Skip to main content

Home/ Socialism and the End of the American Dream/ Contents contributed and discussions participated by Paul Merrell

Contents contributed and discussions participated by Paul Merrell

Simple Middle Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics
Paul Merrell

http://www.quakerpi.org/news/letter.htm - 0 views

www.quakerpi.org/letter.htm

war & peace uh-oh Israel war crimes christian leaders

shared by Paul Merrell on 19 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • Amidst another week of deadly Israeli-Palestinian violence, fifteen faith leaders representing U.S. churches and faith organizations have called on Congress to condition U.S. military aid to Israel upon Israel’s “compliance with applicable U.S. laws and policies.” These leaders--representing Baptist, Lutheran, Catholic, Presbyterian, Methodist, Orthodox, Quaker and other major Christian groups--agree that unconditional U.S. military assistance to Israel has contributed to “sustaining the conflict and undermining the long-term security interests of both Israelis and Palestinians.”  [SEE LETTER BELOW]   As a Quaker peace lobby that has advocated for Israeli-Palestinian peace for decades in Washington, the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) is proud to be a partner in this effort.   These organizations draw upon their decades of experience in the region, during which they have collectively witnessed the horror of suicide bombing, rocket attacks, shootings of civilians, home demolitions, forced displacement, and other widespread human rights violations. These faith groups “recognize that each party — Israeli and Palestinian — bears responsibilities for its actions and we therefore continue to stand against all violence regardless of its source.”      Unconditional U.S. military aid has become one of those sources fueling violence and further entrenchment of Israel’s military occupation of the Palestinian territories. This statement highlights the United States’ responsibility to hold Israel accountable for “a troubling and consistent pattern of disregard by the government of Israel for U.S. policies that support a just and lasting peace.”
  • Congress must investigate possible violations of U.S. law The latest State Department human rights report on Israel and the Occupied Territories provides a devastating account of Israel’s human rights violations against civilians, many of which involve the misuse of U.S.-supplied weapons. This diverse religious coalition has called for “an immediate investigation into possible violations by Israel of the U.S. Foreign Assistance Act and the U.S. Arms Export Control Act,” and urges Congress to “ensure that our aid is not supporting actions by the government of Israel that undermine prospects for peace”.     The signers affirm that these are laws that “should be enforced in all instances regardless of location,” but that it is especially critical for Israel to comply with laws that regulate the use of U.S. supplied weapons, since Israel is the single largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid since World War II. Notably, the United States has initiated investigations of violations of these laws by other countries, and on four different occasions between 1978 and 1982, the Secretary of State notified Congress that Israel “may” have violated the provisions of the Arms Export Control Act.   The coalition has called for renewed investigations into human rights violations documented by the State Department’s report, including Israel’s escalation of home demolitions, forced displacement, suppression of dissent, and its use of prohibited weapons in densely populated areas during Israel’s military Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip.  
  • Echoing urgent warnings from Israeli leader The letter also echoes the urgency for immediate action to secure a diplomatic settlement to the crisis that has been acknowledged by scores of Israeli and Palestinian leaders, including Ehud Barak, Israel’s current Defense Minister and former Prime Minister. In a historic speech delivered at the prestigious Herzliya National Security Conference in Israel in early 2010, Mr. Barak warned of Israel’s future in the absence of a political settlement, saying in stark terms:   “The reality is cruel but simple. Between the Jordan River...and the Mediterranean, 12 million people live, 7.5 million Israelis and 4.5 million Palestinians. And the simple truth is that as long as in this territory to the West of the Jordan River, there is one political entity which is called Israel[...]and if this bloc of Palestinians would not be able to vote, it’s going to be an apartheid state.”     Israeli, Palestinian, and U.S. interests require urgent efforts to avoid the nightmare that Israeli leader Ehud Barak has described as an apartheid state. A just and peaceful future for Israelis and Palestinians requires that all parties to a conflict are held accountable and that a comprehensive, inclusive diplomatic settlement be secured. An essential step for Congress to support Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts is to heed these warnings, and hold Israel accountable for how it uses U.S. military aid. (See full letter at:http://www.fcnl.org/middle_east
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Dear Member of Congress,
  • Unfortunately, unconditional U.S. military assistance to Israel has contributed to this deterioration, sustaining the conflict and undermining the long-term security interests of both Israelis and Palestinians. This is made clear in the most recent 2011 State Department Country Report on Human Rights Practices covering Israel and the Occupied Territories (1), which details widespread Israeli human rights violations committed against Palestinian civilians, many of which involve the misuse of U.S.-supplied weapons. Accordingly, we urge an immediate investigation into possible violations by Israel of the U.S. Foreign Assistance Act and the U.S. Arms Export Control Act which respectively prohibit assistance to any country which engages in a consistent pattern of human rights violations and limit the use of U.S. weapons (2) to “internal security” or “legitimate self-defense.” (3) More broadly, we urge Congress to undertake careful scrutiny to ensure that our aid is not supporting actions by the government of Israel that undermine prospects for peace. We urge Congress to hold hearings to examine Israel’s compliance, and we request regular reporting on compliance and the withholding of military aid for non-compliance.
  • Sincerely, Rev. Gradye Parsons
Stated Clerk of the General Assembly
Presbyterian Church (USA) Mark S. Hanson
Presiding Bishop
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Bishop Rosemarie Wenner
President, Council of Bishops
United Methodist Church Peg Birk
Transitional General Secretary
National Council of Churches USA   Shan Cretin
General Secretary
American Friends Service Committee J Ron Byler
Executive Director
Mennonite Central Committee U.S. Alexander Patico
North American Secretary
Orthodox Peace Fellowship Diane Randall
Executive Secretary
Friends Committee on National Legislation Dr. A. Roy Medley
General Secretary
American Baptist Churches, U.S.A. Rev. Geoffrey A. Black
General Minister and President
United Church of Christ Rev. Dr. Sharon E. Watkins
General Minister and President
Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) Rev. Julia Brown Karimu
President, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Division of Overseas Ministries
Co-Executive, Global Ministries (UCC and Disciples) Rev. Dr. James A. Moos
Executive Minister, United Church of Christ, Wider Church Ministries
Co-Executive, Global Ministries (UCC and Disciples) Kathy McKneely
Acting Director
Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns Eli S. McCarthy, PhD
Justice and Peace Director
Conference of Major Superiors of Men (CMSM)
  • Paul Merrell on 19 Oct 12
     
