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Paul Merrell

The Citadel Is Breached: Congress Taps the Fed for Infrastructure Funding | WEB OF DEBT... - 0 views

ellenbrown.com/...fed-for-infrastructure-funding

banksters Fed infrastructure-funding highway-trust-fund

shared by Paul Merrell on 18 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • In a landmark infrastructure bill passed in December, Congress finally penetrated the Fed’s “independence” by tapping its reserves and bank dividends for infrastructure funding. The bill was a start. But some experts, including Congressional candidate Tim Canova, say Congress should go further and authorize funds to be issued for infrastructure directly. For at least a decade, think tanks, commissions and other stakeholders have fought to get Congress to address the staggering backlog of maintenance, upkeep and improvements required to bring the nation’s infrastructure into the 21st century. Countries with less in the way of assets have overtaken the US in innovation and efficiency, while our dysfunctional Congress has battled endlessly over the fiscal cliff, tax reform, entitlement reform, and deficit reduction. Both houses and both political parties agree that something must be done, but they have been unable to agree on where to find the funds. Republicans aren’t willing to raise taxes on the rich, and Democrats aren’t willing to cut social services for the poor.
  • In December 2015, however, a compromise was finally reached. On December 4, the last day the Department of Transportation was authorized to cut checks for highway and transit projects, President Obama signed a 1,300-page $305-billion transportation infrastructure bill that renewed existing highway and transit programs. According to America’s civil engineers, the sum was not nearly enough for all the work that needs to be done. But the bill was nevertheless considered a landmark achievement, because Congress has not been able to agree on how to fund a long-term highway and transit bill since 2005. That was one of its landmark achievements. Less publicized was where Congress would get the money: largely from the Federal Reserve and Wall Street megabanks. The deal was summarized in a December 1st Bloomberg article titled “Highway Bill Compromise Would Take Money from US Banks”: The highway measure would be financed in part by a one-time use of Federal Reserve surplus funds and by a reduction in the 6 percent dividend that national banks receive from the Fed. . . . Banks with $10 billion or less in assets would be exempt from the cut. The Fed’s surplus capital comes from the 12 reserve banks. The highway bill would allow for a one-time draw of $19 billion from the surplus, which totaled $29.3 billion as of Nov. 25. . . . Banks vigorously fought the dividend cut, which was estimated to generate about $17 billion over 10 years for the highway trust fund.
Paul Merrell

Harder for Americans to Rise From Lower Rungs - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-to-rise-from-lower-rungs.html

class warfare income inequality economic mobility land of opportunity myth

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Benjamin Franklin did it. Henry Ford did it. And American life is built on the faith that others can do it, too: rise from humble origins to economic heights. “Movin’ on up,” George Jefferson-style, is not only a sitcom song but a civil religion.
  • But many researchers have reached a conclusion that turns conventional wisdom on its head: Americans enjoy less economic mobility than their peers in Canada and much of Western Europe. The mobility gap has been widely discussed in academic circles, but a sour season of mass unemployment and street protests has moved the discussion toward center stage. Former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, a Republican candidate for president, warned this fall that movement “up into the middle income is actually greater, the mobility in Europe, than it is in America.” National Review, a conservative thought leader, wrote that “most Western European and English-speaking nations have higher rates of mobility.” Even Representative Paul D. Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican who argues that overall mobility remains high, recently wrote that “mobility from the very bottom up” is “where the United States lags behind.”
  • Liberal commentators have long emphasized class, but the attention on the right is largely new.
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  • At least five large studies in recent years have found the United States to be less mobile than comparable nations. A project led by Markus Jantti, an economist at a Swedish university, found that 42 percent of American men raised in the bottom fifth of incomes stay there as adults. That shows a level of persistent disadvantage much higher than in Denmark (25 percent) and Britain (30 percent) — a country famous for its class constraints. Meanwhile, just 8 percent of American men at the bottom rose to the top fifth. That compares with 12 percent of the British and 14 percent of the Danes.
  • Despite frequent references to the United States as a classless society, about 62 percent of Americans (male and female) raised in the top fifth of incomes stay in the top two-fifths, according to research by the Economic Mobility Project of the Pew Charitable Trusts. Similarly, 65 percent born in the bottom fifth stay in the bottom two-fifths. By emphasizing the influence of family background, the studies not only challenge American identity but speak to the debate about inequality. While liberals often complain that the United States has unusually large income gaps, many conservatives have argued that the system is fair because mobility is especially high, too: everyone can climb the ladder. Now the evidence suggests that America is not only less equal, but also less mobile.
Paul Merrell

DailyTech - Pakistani Court Accuses U.S. of War Crimes for Drone Strikes - 0 views

www.dailytech.com/...article31537.htm

war & peace Pakistan drone attacks war crimes

shared by Paul Merrell on 15 May 13 - No Cached
  • In response four petitions by tribal leaders complaining that U.S. drone strikes were killing civilians, Chief Justice Dost Muhammad Khan and the junior judge on Pakistan two-judge Peshawar High Court panel decided that the drone were war crimes as they killed innocent civilians. The panel says that the drone strikes were inhumane and violated the UN Charter on Human Rights.  The court is asking the government of Pakistan to push a UN resolution to condemn the strikes and declare them a war crimes, writing [according to translation by The Press Trust of India, "The government of Pakistan must ensure that no drone strike takes place in the future.  If the US vetoes the resolution, then the country should think about breaking diplomatic ties with the US."
  • Shahzad Akbar, lawyer for victims in the case, is quoted as saying, "This is a landmark judgment. Drone victims in Waziristan will now get some justice after a long wait. This judgment will also prove to be a test for the new government: if drone strikes continue and the government fails to act, it will run the risk of contempt of court."
  • The administration also does have a policy of paying the family of civilians it kills in the Middle East "grief payments" of a few thousand dollars per body. While the current administration may be hesistant to take action in the UN against the U.S. elections are fast approaching.  This Saturday's election sees the Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) party leading in current polls.  Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, the party's leader, promises a zero-tolerance policy on drone strike civilian deaths.  He comments, "Drone attacks are against the national sovereignty and a challenge for the country's autonomy and independence." The U.S. has often accused hostile regimes like the governments of Syria, Sudan, Iran, and North Korea of war crimes in recent years.  However, it has seldom been on the receiving end of such accusations, despite an aggressive (and expensive) overseas military program.
Gary Edwards

Does 2nd Amendment Confer an Individual Right to Bear Arms? - Tea Party Command Center - 0 views

teapartyorg.ning.com/...show

2nd-Ammendment second-amendment Natural-Rights USA-Constitution

shared by Gary Edwards on 01 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • 1. Barron v Baltimore (1833): held that the Bill of Rights applies directly to the federal government—not to state governments. In effect, the court ruled that states could infringe on the Bill of Rights since the Bill of Rights restrained only the federal government. (Don’t ask. I didn’t delve deeply into the reasoning behind this decision.)
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 01 Feb 13
       
      Nonsense!  The No Religious Test Clause of the United States Constitution is found in Article VI, paragraph 3, and states that: "The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." Furthermore, all federal, state, and local officials must take an oath to support the Constitution. This means that state governments and officials cannot take actions or pass laws that interfere with the Constitution, laws passed by Congress, or treaties.
  • 2. Nunn v State of Georgia (1846): held that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” and that “the right of the whole people, old and young, men, women and boys, and not militia only, to keep and bear arms of every description, and not such merely as are used by the militia, shall not be infringed, curtailed or broken in upon in the smallest degree.”
  • 11. District of Columbia v Heller (2008): the court ruled that the Cruikshank decision failed to properly weigh 14th Amendment protections and that “the inherent right of self-defense has been central to the Second Amendment right.”
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  • McDonald v City of Chicago ensured that the full force of the 2nd Amendment extended to all localities as well.
  • But, what’s behind the McDonald challenge? In short, the Illinois state constitution states that “Subject only to the police power, the right of the individual citizen to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
  • no discussion of the 2nd Amendment can be properly wrapped up without this incisive quote from Thomas Jefferson: “False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary of trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evil, except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such nature…Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man…”
Paul Merrell

