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Paul Merrell

Turkey denies allegations it tipped off al Qaida abductors | McClatchy DC - 0 views

www.mcclatchydc.com/...article32378286.html

war & peace Division30 Turkey betrayal

shared by Paul Merrell on 28 Aug 15 - No Cached
  • The Turkish government Tuesday denied accusations by Syrian rebels that its intelligence service had tipped off an al Qaida-linked group that then abducted the commander and 20 members of a U.S.-trained group of Syrian fighters about to confront the Islamic State.In a statement to McClatchy, which first reported on Monday the allegations from multiple Syrian rebel groups that the Nusra Front had been alerted by the Turkish government, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s office said it denied “the allegations in the strongest terms possible. The idea that Turkey, a key supporter of the Train and Equip Program, would seek to undermine its own interests in Syria is ludicrous.” The statement was attributed to a senior member of the prime minister’s office.The dispute centers around the arrival into Syria of the first 54 members of a program by a coalition of anti-Islamic State members – including the U.S., Jordan, the United Kingdom and Turkey – to train and equip carefully vetted Syrian rebels for the fight against the Islamic State in Syria. The so called “T&E” group is part of a moderate Syrian rebel group known as Division 30, which has drawn members from a variety of units that were once under the umbrella of the Free Syrian Army. The FSA led the initial military uprising against the Syrian regime of Bashar Assad before being eclipsed by a number of jihadist and Islamist groups, including the Islamic State.
  • On July 29, the 54 fighters and their commander, Col. Nadim Hassan, arrived in Azaz, along the Turkish border, where they were immediately abducted or attacked by the Nusra Front. Hassan and about 20 of his men remain held by Nusra, which has declared the group an American front designed to target Islamists, despite the group’s repeated insistence that it would only participate in operations against the Islamic State, which Nusra, despite sharing a common ideology and origins in al Qaida in Iraq, also fights.
  • The United States has frequently clashed with both the Syrian opposition and Turkey over the role of Islamist groups in the Syrian civil war. But many of America’s allies in the region and inside Syria have been loath to cut ties to the groups and continue to cooperate with them both politically and on the battlefield. The Turkish prime minister’s statement added that – despite a widespread belief among other Syrian rebel groups and many regional analysts that it has cooperated with Nusra in the past – it considers Nusra a terrorist organization and has no official contact. “We regard the claims as part of a defamation campaign against Turkey,” the statement said. “In the past, we have repeatedly stated that the government of Turkey designates and treats al Nusra Front as a terrorist organization. There has been absolutely no change in our policy toward the organization.”EDITORS: STORY CAN END HERESpeaking on the condition of anonymity, a Turkish intelligence official said that the breakdown in security, which left the future of the $500 million training program in grave doubt, was the result of members of Division 30 openly advertising their movements on social media.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • “Everyone was talking about that (deployment,)” the official said. “Many groups on the ground, the (Islamist) opposition all were talking about when and how (the T&E) might enter Syria. There might be resentment because the incoming forces had good money, education and training. No one wanted them to be successful.”But Turkey itself has long criticized the T&E program for not only being too small in scale but for only focusing on the Islamic State, an argument repeated by Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu in a televised statement Tuesday evening, who said the abduction of the group proved that Turkey’s concerns were justified.“Now it is seen that Turkey’s (thesis) appears justified on T&E,” he told reporters. “We have been saying for a long period that in order to fight against (the Islamic State), the T&E program alone will not be enough, but can be a supportive element.”
Paul Merrell

Terrorists Supported by America: U.S. Helicopter Delivering Weapons to the Islamic State (ISIS), Shot Down by Iraqi "Popular Forces" | Global Research - 1 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5434230

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Iraq ISIL supplies weapons

shared by Paul Merrell on 05 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • The Iraqi popular forces who shot down a US helicopter carrying weapons for the ISIL forces in Al-Baqdadi region released the photos of the shot down chopper through the Internet. A group of Iraqi popular forces known as Al-Hashad Al-Shabi shot down the US Army helicopter that was carrying weapons for the ISIL in the western parts of Al-Baqdadi region in Al-Anbar province on Thursday.
  • Last week, Head of the Iraqi Parliament’s National Security and Defense Committee Hakem al-Zameli announced that the helicopters of the US-led anti-ISIL coalition were dropping weapons and foodstuff for the ISIL terrorists in the Southern parts of Tikrit. He underscored that he had documents and photos showing that the US Apache helicopters airdropped foodstuff and weapons for the ISIL.
  • Last Monday, a senior lawmaker disclosed that Iraq’s army had shot down two British planes as they were carrying weapons for the ISIL terrorists in Al-Anbar province. “The Iraqi Parliament’s National Security and Defense Committee has access to the photos of both planes that are British and have crashed while they were carrying weapons for the ISIL,” al-Zameli said, according to a Monday report of the Arabic-language information center of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. He said the Iraqi parliament has asked London for explanations in this regard. The senior Iraqi legislator further unveiled that the government in Baghdad is receiving daily reports from people and security forces in al-Anbar province on numerous flights by the US-led coalition planes that airdrop weapons and supplies for ISIL in terrorist-held areas. The Iraqi lawmaker further noted the cause of such western aids to the terrorist group, and explained that the US prefers a chaotic situation in Anbar Province which is near the cities of Karbala and Baghdad as it does not want the ISIL crisis to come to an end. Earlier today, a senior Iraqi provincial official lashed out at the western countries and their regional allies for supporting Takfiri terrorists in Iraq, revealing that US and Israeli-made weapons have been discovered from the areas purged of ISIL terrorists.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • He noted that the members of his committee have already proved that the US planes have dropped advanced weaponry, including anti-aircraft weapons, for the ISIL, and that it has set up an investigation committee to probe into the matter. “The US drops weapons for the ISIL on the excuse of not knowing about the whereabouts of the ISIL positions and it is trying to distort the reality with its allegations. He noted that the committee had collected the data and the evidence provided by eyewitnesses, including Iraqi army officers and the popular forces, and said, “These documents are given to the investigation committee … and the necessary measures will be taken to protect the Iraqi airspace.” Also in January, another senior Iraqi legislator reiterated that the US-led coalition is the main cause of ISIL’s survival in Iraq. “The international coalition is only an excuse for protecting the ISIL and helping the terrorist group with equipment and weapons,” Jome Divan, who is member of the al-Sadr bloc in the Iraqi parliament, said. He said the coalition’s support for the ISIL is now evident to everyone, and continued, “The coalition has not targeted ISIL’s main positions in Iraq.”
  • “We have discovered weapons made in the US, European countries and Israel from the areas liberated from ISIL’s control in Al-Baqdadi region,” the Al-Ahad news website quoted Head of Al-Anbar Provincial Council Khalaf Tarmouz as saying. He noted that the weapons made by the European countries and Israel were discovered from the terrorists in the Eastern parts of the city of Ramadi. Al-Zameli had also disclosed in January that the anti-ISIL coalition’s planes have dropped weapons and foodstuff for the ISIL in Salahuddin, Al-Anbar and Diyala provinces. Al-Zameli underlined that the coalition is the main cause of ISIL’s survival in Iraq. “There are proofs and evidence for the US-led coalition’s military aid to ISIL terrorists through air(dropped cargoes),” he told FNA in January.
  • In late December, Iraqi Parliamentary Security and Defense Commission MP disclosed that a US plane supplied the ISIL terrorist organization with arms and ammunition in Salahuddin province. MP Majid al-Gharawi stated that the available information pointed out that US planes are supplying ISIL organization, not only in Salahuddin province, but also other provinces, Iraq TradeLink reported. He added that the US and the international coalition are “not serious in fighting against the ISIL organization, because they have the technological power to determine the presence of ISIL gunmen and destroy them in one month”. Gharawi added that “the US is trying to expand the time of the war against the ISIL to get guarantees from the Iraqi government to have its bases in Mosul and Anbar provinces.” Salahuddin security commission also disclosed that “unknown planes threw arms and ammunition to the ISIL gunmen Southeast of Tikrit city”. Also in Late December, a senior Iraqi lawmaker raised doubts about the seriousness of the anti-ISIL coalition led by the US, and said that the terrorist group still received aids dropped by unidentified aircraft.
  • “The international coalition is not serious about air strikes on ISIL terrorists and is even seeking to take out the popular (voluntary) forces from the battlefield against the Takfiris so that the problem with ISIL remains unsolved in the near future,” Nahlah al-Hababi told FNA. “The ISIL terrorists are still receiving aids from unidentified fighter jets in Iraq and Syria,” she added. Hababi said that the coalition’s precise airstrikes are launched only in those areas where the Kurdish Pishmarga forces are present, while military strikes in other regions are not so much precise. In late December, the US-led coalition dropped aids to the Takfiri militants in an area North of Baghdad. Field sources in Iraq told al-Manar that the international coalition airplanes dropped aids to the terrorist militants in Balad, an area which lies in Salahuddin province North of Baghdad. In October, a high-ranking Iranian commander also slammed the US for providing aid supplies to ISIL, adding that the US claims that the weapons were mistakenly airdropped to ISIL were untrue.
  • The US and the so-called anti-ISIL coalition claim that they have launched a campaign against this terrorist and criminal group – while supplying them with weapons, food and medicine in Jalawla region (a town in Diyala Governorate, Iraq). This explicitly displays the falsity of the coalition’s and the US’ claims,” Deputy Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Brigadier General Massoud Jazayeri said. The US claimed that it had airdropped weapons and medical aid to Kurdish fighters confronting the ISIL in Kobani, near the Turkish border in Northern Syria. The US Defense Department said that it had airdropped 28 bundles of weapons and supplies, but one of them did not make it into the hands of the Kurdish fighters. Video footage later showed that some of the weapons that the US airdropped were taken by ISIL militants. The Iranian commander insisted that the US had the necessary intelligence about ISIL’s deployment in the region and that their claims to have mistakenly airdropped weapons to them are as unlikely as they are untrue.
  • Paul Merrell on 05 Mar 15
     