    Maybe part of the solution is to stop propping up the apartheid state of Israel with U.S. weapons and war supplies?
Paul Merrell

Iran Able to Block Strait of Hormuz, General Dempsey Says on CBS - Bloomberg - 0 views

www.bloomberg.com/...general-dempsey-tells-cbs.html

straits of hormuz war & peace uh-oh

shared by Paul Merrell on 19 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • Iran has the ability to block the Strait of Hormuz “for a period of time,” and the U.S. would take action to reopen it, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Martin Dempsey said. “They’ve invested in capabilities that could, in fact, for a period of time block the Strait of Hormuz,” Dempsey said in an interview aired yesterday on the CBS “Face the Nation” program. “We’ve invested in capabilities to ensure that if that happens, we can defeat that.”
  • Should Iran try to close Hormuz, the U.S. “would take action and reopen” the waterway, said Dempsey, President Barack Obama’s top military adviser.
  • Paul Merrell on 19 Oct 12
     
    But back in January, we were told that "Should Iran try to close Hormuz, the U.S. 'would take action and reopen' the waterway" by Gerneral Martin Dempsey, President Barack Obama's top military adviser. 
Paul Merrell

U.S. Navy, Allies Find Less Than Half the Sea Mines Planted in Key Exercise | PBS NewsHour - 0 views

www.pbs.org/...s-planted-in-key-exercise.html

straits of hormuz war & peace uh-oh financial-collapse

shared by Paul Merrell on 19 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • A major international naval exercise last month in and around the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea, led by the U.S. Navy with more than 30 other nations participating, located fewer than half of the practice mines laid at sea. This outcome of the highly publicized military drills — not publicly known until now — underscores how difficult it may be for the United States and its partners to detect and incapacitate waterborne explosive devices that Iran has threatened to plant if its nuclear facilities come under attack.
  • Out of the 29 simulated mines that were dropped in the water, “I don’t think a great many were found,” retired Navy Capt. Robert O’Donnell, a former mine warfare director for his service, told the NewsHour. “It was probably around half or less.”
  • The drill, dubbed International Mine Countermeasures Exercise 2012 or IMCMEX, brought together countries from all over the world at a time when tensions with Iran have been heating up. Tehran has threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important choke points through which 20 percent of the world’s oil flows.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The surprising mine-detection result came in what one senior Navy official told the NewsHour was “one of the most significant and strategically important exercises of the year.” It was also the largest exercise of its kind ever held in the region. Being able to find and destroy sea mines is critical to maintaining stable world oil prices and global economic growth.
  • However, some analysts with extensive experience in evaluating Navy mine exercises say the rate of success in detecting practice mines is critically important. “I would be surprised if the post-exercise analysis didn’t include some kind of a scoring mechanism of how well did we do against this set” of imitation mines, said Scott Savitz, a senior RAND engineer who, in a prior job, led Navy-contracted teams to analyze counter-mine exercises. The central point of a mine-hunting exercise is “to find them all, because in the real-world scenario you want to minimize the subsequent mine risk,” he said.
Paul Merrell

Gary Johnson Libertarian Candidate Worries Republicans - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...minee-worries-republicans.html

shared by Paul Merrell on 18 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • Now campaigning as the Libertarian Party’s presidential nominee, Mr. Johnson is still only a blip in the polls. But he is on the ballot in every state except Michigan and Oklahoma, enjoys the support of a few small “super PACs” and is trying to tap into the same grass-roots enthusiasm that helped build Representative Ron Paul a big following. And with polls showing the race between President Obama and Mitt Romney to be tight, Mr. Johnson’s once-fellow Republicans are no longer laughing. Around the country, Republican operatives have been making moves to keep Mr. Johnson from becoming their version of Ralph Nader, the Green Party candidate whose relatively modest support cut into Al Gore’s 2000 vote arguably enough to help hand the decisive states of Ohio and Florida to George W. Bush.
  • Paul Merrell on 18 Oct 12
     