Matt Taibbi Talks Ratings Agencies With Chris Hayes | Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone - 0 views

www.rollingstone.com/...cies-with-chris-hayes-20130621

banksters ratings-agencies fraud

shared by Paul Merrell on 25 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • "Standard & Poor's has long had strict policies to reinforce the independence of our analytical processes. . . . We make our methodology transparent to the market." That was among the responses of a spokesperson for the ratings agency Standard & Poor's when I contacted him a few weeks ago in advance of a new Rolling Stone feature, "The Last Mystery of the Financial Crisis," which describes the role the ratings agencies played in causing the 2008 crash. The company was genuinely miffed that anyone would impugn its honesty. In one relatively brief e-mail, the spokesperson used variables of terms like "independent," "integrity" and "transparent," upwards of nine times. Hold that thought. "The Last Mystery of the Financial Crisis" makes great use of documents uncovered in years of painstaking research by attorneys at Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd, a San Diego-based firm that was at the forefront of major lawsuits against the industry. The material those lawyers found leaves virtually no doubt that the great ratings agencies like Moody's and S&P essentially put their analysis up for sale in the years leading up to the crash.
  • Moreover, the Court said, plaintiffs could not make a claim based on a public statement by S&P touting its "credibility and reliability," or another saying, "[S&P] has a longstanding commitment to ensuring that any potential conflicts of interest do not compromise its analytical independence." Why, you might ask, could one not make a fraud claim based upon those statements? Because, the Second Circuit ruled, those statements were transparently not meant to be taken seriously.
  • I point this out because the ratings agencies' responses to the questions we posed for the piece were almost as revealing as the extremely damaging emails and internal documents the Robbins Geller lawyers uncovered. It wasn't just that there was apparently an entire generation of internal email correspondence that had been taken out of context (apparently, the context was taken out of context). More interesting was another line of defense. Not long before I contacted them, S&P had made, in a very graphic and comical manner, a very strange argument in court. In an attempt to dismiss a federal Justice Department lawsuit pending against S&P, the company had, in a court motion, cited a Florida court case, Boca Raton Firefighters and Police Pension Fund v. Bahash. In that case, the Second Circuit ruled that the plaintiffs suing S&P could not make a fraud claim based upon the company's reassurances in its Code of Conduct of its "objectivity, integrity and independence."
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  • Anyway, if you want the full lowdown on what actually goes on internally at these companies, check out the piece, which is full of the devastating material dug up by those San Diego lawyers. Also, thanks so much to the excellent Chris Hayes at MSNBC, who had me on last night to discuss the issue. It was a very fun talk.
  • Paul Merrell on 25 Jun 13
     
    The Rolling Stone's Mat Taiibi strikes again. 
Paul Merrell

Obama's crackdown views leaks as aiding enemies of U.S. | McClatchy - 0 views

www.mcclatchydc.com/...-crackdown-views-leaks-as.html

government secrecy Obama

shared by Paul Merrell on 25 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Even before a former U.S. intelligence contractor exposed the secret collection of Americans’ phone records, the Obama administration was pressing a government-wide crackdown on security threats that requires federal employees to keep closer tabs on their co-workers and exhorts managers to punish those who fail to report their suspicions. President Barack Obama’s unprecedented initiative, known as the Insider Threat Program, is sweeping in its reach. It has received scant public attention even though it extends beyond the U.S. national security bureaucracies to most federal departments and agencies nationwide, including the Peace Corps, the Social Security Administration and the Education and Agriculture departments. It emphasizes leaks of classified material, but catchall definitions of “insider threat” give agencies latitude to pursue and penalize a range of other conduct.
  • Government documents reviewed by McClatchy illustrate how some agencies are using that latitude to pursue unauthorized disclosures of any information, not just classified material. They also show how millions of federal employees and contractors must watch for “high-risk persons or behaviors” among co-workers and could face penalties, including criminal charges, for failing to report them. Leaks to the media are equated with espionage.
  • Employees must turn themselves and others in for failing to report breaches. “Penalize clearly identifiable failures to report security infractions and violations, including any lack of self-reporting,” the strategic plan says.The Obama administration already was pursuing an unprecedented number of leak prosecutions, and some in Congress – long one of the most prolific spillers of secrets – favor tightening restrictions on reporters’ access to federal agencies, making many U.S. officials reluctant to even disclose unclassified matters to the public. The policy, which partly relies on behavior profiles, also could discourage creative thinking and fuel conformist “group think” of the kind that was blamed for the CIA’s erroneous assessment that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction, a judgment that underpinned the 2003 U.S. invasion. “The real danger is that you get a bland common denominator working in the government,” warned Ilana Greenstein, a former CIA case officer who says she quit the agency after being falsely accused of being a security risk. “You don’t get people speaking up when there’s wrongdoing. You don’t get people who look at things in a different way and who are willing to stand up for things. What you get are people who toe the party line, and that’s really dangerous for national security.”
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  • The program could make it easier for the government to stifle the flow of unclassified and potentially vital information to the public, while creating toxic work environments poisoned by unfounded suspicions and spurious investigations of loyal Americans, according to these current and former officials and experts. Some non-intelligence agencies already are urging employees to watch their co-workers for “indicators” that include stress, divorce and financial problems.
  • The program, however, gives agencies such wide latitude in crafting their responses to insider threats that someone deemed a risk in one agency could be characterized as harmless in another. Even inside an agency, one manager’s disgruntled employee might become another’s threat to national security. Obama in November approved “minimum standards” giving departments and agencies considerable leeway in developing their insider threat programs, leading to a potential hodgepodge of interpretations. He instructed them to not only root out leakers but people who might be prone to “violent acts against the government or the nation” and “potential espionage.”
  • The Department of Education, meanwhile, informs employees that co-workers going through “certain life experiences . . . might turn a trusted user into an insider threat.” Those experiences, the department says in a computer training manual, include “stress, divorce, financial problems” or “frustrations with co-workers or the organization.”An online tutorial titled “Treason 101” teaches Department of Agriculture and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration employees to recognize the psychological profile of spies.
Paul Merrell

Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Skype & Yahoo Hit With Prism Data Protection Complaints In ... - 0 views

techcrunch.com/...europe-v-prism

surveillance state NSA EU PRISM investigation Facebook Apple Microsoft Skype Yahoo!

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • The European data protection activists behind the Europe v Facebook (evf) campaign group, that has long been a thorn in Facebook’s side in Europe, have filed new complaints under regional data protection law targeting Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Skype and Yahoo for their alleged collaboration with the NSA’s Prism data collection program. The student activist organisation is targeting the European subsidiaries of these five U.S. companies, arguing that their corporate structure means they fall fully under European privacy laws despite being U.S. headquartered companies. And yet, being as they are U.S. companies, they are required to comply with U.S. surveillance laws — putting them in the “tricky” situation of having to comply with potentially conflicting legal requirements. It’s that legal conflict evf is now probing.
  • Evf takes the view that the law needs clarifying — and it using these new data protection complaints as the vehicle to obtain clarification from the various regional data protection agencies. Facebook and Apple; Microsoft and Skype; and Yahoo have subsidiaries in Ireland, Luxembourg and Germany respectively. ”We want a clear statement by the authorities if a European company may simply give foreign intelligence agencies access to its customer data. If this turns out to be legal, then we might have to change the laws,” noted evf speaker, Max Schrems, in a statement. The key question, as evf sees it, is whether “mass transfer” of personal data from to a foreign intelligence agency is legal under European law.  ”Many journalists have asked us in recent weeks if PRISM is legal from a EU perspective. We have looked at that a little closer. The result was – after consulting with legal experts – that it is very likely illegal under EU data protection laws, because of the corporate structure of the companies,” added Schrems. Google and YouTube have not been included in this first round of evf complaints being as they have a different corporate structure that does not include European subsidiaries. However it notes they do have datacenters in European countries, which will give evf a route to filing Prism-related data protection complaints against both at a later date.
  • Writing in a press notice announcing its new action, evf added: If a European subsidiary sends user data to the American parent company, this is considered an “export” of personal data. Under EU law, an export of data is only allowed if the European subsidiary can ensure an “adequate level or protection” in the foreign country. After the recent disclosures on the “PRISM” program such trust in an “adequate level of protection” by the involved companies can hardly be upheld. There can in no way be an adequate level of protection if they cooperate with the NSA on the other end of the line. Right now an export of data to the US must be seen as illegal if the involved companies cannot disprove the reports on the PRISM program. According to evf, the subsidiaries being targeted by these complaints have “the burden of proof” — to either “credibly assure” that the Prism program is a hoax, or “explain how mass access by a foreign intelligence agency interplays with EU data protection laws”. Evf cites a 2006 case precedent involving payment processor SWIFT which had forwarded transaction details to U.S. authorities. In that case it says a group of EU data protection authorities decided that such a mass data transfer is illegal under EU law, leading to SWIFT to move European data to a server in Switzerland. The case also led to an agreement between the U.S. and the EU on the use of payment data to combat crime.
Paul Merrell