    And the U.S. commanders wonder why the Iraqi and Iranian generals didn't tell them of their plans to attack Tikrit? 
Gary Edwards

The Daily Bell - Obama Evader - 0 views

www.thedailybell.com/...Obama-Evader

Obama Globalist Daily-Bell Power-Elites CFR Amero Continental-Union Patriot-Act NDAA

shared by Gary Edwards on 11 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 11 Nov 12
     
    "Obama - Globalist Evader Sunday, November 11, 2012 - by Staff Report Obama answers questions about the CFR and Patriot Act ... In this 2008 campaign / townhall video, Obama says that he sees no evidence towards a continental government, yet in other videos he has stated ... "world order that I think we'd all like to see." - YouTube Dominant Social Theme: All of this conspiracy talk is paranoid and unproductive. Free-Market Analysis: Thank goodness for the Internet. Even if you are an Obama supporter, this 2008 video should shock you. In it, Obama sidesteps questions about his membership in the elitist Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and professes to be profoundly troubled by then-President George W. Bush's executive orders reducing US constitutional freedoms. Today, we know that Obama did nothing to defend US civil liberties once he was put in office. Not only did he not reduce George Bush's most invasive executive orders, he added to them. Notably, Obama created a list of US citizens that his administration believes pose an imminent threat to the nation and should be assassinated via drone targeting if possible. It has been pointed out that killing citizens without due process is profoundly authoritarian and violates every aspect of constitutional rights. Dangerous or not, those who the administration believes are an "imminent threat" still are entitled to due process. For some reason, Obama and those who surround him believe they are not. What's also troubling, from our point of view, is the reverence with which the audience treats Barack Obama, thanking him for not taking "lobbyist" funds (whatever that means) and applauding enthusiastically as he evades one question after another. Listen to Obama dodge the real issue - that he is the globalists' point man in the US, the individual the power elite plans to elevate still higher. There is a reason Obama will not reveal his background; it likely shows quite clearly who he really works for ... and wh
Gary Edwards

Is The US Finally Ready For Revolution? - Democratic Underground - 1 views

www.democraticunderground.com/101970

ready-for-revolution

shared by Gary Edwards on 02 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 02 Jul 13
     
    Written in June of 2012, before the national elections, this commentary remains the ringing truth.  Maybe more Americans are ready to listen this fourth of July? ........................... "Is America Ready For Revolution? I have always strongly believed that it's not possible to be a good Christian without standing up against social injustice and government corruption in all its forms. As I take a look around me today I find a lot of things wrong with our country. In fact, I have been a proponent for radical change for several years now, and I have written and published 2 books on this very topic. Where shall I begin? In God-blessed America, the land of the free where everyone is an economic slave, our founding fathers' sacred idea of a government "of the people, by the people, for the people" has become but a cruel joke. Former president George W. Bush has notoriously called our Constitution - our supreme law of the land - "that (expletive) piece of paper". The federal government is currently spending at least $60 billion per month on military excursions in Afghanistan, the Middle East, and northern and western Africa - including operating between 800 and 1,000 foreign military bases all over the world. Our country's over-used flying drone aircraft kills hundreds daily overseas, many of whom are only innocent bystanders. Meanwhile here on the home front, one in seven people are on food stamps, and at any given time one in four American children are going hungry today. Our country spends more money incarcerating people than it does on education. What's up with that? Our political system is openly rigged against the best interests of the American people. A massive market mechanism is securely entrenched in our political system where political influence is openly bought and sold. Tens of thousands of highly-paid middlemen called "lobbyists" facilitate the legal transfer of billions between moneyed special interests and our so-called "representatives" i
Gary Edwards

David Skeel: A Nation Adrift From the Rule of Law - WSJ.com - 1 views

online.wsj.com/...4184704577588822128122752.html

wsj rule-of-law David-Skeel

shared by Gary Edwards on 23 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 23 Aug 12
     
    "No one doubts that the coming election will be the most important referendum on the size and nature of government in a generation. But another issue is nearly as important and has gotten far less attention: our crumbling commitment to the rule of law. The notion that we are governed by rules that are transparent and enacted through the legislative process-not by the whims of our leaders-is at the heart of that commitment. If legislators exceed their authority under the Constitution, or if otherwise legitimate laws are misused, courts must step in to prevent or remedy the potential harm. During the 2008 financial crisis, the government repeatedly violated these principles. When regulators bailed out Bear Stearns by engineering its sale to J.P. Morgan Chase, they flagrantly disregarded basic corporate law by "locking up" the transaction so that no other bidder could intervene. When the government bailed out AIG six months later, the Federal Reserve funded the bailout by invoking extraordinary loan powers for what was clearly an acquisition rather than a loan. (The government acquired nearly 80% of AIG's stock.) Two months later, the Treasury Department used money from the $700-billion Troubled Asset Relief Program fund to bail out the car companies. This was dubious. Under the statute, the funds were to be used for financial institutions. But the real violation came a few months later, when the government used a sham bankruptcy sale to transfer Chrysler to Fiat while almost certainly stiffing Chrysler's senior creditors. According to two leading legal scholars, Eric Posner and Adrian Vermeule, rule-of-law violations are inevitable during a crisis. The executive branch takes all necessary steps, even if that means violating the law, until the crisis has passed. The argument is powerful, and its advocates are correct that presidents and other executive-branch officials often push the envelope during a crisis. Yet pushing the envelope isn't the same thing as f
Gary Edwards

Have a T-P Pre-Primary to avoid sure defeat // Implement a drive to recruit and organize into each precinct - Tea Party Command Center - 1 views

teapartyorg.ning.com/...-primary-prior-to-rino-primary

TP-Primary

shared by Gary Edwards on 22 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 22 Jul 13
     
    "This discussion needs your direct support or direct critique that I might respond.  Other idea's please start in a new discussion (note: this has been revised after 400+ comments, but if possible read all of them) thank you for your time: (revised July 20th,'13) I thought it would be helpful (stike that, it's absolutely imperative!!!!)  to have a T Party pre-primary prior to the RINO primary so we wouldn't split our vote.  That thread sort of grew to the following two steps: The following two step approach would require a temporary meeting of the minds from the various larger conservative Tea Party factions for the following purposes:: 1. Having a pre-primary to avoid the late RINO primary so we avoid splitting our vote and being able to get out there now to campaign because we have some serious hills to climb (our message, government news and funding etc.). But the main point here is that we always split our votes in the regular RINO primary, we need to avoid this.  We need some sort of (temporary or other) unified effort of all the un-unified groups for this purpose.  Make sure you don't miss a word utilized here and that the whole 'idea' is understood.  Along with this we also need to have the above bonded with the following item number 2, as follows: 2. Implement a plan to organize and recruit deep into every precinct of the T-Party. This would include the larger T-P groups to supply their associated local smaller groups with solid information to be distributed and used as a means to educate both door to door and if possible via ads in their local news papers when feasible. (with an increase in some recruiting, this can work - I've checked out the cost). We have great web sites on the internet but many republican's, democrats and independents don't go there.  We need a serious ground team for all of our upcoming elections.  Many of our small groups are getting smaller and many not associated would like to be contacted by us.  Our idea's
Gary Edwards

