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Which gets us to Rep. Paul Ryan. Mr. Ryan receives much praise, but I don't think his role in the current moment has been fully recognized. He is doing something unique in national politics. He thinks. He studies. He reads. Then he comes forward to speak, calmly and at some length, about what he believes to be true. He defines a problem and offers solutions, often providing the intellectual and philosophical rationale behind them.

"Why have we extended an endless supply of taxpayer credit to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, instead of demanding that their government guarantee be wound down and their taxpayer subsidies ended?" Why are tax dollars being wasted on bankrupt, politically connected solar energy firms like Solyndra? "Why is Washington wasting your money on entrenched agribusiness?"

There's only one way that the ruling class knows how to deal with the inevitable consequence of gunning the housing market with mortgage subsidies

The result is that politicians and their officials are always involved in trying to band-aid over the distortions and the wounds they have inflicted on the economy in their crude bid for power.

What can we understand from all this news? It stands to reason. These ruling classes don't have a clue what they are doing.

So the enlightened ruling class would federalize Europe to make sure that aggressive nationalism would never rear its ugly head again.

is the Fed fighting recession or fighting inflation?

The point here is simple: our ruling class has succeeded in ruling not by reason or persuasion, never mind integrity, but by occupying society’s commanding heights, by imposing itself and its ever-changing appetites on the rest of us. It has coopted or intimidated potential opponents by denying the legitimacy of opposition. Donald Trump, haplessness and clownishness notwithstanding, has shown how easily this regime may be threatened just by refusing to be intimidated.

The N.S.A.’s protections for attorney-client conversations are narrowly crafted, said Stephen Gillers, an expert on legal ethics at New York University’s School of Law. The agency is barred from sharing with prosecutors intercepted attorney-client communications involving someone under indictment in the United States, according to previously disclosed N.S.A. rules. But the agency may still use or share the information for intelligence purposes. Andrew M. Perlman, a Suffolk University law professor who specializes in legal ethics and technology issues, said the growth of surveillance was troubling for lawyers. He helped create the bar association’s ethics code revisions that require lawyers to try to avoid being overheard by eavesdroppers. “You run out of options very quickly to communicate with someone overseas,” he said. “Given the difficulty of finding anything that is 100 percent secure, lawyers are in a difficult spot to ensure that all of the information remains in confidence.” 

Still, the N.S.A. can intercept the communications of Americans if they are in contact with a foreign intelligence target abroad, such as Indonesian officials. The N.S.A. is then required to follow so-called minimization rules to protect their privacy, such as deleting the identity of Americans or information that is not deemed necessary to understand or assess the foreign intelligence, before sharing it with other agencies. An N.S.A. spokeswoman said the agency’s Office of the General Counsel was consulted when issues of potential attorney-client privilege arose and could recommend steps to protect such information. “Such steps could include requesting that collection or reporting by a foreign partner be limited, that intelligence reports be written so as to limit the inclusion of privileged material and to exclude U.S. identities, and that dissemination of such reports be limited and subject to appropriate warnings or restrictions on their use,” said Vanee M. Vines, the spokeswoman.

In justifying the agency’s sweeping powers, the Obama administration often emphasizes the N.S.A.’s role in fighting terrorism and cyberattacks, but disclosures in recent months from the documents leaked by Mr. Snowden show the agency routinely spies on trade negotiations, communications of economic officials in other countries and even foreign corporations.

Other documents obtained from Mr. Snowden reveal that the N.S.A. shares reports from its surveillance widely among civilian agencies. A 2004 N.S.A. document, for example, describes how the agency’s intelligence gathering was critical to the Agriculture Department in international trade negotiations. “The U.S.D.A. is involved in trade operations to protect and secure a large segment of the U.S. economy,” that document states. Top agency officials “often rely on SIGINT” — short for the signals intelligence that the N.S.A. eavesdropping collects — “to support their negotiations.”

Here government was crucial to harmonious internal structural arrangements, anticompetitive in its policies for the promotion of monopolism sector-by-sector including banking (the House of Morgan, whose offshoots firmed up the organization of railroads and manufacturing) as the means to systemic consolidation—an end to internecine competition—which was achieved in the early 20th century under Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson (themselves the Janus-faced construct of the Battleship Navy and supposed liberal internationalism) setting the stage for the present era.