Wells Fargo Fined Over Secret Sales Policy to Open Fake Customer Accounts - nsnbc inter... - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...to-open-fake-customer-accounts

banksters Wells-Fargo CFPB fraud data-breach student-loans

shared by Paul Merrell on 09 Sep 16 - No Cached
  • The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has fined Wells Fargo for $100 million based on fraudulent customer account practices. An additional $85 million is to be paid to the city of Los Angeles in California, along with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
  • Last year Wells Fargo was sued by employees (current and former) and customers all across the nation for setting up “unwanted accounts, unwarranted fees”. According to the lawsuit, this was “the largest California-based bank violated state and federal laws by misusing confidential information and failing to notify customers when personal information was breached.” Using “aggressive tactics” to coerce new customers, Wells Fargo made it “difficult to correct the mistakes” made by Wells Fargo and return fees to customers because of “high-pressure sales culture set unrealistic quotas, spurring employees to engage in fraudulent conduct to keep their jobs and boost the company’s profits.” Over the course of an extended period of time, “Wells Fargo employees secretly opened unauthorized accounts to hit sales targets and receive bonuses.” There were 1.5 million accounts opened without the authorization of customers and 500,000 credit cards accounts to boot. Wells Fargo has consistently blames “a few rogue employees. Five hundred employees were terminated, according to a Wells Fargo spokesperson. There was no mention of rescinding of bonuses paid to those employees, and there is no clear evidence that executive’s payouts totaling $155 million for “performance based compensation” for 2012 through 2013 was returned to the bank.
  • Those bonuses were administered based on the fraudulent accounts opened without customer approval. In a statement, Wells Fargo expressed belated regret and a sudden desire to “take responsibility for any instances where customers may have received a product that they did not request.” The training that caused this problem in the first place was a cross-selling strategy called “Going For Gr-Eight” which is a brochure for employees to push banking products onto households of existing customers to increase fee potential and overall profitability. Wells Fargo “staffers, fearing disciplinary action from managers, begged friends and family members to open ghost accounts” and forged signatures “and falsified phone numbers” of customers who did not want to open an account. This practice drove Wells Fargo’s financial success with an estimated “26% of the company’s revenue was from fee income, including those from credit and debit card accounts, trusts and investments.” The bank not only stole money from customers but “also damage their credit scores” and put some into collections to garner fees “for unauthorized accounts went unpaid”. In case of a complaining customer, Wells Fargo would “sandbag” their customers; meaning “failing to open accounts when requested by customers, and instead accumulating a number of account applications to be opened at a later date.”
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  • Another devious tactic Wells Fargo employed was “bundling” or “incorrectly informing customers that certain products are available only in packages with other products such as additional accounts, insurance, annuities, and retirement plans.” This is not an isolated incident. Wells Fargo has fired 5,300 employees for this same “illegal behavior”. Beyond this questionable business practice, Wells Fargo was previously recognized by the CFPB for misapplying student loan payments in order to increase fee income. In this case, Wells Fargo was fined $3.6 million and forced to pay $410,000 to student loan borrowers for restitution.
Gary Edwards

The Fix Is Already in for This Election - The Daily Reckoning - 0 views

dailyreckoning.com/fix-already-election

Trump Federal-Reserve-Bankster-Cartel GOLD

shared by Gary Edwards on 03 Sep 16 - No Cached
  • But Yellen isn’t going to let any normal course of events happen before Election Day, especially since a Trump presidency would be every central banker’s worst freaking nightmare…Trump is deeply suspicious of the Fed… as many of us are.He’s rightfully and repeatedly said that Fed policies have created a stock market bubble that will burst. He’s called the Fed’s QE nonsense a bad economic idea that produced “phony numbers.”He told GQ that he prefers the gold standard to a Fed-manipulated fiat currency: “Bringing back the gold standard would be very hard to do — but boy, would it be wonderful. We’d have a standard on which to base our money.”And he also supports an extensive audit of the Fed to bring transparency and accountability to the secretive “central bank” that’s brought devastating boom-and-bust cycles for decades.
  • Of course, nobody knows if Trump will follow through on these promises if elected. Once in Washington, he could very well become just another lying politician. But right now, the last thing Yellen and her New World Order cronies want to do is take a chance on President Trump.They want to keep their unchecked power to create endless amounts of money out of thin air… to build and pop one financial bubble after another… all to redistribute from the little people to the elites… and destroy free-market capitalism in the name of state-manipulated Ponzi finance.We know that won’t change under Clinton. And maybe it won’t change under Trump. But you can bet central bankers don’t trust that business as usual will continue with Trump.So come the next Fed meeting in mid-September, expect a lot of sophisticated talk from Yellen about this or that economic item, assorted indecipherable mumblings and an army of TV talking heads lapping it all up as if an economic god had spoken.Just don’t hold your breath waiting for a rate hike… no matter what the economy’s doing.
  • Gary Edwards on 03 Sep 16
     
    "Trump is staging a fierce comeback… Hillary Clinton's post-convention lead in the polls has nearly disappeared. Prominent pollster Rasmussen Reports now has Trump leading Clinton 40% to 39%. Trump also has a 3% lead (45% to Hillary's 42%) in the Los Angeles Times poll. And Hillary's edge in the polls in which she's still leading has narrowed sharply. There'll be more back-and-forth momentum swings in the horse race to come, but these new polls show one thing: The odds of a Trump presidency shot higher this week. And that means the odds of a Fed interest rate hike before Election Day got lower… The fix is in… Look, Janet Yellen isn't going to do anything to jeopardize a Clinton presidency. They're both card-carrying Deep Staters. They're both liberals who served under Obama. They both dress the same: Mao chic. And most of all, Yellen wants to keep her job when her term expires in February 2018. She's a lock to stay on in a Clinton administration. But it won't happen in Trump's. He's already told TheWall Street Journal that he wouldn't keep Yellen as Fed chair. I don't see how Yellen can raise rates between now and Election Day… if Trump can win. If she did, it would tank the stock market, nail the economy and give Trump the White House. When the Fed raised rates in December 2015, the stock market plunged, with the Dow dropping more than 1,300 points in the month following. A plunging market would wipe out trillions in paper wealth and slam the economy into recession."
Paul Merrell

US-Saudi Plan: Let 9,000 ISIS Fighters Walk Free from Mosul - to Fight in Syria - 0 views

21stcenturywire.com/...e-from-mosul-to-fight-in-syria

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy ISIL Mosul Deir-Ezzor U.S. Saudis deal

