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Gary Edwards

Why America Hates Washington | RedState - 0 views

www.redstate.com/...why-america-hates-washington

Erick-Erickson Redstate

shared by Gary Edwards on 26 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • I sat in the first class section of the Acela Express once from New York to Washington. I was on a book tour and the publisher was whisking me from New York to DC for events. Thomas Freidman sat diagonally from me. His single seat backed up to where the First Class Stewards worked. As the train pulled into DC, the overworked steward hadn’t taken Friedman’s tray. Friedman yelled angrily about this being why the nation was collapsing. I kid you not. I was the tipster. First Class of the Acela Express has more to do with what is wrong with America than the Steward who works there. The New York-Washington bubble remains largely disconnected from the rest of the country. When last I made that point, Dylan Byers of the Politico tweeted along the lines of this being as preposterous as the French claiming Paris truly wasn’t France. Of course, de Gaulle popularized the notion of La France profounde — that Paris really wasn’t indicative of the rest of the country.
  • There is a disconnect. It is not everywhere nor with everyone in the NYC-DC corridor. There are people who and places that anchor themselves to the values outside what more and more people are calling the “ruling elite,” but there is a disconnect that I think explains both Congress and the President’s falling approval ratings (not that Congress can get much lower). Listen to the rhetoric in Washington, DC and you learn a few things.
  • With a few exceptions, they’re all mostly cool with the NSA spying on ordinary Americans.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Congress thinks immigration reform that will give immigrants preferential hiring status to existing Americans is the most important thing ever.
  • The President thinks shutting down coal power plants is the most important thing ever.
  • The IRS is out of control and Congress would rather bribe each other to pass immigration plans than look into it.
  • Oh, and the rest of America just wants a FREAKING JOB!
  • There is a massive disconnect between the chattering classes and politicos of Washington and New York and the rest of America. While most Americans are struggling to get ahead, both Republicans and Democrats in Washington act as though they are managing our decline.
  • Gun control, global warming, gay marriage, and immigration are the greatest issues of the day to those in Washington who hang around the green rooms of the various news outlets and gossip with reporters about which lobbyists are sleeping with which members of Congress.
  • The sage of creased pants bipartisanship, David Brooks, reports on Jesus’s letter to the Corinthians. Thomas Friedman, the guru of globalism reduced to ridiculous phrases with no meaning yells at train stewards for not clearing his plate fast enough. And the Washington to New York crowd laps them all up as defining what fierce urgencies now must be dealt with.
  • The rest of America is nervous about where their next meal and paycheck are coming from, how they are going to afford to bail their kids out of crumbling schools, and the price of a gallon of milk and loaf of bread that keep going up though Ben Bernanke tells them there is no inflation.
  • Lindsey Graham and John McCain can sit in the Senate Cloakroom passing out pieces of silver to various Senators buying up their votes for their immigration scheme while Harry Reid concocts a new way to bring gun control back to the Senate floor, and Americans everywhere else will sit back and have their W.T.F. moment of the day.
  • Why has Washington forgotten what matters? And what the hell are Republicans even doing?
Gary Edwards

The Black Banners : Six Questions for Ali Soufan-By Scott Horton (Harper's Magazine) - 0 views

harpers.org/...hbc-90008292

Ali-Soufan FBI 911-Conspiracy-facts

shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 09 Jan 12
     
    3. The major still-unanswered question from 9/11 may be this: Why did the CIA keep information about Khalid Al-Mihdhar - the 9/11 team member who was identified before the attacks as having a U.S. visa and tracked into the United States - secret from the FBI and other law enforcement agencies? Clearly this information could have been used to stop the 9/11 plot, yet CIA officials lied about it repeatedly, and have never been held to account either for their failure to inform or their lies. Do you have an answer? My hands started shaking. I didn't know what to think. "They just sent these reports," the [CIA chief of station*] said, seeing my reaction. I walked out of the room, sprinted down the corridor to the bathroom, and fell to the floor next to a stall. There I threw up. I sat on the floor for a few minutes, although it felt like hours. What I had just seen went through my mind again and again. The same thought kept looping back: "If they had all this information since January 2000, why the hell didn't they pass it on?" My whole body was shaking… I got myself to the sink, washed out my mouth, and splashed some water on my face. I covered my face with a paper towel for a few moments. I was still trying to process the fact that the information I had requested about major al-Qaeda operatives, information the CIA had claimed they knew nothing about, had been in the agency's hands since January 2000. The SWAT agent asked, "What's wrong, bud? What the hell did he tell you?" "They knew, they knew." -From The Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against al-Qaeda. (*Redacted in original - text restored by Harper's). Reprinted by permission of W.W. Norton & Co., © 2011 Ali Soufan. Sadly no. To date we've never been told why the information wasn't passed to the team investigating the USS Cole attack, the State Department, or the Immigration and Naturalization Service, nor why he wasn't put on a no-fly list, al
Gary Edwards

The Precinct Project's Blog | Want to really "do something?" Take back the Republican P... - 0 views

theprecinctproject.wordpress.com

Precinct-committee-chairman Precinct-Activism Tea-Party-Patriots precinct-committees

shared by Gary Edwards on 24 Jul 13 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 24 Jul 13
     
    "Where do the candidates on our primary ballots come from? An estimated 95 per cent of the candidates of the Republican and Democrat parties who win the primary election are those who are endorsed by the leadership of those parties. Do You Know Who Elects The Party Leaders? Did You Elect Them? Who elects the leadership of the parties? Do you know? Are you a registered Republican? Guess what? As a "mere" registered Republican voter, without more, you did not have a vote in the election of the present leadership of the Republican Party. Sorry, but those are the facts. Only elected precinct committeemen get to vote for the leadership of the Party. Do I yet have your attention? Ponder the fact that only elected precinct committeemen get to elect the Party leadership. Don't you want to have a vote in those elections? Getting into position to have that right is easy. About 3,141 counties exist in the United States. Almost all have a county party organization. And, those county organizations almost always endorse candidates in the party primaries. And, usually, those party-endorsed candidates win. Tired of the kind of Republican In Name Only Republicans who are winning the primaries? Then do something real and become a Republican Party precinct committeeman! Guess what? About half of the Republican Party precinct committeeman slots, nationwide, are unfilled! There's about 400,000 slots nationwide and about 200,000 of those slots are vacant. If conservatives filled up all the empty slots they OWN the Party. Precinct Committeemen are the Party. Do I yet have your attention? Has the light bulb above your head clicked on yet? In some counties, like the one where I reside, Maricopa County, Arizona, within which Phoenix sits, TWO-THIRDS of the precinct committeeman slots in the Republican Party sat unfilled on Election Day, 2008. [Well, it's now November, 2012, and we're now at 52 per cent strength instead of where we were back in 2008 at 31 per cent.] Spend a few
Paul Merrell

FindLaw | Cases and Codes - 0 views

caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/...getcase.pl

surveillance state NSA pen-register 4th Amendment

shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • SMITH v. MARYLAND, 442 U.S. 735 (1979)
  • The telephone company, at police request, installed at its central offices a pen register to record the numbers dialed from the telephone at petitioner's home. Prior to his robbery trial, petitioner moved to suppress "all fruits derived from" the pen register. The Maryland trial court denied this motion, holding that the warrantless installation of the pen register did not violate the Fourth Amendment. Petitioner was convicted, and the Maryland Court of Appeals affirmed. Held: The installation and use of the pen register was not a "search" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, and hence no warrant was required. Pp. 739-746. (a) Application of the Fourth Amendment depends on whether the person invoking its protection can claim a "legitimate expectation of privacy" that has been invaded by government action. This inquiry normally embraces two questions: first, whether the individual has exhibited an actual (subjective) expectation of privacy; and second, whether his expectation is one that society is prepared to recognize as "reasonable." Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 . Pp. 739-741.
  • (b) Petitioner in all probability entertained no actual expectation of privacy in the phone numbers he dialed, and even if he did, his expectation was not "legitimate." First, it is doubtful that telephone users in general have any expectation of privacy regarding the numbers they dial, since they typically know that they must convey phone numbers to the telephone company and that the company has facilities for recording this information and does in fact record it for various legitimate business purposes. And petitioner did not demonstrate an expectation of privacy merely by using his home phone rather than some other phone, since his conduct, although perhaps calculated to keep the contents of his conversation private, was not calculated to preserve the privacy of the number he dialed. Second, even if petitioner did harbor some subjective expectation of privacy, this expectation was not one that society is prepared to recognize as "reasonable." When petitioner voluntarily conveyed numerical information to the phone company and "exposed" that information to its equipment in the normal course of business, he assumed the risk that the company would reveal the information [442 U.S. 735, 736]   to the police, cf. United States v. Miller, 425 U.S. 435 . Pp. 741-746. 283 Md. 156, 389 A. 2d 858, affirmed.
  • Paul Merrell on 20 Jun 13
     
