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Paul Merrell

Report: Countrywide Used Loan Discounts to Buy Congress,          : Information Clearing House - 0 views

www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31779.htm

banksters corruption bribery financial-collapse congress

shared by Paul Merrell on 08 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • The former Countrywide Financial Corp., whose subprime loans helped start the nation's foreclosure crisis, made hundreds of discount loans to buy influence with members of Congress, congressional staff, top government officials and executives of troubled mortgage giant Fannie Mae, according to a House report.   The report, obtained by The Associated Press, said that the discounts - from January 1996 to June 2008, were not only aimed at gaining influence for the company but to help mortgage giant Fannie Mae.
  • Among those who received loan discounts from Countrywide, the report said, were:   -       Former Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, D-Conn.   -       Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D.   -       Mary Jane Collipriest, who was communications director for former Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, then a member of the Banking Committee.   -       Rep. Howard "Buck" McKeon, R-Calif., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.   -       Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., former chairman of the Oversight Committee.   -       Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Calif.   -       Top staff members of the House Financial Services Committee. (AP)
Paul Merrell

It Just Cost Deutsche Bank $25,000 Per Employee To Keep Its Libor Manipulating Bankers Out Of Jail | Zero Hedge - 0 views

www.zerohedge.com/...or-manipulating-bankers-out-ja

banksters Deutsche-Bank fraud Libor litigation settlement

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • And so another historic scandal involving the manipulation and rigging of one of the most important global markets, that of Libor which is the reference security for several hundred trillion in derivatives, goes in the history books. Moments ago the NY Department for Financial Services announced that Deutsche Bank would pay $2.5 billion "in connection with the manipulation of the benchmark interest rates, including the London Interbank Offered Bank ("LIBOR"), the Euro Interbank Offered Rate ("EURIBOR") and Euroyen Tokyo Interbank Offered Rate ("TIBOR") (collectively, "IBOR")." According to FT calculations, "this is the largest fine to date in the sprawling worldwide Libor investigation" and beneficiaries of DB's criminal generosity include New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) which will get $600 million, $775 million go to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), and 227 million GBP (approximately $340 million) to the United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). Best of all $800 million will end up in the bank accounts oi the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the same CFTC which can now afford to upgrade from ticker tape and actually have some sense of the pervasive manipulation taking place in the S&P on a daily basis.
  • Most importantly for DB's 98,138 employees is that while DB will "terminate and ban individual employees who engaged in misconduct" nobody will go to jail. Again. In other words it just cost DB's about $25,474 per employee to keep its Libor-manipulating employees (and thus, senior level management because the stench always goes to the very top) out of prison. Considering it has cost JPMorgan $150,000 per employee to achieve the same result, here again we see that famous German efficiency in action.
  • To view a copy of the NYDFS order regarding Deutsche Bank, please visit, link.
  • Paul Merrell on 26 Apr 15
     
    Lots of nice quotes from Deutschebank emails, etc.
Joseph Skues

Arctic Ice in Death Spiral - Yahoo! News - 0 views

news.yahoo.com/...world3694891285019437

arctic ice permafrost warming global methane hydrates

shared by Joseph Skues on 24 Sep 10 - No Cached
  • dangerously upsetting the energy balance of the entire planet,
  • the Arctic summer sea ice cover is in a death spiral. It's not going to recover," he said.
  • ecause
  • ...40 more annotations...
  • emendous amounts of extra heat are added every summer to the region as more than 2.5 million square kilometres of the Arctic Ocean have been opened up to the heat of the 24-hour summer sun
  • takes much longer to re-freeze
  • emits huge volumes of additional heat energy into the atmosphere
  • srupting the weather patterns of the northern hemisp
  • Paradoxically, a warmer Arctic means "future cold and snowy winters will be the rule rather than the exception
  • Overland told IPS.
  • average temperatures are now three to five degrees C warmer than they were 30 years ago
  • nderway is a rapid warming of the coastal regions of the Arcti
  • f the global average temperature increases from the present 0.8 C to two degrees C, as seems likely
  • possibly eight degrees due to a series of processes and feedbacks called Arctic amplification.
  • half of the world's permafrost will likely thaw,
  • depth of a few metres,
  • eleasing most of the carbon and methane accumulated ther
  • aid Vladimir Romanovsky of the University of Alaska in Fairbanks and a world expert on permafrost.
  • 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide (CO2).
  • Methane is
  • catastrophic for human civilisatio
  • spans 13 million square kilometres of the land in Alaska, Canada, Siberia and parts of Europe
  • contains at least twice as much carbon as is currently present in the atmosphere –
  • hree times more carbon than all of the worlds' forests contain.
  • consistently across the entire region since the 1980s,
  • southernmost permafrost limit had retreated 130 kilometres over the past 50 years in Quebec’s James Bay region.
  • r by the undersea permafrost that acts as a cap over unknown quantities of methane hydrates (a type of frozen methane) along the Arctic Ocean shelf, he said.
  • eight million tonnes of methane emissions are bubbling to the surface from the shallow East Siberian Arctic shelf every year
  • If just one percent of the Arctic undersea methane reaches the atmosphere, it could quadruple the amount of methane currently in the atmosphere.
  • releasing huge amounts of global warming gases.
  • ould rapidly accelerate in a few decad
  • we could lose much of the permafros
  • because of rapid feedbacks.
  • Present pledges by governments to reduce emissions will still result in a global average temperature increase of 3.5 to 3.9 C by 2100,
  • Arctic that's 10 to 16 degrees C warme
  • asing most of the permafrost carbon and methane and unknown quantities of methane hydrates.
  • climate scientists are calling for a rapid phaseout of fossil fuels
  • still a 50-percent probability of exceeding two degrees C
  • decline three per cent per year
  • the emissions peak is delayed until 2025
  • rctic will be eight to 10 degrees warmer and the world will lose most its permafrost.
  • emperatures will rise three degrees
  • has the potential to eliminate burning coal and oil to generate electric
  • governments have the political will to fully embrace green technologies.
Gary Edwards

