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Gary Edwards

Porter Stansberry- Porter Stansberry: These events confirm my greatest fears - 0 views

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    The Central Banksters of the World are printing money as fast as possible, and using this paper to buy up tons of GOLD.  Rather than lending to productive businesses, the Banksters are using their fiat paper volumes to buy up hard assets, with land, precious metals, and controlling positions in asset rich productive or leading commodity enterprises.  This is not going to end well for those left holding paper when it all crashes. "If you didn't take our warnings or strategies seriously before, I hope now you can see that we have been right: The authorities mean to print their bad sovereign debts away through an ongoing and massive inflation. Just how big is this inflation likely to be? When you look at the world's largest external debt positions, two economic areas appear as outliers: the European Union ($16 trillion) and the U.S. ($14.7 trillion). Even on a per-capita basis, the external foreign debts of the U.S. are enormous ($50,000 per person). Many countries in the European Union are in an even more precarious position. France has $74,000 in external debt per person. Germany has $57,000. These countries obviously have much to gain by printing the currency necessary to repay their obligations. I estimate we'll see at least another doubling of the monetary base in both the U.S. and the ECB. The question is how these nations' creditors will respond. In response... the West's creditors are piling into the one reserve asset no one can print: gold. Since the beginning of quantitative easing in America, Russia has almost doubled its holdings of gold, buying 500 tons. China bought 454 tons during the same period. And it's not only America's economic and military rivals who obviously no longer trust the U.S. dollar or the euro. In the last year, Switzerland's central bank has quietly increased its holdings of gold by nearly 25%. We are approaching the moment of a global paper currency collapse: In the second quarter of this year, central banks around the world
charliecollin

Watch Secret Service Swarm Stage At Clinton Rally - 0 views

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    11 August 2016 A new video features the Secret Service Swarm beside the stage of a Hillary Clinton rally to stop a lunging protester on the scene. Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton recently attended a rally in Des Moines, Iowa to speak with her supporters.
Gary Edwards

Intelligence Warnings On Benghazi Were Loud And Clear - Investors.com - 0 views

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    excerpt: "Months before the murder of a U.S. ambassador in Benghazi, American intelligence analysts documented a massive al-Qaida rally a few miles from the ambassador's residence. At that rally, terror leaders called for the murder of American diplomats. Three U.S. intelligence reports, unearthed by the American Media Institute and detailed here for the first time, offer vivid descriptions of the al-Qaida meeting. Flying the black flag of al-Qaida, some 300 armed men gathered in Benghazi's Al-Tahrir Square on June 7 and 8, 2012. They brandished machine guns, rocket launchers and a truck mounted with an anti-aircraft cannon. The two-day meeting, which included outdoor prayers and a parade of armed vehicles, was attended by a baker's dozen of North African al-Qaida affiliates. "It was like a team pep rally before the game, only for jihad," said a U.S. intelligence analyst who monitors North Africa. "Organized and deadly. You saw what followed. People died." In the face of these three reports, the State Department continued to deny requests for additional security for the U.S. ambassador in Libya. At the same time, the State Department issued a travel advisory warning Americans against going to Libya in August 2012. Obama administration officials have long denied any warning before the Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi attacks. On the campaign trail, the president insisted that al-Qaida was "decimated" and "on the run," while intelligence reports prepared for the president's advisers told a different story - that al-Qaida's menace was growing in Libya and elsewhere. Al-Qaida itself publicly displayed its strength. Al-Qaida posted pictures of the June 2012 Benghazi meeting on its Arabic-language Facebook page and invited the Arabic-language media to cover the event, which many did. The three U.S. intelligence reports documenting the al-Qaida gathering in Benghazi were circulated in August 2012 and earlier among Defense and State Department officials, as well as Americ
Paul Merrell

Anti-Muslim protests span US: How mosques are responding - CSMonitor.com - 0 views

