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Paul Merrell

A Distorted Lens Justifying An Illegitimate Ukrainian Government - 0 views

www.mintpressnews.com/...186661

war & peace Ukraine coup snipers

shared by Paul Merrell on 19 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • Support it or oppose it, a coup d’état took place in Kiev after an EU-brokered agreement was signed by the Ukrainian government and the mainstream opposition on Feb. 21. The agreement called for power sharing between both sides through the formation of a national unity government and for an end to the opposition-led street protests in Kiev. President Viktor Yanukovych ordered the Ukrainian police and security forces to withdraw from their positions, and even earlier, he had made multiple concessions to the opposition leadership. Instead of keeping its end of the bargain, the Ukrainian mainstream opposition executed a coup through the use of violence by organized ultra-nationalist gangs, which some analysts have compared to stay-behinds or secretive militias that were created by NATO during the Cold War. These armed ultra-nationalist groups took over administrative bodies in Ukraine and fought until they managed to oust the Ukrainian government and opened the path for opposition leaders to take power on Feb. 25. The Ukrainian mainstream opposition used the EU-brokered agreement, which the Brussels-based European Commission deliberately refused to enforce, as a means of justifying the formation of a coup-imposed government.
  • In the absence of almost half the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada, or Ukrainian Parliament, the opposition parties began to arbitrarily pass unconstitutional laws. They also unconstitutionally selected Oleksandr/Aleksandr Valentynovych Turchynov as the acting president of Ukraine before President Viktor Yanukovych was even impeached. Intimidation and violence were additionally used to secure the cooperation of any disagreeing parliamentarians or state officials in Kiev. Saying that the ultra-nationalists and fascists are marginal elements, the mainstream media networks in North America and the European Union have simply dismissed the armed ultra-nationalist groups involved in the coup that are presently integrated into the putsch regime running Kiev. The militant ultra-nationalists, however, are very influential and amassing power under the illegal premiership of Arseniy Yatsenyuk.  Yatsenyuk, himself, is from Yulia Tymoshenko’s notoriously corrupt All-Ukrainian Union Fatherland Party (Batkivshchyna) and essentially a U.S. and EU appointee. There is even a pre-coup leaked telephone interception, likely either recorded by the intelligence services of Russia or Ukraine, in which U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victory Nuland says that Yatsenyuk will be appointed as the prime minister of the Ukrainian government that the U.S. is putting together.
  • It is unlikely that Yatsenyuk and the loosely-knit alliance of the governing parties that ran Ukraine under the Yushchenko-Tymoshenko governments, foreign-based Ukrainians, and the forces behind the Orange Revolution that form the Orangist camp which he belongs to could have gotten back into power in Ukraine without pressure, the use of force and foreign backing. Yatsenyuk was even threatened and booed by the Ukrainians gathered at Independence Square when it was announced that he would be appointed as the prime minister of the post-coup government. A vast segment of the protesters made it clear that Tymoshenko, Yatsenyuk’s party leader, was no alternative to the ousted President Viktor Yanukovych in their eyes, either, when it was announced that she wanted to run for prime minister. The Orangists do not have the support of a majority of the population, nor did they form the parliamentary majority in the Verkhovna Rada. Their Orangist president, Viktor Yushchenko, only got 5 percent of the vote in January 2010, in a show of no-confidence, whereas Viktor Yanukovych won the first and second rounds of the presidential elections in 2010. According to Victoria Nuland, the U.S. has also poured $5 billion into “democracy promotion” inside Ukraine. This is U.S. State Department doublespeak for politicized funding that Washington has sent to Ukraine to organize the Orange Revolution and its Euromaidan sequel or what can frankly be described as regime change.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • To rule Ukraine once more, the Orangists and their foreign backers have used and manipulated the ultra-nationalist elements of the population — some of which are openly anti-European Union — as their foot soldiers in an application of force against their democratically-elected opponents. Despite their views, the ultra-nationalists are actually more honest than the Orangist liberal figures like Arseniy Yatsenyuk. Unlike the misleading and utterly corrupt Orangist leaders, the ultra-nationalists do not hide their agendas and platforms.
  • The ultra-nationalists have inconsolably anti-Russian attitudes. Many of them also dislike a vast spectrum of other groups, including Jews, Armenians, Roma, Poles, Tatars, supporters of the Party of Regions and communists. In this context, it should come as no surprise that one of the first decisions that the post-coup regime in Kiev made was to remove the legal status of the Russian language as the regional language of half of Ukraine. Right Sector is, itself, a coalition of militant ultra-nationalists. These militants were instrumental in fighting government forces and taking over both government buildings in Kiev and regional governments in the western portion of Ukraine. Despite the protests of First Deputy Defense Minister Oleynik, Deputy Defense Minister Mozharovskiy and Defense Minister Babenk, Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s post-coup government has even given the ultra-nationalist opposition militias official status within the Ukrainian military and security forces. Yatsenyuk and the Orangists also dismissed all the officials that protested that the move would fracture the country and make the political divide in Ukraine irreversible.
  • Several members of Svoboda have been given key cabinet and government posts. One of the two junior deputy prime ministers, or assistant deputy prime ministers, is Oleksandr Sych. The ministry of agriculture and food has been given for management to Ihor Shvaika. The environment and natural resources ministry has been assigned to Andry/Andriy Mokhnyk. The defense minister is Ihor Tenyukh, a former admiral in the Ukrainian Navy who obstructed Russian naval movements in Sevastopol during the Russo-Georgian War over South Ossetia and who was later dismissed by the Ukrainian government for insubordination. Oleh Makhnitsky, another member of Svoboda, has been assigned as the new prosecutor-general of Ukraine by the coup government. Andry Parubiy, one of the founders of Svoboda, is now the post-coup secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine (RNBO). He was the man controlling the so-called “Euromaidan security forces” that fought government forces in Kiev. His job as secretary is to represent the president and act on his behalf in coordinating and implementing the RNBO’s decisions. As a figure, Parubiy clearly illustrates how the mainstream opposition in Ukraine is integrated with the ultra-nationalists. Parubiy is an Orangist and was a leader in the Orange Revolution. He has changed parties several times. After founding Svoboda, he joined Viktor Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine before joining Yulia Tymoshenko’s Fatherland Party and being elected as one of the Fatherland Party’s deputies, or members of parliament.