    The linked article and a pair of quotes I ran across recently have provoked some thought: "We are conservatives in primaries and Republican in general elections and we aim to win." "Given that we all had to suffer through the Bush administration even though Gore and Nader voters combined for a majority of the electorate, two de facto rules were laid down: Keep progressive challenges to center-right Democrats confined to Democratic primaries, not general elections." Both seem to embody the choice of evils approach to presidential elections. But the inherent lie is the notion that any minority group can ever obtain a seat at the power broker's table if the minority group is unwilling to deprive the majority group of election victories so long as their concerns are ignored. And the major parties *always* manufacture propaganda themes portraying the pending election as a potential doomsday event, a "must win" situation. But reality seldom supports such a theme. E.g., Obama and Romney are two peas from the same pod and the makeup of Congress is going to stay about the same. So given that all truly revolutionary change has to be approved by Congress, things will stay about the same unless one were to believe that it matters which of those two peas nominates new Supreme Court justices. (The vetting process assures that it does not matter.)So given that all truly revolutionary change has to be approved by Congress, things will stay about the same unless one were to believe that it matters which of those two peas nominates new Supreme Court justices. (The vetting process assures that it does not matter.) Certainly one could make a strong argument that all of the Supreme Court justices including Obama's Supreme Court appointments are Establishment whores, avowed corporatist/globalists. Should we expect anything different from Romney? It's a choice of thugs, not a choice of evils if one adopts the view that the choices are limited to the two major parties' candidates.
Paul Merrell

The Real Blame for Deaths in Libya    :   Information Clearing House: ICH - 0 views