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • Judging by both the words, and deeds of the Obama White House and its political ‘diplomatic’ appointees led by perfidious John Kerry and caustic Samantha Power – all evidence to date points to the US wanting to escalate its war on Syria – while happily baiting a military confrontation, and ‘World War‘ scenario with Russia and its allies in the process.  If this latest leak is indeed true – and time will certainly tell whether or not it is, it would constitute one of the most egregious violations of both US and international law – by the United States government and its theocratic dictator partner in Saudi Arabia. Washington’s own anti-terror legislation expressly forbids colluding to provide logistical or material support for terrorist groups, and this US-Saudi venture would be the latest in a long list of violations…
  • Here’s what makes this a potential shocker: the operation allows for safe passage for 9,000 ISIS fighters on the proviso that they are transferred from Iraq to eastern Syria in order to help US plans for “regime change” there.  “At the time of the assault, coalition aircraft would strike only on a pre-agreed detached buildings in the city, which are empty, the source said.” “According to him [the source], the plan of Washington and Riyadh also provides that the rebels move from Mosul to Syria for the attack on the government-controlled town of troops.” Essentially, Washington and Saudi Arabia, will allow 9,000 ISIS (Islamic State) fighter FREE passage into Syria if they agree to join Washington’s “regime change” operations there. This could also include, “… eastern regions of Syria to follow a major offensive operation, which involves the capture of Deir ez-Zor and Palmyra,” the source added. Before you write this story off as some ornate Russian psychological operation, consider the long trend arch. The US along with its generous Gulf sidekicks, have already established a solid track record of aiding and abetting ISIS – not just in Syria, but in Iraq too. The record shows that the US is guilty on a number of counts…
  • If the Mosul leak is true, then it wouldn’t be the first time that the US has provided cover in the military pantomime the world has come to know as “the fight against ISIS.” When large ISIS convoys crossed the Syrian desert to invade and occupy the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra in May 2015, the US ‘Coalition’ airforce did nothing, and allowed ISIS to take and destroy part of the world’s great historic cultural heritage, along with the murder of scores of innocent civilians. Professor Tim Anderson from Sydney University states: “U.S. weapons with Israeli ammunition were used by Islamic State group when taking over Palmyra. The extremists also had U.S. military rations.” “The U.S., which since 2014 claimed to be conducting a war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and which had air power and sophisticated surveillance of the region, did nothing to stop the huge ISIS advance on Palmyra.” The US isn’t even shy about its laissez-faire policy with ISIS in the field, with the New York Times openly boasting, “Any airstrikes against Islamic State militants in and around Palmyra would probably benefit the forces of President Bashar al-Assad. So far, United States-led airstrikes in Syria have largely focused on areas far outside government control, to avoid the perception of aiding a leader whose ouster President Obama has called for.”
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  • More importantly however, is what kind of message an US statement like that sends to ISIS, as well as Al Nusra and other terrorist brigades inside Syria, which is basically, “we do not need to worry about US air strikes, only Syrian Army and Russian strikes.” This situation really sums up the utter fraud and contempt of the US deception in Syria, and it’s no surprise that the Russian Foreign Ministry are reticent to extend themselves any more where the US is concerned. Then, in March 2016, when ISIS fled Palmyra, back across the desert towards Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa – the great and powerful US ‘Coalition’ airforce actually helped ISIS in a number of ways, including allowing them free passage once more. In late August, we were told that the Turkish Army, alongside “allied Syrian rebels” (terrorist group Faylaq al-Sham) backed by the US air cover, invaded Syria in order to capture the “ISIS-held” town of Jarabulus, Syria, this supposedly to cut off ISIS’s last open route into Turkey. But what happened to ISIS? The NYT even admitted that, “… it appeared that most of the militants had fled without a fight.” Here, ISIS appears to have been given advanced warning – by either US or Turkish intelligence, as they left the contested town of Jarabulus quietly, but in droves. In reality, Turkey twisted this operation in order to attack and degrade Kurdish militias including the US-backed artificial construct called the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), and pro-Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), the Syrian affiliate of the militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Iraq and Turkey – all of whom are meant to be fighting ISIS. Instead, they are now busy dodging Turkish artillery rounds. Confusing, yes, but true nonetheless.
  • It’s also common knowledge now, that top of the line US weaponry is being used by ISIS, both in Iraq, in Afghanistan and in Syria as well. In fact, if not for US weapons and supplies (along with US air intervention, or noninterventions), ISIS would have struggled to maintain many of the strategic positions it enjoys today. For the last 3 years, US officials have been dodging this issue, and when they do admit this is true, their patronizing party line is that, “this must be a mistake, if they do have US weapons, we didn’t mean it.” As if the world was born yesterday. Perhaps the most flagrant violation by the US-led forces in aiding and abetting ISIS took place on Sept 17, 2016, when the US-led Coalition bombed Syrian Army positions outside of Deir ez-Zor near al-Tharda Mountain, killing some 80 soldiers and injuring 100 more.  As if by design, an ISIS offensive began immediately following the US massacre of Syrian soldiers. Clearly, this bold move by the Pentagon paved the way for a major ISIS advance. To any normal observer, the US attack was a belligerent act of war that effective destroyed an already fragile bilateral ceasefire agreement, and yet the US response was to somehow blame Russia for calling an emergency UNSC meeting to discuss the incident. Judging by this response, it’s pretty clear that US wants to see the Syrian Conflict carry on for a while, and it will need groups like ISIS to make that happen.
  • The other problem with Washington’s hollow righteousness in the Middle East is that there are key members of the US-led “Coalition” who are financing ISIS, Al Nusra Front, Nour al Din Zinki, and Arar al Sham (all ‘moderate’ terrorists we’re told) militants in Syria, Iraq and beyond. This fact was recently admitted by former US Secretary of State and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, as revealed in this week’s batch of Wikileaks emails. Clinton writes: “While this military/para-military operation is moving forward, we need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region.”  Add to that the multiple exposures over the last 3 years of the US CIA illegally trafficking lethal arms to Al Nusra and other terrorists through covert operations like Timber Sycamore. Still, US and NATO member state officials and their media gatekeepers continue to deny it and play dumb, rather than come clean that the United States and its ‘partners’ in the region are helping, not hindering ISIS terrorism. Some might ask: why would they do a thing like that? By now, the answer should be simple, but threefold:
  • ISIS is still one of Washington’s best hope for continuing instability, and “regime change” in Syria. The existence of ISIS in Syria and Iraq guarantees that Washington can invite itself to the party.  The ISIS brand has been a boon for the global military industrial complex and all of its bottom-feeder businesses and ‘security’ contract firms. What’s so comical yet even more tragic, is how prominent the topic of “ISIS” factors into all of the vapid ‘national security’ debates and media panels in this year’s US Presidential election, and in the dumbed-down ‘coverage’ of the delusional US mainstream media, led by Pentagon surrogate CNN, and hopeless FOX News. Judging by their prosaic ‘coverage’, neither the networks, nor Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump have the slightest clue of what the reality on the ground is. Instead we here, “My ISIS plan is better than yours!” The US political conversation has gone beyond ridiculousness. The corps of US military and CIA media spokesman aren’t much better. The sad part is some of them do know what is really happening, but would rather lie to the American public. With so much double dealing, who can you trust? Certainly not anyone in Washington. More on the White House’s latest dangerous proposition….
Paul Merrell

