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Paul Merrell

Syria may turn out to be Obama's defining legacy | Asia Times - 0 views

www.atimes.com/ay-turn-obamas-defining-legacy

Auction 2016 war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Syria Russia Aleppo

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • By M.K. Bhadrakumar October 5, 2016 9:54 AM (UTC+8) Share 0 Tweet Print Email Comment 0 Asia Times is not responsible for the opinions, facts or any media content presented by contributors. In case of abuse, click here to report. On Monday, the Barack Obama administration fulfilled its week-old threat to suspend bilateral talks with Russia over the Syrian crisis. Does this signal that the dogs of war are about to be unleashed? The thought may seem preposterous but tensions are palpable. US spy planes are spotted ever more frequently in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea over Russian bases, especially Tartus and Hmeimim in Syria.
  • Russia has deployed SA-23 Gladiator anti-missile and anti-aircraft systems in Syria, the first-ever such deployments outside Russia. Western analysts see it as a pre-emptive step to counter any American cruise missile attack. Russia is not taking any chances.
  • Moscow factors in that the US may use some rebel groups to ensure that Russian “body bags” are sent to Moscow, as threatened explicitly by US state department spokesman John Kirby last week. Moscow suspects American involvement in the missile attack on the Russian embassy in Damascus — “Brits and Ukrainians clumsily helped the Americans”, a Russian statement in New York said on Tuesday. Indeed, passions are running high. There could be several dozen western intelligence operatives trapped with the rebel groups in east Aleppo. Clearly, the turning point was reached when the US and western allies undertook a fierce air attack on the Syrian army base at Deir Ezzor lasting an hour and killing 62 government troops. The US explanation of that being an accident lost credibility, since within an hour of the airstrike, extremist groups of al-Qaida followed up with ground attack as if acting in tandem.
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  • Trust has consequently broken down. The Russians are convinced that the US was never really interested in separating the moderate groups from extremists despite repeated promises, because Washington sees a use for al-Qaida affiliates, which happen to be the only capable fighting force to push the ‘regime change agenda in Syria. Put differently, Russians are inclined to agree with what Tehran has been saying all along. Moscow, therefore, switched tack and put its resources behind the Syrian operations to capture the strategic city of Aleppo and the military campaign is within sight of victory.
  • That is, unless there is US intervention in the coming days to tilt the military balance in favor of extremist groups trapped in the eastern districts of Aleppo with supply lines for reinforcements cut.
  • With no prospect of getting reinforcements, facing relentless air and ground attacks from the north and south, the rebels are staring at a hopeless battle of attrition. The point is, with the fall of Aleppo, the Syrian war becomes a residual military operation to purge the al-Qaida affiliate Jubhat al-Nusra from Idlib province as well, which means regime forces would secure control over the entire populous regions of Syria, all main cities and the entire Mediterranean coast. In a nutshell, the Syrian war ends with President Bashar al-Assad ensconced in power. The specter of “total victory” for Assad haunts Washington. It explains the string of vituperative statements against Moscow, betraying a high level of frustration. Theoretically, Obama can order missile attacks on the victorious Syrian government forces, but that will be like pouring oil on fire. On Saturday, the Russian Defense Ministry warned the Pentagon that any US military intervention to remove Assad would result in “terrible tectonic shifts” across the region.
  • In considering the war option, Obama has three things to take into account. First, Washington’s equations with Ankara and Riyadh are hugely uncertain at the moment and both regional allies are key partners in Syria.
  • Second, Turkish President Recep Erdogan is unlikely to gamble on another confrontation with Russia when his country’s legitimate interests in Syria can be secured by working in tandem with President Vladimir Putin at the negotiating table.
  • Third, and most important, Obama is unlikely to lead his country into a war without any clear-cut objective to realize when the curtain is coming down on his presidency. In this current state of play, Assad stands between the West and the deluge.
  • But what rankles is that Russian victory in Syria would mark the end of western hegemony over the Middle East, and historians are bound to single it out as the defining foreign-policy legacy of Obama’s presidency. Certainly, Moscow cannot but be sensing this. Russia may offer at some point a face-saving exit strategy — but only after the capture of Aleppo. After all, there is really no hurry between now and January to salvage Russia-US ties.
  • The debris of Russia’s ties with the US lies all around and no one knows where to begin a clean-up. Relations got worse when Obama called the Kremlin leadership “barbarous” in regard to Aleppo. Then, on Monday, Moscow explained its decision to suspend cooperation in getting rid of excess plutonium (that could be used to make nuclear weapons) as being due to “the emergence of a threat to strategic stability and as a result of unfriendly actions” by the US. This was a decision that Moscow could have deferred until Obama left office. After all, it meant suspending the sole Russian-American nuclear security initiative carrying Obama’s imprimatur. However, Moscow couldn’t resist depicting a Nobel Prize winner who promised to ensure “America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons,” as someone who actually enhanced the role of nuclear weapons in the security strategy of the US.
  • Paul Merrell on 10 Oct 16
     
    If you haven't been following the Syrian War in the last couple of weeks, you'd have missed that the U.S. government has gone bats**t crazy lately, since the ceasefire agreement Kerry negotiated with Lavrov fell apart because the U.S. couldn't deliver its fundamental promise to separate the "moderate" Syrian opposition from Al-Nusrah and ISIL The U.S. problem was two-fold: [i] the Pentagon mutinied and ended all talk of intelligence sharing with Russia by bombing a Syrian Army unit, killing over 60 and wounding over 100, followed within minutes by a coordinated Al-Nusra ground attack; and [ii] all the "moderate Syrian opposition groups refused the U.S. instruction to separate from the head-choppers, saying that ISIL and Al-Nusrah were their brothers-in-arms. (In fact, there are no "moderate" Syrian rebels; just agents of ISIL and Al-Nusrah who fly a different flag when it's time to pick up their supplies and ammunition from the U.S.) What's the Empire of Chaos to do when the mercenaries refuse to obey orders? So with all major elements of al-Nurah surrounded in an East Aleppo noose with the knot rapidly tightening (Aleppo will be taken before Hillary takes her throne), it's up to Obama to decide whether to unleash the Pentagon to save the CIA's al-Nusrah from destruction. He can't kick that can down the road to Hillary (or Donald). MSM is flooding its viewership with anti-Putin propaganda of the most vituperative kind as well as horror stories about all those poor freedom fighters and their kids being ruthlessly killed by Russia in East Aleppo. James Clapper dutifully trotted out an announcement of sorts blaming the Russian government for attempting to hack the U.S. election process, so Hillary could red-bait Donald's "I'd get along with Putin" position in the last debate. The choice must be painful for Obama. Does he want his legacy to be the President who lost the Middle East or the President who waged a war of aggression to protect al-Qaeda from destructio
Paul Merrell

Bipartisan Letter Urging President Obama to Get Congressional Approval Before Striking ... - 0 views

rigell.house.gov/...documentsingle.aspx

war & peace Syria Obama Congress separation-of-powers gauntlet

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • Dear Mr. President,  We strongly urge you to consult and receive authorization from Congress before ordering the use of U.S. military force in Syria. Your responsibility to do so is prescribed in the Constitution and the War Powers Resolution of 1973.  While the Founders wisely gave the Office of the President the authority to act in emergencies, they foresaw the need to ensure public debate – and the active engagement of Congress – prior to committing U.S. military assets. Engaging our military in Syria when no direct threat to the United States exists and without prior congressional authorization would violate the separation of powers that is clearly delineated in the Constitution.  Mr. President, in the case of military operations in Libya you stated that authorization from Congress was not required because our military was not engaged in “hostilities.” In addition, an April 1, 2011, memorandum to you from your Office of Legal Counsel concluded: “…President Obama could rely on his constitutional power to safeguard the national interest by directing the anticipated military operations in Libya—which were limited in their nature, scope, and duration—without prior congressional authorization.” We view the precedent this opinion sets, where “national interest” is enough to engage in hostilities without congressional authorization, as unconstitutional. If the use of 221 Tomahawk cruise missiles, 704 Joint Direct Attack Munitions, and 42 Predator Hellfire missiles expended in Libya does not constitute “hostilities,” what does?  If you deem that military action in Syria is necessary, Congress can reconvene at your request. We stand ready to come back into session, consider the facts before us, and share the burden of decisions made regarding U.S. involvement in the quickly escalating Syrian conflict.  Sincerely,
  • Paul Merrell on 30 Aug 13
     
    The page says that 116 members of Congress signed this letter (their names follow the quoted portion) but latest figure I saw was that 150 are now on board.  The letter is far tougher than has been reported. They've put it very bluntly both on what he did in Libya without consulting Congress and on the separation of powers in the Constitution that allocates to Congress the power to declare war, not to the Executive. 
Gary Edwards

Of Bailouts, Bonuses, and Generational Responsibility from The Daily Bail - 0 views