  • While the mainstream media in North America and the EU look the other way about the ultra-nationalists in the coup government in Kiev, the facts speak for themselves. Both the EU and the U.S. governments have rubbed their elbows with the ultra-nationalists. Oleh Tyahnybok, the leader of Svoboda (formerly the Social Nationalist Party of Ukraine), was even part of the opposition triumvirate that all the U.S. and EU officials visiting Kiev met with while performing their political pilgrimages to Ukraine to encourage the protesters to continue with their demonstrations and riots demanding Euro-Atlantic integration. Svoboda has popularly been described as a neo-Nazi grouping. The World Jewish Congress has demanded that Svoboda be banned. The ultra-nationalist party was even condemned by the EU’s own European Parliament, which passed a motion on Dec. 13, 2012 categorically condemning Svoboda.
  • The ultra-nationalists are such an integral part of the mainstream opposition that the U.S.-supported Orangist president of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, posthumously awarded the infamous Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera the title and decoration of the “Hero of Ukraine” in 2010. Foreign audiences, however, would not know that if they relied on reportage from the likes of the U.S. state-run Radio Free Europe, which tried to protect Yushchenko because he wanted to reorient Ukraine toward the U.S. and EU. Parubiy also lobbied the European Parliament not to oppose Yushchenko’s decision. Other smaller ultra-nationalists parties were also given government posts, and several of the independent cabinet members are also aligned to these parties. Dmytro Yarosh from Right Sector (Pravyi Sektor) is the deputy secretary of the RNBO, and the Trizub Party was given the education ministry. Trizub had Sergey Kvit appointed to the post of education minister.
  • The role of the ultra-nationalists in executing the coup has been essentially ignored by the mainstream media in North America and the EU. The roots of the bloodshed in Kiev have been ignored, too. The shootings of protesters by snipers have simply been presented as the vile actions of the Ukrainian government, never taking into consideration the agitation of the armed ultra-nationalist gangs and the mainstream opposition leaders for a conflict. According to a leaked telephone conversation on Feb. 26 between Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet and European Union Commissionaire Catherine Ashton, which was leaked by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) , the snipers who shot at protesters and police in Kiev were allegedly hired by Ukrainian opposition leaders. Estonian Foreign Minister Paet made the statements on the basis of details he was given by one of the head doctors of the medical team of the anti-government protests, Olga Bogomolets, an opponent of Viktor Yanukovych’s government who wanted it removed from power. Paet tells Ashton the following first: “There is now stronger and stronger understanding that behind the snipers, it was not Yanukovych, but it was somebody from the new coalition.” This is also corroborated by the fact that Yanukovych actually had ordered the Ukrainian riot police and security forces not to use lethal force.
  • The Estonian official then mentions that it was verified to him that the same snipers were killing people on both sides. He tells Ashton the following: “And second, what was quite disturbing, this same Olga [Bogomolets] told as well that all the evidence shows that the people who were killed by snipers from both sides, among policemen and then people from the streets, that they were the same snipers killing people from both sides.” Another important point that Paet makes to Ashton is the following: “[Dr. Olga Bogomolets] then also showed me some photos she said that as a medical doctor she can say that it is the same handwriting, the same type of bullets, and it’s really disturbing that now the new coalition, that they don’t want to investigate what exactly happened.” Past reports that the mainstream media were hostile to the ousted Ukrainian government also raise serious questions that corroborate what has been said about the snipers intentionally killing protesters to instigate regime change.
  • The Telegraph reported on Feb. 20 that “[a]t least three of the bodies displayed single bullet wounds to the heads,” and “were shot in the head, the neck or the heart. None were shot anywhere else like in the legs.” This means that the snipers were making kill shots by design, which seems like the last thing that the Ukrainian government would want to do when it was trying to appease the protesters and bring calm to Kiev. The Ukrainian journalist Alexey Yaroshevsky’s account of the sniper shootings is also worth noting, and it is backed up by footage taken by his Russian crew in Kiev.  Their footage shows armed opposition members running away from the scene of the shooting of anti-government protesters. What comes across as unusual is that the armed members of the opposition were constantly agitating to start firefights at every opportunity that they could get.
  • The commandant of the SSU, Major-General Oleksandr Yakimenko, has testified that his counter-intelligence forces were monitoring the CIA in Ukraine during the protests. According to the SSU, the CIA was active on the ground in Kiev and collaborating with a small circle of opposition figures. Yakimenko has also said that it was not the police or government forces that fired on the protesters, but snipers from the Philharmonic Building that was controlled by the opposition leader Andriy Parubiy, which he asserts was interacting with the CIA. Speaking to the Russian media, Yakimenko said that 20 men wearing “special combat clothes” and carrying “sniper rifle cases, as well as AKMs with scopes” ran out of the opposition-controlled Philharmonic Building and split into two groups of 10 people, with one taking position at the Ukraine Hotel. The anti-government protesters even saw this and asked Ukrainian police to pursue them, and even figures from Right Sector and Svoboda asked Yakimenko’s SSU to investigate and apprehend them, but Parubiy prevented it. Major-General Yakimenko has categorically stated that opposition leaders were behind the shootings. Following the release of the conversation between Paet and Ashton, the Estonian Foreign Ministry confirmed that the leak was authentic, whereas the European Commission kept silent. The mainstream media in North America and the EU either ignored it or said very little. The Telegraph even claimed that Dr. Bogomolets told it that she had not treated any government forces even though she contradicts this directly in an interview with CNN where says she treated military personnel.
  • CNN, on the other hand, quickly glossed over the story, giving it only enough attention to create the impression that the network is fairly covering the news. Opting not to give the story the airtime that it deserved, CNN instead posted it on its webpage. The conversation is immediately discredited, undermined and dismissed in the first sentence of the article, which is attributed to Foreign Minister Paet: “Don’t read too much into the conversation.” The article was deliberately structured by CNN to undermine the important information that would challenge the narrative that the U.S. mainstream media have been painting. The title, sub-titles and opening sentences of most texts act as microcosms or summaries of the articles, and in many cases, readers evaluate or decide to read the articles on the basis of what these texts communicate. Moreover, the first sentence of the article sets the tempo for readers and and influences their opinion, too. Although anyone who listens to the conversation between Paet and Ashton and considers the evidence that is being discussed would realize just how important the news was, the message being set forth by CNN was a dismissive one.
Gary Edwards