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

lobelog.com/-ties-to-rumored-trump-cabinet

Trump-administration terrorist-ties Giuliani bolton

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Nov 16 - No Cached
  • Donald Trump’s rumored picks for key foreign-policy positions have already set off alarm bells about the future administration’s embrace of war hawks and Islamophobes. Today, Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin pointed out that former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, who is currently reported to be under consideration for an appointment to secretary of state or attorney general, potentially violated the law when he made paid speaking appearances for the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), when the State Department listed the Iranian dissident group as a foreign terrorist organization. Giuliani isn’t the only likely member of the future administration to have maintained close ties and advocated on behalf of the former terrorist group, which assassinated six Americans in Iran between 1973 and 1976. John Bolton (another rumored choice for secretary of state), Clare Lopez (who is reportedly short-listed for deputy national security adviser), and Newt Gingrich (who allegedly turned down an offer of secretary of state but has shown interest in serving as a policy adviser in the Trump administration) have all advocated for the former terrorist group and praised its cultish leader, Maryam Rajavi. Shortly after the overthrow of the Shah, the group experienced a falling out with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and fled into exile. Over the following years, the group’s leaders, Maryam and Massoud Rajavi, aligned with Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war (7,000 members fought alongside Saddam Hussein, against Iran) and shifted toward increasingly cultish behavior, mandating divorces and celibacy for their soldiers while cultivating a cult of personality around themselves.
  • Massoud Rajavi hasn’t been seen since overseeing the surrender of MEK forces to the U.S. following the 2003 invasion of Iraq. This summer, the former head of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence agency, Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud referred to Massoud Rajavi as “the late Massoud Rajavi,” suggesting that he may be deceased. Turki’s participation at an MEK event, meanwhile, was a tacit acknowledgement of Saudi Arabia’s support of the group. Indeed, forming opportunistic alliances has been a hallmark of the MEK. In 2012, U.S. officials told NBC News that Israel’s national intelligence agency, Mossad, was training and arming the MEK to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists. The group seeks to portray itself as a government-in-exile and the secular, democratic alternative to Iran’s theocratic government. But the MEK’s lack of influence inside Iran and skepticism about their allegations regarding Iran’s nuclear program—for example, photographic evidence the MEK provided last year allegedly showing evidence of “Lavizan-3,” a secret uranium enrichment facility in the suburbs of Tehran, turned out to be a stock photo from an Iranian safe company – haven’t prevented the group from gaining footholds in Washington through campaign contributions and lucrative speaking gigs for politicians who praise Rajavi and call for regime change in Iran at MEK rallies. The MEK is known for paying generous sums to former officials who speak at their events. Lee Hamilton, a former chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee who headed the Woodrow Wilson Center for 12 years, told InterPress Service that he was paid “a substantial amount” to appear on an MEK panel in 2011. Giuliani, Bolton, Lopez, and Gingrich have all sung the praises of Maryam Rajavi, called for the U.S. to work towards regime change in Tehran, and treated the MEK as a legitimate Iranian government in exile.
  • peaking at an MEK rally outside Paris last year, Giuliani, who had taken speaking fees from the group when it was on the foreign terrorist organization (FTO) list, told the audience: I will not support anyone for President of the United States who isn’t clear on that slogan behind me. What does it say? It says “Regime Change.” … I will not support a candidate who does not have the moral fiber and the courage to stand up to the Ayatollah and tell him “We are going to do everything we can to get you out and you are never going to become a nuclear power.” Bolton, who also advocated for the group when it was on the FTO list, told an MEK audience outside Paris last summer: There is only one answer here: To support legitimate opposition groups that favor overthrowing the military theocratic dictatorship in Tehran, and it should be the declared policy of the United States of America and all of its friends to do just that at the earliest opportunity. Gingrich, who also spoke for the group before it was delisted, told the 2016 gathering in Paris: There are no moderates in the dictatorship. The dictatorship cannot be trusted. The [nuclear] agreement made with it is insane.
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  • He concluded by praising the commitment of Rajavi’s followers, saying: I want you to know that the message I will take home to America is that there are thousands and thousands of Iranians who are prepared, who are ready, who are committed to and who believe that we can truly bring democracy to Iran. Lopez, who serves as a vice president at the Center for Security Policy, a far-right think tank headed by anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney, and as executive director of the long-time MEK advocacy group, the Iran Policy Committee, from 2005 to 2006, wrote that Prince Turki’s surprising appearance marked a watershed moment for the MEK. She wrote: …[T]he implications of official Riyadh government support for the largest, most dedicated, and best-organized Iranian opposition movement will reverberate through the Middle East. Although not openly stated by bin Faisal, the new NCRI-Riyadh alliance may be expected to involve funding, intelligence sharing, and possible collaboration in operations aimed at the shared goal of overthrowing the current Tehran regime. If Lopez, Giuliani, Bolton, or Gingrich serve in the Trump administrations, the MEK will have the highest level access its ever enjoyed in the U.S. government, a remarkable journey for a fringe Islamic-Marxist group that, until 2012, was on the State Department’s terrorism list for its role in assassinating Americans.
Paul Merrell

US Spy Chief Presents Third-Party Debates as Proof RT Is Anti-US - Antiwar.com Blog - 0 views

www.antiwar.com/...debates-as-proof-rt-is-anti-us

shared by Paul Merrell on 07 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • The Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s latest report on the alleged “election hacking” by Russia includes a substantial section focused around the idea that Russian government-funded channel RT is overtly anti-American. This is a common enough accusation, but when set out in a multi-page report format, a lot of the charges fall remarkable short. Nowhere was this more apparent, however, than on the first page of the Annex on RT, which presented the fact that RT America hosted US presidential debates which included third-party candidates. There has of course been long-standing annoyance among many in the US that the “mainstream” US media’s debates consistently exclude all but the Democratic and Republican candidates. US spy agencies, however, see this exclusion as such a core aspect of US democracy that they are presenting more inclusive debates as inherently anti-American. In 2012 RT hosted a third-party candidates debate which included Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein. In 2016 RT ran a pair of primary debates for the same two parties focusing on foreign policy as well as electoral reform. Beyond giving third parties an avenue of debate, the Annex also accuses RT of myriad other “misdeeds” of a similarly dubious nature, complaining RT introduced the show “Breaking the Set” in 2012 with an eye toward “the promotion of radical discontent,” and ran stories critical of the environmental fallout of fracking.
  • While anti-fracking news is common across a lot of media outlets, the report concluded that the only reason RT could possibly be concerned with the practice was that they were trying to protect the profits of major Russian natural gas giant OAO Gazprom. The report also notes RT coverage of police brutality in the US, its sympathy for the Occupy Wall Street movement, and criticism of mass surveillance as signs they were trying to “undermine viewers’ trust in US democratic procedures.”
  • Paul Merrell on 07 Jan 17
     
    Note to DNI James Clapper: You've mistakenly conflated the message and the messenger. Millions of Americans were upset by those issues long before RT piled on; have you granted them all Russian citizenship?
Paul Merrell

IMF's Lagarde guilty of 'negligence' but avoids sentence over 2008 payout - France 24 - 0 views

www.france24.com/...008-payout-french-tycoon-tapie

banksters IMF Lagarde France conviction corruption

shared by Paul Merrell on 19 Dec 16 - No Cached
  • A French court on Monday convicted International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde of "negligence" for her role in a controversial €400 million payout to a French tycoon in 2008 while she was finance minister. The Court of Justice did not hand down a sentence, a decision welcomed by her lawyer, Patrick Maisonneuve, as a "partial" victory. “We wanted a complete acquittal, instead we got a partial one,” said Maisonneuve. “The court has decided to not to penalise her – in fact, the court even decided this should not go on Madame Lagarde’s criminal record.” Lagarde, 60, was accused of approving a controversial €400 million ($425 million) payout to businessman Bernard Tapie in an out-of-court settlement when she was finance minister under former president Nicolas Sarkozy.
  • An arbitration panel ordered the payout to Tapie in connection with his sale of sportswear company Adidas. The panel upheld Tapie's claim that the Crédit Lyonnais bank had defrauded him by intentionally undervaluing Adidas at the time of the sale and that the state – as the bank's principal shareholder – should compensate him. It was Lagarde who, in her role as French finance minister, ordered the case to be heard by an arbitration panel instead of proceeding through the regular courts. Critics say that Lagarde ensured Tapie received preferential treatment by referring the matter to arbitration as a quid pro quo for his financial support for Sarkozy during his 2007 presidential bid. They also argue that the state should not have paid compensation to a convicted criminal who was bankrupt at the time and would not have been able to pursue the case in court. Tapie spent six months in prison in 1997 for match-fixing during his time as president of popular French football club, Olympique Marseille.
  • Tapie was placed under formal investigation for committing fraud in late June of 2013. He was ordered to pay back the money starting in December of last year. The "Tapie affair" has entangled several other high-profile figures, including Sarkozy’s ex-chief of staff Claude Guéant and Stéphane Richard, Lagarde’s former chief of staff at the finance ministry and now chief executive of Orange. Lagarde was appointed managing director of the IMF in July 2011. Lagarde served as French finance minister from June 2007 and also served as minister of foreign trade for two years. Before entering politics she worked as an anti-trust and labour lawyer, and was a partner with the international law firm of Baker & McKenzie.
Paul Merrell