www.google.com/...view

obammunism baby-boomers john-gallo financial-collapse

shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Apr 10 - No Cached
  • When one transfers the learned behavior of selfishness to the world of economics, it is east to see how we got to the world of adjustable rate mortgages, thirty-to-one leverage, credit default swaps, and thirty year hedge fund workers acting as is million dollar paychecks was an otherwise normal entitlement.  If it felt good, it was therefore right – and by all means, don’t rock the boat.  And what we are witnessing today in Washington and Wall Street in response to our economic crisis is nothing but a conscious and willing decision to pass off to the next generation the cost of our mistakes.
  • the fundamental principles of capitalism – namely that bad actors need to fail.
  • First and most foremost, the Congress needs to institute a modernized version of Glass-Stegall and separate commercial banking from investment banking activities. What we have seen in the abolishment Glass-Stegall (please thank Mr. Rubin formerly of Goldman Sachs) is the creation of federally subsidize casinos masquerading as publicly traded financial institutions.  They kept profits from over-leveraged bets and were kind enough to pass their losses onto the taxpayers.  Second, Congress needs to repeal legislation (Gramm-Leach) that allowed financial institutions not only to leverage in ways previously not permitted, but which also granted banks and financial situations exemption from federal gambling laws. Third, and this is where moral outrage hits home to those on Wall Street, we cannot live in a country in which any company is allowed to manipulate the levers of government in such a way as to make itself obscenely rich at the expense of the public.
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  • We saw as we proceeded through life that pursuing one’s self-interest was rewarded just as often than doing what was right, that morals were relative, and that there would be no consequences to bad behavior. It became de rigueur to assume that our parents (and their lawyers) would save us from our bad behavior.
  • no consequences to irresponsible behavior.
  • it is hard to avoid the reality that my generation, the baby boomers who are now approaching retirement, have caused the greatest collapse of the world economy since the 1930s, and in the process damaged this country in ways we are now only beginning to understand.
  • Goldman is only the largest corporate contributor to the Obama administration
  • Looking back more eighteen months after the first signs of distress in our economy appeared, it seems that leaders in Congress and Wall Street have erred in a manner never before witnessed in this nation.  In the process, they have conspired through their collective arrogance, greed, and ignorance to damage the economy of the country (if not the world), make many themselves rich beyond the imaginations of most Americans, and in the process commit the greatest financial rape of the American public in the history of the country.  And if that does resonate, then either you have not been paying attention for the past two years, or you have received your paycheck form Goldman Sachs.
  • Capitalism remains the best economic system on the planet, but when those who have profited handsomely seek to socialize losses caused by their errors, then those in power in Washington have a moral responsibility to demand an accounting.  Our anger comes from the fact that our leaders have failed in their public obligations at the expense of the interests on Wall Street, and in the process created the greatest social divide that this country has seen in the past 40 years.
  • our nation has one of the highest ratios of debt to GDP on the globe
  • Finally, the administration should demand (I know it won’t) that Goldman Sachs return the approximately $13 billion it received in backdoor payments through AIG when AIG received $180 billion in bailout money. That $13 billion belongs to the taxpayers of this country, and the decision to allow Goldman to receive that money perhaps stands as the greatest moral outrage of this entire sordid affair.  
  • he nation will not die; to the contrary, it would become stronger if we permit free markets to work, and allow the next-generation to live unburdened by our mistakes and arrogance.
  • The proposal in question was Ryan's "Roadmap for America's Future," a sweeping plan to stave off the nation's looming economic and fiscal collapse by changing the tax code, overhauling the health care system, and reforming the nation's major entitlement programs. Its debt-reducing claims aren't based on mere fantasy -- the Congressional Budget Office has determined that the plan would boost economic growth while making Medicare and Social Security solvent. And it accomplishes these aims without raising taxes or affecting the benefits of current retirees.
  • There's no doubt where the Treasury will turn for finance. We are about to see the greatest stuffing of banks with government securities the world has ever seen. American banks will be forced to gorge on Treasury securities, and disgorge bank reserves. Where else can the government get the next trillion to spend on things like wars, unemployment benefits, and food stamps?There are a few obvious things to think about here. At the rate of $120 billion a month, it will only take about nine months to blow through over a trillion dollars in free bank reserves. Each Treasury auction will find it more difficult to sell all of the treasury securities, and it will take rising interest rates to coax out even more reserves from the banks. (When you need to borrow over $4 billion a day, even a trillion dollars doesn't last long.)
  • Gary Edwards on 09 Apr 10
     
    Wow!  This is the best response to the financial collapse i have read to date.  Exceptional in clarity, but written with a tone of mixed sorrow and shame.  Mr. Gallow places the blame exactly where it should be placed.  It's a generational thing with one exception Mr. Gallow overlooks - the Obama margin of victory was very much due to the massive turnout and votes of post baby boomer generations.  We boomers may have created and caused the financial collapse and destruction of America, but they were dumb enough to put the decline of capitalism and ordered liberty on marxist steroids. excerpt:  .... this is the first time that I have been so angered by incompetence and greed in government and Wall Street to express publicly my own thoughts.  In simple terms, what has dawned on me is that my generation, the "Baby Boomers" between the ages of 45 and 65, has emerged not as not the most significant or talented generation in our history (as we thought we were), but rather as the most self-absorbed and reckless. Because ours will be the first generation in the history of this country to leave to its successors a nation in worse shape than that which it inherited; put differently, we will be the first generation in this nation to have taken from our parents and stolen from our children. .. it is hard to avoid the reality that my generation, the baby boomers who are now approaching retirement, have caused the greatest collapse of the world economy since the 1930s, and in the process damaged this country in ways we are now only beginning to understand. ... Looking back more eighteen months after the first signs of distress in our economy appeared, it seems that leaders in Congress and Wall Street have erred in a manner never before witnessed in this nation.  In the process, they have conspired through their collective arrogance, greed, and ignorance to damage the economy of the country (if not the world), make many themselves rich beyond the imaginations of mo
Paul Merrell

UN Report Finds Mass Surveillance Violates International Treaties and Privacy Rights - ... - 0 views

firstlook.org/...ort-condemns-mass-surveillance

surveillance state UN-report digital-privacy

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • The United Nations’ top official for counter-terrorism and human rights (known as the “Special Rapporteur”) issued a formal report to the U.N. General Assembly today that condemns mass electronic surveillance as a clear violation of core privacy rights guaranteed by multiple treaties and conventions. “The hard truth is that the use of mass surveillance technology effectively does away with the right to privacy of communications on the Internet altogether,” the report concluded. Central to the Rapporteur’s findings is the distinction between “targeted surveillance” — which “depend[s] upon the existence of prior suspicion of the targeted individual or organization” — and “mass surveillance,” whereby “states with high levels of Internet penetration can [] gain access to the telephone and e-mail content of an effectively unlimited number of users and maintain an overview of Internet activity associated with particular websites.” In a system of “mass surveillance,” the report explained, “all of this is possible without any prior suspicion related to a specific individual or organization. The communications of literally every Internet user are potentially open for inspection by intelligence and law enforcement agencies in the States concerned.”
  • Mass surveillance thus “amounts to a systematic interference with the right to respect for the privacy of communications,” it declared. As a result, “it is incompatible with existing concepts of privacy for States to collect all communications or metadata all the time indiscriminately.” In concluding that mass surveillance impinges core privacy rights, the report was primarily focused on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a treaty enacted by the General Assembly in 1966, to which all of the members of the “Five Eyes” alliance are signatories. The U.S. ratified the treaty in 1992, albeit with various reservations that allowed for the continuation of the death penalty and which rendered its domestic law supreme. With the exception of the U.S.’s Persian Gulf allies (Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar), virtually every major country has signed the treaty. Article 17 of the Covenant guarantees the right of privacy, the defining protection of which, the report explained, is “that individuals have the right to share information and ideas with one another without interference by the State, secure in the knowledge that their communication will reach and be read by the intended recipients alone.”
  • The report’s key conclusion is that this core right is impinged by mass surveillance programs: “Bulk access technology is indiscriminately corrosive of online privacy and impinges on the very essence of the right guaranteed by article 17. In the absence of a formal derogation from States’ obligations under the Covenant, these programs pose a direct and ongoing challenge to an established norm of international law.” The report recognized that protecting citizens from terrorism attacks is a vital duty of every state, and that the right of privacy is not absolute, as it can be compromised when doing so is “necessary” to serve “compelling” purposes. It noted: “There may be a compelling counter-terrorism justification for the radical re-evaluation of Internet privacy rights that these practices necessitate. ” But the report was adamant that no such justifications have ever been demonstrated by any member state using mass surveillance: “The States engaging in mass surveillance have so far failed to provide a detailed and evidence-based public justification for its necessity, and almost no States have enacted explicit domestic legislation to authorize its use.”
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  • Instead, explained the Rapporteur, states have relied on vague claims whose validity cannot be assessed because of the secrecy behind which these programs are hidden: “The arguments in favor of a complete abrogation of the right to privacy on the Internet have not been made publicly by the States concerned or subjected to informed scrutiny and debate.” About the ongoing secrecy surrounding the programs, the report explained that “states deploying this technology retain a monopoly of information about its impact,” which is “a form of conceptual censorship … that precludes informed debate.” A June report from the High Commissioner for Human Rights similarly noted “the disturbing lack of governmental transparency associated with surveillance policies, laws and practices, which hinders any effort to assess their coherence with international human rights law and to ensure accountability.” The rejection of the “terrorism” justification for mass surveillance as devoid of evidence echoes virtually every other formal investigation into these programs. A federal judge last December found that the U.S. Government was unable to “cite a single case in which analysis of the NSA’s bulk metadata collection actually stopped an imminent terrorist attack.” Later that month, President Obama’s own Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies concluded that mass surveillance “was not essential to preventing attacks” and information used to detect plots “could readily have been obtained in a timely manner using conventional [court] orders.”
  • Three Democratic Senators on the Senate Intelligence Committee wrote in The New York Times that “the usefulness of the bulk collection program has been greatly exaggerated” and “we have yet to see any proof that it provides real, unique value in protecting national security.” A study by the centrist New America Foundation found that mass metadata collection “has had no discernible impact on preventing acts of terrorism” and, where plots were disrupted, “traditional law enforcement and investigative methods provided the tip or evidence to initiate the case.” It labeled the NSA’s claims to the contrary as “overblown and even misleading.” While worthless in counter-terrorism policies, the UN report warned that allowing mass surveillance to persist with no transparency creates “an ever present danger of ‘purpose creep,’ by which measures justified on counter-terrorism grounds are made available for use by public authorities for much less weighty public interest purposes.” Citing the UK as one example, the report warned that, already, “a wide range of public bodies have access to communications data, for a wide variety of purposes, often without judicial authorization or meaningful independent oversight.”
  • The report was most scathing in its rejection of a key argument often made by American defenders of the NSA: that mass surveillance is justified because Americans are given special protections (the requirement of a FISA court order for targeted surveillance) which non-Americans (95% of the world) do not enjoy. Not only does this scheme fail to render mass surveillance legal, but it itself constitutes a separate violation of international treaties (emphasis added): The Special Rapporteur concurs with the High Commissioner for Human Rights that where States penetrate infrastructure located outside their territorial jurisdiction, they remain bound by their obligations under the Covenant. Moreover, article 26 of the Covenant prohibits discrimination on grounds of, inter alia, nationality and citizenship. The Special Rapporteur thus considers that States are legally obliged to afford the same privacy protection for nationals and non-nationals and for those within and outside their jurisdiction. Asymmetrical privacy protection regimes are a clear violation of the requirements of the Covenant.
  • That principle — that the right of internet privacy belongs to all individuals, not just Americans — was invoked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden when he explained in a June, 2013 interview at The Guardian why he disclosed documents showing global surveillance rather than just the surveillance of Americans: “More fundamentally, the ‘US Persons’ protection in general is a distraction from the power and danger of this system. Suspicionless surveillance does not become okay simply because it’s only victimizing 95% of the world instead of 100%.” The U.N. Rapporteur was clear that these systematic privacy violations are the result of a union between governments and tech corporations: “States increasingly rely on the private sector to facilitate digital surveillance. This is not confined to the enactment of mandatory data retention legislation. Corporates [sic] have also been directly complicit in operationalizing bulk access technology through the design of communications infrastructure that facilitates mass surveillance. ”
  • The latest finding adds to the growing number of international formal rulings that the mass surveillance programs of the U.S. and its partners are illegal. In January, the European parliament’s civil liberties committee condemned such programs in “the strongest possible terms.” In April, the European Court of Justice ruled that European legislation on data retention contravened EU privacy rights. A top secret memo from the GCHQ, published last year by The Guardian, explicitly stated that one key reason for concealing these programs was fear of a “damaging public debate” and specifically “legal challenges against the current regime.” The report ended with a call for far greater transparency along with new protections for privacy in the digital age. Continuation of the status quo, it warned, imposes “a risk that systematic interference with the security of digital communications will continue to proliferate without any serious consideration being given to the implications of the wholesale abandonment of the right to online privacy.” The urgency of these reforms is underscored, explained the Rapporteur, by a conclusion of the United States Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board that “permitting the government to routinely collect the calling records of the entire nation fundamentally shifts the balance of power between the state and its citizens.”
Gary Edwards