Intelligence Warnings On Benghazi Were Loud And Clear - Investors.com - 0 views

news.investors.com/...agged-dangers-at-benghazi.aspx

Benghazi-coverup

shared by Gary Edwards on 13 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 13 Nov 13
     
    excerpt: "Months before the murder of a U.S. ambassador in Benghazi, American intelligence analysts documented a massive al-Qaida rally a few miles from the ambassador's residence. At that rally, terror leaders called for the murder of American diplomats. Three U.S. intelligence reports, unearthed by the American Media Institute and detailed here for the first time, offer vivid descriptions of the al-Qaida meeting. Flying the black flag of al-Qaida, some 300 armed men gathered in Benghazi's Al-Tahrir Square on June 7 and 8, 2012. They brandished machine guns, rocket launchers and a truck mounted with an anti-aircraft cannon. The two-day meeting, which included outdoor prayers and a parade of armed vehicles, was attended by a baker's dozen of North African al-Qaida affiliates. "It was like a team pep rally before the game, only for jihad," said a U.S. intelligence analyst who monitors North Africa. "Organized and deadly. You saw what followed. People died." In the face of these three reports, the State Department continued to deny requests for additional security for the U.S. ambassador in Libya. At the same time, the State Department issued a travel advisory warning Americans against going to Libya in August 2012. Obama administration officials have long denied any warning before the Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi attacks. On the campaign trail, the president insisted that al-Qaida was "decimated" and "on the run," while intelligence reports prepared for the president's advisers told a different story - that al-Qaida's menace was growing in Libya and elsewhere. Al-Qaida itself publicly displayed its strength. Al-Qaida posted pictures of the June 2012 Benghazi meeting on its Arabic-language Facebook page and invited the Arabic-language media to cover the event, which many did. The three U.S. intelligence reports documenting the al-Qaida gathering in Benghazi were circulated in August 2012 and earlier among Defense and State Department officials, as well as Americ
Paul Merrell

Quitting Over Syria | The American Conservative - 0 views

www.theamericanconservative.com/...quitting-over-syria

war & peace Syria WMD Obama lies

shared by Paul Merrell on 15 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • The release of the White House “Government Assessment” on August 30, providing the purported evidence to support a bombing attack on Syria, defused a conflict with the intelligence community that had threatened to become public through the mass resignation of a significant number of analysts. The intelligence community’s consensus view on the status of the Syrian chemical-weapons program was derived from a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) completed late last year and hurriedly updated this past summer to reflect the suspected use of chemical weapons against rebels and civilians. The report maintained that there were some indications that the regime was using chemicals, while conceding that there was no conclusive proof. There was considerable dissent from even that equivocation, including by many analysts who felt that the evidence for a Syrian government role was subject to interpretation and possibly even fabricated. Some believed the complete absence of U.S. satellite intelligence on the extensive preparations that the government would have needed to make in order to mix its binary chemical system and deliver it on target was particularly disturbing. These concerns were reinforced by subsequent UN reports suggesting that the rebels might have access to their own chemical weapons. The White House, meanwhile, considered the somewhat ambiguous conclusion of the NIE to be unsatisfactory, resulting in considerable pushback against the senior analysts who had authored the report.
  • In a scenario unfortunately reminiscent of the lead up to Iraq, the National Security Council tasked the various intelligence agencies to beat the bushes and come up with more corroborative information. Israel obligingly provided what was reported to be interceptions of telephone conversations implicating the Syrian army in the attack, but it was widely believed that the information might have been fabricated by Tel Aviv, meaning that bad intelligence was being used to confirm other suspect information, a phenomenon known to analysts as “circular reporting.” Other intelligence cited in passing by the White House on the trajectories and telemetry of rockets that may have been used in the attack was also somewhat conjectural and involved weapons that were not, in fact, in the Syrian arsenal, suggesting that they were actually fired by the rebels. Also, traces of Sarin were not found in most of the areas being investigated, nor on one of the two rockets identified. Whether the victims of the attack suffered symptoms of Sarin was also disputed, and no autopsies were performed to confirm the presence of the chemical. 
  • With all evidence considered, the intelligence community found itself with numerous skeptics in the ranks, leading to sharp exchanges with the Director of Central Intelligence John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. A number of analysts threatened to resign as a group if their strong dissent was not noted in any report released to the public, forcing both Brennan and Clapper to back down. This led to the White House issuing its own assessment, completely divorcing the process from any direct connection to the intelligence community. The spectacle of CIA Director George Tenet sitting behind Secretary of State Colin Powell in the United Nations, providing him with credibility as Powell told a series of half-truths, would not be repeated. Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is executive director of the Council for the National Interest.
  • Paul Merrell on 15 Nov 13
     
    More detail about backing up previous reports that the information supplied in the White House "Government Assessment of the Syrian Government's Use of Chemical Weapons on August 21, 2013" cooking of intelligence to justify missile strikes on Syria. Note that the same day the Assessment was published by the White House Offiice of the Press Secretary, active duty intelligence officials passed a message to Obama through veteran intelligence officers that the intelligence in the report was unreliable and that there was strong evidence that it was the "rebels" rather than Syrian government that had used sarin gas. http://www.globalresearch.ca/u-s-military-and-intelligence-officials-to-obama-assad-not-responsible-for-chemical-attack/5348576 Next came a report three days later citing and quoting an anonymous former intelligence official who said the format used and its publication by the White House rather than by the Chief of Intelligence were both strong indications that the document was not the product of the intelligence community. http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/09/obamas-case-for-syria-didnt-reflect-intel-consensus/ Now we learn the reason the White House had to cook its own "public summary of intelligence,"  because many top intelligence threatened to resign if the cherry-picked version of events without reservations explaining the likelihood that it was the rebels who did it. So the Obama Administration, like the Bush II Administration, deliberately lied to the public in an attempt to stampede the nation into another foreign war in the Mideast. The only relevant difference is that Obama didn't get away with launching his own "shock and awe" campaign. Impeachable offense? Yes. Likely to happen? No. Too many hawks in Congress who want war against both Syria and Iran.
Gary Edwards

Revealed: Obama's Immense Shadow Army & Its Shocking Takeover Plan - 1 views

www.libertynews.com/...rmy-its-shocking-takeover-plan

shared by Gary Edwards on 26 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 26 Oct 13
     
    Is the ObamaCare train wreck a wreck by design? Another notch in the Bankster belt marking another step in the bankrupting of America? Revealed: Obama's Immense Shadow Army & Its Shocking Takeover Plan October 26, 2013  //  By: Eric Odom  //   The ObamaCare train wreck - it's awful, possibly purposeful, certainly useful for team Obama and its growing army of community activists and organizers. In a previous report, we explored the question, "What if the ObamaCare debacle is really a diversion, using a military term a "feint" - a tactical distraction to draw our attention, our focus and our fire away from the real point of attack on liberty?" Remember that horrible train wreck in Spain not long ago, captured on video? As tragic as it was, watching the crash and its gruesome aftermath was almost irresistible, wasn't it? Well, what if the disastrous rollout of the President's signature legislative achievement - what if this spectacular slow motion ObamaCare train wreck has been and is being allowed to happen so that what's going on around the bend from the fiery crash site gets little attention, from the public, from the media or from Congressional investigators? Think about it, friends. How could Barack Obama and his celebrated team of incredibly proficient, plugged in techies - the team that twice got him elected - be behind the utterly disastrous launch of the ObamaCare online storefront, healthcare.gov - arguably the biggest website failure in history? How could so much money have been spent to produce such a problem-plagued site that apparently was doomed in its developmental confusion? And how to fix this monumental mess, well, there doesn't seem to be any clear plan…other than hope. And now we learn that many, if not most, of the people actually signing up for ObamaCare through the website are enrolling in Medicaid, not signing up for private insurance policies they pay for, but adding their names onto government roll
  • Gary Edwards on 26 Oct 13
     