Congress Votes to Give Jihadists Anti-Aircraft Missiles | Global Research - Centre for ... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5562564

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Syria MANPADs legislation Obama

shared by Paul Merrell on 19 Dec 16 - No Cached
  • On Thursday, the Senate passed a bill that puts every American who travels by plane at risk.  It is among the stupidest pieces of legislation ever written and it explains– to a great extent– why the US Congress has a public approval rating of 13 percent and is among the most loathed institutions in America. The 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) passed the House last Friday in a 375-34 vote. On Thursday, it cleared the senate with a 92 to 7 margin.  The bill will now be sent to Obama where it is expected to be signed into law. According to an article on SOFREP titled  “Congress authorizes anti-aircraft missiles for Syrian opposition”: Congress for the first time authorized the Department of Defense to provide vetted-Syrian rebels with anti-aircraft missiles. The provision is contained within the $619 billion Fiscal Year 2017 National Defense Authorization Act, which passed the Senate on Dec. 8 and the House on Dec. 2. Under the bill, the Secretaries of Defense and State must submit a report to Congress explaining why they determined Syrian groups need man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS). (SOFREP: Trusted News and Intelligence From Spec Ops Veterans, “Congress authorizes anti-aircraft missiles for Syrian opposition”)
  • You read that right, Congress just passed a bill that will provide shoulder-launched ground-to-air missiles to lunatic jihadists who will undoubtedly use them to take down American or Israeli jetliners. The argument that these Islamic militants are fully vetted is complete nonsense as both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have repeatedly shown. According to a recent article in the New York Times, rebel groups supported by the USG  “have entered into battlefield alliances with the affiliate of al Qaida in Syria formerly known as al Nusra.”  The Wall Street Journal reports that rebel groups are “doubling-down on their alliance with al Qaida. This alliance has rendered the phrase ‘moderate rebels’ meaningless.” Everyone who has followed developments on the ground in Syria knows that the distinction between the “good” terrorists and the “bad” terrorists is pure bunkum. The various militias are merely the many heads of the same homicidal anti-government hydra that has killed over 400,000 Syrians and decimated a large part of the country. The CIA should not be assisting any of these madmen let alone providing them with lethal state-of the-art weapons that will inevitably be used to take down US aircraft.  Here’s more from the same article: The inclusion of the provision represents a departure from previous versions of the NDAA. The original House bill specifically prohibited the transfer of MANPADS to “any entity” in Syria, while the Senate bill did not address it. So, the original bill forbid “the transfer of MANPADS” to Syrian militants because it was considered too dangerous. But now that Obama’s proxy-army is getting pulverized in Aleppo,  Congress has taken off the gloves and gone into full-revenge mode.  Isn’t that what’s really going on?
  • And it looks like Obama has already given this crazy policy a big thumbs up. Check out this “Presidential Determination and Waiver ….on the Arms Export Control Act to Support U.S. Special Operations to Combat Terrorism in Syria” that the White House issued late Thursday: By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, including section 2249a of title 10, United States Code, sections 40 and 40A of the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) (22 U.S.C. 2780 and 2781), and section 301 of title 3, United States Code, I hereby: determine that the transaction, encompassing the provision of defense articles and services to foreign forces, irregular forces, groups, or individuals engaged in supporting or facilitating ongoing U.S. military operations to counter terrorism in Syria, is essential to the national security interests of the United States.(Presidential Determination and Waiver) It looks to me like our Nobel prize-winning president just gave Congress’s idiot plan his ringing endorsement.
  • Paul Merrell on 19 Dec 16
     
    Mike Whitney eloquently expresses my anger.
Paul Merrell

New WikiLeaks Trove Further Exposes TISA's Neoliberal Agenda - 0 views

www.mintpressnews.com/...216768

trade-agreements TISA services China State-Owned-Enterprises

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 May 16 - No Cached
  • WikiLeaks on Wednesday released a trove of documents detailing previously unknown pro-corporate provisions and updates to the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA), exposing the extent to which the U.S.-driven deal will force signatory nations to privatize public services and deregulate corporations. As the 52 nations involved in TISA comprise a full two-thirds of global GDP, the deal is poised to impact billions of lives around the world. The 18th round of negotiations on TISA resumed Thursday. Released for the very first time on Wednesday was TISA’s annex on “State-Owned Enterprises” (SOEs), which mandates that public services must be treated like private businesses. The documents reveal that the annex was introduced only two days after the U.S. successfully forced through similar text in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TTP) in October 2015.
  • Trade expert Jane Kelsey, who teaches law at the University of Auckland, described how the U.S. pushed through such provisions in order to target other nations’ public services—and China’s in particular: When the [TPP] negotiations began in 2010 the U.S. made it clear that it required a chapter on SOEs. The goal was always to create precedent-setting rules that could target China, although the U.S. also had other countries’ SOEs in its sights—the state-managed Vietnamese economy, various countries’ sovereign wealth funds, and once Japan joined, Japan Post’s banking, insurance and delivery services. All the other countries were reluctant to concede the need for such a chapter and the talks went around in circles for several years. Eventually the U.S. had its way. “The U.S. proposal for TISA adopts and adapts key parts of the [TPP] chapter that force majority-owned SOEs to operate like private sector businesses,” Kelsey added. “The most extreme, complicated and potentially unworkable provisions in the [TPP] relating to state support are not included—yet. But there is an extraordinary power for a single TISA party to require the development of those rules if another TISA country, or a country seeking to join TISA, has too many large SOEs.”
  • Observers have long taken note of the implicitly anti-China stance of the several U.S.-backed pro-corporate “free trade” deals being negotiated now. While TISA is perhaps the least well-known of these agreements, together with the TPP and the TransAtlantic Trade and Investment Pact (TTIP), the deals “form not only a new legal order shaped for transnational corporations, but a new economic ‘grand enclosure,’ which excludes China and all other BRICS countries,” as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange put it last year. The leaked documents also showed new, multinational-friendly updates to sections of the deal titled “Domestic Regulation,” “Transparency,” and “New Provisions.” The latest versions, argues WikiLeaks, have further advanced towards the ‘deregulation’ objectives of big corporations entering overseas markets. Local regulations like store size restrictions or hours of operations are considered an obstacle to achieve ‘operating efficiencies’ of large-scale retailing, disregarding their public benefit that foster livable neighbors and reasonable hours of work for employees.
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  • Consumer protection advocates are outraged that such radically pro-corporate deals are being hidden and negotiated away from public view. “Consumer organizations shouldn’t have to rely on leaks to find out about negotiations that will have a major impact on consumers’ lives,” said Amanda Long, general director of the UK-based Consumers International, on Wednesday. “Without greater transparency, the negotiations can’t be exposed to the scrutiny needed to design a good agreement and build public trust, this must be a priority.” The impact of such an agreement will indeed be major: “The TISA provisions in their current form will establish a wide range of new grounds for domestic regulations to be challenged by corporations—even those without a local presence in that country,” WikiLeaks concluded. Kelsey observed, “As President Obama said of the [TPP] in October 2015, these agreements are about the U.S. making the rules for the global economy in the 21st century[…] in ways that ‘reflect America’s values.'”
Paul Merrell