Corporate Rescindment of Legal Rights: Business Power Run Amuck,

The now-and-future business polity is the fulfillment of the fascist dream, an authoritarian power structure of corporate consolidation supported through governmental suppression of dissent at home and an aggressively waged foreign policy to capture world markets.

FOLLOW THE MONEY: The White Helmets are just one component of the new NGO Complex.

“It was unclear whether Mr. Saleh’s name might have shown up on a database, fed by a variety of intelligence and security agencies and intended to guard against the prospect of terrorism suspects slipping into the country.” ~ New York Times Mark Toner, State Department spokesperson: “And any individual – again, I’m broadening my language here for specific reasons, but any individual in any group suspected of ties or relations with extremist groups or that we had believed to be a security threat to the United States, we would act accordingly. But that does not, by extension, mean we condemn or would cut off ties to the group for which that individual works for.” http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=792ODrhwKkk So we come back to the initial question.  Why is the tragic death of a passionate and ambitious politician being exploited? Why are all political parties in the UK endorsing the Jo Cox fund to provide financial assistance for an organisation the UK Government is already funding and training? Why are the public once more being used as political pawns to further our government’s imperialist objectives inside Syria and their covert, illegal, proxy intervention of a sovereign nation via both terrorist forces and phony humanitarian first responders?

The White Helmets are perhaps being demonstrated to be the most crucial component of the US and NATO shadow state building inside Syria.  Led by the US and UK this group is essential to the propaganda stream that facilitates the continued media and political campaign against the elected Syrian government and permits the US and NATO to justify their regime of crippling economic and humanitarian sanctions against the Syrian people. If this latest mechanised ‘NGO’ blueprint is successful then we could see it being re-deployed as key to future neo-colonialist projects. The White Helmets are a direct intra-venus line into the terrorist enclaves within Syria, acting as a conduit for information, equipment and medical support to maintain the US NATO forces. Is this the future of warfare, is this the “swarming” outlined in a 2000 report produced by the RAND Corporation and entitled: Swarming and the Future of Conflict. “The emergence of a military doctrine based on swarming pods and clusters requires that defense policymakers develop new approaches to connectivity and control and achieve a new balance between the two. Far more than traditional approachesto battle, swarming clearly depends upon robust information flows. Securing these flows, therefore, can be seen as a necessary condition for successful swarming.”

An important “previously unpublished interview with Jo Cox” was released today by Adam Barnett.  In this interview Jo Cox makes a clear statement regarding the way the UK Government should be maximising the use of their assets, the White Helmets, inside Syria: “Second thing: many organisations, whether it’s the White Helmets or others, have got really creative ideas about how to operate under the siege and civil war conditions. They’ve got really interesting ideas about channelling money, getting aid in, thinking creatively about how they operate, which DfID [Department for International Development] should be listening to. [emphasis added] And then the third thing is about giving airtime to civil society groups, making sure that they get more time on panels– and making sure this is representative of the diversity of civil society views as well, whether that’s women’s groups, or the White Helmets, or NGOs, or just doctors or people who are literally trying to get on with making society function in response to the humanitarian crisis.” Is this why we are seeing what is, in effect, crowd funding for  proxy war? Do we really want to look back and be “judged by history” for enabling conflict and state terrorism, violating international law and invading sovereign nations.  Are we prepared to accept the consequences of such actions, consequences that should be taken by our governments alone but are now being diffused outwards to the general public.  Is this an attempt by our government to disassociate themselves from their criminal actions?