  • Muslim leaders of mosques in more than 30 cities nationwide are preparing for anti-Muslim marches planned for today.A Facebook group called Global Rally for Humanity has put out a call for anti-Muslim demonstrations "in every country at every Mosque." One spin-off group, organizing a rally in Dearborn, Mich., encouraged demonstrators to show up armed, noting that Michigan is "an open carry state." Earlier this week, the Council for Islamic-American Relations (CAIR), a Muslim civil rights group, released a statement urging Muslim leaders around the country to take extra precautions ahead of the planned demonstrations.
  • In recent weeks, Republican presidential candidates have added their own anti-Islam rhetoric to the public discourse. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson came under fire for saying he didn't believe a Muslim would be fit to serve as President. Weeks before, front-runner Donald Trump was criticized for refusing to correct a questioner who said President Obama was Muslim and "not even an American."This weekend's protests are far from the first round of violent demonstrations at Muslim religious and cultural facilities. In May, armed protesters surrounded a mosque in Phoenix.
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    Zionist propaganda fronts continue to fan the flames of Islamaphobia in the U.S.
Paul Merrell

Tens Of Thousands Join UK Anti-Nuke Demo Billed As Biggest In Generation - 0 views

  • In what was called “Britain’s biggest anti-nuclear weapons rally in a generation,” tens of thousands took to the streets of London on Saturday to protest the UK’s nuclear weapons system—Trident—and to call for global disarmament. According to the Guardian, “Campaigners gathered from across the world: some said they had traveled from Australia to protest against the renewal of Trident. Others had come from the west coast of Scotland where Britain’s nuclear deterrent submarines are based.”
  • Organized by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), the demonstration comes ahead of a parliamentary decision on whether or not to replace Trident, the UK’s nuclear weapons system, comprised of four submarines carrying up to 40 nuclear warheads apiece. Such an endeavor would cost least £41bn, UK government officials have said.
  • Other political figures, including longtime anti-war activist and Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn, also backed the demo. Speaking to the crowd on Saturday, Corbyn said the demonstration was “an expression of many people’s public opinion.”
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    With the U.S. set to spend $1 trillion on increasing its nuclear arsenal over the next few years, one has to wonder why no protests here?
Gary Edwards

Jeff Gundlach June Webcast Presentation - Business Insider - 0 views

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    Fascinating presentation filled with stats and charts depicting the state of the world's economy.  51 slides in total, so it takes some time.  The summation is clear though.  We are in a world of hurt.  The $85 Billion per month the Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel is pumping into the financial markets is the only thing holding the world economy together.  When the dollar collapses, the USA must officially devaluate the dollar, the QEII $85 Billion per month joy ride will be over. ""Something happened in the middle of May," said investing god Jeff Gundlach as he began his latest webcast on the state of the global markets and the economy. He was referring to how global interest rates quietly rallied and how the Japanese stock market fell spectacularly. He notes that the magnitude of the interest rate rally isn't unusual.  Having said that, Gundlach believes rates will stay low thanks to a "put" by the Federal Reserve. Should rates rise, Gundlach believes the Fed would actually expand quantitative easing. This is because high interest rates would put too much pressure on the economy, and it would cause Federal interest expenses to become too onerous. "I certainly think the Fed is going to reduce quantitative easing," he said. But he attributes the reduction to the shrinking Federal deficit. "I'm starting to like long-term Treasuries," said Gundlach as he predicted the 10-year Treasury yield would end the year at 1.7%. All of Gundlach's theses are based on the fact that the global economy remains weak, GDP growth forecasts continue to come down, and unemployment remains high and lop-sided. He communicates all of this in his eye-opening, hand-picked collection of charts on growth, employment, inflation, stocks, bonds, and other critical global macro indicators. Anyone who is serious about investing must consider his charts. And for anyone who's just curious, these charts will give you a peek into how Gundlach thinks. Click Here To See Gundlach's Presentation >"
Paul Merrell

A Rally Against Mass Surveillance | Stop Watching Us - 0 views

  • About the rally Right now the NSA is spying on everyone's personal communications, and they’re operating without any meaningful oversight. Since the Snowden leaks started, more than 569,000 people from all walks of life have signed the StopWatching.us petition telling the U.S. Congress that we want them to rein in the NSA. On October 26th, the 12th anniversary of the signing of the US Patriot Act, we're taking the next step and holding the largest rally yet against NSA surveillance. We’ll be handing the half-million petitions to Congress to remind them that they work for us -- and we won’t tolerate mass surveillance any longer.
  • Who we are StopWatching.us is a coalition of more than 100 public advocacy organizations and companies from across the political spectrum. We came together in June 2013 to demand the U.S. Congress investigate the full extent of the NSA's spying programs. Go here to read our letter to U.S. Congress demanding accountability and reform.
Joe La Fleur

