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White House withholds records from Senate panel's CIA inquiry | Dallas Morning News - 0 views

www.dallasnews.com/...-senate-panels-cia-inquiry.ece Obama CIA torture Senate-Intelligence-Committee cover-up
shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • The White House has been withholding for five years more than 9,000 top-secret documents sought by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence for its investigation into the now-defunct CIA detention and interrogation program, even though President Barack Obama hasn’t exercised a claim of executive privilege.In contrast to public assertions that it supports the committee’s work, the White House has ignored or rejected offers in multiple meetings and in letters to find ways for the committee to review the records, a McClatchy investigation has found.The significance of the materials couldn’t be learned. But the administration’s refusal to turn them over or to agree to any compromise raises questions about what they would reveal about the CIA’s use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques on suspected terrorists in secret overseas prisons.The dispute indicates that the White House is more involved than it has acknowledged in the unprecedented power struggle between the committee and the CIA, which has triggered charges that the agency searched the panel’s computers without authorization and has led to requests to the Justice Department for criminal investigations of CIA personnel and Senate aides.“These documents certainly raise the specter that the White House has been involved in stonewalling the investigation,” said Elizabeth Goitein, the co-director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security Program at the New York University Law School.The committee and the CIA declined to comment.
  • In a prepared statement to McClatchy, the White House confirmed that “a small percentage” of the 6.2 million pages of documents provided to the committee were “set aside because they raise executive branch confidentiality interests.”
  • In question are 9,400 documents that came to the committee’s attention in 2009, McClatchy has learned. It’s unclear whether the CIA first gave the committee staff access to the materials before the White House withheld them.But Obama hasn’t formally decreed that the documents are protected by executive privilege, McClatchy learned. Although the doctrine isn’t mentioned explicitly in the Constitution, the Supreme Court recognized in 1974 a limited power by the White House to withhold certain communications between high officials and close aides who advise and assist them.
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White House refuses to hand over top-secret documents to Senate committee | World news ... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...re-top-secret-documents-senate war & peace torture Senate-Intelligence-Committee Obama withholding
shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • The White House is refusing to hand over top-secret documents to a Senate investigation into CIA torture and rendition of terrorism suspects, claiming it needs to ensure that “executive branch confidentiality” is respected.In the latest development in the spiralling clash between Congress and the administration over oversight of the intelligence agencies, Barack Obama’s spokesman Jay Carney confirmed that certain material from the George W Bush presidency was being withheld for fear of weakening Oval Office privacy.“This is about precedent, and the need, institutionally, to protect some of the prerogatives of the executive branch – and the office of the presidency,” said Carney.“All of these documents pertain to and come from a previous administration, but these are matters that need to be reviewed in light of long-recognised executive prerogatives and confidentiality interests.”
  • A report published by McClatchy newspapers on Wednesday night said that Senate investigators were trying to obtain an estimated 9,400 such documents relating to CIA detention and interrogation after 9/11.
  • In public, the White House has tried to stay out of a growing constitutional clash between Congress and the CIA over alleged interference in the investigation. Reuters reported that the White House chief lawyer, Kathryn Ruemmler, had tried to mediate in private between both sides in an attempt to “de-escalate” the tension.But the admission that the White House is withholding key documents is likely to renew criticism that the Obama administration is failing to live up to promises to fully investigate a dark chapter in CIA history.
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  • Udall said he had lifted a procedural obstacle he had placed on the CIA’s nominee for its next general counsel, Caroline Krass. That sets up the departure of its acting senior attorney, Robert Eatinger, who is at the centre of this week’s extraordinary battle between the Senate intelligence committee and the CIA.Krass had already cleared the Senate committee, but Udall put her on hold to gain leverage for the committee in its struggle for access to CIA documents relevant to its extensive study of the agency’s post-9/11 interrogation, rendition and detention program, which involved torture.The Senate voted Thursday to confirm Krass, sending her to Langley at a time when relations between the CIA and the Senate have reached a nadir. While Eatinger was never going to be the agency’s permanent general counsel, he is now the first explicit casualty in the row between the CIA and its Senate overseers.Eatinger, a longtime agency lawyer with counterterrorism experience, was cited on Monday by the panel’s chairwoman, Dianne Feinstein of California, in her seminal speech lashing out at the CIA. Without naming him, Feinstein indicated he was instrumental in the agency’s now-abandoned torture practices, and had been cited over 1,600 times in the classified Senate torture investigation.
  • Feinstein said Eatinger, whom senators have taken care not to name, had alerted the Justice Department to her staff’s removal of a CIA document from a classified facility – which both Feinstein and Udall cite as a conflict of interest.Ahead of Krass’s arrival at the CIA, Udall called on Eatinger to immediately recuse himself from any internal matters related to either the torture inquiry or the Senate panel generally. “We need to correct the record on the CIA’s coercive detention and interrogation program and declassify the Senate intelligence committee’s exhaustive study of it. I released my hold on Caroline Krass’s nomination today and voted for her to help change the direction of the agency,” Udall said in a statement on Thursday.
  • Paul Merrell on 16 Mar 14
     
    6 million documents. Which means that the Administration chose the time-proven tactic of emptying wastebaskets to have *something* to talk about in defense of withholding the truly damning documents. The Senate committee asked for Swiss Cheese; the administration provided only the cheese's holes. 6,400 documents is far more than the Administration will hold back if this issue winds up in court because of the truly staggering paperwork burden placed on the Administration by procedures for subpoena cases. The White House will have the burdens of proof and persuasion, with a strong presumption favoring production of the records.  For a good quick overview of the governing law and its constitutional history, see the D.C. Circuit's opinion In re sealed Case, 121 F. 3d 729 (1997),  http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=7608826439463067791
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Obama confidant's spine-chilling proposal - Salon.com - 0 views