The Patriot's Declaration - Voice of Essential Liberty - 0 views

patriotpost.us/...19

patriot Patriot-Post Patriotism Liberty-Amendments

shared by Gary Edwards on 29 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • that fiscal responsibility be enumerated in our Constitution by way of a Balanced Budget Amendment, including zero base-line accounting principles, to be put before the states and the people;
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 29 Aug 13
       
      If, under the "Enumerated Powers Act/Amendment", ALL legislation requires the siting of specific Constitutional authority, wouldn't that negate the need for a Balanced Budget Amendment?  Tons of outrageous stuff in the Federal Budget would need to be examined and properly "enumerated".  And that would put an end to it?  Just asking :)
  • that said Amendment contain a provision requiring a three-fifths majority of votes by members of Congress to raise direct or indirect taxes, and acknowledgment that the legislature has no authority to raise taxes for purposes that are not expressly authorized by the Constitution;
  • that said Amendment contain a provision that direct taxes be levied at an equal ratio to all Americans, ensuring that the cost-burden of government is shared equally by all, and consistent with Article I, Section 9, which provides "No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed" which would unduly single out individuals or minority groups for undue punishment;
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  • that said Amendment contain a provision that the withholding of taxes by an employer is the option of the taxpayer;
  • EIGHTH
  • that said Amendment acknowledge the interdependence of economic freedom and political freedom by provision that any bill before Congress must enumerate its implications against the exercise of free enterprise;
  • NINTH
  • Legislature Accountability Amendment
  • that a
  • to establish term limits for all members of Congress, similar to that of the 22nd Amendment, Section 1, limiting terms for the Executive, be put before the states and the people; and,
  • TENTH
  • Rule of Law
  • because
  • established through the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God, entitles the People to unalienable Rights including Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, and severely limits the government from any infringement upon those rights, then any member of the executive, legislative or judicial branch in violation of the Rule of Law established through our Constitution, is subject to impeachment and criminal prosecution.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 29 Aug 13
       
      YES!!! Now we're talking tough.
  • THUS, be it known that for the support of this Declaration in defense of the Rule of Law established by our Constitution, it is, with firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, that we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor
  • Note to signers: The Patriot Declaration is not a petition. It is a "Declaration of Cause and Necessity" and stands on its own as an resolution of intent for all who sign it, as due notice for those who would abandon their oath to "Support and Defend the Constitution" and abuse their office to the detriment of individual liberty and states rights.
  • Preamble to the Patriot Declaration
  • Patriot Declaration
  • THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED,
  • We the People of these United States, in order to restore a more perfect Union, re-establish Justice, re-insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, pledge to support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America, as established at great cost in lives and treasure by our Founders and defended by generations since, and we demand that those in the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches of our national government, likewise honor their oaths, and commit to undertake the following actions to restore constitutional integrity and Rule of Law:
Gary Edwards