    There is no doubt in my mind that corporations (and their Chamber of Commerce boot licking lackys) believe that employer provided healthcare benefits was a HUGE MISTAKE. The key feature of ObamaCare is that of ENDING the HMO-Employee Healthcare profit draining quagmire these corporations somehow stumbled into. (Hint: they traded healthcare benefits for wide open government assisted Globalization - the new world order Merchantilism). IMHO, the insurance companies know full well that the entire HMO-Employee Healthcare bandwagon is going to end. Not because of socialism; because of profit hungry out of control mercantilism. So they are trying to cut the best deal possible with the government. The merchantilist doesn't care that their employees are going to suffer. They only care that this cost and the blame for losing the benefit is moved from their books to the government. Nor does the merchantilist care about protecting our borders. They want cheap labor. Even if the social cost of that cheap labor lands on the government and destroys the nation. That's why the merchantilist and his Bankster financiers support Open Borders. The merchantilist could care less about the trade deficit and the massive transfer of American manufacturing jobs overseas. As long as they can sell their junk back into the USA market without a 33% import tax these bastardos are happy to destroy their country. I wonder whose army and navy will secure their investments when the USA no longer can? Are their private armies enough? Just wondering.
Paul Merrell

F.B.I. Informant Is Tied to Cyberattacks Abroad - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ed-to-cyberattacks-abroad.html

surveillance state cyberwar FBI targets Anyonymous

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • An informant working for the F.B.I. coordinated a 2012 campaign of hundreds of cyberattacks on foreign websites, including some operated by the governments of Iran, Syria, Brazil and Pakistan, according to documents and interviews with people involved in the attacks.Exploiting a vulnerability in a popular web hosting software, the informant directed at least one hacker to extract vast amounts of data — from bank records to login information — from the government servers of a number of countries and upload it to a server monitored by the F.B.I., according to court statements.
  • The attacks were coordinated by Hector Xavier Monsegur, who used the Internet alias Sabu and became a prominent hacker within Anonymous for a string of attacks on high-profile targets, including PayPal and MasterCard. By early 2012, Mr. Monsegur of New York had been arrested by the F.B.I. and had already spent months working to help the bureau identify other members of Anonymous, according to previously disclosed court papers.One of them was Jeremy Hammond, then 27, who, like Mr. Monsegur, had joined a splinter hacking group from Anonymous called Antisec. The two men had worked together in December 2011 to sabotage the computer servers of Stratfor Global Intelligence, a private intelligence firm based in Austin, Tex.
  • Shortly after the Stratfor incident, Mr. Monsegur, 30, began supplying Mr. Hammond with lists of foreign websites that might be vulnerable to sabotage, according to Mr. Hammond, in an interview, and chat logs between the two men. The New York Times petitioned the court last year to have those documents unredacted, and they were submitted to the court last week with some of the redactions removed.Continue reading the main story “After Stratfor, it was pretty much out of control in terms of targets we had access to,” Mr. Hammond said during an interview this month at a federal prison in Kentucky, where he is serving a 10-year sentence after pleading guilty to the Stratfor operation and other computer attacks inside the United States. He has not been charged with any crimes in connection with the hacks against foreign countries.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • according to an uncensored version of a court statement by Mr. Hammond, leaked online the day of his sentencing in November, the target list was extensive and included more than 2,000 Internet domains. The document said Mr. Monsegur had directed Mr. Hammond to hack government websites in Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Turkey and Brazil and other government sites, like those of the Polish Embassy in Britain and the Ministry of Electricity in Iraq.
  • The hacking campaign appears to offer further evidence that the American government has exploited major flaws in Internet security — so-called zero-day vulnerabilities like the recent Heartbleed bug — for intelligence purposes. Recently, the Obama administration decided it would be more forthcoming in revealing the flaws to industry, rather than stockpiling them until the day they are useful for surveillance or cyberattacks. But it carved a broad exception for national security and law enforcement operations.
  • Paul Merrell on 24 Apr 14
     
    Has no one in government ever heard of the concept of leadership by example? Or the Golden Rule?
Paul Merrell

Israel losing Democrats, 'can't claim bipartisan US support,' top pollster warns | The Times of Israel - 0 views

www.timesofisrael.com/-us-support-top-pollster-warns

war & peace Israel Democrats polls

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • hree quarters of highly educated, high income, publicly active US Democrats — the so-called “opinion elites” — believe Israel has too much influence on US foreign policy, almost half of them consider Israel to be a racist country, and fewer than half of them believe that Israel wants peace with its neighbors. These are among the findings of a new survey carried out by US political consultant Frank Luntz
  • Detailing the survey results to The Times of Israel on Sunday, Luntz called the findings “a disaster” for Israel. He summed them up by saying that the Democratic opinion elites are converting to the Palestinians, and “Israel can no longer claim to have the bipartisan support of America.” He said he “knew there was a shift” in attitudes to Israel among US Democrats “and I have been seeing it get worse” in his ongoing polls. But the new findings surprised and shocked him, nonetheless. “I didn’t expect it to become this blatant and this deep.” A prominent US political consultant known best for his work with Republicans, Luntz is meeting with a series of high-level Israeli officials this week to discuss the survey and consult on how to grapple with the trends it exposes.
  • “Israel has won the hearts and minds of Republicans in America, while at the same time it is losing the Democrats,” he said. On US politics, “I’m right of center,” he added. “But the Israeli government and US Jews have to focus on repairing relations with the Democrats.” Luntz put a series of largely Israel-related questions to 802 members of the opinion elites and his findings have a 3.5% margin of error. The survey, sponsored by the Jewish National Fund, was conducted last week. Among the key findings: • Asked about Israeli influence on US foreign policy, an overwhelming 76% of Democrats, as compared to 20% of Republicans, said Israel has “too much influence.” • Asked whether Israel is a racist country, 47% of Democrats agreed it is, as opposed to 13% of Republicans. Another 21% of Democrats didn’t know or were neutral (as opposed to 12% of Republicans), and only 32% of Democrats disagreed when asked if Israel is a racist country, as opposed to 76% of Republicans. (Overall 32% of those polled said Israel is a racist country.)
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  • • Asked whether Israel wants peace with its neighbors, while an overwhelming 88% of Republicans said it does, a far lower 48% of Democrats agreed. Another 21% of Democrats didn’t know or were neutral (as compared to 7% of Republicans). And 31% of Democrats did not think Israel wants peace (as compared to 5% of Republicans). • Asked whether they would be more likely to vote for a local politician who supported Israel and its right to defend itself, an overwhelming 76% of Republicans said yes, but only 18% of Democrats said yes. Meanwhile, only 7% of Republicans — but 32% of Democrats — said they would be less likely to support a local politician who backed Israel. • Asked whether they would be more likely to vote for a local politician who criticized Israeli occupation and mistreatment of Palestinians, 45% of Democrats said yes, compared to just 6% of Republicans. Asked whether they would be less likely to vote for a local politician who criticized Israeli occupation and mistreatment of Palestinians, a whopping 75% of Republicans said yes, compared to just 23% of Democrats.
  • • Asked whether the US should support Israel or the Palestinians, a vast 90% of Republicans and a far lower 51% of Democrats said Israel. Another 8% of Republicans and 31% of Democrats were neutral. And 18% of Democrats said the Palestinians, compared to 2% of Republicans. Overall, 68% of those polled said the US should support Israel, and 10% said the US should support the Palestinians. • Asked about which side they themselves support, 88% of Republicans and 46% of Democrats said they were “pro-Israeli” while 4% of Republicans and 27% of Democrats said they were “pro-Palestinian.” • Asked if settlements are an impediment to peace, 75% of Democrats and 25% of Republicans agreed.
  • A specialist in finding and testing the language that can impact public opinion, Luntz was vehement that Israel’s “messaging” has to be different if support for Israel among US Democrats is to be revived. “Obviously, policy has something to do with it, but the messaging is critical,” he said. “And the Republicans have to realize that their rhetoric is part of the problem: It’s not security that needs to be highlighted, but [Israel’s] social justice and human rights.” Underlining Israel’s role in protecting human rights and promoting equality could be particularly resonant, he said. The “words that work best” among Republicans, he said, are those along the lines of, “Israel is our strongest ally in the Middle East, and attempts to destroy the country economically and politically could do direct harm to the United States.” By contrast, the “words that work best” among Democrats are those to the effect that, “We should be encouraging more communication and cooperation, not less. We should be encouraging more diplomacy and discussion, not less.”
  • More specifically, when it comes to the most effective messaging, Luntz found that the statement “Women in Israel have exactly the same rights as men. No other Middle Eastern country offers women fully equal rights” was particularly well received among Democrats, as was the declaration, “Everyone in Israel is free to practice their religion and worship their God. No other Middle Eastern country offers similar religious protections.” By contrast, responses were markedly less positive to statements about the need for a Jewish homeland after the Holocaust, Israeli claims to the Holy Land, and Israel’s start-up technology prowess. Widely resonant among all those polled, he found, was the statement that “Despite the ongoing conflict with Gaza, Israel still donates tens of millions in humanitarian aid to Palestinians and opens its hospitals to treat them.”
  • “They don’t care about the ‘Start-Up Nation,'” he said flatly of American opinion elites in general. “It’s tragic that so much effort has been devoted to selling an image of Israel that many aren’t interested in buying.” Still more drastically, Luntz said the word “Zionism” could play no part in messaging designed to repair relations with US Democrats. There has to be an “end to the [use of the] word Zionism,” he said. “You can’t make the case if you use that word. If you are at Berkeley or Brown and start outlining a Zionist vision, you don’t get to make a case for Israel because they’ve already switched off.” He also predicted that Israel is in for “a lot more trouble” from the BDS (Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions) campaign. Once they had been informed about the BDS campaign, 19% of respondents supported it — 31% of Democrats and 3% of Republicans. And, stressed Luntz, 60% of America’s opinion elites said they were not familiar with BDS. “Israel is already having trouble with BDS, and Americans don’t even know what it means. Can you imagine how bad it will get?”
  • He also foresaw a looming battle in the US over foreign aid to Israel. Some 33% of Democrats and 22% of Republicans, his poll found, were upset that “Israel gets billions and billions of dollars in funding from the US government that should be going to the American people.” Luntz also asked whether respondents see anti-Semitism as a problem in the US. Overall, 58% agreed with the idea that anti-Semitism is a problem in America (57% of Republicans and 64% of Democrats), compared to 28% who disagreed. “Non-Jews recognize the problem, even if some Israelis want to minimize it,” he said. Ironically, the poll also found, 50% of Democrats and 18% of Republicans (and 36% of all respondents) agreed with the proposition that “Jewish people are too hyper-sensitive and too often label legitimate criticisms of Israel as an anti-Semitic attack.”
  • Paul Merrell on 06 Jul 15
     