    The Washington Post has reported that "on July 15 [2001], the secret surveillance court allowed the NSA to resume bulk collection under the court's own authority. The opinion, which remains highly classified, was based on a provision of electronic surveillance law, known as "pen register, trap and trace," that was written to allow law enforcement officers to obtain the phone numbers of incoming and outgoing calls from a single telephone line." .  The seminal case on pen registers is the Supreme Court's 1979 Smith v. Maryland decision, bookmarked here and the Clerk's syllabus highlighted, with the Court's discussion on the same web page. We will be hearing a lot about this case decision in the weeks and months to come.  Let it suffice for now to record a few points of what my antenna are telling me:  -- Both technology and the law have moved on since then. We are 34 years down the line from the Smith decision. Its pronouncements have been sliced and diced by subsequent decisions. Not a single Justice who sat on the Smith case is still on the High Bench.   -- In Smith, a single pen register was used to obtain calling information from a single telephone number by law enforcement officials. In the present circumstance, we face an Orwellian situation of a secret intelligence agency with no law enforcement authority forbidden by law from conducting domestic surveillance perusing and all digital communications of the entire citizenry. -- The NSA has been gathering not only information analogous to pen register results but also the communications of American citizens themselves. The communications themselves --- the contents --- are subject to the 4th Amendment warrant requirement. Consider the circuitous route of the records ordered to be disclosed in the Verizon FISA order. Verizon was ordered to disclose them to the FBI, not to the NSA. But then the FBI apparently forwards the records to the NSA, who has both the "pen register
Gary Edwards

The Divider vs. the Thinker - WSJ.com - 0 views

online.wsj.com/...3554104577002262150454258.html

Banksters Paul-Ryan Obammunism Peggy-Noonan WSJ The-American-Idea

shared by Gary Edwards on 28 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • There's a lot to rebel against, to want to throw off. If they want to make a serious economic and political critique, they should make the one Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner make in "Reckless Endangerment": that real elites in Washington rigged the system for themselves and their friends, became rich and powerful, caused the great catering, and then "slipped quietly from the scene."
  • It is a blow-by-blow recounting of how politicians—Democrats and Republicans—passed the laws that encouraged the banks to make the loans that would never be repaid, and that would result in your lost job.
  • It began in the early 1990s, in the Clinton administration, and continued under the Bush administration, with the help of an entrenched Congress that wanted only two things: to receive campaign contributions and to be re-elected.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Specifically it is the story of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage insurers, and how their politically connected CEOs, especially Fannie's Franklin Raines and James Johnson, took actions that tanked the American economy and walked away rich.
  • 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.
  • "The American Idea"
  • "the temptation to exploit fear and envy returns." Politicians divide in order to "evade responsibility for their failures" and to advance their interests.
  • But Republicans, in their desire to defend free economic activity, shouldn't be snookered by unthinking fealty to big business. They should never defend—they should actively oppose—the kind of economic activity that has contributed so heavily to the crisis.
  • Here Mr. Ryan slammed "corporate welfare and crony capitalism."
  • "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?"
  • The "true sources of inequity in this country," he continued, are "corporate welfare that enriches the powerful, and empty promises that betray the powerless."
  • The real class warfare that threatens us is "a class of bureaucrats and connected crony capitalists trying to rise above the rest of us, call the shots, rig the rules, and preserve their place atop society."
  • Gary Edwards on 28 Oct 11
     
    Peggy Noonan writes about Paul Ryan's "The American Idea" speech he recently gave at the heritage Foundation.  It's a beautifully written summary that goes right to the heart of the matter:  the ruling elites have been enriching themselves, feeding at the public trough of corporate welfare and crony capitalism.  Washington DC is corrupt and rotten to the core, and the hand maiden of Banksters, Global Corporatist, Big Unions, and Big Bearucracy.   One things for sure.  Congressman Paul Ryan is a brilliant thinker aho believes in the great promise he calls "The American Idea".   Funny how, as the presidential primary race rolls on, my hopeful attention is being drawn towards four men:  Herman Cain, Paul Ryan, Ron Paul and Marco Rubio.   Herman unfortunately is soft on Banksters, totally unaware and oblivious to the need to take back the currency, and end the Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel.  I also have some difficulties with the "revenue neutral" aspects of his 999 plan.  We need less government, not more.  The private sector needs to keep more money, not less.   Too bad because everything else about Herman excites me.  Especially his authentic, from the heart love of America, American exceptionalism and opportunity, and the founders truly unique "American Idea". Ron Paul has an awesome "American Recovery" plan.  Awesome.  But his remarks on terrorism and foreign policy stray far from his usual reliance on the Constitution and the 10th Amendment.   He's right about the connection between global corporatism and the never ending militarism they push.  But he's dead ass wrong about our enemies and their intentions.  And that's scary.  If RP had stuck to the Constitution and 10th Amendment, i would fully support him.   If it's not an enumerated power, it belongs to the States and individual citizens.  End of story.   Marco Rubio is awesome in the same way Herman is.  He connects with a special authenticity that screams the principles and val
Gary Edwards

The Daily Bell - 9/11 Fourteen Years Later - 0 views

www.thedailybell.com/...berts-911-Fourteen-Years-Later

911 911-Conspiracy-facts

shared by Gary Edwards on 15 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • The Official Version of 9/11 goes something like this: Directed by a beardy-guy from a cave in Afghanistan, nineteen hard-drinking, coke-snorting, devout Muslims enjoy lap dances before their mission to meet Allah. Using nothing more than craft knifes, they overpower cabin crew, passengers and pilots on four planes. And hangover or not, they manage to give the world's most sophisticated air defence system the slip. Unfazed by leaving their "How to Fly a Passenger Jet" guide in the car at the airport, they master the controls in no-time and score direct hits on two towers, causing THREE to collapse completely.
  • The laws of physics fail, and the world watches in awe as asymmetrical damage and scattered low temperature fires cause steel-framed buildings to collapse symmetrically through their own mass at free-fall speed, for the first time in history. Despite their dastardly cunning and superb planning, they give their identity away by using explosion-proof passports, which survive the destruction of steel and concrete and fall to the ground where they are quickly discovered lying on top of the mass of debris.
  • Meanwhile in Washington Hani Hanjour, having previously flunked Cessna flying school, gets carried away with all the success of the day and suddenly finds incredible abilities behind the controls of a jet airliner. Instead of flying straight down into the large roof area of the Pentagon, he decides to show off a little. Executing an incredible 270 degree downward spiral, he levels off to hit the low facade of the Pentagon. Without ruining the nicely mowed lawn and at a speed just too fast to capture on video.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • In the skies above Pennsylvania  Desperate to talk to loved ones before their death, some passengers use sheer willpower to connect mobile calls that would not be possible until several years later. And following a heroic attempt by some to retake control of Flight 93, the airliner crashes into a Pennsylvania field leaving no trace of engines, fuselage or occupants except for the standard issue Muslim terrorist bandana.
  • During these events President Bush continues to read "My Pet Goat" to a class of primary school children.
  • In New York World Trade Center leaseholder Larry Silverstein blesses his own foresight in insuring the buildings against terrorist attack only six weeks previously. 
  • In Washington The Neoconservatives are overjoyed by the arrival of the "New Pearl Harbor," the necessary catalyst for launching their pre-planned wars.
  • Gary Edwards on 15 Oct 15
     