Vanessa Beeley speaks to Mike Robinson of UK Column about recent executions of Syrian Arab Army soldiers celebrated by White Helmet operatives.” Watch:

“Speaking to Mnar Muhawesh on ‘Behind the Headline,’ investigative journalist Vanessa Beeley pulls back the curtain on the anti-Assad ‘freedom fighters’ and ‘moderate rebels,’ revealing a carefully calibrated propaganda campaign to drive US intervention in the war-torn country.” Watch:

Video made by Hands Off Syria in Sydney Australia based upon the research of Vanessa Beeley on the White Helmets. Watch: http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5k6hSS6xBTw Mint Press: US Propaganda War in Syria: Report Ties White Helmets to US Intervention “White Helmets primary function is propaganda” reported an independent journalist, who tied the group to George Soros and the controversial advocacy group Avaaz.” Change.org Petition: Do NOT give 2016 Nobel Peace Prize to Syria White Helmets This petition has currently garnered 1370 signatures. The White Helmets have received over $ 40 million in funding from the US Government [USAID] and the UK Foreign Office despite their claims of being “fiercely independent and accepts no money from governments, corporations or anyone directly involved in the Syrian conflict.” Sputnik: Soros Sponsored NGO in Syria Aims at Ousting Assad not Saving Civilians “One of the largest humanitarian organizations operating in war-torn Syria – the White Helmets – has been accused of being an anti-government propaganda arm that encourages direct foreign intervention.” 21st Century Wire: Syria’s White Helmets, War by Way of Deception Part 1 This piece examines the role of the Syria Civil Defence aka,’The White Helmets’ currently operating in Syria and take a closer look at their financial sources and mainstream media partners in order to better determine if they are indeed “neutral” as media moguls proclaim these “humanitarians” to be.

21st Century Wire: Part II. Syria’s White Helmets, “Moderate” Executioners The NGO hydra has no more powerful or influential serpentine head in Syria than the Syria Civil Defence aka The White Helmets who, according to their leader and creator, James Le Mesurier, hold greater sway than even ISIS or Al Nusra confabs over the Syrian communities. This article explores the White Helmet involvement in terrorist executions of civilians particularly in Aleppo. 21st Century Wire: Humanitarian Propaganda War Against Syria – Led by Avaaz and the White Helmets “The White Helmets in their haste to point the finger of blame at Moscow, managed to tweet about Russia’s air strikes several hours before the Russian Parliament actually authorized the use of the Air Force in Syria.” ~ Sott.net UK Column: Syria White Helmets “Mike Robinson speaks to Vanessa Beeley about the so-called NGO, the White Helmets. Are they really the humanitarian first responder organisation they claim to be?” Watch: http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLa9ztvAGWw Eva Bartlett: Human Rights Front Groups Warring on Syria This page will continue to expand as more so-called “Human Rights” groups are outed for propagating anti-Syria war rhetoric and false allegations against the Syrian government and Syrian Arab Army.  As it is, the list of players is quite extensive.  Below, I’ll list the known HR front people and groups (many, if not most, with links to the US State Department and criminals like George Soros). Ron Paul Institute: Syria the Propaganda Ring We have demonstrated that the White Helmets are an integral part of the propaganda vanguard that ensures obscurantism of fact and propagation of Human Rights fiction that elicits the well-intentioned and self righteous response from a very cleverly duped public. A priority for these NGOs is to keep pushing the No Fly Zone scenario which has already been seen to have disastrous implications for innocent civilians in Libya, for example. Dissident Voice: Seven Steps of Highly Effective Manipulators “But White Helmets primary function is propaganda. White Helmets demonizes the Assad government and encourages direct foreign intervention.”

Prof Tim Anderson: Syrian Women Denounce the White Helmets “A range of Syrian women have denounced the US-UK funded group the ‘White Helmets’, led by a former British soldier and recently revealed to be financed by USAID. They come from all the country’s communities (e.g. Sunni, Alawi, Druze, Christian) but, like most Syrians, prefer to identify simply as Syrian.” Khamenei.ir: Interview with Prof. Tim Anderson NATO’s Dirty War on Syria “The ‘White Helmets’ are a Wall Street creation, funded and led by the US and the UK, to give ‘humanitarian’ cover to the al Qaeda groups they support.” AlternativeView7:  Syria: White Helmets Exposed “We live in a world governed by propaganda where the majority of media mouthpieces are gagged by those who own them and only permitted to release information that serves the narrative of the ruling elite or Imperialist powers.”