www.informationclearinghouse.info/article32755.htm

libya war & peace constitutional law

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • However, in this political season, the Republicans want to gain some political advantage by stirring up doubts about President Barack Obama’s toughness on terrorism — and the Obama administration is looking for ways to blunt those rhetorical attacks by launching retaliatory strikes in Libya or elsewhere. Thus, it was small comfort to learn that Teflon-coated John Brennan, Obama’s counterterrorism adviser, had flown to Tripoli, hoping to unearth some interim Libyan government officials to consult with on the Benghazi attack. With the embassy’s help, he no doubt identified Libyan officials with some claim to purview over “terrorism.”
  • But Brennan is not about investigation. Retribution is his bag. It is likely that some Libyan interlocutor was brought forth who would give him carte blanche to retaliate against any and all those “suspected” of having had some role in the Benghazi murders. So, look for “surgical” drone strike or Abbottabad-style special forces attack — possibly before the Nov. 6 election — on whomever is labeled a “suspect.” Sound wild? It is. However, considering Brennan’s penchant for acting-first-thinking-later, plus the entrée and extraordinary influence he enjoys with President Obama, drone and/or special forces attacks are, in my opinion, more likely than not. (This is the same Brennan, after all, who compiles for Obama lists of nominees for assassination by drone.) If in Tuesday’s debate with ex-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Obama is pressed, as expected on his supposed weakness in handling Benghazi, attacks on “terrorists,” real or “suspect,” become still more likely. Brennan and other White House functionaries might succeed in persuading the president that such attacks would be just what the doctor ordered for his wheezing poll numbers.
  • It was no surprise, then, that almost completely absent from the discussion at last Tuesday’s hearing was any attempt to figure out why a well-armed, well-organized group of terrorists wanted to inflict maximum damage on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and kill the diplomats there. Were it not for Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, impressionable listeners would have been left with the idea that the attack had nothing to do with Washington’s hare-brained, bomb-heavy policies, from which al-Qaeda and similar terrorist groups are more beneficiary than victim, as in Libya. Not for the first time, Kucinich rose to the occasion at Tuesday’s hearing:
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • “You’d think that after ten years in Iraq and after eleven years in Afghanistan that the U.S. would have learned the consequences and the limits of interventionism. … Today we’re engaging in a discussion about the security failures of Benghazi. The security situation did not happen overnight because of a decision made by someone at the State Department. … “We owe it to the diplomatic corps, who serves our nation, to start at the beginning and that’s what I shall do. Security threats in Libya, including the unchecked extremist groups who are armed to the teeth, exist because our nation spurred on a civil war destroying the security and stability of Libya. … We bombed Libya. We destroyed their army. We obliterated their police stations … Al Qaeda expanded its presence. “Weapons are everywhere. Thousands of shoulder-to-air missiles are on the loose. Our military intervention led to greater instability in Libya. … It’s not surprising that the State Department was not able to adequately protect our diplomats from this predictable threat. It’s not surprising and it’s also not acceptable. … “We want to stop attacks on our embassies? Let’s stop trying to overthrow governments. This should not be a partisan issue. Let’s avoid the hype. Let’s look at the real situation here. Interventions do not make us safer. They do not protect our nation. They are themselves a threat to America.”
  • Congressman Kucinich went on to ask the witnesses if they knew how many shoulder-to-air missiles were on the loose in Libya. Nordstrom: “Ten to twenty thousand.”
  • We are told we should not speak ill of the dead. Dead consciences, though, should be fair game. In my view, the U.S. Secretary of State did herself no credit the morning after the killing of four of her employees, when she said: “I asked myself — how could this happen? How could this happen in a country we helped liberate, in a city we helped save from destruction? This question reflects just how complicated and, at times, how confounding the world can be. But we have to be clear-eyed, even in our grief.” But some things are confounding only to those suppressing their own responsibility for untold death and misery abroad. Secretary Clinton continues to preen about the U.S. role in the attack on Libya. And, of Gadhafi’s gory death, she exclaimed on camera with a joyous cackle, “We came; we saw; he died.” Can it come as a surprise to Clinton that this kind of attitude and behavior can set a tone, spawning still more violence?
  • In my view, counterterrorism guru Brennan shares the blame for this and other failures. But he has a strong allergy to acknowledging such responsibility. And he enjoys more Teflon protection from his perch closer to the president in the White House. The back-and-forth bickering over the tragedy in Benghazi has focused on so many trees that the forest never came into view. Not only did the hearing fall far short in establishing genuine accountability, it was bereft of vision. Without vision, the old proverb says, the people perish — and that includes American diplomats. The killings in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012, validate that wisdom. If the U.S. does not change the way it relates to the rest of the world, and especially to the Muslim world, more and more people will perish. If we persist on the aggressive path we are on, Americans will in no way be safer. As for our diplomats, in my view it is just a matter of time before our next embassy, consulate or residence is attacked.
  • At Tuesday’s hearing, Kucinich noted that in Libya “we intervened, absent constitutional authority.” Most of his colleagues reacted with the equivalent of a deep yawn, as though Kucinich had said something “quaint” and “obsolete.” Like most of their colleagues in the House, most Oversight Committee members continue to duck this key issue, which directly involves one of the most important powers/duties given the Congress in Article I of the Constitution. Such was their behavior last Tuesday, with most members preferring to indulge in hypocritical posturing aimed at scoring cheap political points. Palpable in that hearing room was one of the dangers our country’s Founders feared the most — that, for reasons of power, position and money, legislators might eventually be seduced into the kind of cowardice and expediency that would lead them to forfeit their power and their duty to prevent a president from making war at will. Many of those now doing their best to make political hay out of the Benghazi “scandal” are the same legislators who appealed strongly for the U.S. to bomb Libya and remove Gadhafi. This, despite it having been clear from the start that eastern Libya had become a new beachhead for al-Qaeda and other terrorists. From the start, it was highly uncertain who would fill the power vacuums in the east and in Tripoli.
  • As Congress failed to exercise its constitutional duties — to debate and vote on wars — Obama, along with his Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Hillary Clinton, took a page out of the Bush/Cheney book and jumped into a new war. Just don’t call it war, said the White House. It’s merely a “kinetic humanitarian action.” You see, our friends in Europe covet that pure Libyan oil and Gadhafi had been a problem to the West for a long time. So, it was assumed that there would be enough anti-Gadhafi Libyans that a new “democratic” government could be created and talented diplomats, like Ambassador Christopher Stevens, could explain to “the locals” how missiles and bombs were in the long-term interest of Libyans.
  • On Libya, the Obama administration dissed Congress even more blatantly than Cheney and Bush did on Iraq, where there was at least the charade of a public debate, albeit perverted by false claims about Iraq’s WMDs and Saddam Hussein’s ties to al-Qaeda. And so Defense Secretary Panetta and Secretary of State Clinton stepped off cheerily to strike Libya with the same kind of post-war plan that Cheney, Bush, and then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had for Iraq — none. Small wonder chaos reigns in Benghazi and other parts of the country. Can it be that privileged politicians like Clinton and Panetta and the many “one-percenters” in Congress and elsewhere really do not understand that, when the U.S. does what it did to Libya, there will be folks who don’t like it; that they will be armed; that there will be blowback; that U.S. diplomats, given an impossible task, will die?
  • Constitutionally, the craven Congress is a huge part of the problem. Only a few members of the House and Senate seem to care very much when presidents act like kings and send off troops drawn largely by a poverty draft to wars not authorized (or simply rubber-stamped) by Congress. Last Tuesday, Kucinich’s voice was alone crying in the wilderness, so to speak. (And, because of redistricting and his loss in a primary that pitted two incumbent Democrats against each other, he will not be a member of the new Congress in January.) This matters — and matters very much. At a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 7, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama, pursued this key issue with Panetta and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey. Chafing ex post facto at the unauthorized nature of the war in Libya, Sessions asked repeatedly what “legal basis” would the Obama administration rely on to do in Syria what it did in Libya. Watching that part of the testimony it seemed to me that Sessions, a conservative Southern lawyer, was not at all faking when he pronounced himself “almost breathless,” as Panetta stonewalled time after time. Panetta made it explicitly clear that the administration does not believe it needs to seek congressional approval for wars like Libya. At times he seemed to be quoting verses from the Book of Cheney.
  • Sessions: “I am really baffled … The only legal authority that’s required to deploy the U.S. military [in combat] is the Congress and the president and the law and the Constitution.” Panetta: “Let me just for the record be clear again, Senator, so there is no misunderstanding. When it comes to national defense, the president has the authority under the Constitution to act to defend this country, and we will, Sir.” (If you care about the Constitution and the rule of law, I strongly recommend that you view the entire 7-minute video clip.)
Paul Merrell