Seth Lipsky: 'Pieces of Eight': The Constitution and the Dollar - WSJ.com - 0 views

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obammunism constitutional-currency-silver vierra-pieces-of-eight

shared by Gary Edwards on 31 May 10 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 31 May 10
     
    "Pieces of Eight." It is a two-volume treatise on the monetary powers of the Constitution. Now out of print, it has become a kind of cult classic, selling on the Internet for hundreds of dollars a set. It addresses questions that, with the value of the dollar having collapsed to 1,200th of an ounce of gold, are suddenly timely. What is a dollar? How did it become our money of account? What powers in respect of money were given to the federal government in 1787? What disabilities, or prohibitions, are in the Constitution? How have we managed to get so far from the law as the Founders wrote it? And what can be done to bring us back from the brink? The title of the book comes from the nickname for the coin the Founding Fathers were referring to when, in the Constitution, they twice used the word "dollars." Its definition was codified in the Coinage Act of 1792, which provided for minting gold and silver coins and defined a dollar as having "the value of a Spanish milled dollar as the same is now current, and to contain three hundred and seventy-one grains and four sixteenth parts of a grain of pure, or four hundred and sixteen grains of standard silver." Mr. Vieira speaks for a school of thought-it goes back to James Madison and Alexander Hamilton and comes together today in, among other places, the Foundation for the Advancement of Monetary Education-that reckons such dollars, and their free-market equivalent in gold, are the only constitutional money in America. Lately he has been arguing for the establishment by the states of separate monetary systems. The authority to do so is in Article 1, Section 10, of the Constitution, which prohibits the states from making "any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts."
Paul Merrell

Conflict Erupts in Public Rebuke on C.I.A. Inquiry - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-used-by-senate-committee.html

surveillance state CIA Feinstein Senate-Intelligence-Committee

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • A festering conflict between the Central Intelligence Agency and its congressional overseers broke into the open Tuesday when Senator Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee and one of the C.I.A.’s staunchest defenders, delivered an extraordinary denunciation of the agency, accusing it of withholding information about its treatment of prisoners and trying to intimidate committee staff members investigating the detention program.Describing what she called a “defining moment” for the oversight of American spy agencies, Ms. Feinstein said the C.I.A. had removed documents from computers used by Senate Intelligence Committee staff members working on a report about the agency’s detention program, searched the computers after the committee completed its report and referred a criminal case to the Justice Department in an attempt to thwart their investigation.
  • Ms. Feinstein’s disclosures came a week after it was first reported that the C.I.A. last year had monitored computers used by her staff in an effort to learn how the committee may have gained access to the agency’s own internal review of the detention and interrogation program that became perhaps the most criticized part of the American government’s response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Ms. Feinstein said the internal review bolstered the conclusions of the committee’s still-classified report on the program, which President Obama officially ended in January 2009 after sharply criticizing it during the 2008 presidential campaign. For an intelligence community already buffeted by controversies over electronic surveillance and armed drone strikes, the rupture with Ms. Feinstein, one of its closest congressional allies, could have broad ramifications.
  • “Feinstein has always pushed the agency in private and defended it in public,” said Amy B. Zegart, who studies intelligence issues at Stanford University. “Now she is skewering the C.I.A. in public. This is a whole new world for the C.I.A.”Ms. Feinstein, who had refused to comment on the dispute between the C.I.A. and her committee, took the Senate floor on Tuesday morning to say the agency’s actions had breached constitutional provisions for the separation of powers and “were a potential effort to intimidate.” “How this will be resolved will show whether the Intelligence Committee can be effective in monitoring and investigating our nation’s intelligence activities, or whether our work can be thwarted by those we oversee,” she said.
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  • The dispute came to a head in mid-January when Mr. Brennan told members of the committee that the agency had carried out a search of computers used by committee investigators at a C.I.A. facility in Northern Virginia, where the committee was examining documents the agency had made available for its report. Ms. Feinstein said on Tuesday that during the meeting, Mr. Brennan told her that the C.I.A. had searched a “walled-off committee network drive containing the committee’s own internal work product and communications” and that he was going to “order further forensic evidence of the committee network to learn more about activities of the committee’s oversight staff.”
  • The C.I.A. had carried out the search to determine whether committee investigators may have gained unauthorized access to the internal review of the detention program that the agency had carried out without informing the committee. Ms. Feinstein on Tuesday vigorously disputed this allegation, saying the document had been included — intentionally or not — as part of a dump of millions of pages the C.I.A. had provided for the Intelligence Committee.
  • Mr. Brennan, in a January letter to Ms. Feinstein that a government official who did not want to be identified released on Tuesday, said the committee had not been entitled to the internal review because it contained “sensitive, deliberative, pre-decisional C.I.A. material”— and therefore was protected under executive privilege considerations. The letter, attached to a statement that Mr. Brennan issued to the agency’s employees on Tuesday, raised questions about Ms. Feinstein’s statements earlier in the day concerning at what point the committee came into possession of the internal review. The C.I.A.’s acting general counsel has referred the matter to the Justice Department as a possible criminal offense, a move Ms. Feinstein called a strong-arm tactic by someone with a conflict of interest in the case. She said that that official had previously been a lawyer in the C.I.A.’s Counterterrorism Center — the section of the spy agency that was running the detention and interrogation program — and that his name is mentioned more than 1,600 times in the committee’s report. Ms. Feinstein did not name the lawyer, but she appeared to be referring to Robert Eatinger, the C.I.A.’s senior deputy general counsel. In 2007, The New York Times reported that when a top C.I.A. official in 2005 destroyed videotapes of brutal interrogations of Al Qaeda detainees, Mr. Eatinger had been one of two lawyers to approve their destruction.
  • Ms. Feinstein said that on two occasions in 2010, the C.I.A. had removed documents totaling hundreds of pages from the computer server used by her staff at the Northern Virginia facility. She did not provide any details about the documents, but said that when committee investigators confronted the C.I.A. they received a number of answers — first a denial that the documents had been removed, then an explanation that they had been removed by contractors working at the facility, then an explanation that the removal of documents was ordered by the White House. When the committee approached the White House, she said, it denied giving such an order.Ms. Feinstein’s broadside rallied Senate Democrats, but divided Republicans.
  • Paul Merrell on 12 Mar 14
     
    The separation of powers Constitutional issue here is plain. The Senate has oversight of the CIA; the CIA has no lawful oversight of the Senate and furthermore is forbidden by law from conducting surveillance within the U.S. But the CIA spied on the Senate, then used evidence it found to file a criminal complaint with the DoJ against Senate staffers. Tit for tat, a criminal complaint has been filed against the CIA staffers.   
Paul Merrell

The Legend of the Phoenix - 0 views

www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37154.htm

war & peace drone attacks Phoenix-Program counter-insurgency

shared by Paul Merrell on 21 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • It would seem the CIA has gone back into their archives, blown the dust off the Phoenix Program, and put it into play again as the “Drone War.” The similarities with the Drone War are readily evident to anyone old enough to know of the Phoenix Program. For those who aren’t old enough or who have forgotten, the Phoenix Program is usually referred to as an assassination program and was the subject of investigation by the Senate’s “Church Committee.” Indisputably, thousands of South Vietnamese civilians were killed under this CIA directed program.
  • Phoenix was far more than a mere assassination program , however. It was a Counter-Insurgency, COIN, program, using the tactic of counter-terrorism, including assassination, against the insurgent’s so-called infrastructure. This was the Vietnamese civilian population in which the insurgent, the Viet Cong guerilla, operated and from some of whom they drew their support. To the U.S., these civilians were the Viet Cong Infrastructure, the VCI. And the VCI was the target to be terrorized by any means necessary in the hope that they would turn against the Viet Cong. The VCI would have included the families, close and extended kinship groups, of alleged active Viet Cong combatants, fellow villagers, and other Vietnamese civilians who were not actively opposed to the Viet Cong. Some of this “support” was voluntary and some coerced. As the Phoenix Program went on, with its assassinations, torture practices, and “disappearances,” more support became voluntary as Vietnamese peasants turned against the U.S. and the South Vietnamese government as a result of the program. An error in identification of a victim was irrelevant to those in control of the program, the CIA, as it still served the purpose of terrorizing the civilian population, which was the true purpose of the program.
  • For the Viet Cong, this was a classic example of achieving the guerilla’s goal of having a civilian population turn against a government by a government’s own harsh over-reaction to the guerilla threat. Today, a guerilla and the people whom they are amongst are deemed “terrorists” if they find themselves on the wrong side of a domestic conflict that the U.S. has taken a side in, such as Yemen. As we saw in Libya, and see in Syria, these guerillas can become instant U.S. allies who must be supported, if, or when, the U.S. makes policy changes. But unless those U.S. policy changes occur, these groups remain part of the global terrorist network of “associated forces” with al Qaeda, in the eyes of CIA and military officials, and targeted with drones. From the relatively large number of civilian victims of drone attacks as claimed by residents of Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the political party, Pakistan Tehreek Insaf (PTI), this Drone Program has all the hallmarks of the Phoenix Program.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Without more transparency by the government, no other conclusion can be drawn that the reason we see so many civilians killed by drones, while denying it as John Brennan did, is because we are targeting civilians as the “infrastructure.” While Anwar al-Awlaki was declared to be an “operational leader,” with the extremely elastic category of “infrastructure” as used in Vietnam, his “operational” activity may have only been “spreading antigovernment propaganda and rumors,” as the Rand Corporation put it, which led to his extrajudicial execution. How many other American citizens might that reach?
  • Paul Merrell on 21 Dec 13
     