    "Millions of refugees from Washington's wars are currently over-running Europe. Washington's 14-year and ongoing slaughter of Muslims and destruction of their countries are war crimes for which the US government's official 9/11 conspiracy theory was the catalyst. Factual evidence and science do not support Washington's conspiracy theory. The 9/11 Commission did not conduct an investigation. It was not permitted to investigate. The Commission sat and listened to the government's story and wrote it down. Afterwards, the chairman and cochairman of the Commission said that the Commission "was set up to fail." For a factual explanation of 9/11, watch this film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsoY3AIRUGA&feature=youtu.be. Here is an extensive examination of many of the aspects of 9/11: http://www.luogocomune.net/site/modules/sections/index.php?op=viewarticle&artid=167. Phil Restino of the Central Florida chapter of Veterans For Peace wants to know why national antiwar organizations buy into the official 9/11 story when the official story is the basis for the wars that antiwar organizations oppose. Some are beginning to wonder if ineffectual peace groups are really Homeland Security or CIA fronts. The account below of the government's 9/11 conspiracy theory reads like a parody, but in fact is an accurate summary of the official 9/11 conspiracy theory. It was posted as a comment in the online UK Telegraph on September 12, 2009, in response to Charlie Sheen's request to President Obama to conduct a real investigation into what happened on September 11, 2001."
Paul Merrell

Inside the NSA's Ultra-Secret China Hacking Group - By Matthew M. Aid | Foreign Policy - 0 views

www.foreignpolicy.com/...tra_secret_china_hacking_group

surveillance state NSA TAO China

shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • This weekend, U.S. President Barack Obama sat down for a series of meetings with China's newly appointed leader, Xi Jinping. We know that the two leaders spoke at length about the topic du jour -- cyber-espionage -- a subject that has long frustrated officials in Washington and is now front and center with the revelations of sweeping U.S. data mining. The media has focused at length on China's aggressive attempts to electronically steal U.S. military and commercial secrets, but Xi pushed back at the "shirt-sleeves" summit, noting that China, too, was the recipient of cyber-espionage. But what Obama probably neglected to mention is that he has his own hacker army, and it has burrowed its way deep, deep into China's networks.
  • It turns out that the Chinese government's allegations are essentially correct. According to a number of confidential sources, a highly secretive unit of the National Security Agency (NSA), the U.S. government's huge electronic eavesdropping organization, called the Office of Tailored Access Operations, or TAO, has successfully penetrated Chinese computer and telecommunications systems for almost 15 years, generating some of the best and most reliable intelligence information about what is going on inside the People's Republic of China.
Paul Merrell

Making America Mediocre Again « LobeLog - 0 views

lobelog.com/making-america-mediocre-again

U.S. stats health

shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • The first signs of decline are physical. Citizens don’t grow as tall. They don’t live as long. They start killing each other in large numbers. Sounds like the post-mortem for a society that disappeared long ago, a conclusion that archaeologists deliver after sifting through bone fragments and pottery shards. Why, the puzzled scholars ask, did such a vibrant society, which produced beautiful art and remarkable scientific advances, fall apart so rapidly and leave so little behind in the unforgiving rainforest? This time, however, the diagnosis is being provided in real time. And the society in decline is the most powerful country in the world. According to the most recent global health surveys, the United States is witnessing a decline in life expectancy for the first time in nearly a quarter century. America is also the first high-income country to see its adults, on average, no longer growing taller. Writes Lenny Bernstein in The Washington Post: The reasons for the United States’ lag are well known. It has the highest infant and maternal mortality rates of any of the countries in the study, and the highest obesity rate. It is the only one without universal health insurance coverage and has the “largest share of unmet health-care needs due to financial costs,” the researchers wrote. I’d like to pin this one on Donald Trump. But U.S. decline has been ongoing for some time.
  • For instance, the United States ranked 16th in the 2014 Social Progress Index developed by Michael Porter at the Harvard Business School. Two years later, the United States slipped to 19th place, with particularly mediocre scores in environmental quality (#36), nutrition and basic medical care (#37), and access to basic knowledge (#40). Let’s compare that to Canada, which sat near the top of the rankings at number two in the SPI. Canada was a little better on environmental quality (#32), quite a bit better on basic medical care (#26), and a whole lot better on access to basic knowledge (#2). Even though Trump can’t be blamed for these mediocre social indicators, his party’s steadfast opposition to spending on social welfare and the environment certainly contributed to the problem. And Trump’s promise to “replace” Obamacare, cut social spending even further, and roll back regulatory oversight — all while boosting the Pentagon budget by an extraordinary 10 percent — will send the United States into free fall. The violent crime rate, which dropped nearly in half over the last 20 years despite what Trump claims, may well start to edge up as our pro-gun president makes firearms even more widely available and the economy takes a turn for the worse.
  • Predictions of the eclipse of American power have been around since Donald Trump was a 30-something playboy. It’s not just the overall health of the population and the toxicity of the environment. The United States has been hobbled by an enormous federal debt, an overextended global military presence, our failing infrastructure, and a paralyzed political system. It’s no wonder that so many Americans were sufficiently fed up in November to vote for anyone who promised to shake up the status quo.
Paul Merrell

Rand Paul: Do not let Elliott Abrams anywhere near the State Department | Rare - 0 views

rare.us/...here-near-the-state-department

Trump-administration appointments Abrams Rand Paul

shared by Paul Merrell on 08 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • I hope against hope that the rumors are wrong and that President Donald Trump will not open the State Department door to the neocons. Crack the door to admit Elliott Abrams and the neocons will scurry in by the hundreds. Neoconservative interventionists have had us at perpetual war for 25 years. While President Trump has repeatedly stated his belief that the Iraq War was a mistake, the neocons (all of them Never-Trumpers) continue to maintain that the Iraq and Libyan Wars were brilliant ideas. These are the same people who think we must blow up half the Middle East, then rebuild it and police it for decades. They’re wrong and they should not be given a voice in this administration.
  • One of the things I like most about President Trump is his acknowledgement that nation building does not work and actually works against the nation building we need to do here at home. With a $20 trillion debt, we don’t have the money to do both. I urge him to keep that in mind this week when he meets with Elliott Abrams, the rumored pick for second in command to the Secretary of State. Abrams would be a terrible appointment for countless reasons. He doesn’t agree with the president in so many areas of foreign policy and he has said so repeatedly; he is a loud voice for nation building and when asked about the president’s opposition to nation building, Abrams said that Trump was absolutely wrong; and during the election he was unequivocal in his opposition to Donald Trump, going so far as to say, “the chair in which Washington and Lincoln sat, he is not fit to sit.” Why then would the president trust him with the second most powerful position in the State Department?
  • Elliott Abrams is a neoconservative too long in the tooth to change his spots, and the president should have no reason to trust that he would carry out a Trump agenda rather than a neocon agenda. But just as importantly, Congress has good reason not to trust him — he was convicted of lying to Congress in his previous job. His conviction for deceiving Congress over secret arms deals, better known as the Iran-Contra scandal, show that his neocon agenda trumps his fidelity to the rule of law. The Constitution directs Congress to approve or disapprove of war. It would be a mistake to appoint anyone to the State Department who was previously convicted for defying Congressional authority. Nation building in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen has not and will not work. Mr. President please, please do not open the door to the people who sip lattes while sneering behind your back. They are bold enough to come begging for work while continuing to laugh and deride your every remark concerning foreign policy. Don’t let them in! The neocon trademark is to conduct war in secret to avoid congressional scrutiny. This is exactly what happened during Iran-Contra. Despite legislation that prohibited sending arms to Nicaragua, Abrams and other neocons surreptitiously funneled money from sultans in Brunei to sheiks in Iran, converting the cash into weapons that were then sent to authoritarians in Nicaragua.
  • Paul Merrell on 08 Feb 17
     
    Politically, Trump may have to appoint Abrams. If so, Trump should make sure that Abrams has neither staff nor authority. A closet for an office should suffice.
Paul Merrell

U.S. forces seize tanker carrying oil from Libya rebel port - Yahoo News India - 0 views

in.news.yahoo.com/-rebel-140041602--finance.html

war & peace Libya U.S.-foreign-policy Navy piracy

shared by Paul Merrell on 18 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • U.S. special forces have seized a tanker that fled with a cargo of oil from a Libyan port controlled by anti-government rebels, halting their attempt to sell crude on the global market. Gunmen demanding regional autonomy and a share of oil wealth had managed to load the ship, which escaped Libya's navy and triggered a crisis that prompted parliament to sack the prime minister. A U.S. SEAL commando team boarded the tanker Morning Glory from a Naval special warfare rigid inflatable boat as it sat in international waters off Cyprus on Sunday night. The seizure was approved by U.S. President Barack Obama and requested by the Libyan and Cypriot governments, Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said.
Paul Merrell