Chants for 'Karl Marx,' 'socialism' at Dem victory rally - 1 views

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    AMERICAS GREATNESS LOST TO SOCIALISM. SOCIALISTS HAVE WON. IT SADDENS ME TO KNOW THAT MY CHILDREN WILL NEVER SEE THE GREAT NATION THAT I WAS RAISED IN.
Paul Merrell

Former Terrorist Group To Enjoy Close Ties to Rumored Trump Cabinet « LobeLog - 0 views

  • Donald Trump’s rumored picks for key foreign-policy positions have already set off alarm bells about the future administration’s embrace of war hawks and Islamophobes. Today, Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin pointed out that former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, who is currently reported to be under consideration for an appointment to secretary of state or attorney general, potentially violated the law when he made paid speaking appearances for the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), when the State Department listed the Iranian dissident group as a foreign terrorist organization. Giuliani isn’t the only likely member of the future administration to have maintained close ties and advocated on behalf of the former terrorist group, which assassinated six Americans in Iran between 1973 and 1976. John Bolton (another rumored choice for secretary of state), Clare Lopez (who is reportedly short-listed for deputy national security adviser), and Newt Gingrich (who allegedly turned down an offer of secretary of state but has shown interest in serving as a policy adviser in the Trump administration) have all advocated for the former terrorist group and praised its cultish leader, Maryam Rajavi. Shortly after the overthrow of the Shah, the group experienced a falling out with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and fled into exile. Over the following years, the group’s leaders, Maryam and Massoud Rajavi, aligned with Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war (7,000 members fought alongside Saddam Hussein, against Iran) and shifted toward increasingly cultish behavior, mandating divorces and celibacy for their soldiers while cultivating a cult of personality around themselves.
  • Massoud Rajavi hasn’t been seen since overseeing the surrender of MEK forces to the U.S. following the 2003 invasion of Iraq. This summer, the former head of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence agency, Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud referred to Massoud Rajavi as “the late Massoud Rajavi,” suggesting that he may be deceased. Turki’s participation at an MEK event, meanwhile, was a tacit acknowledgement of Saudi Arabia’s support of the group. Indeed, forming opportunistic alliances has been a hallmark of the MEK. In 2012, U.S. officials told NBC News that Israel’s national intelligence agency, Mossad, was training and arming the MEK to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists. The group seeks to portray itself as a government-in-exile and the secular, democratic alternative to Iran’s theocratic government. But the MEK’s lack of influence inside Iran and skepticism about their allegations regarding Iran’s nuclear program—for example, photographic evidence the MEK provided last year allegedly showing evidence of “Lavizan-3,” a secret uranium enrichment facility in the suburbs of Tehran, turned out to be a stock photo from an Iranian safe company – haven’t prevented the group from gaining footholds in Washington through campaign contributions and lucrative speaking gigs for politicians who praise Rajavi and call for regime change in Iran at MEK rallies. The MEK is known for paying generous sums to former officials who speak at their events. Lee Hamilton, a former chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee who headed the Woodrow Wilson Center for 12 years, told InterPress Service that he was paid “a substantial amount” to appear on an MEK panel in 2011. Giuliani, Bolton, Lopez, and Gingrich have all sung the praises of Maryam Rajavi, called for the U.S. to work towards regime change in Tehran, and treated the MEK as a legitimate Iranian government in exile.
  • peaking at an MEK rally outside Paris last year, Giuliani, who had taken speaking fees from the group when it was on the foreign terrorist organization (FTO) list, told the audience: I will not support anyone for President of the United States who isn’t clear on that slogan behind me. What does it say? It says “Regime Change.” … I will not support a candidate who does not have the moral fiber and the courage to stand up to the Ayatollah and tell him “We are going to do everything we can to get you out and you are never going to become a nuclear power.” Bolton, who also advocated for the group when it was on the FTO list, told an MEK audience outside Paris last summer: There is only one answer here: To support legitimate opposition groups that favor overthrowing the military theocratic dictatorship in Tehran, and it should be the declared policy of the United States of America and all of its friends to do just that at the earliest opportunity. Gingrich, who also spoke for the group before it was delisted, told the 2016 gathering in Paris: There are no moderates in the dictatorship. The dictatorship cannot be trusted. The [nuclear] agreement made with it is insane.
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  • He concluded by praising the commitment of Rajavi’s followers, saying: I want you to know that the message I will take home to America is that there are thousands and thousands of Iranians who are prepared, who are ready, who are committed to and who believe that we can truly bring democracy to Iran. Lopez, who serves as a vice president at the Center for Security Policy, a far-right think tank headed by anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney, and as executive director of the long-time MEK advocacy group, the Iran Policy Committee, from 2005 to 2006, wrote that Prince Turki’s surprising appearance marked a watershed moment for the MEK. She wrote: …[T]he implications of official Riyadh government support for the largest, most dedicated, and best-organized Iranian opposition movement will reverberate through the Middle East. Although not openly stated by bin Faisal, the new NCRI-Riyadh alliance may be expected to involve funding, intelligence sharing, and possible collaboration in operations aimed at the shared goal of overthrowing the current Tehran regime. If Lopez, Giuliani, Bolton, or Gingrich serve in the Trump administrations, the MEK will have the highest level access its ever enjoyed in the U.S. government, a remarkable journey for a fringe Islamic-Marxist group that, until 2012, was on the State Department’s terrorism list for its role in assassinating Americans.
Paul Merrell