Thierry Meyssan:  Turkey on the verge of a nervous breakdown   :   Informatio... - 0 views

www.informationclearinghouse.info/article32764.htm

syria war & peace turkey nato war by proxy

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • the signs of Western retreat from Syria are multiplying. The influx of Western arms and combatants is drying up except for the ongoing transfers funded by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Even more surprising: on six successive occasions, the NATO Command at Incirlik gave jihadists instructions to regroup within specified zones to prepare for huge offensives. While the Syrian Arab Army, which was formed to confront the Israeli Army, may be ill-adapted for guerilla warfare, it is highly effective in conventional combat. In each of these engagements, it easily encircled and wiped out the assembled units of the Free Syrian Army. Though the initial defeats suffered by the jihadists could have been attributed to a tactical error or to an incompetent commander, after the sixth debacle another hypothesis must be considered: that NATO is willingly sending these combatants to their deaths.
  • It seems Prince Bandar has disappeared from the scene since the attack on him on July 26. He may well be dead. From Morroco to Xinjiang, the jihadists have been left to their own devices, without any real coordination. They could be recruited by any number of actors, as the recent assassination of the U.S. Ambassador in Libya confirms. As a result, Washington wants to unload this risky and burdensome rabble or at the very least reduce their number. The orders that NATO gives to the jihadists are designed to expose them to fire by the Syrian Arab Army which is eliminating them en masse.
  • Whatever the case, these events are marking the end of the Franco-British involvement alongside the Free Syrian Army, while Damascus discretely exchanges its prisoners. A page has been turned. Under the circumstances, one can understand the frustration of Turkey and the Wahhabist monarchies who at the request of the Alliance invested in the secret war unreservedly, but who now must assume alone the failure of the operation. Going for broke, Ankara threw itself into a series of provocations designed to prevent NATO from pulling out.
Paul Merrell

» The government has made an "absolute mockery" of Bradley Manning's right to... - 0 views

www.bradleymanning.org/...nnings-right-to-a-speedy-trial

liberties speedy trial bradley manning

shared by Paul Merrell on 09 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • It’s appropriate that David Coombs’ longest motion of this trial yet, which argues for dismissal of all charges, details PFC Bradley Manning’s extraordinarily and illegally long pretrial confinement. The prosecution’s repeated and unjustifiable delays point “unmistakably to the conclusion that PFC Manning’s statutory and constitutional speedy trial rights have been trampled upon with impunity.”
  • “As of the date of this motion, PFC Manning has been in pretrial confinement for 845 days. Eight hundred forty-five days…. With trial scheduled to commence on 4 February 2013, PFC Manning will have spent a grand total of 983 days in pretrial confinement before even a single piece of evidence is offered against him. To put this amount of time into perspective, the Empire State Building could have been constructed almost two-and-a-half times over in the amount of time it will have taken to bring PFC Manning to trial.” The Rule for Court Martial (RCM) 707 affords 120 days from arrest to arraignment to constitute a speedy trial. However, Bradley was arraigned nearly two years after his arrest and will have been imprisoned for nearly 1,000 days if his court-martial begins as scheduled on February 4, 2013.
  • Paul Merrell on 09 Oct 12
     
    I've read the 117-page brief. This is an outrageous violation of our Constitution.
Paul Merrell

Courthouse News Service - 0 views

www.courthousenews.com/...51004.htm

security state liberties 4th Amendment internet cloud privacy

shared by Paul Merrell on 08 Oct 12 - No Cached
  •      Her 45-page motion argues that her client's subpoena has fateful repercussions in the age of cloud computing, an umbrella term describing the use of remote databases to store users' private information.     "Personal communications, daily schedules and travel itineraries that you once stored in a desk drawer or dedicated directory on a home computer are now stored for you by your ISP or social-networking site, somewhere in the cloud," the motion states. "The information is still yours. You still have control over it, but both technically and technologically someone else is now its custodian.     "The question this case poses to the court is: What, if anything, does the change in architecture and protocols of the Internet mean for the relationship between the individual and the state?
  •      "From Harris' perspective, not much has changed - only the address of your e-storage locker. Law enforcement is still seeking your information, still has to go to you for it, and still has to get your consent or obtain the information via discovery.     "From the [District Attorney of New York]'s perspective, the rise of e-storage has changed everything. The advent of cloud computing releases the DANY from any obligation to ask you for the information or obtain it from you through discovery. From its perspective, it can deal with the owner of the e-storage locker as though that person were the principal, rather than your agent. Since the owner of the storage locker does not have a proprietary interest or expectation of privacy in the stored information, however, that means there are no meaningful constitutional constraints on law enforcement, and your First and Fourth Amendment rights have vanished."
Paul Merrell