www.salon.com/...sunstein_2 surveillance state psywar Sunstein Obama
shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • Cass Sunstein has long been one of Barack Obama’s closest confidants.  Often mentioned as a likely Obama nominee to the Supreme Court, Sunstein is currently Obama’s head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs where, among other things, he is responsible for “overseeing policies relating to privacy, information quality, and statistical programs.”  In 2008, while at Harvard Law School, Sunstein co-wrote a truly pernicious paper proposing that the U.S. Government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-”independent” advocates to “cognitively infiltrate” online groups and websites — as well as other activist groups — which advocate views that Sunstein deems “false conspiracy theories” about the Government.  This would be designed to increase citizens’ faith in government officials and undermine the credibility of conspiracists.  The paper’s abstract can be read, and the full paper downloaded, here. Sunstein advocates that the Government’s stealth infiltration should be accomplished by sending covert agents into “chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups.”  He also proposes that the Government make secret payments to so-called “independent” credible voices to bolster the Government’s messaging (on the ground that those who don’t believe government sources will be more inclined to listen to those who appear independent while secretly acting on behalf of the Government).   This program would target those advocating false “conspiracy theories,” which they define to mean: “an attempt to explain an event or practice by reference to the machinations of powerful people, who have also managed to conceal their role.”  Sunstein’s 2008 paper was flagged by this blogger, and then amplified in an excellent report by Raw Story‘s Daniel Tencer.
  • There’s no evidence that the Obama administration has actually implemented a program exactly of the type advocated by Sunstein, though in light of this paper and the fact that Sunstein’s position would include exactly such policies, that question certainly ought to be asked.  Regardless, Sunstein’s closeness to the President, as well as the highly influential position he occupies, merits an examination of the mentality behind what he wrote.  This isn’t an instance where some government official wrote a bizarre paper in college 30 years ago about matters unrelated to his official powers; this was written 18 months ago, at a time when the ascendancy of Sunstein’s close friend to the Presidency looked likely, in exactly the area he now oversees.  Additionally, the government-controlled messaging that Sunstein desires has been a prominent feature of U.S. Government actions over the last decade, including in some recently revealed practices of the current administration, and the mindset in which it is grounded explains a great deal about our political class.  All of that makes Sunstein’s paper worth examining in greater detail.
  • Initially, note how similar Sunstein’s proposal is to multiple, controversial stealth efforts by the Bush administration to secretly influence and shape our political debates.  The Bush Pentagon employed teams of former Generals to pose as “independent analysts” in the media while secretly coordinating their talking points and messaging about wars and detention policies with the Pentagon.  Bush officials secretly paid supposedly “independent” voices, such as Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher, to advocate pro-Bush policies while failing to disclose their contracts.  In Iraq, the Bush Pentagon hired a company, Lincoln Park, which paid newspapers to plant pro-U.S. articles while pretending it came from Iraqi citizens.  In response to all of this, Democrats typically accused the Bush administration of engaging in government-sponsored propaganda — and when it was done domestically, suggested this was illegal propaganda.  Indeed, there is a very strong case to make that what Sunstein is advocating is itself illegal under long-standing statutes prohibiting government ”propaganda” within the U.S., aimed at American citizens: As explained in a March 21, 2005 report by the Congressional Research Service, “publicity or propaganda” is defined by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) to mean either (1) self-aggrandizement by public officials, (2) purely partisan activity, or (3) “covert propaganda.”  By covert propaganda, GAO means information which originates from the government but is unattributed and made to appear as though it came from a third party.
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  • Covert government propaganda is exactly what Sunstein craves.  His mentality is indistinguishable from the Bush mindset that led to these abuses, and he hardly tries to claim otherwise.  Indeed, he favorably cites both the covert Lincoln Park program as well as Paul Bremer’s closing of Iraqi newspapers which published stories the U.S. Government disliked, and justifies them as arguably necessary to combat “false conspiracy theories” in Iraq — the same goal Sunstein has for the U.S.Sunstein’s response to these criticisms is easy to find in what he writes, and is as telling as the proposal itself.  He acknowledges that some “conspiracy theories” previously dismissed as insane and fringe have turned out to be entirely true (his examples:  the CIA really did secretly administer LSD in “mind control” experiments; the DOD really did plot the commission of terrorist acts inside the U.S. with the intent to blame Castro; the Nixon White House really did bug the DNC headquarters).  Given that history, how could it possibly be justified for the U.S. Government to institute covert programs designed to undermine anti-government “conspiracy theories,” discredit government critics, and increase faith and trust in government pronouncements?  Because, says Sunstein, such powers are warranted only when wielded by truly well-intentioned government officials who want to spread The Truth and Do Good — i.e., when used by people like Cass Sunstein and Barack Obama
  • Throughout, we assume a well-motivated government that aims to eliminate conspiracy theories, or draw their poison, if and only if social welfare is improved by doing so. But it’s precisely because the Government is so often not “well-motivated” that such powers are so dangerous.  Advocating them on the ground that “we will use them well” is every authoritarian’s claim.  More than anything else, this is the toxic mentality that consumes our political culture:  when our side does X, X is Good, because we’re Good and are working for Good outcomes.  That was what led hordes of Bush followers to endorse the same large-government surveillance programs they long claimed to oppose, and what leads so many Obama supporters now to justify actions that they spent the last eight years opposing.
  • Consider the recent revelation that the Obama administration has been making very large, undisclosed payments to MIT Professor Jonathan Gruber to provide consultation on the President’s health care plan.  With this lucrative arrangement in place, Gruber spent the entire year offering public justifications for Obama’s health care plan, typically without disclosing these payments, and far worse, was repeatedly held out by the White House — falsely — as an “independent” or “objective” authority.  Obama allies in the media constantly cited Gruber’s analysis to support their defenses of the President’s plan, and the White House, in turn, then cited those media reports as proof that their plan would succeed.  This created an infinite “feedback loop” in favor of Obama’s health care plan which — unbeknownst to the public — was all being generated by someone who was receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in secret from the administration (read this to see exactly how it worked).In other words, this arrangement was quite similar to the Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher scandals which Democrats, in virtual lockstep, condemned.  Paul Krugman, for instance, in 2005 angrily lambasted right-wing pundits and policy analysts who received secret, undisclosed payments, and said they lack “intellectual integrity”; he specifically cited the Armstrong Williams case.  Yet the very same Paul Krugman last week attacked Marcy Wheeler for helping to uncover the Gruber payments by accusing her of being “just like the right-wingers with their endless supply of fake scandals.”  What is one key difference?  Unlike Williams and Gallagher, Jonathan Gruber is a Good, Well-Intentioned Person with Good Views — he favors health care — and so massive, undisclosed payments from the same administration he’s defending are dismissed as a “fake scandal.”
  • Sunstein himself — as part of his 2008 paper — explicitly advocates that the Government should pay what he calls “credible independent experts” to advocate on the Government’s behalf, a policy he says would be more effective because people don’t trust the Government itself and would only listen to people they believe are “independent.”  In so arguing, Sunstein cites the Armstrong Williams scandal not as something that is wrong in itself, but as a potential risk of this tactic (i.e., that it might leak out), and thus suggests that “government can supply these independent experts with information and perhaps prod them into action from behind the scenes,” but warns that “too close a connection will be self-defeating if it is exposed.”  In other words, Sunstein wants the Government to replicate the Armstrong Williams arrangement as a means of more credibly disseminating propaganda — i.e., pretending that someone is an “independent” expert when they’re actually being “prodded” and even paid “behind the scenes” by the Government — but he wants to be more careful about how the arrangement is described (don’t make the control explicit) so that embarrassment can be avoided if it ends up being exposed.  
  • In this 2008 paper, then, Sunstein advocated, in essence, exactly what the Obama administration has been doing all year with Gruber:  covertly paying people who can be falsely held up as “independent” analysts in order to more credibly promote the Government line.  Most Democrats agreed this was a deceitful and dangerous act when Bush did it, but with Obama and some of his supporters, undisclosed arrangements of this sort seem to be different.  Why?  Because, as Sunstein puts it:  we have “a well-motivated government” doing this so that “social welfare is improved.”  Thus, just like state secrets, indefinite detention, military commissions and covert, unauthorized wars, what was once deemed so pernicious during the Bush years — coordinated government/media propaganda — is instantaneously transformed into something Good.* * * * *What is most odious and revealing about Sunstein’s worldview is his condescending, self-loving belief that “false conspiracy theories” are largely the province of fringe, ignorant Internet masses and the Muslim world.  That, he claims, is where these conspiracy theories thrive most vibrantly, and he focuses on various 9/11 theories — both domestically and in Muslim countries — as his prime example.
  • It’s certainly true that one can easily find irrational conspiracy theories in those venues, but some of the most destructive “false conspiracy theories” have emanated from the very entity Sunstein wants to endow with covert propaganda power:  namely, the U.S. Government itself, along with its elite media defenders. Moreover, “crazy conspiracy theorist” has long been the favorite epithet of those same parties to discredit people trying to expose elite wrongdoing and corruption. Who is it who relentlessly spread “false conspiracy theories” of Saddam-engineered anthrax attacks and Iraq-created mushroom clouds and a Ba’athist/Al-Qaeda alliance — the most destructive conspiracy theories of the last generation?  And who is it who demonized as “conspiracy-mongers” people who warned that the U.S. Government was illegally spying on its citizens, systematically torturing people, attempting to establish permanent bases in the Middle East, or engineering massive bailout plans to transfer extreme wealth to the industries which own the Government?  The most chronic and dangerous purveyors of “conspiracy theory” games are the very people Sunstein thinks should be empowered to control our political debates through deceit and government resources:  namely, the Government itself and the Enlightened Elite like him.
  • It is this history of government deceit and wrongdoing that renders Sunstein’s desire to use covert propaganda to “undermine” anti-government speech so repugnant.  The reason conspiracy theories resonate so much is precisely that people have learned — rationally — to distrust government actions and statements.  Sunstein’s proposed covert propaganda scheme is a perfect illustration of why that is.  In other words, people don’t trust the Government and “conspiracy theories” are so pervasive precisely because government is typically filled with people like Cass Sunstein, who think that systematic deceit and government-sponsored manipulation are justified by their own Goodness and Superior Wisdom.
  • The point is that there are severe dangers to the Government covertly using its resources to “infiltrate” discussions and to shape political debates using undisclosed and manipulative means.  It’s called “covert propaganda” and it should be opposed regardless of who is in control of it or what its policy aims are. UPDATE II:  Ironically, this is the same administration that recently announced a new regulation dictating that “bloggers who review products must disclose any connection with advertisers, including, in most cases, the receipt of free products and whether or not they were paid in any way by advertisers, as occurs frequently.”  Without such disclosure, the administration reasoned, the public may not be aware of important hidden incentives (h/t pasquin).  Yet the same administration pays an MIT analyst hundreds of thousands of dollars to advocate their most controversial proposed program while they hold him out as “objective,” and selects as their Chief Regulator someone who wants government agents to covertly mold political discussions “anonymously or even with false identities.”
  • UPDATE III:  Just to get a sense for what an extremist Cass Sunstein is (which itself is ironic, given that his paper calls for ”cognitive infiltration of extremist groups,” as the Abstract puts it), marvel at this paragraph:
  • So Sunstein isn’t calling right now for proposals (1) and (2) — having Government ”ban conspiracy theorizing” or “impose some kind of tax on those who” do it — but he says “each will have a place under imaginable conditions.”  I’d love to know the “conditions” under which the government-enforced banning of conspiracy theories or the imposition of taxes on those who advocate them will “have a place.”  That would require, at a bare minumum, a repeal of the First Amendment.  Anyone who believes this should, for that reason alone, be barred from any meaningful government position.
  • Paul Merrell on 06 Apr 14
     