IPS - U.S.: Right-Wing Hawks, Arms Industry Rally Against Pentagon Cuts | Inter Press S... - 0 views

  • While Iran, Russia, and China are all pretty scary, the ominous word “sequestration” is what is keeping right-wing hawks and their friends in the defence industry up at night. While they have been rallying their forces for most of the past year, their campaign to avoid the “spectre of sequestration”, as they often refer to it, shifted into high gear on Capitol Hill this week, as top industry executives were summoned to testify to the urgency of the threat. At stake is could be as much as 600 billion dollars in Pentagon funding – much of which would presumably be spent on lucrative procurement contracts for new weapons systems – over the next 10 years, as well as what the hawks see as the further erosion of U.S. global military dominance.
  • The sequestration spectre arises from a 2011 agreement, codified in the Budget Control Act, between President Barack Obama and Republican Congressional leaders for cutting the yawning U.S. federal deficit over the next decade. The Act provides that if Congress cannot agree on a specific plan that would cut 1.2 trillion dollars in the budget by the end of this year, then the cuts would take place automatically beginning in 2013, with half of the total taken from the Pentagon and the rest from non-defence programmes.
Paul Merrell

Video: Chicago Jewish activists disrupt Rahm Emanuel, Michael Oren at Israel fundraiser... - 0 views

  • On Thursday night activists from Jewish Voice for Peace–Chicago (JVP-Chicago) disrupted the Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation of Chicago “Israel Emergency Campaign” fundraiser at the Chicago Hilton, which was addressed by prominent officials and an Israeli soldier. The disruptions took place as dozens of Chicagoans rallied outside calling for an end to the attack on Gaza and for Israeli war criminals to be brought to justice.
  • The video above shows two activists, Lynn Pollack and K. Émilie, standing up during a speech by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and shouting “We are Jews, Shame on You! Stop killing children now!” Emanuel stands silently while a man grabs a sign out of the activists’ hands. As the two are led out by security personnel they continue to shout their message to jeers from the audience.
  • The video then shows a similar disruption to a speech by an Israeli soldier. During that disruption an Israeli citizen called Omer, who was sitting in the audience, stood up and disrupted, shouting in Hebrew his message against Israeli war crimes and the murder of children in Gaza. Yet more activists wave a banner and disrupt as Michael Oren, the former Israeli ambassador to the United States, addresses the audience. Oren was disrupted more than once, as the video shows.
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  • Dozens of members of the Chicago Palestinian community and solidarity activists rallied outside the Chicago Hilton with banners and called out slogans against Israel’s massacre in Gaza. Here’s a brief video of the scene:
  • Bill Chambers reported on some of the rally speeches in The Chicago Monitor: Outside multiple speakers emphasized the injustice of the continued assault on Gaza. Nashisha Alam from SJP-Chicago said “While they sip cocktails and raise funds for war criminals, we are here supporting the people of Palestine…They are inside listening to Michael Oren trying to justify the killing of civilians.” Kait McIntyre from the Chicago Anti-War Committee and one of the activists arrested during a recent sit-in at Boeing headquarters described the outrage that “in Chicago with the largest Palestinian community in the country, Boeing is providing weapons to Israel to kill Palestinians in Gaza.”
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    Perhaps during the ongoing slaughter in Gaza wasn't the wisest time for Mayor Rahm Emanuel to keynote an "emergency" fundraiser in support of Israel's violence. Jewish Voice for Peace activists simply had too much fun at Emanuel's expense. Even worse for Emanuel, his most embarrassing moment got fairly wide coverage in the Chicago media. 
Paul Merrell