Top 1% Got 93% of Income Growth as Rich-Poor Gap Widened - Bloomberg - 0 views

www.bloomberg.com/...-as-rich-poor-gap-widened.html

economy election 2012 income gap

shared by Paul Merrell on 08 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • The earnings gap between rich and poor Americans was the widest in more than four decades in 2011, Census data show, surpassing income inequality previously reported in Uganda and Kazakhstan. The notion that each generation does better than the last -- one aspect of the American Dream -- has been challenged by evidence that average family incomes fell last decade for the first time since World War II.
Paul Merrell

PressTV - US planning for a post-Israel Middle East - 0 views

www.presstv.ir/...g-for-a-postisrael-middle-east

war & peace Israel

shared by Paul Merrell on 01 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • So what is all the fuss about? It’s a paper entitled: Preparing for a Post-Israel Middle East, an 82-page analysis that concludes that the American national interest in fundamentally at odds with that of Zionist Israel. The authors conclude that Israel is currently the greatest threat to US national interests because its nature and actions prevent normal US relations with Arab and Muslim countries and, to a growing degree, the wider international community. The study was commissioned by the US Intelligence Community comprising 16 American intelligence agencies with an annual budget in excess of $ 70 billion. The IC includes the departments of the Navy, Army, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, Defense Intelligence Agency, Departments of Energy, Homeland Security, State, Treasury, Drug Enforcement Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Security Agency, National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, National Reconnaissance Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency commissioned the study.
  • srael, given its current brutal occupation and belligerence cannot be salvaged any more than apartheid South Africa could be when as late as 1987 Israel was the only “Western” nation that upheld diplomatic ties with South Africa and was the last country to join the international boycott campaign before the regime collapsed;
  • Simultaneous with, but predating, rapidly expanding Arab and Muslim power in the region as evidenced by the Arab Spring, Islamic Awakening and the ascendancy of Iran, as American power and influence recedes, the US commitment to belligerent oppressive Israel is becoming impossible to defend or execute consistent given paramount US national interests which include normalizing relations with the 57 Islamic countries; · Gross Israeli interference in the internal affairs of the United States through spying and illegal US arms transfers. This includes supporting more than 60 ‘front organizations’ and approximately 7,500 US officials who do Israel’s bidding and seek to dominate and intimidate the media and agencies of the US government which should no longer be condoned;
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The international opposition to the increasingly apartheid regime can no longer be synchronized with American claimed humanitarian values or US expectations in its bilateral relations with the 193 member United Nations. The Draft ends with language about the need to avoid entangling alliances that alienate much of the World and condemn American citizens to endure the consequences.
  • Franklin Lamb, former Assistant Counsel, US House Judiciary Committee and Professor of International Law at Northwestern College of Law in Oregon, earned his Law Degree at Boston University and his LLM, M.Phil., and PhD degrees at the London School of Economics. Following three years at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Lamb was visiting fellow at the Harvard Law School’s East Asian Legal Studies Center.
Paul Merrell

Bankers And Their Dirty Tricks » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names - 0 views

www.counterpunch.org/...bankers-and-their-dirty-tricks

banksters QE3 Bernanke

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • Didn’t Ben Bernanke promise that another round of bond purchases would lower unemployment and boost economic growth? We think he did, which is why we’re wondering why all the benefits from QE3 appear to be going to the banks. According to Bloomberg News:
  • “The Federal Reserve’s latest mortgage bond purchases so far are helping profit margins at lenders including Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) and JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) more than homebuyers and property owners looking to refinance… Since the Fed’s Sept. 13 announcement that it would buy $40 billion more securities per month, the rates offered for new 30- year loans have fallen by just 0.11 percentage point, compared with a drop of more than 0.6 percentage point for yields on the bonds into which the loans get packaged.” (“Fed Helps Lenders’ Profit More Than Homebuyers:Mortgages”, Bloomberg)
  • Well, how do you like that? That means that Mr. Bernanke’s trickle down monetary theories aren’t really working at all. Instead of the savings being passed along to homeowners in the form of lower rates, the banks are juicing profits by taking a bigger share for themselves. Who could have known?
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • So, what else are the banks up to besides keeping rates elevated so they can make a bigger killing on refis?
Paul Merrell

Anti-austerity violence: Video of riot police clashing with protesters in Madrid - YouTube - 0 views

www.youtube.com/watch

hard times economy Spain

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • Riot police clash with protesters as they have ringed the Spanish parliament in Madrid where thousands gather for a march against austerity tagged "Occupy Congress".
Paul Merrell