Seymour M. Hersh · The Red Line and the Rat Line · LRB 6 April 2014 - 0 views

www.lrb.co.uk/...the-red-line-and-the-rat-line

Syria Gun-running Benghazi-coverup Seymour-Hersh

shared by Gary Edwards on 07 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • In 2011 Barack Obama led an allied military intervention in Libya without consulting the US Congress. Last August, after the sarin attack on the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, he was ready to launch an allied air strike, this time to punish the Syrian government for allegedly crossing the ‘red line’ he had set in 2012 on the use of chemical weapons.[*]​＊ Then with less than two days to go before the planned strike, he announced that he would seek congressional approval for the intervention. The strike was postponed as Congress prepared for hearings, and subsequently cancelled when Obama accepted Assad’s offer to relinquish his chemical arsenal in a deal brokered by Russia. Why did Obama delay and then relent on Syria when he was not shy about rushing into Libya? The answer lies in a clash between those in the administration who were committed to enforcing the red line, and military leaders who thought that going to war was both unjustified and potentially disastrous.
  • Paul Merrell on 07 Apr 14
     
    Sy Hersh walks us through his investigation into the reasons behind Obama's last-minute decision to postpone missile (and as it turns out, B52) strikes on Syria. His trail leads through the Benghazi incident and the CIA's running of weapons from Libya to jihadists in Syria (the "rat line") through Turkey engineering a false flag gas attack in Syria to draw Obama into attacking Syria for crossing his "red line" against Syrian use of chemical weapons. Note that Hersh's account of the "red line" events largely fits with the earlier accounts by Yossef Bodansky.  http://oilprice.com/Geopolitics/Middle-East/Syrian-Chemical-Attack-More-Evidence-Only-Leads-to-More-Questions.html http://www.worldtribune.com/2013/09/09/new-granular-evidence-points-to-saudi-involvement-in-syrias-chemical-weapons-terror-attack/ http://www.globalresearch.ca/did-the-white-house-help-plan-the-syrian-chemical-attack Note however that Hersh's account omits Bodansky's evidence that the U.S. State Department and CIA were part of the planning for the false flag attack.
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  • Paul Merrell on 07 Apr 14
     
    Note also the previous account by Wayne Madsen of events leading Obama to postpone his atack on Syria. http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2013/09/04/american-generals-stand-between-war-and-peace.html "Obama is faced with another grim reality. Some within the Pentagon ranks are so displeased with Obama's policies on Syria, they have let certain members of Congress of both parties know that «smoking gun» proof exists that Obama and CIA director John O. Brennan personally authorized the transfer of arms and personnel from Al-Qaeda-linked Ansar al Sharia Islamist rebels in Libya to Syria's Jabhat al Nusra rebels, who are also linked to Al Qaeda, in what amounts to an illegal «Iran-contra»-like scandal. The proof is said to be highly «[un]impeachable»." This is another "red line" / "rat line" tie, suggesting that the reason the Benghazi investigation has not produced an even larger scandal is that it would expose the War Party's efforts to supply captured Libyan arms to jihadists in Syria.  On the Iran/Contra parallel, note that bills to approve supply of weapons to Syrian "rebels" were then stalled in Congress, evidencing Congressional intent that it rather than the President would authorize arming the "rebel" forces. The fact that CIA and the State Dept. were already covertly doing so completes the Iran/Contra scandal analogy.
  • Paul Merrell on 07 Apr 14
     
    See also Hersh's article in December 2013, establishing that the White House had "cooked" the alleged evidence offered in support of Obama's claim that Syria had been responsible for the attack. It also establishes Obama's prior knowledge that the "rebel" forces had sarin weapons. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n24/seymour-m-hersh/whose-sarin
  • Gary Edwards on 07 Apr 14
     
    "The Red Line and the Rat Line: Seymour M. Hersh on Obama, Erdoğan and the Syrian rebels excerpt/intro: In 2011 Barack Obama led an allied military intervention in Libya without consulting the US Congress. Last August, after the sarin attack on the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, he was ready to launch an allied air strike, this time to punish the Syrian government for allegedly crossing the 'red line' he had set in 2012 on the use of chemical weapons.​＊ Then with less than two days to go before the planned strike, he announced that he would seek congressional approval for the intervention. The strike was postponed as Congress prepared for hearings, and subsequently cancelled when Obama accepted Assad's offer to relinquish his chemical arsenal in a deal brokered by Russia. Why did Obama delay and then relent on Syria when he was not shy about rushing into Libya? The answer lies in a clash between those in the administration who were committed to enforcing the red line, and military leaders who thought that going to war was both unjustified and potentially disastrous. Obama's change of mind had its origins at Porton Down, the defence laboratory in Wiltshire. British intelligence had obtained a sample of the sarin used in the 21 August attack and analysis demonstrated that the gas used didn't match the batches known to exist in the Syrian army's chemical weapons arsenal. The message that the case against Syria wouldn't hold up was quickly relayed to the US joint chiefs of staff. The British report heightened doubts inside the Pentagon; the joint chiefs were already preparing to warn Obama that his plans for a far-reaching bomb and missile attack on Syria's infrastructure could lead to a wider war in the Middle East. As a consequence the American officers delivered a last-minute caution to the president, which, in their view, eventually led to his cancelling the attack."
Paul Merrell

