver backed currency.  Abolish praetorian federal agencies - immediately.  The rich are in position to bribe and elect toady politicians.  the socialist policies cement the poor and middle class to the bottom.  These programs are designed to keep them poor and dependent.  The middle class saves in dollars, and those savings are being systematically destroyed by the enormous debt of social, military and regulatory spending that is infused with corruption from top to bottom.   Financial advice to the middle class?  Get into GOLD and other hard assets.  Cut back standard of living before inflation and unsustainable government programs and promises cuts it back for you. Is Doug long on US equities and assets?  GOLD!  It's the dollar that is being destroyed.  Stocks are very expensive now.  Casey is thinking of buying USA real estate.  Not Bonds.  Even at $1800 per oz, Gold is still good.  Mining stocks are cheap relative to GOLD, but watch for bubble in these stocks.  Life changing moment: 1971 - Harry Brown's book "How to Profit from the coming Devaluation".  Buy GOLD.  "Crisis Investing" book by Casey in 1978.  Advice?  Skip college.  Minds cluttered with false concepts and a ton of debt.  
Gary Edwards

Herman Cain: 21 Things You Don't Know About Him - 0 views

www.thefiscaltimes.com/...s-You-Dont-Know-About-Him.aspx

Herman-Cain 90-day-plan Impeach-Obama End-Obammunism

shared by Gary Edwards on 10 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 10 Oct 11
     
    Excellent summary of Herman Cain.  Background and brief explanation of Herman's "first 90 days in the White House" plan.  Good stuff.... excerpt:  Herman Cain - or the Hermanator, as he calls himself in his new book - is so confident he'll be elected president on November 6, 2012, he's already sketched out his first 90 days in office. Among the things he says he'll do in the early days of a Cain administration: "Treat our economic system as I would a corporation on the verge of bankruptcy: Step one, make a 10 percent across-the-board cut" in all government departments. Step two, he says, would include "vertical deep dives" in which every department would be asked to justify its cost and directly answer the question, "Is it still in the best interests of the country?" Election 2012 Complete Coverage According to a new CBS News poll, Cain, 65, is now tied with Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, atop the field of Republican presidential candidates. Among GOP primary voters, support for Cain now stands at 17 percent support, compared with 5 percent two weeks ago. (Rick Perry has fallen 11 percentage points in just two weeks.) Cain's 9-9-9 tax plan has attracted voters: He'd replace the current tax code with a nine-percent flat income tax, a nine-percent corporate tax, and a nine-percent national sales tax.
Gary Edwards

American Apocalypse: Weiss Research, Inc. - 0 views

events.moneyandmarkets.com/ThankYou.aspx

banksters financial-collapse financial-oligarchs Banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 30 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 30 Mar 11
     
    I wonder if they can beat Porter Stansberry's presentation?  Porter rocks. "Inside the Meltdown" is chilling (and can be seen on line at: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/meltdown/view/
Gary Edwards

How IT Costs More Jobs than It Creates - Technology Review - 0 views

www.technologyreview.com/...page2

shared by Gary Edwards on 26 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • Brynjolfsson and McAfee cite evidence that—in addition to other macroeconomic problems, and the 2008 financial crisis—the U.S. economy is undergoing a structural change wrought by technology. "It's not just the crash, it's something that is changing fundamentally in the way people use technology," Brynjolfsson says
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 26 Oct 11
       
      Maybe it's true that technological changes to "productivity" are coming so fast, and with such dramatic improvements, that people can't adapt and keep up; creating a human vs tech productivity gap.  Maybe though, productivity / employment is not the most accurate gauge for measuring income, prosperity and wealth.  Consumption and investment have to be factored in.  The Fair Tax is a better fit for this high tech  productivity world than the Progressive Income Tax. Societies that carry a huge militaristic and/or socialistic cost to citizenship and governance are certainly at a competitive disadvantage in a global economy.  The cost of productivity has to carry the weight of militaristic/socialist government.  In the US, near 50% of the population exist on government subsidized income/re-distribution.  If it wasn't for tech pumped productivity, where the return on investment jumps also as labor cost and the cost of product/services distribution falls, it would be impossible for the US private sector to carry the enormous weight of government. It seems to me though that consumption has it's own internal balancing mechanism, if only the government would get out of the way and let it work.  Citizens can't consume if they don't produce.  Regardless of the the tech productivity bump factor!   The other point is that much of this discussion rests on the gravitational law that digital information represents reality; and digital services make reality more efficient with global distribution possibilities (larger markets).  But you can't eat "digital representations of reality".  You can't physically fly from San Francisco to NYC using strictly digital representations, even though you can simulate communication and connectivity "digitally". At the end of the day, digital machines enable us to work reality in new and efficient ways.  But they are still machines.  And a reality of physical dimensions remains.
Paul Merrell