Young U.S. Adults Flock to Parents' Homes Amid Economy - Bloomberg - 0 views

www.bloomberg.com/...s-homes-amid-sour-economy.html

economy hard times

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • The number of 26-year-olds living with parents has jumped almost 46 percent since 2007, according to Census Bureau data compiled by the University of Minnesota Population Center. Last year, the number of 18- to 30-year-olds living with their parents grew to 20.7 million, a 3.9 percent gain from 2010. The figures underscore the difficulty that millions of young people have had in finding jobs and starting careers in the U.S. following the longest recession since the Great Depression. About a quarter of American adults between the ages of 18 and 30 now live with parents, while intergenerational households have reached the highest level in more than 50 years.
Paul Merrell

PressTV - Congress' approval at 13 percent - 0 views

www.presstv.ir/...262086.html

election 2012 congress statistics approval ratings

shared by Paul Merrell on 18 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • Only 13 percent of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing, the lowest Gallup has measured this late in an election year. The prior lows were 18% in 1992, 2008, and 2010.
  • Given Congress' near-record-low job approval ratings, voters may continue to take out their frustrations on members of the institution, which has resulted in considerable turnover in congressional membership or party composition in each of the last three election years.   Congress has never had very high approval ratings at this point in an election year; only twice since 1974 were they over 50% -- in 1998, during the economic boom, and in 2002, during the rally in support for public officials after the Sept. 11 attacks. The historical average approval rating for Congress is 33%.
Paul Merrell

Iraq, Afghanistan Veterans Filing For Disability Benefits At Historic Rate - 0 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...bility-benefits_n_1549436.html

war crimes Bush_Obama wars casualties disabilities

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • A staggering 45 percent of the 1.6 million veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are now seeking compensation for injuries they say are service-related. That is more than double the estimate of 21 percent who filed such claims after the Gulf War in the early 1990s, top government officials told The Associated Press. What's more, these new veterans are claiming eight to nine ailments on average, and the most recent ones over the last year are claiming 11 to 14. By comparison, Vietnam veterans are currently receiving compensation for fewer than four, on average, and those from World War II and Korea, just two.
  • The new veterans have different types of injuries than previous veterans did. That's partly because improvised bombs have been the main weapon and because body armor and improved battlefield care allowed many of them to survive wounds that in past wars proved fatal. "They're being kept alive at unprecedented rates," said Dr. David Cifu, the VA's medical rehabilitation chief. More than 95 percent of troops wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan have survived.
  • "You just can't keep sending people into war five, six or seven times and expect that they're going to come home just fine," he said. For taxpayers, the ordeal is just beginning. With any war, the cost of caring for veterans rises for several decades and peaks 30 to 40 years later, when diseases of aging are more common, said Harvard economist Linda Bilmes. She estimates the health care and disability costs of the recent wars at $600 billion to $900 billion.
  • Paul Merrell on 17 Sep 12
     
    The earlier Gulf War lasted only 100 hours, but still resulted in 21% compensable disabilities among its veterans, not counting those who are still in active military service. But the Iraq and Afghanistan wars still continue after 10 years, albeit we're now fighting the Iraq War with mercenaries only. And thus far, 45 per cent of those who served in Iraq and Aghanistan have applied for VA disability compensation, with far more still in service and thus ineligible for VA disability comp until they are discharged from the military. That's how badly the U.S. government treated its military in these latter wars, with many of them serving as many as seven combat tours of duty. That compares with the Viet Nam war where a 3-year enlistee normally saw only a single combat tour. The incidence of injury increases along with time spent in combat. And some types of injuries, e.g., posttraumatic stress disorder ("PTSD"), result from cumulative time spent in combat. Virtually everyone has their breaking point and the more time spent in combat the more likely that PTSD will result. Likewise, the more time spent handling projectiles weighted with depleted Uranium or walking through areas where such rounds have exploded, the more likely that radiation sickness or cancer will result. And a huge range of injuries may only result in disabilities well after the aggravating factor of aging has worked its magic. As Prof. Bilmes said in 2008, "in World War II and Vietnam and Korea, the number of wounded troops per fatality was about two-to-one or three-to-one. And now, the number of wounded troops per fatality is seven-to-one in combat, and if you include all of those wounded in non-combat and diseased seriously enough to have to be medevaced home, it's fifteen-to-one. So it's a very significant difference. And this difference compared to previous wars is, of course, you know, a great tribute to the medical care that they receive on the field and the enormous advance
Paul Merrell