    Spot on analysis by a retired Navy lawyer who knows his U.S. military history.The striking parallels he points to between contemporary U.S. drone terrorism and the notorious Viet Nam War Phoenix Program terrorism are no accident. Among the super-hawks of the War Party, there has been a persistent meme that the U.S. military suffered no defeat in Viet Nam, that the vaunted "counter-insurgency" strategy and tactics were working, and that the war was lost by politicians and the American public who lost the nerve to continue the war.  If you put your blinders on firmly enough to pretend that the North and South Vietnamese were separate people, there's an element of truth to that myth. The South Vietnamese Viet Cong guerrillas were decimated by 1970. But the North and South Vietnamese were in fact one people of a single nation, who had united to defeat and evict the French military force. The division into two nations was to have been only a one-year thing, prelude to national election of a government for a reunited Viet Nam. It was the U.S. puppet government of the South that, realizing they could not win the election, reneged on allowing it in the South.  Long before the Viet Cong became a shadow of its former force, the Vietnamese from the North had responded to the betrayal of the treaty by sending North Vietnamese regular army troops ("NVA") to the South, spearheaded by the same battle-hardened men who had defeated the French. And the U.S. military was well and truly overwhelmed by the NVA's strategy and tactics, forced to retreat into strongholds from which they ventured only in force. The NVA's Tet Offensive in 1968 failed to succeed in the effort to capture multiple Vietnamese cities concurrently. But the number, weaponry, and power of their force caused Lyndon Johnson to realize that the U.S. generals had been lying to him, that the U.S. was not on the brink of victory, and that there was a very long slog ahead with an unknown outcome if the U.S. continu
Paul Merrell

DOJ Seeks Removal Of Restrictions On Computer Search Warrants - 0 views

www.mintpressnews.com/...190535

surveillance state digital-privacy remote-computer-search 4th Amendment

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 May 14 - No Cached
  • The Justice Department recently submitted proposed new rules on the procedures and practices of the department’s agencies and bureaus. Among the suggested changes is a modification of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure Rule 41(b), which empowers a federal court to issue a warrant allowing the federal government to conduct a search of a computer or computer network involved in a criminal investigation. Under current regulations, a warrant issued by a federal court is only valid in that court’s district. As there are 94 federal judicial districts, investigating a widespread attack may require either petitioning dozens of district courts or acting extrajudicially by not seeking a warrant. An extrajudicial investigation, however, cannot be used if criminal convictions are sought, as evidence gathered in this manner is not typically admissible in court. The Justice Department is seeking to make remote access warrants to search, seize and copy electronic information valid for all federal districts.
  • The Justice Department argues that due to the sophistication of cyber-criminals, an offending computer or computer cluster can sit in a district separate from the district where the hackers that infected the target computer anonymously are and separate from the investigators’ district. “Criminals are using multiple computers in many districts simultaneously as part of complex criminal schemes, and effectively investigating and disrupting these schemes often requires remote access to Internet-connected computers in many different districts,” wrote then-acting Assistant Attorney General Mythili Raman in a September letter to the Advisory Committee on the Criminal Rules. “Botnets are a significant threat to the public: they are used to conduct large-scale denial of service attacks, steal personal and financial data, and distribute malware designed to invade the privacy of users of the host computers,” Raman continued. In the letter, Raman cited an investigation of a child porn site that uses The Onion Router Network, or Tor, to anonymize its traffic. The Justice Department argues that it knows the site’s hosting server location, but without a warrant local to the server, the department is prevented from retrieving the server’s user records — including IP and MAC addresses. In most cases, however, law enforcement do not know the physical location of the site’s server, making it impossible to request a specific warrant.
  • In these cases, the Justice Department could request a blanket warrant. This would allow the department to set up a “zero-day” attack on the server — an attack exploiting a manufacturer-unknown or -permitted security flaw, allowing access to the system’s operating software. However, a Texas judge denied the FBI access to such a warrant, saying the Justice Department’s use of “zero-day” attacks in its investigation exposes the public and the target to unknown risks. One typical type of a “zero-day” attack is an infected email that could affect a large number of innocent people if the target used a public computer to access his email. The FBI planned to install a Remote Administration Tool, or RAT, which would distribute such emails in a partially-targeted spam mail distribution. Last year, Federal Magistrate Judge Stephen Smith of the Houston Division of the Southern District of Texas ruled that this was a gross overreach of investigatory intrusion, blocking the plan temporarily. A “zero-day” attack has the potential to activate and control the targeted computer’s peripherals, such as webcams and microphones.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Following this ruling, based on the assumptions that federal law enforcement fundamentally act in good faith and that there may be a legitimate need for remote exploitation of computer data, the Justice Department sought to introduce changes to the rules that would overcome Smith’s objections. The proposed change to Rule 41(b) would allow magistrate judges “… to issue a warrant to use remote access to search electronic storage media and to seize electronically stored information located within or outside that district.” The Justice Department has indicated that it wants warrants permitting multiple computers to be searched at the same time, as well as permission to search all of the email and social media accounts accessible from a single computer. Such access would constitute a violation of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, as the government, under the act, must make demonstrate probable cause to each targeted service provider and obtain and serve a warrant for each service provider. A warrant to search every account active on a computer would be actively bypassing the act’s numerous safeguards.
  • Privacy advocates fear that this rule change would allow prosecutors and the Justice Department to seek out magistrates likely to give them their requested warrants, creating a situation in which the federal government could have a “warrant shop” with just one judge for the whole of the nation. In light of allegations of federal government over-policing — including revelations of aggressive domestic and international electronic spying by the FBI and the National Security Agency — many advocates argue that an examination of the federal government’s commitment to the Fourth Amendment is needed. “The proposed amendment would significantly expand the government’s authority to conduct remote searches of electronic storage media,” the American Civil Liberties Union wrote in a memorandum early last month. “It would also expand the government’s power to engage in computer hacking in the course of criminal investigations, including through the use of malware and other techniques that pose a risk to internet security and that raise Fourth Amendment and policy concerns. “In light of these concerns, the ACLU recommends that the Advisory Committee exercise extreme caution before granting the government new authority to remotely search individuals’ electronic data.” The rules are scheduled to be discussed at the meeting of the Judiciary’s Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure later this month.
  • Paul Merrell on 13 May 14
     
    The proposed rule change is at pp. 499-501 here. http://www.uscourts.gov/uscourts/RulesAndPolicies/rules/Agenda%20Books/Standing/ST2014-05.pdf#page499 (very large PDF).  This is not just about the government being granted permission to exploit vulnerabilities unknown to the computer owner; the issue arose in a case where the government sought judicial permission to implant a Trojan Horse in a suspect's computer. Moreover, the proposed rule goes far beyond the confines of that case, purporting to authorize the government to skip merrily along searching computers not specified in the warrant, along the purported botnet. To put the icing on the cake, the government wants to be relieved from the requirement that they apply for a warrant in the district in which the computer to be searched is located. ("Oh, Goody! Let's start shopping around for the judges we like instead of the ones we are now required to persuade. What? The Mississippi judge refused to sign the warrant? Oh well, let's try it with that other judge we like, the one in Gnome, Alaska.") In other words, what the government seeks is authority for "general warrants," the very evil that the 4th Amendment was designed to outlaw. Even more outrageously, the proposed rule provides in part: "For a warrant to use remote access to search electronic storage media and seize or copy electronically stored information, the officer must make reasonable efforts to serve a copy of the warrant on the person whose property *was* searched or whose information *was* seized or copied. Service may be accomplished by any means, including electronic means, reasonably calculated to reach that person." Not the use of the past tense "was." So after they have drained your computer of all its data, they may permissibly install a batch file that will display a copy of the warrant on your monitor the next time you boot your computer. With a big red lipstick imprint of a kiss imprinted in the warrant's bottom margin, no doubt
  • Paul Merrell on 13 May 14
     
    The proposed rule change is at pp. 499-501 here. http://www.uscourts.gov/uscourts/RulesAndPolicies/rules/Agenda%20Books/Standing/ST2014-05.pdf#page499 (very large PDF).  This is not just about the government being granted permission to exploit vulnerabilities unknown to the computer owner; the issue arose in a case where the government sought judicial permission to implant a Trojan Horse in a suspect's computer. Moreover, the proposed rule goes far beyond the confines of that case, purporting to authorize the government to skip merrily along searching computers not specified in the warrant, along the purported botnet. To put the icing on the cake, the government wants to be relieved from the requirement that they apply for a warrant in the district in which the computer to be searched is located. In other words, what the government seeks is authority for "general warrants," the very evil that the 4th Amendment was designed to outlaw. Even more outrageously, the proposed rule provides in part: "For a warrant to use remote access to search electronic storage media and seize or copy electronically stored information, the officer must make reasonable efforts to serve a copy of the warrant on the person whose property *was* searched or whose information *was* seized or copied. Service may be accomplished by any means, including electronic means, reasonably calculated to reach that person." Not the use of the past tense "was." So after they have drained your computer of all its data, they may permissibly install a batch file that will display a copy of the warrant on your monitor the next time you boot your computer. With a big red lipstick imprint of a kiss imprinted at the bottom.  To be continued after this is intially posted to Diigo so the content isn't cut off.   
Paul Merrell

Netanyahu vows to scuttle world powers' Iran deal | The Times of Israel - 0 views

www.timesofisrael.com/scuttle-world-powers-iran-deal

war & peace Iranian-nukes-myth Netanyahu-speech boycott

shared by Paul Merrell on 11 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • A Channel 10 news report Saturday indicated that some 60 Democratic legislators were expected to stay away from the address.
  • Paul Merrell on 11 Feb 15
     
    The Democratic boycott of Netanyahu's speech is gaining strength. Republicans need to get on board too. 
  • Paul Merrell on 11 Feb 15
     
    The Democratic boycott of Netanyahu's speech is gaining strength. Republicans need to get on board too. 
Paul Merrell