Edward Snowden doesn't deserve clemency: The NSA leaker hasn't proved he is a whistlebl... - 0 views

www.slate.com/...r_hasn_t_proved_he.single.html

surveillance state NSA Snowden amnesty

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • And yet I firmly disagree with the New York Times’ Jan. 1 editorial (“Edward Snowden, Whistle-Blower”), calling on President Obama to grant Snowden “some form of clemency” for the “great service” he has done for his country.
  • If that were all that Snowden had done, if his stolen trove of beyond-top-secret documents had dealt only with the NSA’s domestic surveillance, then some form of leniency might be worth discussing. But Snowden did much more than that. The documents that he gave the Washington Post’s Barton Gellman and the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald have, so far, furnished stories about the NSA’s interception of email traffic, mobile phone calls, and radio transmissions of Taliban fighters in Pakistan’s northwest territories; about an operation to gauge the loyalties of CIA recruits in Pakistan; about NSA email intercepts to assist intelligence assessments of what’s going on inside Iran; about NSA surveillance of cellphone calls “worldwide,” an effort that (in the Post’s words) “allows it to look for unknown associates of known intelligence targets by tracking people whose movements intersect.” In his first interview with the South China Morning Post, Snowden revealed that the NSA routinely hacks into hundreds of computers in China and Hong Kong. These operations have nothing to do with domestic surveillance or even spying on allies. They are not illegal, improper, or (in the context of 21st-century international politics) immoral. Exposing such operations has nothing to do with “whistle-blowing.”
  • Paul Merrell on 06 Jan 14
     
    Another "kill the messenger" piece on Edward Snowden, this one by a Council on Foreign Relations analyst. 
Paul Merrell

Turkish court seeks military arrests of Israelis over ship killings | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...y-israel-idUSBREA4P0AO20140526

war & peace Israel Palestine Turkey Mavi-Marmara piracy

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 May 14 - No Cached
  • (Reuters) - A Turkish court has issued arrest warrants on Monday for four former Israeli military commanders who are on trial in absentia over the 2010 killing of nine Turks on a Gaza-bound aid ship, Turkish media reports said. The move came after months of negotiations between Turkey and Israel to end a diplomatic crisis over the Israeli commando raid on the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish ship challenging Israel's naval blockade of Palestinian-run Gaza Strip in 2010.Eight Turks and a Turkish-American died during the operation and a Turkish man, Suleyman Ugur Soylemez, died in hospital on Friday night after four years in a coma since the raid.
  • The court ordered the arrest of former Chief of General Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, ex-Navy Commander Eliezer Marom, ex-Air Force Commander Amos Yadlin and ex-head of Air Force intelligence head Avishay Levi, the newspaper Hurriyet said on its website.Turkish prosecutors have already sought multiple life sentences for the now-retired Israeli officers over their involvement in the killings. Among the charges listed in the 144-page indictment are "inciting murder through cruelty or torture" and "inciting injury with firearms".Although the indictment was handed up in 2012, no arrest warrants were issued then. The court said on Monday it would seek the issue of Interpol 'red notices' for the arrest of the four former generals.
  • Paul Merrell on 29 May 14
     
    A Turkish court proceeds with criminal prosecution of high Israeli military commanders responsible for the Mavi-Marmara piracy in which nine humanitarian aid workers were murdered in international waters. One of the nine had dual U.S.-Turkish citizenship but the U.S. government has taken no legal action,     
Paul Merrell