Senate CIA torture report could throw Gitmo hearings into chaos | Al Jazeera America - 0 views

america.aljazeera.com/...senate-cia-guantanamo.html

war & peace torture CIA Gitmo-detainees

shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • The possible declassification and release of a Senate report into the CIA’s detention and interrogation program — begun in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks — could have a huge impact on the controversial military tribunals happening at Guantánamo Bay, experts and lawyers believe. The proceedings have been moving at a snail’s pace at the U.S.-held military base on the island of Cuba, amid widespread condemnation that they are being held in a legal limbo and outside the U.S. criminal justice system. Details surrounding the CIA’s activities have been one of the most contentious issues concerning the commissions at Guantánamo, where the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and his co-defendants are on trial. Their alleged treatment while in CIA custody has been a key stumbling block in the hearings’ progress. The same goes for the man alleged to be behind the USS Cole bombing, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, another former CIA captive. In both cases, there have been dozens of delays — mainly due to the fact that the attorneys have been battling military prosecutors over access to classified information about the CIA interrogation program that the attorneys want to use as evidence. Both cases have been dragging on for two years and are still in the pretrial evidentiary phase.
  • But now that the Senate Intelligence Committee appears set to vote on releasing its long-awaited 6,300-page, $50 million study — or at least some portion of it — the defense attorneys will finally get the opportunity to talk openly at the military commissions about torture. That could prove disastrous for military prosecutors. According to defense attorneys and human rights observers who have been monitoring the proceedings, it might also derail the government’s attempts to convince a jury that the detainees, if convicted, deserve to be executed. “The U.S. government has gone to great lengths to classify evidence of crimes — crimes committed by U.S. actors,” said Army Maj. Jason Wright, one of Mohammed’s military defense attorneys. “Were this information in this Senate report to be revealed … it would completely gut the classification architecture currently in place before the commissions.” The panel is expected to vote April 3, and it is widely believed the panel will approve release of its 400-page executive summary. If that happens, Wright said, he anticipates petitioning the military court to amend the protective order that treats all information about the CIA torture program as classified.
  • The report is likely to contain reams of information that has not yet come to light. Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Sen. Dianne Feinstein has said the report “includes details of each detainee in CIA custody, the conditions under which they were detained, how they were interrogated, the intelligence they actually provided and the accuracy — or inaccuracy — of CIA descriptions about the program to the White House, Department of Justice, Congress and others.” Wright said that in addition to seeking a change to the protective order, he would file discovery motions to gain access to the 6.2 million pages of documents the Senate had. Such a move would lead to further legal wrangling and delay the start of the trial, which the government hopes will get underway in September. “We have an absolute right to review that and have it produced in discovery,” Wright said.
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  • Richard Kammen, al-Nashiri’s civilian defense attorney, meanwhile, has already filed a motion with the military court to obtain a complete, unredacted copy of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report. The motion, submitted in September prior to the revelations that have surfaced about infighting between the CIA and Senate committee investigators, said the report “will be central to the accused’s defense on the merits, in impeaching the credibility of the evidence against him and in mitigation of the death sentence the government is seeking to impose.” If the entire report were declassified by the Intelligence Committee, it “would be huge because it would really eliminate the ‘need’ for military commissions, which are in my view mainly a vehicle to have what will look like trials but will keep whatever evidence of torture the judge ultimately allows secret from or sanitized to the public,” Kammen said.
  • But not everyone expects the report to be released in great detail. Air Force Capt. Michael Schwartz, the attorney for alleged 9/11 co-conspirator Walid bin Attash, doesn’t believe the Senate committee’s report will ever see the light of day. If it is released, he said it will be highly redacted, rendering it useless to the public and Attash’s defense team. “This whole military commissions system is designed to make sure this information is never known to the public,” Schwartz said. “No one in my office is naive enough to think this report will come out in any unredacted form. Certainly that report contains a lot of mitigating information that would be relevant to the defense of this case. But I don’t believe for a second that we will see anything in that report that actually sheds light on the crimes committed by the CIA against our clients between 2003 and 2006.” Air Force Col. Morris Davis, the former chief prosecutor at Guantánamo and a staunch critic of the military commissions, doesn’t believe the Senate committee’s report “is legally relevant” to the military commission trial of Mohammed and the other high-value detainees. But he does believe it will force the hearings more into the public.
  • “Where I do think it will have an impact is in the assessment of whether those legal relevance proceedings take place in open court or in secret closed sessions,” he said. “The report is likely to officially reinforce and amplify what the public already knows about this regrettable chapter in our history. It should further undercut the government’s claim that all this absolutely must stay hidden behind closed doors or else cataclysmic things will happen.” Army. Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale, a Pentagon spokesman who deals with detainee matters at Guantánamo, declined to discuss the Senate report or how its release may affect the commissions. "I can't imagine a world where competent counsel — be they from the government or defense — would announce in advance, any strategy they might pursue or make predictions on how any given issue might affect the progress of their case," Breasseale said.
  • Daphne Eviatar, a lawyer for Human Rights First who has closely observed and written about the military commission proceedings, said whether the Senate’s report is a game changer will ultimately depend on what is declassified. Perhaps details of the interrogations will be released, or they may be heavily redacted. “Either way, you can be sure the defense lawyers will try to reopen this issue, and the government will fight it, and the case will get bogged down once again in months of argument in pretrial hearings that are already taking forever,” she said.
  • Paul Merrell on 03 Apr 14
     