    This is a January 2010 article by Glenn Greenwald. The Sunstein paper referred to was published in 2008 and is at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1084585  Sunstein left the Obama Administration in 2012 and now teaches law at Harvard. He is the husband of U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice,a notorious neocon.  His paper is scholarly only in format. His major premises have no citations and in at least two cases are straw man logical fallacies that misportray the position of the groups he criticizes. This is "academic" work that a first-year-law student heading for a 1.0 grade point average could make mincemeat of. This paper alone would seem to disqualify him from a Supreme Court nomination and from teaching law. Has he never heard of the First Amendment and why didn't he bother to check whether it is legal to inflict propaganda on the American public? But strange things happen when you're a buddy of an American president. Most noteworthy, however, is that the paper unquestionably puts an advocate of waging psychological warfare against the foreign populations *and* the American public as the head of the White House White House OMB Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs from 2008 through 2012 and on Obama's short list for the Supreme Court. Given the long history of U.S. destabilization of foreign nations via propaganda, of foreign wars waged under false pretenses, of the ongoing barrage of false information disseminated by our federal government, can there be any reasonable doubt that the American public is not being manipulated by false propaganda disseminated by their own government?  An inquiring mind wants to know ...   
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White House: Al Qaeda in Iraq now 'transnational threat' | TheHill - 0 views

thehill.com/...-iraq-now-transnational-threat war & peace Iraq ISIS politics of fear
shared by Paul Merrell on 01 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Al Qaeda's violent resurgence in Iraq and expansion into Syria now represents a "transnational threat network" that could possibly reach from the Mideast to the United States, according to the White House. The teaming of al Qaeda's Iraqi cell and affiliated Islamic militant groups in Syria into the new Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) has developed into "a major emerging threat to Iraqi stability . . . and to us," a senior administration official told reporters on Wednesday. "It is a fact now that al Qaeda has a presence in Western Iraq" extending into Syria, "that Iraqi forces are unable to target," the official said. That growing presence "that has accelerated in the past six to eight months" has been accompanied by waves of bombings and attacks that threaten to throw Iraq into a full-blown civil war. 
  • Keeping ISIS from destabilizing the Iraqi government and expanding into other areas in the region is a "major focus" of this week's visit by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki to Washington. The Iraqi delegation met with Vice President Joe Biden Wednesday morning, and will meet with congressional leaders later in the day. Top defense lawmakers are already sounding the alarm on ISIS growth in the region and the threat posed by the al Qaeda faction to Iraq, Syria and ultimately the United States. "As the situation in both countries grows worse . . . we are deeply concerned that Al-Qaeda could use its new safe haven in Iraq and Syria to launch attacks against U.S. interests and those of our friends and allies," Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) along with Senate Armed Services Committee chief Carl Levin (D-Mich.), ranking member Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) wrote in a letter to President Obama. Senate Foreign Relations heads Sens. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) also co-signed the letter, sent to the White House on Tuesday. 
  • "We urge you to press [al-Maliki] to formulate a comprehensive political and security strategy that can stabilize the country, enable Iraq to realize its vast potential, and help to safeguard our nation’s enduring national security interests in Iraq," they wrote. One area lawmakers are pressing the White House and Iraqi government on is increased U.S. assistance for counterterrorism operations in the country, backed by supplies of American military weapons and intelligence. 
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  • Iraqi officials reportedly reached out to U.S. intelligence officials to see if American drones could begin conducting airstrikes against ISIS targets in Western Iraq. When asked whether the White House was considering expediting those weapon sales to Iraq, the official replied: "I will leave it up to the Iraqis to make that case." That said, the administration "is working closely with Congress" to facilitate the kind of military and intelligence aid being sought by al-Maliki from the United States. Counterterrorism support is evaluated "country by country and in Iraq that is [especially] complicated," the official said, noting the long-standing tribal and sectarian ties woven into the country's makeup. 
  • That said, the White House official ruled out the possibility of putting U.S. boots back on the ground in Iraq, in the form of military trainers, as part of any counterterrorism strategy. The White House and Pentagon failed to reach a bilateral security deal with Baghdad that would allow a handful of American troops to remain in the country after the U.S. pullout in 2011. That lack of a deal prevented Washington from fielding a postwar force in Iraq after the final withdrawal in December of that year. White House critics claim Obama's inability to lock in a postwar deal with Iraq opened the door for al Qaeda's return to power in the country. 
  • Paul Merrell on 01 Nov 13
     
    Let's see if I've got this straight. Our previous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan resulted in massive recruitment by "terrorists" who now threat our shores once again. Therefore, we should launch a third war in Iraq or at least raining Hellfire missiles on Iraq from drones. This logic seems to ignore the immutable fact that it is U.S. violence in the region that converts peaceful Arab citizens into "terrorists." The message is clear: end our military involvement in the Mideast and northern Africa. But that message seems to fall on deaf ears in Washington, D.C. That is because this is not about terrorists at all. It is about control of Pipelinestan and profits in the military-industrial complex.   
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Land Destroyer: Grisly Peshawar Slaughter - Who Created Taliban, Who Still Funds Them? - 0 views

landdestroyer.blogspot.dk/...war-slaughter-who-created.html war & peace Taliban U.S.-foreign-policy U.S.-funding Saudis UAE Qatar must-read
shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • Taliban militants stormed an army public school in the northern city of Peshawar, killing over 100, including many young students. It is believed up to 10 militants took part in the attack, dressed as soldiers to first infiltrate the school's grounds before beginning the attack.  While the details of the attack are forthcoming, the background of the Taliban and the persistent threat it represents is well established, though often spun across the Western media.  Who Put the Taliban into Power? Who is Funding them Now?  In the 1980's the United States, Saudi Arabia, and elements within the then Pakistani government funneled millions of dollars, weapons, equipment, and even foreign fighters into Afghanistan in a bid to oust Soviet occupiers. Representatives of this armed proxy front would even visit the White House, meeting President Ronald Reagan personally. 
  • In 1997, Taliban representatives would find themselves in Texas, discussing a possible oil pipeline with energy company Unocal (now merged with Chevron). The BBC would report in a 1997 article titled, "Taleban in Texas for talks on gas pipeline," that: A senior delegation from the Taleban movement in Afghanistan is in the United States for talks with an international energy company that wants to construct a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan to Pakistan. A spokesman for the company, Unocal, said the Taleban were expected to spend several days at the company's headquarters in Sugarland, Texas.
  • However, it was already claimed by the US that the Taliban had been "harboring" Osama Bin Laden since 1996, and had branded the Taliban's human rights record as "despicable." The Telegraph in an artile titled, "Oil barons court Taliban in Texas," would report (emphasis added):  The Unocal group has one significant attraction for the Taliban - it has American government backing. At the end of their stay last week, the Afghan visitors were invited to Washington to meet government officials. The US government, which in the past has branded the Taliban's policies against women and children "despicable", appears anxious to please the fundamentalists to clinch the lucrative pipeline contract. The Taliban is likely to have been impressed by the American government's interest as it is anxious to win international recognition. So far, it has been recognised only by the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. It is clear that to the West, as they were during the proxy war against the Soviets, and during attempts to forge an oil pipeline across Afghan territory, the Taliban remain a tool, not an ally - to be used and abused whenever and however necessary to advance Wall Street and Washington's agenda - a self-serving Machiavellian agenda clearly devoid of principles. 
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  • The Global Post would reveal in a 2009 investigative report that the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan was mostly funded via redirected US aid. The report titled, "Who is funding the Afghan Taliban? You don’t want to know," would state:  It is the open secret no one wants to talk about, the unwelcome truth that most prefer to hide. In Afghanistan, one of the richest sources of Taliban funding is the foreign assistance coming into the country. The report would also reveal that Taliban members were in the capital city of Kabul, directly involved in redirecting the funds, apparently under the nose of occupying NATO forces:
  • But the narrative of the "accidental" funding of Taliban militants in Afghanistan is betrayed when examining their counterparts in Pakistan and their source of funding. While the US funds roughly a billion USD a year to the Taliban in Afghanistan "accidentally," their allies in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia are confirmed to be funding the Taliban in Pakistan.In the Guardian's article, "WikiLeaks cables portray Saudi Arabia as a cash machine for terrorists," the US State Department even acknowledges that Saudi Arabia is indeed funding terrorism in Pakistan:   Saudi Arabia is the world's largest source of funds for Islamist militant groups such as the Afghan Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba – but the Saudi government is reluctant to stem the flow of money, according to Hillary Clinton."More needs to be done since Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaida, the Taliban, LeT and other terrorist groups," says a secret December 2009 paper signed by the US secretary of state. Her memo urged US diplomats to redouble their efforts to stop Gulf money reaching extremists in Pakistan and Afghanistan."Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide," she said.Three other Arab countries are listed as sources of militant money: Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.
  • Pakistani terror organization Lashkar-e-Jhangvi - which maintains ties to the Taliban - has also been financially linked to the Persian Gulf monarchies. Stanford University's "Mapping Militant Organizations: Lashkar-e-Jhangvi," states under "External Influences:"  LeJ has received money from several Persian Gulf countries including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates[25] These countries funded LeJ and other Sunni militant groups primarily to counter the rising influence of Iran's revolutionary Shiism.   Astonishingly, despite these admission, the US still works politically, financially, economically, and even militarily in tandem with these very same state-sponsors of rampant, global terrorism. In fact, Wall Street and Washington are among the chief architects and beneficiaries of this global terrorism. 
  • Just as in Libya and Syria where the US and its Persian Gulf allies funded terrorist fronts in bids to overthrow each nation's respective governments, this unholy alliance is working in Pakistan to create a militant front with which to menace political groups in Islamabad and reorder the country to reflect and serve their collective interests. And just as in Syria now, where the US feigns to be locked in battle with terrorists of their own creation, the fact that the US is funding their own enemy billions of dollars while allegedly fighting them in Afghanistan creates a perpetual conflict justifying their continued intervention in the region - overtly and covertly.  When a terrorist attack is carried out in Pakistan by the "Taliban," it must then be looked at through this lens of global geopolitical reality. Attempts by the Western media to reduce this recent attack to mere "extremism," preying on global audiences emotionally, provides impunity for the state-sponsors of the Taliban - those funding, arming, and directing their operations across the region, and then benefiting from their horrific consequences.It appears, just as in Libya, Syria, and Iraq, the West and its allies are waging a proxy war in Pakistan as well. Attempts to exploit the tragedy in Peshawar compound this insidious agenda. Those across Pakistan's political landscape must understand that their is no line these foreign interests are unwilling to cross in achieving their agenda - be it a line crossed at a perceived ally's expense, or a perceived enemy's expense. 
  • Paul Merrell on 17 Dec 14
     