Oil surges 8 percent as U.S. rig count plunges, shorts scramble - Yahoo Finance - 0 views

  • EW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices roared back from six-year lows on Friday, rocketing more than 8 percent as a record weekly decline in U.S. oil drilling fueled a frenzy of short-covering. In a rally that may spur speculation that a seven-month price collapse has ended, global benchmark Brent crude shot up to more than $53 per barrel, its highest in more than three weeks in its biggest one-day gain since 2009. The late-session surge was primed by Baker Hughes data showing the number of rigs drilling for oil in the United States fell by 94 - or 7 percent - this week. Earlier gains were fueled by reports of Islamic State militants striking at Kurdish forces southwest of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.
  • Poised for a bounce many thought was overdue, short traders raced to cover their positions on fears that the rout, sparked by massive U.S. shale crude supplies, was nearing its end. "The rig count drop was a lot more than people expected and it really got the market going," said Phil Flynn, analyst at Price Futures Group in Chicago. According to Baker Hughes, the decline in oil drilling rigs was the most since it began keeping records in 1987. With drillers having idled about 24 percent of their oil drilling rigs since the summer, some traders may be betting that an anticipated slowdown in U.S. oil production is nearer than expected.
  • Some are not convinced that the sell-off in oil is over. The rout began in June when Brent peaked at over $115 a barrel and accelerated in November after OPEC refused to cut its production. "There was a lot of short-covering before the month end from people wanting to take profit from the $40-odd lows, so it's not surprising that we rallied," said Tariq Zahir, managing member at Tyche Capital Advisors in Laurel Hollow in New York. But it will take a while for production to respond to lower drilling. "This doesn't change the fundamental outlook in oil. We are still about 2 million barrels oversupplied." Production from OPEC, or the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, rose in January to 30.37 million barrels per day (bpd), a Reuters poll showed, a sign that key members of the group were resolute about defending their market share. A Reuters poll shows oil prices may post only a mild recovery in the second half of the year, with prices still averaging less in 2015 than during the global financial crisis. (OILPOLL) Joseph Posillico, senior vice president of energy futures at Jefferies in New York, also warned of a short-term, short-covering rally that could be quickly reversed. "This is just the market being the market and we could give these all back in the next few sessions."
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    More indication that the economic oil bubble is bursting. 
Gary Edwards

Gadfly ONLINE | The Age of Neo-Feudalism: A Government of the Rich, by the Rich, and fo... - 2 views

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    "THE AGE OF NEO-FEUDALISM: A GOVERNMENT OF THE RICH, BY THE RICH, AND FOR THE CORPORATIONS" excerpt: "The shaping of the will of Congress and the choosing of the American president has become a privilege reserved to the country's equestrian classes, a.k.a. the 20% of the population that holds 93% of the wealth, the happy few who run the corporations and the banks, own and operate the news and entertainment media, compose the laws and govern the universities, control the philanthropic foundations, the policy institutes, the casinos, and the sports arenas." - Journalist Lewis Lapham The pomp and circumstance of the presidential inauguration has died down. Members of Congress have taken their seats on Capitol Hill, and Barack Obama has reclaimed his seat in the White House. The circus of the presidential election has become a faint memory. The long months of debates, rallies, and political advertisements have slipped from our consciousness. Now we are left with the feeling that nothing has really changed, nor will it. This is not by accident. The media circus leading up to the elections, the name calling in the halls of Congress, the vitriol and barbs traded back and forth among people who are supposed to be working together to improve the country, are all components of the game set up by those who run the show. The movers and shakers behind these engaging, but ultimately trite, political exercises are the elite, the so-called upper class, who benefit from the status quo. This status quo is marked by an economic crisis with no end in sight, by the slow but steady growth of a police state aimed at the lowest rungs of society, and a political circus which keeps us enraptured long enough that we don't question what's really going on. Meanwhile, this elite, composed of corporations profiting off of our ignorance, avoid being brought to task for their destruction of democratic governance and the economy. These are the corporations who sent our econo
Paul Merrell

Qods Force commander Qassem Soleimani rallies Iranian officers, Hezbollah in Syria | Th... - 0 views