    A ray of sunlight ahead in the Gitmo detainee prosecutions?
Paul Merrell

The Agency That Could Be Big Brother - New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...25bamford.html

surveillance state NSA digital-privacy Bamford 2005

shared by Paul Merrell on 15 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • December 25, 2005
  • DEEP in a remote, fog-layered hollow near Sugar Grove, W.Va., hidden by fortress-like mountains, sits the country's largest eavesdropping bug. Located in a "radio quiet" zone, the station's large parabolic dishes secretly and silently sweep in millions of private telephone calls and e-mail messages an hour. Run by the ultrasecret National Security Agency, the listening post intercepts all international communications entering the eastern United States. Another N.S.A. listening post, in Yakima,Wash., eavesdrops on the western half of the country. A hundred miles or so north of Sugar Grove, in Washington, the N.S.A. has suddenly taken center stage in a political firestorm. The controversy over whether the president broke the law when he secretly ordered the N.S.A. to bypass a special court and conduct warrantless eavesdropping on American citizens has even provoked some Democrats to call for his impeachment. According to John E. McLaughlin, who as the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency in the fall of 2001 was among the first briefed on the program, this eavesdropping was the most secret operation in the entire intelligence network, complete with its own code word - which itself is secret.
  • But the agency is still struggling to adjust to the war on terror, in which its job is not to monitor states, but individuals or small cells hidden all over the world. To accomplish this, the N.S.A. has developed ever more sophisticated technology that mines vast amounts of data. But this technology may be of limited use abroad. And at home, it increases pressure on the agency to bypass civil liberties and skirt formal legal channels of criminal investigation. Originally created to spy on foreign adversaries, the N.S.A. was never supposed to be turned inward. Thirty years ago, Senator Frank Church, the Idaho Democrat who was then chairman of the select committee on intelligence, investigated the agency and came away stunned. "That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people," he said in 1975, "and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter. There would be no place to hide." He added that if a dictator ever took over, the N.S.A. "could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back."
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Before the Sept. 11 attacks, the N.S.A. normally eavesdropped on a small number of American citizens or resident aliens, often a dozen or less, while the F.B.I., whose low-tech wiretapping was far less intrusive, requested most of the warrants from FISA. Despite the low odds of having a request turned down, President Bush established a secret program in which the N.S.A. would bypass the FISA court and begin eavesdropping without warrant on Americans. This decision seems to have been based on a new concept of monitoring by the agency, a way, according to the administration, to effectively handle all the data and new information. At the time, the buzzword in national security circles was data mining: digging deep into piles of information to come up with some pattern or clue to what might happen next. Rather than monitoring a dozen or so people for months at a time, as had been the practice, the decision was made to begin secretly eavesdropping on hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people for just a few days or a week at a time in order to determine who posed potential threats. Those deemed innocent would quickly be eliminated from the watch list, while those thought suspicious would be submitted to the FISA court for a warrant. In essence, N.S.A. seemed to be on a classic fishing expedition, precisely the type of abuse the FISA court was put in place to stop.At a news conference, President Bush himself seemed to acknowledge this new tactic. "FISA is for long-term monitoring," he said. "There's a difference between detecting so we can prevent, and monitoring.
  • In 2002, it was revealed that the Pentagon had launched Total Information Awareness, a data mining program led by John Poindexter, a retired rear admiral who had served as national security adviser under Ronald Reagan and helped devise the plan to sell arms to Iran and illegally divert the proceeds to rebels in Nicaragua. Total Information Awareness, known as T.I.A., was intended to search through vast data bases, promising to "increase the information coverage by an order-of-magnitude." According to a 2002 article in The New York Times, the program "would permit intelligence analysts and law enforcement officials to mount a vast dragnet through electronic transaction data ranging from credit card information to veterinary records, in the United States and internationally, to hunt for terrorists." After press reports, the Pentagon shut it down, and Mr. Poindexter eventually left the government. But according to a 2004 General Accounting Office report, the Bush administration and the Pentagon continued to rely heavily on data-mining techniques. "Our survey of 128 federal departments and agencies on their use of data mining," the report said, "shows that 52 agencies are using or are planning to use data mining. These departments and agencies reported 199 data-mining efforts, of which 68 are planned and 131 are operational." Of these uses, the report continued, "the Department of Defense reported the largest number of efforts."
  • "I don't want to see this country ever go across the bridge," Senator Church said. "I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return." James Bamford is the author of "Puzzle Palace" and"Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency."
  • Paul Merrell on 15 Jun 14
     
    James Bamford's 2005 article in The New York Times that raised public awareness of what the Bush-II administration had done by bypass the FISA Court. 
Gary Edwards

CBS News Reporter Says White House Screamed, Swore at Her Over Fast and Furious | The Weekly Standard - 0 views

www.weeklystandard.com/...r-fast-and-furious_595011.html

Sharyl-Attkisson Laura-Ingram fast-and-furious Obammunism Eric-Holder-Corruption Impeachment

shared by Gary Edwards on 05 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 05 Oct 11
     
    CBS News reproter Sharyl Attkisson on the Laura Ingram Show describes her efforts to get answers from the Obama Whitehouse about the notorious  Fast and Furious Justice Departments gun running fiasco. excerpt: The Fast and Furious scandal, in which the Justice Department knowingly gave Mexican criminal gangs thousands of guns, just keeps escalating. The latest development centers around whether or not Attorney General Eric Holder lied to Congress about having knowledge of the controversial gun trafficking operation. Recently released documents say Holder was briefed about the operation long before he told the Judiciary Committee he was first aware of what was going on. (Holder now claims he misunderstood the question was being asked.)
Gary Edwards