    How to fight the "Long War?" Well, you need a constant supply of new enemies to fight ...
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White House wants Republicans to disqualify Trump as reactions snowball - 0 views

www.todayszaman.com/reactions-snowball_406556.html Auction 2016 Trump disqualification Obama DoD UN
shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • As international condemnation of Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump's proposal to ban Muslims from entering the US snowballs, the White House has called for Trump to be disqualified from the presidential race and urged Republican candidates to reject him. Trump called for blocking Muslims -- including prospective immigrants, students, tourists and other visitors -- from entering the US following a shooting spree in San Bernardino, California, by a Muslim couple whom authorities said had been radicalized. The White House lambasted Trump's proposal for the ban, maintaining on Tuesday that Trump's outburst disqualified him from becoming president and called on Republican Party presidential hopefuls to disavow him with immediate effect. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Trump's campaign had a "dustbin of history" quality to it and said his comments were offensive and toxic, according to Reuters. "If they are so cowed by Mr. Trump and his supporters that they're not willing to stand by the values enshrined in the Constitution, then they have no business serving as president of the United States themselves," Earnest said, according to The Associated Press (AP).
  • The Pentagon, the headquarters of the US Department of Defense, warned on Tuesday that Trump's anti-Muslim rhetoric undermines US national security, especially fueling the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant's (ISIL) narrative of a US war with Islam. Asked about Trump's remarks, Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said Muslims serve in the US armed forces and that America's war strategy to combat the Islamic State hinged on support from Muslim countries, according to a Reuters report. “Anything that bolsters ISIL's narrative and pits the United States against the Muslim faith is certainly not only contrary to our values but contrary to our national security,” Cook told a news briefing, refraining to mention Trump by name. US Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Trump's proposal could thwart US efforts to connect with the Muslim community and Secretary of State John Kerry said his ideas were not constructive. The Pentagon counts thousands of service members who self-identify as Muslims. Data released by the US Defense Department showed that 3,817 active-duty members and 2,079 members of the National Guard and reserve identified their faith as “Islam.” However the real number could well be higher as the identifications are voluntary.
  • UN secretary-general strongly opposes Trump comments UN spokesman Farhan Haq said recently UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon strongly opposes Trump's call for a ban on Muslims entering the United States. Haq said the secretary-general has repeatedly spoken out against all forms of xenophobia and statements against migrants, racial or religious groups "and that would certainly apply in this case." While political campaigns have their own dynamics, Haq said, according to AP, “we do not believe that any kind of rhetoric that relies on Islamaphobia, xenophobia, any other appeal to hate any groups, really should be followed by anyone.”
  • Paul Merrell on 12 Dec 15
     
    That figures. Trump is out-polling Hillary at the moment.
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The Washington-Wall Street Revolving Door Keeps Spinning - 0 views

www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30348.htm Banksters Bankster-Campaign-Funding Too-Big WhiteHouse-Banksters
shared by Gary Edwards on 25 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • President Obama may call bankers “fat cats” and stir the rabble against them with populist rhetoric when it serves his interest, but after the fiscal fiasco, he allowed the culprits to escape virtually scot-free. When he’s in New York he dines with them frequently and eagerly accepts their big contributions. Like his predecessors, his administration also has provided them with billions of taxpayer dollars – low-cost money that they used for high-yielding investments to make big profits. The largest banks are bigger than they were when he took office and earned more in the first two-and-a-half years of his term than they did during the entire eight years of the Bush administration. That’s confirmed by industry data. And get this. It turns out, according to The New York Times, that as President Obama’s inner circle has been shrinking, his “rare new best friend” is Robert Wolf. They play basketball, golf, and talk economics when Wolf is not raising money for the president’s campaign. Robert Wolf runs the U.S. branch of the giant Swiss bank UBS, which participated in schemes to help rich Americans evade their taxes. During hearings in 2009, Michigan’s Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the permanent subcommittee on investigations, described some of the tricks used by UBS: “Swiss bankers aided and abetted violations of U.S. tax law by traveling to this country with client code names, encrypted computers, counter- surveillance training, and all the rest of it, to enable U.S. residents to hide assets and money in Swiss accounts.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 25 Jan 12
       
      First time i've heard about Robert "the Bankster" Wolf!  Didn't realize how complicit he was in perfecting Bankster tax evasion schemes.
  • Gary Edwards on 25 Jan 12
     
    Nice grab by Marbux.   The old maxim holds true and is more important today than ever before: "Don't listen to what they say.  Watch carefully what they do!" excerpt: We've already made our choice for the best headline of the year, so far: "Citigroup Replaces JPMorgan as White House Chief of Staff." When we saw it on the website Gawker.com we had to smile - but the smile didn't last long. There's simply too much truth in that headline; it says a lot about how Wall Street and Washington have colluded to create the winner-take-all economy that rewards the very few at the expense of everyone else. The story behind it is that Jack Lew is President Obama's new chief of staff - arguably the most powerful office in the White House that isn't shaped like an oval. He used to work for the giant banking conglomerate Citigroup. His predecessor as chief of staff is Bill Daley, who used to work at the giant banking conglomerate JPMorgan Chase, where he was maestro of the bank's global lobbying and chief liaison to the White House. Daley replaced Obama's first chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who once worked as a rainmaker for the investment bank now known as Wasserstein & Company, where in less than three years he was paid a reported eighteen and a half million dollars. The new guy, Jack Lew - said by those who know to be a skilled and principled public servant - ran hedge funds and private equity at Citigroup, which means he's a member of the Wall Street gang, too. His last job was as head of President Obama's Office of Management and Budget, where he replaced Peter Orzag, who now works as vice chairman for global banking at - hold on to your deposit slip - Citigroup. Still with us? It's startling the number of high-ranking Obama officials who have spun through the revolving door between the White House and the sacred halls of investment banking.
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NSA program stopped no terror attacks, says White House panel member - Investigations - 0 views

investigations.nbcnews.com/...-says-white-house-panel-member surveillance state NSA NSA-blowback Obama call-metadata
shared by Paul Merrell on 21 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • A member of the White House review panel on NSA surveillance said he was “absolutely” surprised when he discovered the agency’s lack of evidence that the bulk collection of telephone call records had thwarted any terrorist attacks.
  • “It was, ‘Huh, hello? What are we doing here?’” said Geoffrey Stone, a University of Chicago law professor, in an interview with NBC News. “The results were very thin.”While Stone said the mass collection of telephone call records was a “logical program” from the NSA’s perspective, one question the White House panel was seeking to answer was whether it had actually stopped “any [terror attacks] that might have been really big.” Advertise | AdChoices “We found none,” said Stone. Under the NSA program, first revealed by ex-contractor Edward Snowden, the agency collects in bulk the records of the time and duration of phone calls made by persons inside the United States.Stone was one of five members of the White House review panel – and the only one without any intelligence community experience – that this week produced a sweeping report recommending that the NSA’s collection of phone call records be terminated to protect Americans’ privacy rights.The panel made that recommendation after concluding that the program was “not essential in preventing attacks.”“That was stunning. That was the ballgame,” said one congressional intelligence official, who asked not to be publicly identified. “It flies in the face of everything that they have tossed at us.”
  • The conclusions of the panel’s reports were at direct odds with public statements by President Barack Obama and U.S. intelligence officials. “Lives have been saved,” Obama told reporters last June, referring to the bulk collection program and another program that intercepts communications overseas. “We know of at least 50 threats that have been averted because of this information.”
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  • But in one little-noticed footnote in its report, the White House panel said the telephone records collection program – known as Section 215, based on the provision of the U.S. Patriot Act that provided the legal basis for it – had made “only a modest contribution to the nation’s security.” The report said that “there has been no instance in which NSA could say with confidence that the outcome [of a terror investigation] would have been any different” without the program. Advertise | AdChoices The panel’s findings echoed that of U.S. Judge Richard Leon, who in a ruling this week found the bulk collection program to be unconstitutional. Leon said that government officials were unable to cite “a single instance in which analysis of the NSA’s bulk collection metadata collection actually stopped an imminent attack, or otherwise aided the Government in achieving any objective that was time-sensitive in nature.” 
  • Stone declined to comment on the accuracy of public statements by U.S. intelligence officials about the telephone collection program, but said that when they referred to successes they seemed to be mixing the results of domestic metadata collection with the intelligence derived from the separate, and less controversial, NSA program, known as 702, to intercept communications overseas.The comparison between 702 overseas interceptions and 215 bulk metadata collection was “night and day,” said Stone. “With 702, the record is very impressive. It’s no doubt the nation is safer and spared potential attacks because of 702. There was nothing like that for 215. We asked the question and they [the NSA] gave us the data. They were very straight about it.”He also said one reason the telephone records program is not effective is because, contrary to the claims of critics, it actually does not collect a record of every American’s phone call. Although the NSA does collect metadata from major telecommunications carriers such as Verizon and AT&T, there are many smaller carriers from which it collects nothing. Asked if the NSA was collecting the records of 75 percent of phone calls, an estimate that has been used in briefings to Congress , Stone said the real number was classified but “not anything close to that” and far lower.
  • When panel members asked NSA officials why they didn’t expand the program to include smaller carriers, the answer they gave was “money,” Stone said. “They were setting financial priorities,” said Stone, and that was “really revealing” about how useful the bulk collection of telephone calls really was.An NSA spokeswoman declined to comment on any aspect of the panel’s report, saying the agency was deferring to the White House. Asked Wednesday about the surveillance panel’s conclusions about telephone record collection, White House press secretary Jay Carney said that “the president does still believe and knows that this program is an important piece of the overall efforts that we engage in to combat threats against the lives of American citizens and threats to our overall national security.”
  • Paul Merrell on 21 Dec 13
     