NSA Data Will Soon Be Used By Domestic Law Enforcement - 0 views

www.mintpressnews.com/...214734

surveillance state NSA raw-data-sharing

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • If you’re reading this, then I’m willing to bet that you’ve been called many different names throughout your life. If I were to hazard a guess, I would say they were names like kook, paranoid, conspiracy theorist, alarmist, insane, or gullible. And after this week, you can go by a new name: Vindicated. I’m of course talking about recent revelations from the NSA. Long before Edward Snowden came along, it was no secret that the NSA was spying on everyone without good cause. Anyone who believed that fact was called a conspiracy theorist, but their fears were eventually validated. These same people also understood that the NSA’s surveillance powers would never be used exclusively against terrorists and hostile governments. The power they have is just too tempting for any government. If various government agencies weren’t using the NSA’s surveillance apparatus to solve domestic crimes, it was only a matter of time before it was used for just that.
  • And again, they called us conspiracy theorists for believing that. And again, we were right all long. A while back, we noted a report showing that the “sneak-and-peek” provision of the Patriot Act that was alleged to be used only in national security and terrorism investigations has overwhelmingly been used in narcotics cases. Now the New York Times reports that National Security Agency data will be shared with other intelligence agencies like the FBI without first applying any screens for privacy. The ACLU of Massachusetts blog Privacy SOS explains why this is important: What does this rule change mean for you? In short, domestic law enforcement officials now have access to huge troves of American communications, obtained without warrants, that they can use to put people in cages. FBI agents don’t need to have any “national security” related reason to plug your name, email address, phone number, or other “selector” into the NSA’s gargantuan data trove. They can simply poke around in your private information in the course of totally routine investigations. And if they find something that suggests, say, involvement in illegal drug activity, they can send that information to local or state police. That means information the NSA collects for purposes of so-called “national security” will be used by police to lock up ordinary Americans for routine crimes.
  • Anybody who knows anything about how governments work, should not surprised. You can’t give them any kind of power, and expect them to use it responsibly. You can’t give them any stipulations. Eventually they’ll find a legal loophole to work around any limitations that have been placed on them. In other news, the Pentagon admitted this week that they’ve been deploying military drones over the United States for domestic surveillance purposes. Much like the NSA’s surveillance apparatus, we were assured that drones were for terrorists in faraway lands. Nothing so Orwellian would ever be used against ordinary American citizens at home. Yet here we are, with more to come.
  • Paul Merrell on 24 Mar 16
     
    The Privacy Act, 5 U.S.C. 552a, provides in relevant part: "(a)(4) the term "record" means any item, collection, or grouping of information about an individual that is maintained by an agency, including, but not limited to, his education, financial transactions, medical history, and criminal or employment history and that contains his name, or the identifying number, symbol, or other identifying particular assigned to the individual, such as a finger or voice print or a photograph[.] ... "(b) Conditions of Disclosure.-No agency shall disclose any record which is contained in a system of records by any means of communication to any person, or to another agency, except pursuant to a written request by, or with the prior written consent of, the individual to whom the record pertains, unless disclosure of the record would be- ... "(7) to another agency or to an instrumentality of any governmental jurisdiction within or under the control of the United States for a civil or criminal law enforcement activity if the activity is authorized by law, and if the head of the agency or instrumentality has made a written request to the agency which maintains the record specifying the particular portion desired and the law enforcement activity for which the record is sought[.]" So a separate written request for each "portion" of any individual record that describes the "law enforcement activity for which the record is sought[.]" That doesn't sound like the contemplated unfettered access to bulk raw data. And it gets even better, with a right to sue for any violation, attorney fees and expenses, and a statutory minimum of $1,000 damages per violation just for winning the case.  
Gary Edwards

Liberty in the Breach | The End of the American Dream - 0 views

bayareapatriots.wordpress.com

Alexis-de-Tocqueville freedom-liberty Banksters Globalist-Elites

shared by Gary Edwards on 08 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 08 Jul 13
     
    This link will take you to a public blog, the content of which comes from the collaborative work of the Diigo group, "Socialism and the End of the American Dream". The content for the Liberty in the Breach (http://goo.gl/AAFJ9) blog is posted directly from a Diigo.com group called "Socialism and the End of the American Dream". So yes, this groups bookmarking efforts are public.  The way this works is easy for anyone to to do, and I encourage everyone to make use of blog and RSS posts. The Diigo bookmark service enables groups of people to share tagged and categorized lists of bookmarks, but the only way to take these group collaborations truly public is through the blog and RSS posting mechanisms. There are also select sharing methods.  Each Group of bookmarks and comments can have any number of "Lists". A list is a subset of a group, but it can stand on it's own or serve many groups. The difference is that Groups have members and lists do not.  The effect of this separation is that you can publish or RSS any list to a Web Site or Reader, and not be concerned about errant group membership comments and posts. Fortunately we not encountered that problem with the End of the American Dream group.  The "Socialism and the End of the American Dream" group contains two prominent "lists": Banksters and USA-Constitution. There are other lists, but over time these two became dominant.  I started the "Socialism and the End of the American Dream" group in August of 2008 as part of my research and attempt to understand the financial collapse of 2008. What I found was quite chilling, and has nothing to do with "Socialism" or it's many forms.  I came to understand that socialism in it's many forms (liberalism, Progressivism, Marxism, Naziism, and Communism), is used the same as conservatism and corporate facism by a wealthy globalist elite to seize the instruments and resources of government for their own purposes.  So yeah, if I had the chance to rename to group, I
Paul Merrell

WASHINGTON: CIA admits it broke into Senate computers; senators call for spy chief's ou... - 0 views

www.mcclatchydc.com/...-staffers-accessed-senate.html

surveillance state CIA torture Senate-Intelligence_Committee-Report Brennan

shared by Paul Merrell on 01 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • An internal CIA investigation confirmed allegations that agency personnel improperly intruded into a protected database used by Senate Intelligence Committee staff to compile a scathing report on the agency’s detention and interrogation program, prompting bipartisan outrage and at least two calls for spy chief John Brennan to resign.“This is very, very serious, and I will tell you, as a member of the committee, someone who has great respect for the CIA, I am extremely disappointed in the actions of the agents of the CIA who carried out this breach of the committee’s computers,” said Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., the committee’s vice chairman.
  • The rare display of bipartisan fury followed a three-hour private briefing by Inspector General David Buckley. His investigation revealed that five CIA employees, two lawyers and three information technology specialists improperly accessed or “caused access” to a database that only committee staff were permitted to use.Buckley’s inquiry also determined that a CIA crimes report to the Justice Department alleging that the panel staff removed classified documents from a top-secret facility without authorization was based on “inaccurate information,” according to a summary of the findings prepared for the Senate and House intelligence committees and released by the CIA.In other conclusions, Buckley found that CIA security officers conducted keyword searches of the emails of staffers of the committee’s Democratic majority _ and reviewed some of them _ and that the three CIA information technology specialists showed “a lack of candor” in interviews with Buckley’s office.
  • The inspector general’s summary did not say who may have ordered the intrusion or when senior CIA officials learned of it.Following the briefing, some senators struggled to maintain their composure over what they saw as a violation of the constitutional separation of powers between an executive branch agency and its congressional overseers.“We’re the only people watching these organizations, and if we can’t rely on the information that we’re given as being accurate, then it makes a mockery of the entire oversight function,” said Sen. Angus King, an independent from Maine who caucuses with the Democrats.The findings confirmed charges by the committee chairwoman, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., that the CIA intruded into the database that by agreement was to be used by her staffers compiling the report on the harsh interrogation methods used by the agency on suspected terrorists held in secret overseas prisons under the George W. Bush administration.The findings also contradicted Brennan’s denials of Feinstein’s allegations, prompting two panel members, Sens. Mark Udall, D-Colo., and Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., to demand that the spy chief resign.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Another committee member, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and some civil rights groups called for a fuller investigation. The demands clashed with a desire by President Barack Obama, other lawmakers and the CIA to move beyond the controversy over the “enhanced interrogation program” after Feinstein releases her committee’s report, which could come as soon as next weekMany members demanded that Brennan explain his earlier denial that the CIA had accessed the Senate committee database.“Director Brennan should make a very public explanation and correction of what he said,” said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich. He all but accused the Justice Department of a coverup by deciding not to pursue a criminal investigation into the CIA’s intrusion.
  • “I thought there might have been information that was produced after the department reached their conclusion,” he said. “What I understand, they have all of the information which the IG has.”He hinted that the scandal goes further than the individuals cited in Buckley’s report.“I think it’s very clear that CIA people knew exactly what they were doing and either knew or should’ve known,” said Levin, adding that he thought that Buckley’s findings should be referred to the Justice Department.A person with knowledge of the issue insisted that the CIA personnel who improperly accessed the database “acted in good faith,” believing that they were empowered to do so because they believed there had been a security violation.“There was no malicious intent. They acted in good faith believing they had the legal standing to do so,” said the knowledgeable person, who asked not to be further identified because they weren’t authorized to discuss the issue publicly. “But it did not conform with the legal agreement reached with the Senate committee.”
  • Feinstein called Brennan’s apology and his decision to submit Buckley’s findings to the accountability board “positive first steps.”“This IG report corrects the record and it is my understanding that a declassified report will be made available to the public shortly,” she said in a statement.“The investigation confirmed what I said on the Senate floor in March _ CIA personnel inappropriately searched Senate Intelligence Committee computers in violation of an agreement we had reached, and I believe in violation of the constitutional separation of powers,” she said.It was not clear why Feinstein didn’t repeat her charges from March that the agency also may have broken the law and had sought to “thwart” her investigation into the CIA’s use of waterboarding, which simulates drowning, sleep deprivation and other harsh interrogation methods _ tactics denounced by many experts as torture.
  • Buckley’s findings clashed with denials by Brennan that he issued only hours after Feinstein’s blistering Senate speech.“As far as the allegations of, you know, CIA hacking into, you know, Senate computers, nothing could be further from the truth. I mean, we wouldn’t do that. I mean, that’s _ that’s just beyond the _ you know, the scope of reason in terms of what we would do,” he said in an appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations.White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest issued a strong defense of Brennan, crediting him with playing an “instrumental role” in the administration’s fight against terrorism, in launching Buckley’s investigation and in looking for ways to prevent such occurrences in the future.Earnest was asked at a news briefing whether there was a credibility issue for Brennan, given his forceful denial in March.“Not at all,” he replied, adding that Brennan had suggested the inspector general’s investigation in the first place. And, he added, Brennan had taken the further step of appointing the accountability board to review the situation and the conduct of those accused of acting improperly to “ensure that they are properly held accountable for that conduct.”
  • The allegations and the separate CIA charge that the committee staff removed classified documents from the secret CIA facility in Northern Virginia without authorization were referred to the Justice Department for investigation.The department earlier this month announced that it had found insufficient evidence on which to proceed with criminal probes into either matter “at this time.” Thursday, Justice Department officials declined comment.
  • In her speech, Feinstein asserted that her staff found the material _ known as the Panetta review, after former CIA Director Leon Panetta, who ordered it _ in the protected database and that the CIA discovered the staff had it by monitoring its computers in violation of the user agreement.The inspector general’s summary, which was prepared for the Senate and the House intelligence committees, didn’t identify the CIA personnel who had accessed the Senate’s protected database.Furthermore, it said, the CIA crimes report to the Justice Department alleging that panel staffers had removed classified materials without permission was grounded on inaccurate information. The report is believed to have been sent by the CIA’s then acting general counsel, Robert Eatinger, who was a legal adviser to the interrogation program.“The factual basis for the referral was not supported, as the author of the referral had been provided inaccurate information on which the letter was based,” said the summary, noting that the Justice Department decided not to pursue the issue.
  • Christopher Anders, senior legislative counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union, criticized the CIA announcement, saying that “an apology isn’t enough.”“The Justice Department must refer the (CIA) inspector general’s report to a federal prosecutor for a full investigation into any crimes by CIA personnel or contractors,” said Anders.
  • Paul Merrell on 01 Aug 14
     