Gunrunning scandal uncovered at the ATF - CBS News Video - 0 views

www.cbsnews.com/...main20035609.shtml

Sharyl Sharyl-Attkisson Obammunism Impeachment fast-and-furious Project-Gunrunner Eric-Holder-Corruption ATF scandal

shared by Gary Edwards on 05 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 05 Oct 11
     
    This is the Sharyl Attkisson news report video that every American should take the time to view.  This is the trajic and still unfolding story of Obama's Project Gunrunner, where over 2,500 assault weapons, including 50 Caliber rifles, were ordered to be sold to criminal Mexican Drug Cartels.  Obama used over $10 Million of the Stimulous Act to fund the operation.  Now Mexican and American law enforcement and border patrol members are getting gunned down by the thugs Obama armed.  Must see video. excerpt: December 14, 2010. The place: a dangerous smuggling route in Arizona not far from the border. A special tactical border squad was on patrol when gunfire broke out and agent Brian Terry was killed. The assault rifles found at the murder were traced back to a U.S. gun shop. Where they came from and how they got there is a scandal so large, some insiders say it surpasses the shoot-out at Ruby Ridge and the deadly siege at Waco.........
Gary Edwards

Herman Cain: 21 Things You Don't Know About Him - 0 views

www.thefiscaltimes.com/...s-You-Dont-Know-About-Him.aspx

Herman-Cain 90-day-plan Impeach-Obama End-Obammunism

shared by Gary Edwards on 10 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 10 Oct 11
     
    Excellent summary of Herman Cain.  Background and brief explanation of Herman's "first 90 days in the White House" plan.  Good stuff.... excerpt:  Herman Cain - or the Hermanator, as he calls himself in his new book - is so confident he'll be elected president on November 6, 2012, he's already sketched out his first 90 days in office. Among the things he says he'll do in the early days of a Cain administration: "Treat our economic system as I would a corporation on the verge of bankruptcy: Step one, make a 10 percent across-the-board cut" in all government departments. Step two, he says, would include "vertical deep dives" in which every department would be asked to justify its cost and directly answer the question, "Is it still in the best interests of the country?" Election 2012 Complete Coverage According to a new CBS News poll, Cain, 65, is now tied with Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, atop the field of Republican presidential candidates. Among GOP primary voters, support for Cain now stands at 17 percent support, compared with 5 percent two weeks ago. (Rick Perry has fallen 11 percentage points in just two weeks.) Cain's 9-9-9 tax plan has attracted voters: He'd replace the current tax code with a nine-percent flat income tax, a nine-percent corporate tax, and a nine-percent national sales tax.
Paul Merrell

Brazil's Epic Scandal Takes Down a Banker - Bloomberg Business - 0 views

www.bloomberg.com/...ic-scandal-takes-down-a-banker

banksters Brazil Esteves criminal-prosecution litigation obstruction corruption

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • Brazilians have become inured to seeing politicians and businessmen marched off to prison for corruption. But the mug shot of banker André Esteves—unshaven and frowning—that flashed across TV screens in early December was a shock. Part of a cadre of mavericks who got astonishingly rich from Brazil’s transformation into one of the world’s top 10 economies in the 2000s, Esteves helped turn Grupo BTG Pactual into Latin America’s biggest standalone investment bank. Supremely confident, Esteves—who was a billionaire by his mid-30s—liked to quip that the initials in his company’s name stood for “Better than Goldman.”Around dawn on Nov. 25, Esteves’s fortunes soured in an instant. Police showed up at his apartment, which faces Rio de Janeiro’s legendary Ipanema beach, and hauled him away on allegations of obstructing a federal investigation into a massive pay-to-play scheme centered on Brazil’s state-run oil giant, Petrobras. Now Esteves, 47, resides in a cell block with concrete beds and communal toilets at Bangu, a high-security prison in Rio better known for housing drug traffickers and murderers.
  • Having its founder, chief executive officer, and chairman behind bars has pushed BTG Pactual to the brink of insolvency as clients pull their money out. Within days of his arrest, Esteves had relinquished his controlling stake in the firm, and his partners had begun a wholesale selloff of assets. To avert disaster, Brazil’s central bank helped engineer a $1.6 billion rescue line from the country’s privately funded deposit guarantee fund. Still, the bank’s shares have lost half their value since Esteves’s arrest. On Dec. 7, prosecutors formally accused the banker of obstruction of justice. Antônio Carlos de Almeida Castro, Esteves’s lawyer, says his client has done nothing wrong.The metastatic graft scandal that sent Esteves to jail threatens more than the survival of BTG. So many legislators are implicated, Congress has been unable to pass legislation to contain an exploding budget deficit. President Dilma Rousseff has grown so unpopular that lawmakers are maneuvering to impeach her for allegedly cooking the government’s books. Meanwhile, the economy is sliding into what Goldman Sachs calls a full-blown depression.
  • BTG’s collapse won’t cause Brazil’s capital markets to seize up as Lehman Brothers’ failure did in the U.S. in 2008. Yet having one of the country’s most prominent financiers behind bars is a body blow to the confidence of investors at a time when Brazil needs their cash. “It very much gives you the impression that the corruption scheme is so widespread that it induces a kind of counterparty risk,” says Monica de Bolle, a former International Monetary Fund economist. “You enter into transactions with people in Brazil without knowing whether or not they might be implicated in something.” The result: “Nothing gets done. There’s no business,” she says.
Paul Merrell