BBC - Blogs - Adam Curtis - Bugger - 1 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...BUGGER

surveillance state MI5 MI6 GCHQ

shared by Paul Merrell on 18 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • The recent revelations by the whistleblower Edward Snowden were fascinating. But they - and all the reactions to them - had one enormous assumption at their heart.That the spies know what they are doing.It is a belief that has been central to much of the journalism about spying and spies over the past fifty years. That the anonymous figures in the intelligence world have a dark omniscience. That they know what's going on in ways that we don't.It doesn't matter whether you hate the spies and believe they are corroding democracy, or if you think they are the noble guardians of the state. In both cases the assumption is that the secret agents know more than we do.
  • But the strange fact is that often when you look into the history of spies what you discover is something very different.It is not the story of men and women who have a better and deeper understanding of the world than we do. In fact in many cases it is the story of weirdos who have created a completely mad version of the world that they then impose on the rest of us.I want to tell some stories about MI5 - and the very strange people who worked there. They are often funny, sometimes rather sad - but always very odd.The stories also show how elites in Britain have used the aura of secret knowledge as a way of maintaining their power. But as their power waned the "secrets" became weirder and weirder.They were helped in this by another group who also felt their power was waning - journalists. And together the journalists and spies concocted a strange, dark world of treachery and deceit which bore very little relationship to what was really going on. And still doesn't.
  • Here is Chapman Pincher being interviewed on the Wogan programme about what then happened. Up to this point Pincher had been the Defence correspondent on the Daily Express. He was successful for getting "scoops" from "inside sources" - although the historian EP Thompson said that really Chapman Pincher was:"A kind of official urinal in which ministers and intelligence and defence chiefs could stand patiently leaking."What the dissident MI5 agents now told Pincher was like super high-grade piss. Or, as he puts it in the Wogan interview, "it was like walking into an Aladdin's Cave". But what Pincher wrote was going to open the floodgates to a new kind of conspiracy journalism that still holds sway over large parts of the media imagination.Have a look at him and decide yourself - high grade toilet or investigative journalist? Or maybe often they are the same thing?
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • But something else happened to all the intelligence agencies during the war - MI6 as well as MI5. As they grew massively in size they became riddled with factions and infighting. And because all this happened behind a wall of secrecy, there was little to stop things becoming vicious and poisonous.The journalist Phillip Knightley has written a really good history of spies - called The Second Oldest Profession. In it he quotes an agent describing what happened during the war years:"The whole organisation was riddled with nepotism - dim, dreary people of utter unmemorability; sub-men who were doubled up with other sub-men to create an illusion of strength and only doubled the weakness; others made memorable only by poisonous, corrupt malevolence or crass, mulish stupidity; the whole run by a chain of command remarkable for its feebleness. The entire service was decrepit and incompetent."
  • The case that really shocked Mrs Thatcher was the traitor Geoffrey Prime. In the 1970s he had worked at the top secret listening centre GCHQ and had been selling all it's secrets to the Russians.
  • And yet again it wasn't MI5 who uncovered his treachery - it was the local police in Cheltenham.In 1982 a policeman came to his house enquiring about his car - a rather distinct two-tone brown and white Mk IV Cortina - a which had been seen in the vicinity of an assault on a young girl.Prime told the policeman that he had been at home all day. But that evening he and his wife Rhona went for a drive to the top of Cleeve Hill. As they sat in the twilight Prime told Rhona that he was the man the police were looking for. And not only that, he was also a Russian spy.
  • Prime was a paedophile - and had used spying techniques to monitor the activities of thousands of young girls around Cheltenham. He had created a vast set of index cards which showed when the girls were most likely to be alone at home. He then went round to their houses in his two tone Cortina and sexually assaulted them.Despite this Prime had been positively vetted six times. Even the Russians got worried about his paedophile activities and seemed to want to dump him. In 1980 Prime had gone to Vienna to meet the KGB. Instead of meeting him secretly as they normally did, the Russians took him openly to the best restaurants where they knew Western intelligence agents would recognise them as KGB agents.But even then noone noticed them - or Prime.Prime's wife Rhona wrestled with her conscience - and in the end went to the police and told them everything about Prime. He was sent to jail for 35 years for spying and 3 years for the assaults on young girls - which says a lot about the priorities of the British establishment at that time.
  • The cases of Bettaney and Prime revealed not only just how incompetent MI5 was - but also how sad and seedy the secret world of spies really was.
  • Paul Merrell on 18 Aug 13
     
    Fascinating in-depth article on the history of British spy agencies' incompetence. From the great MI5 media hoax during World War I that the agency's reputation was built upon through the failures to foresee the collapse of the Soviet Union and the false report of WMDs in Iraq, the author builds a compelling case that the excessive secrecy and incompetence of the British Security Service staff has resulted in a marvelous collection of wackos mired in fantasies of conspiracies within conspiracies who feed gullible journalists lie after lie. Very well-written, Interspersed with spot-on historical videos. Well worth the read and watch. I've highlighted only small tidbits to avoid playing the part of a spoiler.      
Paul Merrell

Interview With Iran Foreign Minister: "The President of the US is Being Pushed into a T... - 0 views

www.informationclearinghouse.info/article36231.htm

war & peace syria Iran U.S. war crimes crimes against humanity

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Video and Transcript Press TV has conducted an exclusive interview with Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif
  • The use of chemical weapons is a crime, we believe it is a crime against humanity, but we believe that also the use of force, the threat of use of force, is also a criminal offense in international law. Unfortunately it seems to me that the United States seems to be living in the 19th century when the use of force was a prerogative of states, it is not. I believe the United States, the president of the United States, who seems to be a very fine constitutional lawyer, has to look into his law books, his international law books, which he has not, I think, reviewed recently, and consider the fact, that when he concedes, as he did last night before the American people, that there is no imminent or direct threat against the United States, then the United States doesn’t have any standing under any provision of international law, to take law in its own hands.
  • There is a need for the United States to come to the realization, and I believe this is an important realization for the United States, that not only the use of force is illegal, that not only the threat of force is against a preemptory international norm of law, but also and more importantly the use of force is ineffective. Force has lost its utility in international relations and it lost its utility long time ago. In 1928, civilized countries decided to reject the use of force as an instrument of national policy, before then, force or war was an instrument of national policy, they thought that war was diplomacy by another means. But since then, the international community has come to its senses, believing that the use of force doesn’t provide the necessary outcome that those who started it wanted to provide and wanted to produce and that is why they have outlawed the use of force. It is not a bunch of idealistic lawyers who sat down and banned the use of force, but in fact because of the reality that it has lost the utility that. Let me just tell you that in the 20th century, 85 percent of the cases, where a country resorted to force, have resulted in that country either being annihilated or not achieving the intended consequences of the war, so that shows to you empirically that force is no longer effective. I hope that the United States, which is the mightiest country on the face of the earth, would come to this realization that it is important to use other means of influence; force is no longer effective
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  • I believe the statement “all options are on the table” is an outdated statement because all options are not on the table, at least for the countries that claim to be law-abiding, for countries that claim to be following the UN charter, for countries which push others to live to their international obligations under the UN charter, push others, who want to punish others for violating internationals law, they have to know that all options are not on the table. The threat or the use of force have been removed from the table long time ago by countries, including the United States when they gathered in San Francisco and decided to save the succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in their generation caused untold misery. So this comes from the charter of the United Nations adopted under the US hospitality in San Francisco in 1945. So, they have to understand that all options are not on the table.
  • Unfortunately a great deal of foreign intervention, a great deal of arms shipment to the various rebel groups, extremist groups, groups that have caused havoc in the region and beyond the region is continuing for very shortsighted interests. They should know that those who help, create and breed extremism in the region [will] fall victim to that extremism. Whether that extremism was that of al-Qaeda, whether it was that of Taliban or that of Saddam Hussein. Those who sponsor them will be their final victims.
  • We have indications and we had shared those indications in the past with the United States and with others that unfortunately, and this is extremely dangerous, the chemical weapons were being smuggled into Syria to groups, armed groups that are fighting the Syrian people and the Syrian government. This was information that we had for some time. A number of arrests have been made earlier this year in the neighboring countries, indicating the fact that this was actually taking place.
  • We alerted them, we told them that this was taking place, we told them and we still tell them that this is a continuing nightmare, chemical weapons in the hands of non-state actors, particularly extremist non-state actors is a threat to everybody. It recognizes no borders, it will become a menace for the entire region and those who help these groups have access to chemical weapons will need to address the question how they are going to deal with that? The addresses are unknown. The possibilities for the use of these chemical weapons are unknown. I am not in the business of fear mongering, I am not in that business but this is a real concern. We need to be able to address this issue and to find a way. Now we are very happy that the Syrians are dealing with some sort of an international arrangement to deal with their chemical weapons, but it is important also at the same time to deal with the weapons that are in the hands of the extremists.
Paul Merrell