    Obama still believes "this program is an important piece of the overall efforts?" Whew! 
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Obama to Offer Proposal for War on Islamic State, Senators Say - Businessweek - 0 views

www.businessweek.com/...-on-islamic-state-senators-say war & peace ISIL Obama war-powers-resolution
shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • President Barack Obama told congressional leaders he will propose terms for a measure authorizing U.S. military force against Islamic State, two top Republicans said following a White House meeting today.
  • A debate over efforts to defeat Islamic State would reopen tension over the president’s authority to conduct military operations and uneasiness among some lawmakers -- mostly Obama’s fellow Democrats -- about being drawn into open-ended conflicts and ground combat.
  • A White House statement said Obama “committed to working with members of both parties” on an authorization “that Congress can pass to show the world America stands united against ISIL,” an acronym for Islamic State’s former name. Congressional leaders of both parties met with Obama today for about an hour, the first such meeting since Congress opened its new session this month with Republicans in control of both chambers for the first time in eight years.
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  • A debate over authorizing military force against Islamic State could put Republican senators considering a run for the White House in 2016 in a tricky position. Among them are Ted Cruz of Texas, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Marco Rubio of Florida. Last week’s attacks in Paris, including the murder of journalists at Charlie Hebdo, a satirical newspaper, brought the threat posed by Islamic extremists back into the spotlight.
  • Boehner, like many fellow Republicans, has criticized the president as lacking a clear strategy to defeat Islamic State. He urged Obama today to send the authorization request and said Republicans will work to build bipartisan support for its enactment, according to the speaker’s office. “There’s consensus both up here and at the White House that we need one,” South Dakota Senator John Thune, the chamber’s third-ranking Republican, told reporters following the meeting
  • Passing such an authorization could help smooth the way for confirmation of Ashton Carter, Obama’s nominee to become defense secretary, Thune said. “Getting that, kind of, elephant out of the room and dealing with that issue might clear the deck for some other foreign policy, national security issues to move as well,” he said.
  • The Senate Foreign Relations Committee in December approved a draft authorization, written by Democrats, that would have imposed a three-year limit and banned “large-scale U.S. ground combat operations.” The restrictions reflect the position of many Democrats who said they regret the open-ended 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force that Congress gave President George W. Bush following the Sept. 11 attacks by al-Qaeda. Kerry’s Conditions In December, Secretary of State John Kerry told the Senate panel that the administration would support a three-year time limit but wanted the measure to include an option for the next president to extend the authorization if necessary. He also said that authorization to target Islamic State and its affiliates shouldn’t be limited to Iraq and Syria because “it would be a mistake to advertise” to the group that it has “safe havens” elsewhere. Kerry also resisted language that would limit combat operations, saying Congress shouldn’t “pre-emptively bind the hands” of the president in case of unforeseen circumstances. He cited Obama’s assurances that he won’t send U.S. forces into ground combat.
  • Paul Merrell on 14 Jan 15
     
    The War Party is on the march. According to USA Today: "White House spokesman Shawn Turner said bipartisan leaders in Congress expressed interest in a new authorization "that provides a clear signal of support for our ongoing military operations" against the Islamic State. "At the request of bipartisan members present at today's meeting, the White House will continue to work with the congressional leaders on the details of that language, and we look forward to sharing a draft with Congress that reflects their bipartisan input," he said. "Obama will deliver his State of the Union address on Jan. 20, where he is likely to address the changing nature of the war on terror." http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/01/13/aumf-congress-obama/21706459/
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White House: racial slurs in NSA intelligence material 'unacceptable' | World news | Th... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...racial-slurs-training-material surveillance state NSA NSA-targets Muslims NSA-blowback
shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • The White House has instructed US security agencies to review their training and policy materials for racial or religious bias after documents leaked by Edward Snowden showed training material for the intelligence agencies referring to "Mohammed Raghead".After an extensive investigation by the Intercept on Wednesday reported that the NSA and the FBI spied on the emails of five prominent US activists and attorneys with Muslim backgrounds, White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said that the administration took accusations of the slurs "extremely seriously." "Upon learning of this matter, the White House immediately requested that the director of national intelligence undertake an assessment of intelligence community policies, training standards or directives that promote diversity and tolerance, and as necessary, make any recommendations changes or additional reforms," Hayden said.It is at least the second time the White House has ordered a review of agency training materials said to include offensive language.
  • Hayden declined to provide additional detail on the scope or duration of the investigation. But it is reminiscent of an earlier incident in which the White House ordered the government's vast counter-terrorism apparatus to find and purge inflammatory training material, particularly that which singled out Muslims for particular scrutiny. In 2011, this reporter published FBI training material instructing newer counter-terrorism agents that Islam itself was a threat to US national security and compared the prophet Muhammad to a cult leader. Initial FBI pushback gave way to an inquiry, at the instruction of the White House, that removed significant quantities of offensive or imprecise training material. That instruction came six years after the "Mohammed Raghead" material and stretched far beyond the FBI. Anti-Islam training material, including some urging "Hiroshima" tactics against Islamic nations, was found and removed from professional education courses for US military officers, at the behest of Army General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.
  • The Obama administration has strained to reconcile the vast counter-terrorism bureaucracy with its policy declarations that the US is not at war with Islam and has attempted, with mixed results, to cultivate a less militarized and security-focused relationship with US Muslims, often preferring the term "countering violent extremism" over "counter-terrorism".In some anti-Islam circles, the removal of the instructional material is infamous and considered evidence of an administration capitulation to Islam – the exact opposite of the concern raised by the Intercept on Wednesday. The Intercept report, by former Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald, Murtaza Hussain and Josh Meyer, suggested a persistent counter-terrorism atmosphere in which the mixture of Muslim heritage or faith and political activism attracted the scrutiny of US security agencies, despite first amendment protections. It presented the cases of five American activists and attorneys of Muslim heritage who appear to have been targeted for surveillance, at least between 2002 and 2008. None have been charged with a crime.
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  • The accusation is one of the gravest the US intelligence agencies have faced in the year since the Guardian and other news outlets began publishing material leaked by Snowden. A central aspect of the intelligence agency's public defense is that it cannot surveil US persons for constitutionally-protected activity and that its court-certified privacy protections are too robust to allow for privacy intrusions of the sort the Intercept reported.The allegation threatens to sever the tenuous relationship between US law enforcement and surveillance agencies and American Muslim communities, many of whom have long suspected that their government views them as an internal threat and not a population to be protected.The NSA, the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence sharply pushed back against the accusations that protected speech, unrelated to terrorism or espionage, turned American Muslims into counterterrorism targets.
  • US Muslim leaders and civil rights groups reacted with fury to the Intercept report.A coalition of 44 civil rights organizations wrote Obama on Wednesday to request a meeting with him, attorney general Eric Holder and FBI director James Comey. "In short, the government’s domestic counterterrorism policies treat entire minority communities as suspect, and American Muslims have borne the brunt of government suspicion, stigma and abuse," reads an open letter issued by a coalition that includes the ACLU, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Arab-American Institute, and dozens of others.In a statement, the law firm Muslim Advocates said the spying, apparently conducted between 2002 and 2008, "confirms the worst fears of American Muslims"."The federal government has targeted Americans, even those who have served their country in the military and government, simply because of their faith or religious heritage," the group said. "The report clearly documents how biased training by the FBI leads to biased surveillance."
  • Vincent Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, issued a statement comparing the surveillance of Nihad Awad of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, named by the Intercept as one of the five surveillance targets, to the infamous surveillance of the Civil Rights Movement."The NSA’s surveillance of Nihad Awad and CAIR fits the same pattern as the FBI surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr, Ella Baker, Jesse Jackson, Malcolm X, and other leaders of the civil rights movement. Then it was based on manufactured suspicions of associations with the Communist party. Now it is seemingly based on unproven claims of tangential associations with Hamas," Warren said.
  • Paul Merrell on 10 Jul 14
     