Brazil: The Provisional Banana Scoundrel Republic - 0 views

sputniknews.com/...zil-latam-banana-republic.html

Brazil corruption car-wash-investigation coup Rousseff-impeachment Temer

shared by Paul Merrell on 31 May 16 - No Cached
  • Every political junkie on the planet has to be glued to the ongoing Brazilian House of Cards, consistently offering an unparalleled feast of cheap thrills.The latest cliffhanger was the leak of a conversation between one of the key operators involved in the oil giant Petrobras corruption scandal and a senator and short-lived Minister of Planning in the usurper interim government currently replacing President Dilma Rousseff while she is undergoing an impeachment trial by the Senate.  Call the leak a short autopsy of what from the beginning should have been defined as golpeachment; a mix of coup (“golpe”, in Portuguese) and impeachment, which took place in a one/two sequential vote in the Brazilian Congress and Senate, as a notorious congregation of crooks investigated for myriad offenses and crimes seized power in Brasilia in a full-fledged Buffon’s Opera. I call their scam Provisional Banana Scoundrel Republic (PBSR).  
  • The leak/autopsy duly unveiled how the PBSR cancer progressed.  One of the key plotters outlines the coup; stresses how it should protect Brazilian plutocracy/kleptocracy from unintended consequences of the ongoing, two-year-old Car Wash corruption investigation; and how the Left – from President Rousseff to Lula and the Workers’ Party – should be criminalized for good. 
  • The rest would be history, including the demolition of recently acquired social and workers’ rights via the imposition of a neoliberal restoration; total reversion in foreign policy, with geopolitical and geoeconomic relations back to a colonized mindset; and the reestablishment of a conservative, neoliberal, rentier hegemonic class lording over a socially-oriented, democratic society. That fits in with the current Brazilian Congress and Senate dominated by “BBB” interests. “BBB” stands for Beef (the powerful agribusiness lobby); Bullet (the weapons and private security complex); and Bible (evangelical fanatics), all supported by corporate media. Many of these unsavory characters are connected and/or represent the toxic Brazilian rural aristocracy – which are in fact heirs to nobility titles handed over to slave owners. It was going all so swell after only a few days – even with the former head of the lower house, notorious crook Eduardo Cunha, temporarily sidelined; Cunha – the ringleader of a campaign financing scam inside Congress – de facto had become the Prime Minister of the puppet former Vice-President and current, interim President Michel Temer. 
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  • The key variable from now on is how the PBSR gang will maneuver – possibly illegally — to cling to power. The Public Ministry and the Federal police are totally politicized. Increasingly there are no mediation powers. The PBSR gang will take no prisoners. The Public Ministry will go after Lula while the attorney general will try to block any chance of Rousseff being reinstated. Meanwhile, the social democrats turned neoliberal enforcers – key associates of the PBSR — will keep advancing their own agenda; hardcore privatizations; handing over the exploration of the pre-salt oil deposits to US Big Oil; and dutifully prostrating as Washington vassals. One just needs to examine the extreme interest by the US Department of Justice on all things related to the Car Wash investigation to infer how Washington is deeply involved in smashing leading Brazilian corporations.   
  • Washington has not had the balls to do it directly – relying on minions such as the State Department spokesman and the interim ambassador to the OAS. But the message is unmistakable; golpeachment is legal, and Washington trusts Brazilian “democratic institutions”. Compare it to the Russian Foreign Ministry, which alerted to “foreign interference” in Brazilian affairs. The new Brazilian Foreign Minister – a sore loser (twice) in presidential elections won by the Workers’ Party – took no time to launch his glorious Vassal of Washington/US Big Capital policy. He already issued a veiled “threat” to Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador and El Salvador. Mercosur will be sidelined to the benefit of the Pacific Alliance – where Mexico, Peru and Colombia are under Washington’s wings. Unasur will be ditched.
  • And then there’s the stale ice cream in the scoundrel’s tart; the “B” in BRICS is now dormant. This means the role of Brazil in the BRICS bank will be seriously compromised. Granted, the BRICS were never a homogenous group and have been riddled with conflicting interests. For instance, India’s nuclear-sharing agreement with the US effectively ties it up with Washington. The next BRICS summit is in India, in October. Brazil risks the ignominy of being represented by the PBSR gang.  Meanwhile, make no mistake; as much as the Car Wash investigation was revealed to be a totally politicized drive – where fighting corruption was just a convenient cover – the PBSR gang and their allies will do everything to get rid of the 2018 direct presidential elections. So here’s the sorry Brazilian road map up to 2018; total political, economic, social and juridical chaos. 
  • Paul Merrell on 31 May 16
     
    Pepe Escobar, himself a Brazilian expatriate journailist, riffs on the Brazilian coup-gone-sour-by-discllosure-of-plans. If you have a browser extension to do translations, read the article linked from the "U.S. Department of Justice" text. It seems that the U.S. played a part in setting the coup in motion. Surprise, surprise. A very fun read. 
Paul Merrell

Panama Papers database of offshore companies goes public - Chicago Tribune - 0 views

www.chicagotribune.com/...c-database-20160509-story.html

banksters Panama-Papers database

shared by Paul Merrell on 14 May 16 - No Cached
  • group of investigative journalists made live the names of thousands of offshore companies based on a massive trove of data on the finances of the rich and powerful that has become known as the Panama Papers.The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists made data on 200,000 entities available on Monday at 1 p.m. CT on its website. They contain basic corporate information about companies, trusts and foundations set up in 21 jurisdictions including Hong Kong and the U.S. state of Nevada. The data was obtained from Panamanian law firm Mossack Foneca, which said it was hacked.Users can search the data and see the networks involving the offshore companies, including, where available, Mossack Fonseca's internal records of the true owners.
  • It won't be the full cache of data commonly known as the Panama Papers, since the database will exclude information and documents on bank accounts, phone numbers and emails.The ICIJ said it was putting the information online "in the public interest" as "a careful release of basic corporate information" as it builds on an earlier database of offshore entities.Setting up an offshore company is not by itself illegal or evidence of illegal conduct, and Mossack Fonseca said it observed rules requiring it to identify its clients.But anti-poverty campaigners say shell companies can be used by the wealthy and powerful to shield money from taxation, or to launder the gains from bribery, embezzlement and other forms of corruption. The Group of 20 most powerful economies has agreed that individual governments should make sure authorities can tell who really owns companies, but implementation in national law has lagged.
Paul Merrell

Freedom for Saif al-Islam Gaddafi! Freedom for Libya! - nsnbc international | nsnbc int... - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...slam-gaddafi-freedom-for-libya