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

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

Dark-State car-hacking Hastings

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

Fanniegate: Gamechanger For The GOP? | Via Meadia - 0 views

blogs.the-american-interest.com/...iegate-gamechanger-for-the-gop

financial-collapse obammunism fanniegate

shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • The story doesn’t just attack a failure of Democratic policy execution; it exposes a key flaw in New Democratic thinking.  The Third Way as dreamed up by Bill Clinton and Tony Blair sought to harness the power of financial markets to a public service agenda.  Old style command and control liberalism believed in directly mandating business to do what politicians thought should be done.  AT&T had to serve rural communities, but in exchange it had a phone monopoly and regulators made sure that it made a good profit.  The airlines and bus companies had to service unprofitable routes, but regulators made sure that their route networks as a whole were profitable.
  • a new and updated liberalism appeared.
  • The sad fact remains that the current president, according to longstanding government clearance protocols, could not be hired as a janitor in a federal building with the amount of personal background information that he has provided. Run for President? No problem. Get any other federal job? No way. Quite apart from the issue of any sort of birth certificates, real or imagined, genuine or forged, is the fact that Barack Obama’s school records, SAT and LSAT scores, college and law school admission records and scholarship paperwork and grade transcripts and thesis papers, medical records, passport history, Illinois state senate tenure records, presidential campaign foreign donor lists, complete White House visitor logs and many other relevant records and documents have all never been released or allowed to be subjected to any sort of scrutiny, despite several years of repeated requests for disclosure by numerous individuals and non-traditional media organizations. Virtually the entire paper trail of Barack Obama’s existence has always been deeply hidden away in a tight shroud of secrecy. The Obama 2008 campaign and subsequent administration have to date spent a substantial sum on legal fees, estimated in the millions of dollars, to fight Freedom of Information Act filings and other motions and requests to examine some of this material. The powerful international law firm Perkins Coie, the counsel of record to the Democractic National Committee, has been their primary provider of these services and continues in that role.
  • Gary Edwards on 09 Jun 11
     
    excerpt:  Democrats, watch out. The Republican Party and especially its Tea Party wing have just acquired a new weapon of mass destruction - and it has nothing to do with any of Congressman Wiener's rogue body parts.  If they deploy this weapon effectively in the next election cycle - a big if - then they have the biggest opportunity to move the country rightward since Ronald Reagan took the oath of office back in 1981. The Tea Party WMD stockpile is currently stored in book form:  Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon. By Gretchen Morgenson, one of America's best business journalists who is currently at The New York Times, and noted financial analyst Joshua Rosner, Reckless Endangerment gives the best available account of how the growing chaos in the mortgage and personal finance markets and the rampant bundling of dubious loans into exotically toxic securities plunged the world, and millions of American families, into the gravest financial crisis since World War Two. It is gripping reading as well, and its explanations are clear enough that readers without any background in finance will have no trouble following the plot.  The villains?  An unholy alliance between Wall Street, the Democratic establishment, community organizing groups like ACORN and La Raza, and politicians like Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi and Henry Cisneros.  (Frank got a cushy job for a lover, Pelosi got a job and layoff protection for a son, Cisneros apparently got a license to mint money bilking Mexican-Americans of their life savings in cheesy housing developments.)
Paul Merrell

Russia's Humanitarian 'Invasion' | Consortiumnews - 0 views

consortiumnews.com/...russias-humanitarian-invasion

war & peace Ukraine Russia U.S.-foreign-policy humanitarian-aid Luhansk

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • Before dawn broke in Washington on Saturday, “Ukrainian pro-Russian separatists” – more accurately described as federalists of southeast Ukraine who oppose last February’s coup in Kiev – unloaded desperately needed provisions from some 280 Russian trucks in Luhansk, Ukraine. The West accused those trucks of “invading” Ukraine on Friday, but it was a record short invasion; after delivering their loads of humanitarian supplies, many of the trucks promptly returned to Russia. I happen to know what a Russian invasion looks like, and this isn’t it. Forty-six years ago, I was ten miles from the border of Czechoslovakia when Russian tanks stormed in to crush the “Prague Spring” experiment in democracy. The attack was brutal.
  • I was not near the frontier between Russia and southeastern Ukraine on Friday as the convoy of some 280 Russian supply trucks started rolling across the border heading toward the federalist-held city of Luhansk, but that “invasion” struck me as more like an attempt to break a siege, a brutal method of warfare that indiscriminately targets all, including civilians, violating the principle of non-combatant immunity. Michael Walzer, in his War Against Civilians, notes that “more people died in the 900-day siege of Leningrad during WWII than in the infernos of Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki taken together.” So the Russians have some strong feelings about sieges. There’s also a personal side for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was born in Leningrad, now Saint Petersburg, eight years after the long siege by the German army ended. It is no doubt a potent part of his consciousness. One elder brother, Viktor, died of diphtheria during the siege of Leningrad.
  • Despite the fury expressed by U.S. and NATO officials about Russia’s unilateral delivery of the supplies after weeks of frustrating negotiations with Ukrainian authorities, there was clearly a humanitarian need. An International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) team that visited Luhansk on Aug. 21 to make arrangements for the delivery of aid found water and electricity supplies cut off because of damage to essential infrastructure. The Ukrainian army has been directing artillery fire into the city in an effort to dislodge the ethnic Russian federalists, many of whom had supported elected President Viktor Yanukovych who was ousted in the Feb. 22 coup. The Red Cross team reported that people in Luhansk do not leave their homes for fear of being caught in the middle of ongoing fighting, with intermittent shelling into residential areas placing civilians at risk. Laurent Corbaz, ICRC head of operations for Europe and Central Asia, reported “an urgent need for essentials like food and medical supplies.” The ICRC stated that it had “taken all necessary administrative and preparatory steps for the passage of the Russian convoy,” and that, “pending customs checks,” the organization was “therefore ready to deliver the aid to Luhansk … provided assurances of safe passage are respected.” The “safe passage” requirement, however, was the Catch-22. The Kiev regime and its Western supporters have resisted a ceasefire or a political settlement until the federalists – deemed “terrorists” by Kiev – lay down their arms and surrender.
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  • Accusing the West of repeatedly blocking a “humanitarian armistice,” a Russian Foreign Ministry statement cited both Kiev’s obstructionist diplomacy and “much more intensive bombardment of Luhansk” on Aug. 21, the day after some progress had been made on the ground regarding customs clearance and border control procedures: “In other words, the Ukrainian authorities are bombing the destination [Luhansk] and are using this as a pretext to stop the delivery of humanitarian relief aid.”
  • Despite all the agreements and understandings that Moscow claims were reached earlier with Ukrainian authorities, Kiev insists it did not give permission for the Russian convoy to cross its border and that the Russians simply violated Ukrainian sovereignty – no matter the exigent circumstances they adduce. More alarming still, Russia’s “warning” could be construed as the Kremlin claiming the right to use military force within Ukraine itself, in order to protect such humanitarian supply efforts – and perhaps down the road, to protect the anti-coup federalists, as well. The risk of escalation, accordingly, will grow in direct proportion to the aggressiveness of not only the Ukrainian armed forces but also their militias of neo-fascists who have been dispatched by Kiev as frontline shock troops in eastern Ukraine.
  • Moscow’s move is a difficult one to parry, except for those – and there are many, both in Kiev and in Washington – who would like to see the situation escalate to a wider East-West armed confrontation. One can only hope that, by this stage, President Barack Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and the European Union realize they have a tiger by the tail. The coup regime in Kiev knows which side its bread is buttered on, so to speak, and can be expected to heed the advice from the U.S. and the EU if it is expressed forcefully and clearly. Not so the fanatics of the extreme right party Svoboda and the armed “militia” comprised of the Right Sector. Moreover, there are influential neo-fascist officials in key Kiev ministries who dream of cleansing eastern Ukraine of as many ethnic Russians as possible. Thus, the potential for serious mischief and escalation has grown considerably. Even if Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko wants to restrain his hardliners, he may be hard-pressed to do so. Thus, the U.S. government could be put in the unenviable position of being blamed for provocations – even military attacks on unarmed Russian truck drivers – over which it has little or no control.
  • The White House second-string P.R. team came off the bench on Friday, with the starters on vacation, and it was not a pretty scene. Even if one overlooks the grammatical mistakes, the statement they cobbled together left a lot to be desired. It began: “Today, in violation of its previous commitments and international law, Russian military vehicles painted to look like civilian trucks forced their way into Ukraine. … “The Ukrainian government and the international community have repeatedly made clear that this convoy would constitute a humanitarian mission only if expressly agreed to by the Ukrainian government and only if the aid was inspected, escorted and distributed by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). We can confirm that the ICRC is not escorting the vehicles and has no role in managing the mission. … “Russian military vehicles piloted by Russian drivers have unilaterally entered the territory controlled by the separatist forces.”
  • The White House protested that Kiev had not “expressly agreed” to allow the convoy in without being escorted by the ICRC. Again, the Catch 22 is obvious. Washington has been calling the shots, abetting Kiev’s dawdling as the supply trucks sat at the border for a week while Kiev prevented the kind of ceasefire that the ICRC insists upon before it will escort such a shipment. The other issue emphasized in the White House statement was inspection of the trucks: “While a small number of these vehicles were inspected by Ukrainian customs officials, most of the vehicles have not been inspected by anyone but Russia.” During a press conference at the UN on Friday, Russia’s UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin took strong exception to that charge, claiming not only that 59 Ukrainian inspectors had been looking through the trucks on the Russian side of the border, but that media representatives had been able to choose for themselves which trucks to examine.
  • Regardless of this latest geopolitical back-and-forth, it’s clear that Moscow’s decision to send the trucks across the border marked a new stage of the civil war in Ukraine. As Putin prepares to meet with Ukrainian President Poroshenko next week in Minsk – and as NATO leaders prepare for their summit on Sept. 4 to 5 in Wales – the Kremlin has put down a marker: there are limits to the amount of suffering that Russia will let Kiev inflict on the anti-coup federalists and ethnic Russian civilians right across the border. The Russians’ attitude seems to be that if the relief convoys can be described as an invasion of sovereign territory, so be it. Nor are they alone in the court of public opinion.
  • Charter members of the Fawning Corporate Media are already busily at work, including the current FCM dean, the New York Times’ Michael R. Gordon, who was at it again with a story titled “Russia Moves Artillery Units Into Ukraine, NATO Says.”  Gordon’s “scoop” was all over the radio and TV news; it was picked up by NPR and other usual suspects who disseminate these indiscriminate alarums. Gordon, who never did find those Weapons of Mass Destruction that he assured us were in Iraq, now writes: “The Russian military has moved artillery units manned by Russian personnel inside Ukrainian territory in recent days and was using them to fire at Ukrainian forces, NATO officials said on Friday.” His main source seems to be NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who famously declared in 2003, “Iraq has WMDs. It is not something we think; it is something we know.” Cables released by WikiLeaks have further shown the former Danish prime minister to be a tool of Washington.
  • However, Gordon provided no warning to Times’ readers about Rasmussen’s sorry track record for accuracy. Nor did the Times remind its readers about Gordon’s sorry history of getting sensitive national security stories wrong. Surely, the propaganda war will be stoked by what happened on Friday. Caveat emptor.
  • Paul Merrell on 24 Aug 14
     