    Don't look for the American Muslim community to let go of this one anytime soon. They know they've been profiled since 9-11 but finally have proof.
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Putin orders military to take tough action against threats in Syria - MIDEAST - 0 views

www.hurriyetdailynews.com/against-threats-in-syria-.aspx war & peace Syria Russia Putin hardball
shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • Sub Categories: » HOMEPAGE / WORLD/ MIDEASTSaturday,December 12 2015, Your time is 1:49:10 AMMIDEAST >Putin orders military to take tough action against threats in Syria MOSCOW - Agence France-PressePrint Page Send to friend » Share on FacebookRussian President Vladimir Putin addresses the audience during an annual meeting at the Defence Ministry in Moscow, Russia, December 11, 2015. REUTERS PhotoPresident Vladimir Putin on Dec. 11 ordered his forces in Syria to take tough action against any threats, speaking two weeks after Turkey shot down a Russian warplane in the war-torn country."I order you to act as tough as possible," he told a defence meeting in televised remarks.     "Any targets threatening the Russian grouping or our land infrastructure should be immediately destroyed."   "I would like to warn those who would once again try to organise some sort of provocations against our servicemen," he said in a thinly veiled threat to Ankara.
  • Putin's call for a tougher military response is also likely to cause concern among monitors who have repeatedly accused Russia of conducting an indiscriminate bombing campaign and killing civilians in Syria.   Russia has been carrying out air strikes in the war-ravaged nation at the request of President Bashar al-Assad since the end of September, while a US-led coalition is conducting its own campaign targeting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).      Earlier this week Russia said it hit IS targets with missiles fired from a submarine in the Mediterranean for the first time since launching the campaign on September 30.     Putin rejected claims that Russia is using the Syrian campaign, which also saw the military fire off cruise missiles from warships in the Caspean Sea, to showcase its top weapons to the West.   "Our actions there are not guided by some unclear abstract geopolitical interests, nor are they guided by a desire to practice and test new weapons systems which is of course important in itself," Putin said at the defence meeting.   "The most important thing is not this. The most important thing is to prevent the threat to Russia itself."   Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, for his part, said ISIL jihadists now control 70 percent of Syrian territory, putting their number at 60,000.
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Suspect in Quebec Mosque Attack Quickly Depicted as a Moroccan Muslim. He's a White Nat... - 0 views

theintercept.com/...muslim-hes-a-white-nationalist terrorists™ Quebec white-power War-on-Muslims
shared by Paul Merrell on 01 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • A mass shooting at a Quebec City mosque last night left six people dead and eight wounded. The targeted mosque, the Cultural Islamic Center of Quebec, was the same one at which a severed pig’s head was left during Ramadan last June. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the episode a “terrorist attack on Muslims.” Almost immediately, various news outlets and political figures depicted the shooter as Muslim. Right-wing nationalist tabloids in the U.K. instantly linked it to Islamic violence. Fox News claimed that “witnesses said at least one gunman shouted ‘Allahu akbar!’”
  • White House press secretary Sean Spicer exploited the attack to justify President Trump’s ban on immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries. “It’s a terrible reminder of why we must remain vigilant and why the president is taking steps to be proactive rather than reactive when it comes to our nation’s safety and security,” Spicer said at this afternoon’s briefing when speaking of the Quebec City attack. But these assertions are utterly false. The suspect is neither Moroccan nor Muslim. The Moroccan individual, Mohamed Belkhadir, was actually one of the worshippers at the mosque and called 911 to summon the police, playing no role whatsoever in the shooting. The actual shooting suspect is 27-year-old Alexandre Bissonnette, a white French Canadian who is, by all appearances, a rabid anti-immigrant nationalist. A leader of a local immigration rights group, François Deschamps, told a local paper he recognized his photo as an anti-immigrant far-right “troll” who has been hostile to the group online.
  • Paul Merrell on 01 Feb 17
     
    The Trump White House continues to stack up serious mistakes.
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CIA Seeks More Time to Declassify Interrogation Documents - Secrecy News - 0 views

blogs.fas.org/...cia-more-time war & peace CIA torture declassification FOIA litigation Senate-Intelligence_Committee-Report
shared by Paul Merrell on 16 May 14 - No Cached
  • The Central Intelligence Agency today asked a court to allow more time to declassify its response to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on CIA rendition, detention and interrogation (RDI) activities, which itself is undergoing a time-consuming declassification review. “This complex process requires the careful review of over 500 pages of highly classified material. In addition, sufficient time must be allowed not only for coordination with other agencies, but — after completion of declassification review — for implementation of security measures to ensure the safety of U.S. personnel and facilities overseas,” according to a May 15 motion filed by the government in a FOIA lawsuit brought by the ACLU. “Due to the fluid nature of this process, aspects of which are beyond the CIA’s control, the Agency does not yet have a firm date by which it can complete the processing of the CIA Response [to the SSCI report] and the so-called Panetta Report, although it hopes the declassification review and accompanying processing of those documents can be completed this summer.” The CIA therefore requested an extension of time to respond, to which the ACLU plaintiffs did not consent.
  • With respect to the Senate Intelligence Committee report itself, the government promised an “expeditious” declassification review of the executive summary, findings, and conclusions. “While all declassification decisions are guided by the need to protect national security interests, the President has expressed a clear intent to declassify as much of the executive summary, findings, and conclusions of the SSCI Report as possible, and intends the declassification process to be expeditious,” the government motion said. According to an April 18 letter from then-White House counsel Katherine Ruemmler, appended to the new motion, “The President supports making public the Committee’s important review of the historical RDI program, as he believes that public scrutiny and debate will help to inform the public understanding of the program and to ensure that such a program will not be contemplated by a future administration.
  • Paul Merrell on 16 May 14
     
    Horse puckey. The quoted article is misleading, attempting to conflate two distinct sets of documents that the Court ordered the CIA to disclose after removing all properly classified information. The duty to disclose segregable portions of  records that are not classified has been in place since the early 70s. It should have been done without a lawsuit having been filed and litigated. I.e.,it was a court order the CIA knew was coming since it first received the FOIA request from the ACLU. One set is the CIA response to the Senate Committee. The other set is the DoJ's Office of Legal Counsel memoranda on the legality of torture techniques. not documents documenting the torture itself and not the CIA response to the Senate Committee. Even if he CIA really needed more time for the documents in the Senate group, the legal memoranda could be shorn of classified information in a mater of hours, not days, weeks, or months.  It's the legal memoranda disclosure that CIA and DOJ are really trying to delay. At least two of them were written and/or signed by a former head of the DoJ Office of Legal Counsel whose nomination to the First Circuit Court of Appeals is now pending in Congress. And it's crystal clear that he signed memoranda arguing that torture was legal, which bears directly on his fitness to become a federal appellate judge. It takes a lawyer without ethics or morality to argue that torture is legal. It's not, under either U.S. law or the Geneva Conventions governing warfare. Neither  is grabbing people and turning them over to other governments for torture.  Those memoranda will establish that the nominee is a war criminal. We know this because we have already had a preview in the form of a white paper on the topic released by the White House last year that it's known the same nominee had worked on. And the legal arguments in that white paper are preposterous.   The delay attempt is transparently in aid of pushing that nomination through Congress before
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Will Hillary Clinton's Emails Burn the White House? - The Daily Beast - 0 views

www.thedailybeast.com/...ails-burn-the-white-house.html Auction 2016 Hillary email-scandal Obama
shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • Hillary Clinton’s email problems are already causing headaches for her presidential campaign. But within American counterintelligence circles, there’s a mounting sense that the former secretary of state may not be the only Obama administration official in trouble. This is a scandal that has the potential to spread to the White House, as well. The Federal Bureau of Investigation can be expected to be tight-lipped, especially because this highly sensitive case is being handled by counterintelligence experts from Bureau headquarters a few blocks down Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House, not by the FBI’s Washington Field Office. That will ensure this investigation gets the needed “big picture” view, since even senior FBI agents at any given field office may only have a partial look at complex counterintelligence cases.
  • And this most certainly is a counterintelligence matter. There’s a widely held belief among American counterspies that foreign intelligence agencies had to be reading the emails on Hillary’s private server, particularly since it was wholly unencrypted for months. “I’d fire my staff if they weren’t getting all this,” explained one veteran Department of Defense counterintelligence official, adding: “I’d hate to be the guy in Moscow or Beijing right now who had to explain why they didn’t have all of Hillary’s email.” Given the widespread hacking that has plagued the State Department, the Pentagon, and even the White House during Obama’s presidency, senior counterintelligence officials are assuming the worst about what the Russians and Chinese know.
  • EmailGate has barely touched the White House directly, although it’s clear that some senior administration officials beyond the State Department were aware of Hillary’s unorthodox email and server habits, given how widely some of the emails from Clinton and her staff were forwarded around the Beltway. Obama’s inner circle may not be off-limits to the FBI for long, however, particularly since the slipshod security practices of certain senior White House officials have been a topic of discussion in the Intelligence Community for years. Hillary Clinton was far from the only senior Obama appointee to play fast and loose with classified materials, according to Intelligence Community insiders. While most counterspies agree that Hillary’s practices—especially using her own server and having her staffers place classified information into unclassified emails, in violation of federal law—were especially egregious, any broad-brush investigation into security matters are likely to turn up other suspects, they maintain. “The whole administration is filled with people who can’t shoot straight when it comes to classified,” an Intelligence Community official explained to me this week. Three U.S. officials suggested that Susan Rice, the National Security Adviser, might be at particular risk if a classified information probe goes wide. But it should be noted that Rice has made all sorts of enemies on the security establishment for her prickly demeanor, use of coarse language, and strategic missteps.
  • Paul Merrell on 03 Sep 15
     