    So the cure is supposedly "better messaging" rather than substantive reforms in Israel. Anything but behave as a civilized nation. 
Gary Edwards

Biden-Palin: An Unhealthy Debate by Yuval Levin on National Review Online - 0 views

article.nationalreview.com/?q=NTRmYzJkMmZkN2U2MDY4NmIwZTdlZTk5YzY5NTU1OTc=&w=MA==

biden palin debate mccain obama politics lies

shared by Gary Edwards on 29 Oct 08 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 29 Oct 08
     
    The rule of thumb for fact checkers of Thursday night's vice-presidential debate was that every time Joe Biden sounded especially confident, he was saying something that wasn't true. Levin tracks the many lies, distortions and half truths Joe Biden used in the debate and the Obama campaign uses in ads to smear John McCain. The healthcare lies are especially revealing.
Gary Edwards

Follow the Money: Banksters & Wall Streeters Top Obama Re-Election Supporters - 0 views

www.moneynews.com/...404563

Banksters financial-collapse financial-oligarchs Obama-re-election banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 25 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 25 Jul 11
     
    excerpt: A just-released study by the Center for Responsive Politics shows that President Obama is relying more on Wall Street to fund his re-election this year than he did in 2008, according to CNBC, which obtained an advance copy of the report.  The report says that one-third of the money Obama's elite fund-raising corps has raised on behalf of his re-election has come from the financial sector.  "Individuals who work in the finance, insurance, and real estate sector are responsible for raising at least $11.3 million for Obama's campaign and the Democratic National Committee," the report says.  And, all of Obama's "bundlers" - top fundraisers who obtain donations from people and groups in their business, professional, and personal networks - have raised a minimum of $34.95 million.  Obama has even added new Wall Streeters who did not work for him in 2008, including former Goldman Sachs CEO Jon Corzine, Evercore Partners executive Charles Myers, Greenstreet Real Estate Partners CEO Steven Green, and Azita Raji, a former investment banker for JPMorgan.  Obama and the DNC combined are on pace to far exceed the amounts Obama raised from Wall Street donors in 2008, both in raw dollar amounts and as a percentage of what he raises overall.
Paul Merrell

U.S. sees Syria rebels in political, not military solution: Asharq al-Awsat newspaper | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...a-rebels-idUSKBN0IG0PV20141027

war & peace Syria ISIL U.S.-foreign-policy Syrian-opposition

shared by Paul Merrell on 01 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • The United States does not expect Syrian rebels it plans to train to fight Islamic State militants to also take on President Bashar al-Assad's forces, but sees them as a crucial part of a political solution to end the war, the Asharq al-Awsat newspaper quoted a senior U.S. official as saying. The United States, which is leading an international coalition bombing Islamic State in Syria, has said it wants to train and equip "moderate" rebels to fight the militant group which has seized tracts of land in Syria and neighboring Iraq.Asked whether those rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) units would ultimately go on to fight Syrian government forces, John Allen, the U.S. representative to the coalition, told the Asharq al-Awsat daily:
  • "No. What we would like to see is for the FSA and the forces that we will ultimately generate, train and equip to become the credible force that the Assad government ultimately has to acknowledge and recognize.""There is not going to be a military solution here," he added, in comments published at the weekend on the newspaper's English language website.
  • Allen said there was a need to build up the credibility of the moderate Syrian opposition at a political level, adding that it was normal for rebel forces to clash with the Syrian military as they seek to defend their territory and families."But the intent is not to create a field force to liberate Damascus — that is not the intent," Allen, a retired U.S. general, told the newspaper."The intent is that in the political outcome, they must be a prominent - perhaps the preeminent voice - at the table to ultimately contribute to the political outcome that we seek," he said at the start of a Middle East tour.U.S. President Barack Obama said last month he wanted to train and equip Free Syrian Army rebels to "strengthen the opposition as the best counterweight to the extremists" and to prevent U.S. troops from being dragged into another ground war.
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  • The Free Syrian Army is a term used to describe dozens of armed groups fighting to overthrow Assad but with little or no central command. They have been widely outgunned by Islamist insurgents such as Islamic State.Rebel fighters have voiced frustration with the U.S.-led approach to fighting Islamic State. They say Washington and its Arab allies are too focused on quashing the militant group at the expense of confronting Syrian government forces, which many rebels still see as the ultimate enemy.The Syrian air force has ramped up its own bombing campaign on insurgent-held areas since the U.S-led air strikes began last month, increasing rebel fears that the government is profiting from the distraction of the coalition campaign.
  • "The outcome that we seek in Syria is akin to the (anti-Islamic State) strategy that fits into a much larger regional strategy and that outcome is a political outcome that does not include Assad," Allen said.The United Nations says more than 191,000 people have been killed since the start of the Syrian uprising against Assad's rule in 2011. Rights groups say the actual figure is higher.
Paul Merrell

Exclusive: Major nations hold talks on ending U.N. sanctions on Iran - officials | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...-nuclear-idUSKBN0M82IS20150312