    And no one but the lowest ranking staffer knew anything about it, not even the CIA lawyer who made the criminal referral to the Justice Dept., alleging that the Senate Intelligence Committee had accessed classified documents it wasn't authorized to access. So the Justice Dept. announces that there's insufficient evidence to warrant a criminal investigation. As though the CIA lawyer's allegations were not based on the unlawful surveillance of the Senate Intelligence Committee's network.  Can't we just get an official announcement that Attorney General Holder has decided that there shall be a cover-up? 
Gary Edwards

Arnold Ahlert: Liberty at Risk - The Patriot Post - 1 views

patriotpost.us/42083

liberty

shared by Gary Edwards on 22 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 22 Apr 16
     
    "The American Left's desire to crush Liberty and dissent in order to "fundamentally transform the United States of America" has reached metastatic levels. In the last three weeks alone, the following stories have surfaced. All of which indicate we are well on our way toward relinquishing our birthright. Even worse, millions of Americans are apparently more than willing to do so. First, this week the Supreme Court heard arguments in the United States v. Texas case that will determine whether a president can unilaterally rewrite immigration law. If SCOTUS rules in Barack Obama's favor, the separation of powers outlined in the first three articles of the Constitution will be rendered moot and, as political analyst Charles Krauthammer wryly observed, "you can send Congress home." And the Left is not content to stop there. A coalition of 118 cities and counties have filed a legal brief asserting they will lose up to $800 million in economic benefits if large numbers of illegal aliens remain subject to deportation. Second, the IRS has admitted it abides the use of fraudulent Social Security numbers used by illegal aliens to process tax payments - and refunds. Third, in New York and California, Democratic attorneys general Eric Schneiderman and Kamala Harris are pursuing fraud investigations against Exxon, based on the premise they can "prosecute persons and institutions with nonconforming views on global warming," writes National Review's Kevin Williams. "Prosecuting political institutions and businesses for political activism is brown-shirt business." Fourth, the Obama administration, already under fire for its determination to flood America with Syrian "refugees," announced it will reduce its vetting process to three months, instead of 18-24 months. They claim the reduced time is necessary to handle a sped-up "surge operation" whose population is 99% Sunni Muslim. Even more insulting, Gina Kassem, the regional refugee coordinator at t
  • Paul Merrell on 23 Apr 16
     
    I'll leave well enough alone on Mr. Ahert's positions regarding the U.S. v. Texas case and IRS reliance on fraudulent Social Security numbers; I have not studied those issues. But Mr. Ahert has not done his homework on the Exxon investigations and on the law governing the Syrian refugee situation. Re Exxon, the criminal investigations are to determine whether Exxon committed fraud against *investors* by concealing its knowledge of climate change the company was contributing to --- and knew of decades ago. We don't yet know the outcome of those investigations, but this is a far cry from prosecuting "persons and institutions with nonconforming views on global warming." If pursued, it will be a prosecution of a company -- and conceivably its managers -- who damned well knew through in-house scientific studies it sponsored that global warming was man-made and that their own company was a major causative agent. On the Syrian refugee situation, the right of war refugees to refuge in the U.S. and all other nations is, under the U.S. Constitution's Treaty Clause, "the law of this land." There is nothing in that body of international law created by treaty that permits the U.S. or any other nation to delay providing refuge for purposes of vetting refugees for possible terrorists among them. Vetting can, however, proceed lawfully after refugees are admitted while being held in refugee camps. One need only ask how one would feel were the tables turned and it was yourself fleeing from U.S. violence? Would you want to be forced to linger in the war zone while your anti-terrorism bona fides were established over a period of months? Refuge must be granted when it is needed, not months or years later, regardless of how much "terrorist" hysteria our mainstream media and the military-industrial complex drums up to fan the flames of war and industry profits. And this is all the more a moral case because it is the U.S. and its allies' illegal proxy war in Syria that is creating
Gary Edwards

Executive Doomsday Order: Obama Authorizes Gov to Seize Farms, Food, Processing Plants,... - 1 views

www.shtfplan.com/...ng-national-emergency_03182012

Obama-destroy-the-Constitution-effort Obama-martial-law executive-orders

shared by Gary Edwards on 19 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 19 Mar 12
     
    Good summary of the most recent and entirely un-Constitutional act of definace and tyranny.  Keep in mind that Obama does not have the authority to suspend or alter any natural rights, especially those specifically protected by the Constitution from any and all branches of the federal government.  Nor does Congress have the authority to grant that power.  There is only one way to alter the Constitution, and that is through an onerous amendment process requiring the approval of 2/3 rds the States. Recall also that in 1798, the passage of the Alien & Sedition Act similarly sought to compromise the Constitution and reatly expand the authority of the Feds.  Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, and James Madison, author of the Constitution, fought and defeated the A&S Act by going directly to the State Legislatures to force their US Senators to repeal the A&S Act.  This worked extremely well; but that was before the 17th Amendment separated US Senators from their State Legislatures. Still, i think the approach holds.  I suggest we petition the State Legislatures to declare these Executive Orders and Martial Law Congressional authorizations Un-Constitutional; taking the arguments directly to the Supreme Court.  Immediately. excerpt: As of March 16, 2012, your land, your food, your water and your abilities as a laborer are now a wholly owned subsidiary of the United States government at any time they choose to initiate the provisions of this order, which according to the order itself, can be during an emergency or a non-emergency. While some reports indicate that the general impact of this new executive order is negligible, when considered with the broader implications including the  introduction and passage of laws allowing for the indefinite detention of American citizens without charge or trial, restricting the general assembly of individuals to protest, the establishment of an internet 'kill switch' contingency plan and jamming
Gary Edwards

Theodore and Woodrow: How Two American Presidents Destroyed Constitutional Freedom: And... - 0 views

www.amazon.com/...ref=as_li_ss_til

Judge-Andrew-Napolitano NSA-Patriot-Act-NDAA Federal-Reserve-Bankster-Cartel Globalist-Elites New-World-Order Banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 03 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 03 Oct 13
     
    Judge Andrew Napolitano at his best: summary: "Either the Constitution means what it says, or it doesn't." America's founding fathers saw freedom as a part of our nature to be protected-not to be usurped by the federal government-and so enshrined separation of powers and guarantees of freedom  in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. But a little over a hundred years after America's founding, those God-given rights were laid siege by two presidents caring more about the advancement of progressive, redistributionist ideology than the principles on which America was founded. Theodore and Woodrow is Judge Andrew P. Napolitano's shocking historical account of how a Republican and a Democratic president oversaw the greatest shift in power in American history, from a land built on the belief that authority should be left to the individuals and the states to a bloated, far-reaching federal bureaucracy, continuing to grow and consume power each day. With lessons rooted in history, Judge Napolitano shows the intellectually arrogant, anti-personal freedom, even racist progressive philosophy driving these men to poison the American system of government.  And Americans still pay for their legacy-in the federal income, in state-prescribed compulsory education, in the Federal Reserve, in perpetual wars, and in the constant encroachment of a government that coddles special interests and discourages true competition in the marketplace. With his attention to detail, deep constitutional knowledge, and unwavering adherence to truth telling, Judge Napolitano moves through the history of these men and their times in office to show how American values and the Constitution were sadly set aside, leaving personal freedom as a shadow of its former self,  in the grip of an insidious, Nanny state, progressive ideology.
Paul Merrell

ISIL, Turkey: The Dream of Restoring the Glories of Sublime Ottoman State , by Israa Al... - 0 views