    Former Army officer and CIA analyst Ray McGovern informs that the Russian humanitarian aid convoy to Luhansk. It should be noted that "humanitarian intervention" has increasingly been used by the U.S. as grounds for full-fledged regime change military operations that invade other nation's sovereignty. Kosovo and Libya and prime examples, and the U.S. war by proxy against Syria has also been justified only by the humanitarian pretext of saving civilian lives, more than 100,000 of which have been extinguished by the war so far. So an actual humanitarian relief effort that invades the coup government of Ukraine's "sovereignty" seems like small potatoes in comparison. 
  • Paul Merrell on 25 Aug 14
     
    Former Army officer and CIA analyst Ray McGovern informs that the Russian humanitarian aid convoy to Luhansk. It should be noted that "humanitarian intervention" has increasingly been used by the U.S. as grounds for full-fledged regime change military operations that invade other nation's sovereignty. Kosovo and Libya and prime examples, and the U.S. war by proxy against Syria has also been justified only by the humanitarian pretext of saving civilian lives, more than 100,000 of which have been extinguished by the war so far. So an actual humanitarian relief effort that invades the coup government of Ukraine's "sovereignty" seems like small potatoes in comparison. 
Paul Merrell

Hillary Clinton's Real Scandal Is Honduras, Not Benghazi - 0 views

www.informationclearinghouse.info/article39225.htm

Auction 2016 Hillary Honduras

shared by Paul Merrell on 28 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • What beats me is why more Democrats aren’t deeply troubled by the legacy of Clinton’s foreign policy blunder in Honduras. Maybe you’ve forgotten what happened in that small country in the first year of the Obama administration — more on that in a moment. But surely you’ve noticed the ugly wave of xenophobia greeting a growing number of Central American child refugees arriving on our southern border. Some of President Barack Obama’s supporters are trying to blame this immigration crisis on the Bush administration because of an anti-trafficking law George W. signed in 2008 specifically written to protect Central American children that preceded an uptick in their arrivals. But which country is the top source of kids crossing the border? Honduras, home to the world’s highest murder rate, Latin America’s worst economic inequality, and a repressive U.S.-backed government. When Honduran military forces allied with rightist lawmakers ousted democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya in 2009, then-Secretary of State Clinton sided with the armed forces and fought global pressure to reinstate him.
  • Washington wields great influence over Honduras, thanks to the numerous military bases built with U.S. funds where training and joint military and anti-drug operations take place. Since the coup, nearly $350 million in U.S. assistance, including more than $50 million in military aid has poured into the country. That’s a lot of investment in a nation where the police, the military, and private security forces are killing people with alarming frequency and impunity, according to Human Rights Watch. In short, desperate Honduran children are seeking refuge from a human rights nightmare that would cast a dark cloud over Clinton’s presidential bid right now if the media were paying any attention. That wouldn’t give Republicans a big advantage, of course. Until they stop alienating a majority of female voters and communities of color, I find it hard to see the party of Mitt Romney and John McCain winning the White House.
  • Given the Democratic Party’s demographic edge, progressives have nothing to lose by seizing on the GOP field’s weakness and pressing for a viable alternative to another Clinton administration. Senator Elizabeth Warren could prove a contender. Unfortunately, the consumer-rights firebrand and Massachusetts Democrat lacks any foreign policy experience. And foreign policy is no afterthought these days. Israel — the recipient of $3.1 billion a year in U.S. military aid — is waging a ground war in Gaza, and the stakes in the Russia-Ukraine conflict just grew following the downing of that Malaysia Airlines jet. Plus, Iraq is growing more violent and unstable once more. On all these issues, Clinton is more hawkish than most of the Democratic base. But other Democrats with a wide range of liberal credentials and foreign policy expertise are signaling some interest in running, especially if Clinton ultimately sits out the race. Even if Clinton does win in 2016, a serious progressive primary challenge could help shape her presidency. As more and more Honduran kids cross our border in search of a safe haven, voters should take a good look at her track record at the State Department and reconsider the inevitability of another Clinton administration.
Paul Merrell