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • (Reuters) - Major world powers have begun talks about a United Nations Security Council resolution to lift U.N. sanctions on Iran if a nuclear agreement is struck with Tehran, a step that could make it harder for the U.S. Congress to undo a deal, Western officials said. The talks between Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — the five permanent members of the Security Council — plus Germany and Iran, are taking place ahead of difficult negotiations that resume next week over constricting Iran's nuclear ability.Some eight U.N. resolutions - four of them imposing sanctions - ban Iran from uranium enrichment and other sensitive atomic work and bar it from buying and selling atomic technology and anything linked to ballistic missiles. There is also a U.N. arms embargo.Iran sees their removal as crucial as U.N. measures are a legal basis for more stringent U.S. and European Union measures to be enforced. The U.S. and EU often cite violations of the U.N. ban on enrichment and other sensitive nuclear work as justification for imposing additional penalties on Iran.
  • U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told Congress on Wednesday that an Iran nuclear deal would not be legally binding, meaning future U.S. presidents could decide not to implement it. That point was emphasized in an open letter by 47 Republican senators sent on Monday to Iran's leaders asserting any deal could be discarded once President Barack Obama leaves office in January 2017.But a Security Council resolution on a nuclear deal with Iran could be legally binding, say Western diplomatic officials. That could complicate and possibly undercut future attempts by Republicans in Washington to unravel an agreement.Iran and the six powers are aiming to complete the framework of a nuclear deal by the end of March, and achieve a full agreement by June 30, to curb Iran's most sensitive nuclear activities for at least 10 years in exchange for a gradual end to all sanctions on the Islamic Republic.So far, those talks have focused on separate U.S. and European Union sanctions on Iran's energy and financial sectors, which Tehran desperately wants removed. The sanctions question is a sticking point in the talks that resume next week in Lausanne, Switzerland, between Iran and the six powers.
  • But Western officials involved in the negotiations said they are also discussing elements to include in a draft resolution for the 15-nation Security Council to begin easing U.N. nuclear-related sanctions that have been in place since December 2006."If there's a nuclear deal, and that's still a big 'if', we'll want to move quickly on the U.N. sanctions issue," an official said, requesting anonymity.The negotiations are taking place at senior foreign ministry level at the six powers and Iran, and not at the United Nations in New York.
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  • A senior U.S. administration official confirmed that the discussions were underway.The official said that the Security Council had mandated the negotiations over the U.N. sanctions and therefore has to be involved. The core role in negotiations with Iran that was being played by the five permanent members meant that any understanding over U.N. sanctions would likely get endorsed by the full council, the official added.Iran rejects Western allegations it is seeking a nuclear weapons capability.Officials said a U.N. resolution could help protect any nuclear deal against attempts by Republicans in U.S. Congress to sabotage it. Since violation of U.N. demands that Iran halt enrichment provide a legal basis for sanctioning Tehran, a new resolution could make new sanction moves difficult."There is an interesting question about whether, if the Security Council endorses the deal, that stops Congress undermining the deal," a Western diplomat said.
  • Other Western officials said Republicans might be deterred from undermining any deal if the Security Council unanimously endorses it and demonstrates that the world is united in favor of a diplomatic solution to the 12-year nuclear standoff.Concerns that Republican-controlled Congress might try to derail a nuclear agreement have been fueled by the letter to Iran's leaders and a Republican invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address Congress in a March 3 speech that railed against a nuclear deal with Iran.The officials emphasized that ending all sanctions would be contingent on compliance with the terms of any deal. They added that the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Vienna-based nuclear watchdog, will play a key role in verifying Iran's compliance with any agreement.
  • Among questions facing negotiators as they seek to prepare a resolution for the Security Council is the timing and speed of lifting U.N. nuclear sanctions, including whether to present it in March if a political framework agreement is signed next week or to delay until a final deal is reached by the end-June target.
  • Paul Merrell on 13 Mar 15
     
    Soundslike it's official. U.N. Security Council Resolution is the chosen route past the Israel Firsters in Congress. But notice that Reuters is saying that "Republicans" in Congress are the barrier. Is that a sign that Repubswill be painted as the bad guys here? As in Israel's wants are now a partisan issue? It's factually incorrect. Plenty of Democrats also bow toward AIPAC headquarters  five times a day while praying for Zionist campaign contributions. 
Paul Merrell

Hillary Clinton, With Little Notice, Vows to Embrace an Extremist Agenda on Israel - 0 views

theintercept.com/...-an-extremist-agenda-on-israel

Auction 2016 Greenwald Hillary Israel-lobby

shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • Photo: Alex Brandon/APFormer President Bill Clinton on Monday met in secret (no press allowed) with roughly 100 leaders of South Florida’s Jewish community, and, as the Times of Israel reports, “He vowed that, if elected, Hillary Clinton would make it one of her top priorities to strengthen the U.S.-Israel alliance.” He also “stressed the close bond that he and his wife have with the State of Israel.” It may be tempting to dismiss this as standard, vapid Clintonian politicking: adeptly telling everyone what they want to hear and making them believe it. After all, is it even physically possible to “strengthen the U.S.-Israel alliance” beyond what it already entails: billions of dollars in American taxpayer money transferred every year, sophisticated weapons fed to Israel as it bombs its defenseless neighbors, blindly loyal diplomatic support and protection for everything it does? But Bill Clinton’s vow of even greater support for Israel is completely consistent with what Hillary Clinton herself has been telling American Jewish audiences for months. In November, she published an op-ed in The Forward in which she vowed to strengthen relations not only with Israel, but also with its extremist prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
  • Her comments on Israel have similarly contained implicit criticisms of Obama’s foreign policy: namely, that he has created or at least allowed too much animosity with Netanyahu. In her Forward op-ed, she wrote that the Israeli prime minister’s “upcoming visit to Washington is an opportunity to reaffirm the unbreakable bonds of friendship and unity between the people and governments of the United States and Israel.” She pointedly added: “The alliance between our two nations transcends politics. It is and should always be a commitment that unites us, not a wedge that divides us.” And in case her message is unclear, she added this campaign promise: “I would also invite the Israeli prime minister to the White House in my first month in office.” Last month, Clinton wrote an even more extreme op-ed in the Jewish Journal, one that made even clearer that she intends to change Obama’s policy to make it even more “pro-Israel.” It begins: “In this time of terrorism and turmoil, the alliance between the United States and Israel is more important than ever. To meet the many challenges we face, we have to take our relationship to the next level.”
  • “With every passing year, we must tie the bonds tighter,” she wrote. Tie those bonds tighter. Thus: As part of this effort, we need to ensure that Israel continues to maintain its qualitative military edge. The United States should further bolster Israeli air defenses and help develop better tunnel detection technology to prevent arms smuggling and kidnapping. We should also expand high-level U.S.-Israel strategic consultations. As always, there is not a word about the oppression and brutality imposed on Palestinians as part of Israel’s decadeslong occupation. She does not even acknowledge, let alone express opposition to, Israel’s repeated, civilian-slaughtering bombing of the open-air prison in Gaza. That’s because for Clinton — like the progressive establishment that supports her — the suffering and violence imposed on Palestinians literally do not exist. None of this is mentioned, even in passing, in the endless parade of pro-Clinton articles pouring forth from progressive media outlets.
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  • Clinton partisans — being Clinton partisans — would, if they ever did deign to address Israel/Palestine, undoubtedly justify Clinton’s hawkishness on the ground of political necessity: that she could never win if she did not demonstrate steadfast devotion to the Israeli government. But for all his foreign policy excesses, including on Israel, Obama has proven that a national politician can be at least mildly more adversarial to Israeli leaders and still retain support. And notably, there is at least one politician who rejects the view that one must cling to standard pro-Israel orthodoxy in order to win; just yesterday, Donald Trump vowed “neutrality” on Israel/Palestine. As I noted a couple of weeks ago, Clinton advocates are understandably desperate to manufacture the most trivial controversies because the alternative is to defend her candidacy based on her prior actions and current beliefs (that tactic was actually pioneered by then-Clinton operative Dick Morris, who had his client turn the 1996 election into a discussion of profound topics such as school uniforms). If you were a pro-Clinton progressive, would you want to defend her continuous vows to “strengthen” U.S. support for the Netanyahu government and ensure that every year “we must tie the bonds tighter”?
  • Paul Merrell on 20 Feb 16
     
    Glen Greenwald (a Jew) tackles Hillary's promise to increase support for Israel's right-wing government, at the expense of Palestinian liberty. With friends like Israel, who needs enemies?
Paul Merrell

A Coalition in Which Some Do More Than Others to Fight ISIS - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...than-others-to-fight-isis.html

war & peace Syria ISIL U.S.-foreign-policy coalition-of-the-unwilling

shared by Paul Merrell on 01 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • “We have mobilized 65 countries to go after ISIL,” Mr. Obama told reporters while on a trip to Turkey, using an acronym for the group. “The United States has built and led a broad coalition against ISIL of some 65 nations,” he said several days later.“The United States, France and our coalition of some 65 nations have been united in one mission — to destroy these ISIL terrorists,” he added a few days after that.The president has sought to evoke the sort of grand coalition the United States led in World War II. But when it comes to the war part of the war against the Islamic State, the 65-member coalition begins to shrink rapidly down to a coalition of just a handful.
  • As of Nov. 19, the United States had conducted 6,471 of the 8,289 airstrikes against the Islamic State, according to the Pentagon. American warplanes carried out about two-thirds of the strikes on Iraqi territory and 95 percent of those on Syrian territory. Australia, Canada, France and Jordan have conducted strikes in both countries. Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands and Britain have participated just in Iraq, while Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates have participated just in Syria.That leaves more than 50 other coalition members that have never been directly involved in the air campaign. Some early participants, like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Jordan and the U.A.E., have not conducted a strike in months. While France has stepped up its strikes since the Paris attacks, Canada’s new prime minister is sticking to his vow to pull its six CF-18 fighter jets out of the bombing campaign, although Canadian surveillance and refueling aircraft may stay with the mission.
  • The Obama administration considers just 24 of the countries to be part of the core group that meets quarterly. The Italians are training Iraqi police officers, the Germans and Emiratis are working with 20 countries to stabilize war-torn areas, and 18 countries are training Iraqi and Kurdish military.But many others seem included in the membership rolls because they have adopted policies protecting their own security. Countries like Kuwait and Tunisia have broken up Islamist cells. Sweden is speeding up legislation to curb the abuse of Swedish passports and to criminalize foreign fighters. Albania approved a national strategy to combat violent extremism. Other members include Luxembourg, Montenegro, Iceland, Taiwan, Singapore, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Latvia, and Kosovo.
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  • One reason Mr. Obama has emphasized the size of the coalition lately has been to isolate Russia, which has begun its own military operations in Syria, independent of the United States and its allies, to bolster the government of President Bashar al-Assad.“We’ve got a coalition of 65 countries who’ve been active in pushing back against ISIL for quite some time,” Mr. Obama said last week. “Russia right now is a coalition of two — Iran and Russia, supporting Assad.”At a briefing this month, John Kirby, the State Department spokesman, defended the coalition when a reporter suggested Russia was doing more than many members.“It’s a coalition of the willing, which means every nation has to be willing to contribute what they can,” Mr. Kirby said. Not everyone can conduct airstrikes, he added, “but that doesn’t mean that other nations’ contributions aren’t important.”
Paul Merrell