  • Major General Qassem Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps – Qods Force, has been seen addressing Iranian military officers and members of Lebanese Hezbollah in western Syria. In the past, the leader of Iran’s expeditionary special operations forces has been spotted on key battlefields in Iraq and Syria prior to the launch of major operations against jihadist groups such as the Islamic State. Recent images of Soleimani (above) appeared on social media sites such as Twitter. His presence in the western province of Latakia in Syria was confirmed by Reuters. According to the news service, Soleimani was “addressing Iranian officers and Hezbollah fighters with a microphone, wearing dark clothes as he spoke to the men in camouflage.” In the photographs, Soleimani is flanked by by a handful of men wearing military fatigues. The faces of the individuals standing next to him are digitally altered to prevent their identity from being disclosed. A crowd of armed fighters who appear to be wearing US Marine Corps desert camouflage uniforms listens to his speech.
  • Latakia is a western coastal province that has long been a stronghold for the Assad family. Jihadists from the Jaysh al Fateh alliance, which is led by Al Nusrah Front, al Qaeda’s official branch in Syria, and its close ally, Ahrar al Sham, have launched attacks in the province in an effort to break Assad’s power base. Just two days ago, Abu Muhammad al Julani, Al Nusrah’s emir, threatened to indiscriminately shell villages in the province to avenge regime attacks, including airstrikes and barrel bombs dropped from helicopters, on Sunni villages, towns, and cities controlled by jihadist groups and allied rebel forces. Iran is reported to have deployed significant forces, estimated at thousands of troops, to support the Assad regime’s offensive to retake areas controlled by Jaysh al Fateh in Hama and Aleppo. But Omran al Zoubi, Syria’s Information Minister, has denied a large Iranian presence in Syria. “Only some Iranian military advisers, whose mission is to provide consultations and nothing more, are present in Syria,” Zoubi said, according to Iran’s Tasnim News Agency. Soleimani is instrumental in organizing Syrian and Iraqi militias, as well as Hezbollah, to battle Sunni jihadists and allied rebels in Syria. He has played a similar role in Iraq, where he has organized, trained, and equipped Shiite militias along the lines of Lebanese Hezbollah to fight the Islamic State. The leaders of some of these militias are listed by the US as Specially Designated Global Terrorists, and remain hostile to the US. Soleimani is occasionally photographed with these militia leaders.
  • Hezbollah has also committed a large force to back the government’s offensive in Hama and Idlib in western Syria. Thousands of the group’s fighters are said to be involved in the operation. In the past week, a senior Hezbollah leader known as Hassan al Haj was killed during the offensive. A senior Lebanese government official told Reuters that Haj was “the most important [Hezbollah] figure killed in battles in Syria since the start of the war.” Russia has also committed an expeditionary military force to back the Assad regime’s offensive. After building up its forces in Syria, the Russian military launched airstrikes on Sept. 30 and have primarily targeted Jaysh al Fateh and allied rebel groups in the northwest. Russia entered the fight under the guise of attacking the Islamic State, but few of its airstrikes have hit the jihadist group. In addition to warplanes and attack helicopters, the Russian military has deployed “marines, paratroopers, and special forces” to Syria, and even executed a sea-launched cruise missile strike from the Caspian Sea. Russia very likely coordinated its entry into the Syrian civil war with Iran and Soleimani. In July, Soleimani is reported to have visited Russia and met with met President Vladimir Putin and Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, despite a United Nations travel ban.
Paul Merrell

Dems discuss dropping Wasserman Schultz | TheHill - 0 views

  • Democrats on Capitol Hill are discussing whether Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz should step down as Democratic National Committee (DNC) chairwoman before the party’s national convention in July.Democrats backing likely presidential nominee Hillary ClintonHillary Rodham ClintonSanders: Clinton shouldn't pick VP from Wall Street McAfee on chances of Libertarian win: 'We're not that stupid' Libertarian candidate raps at party convention MORE worry Wasserman Schultz has become too divisive a figure to unify the party in 2016, which they say is crucial to defeating presumptive GOP nominee Donald TrumpDonald TrumpSanders: Primary isn't 'rigged,' just 'dumb' Trump University judge to unseal documents Dole: Gingrich should be Trump's running mate MORE in November.ADVERTISEMENTWasserman Schultz has had an increasingly acrimonious relationship with the party’s other presidential candidate, Bernie SandersBernie SandersSanders: Clinton shouldn't pick VP from Wall Street Sanders: Primary isn't 'rigged,' just 'dumb' Dick Van Dyke introduces Sanders at rally MORE, and his supporters, who argue she has tilted the scales in Clinton’s favor.“There have been a lot of meetings over the past 48 hours about what color plate do we deliver Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s head on,” said one pro-Clinton Democratic senator.
Gary Edwards