    Sounds to me like some CIA officials of the "Cowboy" branch are trying to use the Clinton email scandal to tar the Obama Administration.  
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Wyden Ponders Release of CIA Torture Report Without White House Consent | The World's G... - 0 views

blogs.rollcall.com/...rt-without-white-house-consent war & peace torture Senate-Intelligence_Committee-Report declassification Wyden Obama
shared by Paul Merrell on 28 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • A senior Senate Democrat is firing a warning shot at the White House against stalling the release of a report about the past use of torture by the U.S. intelligence community. Sen. Ron Wyden is talking with his colleagues about the possibility of using a seldom-invoked procedure to declassify an Intelligence Committee report on the use of torture in the event the White House does not move ahead quickly. Speaking with reporters on a variety of subjects Thursday, the Oregon Democrat referred to the Senate’s “Resolution 400″ — the Abraham A. Ribicoff-sponsored resolution that established the Intelligence Committee back in 1976. Wyden said he was discussing invoking the resolution “in order to move this along if we have to, through the committee process, to get it declassified.” Matt Bai of Yahoo! News reported earlier Thursday that Wyden mentioned the same procedure to him. And it was not the first time he’s discussed the possibility. Wyden previously explained the provision in October 2013, KATU reported. The Senate Intelligence Committee voted on April 3 to provide for declassification of the report into the use of harsh interrogation practices by the CIA during the administration of President George W. Bush. That action set the gears in motion for declassification review. The report is now in the hands of the White House.
  • Paul Merrell on 28 Jul 14
     
    Senate Resolution 400 provides in relevant part that the Intelligence Committee can vote to declassify documents, giving the White House 5 days to object. If such an objection is made, then the full Senate votes on whether to declassify. It should be recognized, however, that senators' immunity from prosecution for statements made in Congress or in committee hearings in effect grants any member of Congress the ability to declassify documents simply by reading them into the Congressional Record.   
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War authorization in trouble on Hill - Manu Raju and Burgess Everett - POLITICO - 0 views

www.politico.com/...-war-authorization-115773.html war & peace ISIL AUMF Congress Obama
shared by Paul Merrell on 11 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Key Democrats are hardening their opposition to President Barack Obama’s proposal for attacking Islamic militants in Iraq and Syria, raising fresh doubts the White House can win congressional approval of the plan as concerns grow over its handling of crises around the globe. In interviews this week, not a single Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee expressed support for the president’s war plan as written; most demanded changes to limit the commander in chief’s authority and more explicitly prohibit sending troops into the conflict.
  • That opposition puts the White House and Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), the Foreign Relations Committee chairman, in a quandary — stuck between Republican defense hawks who are pushing for a more robust U.S. role against the terrorist group known as Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and liberals who fear a repeat of the Iraq war. In an interview, Corker issued a stark warning: If Democrats refuse to lend any support to Obama’s request for the Authorization for Use of Military Force against ISIL, he may scrap a committee vote, making it less likely the full Senate or House would even put it on the floor, much less pass it. The comments put pressure on the White House to deliver Democratic votes or witness the collapse of a second war authorization plan in Congress in as many years.
  • “He is asking us to do something that takes us nowhere,” Corker said of Obama. “Because from what I can tell, he cannot get one single Democratic vote from what he’s sent over. And he certainly wouldn’t get Democratic votes for something Republicans might be slightly more comfortable with. … It’s quite a dilemma.” Corker added: “Before we begin the process of considering marking up a bill, I want to know that there’s a route forward that can lead to success.” Last month, the president proposed a draft AUMF aimed at giving him the flexibility to wage war with ISIL, but also restricting his own authority. The plan would set a three-year time limit and ban “enduring offensive ground combat operations.” While ISIL, also known as ISIS, is the main enemy targeted by the plan, the U.S. would have the flexibility to attack forces “associated” with the terrorist group. And while Obama sought to rescind the 2002 Iraq War authorization, his plan would leave in place the post-9/11 war powers resolution that the U.S. is currently using to justify its ongoing military campaign against ISIL and terrorist organizations worldwide. The effort, to carve a middle ground between hawks and doves, appears to have pleased nobody on Capitol Hill. Republicans want to give this and the next president wide latitude to “degrade and destroy” ISIL, while Democrats want to impose a round of new restrictions further prohibiting ground troops while rescinding the 2001 war authorization.
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  • The new challenges facing the White House plan come as a growing number of Democrats are breaking with the administration over its handling of a range of international crises. Several Iran hawks in the Senate Democratic Caucus signed onto a bill calling on the White House to send any nuclear deal with Iran for immediate congressional approval. They were working to gather enough Democratic support to override a threatened presidential veto, but the plan has stalled temporarily over a partisan procedural squabble. Influential Democrats like Dick Durbin of Illinois have joined a push calling on the White House to toughen sanctions against Russia while arming Ukraine in the fight against Russian-backed rebels.
  • And on ISIL, Democrats say the president needs to swallow changes to his proposed draft to win backing from his own party, even if doing so could turn off even more Republicans. “No,” said New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, when asked whether he would support the president’s proposal. “I think we have to do a better job of defining what is ‘no enduring offensive combat troops.’ That is a critical element. I think if we can get past that element of it, other elements could fall into place. But we need to do a better job of that — otherwise, many members feel that is the equivalent of a blank check.”
  • It’s unclear how aggressive the president will be, but senior administration officials have indicated they would not play a heavy hand in the negotiations on Capitol Hill, at least at the onset of the debate. A White House spokesperson said, “We remain open to reasonable adjustments that are consistent with the president’s policy and that can garner bipartisan support. However, it is ultimately up to Congress to pass a new authorization.”
  • There is little margin for error on the committee, given that it is split between 10 Republicans and nine Democrats. On the Republican side, two senators who are likely running for president and have opposite foreign policy views — Rand Paul of Kentucky and Marco Rubio of Florida — will be difficult to court no matter how the proposal is structured. And the nine Democrats on the committee each have strong reservations about the president’s proposal, arguing it’s too broad in scope.
  • “If the Vietnam War taught us anything, and if the president’s interpretation of the 2001 authorization has taught us anything, it’s that Congress better be pretty specific on our authorization,” Cardin said. “The hearings and meetings we’ve had raised as many questions as they have answered,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). “I appreciate the president has done something unprecedented — he’s proposed restrictions on his authority — but it’s likely got to change for me to support it.”
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Press Gaggle by Press Secretary Josh Earnest en route Cleveland, OH, 3/18/15 | The Whit... - 0 views

www.whitehouse.gov/...st-en-route-cleveland-oh-31815 war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Israel election-2015 Netanyahu Obama
shared by Paul Merrell on 19 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Q    -- talking about the Palestinian state issue over the last couple of days, citing the election.  But now that the election is over and Prime Minister Netanyahu has been reelected, can you talk a little bit about what that means for the U.S. goals in the peace process and the hope for a two-state solution?
  • Q    -- that you guys may no longer favor a two-state solution, or that you may reevaluate sort of your ability to cooperate with Netanyahu?
  • it has long been the policy of the United States and it continues to be the view of the President that a two-state solution is the best way to address those tensions and address that instability.
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  • Q    Netanyahu said that there would not be a Palestinian state for as long as he’s Prime Minister.  So the U.S. position is that you favor a two-state solution.  But he’s saying that he doesn’t want that as long as he’s in office.  So does that mean the Mideast peace process is essentially dormant for the rest of the Obama administration?  MR. EARNEST:  It means for today -- it means that for today that based on Prime Minister Netanyahu’s comments, the United States will reevaluate our position and the path forward in the situation.
  • Paul Merrell on 19 Mar 15
     