Court refuses to combine dozens of cases over Clinton emails | TheHill - 0 views

thehill.com/...s-of-cases-over-clinton-emails

Auction 2016 Hillary-emails litigation consolidation

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • A federal court is denying the State Department’s efforts for judges to coordinate on the roughly three-dozen pending lawsuits related to former Secretary Hillary Clinton’s emails.The decision from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia is a setback for the department, which had complained that the multiple legal fronts were draining its limited resources.ADVERTISEMENTBut the multiple cases were at such different points in their development, Chief Judge Richard Roberts wrote in an order released Thursday, it made little sense to combine them.“Many of the underlying cases have been pending for several years and a significant number of scheduling orders have already been entered,” Roberts wrote.The decision to deny the State Department’s request was unanimous, Roberts added.
  • However, he noted that individual judges have “committed to informal coordination so as to avoid unnecessary inefficiencies and confusion.”The State Department has complained about the multiple public records lawsuits, which seek to force into the light various documents from Clinton’s personal server during her time at State.Last month, the government filed a request seeking to have a single judge coordinate responses to 32 of them. That would cut down on the “confusion, inefficiencies and advantages given to some requesters at the expense of others,” the department claimed.“It will put some order to what has been a chaotic situation,” government lawyer Elizabeth Shapiro said at the time. In denying the government's motion, the individual cases will continue to move along on a relatively scattershot basis. Any one of the 17 judges involved in the cases has the power to order the State Department to release certain documents or, if they so chose, order new searches on Clinton’s private server.Organizations suing the government called the court’s decision a win.
  • The government's request was a “desperate effort to buy time for itself and Hillary Clinton,” Tom Fitton, the head of the conservative group Judicial Watch, said in a statement. Judicial Watch has filed a total of 18 lawsuits involving Clinton’s emails.“With this obstruction out of the way, we are one step closer to the legal reckoning for Mrs. Clinton’s and the State Department’s contempt for the rule of law.”A State Department spokesman declined to comment.  
Paul Merrell

Syria: US Success Would Only Be the End of the Beginning | nsnbc international - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...ly-be-the-end-of-the-beginning

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Iran Israel MEK

shared by Paul Merrell on 11 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • An October 7, 2015 hearing before the US Senate Committee on Armed Forces (SASC) titled, “Iranian Influence in Iraq and the Case of Camp Liberty,” served as a reaffirmation of America’s commitment to back the terrorist organization Mujahedeen e-Khalq (MEK) and specifically 2,400 members of the organization being harbored on a former US military base in Iraq.
  • Providing testimony was former US Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, former US Marine Corps Commandant and former Supreme Allied Commander Europe General James Jones, USMC (Ret.), and Colonel Wesley Martin, US Army (Ret.). All three witnesses made passionate pleas before a room full of nodding senators for America to continue backing not only MEK terrorists currently harbored on a former US military base in Iraq, but to back groups like MEK inside of Iran itself to threaten the very survival of the government in Tehran. In the opening remarks by Lieberman, he stated: It was not only right and just that we took them off the foreign terrorist organization list, but the truth is now that we ought to be supportive of them and others in opposition to the government in Iran more than we have been.
  • Lieberman would also state (emphasis added): Here’s my point Mr. Chairman, we ought to compartmentalize that agreement also, that nuclear agreement. We ought to put it over there, and not let it stop us from confronting what they’re doing in Syria. Continuing the sanctions for human rights violations in Iran in support of terrorism. And here’s the point I want to make about the National Council of Resistance of Iran and other democratic opposition groups that are Iranian – we ought to be supporting them.  This regime in Tehran is hopeless. It’s not going to change. There’s no evidence … every piece of evidence says the contrary. So I hope we can find a way, we used to do this not so long ago, supporting opposition groups in Iran. They deserve our support, and actually they would constitute a form of pressure on the government in Tehran that would unsettle them as much as anything else we could do because it would threaten the survival of the regime which from every objective indicator I can see is a very unpopular regime in Iran.  The United States, unrepentant regarding the arc of chaos, mass murder, terrorism, civilizational destruction it has created stretching from Libya to Syria, now seeks openly to extend it further into Iran using precisely the same tactics – the use of terrorist proxies – to dismantle and destroy Iranian society.
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  • MEK has carried out decades of brutal terrorist attacks, assassinations, and espionage against the Iranian government and its people, as well as targeting Americans including the attempted kidnapping of US Ambassador Douglas MacArthur II, the attempted assassination of USAF Brigadier General Harold Price, the successful assassination of Lieutenant Colonel Louis Lee Hawkins, the double assassinations of Colonel Paul Shaffer and Lieutenant Colonel Jack Turner, and the successful ambush and killing of American Rockwell International employees William Cottrell, Donald Smith, and Robert Krongard. Admissions to the deaths of the Rockwell International employees can be found within a report written by former US State Department and Department of Defense official Lincoln Bloomfield Jr. on behalf of the lobbying firm Akin Gump in an attempt to dismiss concerns over MEK’s violent past and how it connects to its current campaign of armed terror – a testament to the depths of depravity from which Washington and London lobbyists operate. To this day MEK terrorists have been carrying out attacks inside of Iran killing political opponents, attacking civilian targets, as well as carrying out the US-Israeli program of targeting and assassinating Iranian scientists. MEK terrorists are also suspected of handling patsies in recent false flag operations carried out in India, Georgia, and Thailand, which have been ham-handedly blamed on the Iranian government.
  • MEK is described by Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Ray Takeyh as a “cult-like organization” with “totalitarian tendencies.” While Takeyh fails to expand on what he meant by “cult-like” and “totalitarian,” an interview with US State Department-run Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty reported that a MEK Camp Ashraf escapee claimed the terrorist organization bans marriage, using radios, the Internet, and holds many members against their will with the threat of death if ever they are caught attempting to escape. Not once is any of this backstory mentioned in the testimony of any of the witnesses before the senate hearing, defiling the memories of those who have been murdered and otherwise victimized by this terrorist organization. The de-listing of MEK in 2012 as a foreign terrorist organization by the US State Department is another indictment of the utter lack of principles the US clearly hides behind rather than in any way upholds as a matter of executing foreign policy.
  • MEK has already afforded the US the ability to wage a low-intensity conflict with Iran. MEK’s role in doing so was eagerly discussed in 2009, several years before it was even de-listed as a terrorist organization by the US State Department in the Brooking Institution’s policy paper “Which Path to Persia? Options for a New American Strategy Toward Iran” (PDF). The report stated (emphasis added): Perhaps the most prominent (and certainly the most controversial) opposition group that has attracted attention as a potential U.S. proxy is the NCRI (National Council of Resistance of Iran), the political movement established by the MEK (Mujahedin-e Khalq). Critics believe the group to be undemocratic and unpopular, and indeed anti-American.
  • In contrast, the group’s champions contend that the movement’s long-standing opposition to the Iranian regime and record of successful attacks on and intelligence-gathering operations against the regime make it worthy of U.S. support. They also argue that the group is no longer anti-American and question the merit of earlier accusations. Raymond Tanter, one of the group’s supporters in the United States, contends that the MEK and the NCRI are allies for regime change in Tehran and also act as a useful proxy for gathering intelligence. The MEK’s greatest intelligence coup was the provision of intelligence in 2002 that led to the discovery of a secret site in Iran for enriching uranium.   Despite its defenders’ claims, the MEK remains on the U.S. government list of foreign terrorist organizations. In the 1970s, the group killed three U.S. officers and three civilian contractors in Iran. During the 1979-1980 hostage crisis, the group praised the decision to take America hostages and Elaine Sciolino reported that while group leaders publicly condemned the 9/11 attacks, within the group celebrations were widespread. Undeniably, the group has conducted terrorist attacks—often excused by the MEK’s advocates because they are directed against the Iranian government. For example, in 1981, the group bombed the headquarters of the Islamic Republic Party, which was then the clerical leadership’s main political organization, killing an estimated 70 senior officials. More recently, the group has claimed credit for over a dozen mortar attacks, assassinations, and other assaults on Iranian civilian and military targets between 1998 and 2001. At the very least, to work more closely with the group (at least in an overt manner), Washington would need to remove it from the list of foreign terrorist organizations.
  • Proof that Brookings’ policy paper was more than a mere theoretical exercise, in 2012 MEK would indeed be de-listed by the US State Department with support for the terrorist organization expanded. The fact that former senators and retired generals representing well-funded corporate think tanks even just this week are plotting to use MEK to overthrow the Iranian government should raise alarms that other criminality conspired within the pages of this policy paper may still well be in play. Lieberman himself suggests that proxy war and regime-change should proceed regardless of the so-called “nuclear deal” – with the 2009 Brookings report itself having stated that (emphasis added): …any military operation against Iran will likely be very unpopular around the world and require the proper international context—both to ensure the logistical support the operation would require and to minimize the blowback from it. The best way to minimize international opprobrium and maximize support (however, grudging or covert) is to strike only when there is a widespread conviction that the Iranians were given but then rejected a superb offer—one so good that only a regime determined to acquire nuclear weapons and acquire them for the wrong reasons would turn it down. Under those circumstances, the United States (or Israel) could portray its operations as taken in sorrow, not anger, and at least some in the international community would conclude that the Iranians “brought it on themselves” by refusing a very good deal.  Clearly, both Brookings in 2009, and Lieberman this week have conspired to use the so-called “Iranian Nuclear Deal” as cover for betrayal and regime change.
  • For those wondering why Russia has intervened in Syria in the matter that it has, it should be plainly obvious. The US has no intention to stop in Syria. With Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya behind it, and Syria within its clutches, it is clear that Iran is next, and inevitably this global blitzkrieg will not stop until it reaches Moscow and Beijing. Even as the US adamantly denies the obvious – that is has intentionally created and is currently perpetuating Al Qaeda, the so-called “Islamic State,” and other terrorist groups in Syria, it is openly conspiring to use another army of terrorists against neighboring Iran, live before a US Senate hearing. Should the US succeed in Syria, it would not be the end of the conflict, but only the end of the beginning of a much wider world war.
Paul Merrell