Please note that the child that is rescued is very clean considering she has allegedly been buried under the rubble of “regime” bombing raids..we do not in any way wish to detract from the heroic work of the true first responders on the ground in Syria, the real Syria Civil Defence and the Red Crescent who are never mentioned in the western media but we do wish to draw your attention to the propaganda methods being employed to amplify US and NATO narratives that are insisting upon “regime change.”

We will add to the above articles and interviews as they become available.  Vanessa Beeley has just completed a speaking tour of the UK and Iran during which she highlighted the role of the NGO complex in general and the White Helmets in particular as a new breed of predatory humanitarianism being unleashed against target nations. Videos of her talks will be published as soon as they become available from the AV7 conference and Frome Stop War.

Author Vanessa Beeley is a special contributor to 21WIRE, and since 2011, she has spent most of her time in the Middle East reporting on events there – as a independent researcher, writer, photographer and peace activist. She is also a US Peace Council delegate and a volunteer with the Global Campaign to Return to Palestine. See more of her work at her blog The Wall Will Fall.

If collection is universal, the collectors don’t have to explain to others (or even to themselves) why they are targeting this person or group and not another. Possessing the data in secret, they can then decide in secret who they are really interested in.

the FISA court. But that court acts not just in secret, but ex parte – hearing only one side.

From Barack Obama to Karl Rove, the ruling class is in unison: The NSA’s collection of data on virtually all Americans is essential to preventing you from “being blown to smithereens on your morning commute”

These programs stand between Americans and terrorists. Worries that they will be misused are misplaced or downright kooky.

anyone who has followed telecommunication technology and intelligence during the past three decades can only scoff at the claim that universal collection of telephone externals and access to internet traffic can thwart serious criminals or terrorists.

chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee (and thus someone complicit in the spying programs).

Snowden has not merely revealed that the U.S. government has forced service providers Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple to share all their records with itself, in the form of mega-data that can only be accessed for content following the issuance of warrants from (secret) courts, in order to thwart real or imagined terrorist plots. He hasn’t merely shown that the NSA intercepts 1.7 billion electronic records every day (in order, of course, to thwart the terrorists). He has charged the following:

Snowden indicates that those with that power can indeed gain access to what Bill Clinton recently called the “meat” of your communications.

“‘These were just really everyday, average, ordinary Americans who happened to be in the Middle East, in our area of intercept and happened to be making these phone calls on satellite phones,’ said Adrienne Kinne, a 31-year old US Army Reserves Arab linguist assigned to a special military program at the NSA’s Back Hall at Fort Gordon from November 2001 to 2003. Kinne described the contents of the calls as ‘personal, private things with Americans who are not in any way, shape or form associated with anything to do with terrorism.’ [...] Another intercept operator, former Navy Arab linguist, David Murfee Faulk, 39, said he and his fellow intercept operators listened into hundreds of Americans picked up using phones in Baghdad’s Green Zone from late 2003 to November 2007. ‘Calling home to the United States, talking to their spouses, sometimes their girlfriends, sometimes one phone call following another,’ said Faulk. [...] ‘Hey, check this out,’ Faulk says he would be told, ‘there’s good phone sex or there’s some pillow talk, pull up this call, it’s really funny, go check it out. It would be some colonel making pillow talk and we would say, ‘Wow, this was crazy,’ Faulk told ABC News.”

One of its stated missions was to use surveillance on activists to release negative personal information to the public to discredit them. In many instances the agents succeeded, and they ruined lives. And their abilities to do so pale in comparison with the abilities of Obama’s NSA.

the Bush administration would be willing to learn a thing or two about domestic spying from the experts of the former Stasi. What ruling elite has ever gained more total information awareness about its citizens than the old German Democratic Republic?  And done it with such elegant legal scaffolding?

Thus, you see, he’s not a whistle-blower but a criminal.

U.S. to World: “You Must View Snowden as a Criminal, and Give Him Back”

No, there are us, and there are them. The tiny power elite that controls the mainstream press and cable channels, the corporations that dutifully hand over mega-data to the state (and then deny doing so to allay consumer outrage), the twin political parties, are sick to their stomachs that they’ve been so exposed. We in our turn should feel, if not terrorized, nauseated.