The Left Ought to Worry About Hillary Clinton, Hawk and Militarist, in 2016 | The Nation - 0 views

www.thenation.com/...inton-hawk-and-militarist-2016

Auction 2016 war war & peace Hillary

shared by Paul Merrell on 28 May 14 - No Cached
  • When it comes to Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy, start first by disentangling the nonsense about Benghazi—a nonexistent scandal if ever there was one—from the broader palette of Clinton’s own, relatively hawkish views. As she consolidates her position as the expected nominee in 2016, with wide leads over all the likely GOP challengers, it ought to worry progressives that the next president of the United States is likely to be much more hawkish than the current one. Expect to be deluged, in the next few weeks, with news about Hard Choices, the memoir of her years as secretary of state under President Obama, to be released June 10. But we don’t need a memoir to know that, comparatively speaking, two things can be said about her tenure at the State Department: first, that in fact she accomplished very little; and second, that both before her appointment and during her service, she consistently came down on the hawkish side of debates inside the administration, from Afghanistan to Libya and Syria. She’s also taken a more hawkish line than Obama on Ukraine and the confrontation with Russia.
  • Commentators were observing that in an administration where all power and decision making were gravitating toward the White House, Clinton and I represented the only independent “power center”, not least because…we were both seen as “unfire-able.” [page 289] Gates confirms that he and Clinton lined up with the hawks against the doves on Afghanistan
  • In the brief excerpt that’s been released by her publisher, Clinton notes that as secretary of state she “ended up visiting 112 countries and traveling nearly one million miles.” But what, if anything, did she accomplish with all that to-ing and fro-ing? Not a lot. She largely avoided the Israel-Palestine tangle, perhaps because she didn’t want to risk crossing the Israel lobby at home, and it’s hard to see what she actually did, other than to promote the education and empowerment of girls and women in places where they are severely beaten down. And, while it’s wrong (and really silly) to call Clinton a neoconservative, she’s more of—how to put it?—a “right-wing realist” on foreign policy, who often backed military intervention as a first or second resort, while others in the White House—especially Obama’s national security staff and Vice President Biden’s own aides, were far more reluctant to employ the troops. In that vein, it’s useful to explore the memoirs of Robert Gates, who was secretary of defense under George W. Bush and then, inexplicably, under President Obama, too. In Duty: Memoir of a Secretary at War (which could also be the subtitle of Clinton’s own memoir), Gates says several times that he and Clinton saw eye to eye. (This has also been extensively documented by Bob Woodward, if more narrowly focused, in his 2010 book, Obama’s Wars.) In Duty, Gates says that he formed an alliance with Clinton because both he and her had independent power bases and were, in his words, “un-fireable”
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • And Gates says that on the crucial decision to escalate the Afghan war in 2009 and then to slow the drawdown in 2010, he and Clinton were on the same side:
  • Paul Merrell on 28 May 14
     
    Criticism of Hillary from the progressive side: even more prone to use military intervention than Obama and pro-military/industrial complex, with some evidence to back those classifications. The problem, of course, is that public wishes bedamned, both the Republicans and Democrats will select candidates representing the War Party then present the choice of evils as their campaign theme. Either way, the War Party wins unless a winning third party candidate miraculously emerges. Such is the state of democracy in the American republic.   
Paul Merrell

US Navy officer pleads guilty in bribery case - Americas - Al Jazeera English - 0 views

www.aljazeera.com/...-case-2013121835122920822.html

corruption Navy NCIS

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • A US Navy official has pleaded guilty to conspiracy and bribery charges, admitting he received envelopes of cash and the services of prostitutes from a Singapore-based company at the center of a multimillion-dollar fraud investigation. John Beliveau II, a supervisor in the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), entered his plea at a hearing in federal court in San Diego, California on Tuesday. The bribery scandal has ensnared six US Navy officials so far and could lead to an expansion of the investigation if Beliveau cooperates with authorities as part of his plea agreement.
  • Beliveau became the first to be convicted in the bribery probe involving US Navy contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars in maintenance and restocking for Pacific Fleet ships. Beliveau, who was arrested in September, was accused of accepting money, travel and hotel costs for trips to Thailand and Indonesia from a Malaysian contractor, where he was also provided with prostitutes, according to charging documents.
  • According to the plea, Beliveau gave Francis detailed advice on how to thwart a years-long NCIS investigation against him, leaking the names of witnesses and sharing hundreds of pages of confidential NCIS files with him. In exchange, he received travel and dinners worth thousands of dollars, at least five envelopes of cash, and the services of prostitutes, the document said.
  • Paul Merrell on 22 Dec 13
     
    "NCIS" is the Navy Criminal Investigation Service." That is serious corruption.
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