First to Fall? Panama Papers Bring Down Iceland PM, Portending Future Fallout | Common Dreams | Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community - 0 views

www.commondreams.org/...d-pm-portending-future-fallout

Auction 2016 Hillary Panama-Papers Iceland Ukraine British-Virgin-Isles Chile

shared by Paul Merrell on 07 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • In the first instance of a prominent politician taken down by the 11.5 million documents leaked in the Panama Papers, Iceland Prime Minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson resigned on Tuesday after fully 10 percent of Iceland's population rallied in protest of his wife's secret, offshore shell company holding millions. Gunnlaugsson was asked about the account on the day the leak was announced in a television interview, and he walked out rather than answer the question:
  • The next day, "an estimated 22,000 Icelanders slung eggs and protested outside the Parliament building" demanding his resignation, as Common Dreams reported. Gunnlaugsson initially refused to bow to the public pressure, but eventually announced his resignation on Tuesday evening.
  • News editor of the Reykjavík Grapevine Paul Fontaine said Tuesday, "While the Prime Minister's particular role in the Panama Papers leak is huge, and I don't want to downplay it, I also don't want to downplay the involvement other Icelanders—and the countless others around the world—also had in this." "This extends beyond the prime minister; it reaches parliament, it reaches Reykjavík City Hall, and it reportedly reaches hundreds of as yet unnamed Icelandic businesspeople," Fontaine pointed out. "The greater crime, which the Panama Papers illustrate comprehensively, is that we have a secret economy connected to and even supporting some of the worst aspects of the global capitalist system."
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Meanwhile, Ukraine's president faces possible impeachment proceedings for his offshore holdings in the British Virgin Islands, and the Chilean head of anti-corruption group Transparency International resigned Tuesday after the Panama Papers revealed his own use of secret shell companies.
  • Relatively few Americans have been named in the leak thus far, perhaps pointing to the country's status as one of the foremost locales for creating shell corporations like those documented in the Panama Papers. "Americans can form shell companies right in Wyoming, Delaware or Nevada," said Shima Baradaran Baughman, a law professor at the University of Utah, in an interview with Fusion. "They have no need to go to Panama to form a shell company to use for illicit activities."
  • David Dayen explored in depth the paltry U.S. regulations around onshore shell companies in Salon: "While we force foreign financial institutions to give up information on accounts held by U.S. taxpayers through the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act of 2010, we don’t reciprocate by complying with international disclosure requirements standardized by the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) and agreed to by 97 other nations. As a result, the U.S. is becoming one of the world’s foremost tax havens."
  • President Barack Obama addressed the Panama Papers leak for the first time on Tuesday, condemning the laws that make offshore tax havens legal. But those words rang hollow to many observers who recalled that the Obama Administration was behind the very trade deal, Panama TPA, that enshrined the rights of firms such as Mossack Fonseca to funnel millions into untraceable offshore shell companies. As Common Dreams noted, "Much of [Mossack Fonseca's] activities were not necessarily illegal—thanks to agreements such as the Panama TPA." It is worth noting that Bernie Sanders advocated against the deal.
  • Reform also seems unlikely should Hillary Clinton become the Democratic party's nominee, considering that she and her husband own a shell corporation such as the ones documented in the Panama Papers, as the Associated Press reported last year. Unnamed officials told the AP that "the entity was a 'pass-through' company designed to channel payments to the former president." Thanks to the nature of the laws surrounding such corporations, Clinton is not required to disclose the company's existence or earnings in her campaign finance reports. Still, observers are hopeful that this record-shattering leak will drum up enough public pressure to not only topple prominent politicians, but to also propel the efforts of groups seeking real legislative reform. "The Panama Papers are a boost to the global movement to stop tax-haven abuse and recapture trillions of the hidden wealth of nations," wrote author Chuck Collins in The Nation. "This story isn’t going away anytime soon."
Paul Merrell

Julian Assange on Twitter: "Two IC officials close to Pence stated privately this month that they are planning on a Pence takeover. Did not state if Pence agrees." - 0 views

twitter.com/...841612345185046528

Trump Pence impeachment coup

shared by Paul Merrell on 18 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • Julian Assange‏ @JulianAssange Mar 14 Follow Following Unfollow Blocked Unblock Pending Cancel More Share via Direct Message Copy link to Tweet Embed Tweet Mute @JulianAssange Unmute @JulianAssange Mute this conversation Unmute this conversation Block @JulianAssange Unblock @JulianAssange Report Tweet Add to other Moment Add to new Moment Two IC officials close to Pence stated privately this month that they are planning on a Pence takeover. Did not state if Pence agrees.
Paul Merrell

U.S. manufacturing industry is in a recession now - Los Angeles Times - 1 views

www.latimes.com/...vow-manufacturing-in-recession

Auction-2020 economy recession manufacturing

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • During President Trump’s first two years in office, his standing with many voters was buoyed by a surge in manufacturing that helped create millions of new jobs and undergirded the whole U.S. economy.But today, manufacturing has plunged into recession and is threatening to pull down other sectors, perhaps hitting hardest on supporters in those states that helped put Trump in office.Impeachment may be dominating the news, but the less-noticed industrial slump ultimately could pose a greater threat to Trump’s reelection.
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