The Libya fiasco and the folly of intervention - The Hill's Congress Blog - 0 views

thehill.com/...-and-the-folly-of-intervention

ron paul war crimes blowback al qaeda foreign policy

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • The attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya and the killing of the U.S. ambassador and several aides is another tragic example of how our interventionist foreign policy undermines our national security. The more the U.S. tries to control the rest of the world, either by democracy promotion, aid to foreign governments, or by bombs, the more events spin out of control into chaos, unintended consequences, and blowback. Unfortunately what we saw in Libya this week is nothing new.
  • The problem is that we do not know and we cannot know enough about these societies we are seeking to remake. We never try to see through the eyes of those we seek to liberate. Libya is in utter chaos, the infrastructure has been bombed to rubble, the economy has ceased to exist, gangs and militias rule by brutal force, the government is seen as a completely illegitimate and powerless U.S. puppet. Is anyone really shocked that the Libyans do not see our bombing their country as saving it from destruction? Currently, the U.S. is actively supporting rebels in Syria that even our CIA tells us are affiliated with al Qaeda. Many of these radical Islamist fighters in Syria were not long ago fighting in Libya.
  • We must learn from these mistakes and immediately cease all support for the Syrian rebels, lest history once again repeat itself. We are literally backing the same people in Syria that we are fighting in Afghanistan and that have just killed our ambassador in Libya! We must finally abandon the interventionist impulse before it is too late. I sincerely hope that we may finally have learned something in the aftermath of the tragedy in Libya. I hope it might finally serve as a wake-up call that our interventionist foreign policy is causing us real harm. It is bankrupting our economy and it is turning the rest of the world against us.
Paul Merrell

More Americans opting out of banking system - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...1-a31e-804fccb658f9_story.html

banksters statistics boycotts

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • Released Wednesday, the study found that 821,000 households opted out of the banking system from 2009 to 2011 and that the so-called unbanked population grew to 8.2 percent of U.S. households.
  • Paul Merrell on 16 Sep 12
     
    Interesting that the article includes much speculation about various reasons consumers are increasingly boycotting banks, but never mention distrust as a motive. 
Paul Merrell

Courthouse News Service - 0 views

www.courthousenews.com/...49968.htm

election 2012

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • Nevadans can pick "none of the above" on Election Day, the 9th Circuit ruled while blasting a federal judge who tried to delay the appeal.     The ruling marks a setback for Republicans who hoped to remove the unique option so that dissatisfied voters would pick Mitt Romney if forced to make a choice.     Eleven voters from all parties, including former Clark County Commissioner Bruce Woodbury and the state's Republican Party Secretary James DeGraffenreid, sued Nevada and its secretary of state in June. The Republican National Committee sought to remove the option that has been on all Nevada ballots since 1976. Nevada is the only state to offer such an option.
Paul Merrell

U.S. Reduces Troops Involved in Joint Military Exercise with Israel | World | TIME.com - 0 views

world.time.com/...ffecting-potential-iran-strike

war & peace Iran Iranian nukes Israel

shared by Paul Merrell on 05 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • Seven months ago, Israel and the U.S. postponed a massive joint military exercise that was originally set to go forward just as concerns were brimming that Israel would launch a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The exercise was rescheduled for late October and appears likely to go forward on the cusp of the U.S. presidential election. But it won’t be nearly the same exercise. Well-placed sources in both countries have told TIME that Washington has greatly reduced the scale of U.S. participation, slashing by more than two-thirds the number of American troops going to Israel and reducing both the number and potency of missile-interception systems at the core of the joint exercise.
  • “Basically what the Americans are saying is, ‘We don’t trust you,’” a senior Israeli military official says. The reductions are striking. Instead of the approximately 5,000 U.S. troops originally trumpeted for Austere Challenge 12, as the annual exercise is called, the Pentagon will send only 1,500 service members and perhaps as few as 1,200. Patriot antimissile systems will arrive in Israel as planned, but the crews to operate them will not. Instead of two Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense warships being dispatched to Israeli waters, the new plan is to send one, though even the remaining vessel is listed as a “maybe,” according to officials in both militaries.
  • Paul Merrell on 05 Sep 12
     
    Sounds like the U.S. is calling the Israeli bluff, telling them that they're on their own if they attack Iran. But watch for a false flag operation by the Mossad to force the U.S. to attack Iran. 
Paul Merrell

'I don't want to be complicit' in an Israeli strike on Iran, says US army chief | The T... - 0 views

www.timesofisrael.com/ike-on-iran-says-us-army-chief

war & peace Iran Iranian nukes Israel

shared by Paul Merrell on 05 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • The US should not become embroiled in an Israeli military strike on Iran that would not only fail to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, but could also undo international diplomatic pressure on Tehran, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey said Thursday in London. Such an attack by Israel would “clearly delay but probably not destroy Iran’s nuclear program,” Dempsey said, adding: ”I don’t want to be complicit if they [Israel] choose to do it.”
  • Thursday’s comments from Dempsey, who was in London for the Paralympic Games, come amid mounting chatter over a possible Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear program. The US has been working to keep Israel from launching a unilateral strike, maintaining that sanctions should be given more time to work. Last week, the former American ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk, termed Israel’s talk of attacking Iran “a classic case of crying wolf.”
« First ‹ Previous 5321 - 5340 of 5394 Next › Last »
Showing 20▼ items per page