Congress Is Irrelevant on Mass Surveillance. Here's What Matters Instead. - The Intercept - 0 views

firstlook.org/...topping-nsas-mass-surveillance

surveillance state nsa-reform

shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • The “USA Freedom Act”—the proponents of which were heralding as “NSA reform” despite its suffocatingly narrow scope—died in the august U.S. Senate last night when it attracted only 58 of the 60 votes needed to close debate and move on to an up-or-down vote. All Democratic and independent senators except one (Bill Nelson of Florida) voted in favor of the bill, as did three tea-party GOP Senators (Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and Dean Heller). One GOP Senator, Rand Paul, voted against it on the ground that it did not go nearly far enough in reining in the NSA. On Monday, the White House had issued a statement “strongly supporting” the bill. The “debate” among the Senators that preceded the vote was darkly funny and deeply boring, in equal measure. The black humor was due to the way one GOP senator after the next—led by ranking intelligence committee member Saxby Chambliss of Georgia (pictured above)—stood up and literally screeched about 9/11 and ISIS over and over and over, and then sat down as though they had made a point.
  • So the pro-NSA Republican senators were actually arguing that if the NSA were no longer allowed to bulk-collect the communication records of Americans inside the U.S., then ISIS would kill you and your kids. But because they were speaking in an empty chamber and only to their warped and insulated D.C. circles and sycophantic aides, there was nobody there to cackle contemptuously or tell them how self-evidently moronic it all was. So they kept their Serious Faces on like they were doing The Nation’s Serious Business, even though what was coming out of their mouths sounded like the demented ramblings of a paranoid End is Nigh cult. The boredom of this spectacle was simply due to the fact that this has been seen so many times before—in fact, every time in the post-9/11 era that the U.S. Congress pretends publicly to debate some kind of foreign policy or civil liberties bill. Just enough members stand up to scream “9/11″ and “terrorism” over and over until the bill vesting new powers is passed or the bill protecting civil liberties is defeated.
  • Eight years ago, when this tawdry ritual was still a bit surprising to me, I live-blogged the 2006 debate over passage of the Military Commissions Act, which, with bipartisan support, literally abolished habeas corpus rights established by the Magna Carta by sanctioning detention without charges or trial. (My favorite episode there was when GOP Sen. Arlen Specter warned that “what the bill seeks to do is set back basic rights by some nine hundred years,” and then voted in favor of its enactment.) In my state of naive disbelief, as one senator after the next thundered about the “message we are sending” to “the terrorists,” I wrote: “The quality of the ‘debate’ on the Senate floor is so shockingly (though appropriately) low and devoid of substance that it is hard to watch.” So watching last night’s Senate debate was like watching a repeat of some hideously shallow TV show. The only new aspect was that the aging Al Qaeda villain has been rather ruthlessly replaced by the show’s producers with the younger, sleeker ISIS model. Showing no gratitude at all for the years of value it provided these senators, they ignored the veteran terror group almost completely in favor of its new replacement. And they proceeded to save a domestic surveillance program clearly unpopular among those they pretend to represent.
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  • Ever since the Snowden reporting began and public opinion (in both the U.S. and globally) began radically changing, the White House’s strategy has been obvious. It’s vintage Obama: Enact something that is called “reform”—so that he can give a pretty speech telling the world that he heard and responded to their concerns—but that in actuality changes almost nothing, thus strengthening the very system he can pretend he “changed.” That’s the same tactic as Silicon Valley, which also supported this bill: Be able to point to something called “reform” so they can trick hundreds of millions of current and future users around the world into believing that their communications are now safe if they use Facebook, Google, Skype and the rest. In pretty much every interview I’ve done over the last year, I’ve been asked why there haven’t been significant changes from all the disclosures. I vehemently disagree with the premise of the question, which equates “U.S. legislative changes” with “meaningful changes.” But it has been clear from the start that U.S. legislation is not going to impose meaningful limitations on the NSA’s powers of mass surveillance, at least not fundamentally. Those limitations are going to come from—are now coming from —very different places:
  • All of that illustrates what is, to me, the most important point from all of this: the last place one should look to impose limits on the powers of the U.S. government is . . . the U.S. government. Governments don’t walk around trying to figure out how to limit their own power, and that’s particularly true of empires. The entire system in D.C. is designed at its core to prevent real reform. This Congress is not going to enact anything resembling fundamental limits on the NSA’s powers of mass surveillance. Even if it somehow did, this White House would never sign it. Even if all that miraculously happened, the fact that the U.S. intelligence community and National Security State operates with no limits and no oversight means they’d easily co-opt the entire reform process. That’s what happened after the eavesdropping scandals of the mid-1970s led to the establishment of congressional intelligence committees and a special FISA “oversight” court—the committees were instantly captured by putting in charge supreme servants of the intelligence community like Senators Dianne Feinstein and Chambliss, and Congressmen Mike Rogers and “Dutch” Ruppersberger, while the court quickly became a rubber stamp with subservient judges who operate in total secrecy.
  • There is a real question about whether the defeat of this bill is good, bad, or irrelevant. To begin with, it sought to change only one small sliver of NSA mass surveillance (domestic bulk collection of phone records under section 215 of the Patriot Act) while leaving completely unchanged the primary means of NSA mass surveillance, which takes place under section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, based on the lovely and quintessentially American theory that all that matters are the privacy rights of Americans (and not the 95 percent of the planet called “non-Americans”). There were some mildly positive provisions in the USA Freedom Act: the placement of “public advocates” at the FISA court to contest the claims of the government; the prohibition on the NSA holding Americans’ phone records, requiring instead that they obtain FISA court approval before seeking specific records from the telecoms (which already hold those records for at least 18 months); and reducing the agency’s “contact chaining” analysis from three hops to two. One could reasonably argue (as the ACLU and EFF did) that, though woefully inadequate, the bill was a net-positive as a first step toward real reform, but one could also reasonably argue, as Marcy Wheeler has with characteristic insight, that the bill is so larded with ambiguities and fundamental inadequacies that it would forestall better options and advocates for real reform should thus root for its defeat.
  • 1) Individuals refusing to use internet services that compromise their privacy.
  • 2) Other countries taking action against U.S. hegemony over the internet.
  • 4) Greater individual demand for, and use of, encryption.
  • 3) U.S. court proceedings.
  • The “USA Freedom Act”—which its proponents were heralding as “NSA reform” despite its suffocatingly narrow scope—died in the august U.S. Senate last night when it attracted only 58 of the 60 votes needed to close debate and move on to an up-or-down vote. All Democratic and independent senators except one (Bill Nelson of Florida) voted in favor of the bill, as did three tea-party GOP Senators (Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and Dean Heller). One GOP Senator, Rand Paul, voted against it on the ground that it did not go nearly far enough in reining in the NSA. On Monday, the White House had issued a statement “strongly supporting” the bill.
  • Paul Merrell on 20 Nov 14
     
    Glenn Greenwald on why the death of the USA Freedom Act is actually a Very Good Thing. I couldn't agree more.
Paul Merrell

Ebola? How Do You Know, WHO and CDC? | nsnbc international - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...ebola-know-cdc