www.voltairenet.org/article185381.html

war & peace ISIL Turkey Erdogan

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • The ISIL’s funding father is Erdogan’s personal friend The name of the Saudi businessman Yassin al-Qadi has been linked to organizations classified as terrorist internationally. In particular, the foreign press and the Turkish opposition media describe him as “al-Qaeda’s funding father”. After the events of September 11/2001, al-Qadi- along with other figures- has been included in the world’s list of terrorists, and his name was stereotyped as a terrorist man. This made several countries ban him from entering into their territories, Turkey was one of them. Earlier, the Turkish media documented a photo scandal: Erdogan’s meetings with Yassin al-Qadi as well as long meetings with his son Bilal Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The scandal that was leaked by Turkish security elements came in the context of the case of corruption of which the son of the former Turkish Prime Minister has been accused. Based upon this, a large number of elements of the security corps were arrested being accused of plotting a coup against the government.
  • Nevertheless, the French journalist Thierry Meyssan describes Yassin al-Qadi as a personal friend of both Dick Cheney (former U.S. Vice President) and Recep Tayyip Erdogan. According to him, al-Qadi visited Turkey four times during 2012, and “his plane used to land at the second airport of Istanbul, and was being welcomed by the Prime Minister personally, without going through the smart gate, and after cutting the security cameras’ power supply”. The Turkish Gmehoriet Newspaper intended to publish details about the investigations conducted by the Turkish judiciary on the same case, and mentioned that Recep Tayyip Erdogan introduced Yassine al-Qadi as a Saudi businessman visiting Turkey to invest and denied that he is a terrorist. It quoted him as saying: “I trust Mr. Al-Qadi just as I trust myself. He is an almsgiver”.
  • The Turkish newspaper, after publishing Erdogan’s utterances before the Turkish judiciary, revealed that the Turkish police monitored 12 visits made by the Saudi man to Turkey. Seven out of these visits have been made with the help of Erdogan, the period when he was banned from entering Turkey, because his name was added as one of the world wanted terrorists in the list of the American FBI. The newspaper commented saying: “When the Turkish police was looking for al-Qadi, he was holding meetings with the Prime Minister”. Also, it published a photograph that showed separately the aforesaid man, Erdogan, and the Turkish intelligence chief Hakan Fidan, when they were going to a meeting that gathered them. The newspaper noted that Fidan himself met with al-Qadi 5 times when Al-Qadi has been banned from entering the Turkish territory.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Yet, the interesting thing is the leaked recordings published by the newspaper that disclose that Yassin al-Qadi used to give orders to the Erdogan’s office. He used to call to inform them that he had decided today to meet with Erdogan, and that the latter should not engage in any other obligations. The newspaper reported details about the dates of the meetings between the two men, what implies that the meetings were being attended by Fidan and by the Egyptian businessman Osama Qutob; the son of Muhammad Qutob the brother of the Brotherhood leader Sayyid Qutob who holds the Turkish citizenship and is living with his father in Turkey at present. This also mean that the meetings were taking place sometimes at the home of the Turkish businessman Mustafa Latif Topas in Istanbul, attended by Erdogan’s son and Moaz the son of al-Qadi. The recordings verify that Qutob was in charge of delivering the messages from the insurgents in the battlefield in Syria to Erdogan, what signifies that the meetings of these figures exceeded the issues of investment, and perhaps they exploited the title of a charity practice!
  • Those returning from Turkey refer to the public sympathy in the pro-government Turkish street with the ISIL. Social networking websites publish photos of Islamic libraries in Istanbul selling “T-shirts” and goods with the ISIL logo on them. Perhaps this news is no longer shocking after what the German (ARD) Television has revealed regarding the opening of an office for the ISIL in al-Fateh Street in Istanbul, being ran by Turks. Through it, the process of supporting and supplying the Takfiri organization in Iraq and Syria with funds and fighters takes place.
  • The German channel itself revealed in a video report aired by it that the ISIL has training camps on the Turkish territory: 1- The GAZIANTEP Camp: a training camp for the ISIL fighters According to the report published by the website of “Today’s Zaman”, an English-language newspaper in Turkey, the Governor of the Gaziantep (Erdal Ata) rushed to hold a press conference to deny what has been revealed by the German television. However, he spoke about the arrest of 19 elements that belong to the ISIL in the city, among those who came from European countries before committing them to trial.
  • Additionally, the Lebanese journalist Hassan Hamade, in an earlier interview with Al-Manar, drew attention to the existence of three training camps in Turkey for the fighters of extremist organizations [3]. 2- The ORFA Camp, southeastern Turkey: a camp out of which the gunmen came when they attacked the Kasab city that its residents are predominantly Armenian.
  • 3- The OSMANIYA camp in Adana, southern Turkey: It is directly near the major bases of the U.S. Air Force in the Turkish territory. Yet, what is interesting is that the Osmaniya camp is a stone’s throw away from the gas pipelines points of intersection coming from Iraq and Central Asia that empty the freight in the Turkish port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean Sea. 4- The KARMAN camp, it is also in Adana but is much closer to Istanbul. Moreover, a document published by the French journalist Thierry Meyssan, earlier, revealed that Turkey facilitated the infiltration of 5,000 fighters, who belong to al-Qaeda, to the Syrian territory after receiving training in Libya.
  • Perhaps the report of the American TV Network clarifies the argument of the Turkish journalist Orhan Kama Genghis: “The strongholds of the ISIL are located close to the Turkish border, and this did not happen coincidentally”. The Turkish journalist Kadri Gursel talks about the fact that the Turkish border territories have turned into an easy pathway facilitating the arrival and departure of the militants, where there are no formal procedures (visas, etc…) that could bother them, referring to the cooperation of the Turkish intelligence agency with the militants. Above and beyond, the Turkish opposition Republican People’s Party MP Muharram Ingee said that the ISIL leader “Mazen Abu Mohammed” received treatment in one of the Turkish government hospitals in the city of Hatay on April 2014, publishing a photo of the terrorist man in the hospital.
  • Reviewing these data provide an early answer to the question of the Saudi writer, Nawaf Qadimi, who is known for his support for the Muslim Brotherhood, where the phenomenon of the ISIL leads us to evoke history. The Seljuks drew the policies to expand their influence and their tools were the advocates of takfir and the recruiting of fighters in the name of religion. Here is Erdogan in actual fact walking in the footsteps of the ancestors and painting policies, and the tools are the texts of takfir for which he is recruiting fighters in the name of religion itself! That is how history is enabling us to understand our present...
Paul Merrell

Moon of Alabama - 0 views

www.moonofalabama.org

war & peace Syria U.S.-foreign-policy moderate-rebels military-defeat

shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Aug 15 - Cached
  • Over the last year the U.S. bombed Jabhat al-Nusra personal and facilities in Syria some five or six times. The al-Qaeda subgroup also has a history of attacking U.S. paid "relative moderate" proxy forces in Syria. The Pentagon recently inserted another U.S. mercenary group into north Syria. This was accompanied by a media campaign in which the administration lauded itself for the operation. The newly inserted group is especially trained and equipped to direct U.S. air attacks like those that earlier hit al-Nusra fighters. Now that freshly inserted group was attacked by Jabhat al-Nusra. Some of its members were killed and others were abducted. The Obama administration is shocked, SHOCKED, ABSOLUTELY SHOCKED that Jabhat al-Nusra would do such a ghastly deed. "Why would they do that?" "Who could have known that they would attack U.S. proxy forces???"
  • There is no longer an Jihadist ISIS or ISIL in Syria and Iraq. The people leading that entity declared (pdf) today, at the highly symbolic beginning of Ramadan, themselves to be a new caliphate:
  • Could someone explain to the fucking dimwits in the Pentagon and the Obama administrations that people everywhere, and especially terrorists group, hate it when you bomb them and kill their leaders? That those people you bomb might want to take revenge against you and your proxies? That people you bombed will not like your targeting team moving in next door to them? That alQaeda is not an "ally"? These people are too pathetically clueless to even be embarrassed about it. The accumulated intelligence quotient of the administration and Pentagon officials running the anti-Syria operation must be below three digits. But aside from their lack of basic intelligence the utter lack of simple "street smarts" is the real problem here. These people have no idea how life works outside of their beltway cages.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • On more thought from me on why the dimwits did not foresee that Nusra would attack. The White House insisted on calling a part of Nusra the "Khorasan group" and explained that it was only bombing this groups of alQaeda veterans now part of Nusra because the "Khorasan group" planning to hit in "western" countries. No expert nor anyone on the ground in Syria thought that this differentiation was meaningful. Nusra is alQaeda and so are all of its members. But the White House and Pentagon probably thought that Nusra would accept the artificial separation they themselves had made up. That Nusra would understand that it is seen as an "ally" and only the "Khorasan group" is seen as an enemy. If that was the line of thinking, and the situation seems to point to that, then these people have fallen for their own propaganda stunt. They probably believed that the "Khorasan group" was an accepted narrative because they were telling that tale to themselves. Poor idiots.
  • UPDATE: The one sane guy at the Council of Foreign relations, Micah Zenko, foresaw this debacle and wrote on March 2: [The U.S. trained mercenaries] will immediately be an attractive target for attacks by the Islamic State, Assad’s ground and air forces, and perhaps Nusra and other forces. Killing or taking prisoner fighters (or the families of those fighters) who were trained by the U.S. military will offer propaganda value, as well as leverage, to bargain for those prisoners’ release. He compared the whole operation to the 1961 CIA invasion of Cuba: Last September, the White House and Congress agreed to authorize and fund a train-and-equip project similar to the Bay of Pigs, but this time in the Middle East, without any discussion about phase two. The Syrian project resembles 1961 in two ways: What happens when the fighting starts is undecided, and the intended strategic objective is wholly implausible.
  • The attack on Friday was mounted by the Nusra Front, which is affiliated with Al Qaeda. It came a day after the Nusra Front captured two leaders and at least six fighters of Division 30, which supplied the first trainees to graduate from the Pentagon’s anti-Islamic State training program. In Washington, several current and former senior administration officials acknowledged that the attack and the abductions by the Nusra Front took American officials by surprise and amounted to a significant intelligence failure. While American military trainers had gone to great lengths to protect the initial group of trainees from attacks by Islamic State or Syrian Army forces, they did not anticipate an assault from the Nusra Front. In fact, officials said on Friday, they expected the Nusra Front to welcome Division 30 as an ally in its fight against the Islamic State....A senior Defense Department official acknowledged that the threat to the trainees and their Syrian recruiters had been misjudged, and said that officials were trying to understand why the Nusra Front had turned on the trainees. Like other Obama administration operations this one did not fail because of "intelligence failure" but because an utter lack of common sense.
  • U.S. media can no agree with itself if Russia is giving ISIS an airforce or if Russia pounds ISIS with the biggest bomber raid in decades. Such confusion occurs when propaganda fantasies collide with the observable reality. To bridge such divide requires some fudging. So when the U.S. claims to act against the finances of the Islamic State while not doing much, the U.S Public Broadcasting Service has to use footage of Russian airstrikes against the Islamic State while reporting claimed U.S. airstrike successes. The U.S. military recently claimed to have hit Islamic State oil tankers in Syria. This only after Putin embarrassed Obama at the G-20 meeting in Turkey. Putin showed satellite pictures of ridiculous long tanker lines waiting for days and weeks to load oil from the Islamic State without any U.S. interference.
  • The U.S. then claimed to have hit 116 oil tankers while the Russian air force claims to have hit 500. But there is an important difference between these claims. The Russians provided videos showing how their airstrikes hit at least two different very large oil tanker assemblies with hundreds of tankers in each. They also provided video of several hits on oil storage sites and refinery infrastructure. I have found no video of U.S. hits on Islamic State oil tanker assemblies. The U.S. PBS NewsHour did not find any either. In their TV report yesterday about Islamic State financing and the claimed U.S. hits on oil trucks they used the videos Russia provided without revealing the source. You can see the Russian videos played within an interview with a U.S. military spokesperson at 2:22 min.
  • The U.S. military spokesperson speaks on camera about U.S. airforce hits against the Islamic State. The video cuts to footage taken by Russian airplanes hitting oil tanks and then trucks. The voice-over while showing the Russian video with the Russians blowing up trucks says: "For the first time the U.S. is attacking oil delivery trucks." The video then cuts back to the U.S. military spokesperson. At no point is the Russian campaign mentioned or the source of the footage revealed. Any average viewer of the PBS report will assume that the black and white explosions of oil trucks and tanks are from of U.S. airstrikes filmed by U.S. air force planes. The U.S. military itself admitted that its strikes on IS oil infrastructure over the last year were "minimally effective". One wonders then how effective the claimed strike against 116 trucks really was. But unless we have U.S. video of such strikes and not copies of Russian strike video fraudulently passed off as U.S. strikes we will not know if those strikes happened at all.
  • The wannabe Sultan Erdogan did not get his will in Syria where he had planned to capture and annex Aleppo. The Russians prevented that. He now goes for his secondary target, Mosul in Iraq, which many Turks see as historic part of their country
  • Mosul, Iraq's second biggest city with about a million inhabitants, is currently occupied by the Islamic State. On Friday a column of some 1,200 Turkish soldiers with some 20 tanks and heavy artillery moved into a camp near Mosul. The camp was one of four small training areas where Turkey was training Kurds and some Sunni-Arab Iraqis to fight the Islamic State. The small camps in the northern Kurdish area have been there since the 1990s. They were first established to fight the PKK. Later their Turkish presence was justified as ceasefire monitors after an agreement ended the inner Kurdish war between the KDP forces loyal to the Barzani clan and the PUK forces of the Talabani clan. The bases were actually used to monitor movement of the PKK forces which fight for Kurdish independence in Turkey. The base near Mosul is new and it was claimed to be just a small weapons training base. But tanks and artillery have a very different quality than some basic AK-47 training. Turkey says it will increase the numbers in these camps to over 2000 soldiers.
  • Should Mosul be cleared of the Islamic State the Turkish heavy weapons will make it possible for Turkey to claim the city unless the Iraqi government will use all its power to fight that claim. Should the city stay in the hands of the Islamic State Turkey will make a deal with it and act as its protector. It will benefit from the oil around Mosul which will be transferred through north Iraq to Turkey and from there sold on the world markets. In short: This is an effort to seize Iraq's northern oil fields. That is the plan but it is a risky one. Turkey did not ask for permission to invade Iraq and did not inform the Iraqi government. The Turks claim that they were invited by the Kurds: Turkey will have a permanent military base in the Bashiqa region of Mosul as the Turkish forces in the region training the Peshmerga forces have been reinforced, Hürriyet reported. The deal regarding the base was signed between Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) President Massoud Barzani and Turkish Foreign Minister Feridun Sinirlioğlu, during the latter’s visit to northern Iraq on Nov. 4. There are two problems with this. First: Massoud Barzani is no longer president of the KRG. His mandate ran out and the parliament refused to prolong it. Second: Mosul and its Bashiqa area are not part of the KRG. Barzani making a deal about it is like him making a deal about Paris.
  • The Iraqi government and all major Iraqi parties see the Turkish invasion as a hostile act against their country. Abadi demanded the immediate withdrawal of the Turkish forces but it is unlikely that Turkey will act on that. Some Iraqi politicians have called for the immediate dispatch of the Iraqi air force to bomb the Turks near Mosul. That would probably the best solution right now but the U.S. installed Premier Abadi is too timid to go for such strikes. The thinking in Baghdad is that Turkey can be kicked out after the Islamic State is defeated. But this thinking gives Turkey only more reason to keep the Islamic State alive and use it for its own purpose. The cancer should be routed now as it is still small. Barzani's Kurdistan is so broke that is has even confiscated foreign bank accounts to pay some bills. That may be the reason why Barzani agreed to the deal now. But the roots run deeper. Barzani is illegally selling oil that belongs to the Iraqi government to Turkey. The Barzani family occupies  not only the presidential office in the KRG but also the prime minister position and the local secret services. It is running the oil business and gets a big share of everything else. On the Turkish side the oil deal is handled within the family of President Erdogan. His son in law, now energy minister, had the exclusive right to transport the Kurdish oil through Turkey. Erdogan's son controls the shipping company that transports the oil over sea to the customer, most often Israel. The oil under the control of the Islamic State in Iraq passes the exactly same route. These are businesses that generate hundreds of millions per year.
  • It is unlikely that U.S., if it is not behinds Turkey new escapade, will do anything about it. The best Iraq could do now is to ask the Russians for their active military support. The Turks insisted on their sovereignty when they ambushed a Russian jet that brushed its border but had no intend of harming Turkey. Iraq should likewise insist on its sovereignty, ask Russia for help and immediately kick the Turks out. The longer it waits the bigger the risk that Turkey will eventually own Mosul.
  • Another fake news item currently circling is that Trump has given order to the military to create safe zones for Syria. The reality is still far from it: [H]is administration crafted a draft order that would direct the Pentagon and the State Department to submit plans for the safe zones within 90 days. The order hasn't yet been issued. The draft of the order, which will be endlessly revised, says that safe zones could be in Syria or in neighboring countries. The Pentagon has always argued against such zones in Syria and the plans it will submit, should such an order be issued at all, will reflect that. The safe zones in Syria ain't gonna happen
  • Paul Merrell on 03 Aug 15
     