Then several years later the US encouraged South Korean incursions into Communist North Korea in order to manipulate North Korea into responding in kind. Guaranteeing South Korea full UN support, when the baited North Koreans retaliated by moving two miles inside the South Korean border, that June 1950 “transgression” immediately became the false pretense used to initiate the Korean War.

in August 1964 President Johnson lied to the American people with the bogus claim that a US Navy ship was attacked by North Vietnamese gunboats in the Gulf of Tonkin to launch America’s longest running war in history (that is until this century’s everlasting war of terror). That false flag cost near 60,000 American lives and over 3 million dead Southeast Asians, in addition to being the first US humiliating war defeat in its history, marking the first of many consecutive losses.

The smaller, less intensive military campaigns of Grenada, Panama, Nicaragua and El Salvador, the First Gulf War, Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo were all jingoistic saber rattling manipulations of imperialistic Empire overpowering far weaker opponents to take down former US allied dictators (or in the case of Saddam Hussein a preliminary step to the father-son neocon tag team), balkanizing a divide and conquer strategy for global hegemony and imperial war profiteering from the always lucrative drug trafficking trade.

Meanwhile, the only true winners of all wars is the oligarch owned and controlled central banking cabal and its Wall Street 500. Once American Empire wreaks military havoc to achieve another ravaged failed state, be it Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, a second invasion that becomes the permanent occupation arrives in the form of IMF and World Bank loans. When the war destroyed nation cannot pay the bankster cabal’s loan shark extortion, privatization through transnational corporations rapidly descends as economic hit men-vultures move in for the final kill. The game’s been rigged, set up so no one but the filthy, gluttonous, bloodthirsty, psychopathic vampires comprising the ruling elite can possibly win from all this rigged warring death and destruction.

The Zionist neocon creation with a little help from their Saudi-Israeli evil axis friends pulled off the coup of the century on 9/11, massacring 3,000 Americans as their sacrificial lambs, setting into motion the fabricated war on terror masking their actual war on Islam to ensure that a constant fresh supply of made-by-the-USA enemy materializes to justify permanent global violence. During the near ten years that Americans fought in Iraq near a half million Iraqis lost their life, mostly innocent civilians. That toll has only since risen with war still raging. The Islamic State jihadists that the US-Saudi-Israeli unholy alliance secretly created, trained, armed and has funded (just as it did al Qaeda for decades) invaded Iraq last June and is currently in control of more area in Iraq than the weak US puppet government in Baghdad with no end of sectarian violence in sight. Afghanistan looks no better with the puppet Kabul government holding less territory than the surging Taliban that has been waiting for the US military exodus by December 2014 leaving 10,800 US military advisors still remaining behind.

The proxy wars leaving Libya as a corrupt and lawlessly violent failed state and Syria a stalemated quagmire with Islamic State mercenaries our not-so-secret friendly boots on the ground still unable to topple and remove Assad from power. Meanwhile, near a quarter of a million people have died in the war in Syria and an astounding 6.5 million have been displaced in that colossal human tragedy supported and caused by the United States.

The entitlement mentality is a source of much anger and misunderstanding. It leads people who see themselves as victims to one conclusion: they are entitled to be taken care of.

Honest profits of successful entrepreneurs are quite different than profits of the corporate elite who gain control of the government and, as a consequence, accumulate obscene wealth by “robbing” the middle class.

True satisfaction comes from productive effort and self-reliance and not from a government transferring wealth in an effort to bring about an egalitarian society.

Retraining the police won’t touch the complex problems that pit the police against the victims of complex social conditions generated by hate, violence and bad economic policies.

Eventually the social strife that is predictable leads to an overthrow of the government.

The strife that we are witnessing is a reflection of a growing number of people who are recognizing the discrepancy between rich and poor, the weak and the powerful, Wall Street and Main Street.

The economic interventionist system under which we live today rewards those who benefit from government economic planning by the Federal Reserve, access to government contracts, and targeted special regulations to help one group over the other

Police brutality and militarization may well induce a violent event far beyond what we have seen in Ferguson. It also can serve as an excuse. But it is not the root cause of turmoil. The real cause is poverty, the entitlement mentality, and the breakdown of the rule of law. Moral decay and the national police state are the real culprits.