    "And it has long been the policy of the United States and it *continues* to be the view of the President that a two-state solution is the best way to address those tensions and address that instability. ... "[T]he United States will reevaluate our position and the path forward in the situation." Those are the two most substantive sentences in quite a bit of White House Press Secretary blathering about Netanyahu's statement that there will not be a Palestinian State, chucking overboard even Israel's lip service to the 2-state solution. And at that, it doesn't say much to Joe Sixpack. But in diplomat-speak, it signals that even the future of the 2-state solution is up for discussion at the White House.  That signal should be causing heart palpitations in Israeli government and undoubtedly is within Mossad and the Israeli Defense Force. IDF went public over a year ago with its concerns that a severe national security problem was resulting in rapidly worsening isolation of Israel because of the Palestine Question and Palestine Civil Society's call for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions of settlement-produchttps://nsarchive.wordpress.com/2015/03/13/posting-foia-releases-online-saves-agencies-time-and-money/ed goods with a goal of a single-state solution.  Not a word by the White House Press Secretary about what the U.S. will do about Netanyahu's statement that there will be no Palestinian State. That underscores that the Obama Administration was taken by suprise when Netanyahu said it. But it is not a matter that Obama may delay long in announcing a far more substantive position. 
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How the US Armed-up Syrian Jihadists - Consortiumnews - 0 views

consortiumnews.com/...e-us-armed-up-syrian-jihadists war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Syria CIA DoD Special-Forces jihadis training
shared by Paul Merrell on 01 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • “No one on the ground believes in this mission or this effort”, a former Green Beret writes of America’s covert and clandestine programs to train and arm Syrian insurgents, “they know we are just training the next generation of jihadis, so they are sabotaging it by saying, ‘Fuck it, who cares?’”. “I don’t want to be responsible for Nusra guys saying they were trained by Americans,” the Green Beret added. In a detailed report, US Special Forces Sabotage White House Policy gone Disastrously Wrong with Covert Ops in Syria, Jack Murphy, himself a former Green Beret (U.S. Special Forces), recounts a former CIA officer having told him how the “the Syria covert action program is [CIA Director John] Brennan’s baby …Brennan was the one who breathed life into the Syrian Task Force … John Brennan loved that regime-change bullshit.”
  • “No one on the ground believes in this mission or this effort”, a former Green Beret writes of America’s covert and clandestine programs to train and arm Syrian insurgents, “they know we are just training the next generation of jihadis, so they are sabotaging it by saying, ‘Fuck it, who cares?’”. “I don’t want to be responsible for Nusra guys saying they were trained by Americans,” the Green Beret added. In a detailed report, US Special Forces Sabotage White House Policy gone Disastrously Wrong with Covert Ops in Syria, Jack Murphy, himself a former Green Beret (U.S. Special Forces), recounts a former CIA officer having told him how the “the Syria covert action program is [CIA Director John] Brennan’s baby …Brennan was the one who breathed life into the Syrian Task Force … John Brennan loved that regime-change bullshit.”
  • In gist, Murphy tells the story of U.S. Special Forces under one Presidential authority, arming Syrian anti-ISIS forces, whilst the CIA, obsessed with overthrowing President Bashar al-Assad, and operating under a separate Presidential authority, conducts a separate and parallel program to arm anti-Assad insurgents. Murphy’s report makes clear the CIA disdain for combatting ISIS (though this altered somewhat with the beheading of American journalist James Foley in August 2014): “With the CIA wanting little to do with anti-ISIS operations as they are focused on bringing down the Assad regime, the agency kicked the can over to 5th Special Forces Group. Basing themselves out of Jordan and Turkey” — operating under “military activities” authority, rather than under the CIA’s coveted Title 50 covert action authority. The “untold story,” Murphy writes, is one of abuse, as well as bureaucratic infighting, which has only contributed to perpetuating the Syrian conflict.
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  • But it is not the “turf wars,” nor the “abuse and waste,” which occupies the central part of Murphy’s long report, that truly matters; nor even the contradictory and self-defeating nature of U.S. objectives pursued. Rather, the report tells us quite plainly why the attempted ceasefires have failed (although this is not explicitly treated in the analysis), and it helps explain why parts of the U.S. Administration (Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and CIA Director Brenner) have declined to comply with President Obama’s will – as expressed in the diplomatic accord (the recent ceasefire) reached with the Russian Federation. The story is much worse than that hinted in Murphy’s title: it underlies the present mess which constitutes relations between the U.S. and Russia, and the collapse of the ceasefire.
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Breedlove: No-fly zone over Syria would constitute 'act of war' - News - Stripes - 0 views

www.stripes.com/...constitute-act-of-war-1.223788 war & peace Syria no-fly-zone act of war Obama Pipelinestan
shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • NAPLES, Italy — Rather than a quick and relatively painless affair, any effort to dismantle Syria’s air defenses as part of enforcing a no-fly zone would be tantamount to a declaration of war, cautioned NATO’s new military chief, Gen. Philip Breedlove. “It is quite frankly an act of war and it is not a trivial matter,” said Breedlove, NATO’s new supreme allied commanderr and head of U.S. European Command, during a recent Thursday to Naples, Italy.
  • As the debate continues about whether the U.S. and its European allies should begin to arm rebel forces in Syria and possibly impose a no-fly zone over the country to help those forces in their fight against forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, Breedlove cautioned that such actions also carry risks. “It would absolutely be harder than Libya,” said Breedlove, referring to NATO’s 2011 air bombardment that resulted in the ouster of longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi. “This is a much denser, much more capable defense system than we’d faced in Libya.” While some political leaders, such as Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., have been vocal about the need for the U.S. to arm rebel forces and support a no-fly zone, the Obama administration has so far been cautious about military involvement or sending lethal aid to rebels amid concerns that some of those fighters have ties to al-Qaida-like groups.
  • There is a widespread perception that setting up a no-fly zone is simply a matter of sending in some planes, Breedlove said. “I know it sounds stark, but what I always tell people when they talk to me about a no-fly zone is … it’s basically to start a war with that country because you are going to have to go in and kinetically take out their air defense capability,” Breedlove said. Any no-fly zone plan would be further complicated if Russia goes ahead with plans to provide Syria with advanced anti-aircraft missiles, Breedlove said. On Thursday, Assad told a Lebanese television outlet that some of Syria’s weapons contracts with Russia had been implemented, but he did not specifically mention the sophisticated S-300 anti-aircraft system. Russian media later reported that Syria would not receive the first shipment for several months.
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  • “These are some very capable systems that are being talked about,” Breedlove said. The S-300 is considered a top-of-the-line air defence system which can also be used to intercept ballistic missiles. Its automatic targeting system is reported to be capable of tracking 100 targets and engaging a dozen simultaneously at all altitudes and at ranges of up to 200 kilometers.
  • Paul Merrell on 02 Jun 13
     
    Query, whether Breedlove had authorization from the White House to make his statement that establishing a no-fly zone over Syria would constitute "an act of war?"  In the public debate over the Obama Administration's commencement of the Libyan War without Congressional authorization, the White House was adamant that creating a no fly-zone over Libya did not constitute "an act of war" in the sense of the U.S. Constitution's allocation to Congress of the power to declare war, ostensibly because no U.S. casualties were expected. (A good sound bite but a legally preposterous proposition. ) If Breedlove's statement was authorized by the White House, it would be an additional sign that the Obama Administration is back-pedaling on war with Syria because of Russian intervention to preserve the Syrian government, resulting in a strategic military stalemate.
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BENGHAZI - THE BIGGEST COVER-UP SCANDAL IN U.S. HISTORY? - WAS BENGHAZI A CIA GUN-RUNNI... - 0 views

www.libertynews.com/...r-insurgents-fighting-in-syria Benghazi Benghazigate Benghazi-coverup
shared by Gary Edwards on 09 May 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 09 May 13
     
    "LibertyNEWS.com - Editorial Team Special Report It's never fun to admit you've been lied to and duped. There is no comfort in realizing a high-level group in government has conned you. The wound created from such a realization would be deep and painful when paired with extraordinary insult when you realize the cons are people you not only trusted, but people who are tasked with protecting your rights, your liberty, your life. When these people betray you, you're in trouble - big trouble. Unfortunately, we believe America is being betrayed by powerful individuals tasked with our protection. These people are found in the White House, the Congress, the CIA and other government entities - and they're lying to you. Then they're covering it up on an epic scale, in a never-before-seen manner. Here are the basics of what the schemers in government and the complicit media would like for us all to focus on and buy into: Why wasn't there better security at the consulate (keep this misleading word in mind) in Benghazi? Why didn't authorization come to move special forces in for protection and rescue? Why was an obscure video blamed when everyone knew the video had nothing to do with it? Did Obama's administration cover-up the true nature of the attacks to win an election? Truth is, as we're starting to believe, the above questions are convenient, tactical distractions. And truth is, answers to these questions, if they ever come, will never lead to revelations of the REAL TRUTH and meaningful punishment of anyone found responsible. Rep. Darrell Issa knows this, members of the House Committee investigating the Benghazi attacks know this, the White House knows this, and much of the big corporate media infrastructure knows it, too. How do they know it? Because they know the truth. They know the truth, but cannot and/or will not discuss it in public. Here are the basics that we (America, in general) should be focusing on, but aren't: Why do media
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