war & peace Libya Gadafi reconstruction

shared by Paul Merrell on 15 Jul 16 - No Cached
  • The news that Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the son of the assassinated leader of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya Muammar Gaddafi, has been released from captivity is one of the most significant developments in Libya in some time. For while the Western corporate media would like people to believe that the Gaddafi name is dead and buried, the fact remains that Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, and the surviving members of the Gaddafi family, are seen as heroes by many in Libya. Moreover, Saif’s release has the potential to transform the political situation in the country.
  • Although details are few and far between, what we do know is that according to his lawyer at the International Criminal Court (ICC), Saif Gaddafi “was given his liberty on April 12, 2016.” Indeed official documents (which remain unverified) seem to support the assertion that Saif has, in fact, been released. Considering the statements from his attorneys that Saif is “well and safe and in Libya,” the political ramifications of this development should not be underestimated. Not only is Saif Gaddafi the second eldest and most prominent of Col. Gaddafi’s sons, he is also the one seen as the inheritor of his father’s legacy of independent peaceful development and the maintenance of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. This last point is of critical importance as his release is a clear signal to many Libyans that the resistance to the NATO-imposed chaos and war is alive and well. And while there have been isolated upsurges of pro-Gaddafi sentiments at various times in the last five years, they mostly remained underground. Perhaps it might soon be time for the resistance to once again become united as it moves to drive out the terrorists and opportunists who have torn the jewel of Africa apart these last five years.
  • It is against this dizzying political backdrop that one must examine the significance of a potential return for Saif al-Islam Gaddafi. Saif remains a hero to many Libyans who see in him the inheritor of the independent spirit of his father, a man whose education and erudition, and most importantly wartime experience, make him a natural leader. It should be remembered that Saif was the main advocate of the rapprochement between Libya and the West in the early 2000s, spearheading the campaign for Libya’s disarmament of its nuclear and long-range ballistic missiles program. However, by 2011 and the US-NATO illegal war on Libya, Saif had changed his tune, regretting terribly his having taken western leaders at their word. In a now infamous interview with RT conducted in the midst of the NATO war, Saif stated: “Many countries, Iran and North Korea are among them, told us it was our mistake to give up, to have stopped developing long-range missiles and to become friendly with the West. Our example means one should never trust the West and should always be on alert – for them it is fine to change their mind overnight and start bombing Libya…One of our biggest mistakes was that we delayed buying new weapons, especially from Russia, and delayed building a strong army. We thought Europeans were our friends; our mistake was to be tolerant with our enemies.”
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  • And today, nearly five years later, Saif remains the chosen son of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya – a man who has endured five years of confinement at the hands of his one-time enemies, who has remained defiant of the US and of its puppet institutions such as the International Criminal Court. His is the man who for so many represents the promise of a better future by symbolizing a better past. And this is why factions inside Libya, and their backers in the US and Europe, are terrified of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi; they understand perfectly what he represents. They know that Saif commands the loyalty and respect of the majority of Libyans, far more than any other single faction. They know that Saif is backed by the most influential tribes in the country, as well as what remains of the Green Resistance which has emerged at key moments in the last few years, including the brief takeover of a critical air base in the southern city of Sabha in January 2014. They know that Saif is the only individual leader left in Libya who can unite the disparate political formations into a single force prepared to finally defeat the jihadist elements backed by the US-NATO. But the fear of Saif runs even deeper than just the theoretical leadership that he represents. Rather, the powers that be fear the political force he already is. When Saif’s death sentence was handed down by a kangaroo court in Tripoli, supporters of Gaddafi (Qadafi – Qaddafi edt) ) and the Jamhiriya took to the streets in Benghazi, Sirte, Bani Walid, and a number of other cities across the country, despite ISIS and Al Qaeda terrorists in control of much of those cities. At the risk of their own lives, these Libyans carried portraits of the assassinated Col. Gaddafi and Saif al-Islam, chanting their names and calling for a restoration of the socialist government. Consider the devotion necessary for followers to risk life and limb in a show of political support. Now imagine what would happen with Saif free.
  • Sources in Libya, and among those who have fled to neighboring countries, as well as Europe, have noted that elements of the former Gaddafi government have been working closely with the Sisi government in Egypt. While it is difficult to confirm independently, such a move is entirely plausible considering the common jihadi enemy both face in Libya which shares a long, porous border with Egypt. Assuming that the collaboration is true, it presents yet another reason why the US and its proxies, to say nothing of the terror groups inside Libya, would greatly fear Saif’s freedom. With the backing of an assertive Egypt, the all-important tribal councils, and elements of the disparate factions on the ground, Saif would instantly become the single most powerful man in Libya. And for those in the West, it is incumbent on everyone to vigorously and publicly defend Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, and to redouble efforts to back him. Saif represents a chance for Libya to be rebuilt, for the country to be pulled from the morass of chaos manufactured by the US and its NATO partners. Saif is the hope of the Libyan people who have suffered unspeakable horrors these last five years. Even those who have no love lost for Gaddafi understand the importance of reconstituting a single, united Libya under a single, united government. Only Saif al-Islam Gaddafi can do that now. And that’s why freedom for Saif might one day mean freedom for Libya.
Paul Merrell

Hawaii becomes first U.S. state to place gun owners on FBI database | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...s-hawaii-gun-law-idUSKCN0ZA3IP

2nd-Amendment firearm-registration Hawaii FBI

shared by Paul Merrell on 28 Jun 16 - No Cached
  • Hawaii's governor signed a bill making it the first state to place its residents who own firearms in a federal criminal record database and monitor them for possible wrongdoing anywhere in the country, his office said.The move by gun control proponents in the liberal state represents an effort to institute some limits on firearms in the face of a bitter national debate over guns that this week saw Democratic lawmakers stage a sit-in at the U.S. House of Representatives.Hawaii Governor David Ige, a Democrat, on Thursday signed into law a bill to have police in the state enroll people into an FBI criminal monitoring service after they register their firearms as already required, his office said in a statement.The Federal Bureau of Investigation database called "Rap Back" will allow Hawaii police to be notified when a firearm owner from the state is arrested anywhere in the United States.Hawaii has become the first U.S. state to place firearm owners on the FBI's Rap Back, which until now was used to monitor criminal activities by individuals under investigation or people in positions of trust such as school teachers and daycare workers
  • The law could affect gun owners outside Hawaii, because the state requires visitors carrying guns to register, Hunter said. As a result, they could be added to "Rap Back" because they arrived in the state with a gun, she said. The Hawaii attorney general's office said a weapon-carrying visitor should be able to petition for removal from the national database after leaving the state.
  • Ige's office said he also signed into law two other firearms bills. One makes convictions for stalking and sexual assault among the criminal offenses disqualifying a person from gun ownership. The other requires firearm owners to surrender their weapons if diagnosed with a mental, behavioral or emotional disorder.
  • Paul Merrell on 28 Jun 16
     
    Goverrnment tracking of those who exercise a constitutional right? Scary stuff.
Paul Merrell

Microsoft Says U.S. Is Abusing Secret Warrants - 0 views

theintercept.com/...u-s-is-abusing-secret-warrants

surveillance state Microsoft DoJ litigation 4th-Amendment 1st Amendment gag-orders

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • “WE APPRECIATE THAT there are times when secrecy around a government warrant is needed,” Microsoft President Brad Smith wrote in a blog post on Thursday. “But based on the many secrecy orders we have received, we question whether these orders are grounded in specific facts that truly demand secrecy. To the contrary, it appears that the issuance of secrecy orders has become too routine.” With those words, Smith announced that Microsoft was suing the Department of Justice for the right to inform its customers when the government is reading their emails. The last big fight between the Justice Department and Silicon Valley was started by law enforcement, when the FBI demanded that Apple unlock a phone used by San Bernardino killer Syed Rizwan Farook. This time, Microsoft is going on the offensive. The move is welcomed by privacy activists as a step forward for transparency — though it’s also for business reasons.
  • Secret government searches are eroding people’s trust in the cloud, Smith wrote — including large and small businesses now keeping massive amounts of records online. “The transition to the cloud does not alter people’s expectations of privacy and should not alter the fundamental constitutional requirement that the government must — with few exceptions — give notice when it searches and seizes private information or communications,” he wrote. According to the complaint, Microsoft received 5,624 federal demands for customer information or data in the past 18 months. Almost half — 2,576 — came with gag orders, and almost half of those — 1,752 — had “no fixed end date” by which Microsoft would no longer be sworn to secrecy. These requests, though signed off on by a judge, qualify as unconstitutional searches, the attorneys argue. It “violates both the Fourth Amendment, which affords people and businesses the right to know if the government searches or seizes their property, and the First Amendment, which enshrines Microsoft’s rights to talk to its customers and to discuss how the government conducts its investigations — subject only to restraints narrowly tailored to serve compelling government interests,” they wrote.
  • Paul Merrell on 16 Apr 16
     
    The Fourth Amendment argument that people have a right to know when their property has been searched or seized is particularly interesting to me. If adopted by the Courts, that could spell the end of surveillance gag orders. 
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