New Evidence Links Ledezma, COPEI to Thwarted Coup | venezuelanalysis.com - 0 views

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war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Venezuela coup-attempts UK

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • Speaking on his television program "Con el Mazo Dando", National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello released new evidence on Wednesday regarding the thwarted "Blue Coup" attempt against the government of Nicolas Maduro on February 12.Coming in the wake of the arrest of Antonio Ledezma last Thursday on charges of sedition and conspiracy, these revelations could lend further support to allegations concerning both the Caracas Metropolitan Mayor's role in the coup as well as the advance knowledge and involvement of the opposition party COPEI.Ledezma Linked to Coup Plotters Via U.S. Phone NumberAccording to Cabello, Ledezma allegedly made three phone calls in December to a New York-based number belonging jointly to General Eduardo Báez Torrealba (alias "Máximo") and Carlos Manuel Osuna Saraco (alias "Guillermo"), the latter of whom is believed to be the "financier" of the coup plot.
  • In a two week period spanning from the 25th of December to the 10th of January, Lieutenant Henry Salazar Moncada, who has been arrested and formally charged for his role in the coup attempt, also made three separate phone calls to the same U.S. number."The evidence is notorious. The proof is extremely clear [...] It's a coup, and as President Nicolas Maduro said, there are very few opposition leaders who didn't know anything [about the coup]," announced the President of the National Assembly.Antonio Ledezma was one of three signatories of a public statement by leaders of the Venezuelan opposition calling for the ouster of President Nicolas Maduro as part of a "national transition", which was released just 24 hours prior to the coup attempt.The other signatories were multi-millionaire former legislator Maria Corina Machado, whose various NGOs have received millions in funding from the U.S. government, and Voluntad Popular leader Leopoldo Lopez, who currently awaits trial for his role in leading violent opposition protests last year that took the lives of 43 people.
  • Ledezma has also been linked to extreme right-wing opposition figures such as Lorent Gómez Saleh, who was extradited from Colombia and charged with allegedly conspiring with paramilitaries to launch terrorist attacks as part of a campaign of so-called "resistance" against the Venezuelan government.COPEI Leaders Discuss Links to Military Officials "Preparing How to Do the Transition"On his program on Wednesday night, Cabello also presented a recording of an alleged phone call between the first COPEI vice-president for Lara State Jose Cassany, and another top party official by the name of Antonio Sotillo in which the two christian democrats appear to discuss preparations for a coup.In a conversation recorded on January 3 of this year, Cassany informs Sotillo that he is friends with a businessman who has a relationship "with the civil and military worlds, active military [officials], including generals."He added that these military officials were "preparing how to do the transition," which is the name given by the opposition to their demand for the ouster of President Nicolas Maduro.
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  • In another alleged phone recording highlighted by the President of the National Assembly, the Caracas president of COPEI Antonio Ecarri and the secretary general Rogelio Diaz consider the option of a coup against President Nicolas Maduro.In a recording dated February 21, Ecarri asks Diaz if he received the message from national secretary general Herberto Diaz and then goes on to state that, "one cannot have a double posture in life, if you are going to abandon the electoral field, you are going to call openly for a coup and everything else, that's fine, that is a path [...] I say we must look for a different mechanism."Diaz agrees with Ecarri's affirmation that while a coup represents a legitimate "path", a "different mechanism" is needed, adding that otherwise, "we put everything on the table and they put us in jail.The conversation ends with the two leaders agreeing on the need to "promote street activity".
  • Nonetheless, since February 2014, opposition "street activity" has largely taken the form of violent protests, which resulted in the death of 43 people last year as well as millions of dollars in damages to public property.On Tuesday, Public Ministry officials discovered a weapons cache at COPEI headquarters in Las Palmas, Caracas. Among the weapons found were 52 homemade explosive devices resembling a type of grenade, 32 molotov cocktails, and four gas masks.Officials also discovered various pamphlets with messages expressing support for Metropolitan Mayor Antonio Ledezma in the wake of his arrest on charges of conspiracy and sedition.
  • In the same program on Wednesday, Diosdado Cabello also unveiled a recording of the alleged confession of First Lieutenant Luis Lugo Calderón, revealing further details regarding the thwarted coup effort earlier this month.During his interrogation, the Air Force Lieutenant confirmed the existence of a video intended to be the "preamble" to the coup, "calling on the superior officers to wake up, asking for the renunciation of the President of the Republic, and saying that the lower officers were against the government."Lugo further elaborated that the video was to be disseminated outside the country by the Miami-based journalist Patricia Poleo around the time of Carnival, when vast numbers of Venezuelans travel to the beach and other parts of the country.The officer also substantiated allegations that coup plotters intended to use a "Super Tucano" counter-insurgency aircraft to bomb numerous ground targets such as the Miraflores Palace, teleSur, and the Ministry of Defense.
  • Identifying himself as the intended pilot of the military aircraft, he added that among the targets were air force bases located in highly populated cities, including the La Carlota base in the wealthy Caracas neighborhood of Chacao as well as the the Sucre base in the city of Maracay in Aragua State.Furthermore, the Lieutenant indicated that he had been approached by an official from the British embassy with an offer of asylum in the event that the coup failed, though he did not give further details.
  • Paul Merrell on 27 Feb 15
     
    Isn't it odd how quiet Washington, D.C. has been about the arrests? In January, Obama signed legislation imposing economic sanctions on Venezuela because it had arrested "protestors" during the last coup attempt. Of course the protestors were members of the U.S. recruited "opposition" and had been arrested for some extremely violent behavior. Could it be that CIA realized that Venezuela has firm evidence of U.S. and U.K. involvement this time around?
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