The Founders and our Constitution intended that policing powers would be the responsibility of the individual states. That was forgotten a long time ago

Old-fashioned colonialism was deemed necessary by various European powers to secure natural resources along with control over sea lanes and markets for selling manufactured goods.

We are now subject to an out-of-control domestic police force while the US military maintains our Empire overseas.

The United States military presence around the world provides a “private” police force to protect US and other international companies against any local resistance or leaders that turn unfriendly. Our military presence overseas has nothing to do with protecting our freedoms and defending our Constitution.

When this process gets out-of-control the economy goes into a death spiral, in the beginning of which we currently find ourselves. Without a correction to the basic understanding of the proper role of government, the downward spiral will continue.

Tax revenues will continue to rise, aiding the policy of the government spending the people’s money rather than those who earned it.

Wall Street will be protected, and the trillions of dollars of big banks derivatives will be absorbed by the Fed, the FDIC, and ultimately by the American taxpayers in the next financial crisis.

Authoritarianism has overtaken our economic system as the welfare mentality takes over at every level of government.

Restraining the few who thrive on the use of force to rule over us is the challenge. Fortunately they are outnumbered by those who would choose liberty yet lack the will to challenge the humanitarian monsters who gain support from naive and apathetic citizens.

The sentiments supporting secession, jury nullification, nullification of federal laws by state legislatures, and a drive for more independence from larger governments will continue.

Jaresko, a former U.S. diplomat who received overnight Ukrainian citizenship in December to become Finance Minister, had been in charge of the Western NIS Enterprise Fund (WNISEF), which became the center of insider-dealing and conflicts of interest, although the U.S. Agency for International Development showed little desire to examine the ethical problems – even after Jaresko’s ex-husband tried to blow the whistle. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Ukraine Finance Minister’s American ‘Values.’”]Passing Out the BillionsJaresko will be in charge of dispensing the $17.5 billion that the International Monetary Fund is allocating to Ukraine, along with billions of dollars more expected from U.S. and European governments.

Regarding Kolomoisky’s claim about “Russian saboteurs,” the government said that was not the case, explaining that the clash resulted from the parliament’s vote last week to reduce Kolomoisky’s authority to run the company from his position as a minority owner. As part of the shakeup, Kolomoisky’s protégé Oleksandr Lazorko was fired as chairman, but he refused to leave and barricaded himself in his office, setting the stage for Kolomoisky’s arrival with armed men.On Tuesday, the New York Times reported on the dispute but also flashed back to its earlier propagandistic praise of the 52-year-old oligarch, recalling that “Mr. Kolomoisky was one of several oligarchs, considered too rich to bribe, who were appointed to leadership positions in a bid to stabilize Ukraine.”Kolomoisky also is believed to have purchased influence inside the U.S. government through his behind-the-scenes manipulation of Ukraine’s largest private gas firm, Burisma Holdings. Last year, the shadowy Cyprus-based company appointed Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, to its board of directors. Burisma also lined up well-connected lobbyists, some with ties to Secretary of State John Kerry, including Kerry’s former Senate chief of staff David Leiter, according to lobbying disclosures.

As Time magazine reported, “Leiter’s involvement in the firm rounds out a power-packed team of politically-connected Americans that also includes a second new board member, Devon Archer, a Democratic bundler and former adviser to John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign. Both Archer and Hunter Biden have worked as business partners with Kerry’s son-in-law, Christopher Heinz, the founding partner of Rosemont Capital, a private-equity company.”According to investigative journalism in Ukraine, the ownership of Burisma has been traced to Privat Bank, which is controlled by Kolomoisky.So, it appears that Ukraine’s oligarchs who continue to wield enormous power inside the corrupt country are now circling each other over what’s left of the economic spoils and positioning themselves for a share of the international bailouts to come.

As for “democratic reform,” only in the upside-down world of the State Department’s Orwellian “information war” against Russia over Ukraine would imposing a corrupt and brutal oligarch like Kolomoisky as the unelected governor of a defenseless population be considered a positive.(Early Wednesday morning, President Poroshenko dismissed Kolomoisky from his post as Dnipropetrovsk regional governor.)