End the Fed! Congress Debates the Federal Reserve: Reform or Abolish? - 0 views

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    synopsis: Tuesday May 8th, 2012 - Dr. Ron Paul Chaired the Congressional subcommittee holding the first hearings on the Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel.  Dr. Paul has become famous around the world for his tireless efforts to audit, expose, and abolish the central bank. Even making that effort the centerpiece of his "Restore the Constitution - Take Back America" run for the presidency.  He published a best-selling book in 2009 entitled "End the Fed", a title that has become a rallying cry for millions of Americans angry about the institution's multi-trillion-dollar bailouts, market manipulations, corruption, and debasement of the currency. The subcommittee hearing, entitled "The Federal Reserve System: Mend It or End It?", examined a range of different proposals to reform the nation's monetary system - it was supposed to look at six different options emanating from both parties. One of the measures on the agenda was Congressman Paul's own "Federal Reserve Board Abolition Act," legislation to dismantle the central bank and restore sound money based on market principles. "More and more people are beginning to understand just how destructive the Federal Reserve's monetary policy has been. I hope that this hearing will kick start a serious discussion on the need to rein in the Fed," Chairman Paul said in a statement about the event. "A hundred years is far too long for Congress to have taken a hands-off approach. The Fed continues to reward Wall Street banks while destroying the dollar's purchasing power and driving up the cost of living for average Americans. This reckless behavior must come to an end."
Gary Edwards

RealClearMarkets - Yes, IRS Harassment Blunted The Tea Party Ground Game - 0 views

  • We found that the effect was huge: the movement brought the Republican Party some 3-6 million additional votes in House races.
  • The bottom line is that the Tea Party movement, when properly activated, can generate a huge number of votes-more votes in 2010, in fact, than the vote advantage Obama held over Romney in 2012.
    • Gary Edwards
       
      Wow!  So the IRS re-elected Obama?  This is a bureaucratic coup.  We are living in a cleptocracy where the citizens treasury is being systematically looted by Federal bureacracies who are in position and powerfully corrupt enough to elect the representatives who enable them to loot at will. 
  • The data show that had the Tea Party groups continued to grow at the pace seen in 2009 and 2010,
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  • and had their effect on the 2012 vote been similar to that seen in 2010, they would have brought the Republican Party as many as 5 - 8.5 million votes compared to Obama's victory margin of 5 million.
  • Unfortunately for Republicans, the IRS slowed Tea Party growth before the 2012 election.
  • In March 2010, the IRS decided to single Tea Party groups out for special treatment when applying for tax-exempt status by flagging organizations with names containing "Tea Party," "patriot," or "9/12."
  • For the next two years, the IRS approved the applications of only four such groups, delaying all others while subjecting the applicants to highly intrusive, intimidating requests for information regarding their activities, membership, contacts, Facebook posts, and private thoughts.
  • As a consequence, the founders, members, and donors of new Tea Party groups found themselves incapable of exercising their constitutional rights, and the Tea Party's impact was muted in the 2012 election cycle.
  • it doesn't take a conspiracy theorist to note that the president's team was competent enough to recognize the threat from the Tea Party and take it seriously.
  • The Obama campaign has made no secret of its efforts to revolutionize turnout models for the most recent campaign.
  • Its remarkable competence turning out its own voters has been widely discussed, and it seems quite plausible that efforts to suppress the Republican vote would have been equally sophisticated.
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    excerpt: .................... The controversy over the IRS's harassment of conservative groups continues. President Obama's team continues to blame low-level bureaucrats. Some conservatives suspect a more sinister explanation: that the levers of government were used to attack an existential threat to the president's 2012 reelection. The president and his party dismiss this as a paranoid fantasy. The evidence, however, is enough to make one believe that targeting Tea Party groups would have been an effective campaign strategy going into the 2012 election cycle. It is a well-known fact that the Tea Party movement dealt the president his famous "shellacking" in the 2010 mid-term election. Less well-known is the actual number of votes this new movement delivered-and the continuing effects these votes could have had in 2012 had the movement not been de-mobilized by the IRS. In a new research paper, Andreas Madestam (from Stockholm University), Daniel Shoag and David Yanagizawa-Drott (both from the Harvard Kennedy School), and I set out to find out how much impact the Tea Party had on voter turnout in the 2010 election. We compared areas with high levels of Tea Party activity to otherwise similar areas with low levels of Tea Party activity, using data from the Census Bureau, the FEC, news reports, and a variety of other sources. We found that the effect was huge: the movement brought the Republican Party some 3-6 million additional votes in House races. That is an astonishing boost, given that all Republican House candidates combined received fewer than 45 million votes. It demonstrates conclusively how important the party's newly energized base was to its landslide victory in those elections, and how worried Democratic strategists must have been about the conservative movement's momentum. The Tea Party movement's huge success was not the result of a few days of work by an elected official or two, but involved activists all over the country who spent the year and a hal
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    One interesting facet of this scandal is that the IRS in its own regulations rewrote a law passed by Congress in the early 50s to permit non-profit corporations to devote part of their resources to political issues. As passed by Congress, it says that the non-profits must be "exclusively" charitable in nature. But when the IRS wrote its implementing regulations, it substituted "primarily" for "exclusively," thus allowing the non-profits to engage in political political campaigns to an undefined extent and getting the IRS into the business of looking at political credentials rather than a simpler review of whether the given non-profit's purpose is purely charitable. Thus, a question of what should be done about this. Roughly, the choices are: [i] amend the statute to read "primarily;" or [ii] leave the statute alone and have someone litigate to correct the IRS regulations. The latter path, if followed, should result in ending *all* non-profits' participation in political campaigns. The advantage of the latter path is that it gets the IRS out of the business of picking whose politics they like. The disadvantage is that it gores a huge number of non-profits' oxen across the political spectrum, so a major lobbying effort to rewrite the statute to maintain the status quo is predictable. But with a court decision holding that the IRS got it wrong, that non-profits must be "exclusively" charitable, presumably it would be illegal for non-profits to do that campaigning themselves.
Gary Edwards