    So the first group of U.S. trained "moderate" Syrian opposition fighters are an epic fail. Who'd of thunk? 
Gary Edwards

Truth Attack - Attorney Tom Cryer - 2 views

www.truthattack.org/index.php

Income-Tax Constitution

shared by Gary Edwards on 10 Apr 12 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 10 Apr 12
     
    .. Restore Economic Freedom .... Rediscover your constitutional rights ..... Unwind the Income Tax behemoth  In 2006, Attorney Tommy Cryer was indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice for two counts of tax evasion. In July of 2007, the IRS reduced the charges to willful failure to file income tax returns. He went to trial and was unanimously acquitted by the jury. This issue is NOT about "paying your fair" share on April 15th. This is a legal issue that involves more lies by "our" government. excerpt: Dare to look behind the Wizard's curtain and you'll discover the "Great and Powerful Income Tax" is a monumental fraud. Cleverly built over decades amid the swamp of a single misunderstood word ("income") not to mention boxcars of false data heaped on school children, what your "income" actually IS -- as guaranteed by the US Constitution -- and what you think it is, are two separate things. Read on as Attorney Tom Cryer delivers you out of the IRS catecombs, toward a deeper appreciation of your own cherished freedoms and economic rights. The US Constitution prohibits any direct tax upon your labor or property. When federal agencies are allowed to operate above the law only then can you be ruled by fear, intimidation and force.  The Fed uses money stolen through income tax to buy legislators and bring states in line. Thus the Fed, not you nor your state representatives, rules. Your state has  been reduced, once again, to a colony of a distant and indifferent  government, and YOU ARE NOT FREE! Finally, third, and perhaps even more importantly, the power to tax  is the power to destroy. If the federal government can tax one freedom, it can tax all of our freedoms. If we permit them to tax our most precious and  fragile assets, if all we have is kept only by the consent of the  government-then we are at its mercy and YOU ARE NOT FREE!
Paul Merrell

Use of US Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2014, and More from CRS - 0 views

fas.org/...armed-forces-abroad

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy U.S.-foreign-wars

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • Noteworthy new products of the Congressional Research Service that Congress has withheld from online public distribution include the following. Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2014, September 15, 2014
  • Proposed Train and Equip Authorities for Syria: In Brief, September 16, 2014
  • The No Fly List: Procedural Due Process and Hurdles to Litigation, September 18, 2014
  • Paul Merrell on 24 Sep 14
     
    This report lists hundreds of instances in which the United States has used its Armed Forces abroad in situations of military conflict or potential conflict or for other than normal peacetime purposes. It was compiled in part from various older lists and is intended primarily to provide a rough survey of past U.S. military ventures abroad, without reference to the magnitude of the given instance noted. The listing often contains references, especially from 1980 forward, to continuing military deployments, especially U.S. military participation in multinational operations associated with NATO or the United Nations. Most of these post-1980 instances are summaries based on presidential reports to Congress related to the War Powers Resolution. A comprehensive commentary regarding any of the instances listed is not undertaken here. The instances differ greatly in number of forces, purpose, extent of hostilities, and legal authorization. Eleven times in its history the United States has formally declared war against foreign nations. These 11 U.S. war declarations encompassed 5 separate wars: the war with Great Britain declared in 1812; the war with Mexico declared in 1846; the war with Spain declared in 1898; the First World War, during which the United States declared war with Germany and with Austria-Hungary during 1917; and World War II, during which the United States declared war against Japan, Germany, and Italy in 1941, and against Bulgaria, Hungary, and Rumania in 1942.  Some of the instances were extended military engagements that might be considered undeclared wars. These include the Undeclared Naval War with France from 1798 to 1800; the First Barbary War from 1801 to 1805; the Second Barbary War of 1815; the Korean War of 1950-1953; the Vietnam War from 1964 to 1973; the Persian Gulf War of 1991; global actions against foreign terrorists after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States; and the war with Iraq in 2003. With the exception of
Gary Edwards

Doug Casey on American Socialism - Casey Research - 0 views

www.caseyresearch.com/...doug-casey-american-socialism

Doug-Casey Socialism economic-ruin

shared by Gary Edwards on 20 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 20 Oct 12
     
    "Doug Casey on American Socialism"  .  Awesome interview, especially the discussion on Liberalism and how the socialist Norman Thomas decided to co-opt the term as an effective replacement for the disreputable socialism.  Links to the Thomas 1932 socialist platform that Casey points out has pretty much been put into place.   Good discussion.  Focus on an article published by socialist apologist and idiot, Allan Colmes.
  • Paul Merrell on 20 Oct 12
     
    I agree that Colmes is far from the sharpest knife in the drawer. In my opinion, he was largely a Fox News invention to give Shawn Hannity a far weaker opponent to argue against that Hannity's idiocy could still overcome. There are in reality liberals that Hannity could never have gone toe-to-toe with. (That's not an endorsement of liberalism; it's commentary on the quality of Hannity's arguments.) The show was mostly a variant of the straw man logical fallacy; the fact that Colmes lacked the ability to think critically or communicate effectively made Hannity "win" the pseudo-debate in the eyes of those unable to think critically themselves. I have some criticism of Casey's remarks that apply more generally to my experience of strict Libertarians and perhaps even farther to strict adherents to any "ism." My criticism boils down to a couple of examples of hard issues usually avoided by strict Libertarians. -- The Disabled: When discussing Social Security disability benefits, Casey changes the subject from the genuinely disabled to a short rant about those whose disability claims are bogus and the "ambulance chasing" lawyers who pursue their claims. But if pressed to the wall and forced to answer, I strongly suspect that Casey would admit that there are people, likely the majority of Social Security disability benefits, whose claims are genuine. The net effect of his relevant argument: an impression that he has a Darwinian view that he would leave the disabled dying in the streets without sustenance or medical care. That kind of society is unacceptable to me. Perhaps it is to Casey too, but if so I think it was incumbent on him to offer a solution for the genuinely disabled. (In fairness, I'll note that at one point Casey hinted but did not forthrightly say that he would favor financial assistance for single mothers in Harlem.) -- Medical Care: I agree that our health care system is badly broken. But again Casey is long on criticism but short on realistic idea
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