ebola PCR-test

shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • There is something perversely strange about the entire hoopla around the so-called Ebola outbreaks. An African man is admitted to a Dallas hospital with symptoms, treated, released and re-admitted, the “first” case of Ebola in the USA. What the guardians of truth in the mainstream media never ask is how reliable is the test that determines if someone has Ebola.
  • One courageous scientist who did question the Gallo HIV-AIDS hypothesis was Kary Mullis, who in 1996 wrote, “The HIV/AIDS hypothesis is one hell of a mistake.” Mullis won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1993. His devastating comments were ignored by the ever-vigilant mainstream media and medical profession. In 1983 Gallo arbitrarily transformed correlation into causality and said he had discovered the “virus” causing acquired immunodeficiency or AID, which was then named a “syndrome,” or AIDS. Gallo had just before that announcement won a patent for the only known test to determine of someone had AIDS. An habitual user of certain drugs like amyl nitrite or poppers, or even a pregnant woman would show HIV-positive with the Gallo test. Fears of a new global plague were stoked in the media by irresponsible scientists. Gallo sold his AIDS test to five pharmaceutical companies and sat back to reap the royalties. The Ebola Test
  • Can the PCR blood test tell how much Ebola virus is in a person’s body? The same Kary Mullis cited above regarding the HIV/AIDS hypothesis invented the PCR test in 1983, the basis on which his Nobel Prize was awarded. He told journalist John Lauritsen years back of his test and warned against its misuse. Lauritsen reported: With regard to the viral-load tests, which attempt to use PCR for counting viruses, Mullis has stated: “Quantitative PCR is an oxymoron.” PCR is intended to identify substances qualitatively, but by its very nature is unsuited for estimating numbers. Although there is a common misimpression that the viral-load tests actually count the number of viruses in the blood, these tests cannot detect free, infectious viruses at all; they can only detect proteins that are believed, in some cases wrongly, to be unique to HIV. The tests can detect genetic sequences of viruses, but not viruses themselves.
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  • Now we are again reading similar terrorizing stories in the mass media, this time about Ebola–fears stoked by the pharma-industry-controlled WHO in Geneva under Director General Margaret Chan’s Scientific Advisory Group of Experts and their ties to Big Pharma giants, and the US Government Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. What exactly is the Ebola test that is being used by doctors or health workers in Sierre Leone or Liberia to “prove” Ebola in a sick person? When the African man was re-hospitalized in Dallas, the head of the CDC, Tom Frieden, declared the patient was diagnosed with Ebola based on a test that is “highly accurate. It’s a PCR test of blood.” But that PCR test of blood is not highly accurate. Rather it is highly flawed. As Jon Rappoport points out, “Among the problems of the PCR test is that it is open to errors. Is the sample taken from the patient actually a virus or a piece of a virus? Or is just an irrelevant piece of debris? Another problem is inherent in the method of the PCR itself. The test is based on the amplification of a tiny, tiny speck of genetic material taken from a patient—blowing it up millions of times until it can be observed and analyzed. Researchers who employ the test claim that, as a result of the procedure, they can also infer the quantity of virus that is present in the patient. This is crucial, because unless a patient has millions and millions of Ebola virus in his body, there is absolutely no reason to think he is sick or will become sick.”
  • Nor can the Mullis PCR test count the number of Ebola viruses in a person’s blood. Yet the CDC claims, wrongly according to Mullis, that it can. Can it be that the entire Ebola fear campaign launched by Chan’s WHO and the CDC is based on fiction and a pharmaceutical industry ready to jab millions with their untested “Ebola vaccines”?
Paul Merrell

9/11 judge: War court can't order Guantánamo healthcare | Miami Herald Miami ... - 0 views

www.miamiherald.com/...article15621776.html

war & peace Gitmo-detainees alo-Hawsawi medical-care litigation

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • A​ military judge has rejected a request for war court intervention in the healthcare of an alleged 9/11 plotter who, according to his lawyer, still suffers from wounds inflicted at a CIA “black site” where agents subjected him to rectal rehydration.Army Col. James L. Pohl wrote in a two-page order released by the Pentagon Friday that the court “does not have the authority to address issues concerning medical care.” It was dated March 10.In February, the attorney for Saudi captive Mustafa al Hawsawi asked the judge to intervene in the case, referring to a recently released portion of the Senate Intelligence Committee's “Torture Report,” and saying that the 46-year-old man had been rectally abused while in CIA custody — and that he continues to bleed now, at least eight years later. “Some would call that sodomy,” said attorney Walter Ruiz, adding that “those acts caused longstanding chronic medical conditions that have yet to be resolved.”
  • Hawsawi is accused of helping the Sept. 11 hijackers with travel and money. He is awaiting a death-penalty trial with the alleged mastermind, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, and three others, all of whom were subjected to “enhanced interrogation techniques” before they got to Guantánamo in September 2006.Hawsawi has sat on a pillow over years of pretrial hearings. The February hearing was the first time that Ruiz was permitted to explain it under a loosening of censorship at the court that lets lawyers talk about the released, redacted 524-page portion of the 6,200-page Senate report.Guantánamo’s prison spokesmen say war-on-terror captives get the same level of medical care as U.S. service members.Ruiz specifically cited a reference to an investigation of allegations that CIA agents conducted medically unnecessary rectal exams with excessive force on two detainees, one of them Hawsawi, who afterward suffered an anal fissure, rectal prolapse and hemorrhoids.　
  • Ruiz said that guards sometimes find blood in Hawsawi’s clothes. The lawyer asked the judge to order prison legal and medical staff to speak with him, as Hawsawi’s healthcare proxy, and to let him see Hawsawi’s secret medical records. Prosecutors urged the Army judge to stay out of the issue. “No doctor should be treating with a lawyer looking over his shoulder,” said federal attorney Ed Ryan.The Sept. 11 hearings are in recess until April 20.
  • Paul Merrell on 27 Mar 15
     
    Whereas if he were facing trial in an Article III court, the court would have jurisdiction to protect a prisoner's health and conditons of confinement. This is disgusting.
Paul Merrell

Time for GOP panic? Establishment worried Carson or Trump might win. - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...5-be8b-1ae2e4f50f76_story.html

Auction 2016 Trump Carson Republican-establishment

shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • Less than three months before the kickoff Iowa caucuses, there is growing anxiety bordering on panic among Republican elites about the dominance and durability of Donald Trump and Ben Carson and widespread bewilderment over how to defeat them. Party leaders and donors fear that nominating either man would have negative ramifications for the GOP ticket up and down the ballot, virtually ensuring a Hillary Rodham Clinton presidency and increasing the odds that the Senate falls into Democratic hands. The party establishment is paralyzed. Big money is still on the sidelines. No consensus alternative to the outsiders has emerged from the pack of governors and senators running, and there is disagreement about how to prosecute the case against them. Recent focus groups of Trump supporters in Iowa and New Hampshire commissioned by rival campaigns revealed no silver bullet.
  • According to other Republicans, some in the party establishment are so desperate to change the dynamic that they are talking anew about drafting Romney — despite his insistence that he will not run again. Friends have mapped out a strategy for a late entry to pick up delegates and vie for the nomination in a convention fight, according to the Republicans who were briefed on the talks, though Romney has shown no indication of reviving his interest.
  • South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, herself an outsider who rode the tea party wave into office five years ago, explained the phenomenon. “You have a lot of people who were told that if we got a majority in the House and a majority in the Senate, then life was gonna be great,” she said in an interview Thursday. “What you’re seeing is that people are angry. Where’s the change? Why aren’t there bills on the president’s desk every day for him to veto? They’re saying, ‘Look, what you said would happen didn’t happen, so we’re going to go with anyone who hasn’t been elected.’ ”
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  • There are similar concerns about Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who is gaining steam and is loathed by party elites, but they are more muted, at least for now.
  • Still, the party establishment’s greatest weapon — big money — is partly on the shelf. Kenneth G. Langone, a founder of Home Depot and a billionaire supporter of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, said he is troubled that many associates in the New York financial community have so far refused to invest in a campaign due to the race’s volatility.
  • “Some of them are in, but too many are still saying, ‘I’ll wait to see how this all breaks,’ ” Langone said. “People don’t want to write checks unless they think the candidate has a chance of winning.” He said that his job as a ­mega-donor “is to figure out how we get people on the edge of their chairs so they start to give money.” Many of Romney’s 2012 National Finance Committee members have sat out the race so far,
  • The apprehension among some party elites goes beyond electability, according to one Republican strategist who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly about the worries. “We’re potentially careening down this road of nominating somebody who frankly isn’t fit to be president in terms of the basic ability and temperament to do the job,” this strategist said. “It’s not just that it could be somebody Hillary could destroy electorally, but what if Hillary hits a banana peel and this person becomes president?” Angst about Trump intensified this week after he made two comments that could prove damaging in a general election. First, he explained his opposition to raising the minimum wage by saying “wages are too high.” Second, he said he would create a federal “deportation force” to remove the more than 11 million immigrants living in the United States illegally. “To have a leading candidate propose a new federal police force that is going to flush out illegal immigrants across the nation? That’s very disturbing and concerning to me about where that leads Republicans,” said Dick Wadhams, a former GOP chairman in Colorado, a swing state where Republicans are trying to pick up a Senate seat next year.
  • Said Austin Barbour, a veteran operative and fundraiser now advising former Florida governor Jeb Bush: “If we don’t have the right [nominee], we could lose the Senate, and we could face losses in the House. Those are very, very real concerns. If we’re not careful and we nominate Trump, we’re looking at a race like Barry Goldwater in 1964 or George McGovern in 1972, getting beat up across the board because of our nominee.” George Voinovich, a retired career politician who rose from county auditor to mayor of Cleveland to governor of Ohio to U.S. senator, said this cycle has been vexing. “This business has turned into show business,” said Voinovich, who is backing Ohio Gov. John Kasich. “We can’t afford to have somebody sitting in the White House who doesn’t have governing experience and the gravitas to move this country ahead.”
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