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

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

The History of the 'Tea Party' Movement? - NH Tea Party Coalition - 0 views

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    The true history of the tea party movement: The very first tea party  was held by Congressman Ron Paul (R - Texas) supporters December 16, 2007 for calling attention to a "money bomb." People dumped boxes labeled "taxes, war, big government" into the Boston harbor. Similar events took place around the country. A more organized protest happened on July 12, 2008 when 10,000 Ron Paul supporters descended upon DC at the West Side of Capitol Hill for a "Revolution March". The main theme of the March and Rally was Dr. Ron Paul's message of Peace, Prosperity, and Freedom through adherence to the Constitution. The Keynote Speaker and Guest of Honor was Dr. Paul himself. Later both of these were known as the resurgence of the American "tea party" or the "re-teaparty". In February of 2009, a CNBC financial talking head named Rick Santelli burst forth with his famous rant in reaction to the mortgage crash. The traders on the floor of the CME Group joined him in expressing their outrage over the notion they may have to pay their neighbor's mortgage, particularly if they bought far more house than they could actually afford. "President Obama, are you listening?" he shouted into the camera to the amused interviewers. He then said he would even start organizing a tea party to happen in July at Lake Michigan because what we are doing now was making our founding fathers "roll over in their graves". Later, many "912″ groups formed after an idea proposed by Glenn Beck. And thus, we are a happy conglomeration of all of these elements. Because by now, Americans were beginning to realize that neither party was serving their interests and our country was going down the tubes fast. And thus, the movement was born. Conservatives, some who'd never been politically active before, took to the streets. Progressives and leftists at first thought it was just a tiny minority, but then the numbers grew. It became apparent that this was no small phenomenon a
Gary Edwards

Soros Foresaw the End of an Era - The New York Review of Books - 0 views

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    NYTImes Review of Soros Book: "The End of an Era": At the start of this year, Soros, convinced (correctly) that the financial crisis was far from over, adopted a bearish investment strategy, which he describes thus: "short US and European stocks, US ten-year government bonds, and the US dollar; long Chinese, Indian, and Gulf States stocks and non-US currencies." Initially, some of these positions didn't pay off. Between January and March, US bonds rallied and Indian stocks tumbled, wiping out gains in other parts of Quantum's portfolio. Just how Soros has fared in the past few months of market turmoil may be known only to investors in Quantum, but it would be foolhardy to bet against him.
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