Security, the Edward Snowden Way - Datamation - 0 views

www.datamation.com/...-the-edward-snowden-way-1.html

security Edward-Snowden

shared by Gary Edwards on 25 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • NoScript NoScript is a free extension for Mozilla-based web browsers, including Firefox. It blocks executable web content by default. This blocking includes JavaScript, Java, Flash and Silverlight. You can whitelist sites if you want to use such content on a site-by-site basis. Or, if you choose, you can make all sites active by default and choose to blacklist sites you think might be dangerous. A visual button tells you if active content has been blocked on the current site.
  • PGP In the first chapter of his book “No Place to Hide,” journalist Glenn Greenwald wrote that Edward Snowden contacted him using the alias “Cincinnatus,” and said he would tell Greenwald some highly newsworthy facts, but only if he installed Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) first. (Greenwald didn’t know the magnitude of the scoop being offered to him and didn’t get around to installing PGP for months, thus delaying the leak.) PGP, of course, is a 23-year-old encryption program that can be used for email, as well as files and other things.
  • Tor Tor is a free application that routes your Internet traffic through a global volunteer network of thousands of relays that play a shell game with your data so your location and Internet travels are concealed. Tor, which used to stand for “The Onion router” in a reference to layers of encryption, encrypts data in multiple layers that prevents snoops from being able to figure out any details about your web travels, such as where you are or what you’re looking at. Tor was developed in part by US government funding as a way to enable citizens in repressive countries to communicate safely. And the NSA has a lot of respect for it. But in a recent controversy, two Carnegie Mellon researchers said they would give a talk at the Black Hat USA 2014 conference next month telling how to identify Tor users inexpensively (for only $3,000). The session was cut from the lineup because university lawyers didn’t approve it. The institute that the researchers work for is funded by the Pentagon, but the Department of Homeland Security said they did not request that the talk be cancelled.
  • Gary Edwards on 25 Jul 14
     
    "Whether you think NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is a hero or a traitor, you have to admit: The guy knows how to keep his information secure. The fact that Snowden isn't sitting in Guantanamo right now with ankle cuffs and a bag over his head demonstrates his ability to avoid detection. Snowden spoke at the Hope X conference in New York this month via a Google+ Hangout from Russia, and called on developers to build privacy and security into everyday products. He also hinted that he planned to work on building such technology. If you look into the details of what's been happening with tracking, surveillance, spying, hacking and global cyber industrial espionage, you can see that Snowden is right. We all need a lot better protection from snoops of all stripes. But how does the non-expert get started? One option is to listen to Snowden himself. Over the past year, Snowden has in one format or another, made specific product recommendations. Here are the products Snowden has explicitly recommended since the trove of documents on the NSA has been publicly revealed. (The list is in alphabetical order.) Ghostery Ghostery, made by a company called Evidon, is a browser extension for Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer. It exists for two purposes. The first is to block tracking code, which makes browsing the web both more private and also faster. The second purpose is, somewhat contradictory -- Evidon collects data from you to help advertisers avoid being blocked. It also enables website owners to gain insights into the tracking code deployed on their site by third-party advertising companies. Note that Snowden recommended Ghostery some time ago. But this month, the Electronic Frontier Foundation launched a competing product that I would imagine Snowden would recommend called Privacy Badger."
  • Paul Merrell on 26 Jul 14
     
    I'd back Snowden in 2016 as a write-in candidate for President.
Paul Merrell

Fisa court oversight: a look inside a secret and empty process | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...ourt-oversight-process-secrecy

surveillance state NSA lies FISA FISA Court Obama procedures must-read

shared by Paul Merrell on 21 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Since we began began publishing stories about the NSA's massive domestic spying apparatus, various NSA defenders – beginning with President Obama - have sought to assure the public that this is all done under robust judicial oversight. "When it comes to telephone calls, nobody is listening to your telephone calls," he proclaimed on June 7 when responding to our story about the bulk collection of telephone records, adding that the program is "fully overseen" by "the Fisa court, a court specially put together to evaluate classified programs to make sure that the executive branch, or government generally, is not abusing them". Obama told Charlie Rose last night:"What I can say unequivocally is that if you are a US person, the NSA cannot listen to your telephone calls … by law and by rule, and unless they … go to a court, and obtain a warrant, and seek probable cause, the same way it's always been, the same way when we were growing up and we were watching movies, you want to go set up a wiretap, you got to go to a judge, show probable cause."The GOP chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Mike Rogers, told CNN that the NSA "is not listening to Americans' phone calls. If it did, it is illegal. It is breaking the law." Talking points issued by the House GOP in defense of the NSA claimed that surveillance law only "allows the Government to acquire foreign intelligence information concerning non-U.S.-persons (foreign, non-Americans) located outside the United States."
  • The decisions about who has their emails and telephone calls intercepted by the NSA is made by the NSA itself, not by the Fisa court, except where the NSA itself concludes the person is a US citizen and/or the communication is exclusively domestic. But even in such cases, the NSA often ends up intercepting those communications of Americans without individualized warrants, and all of this is left to the discretion of the NSA analysts with no real judicial oversight.
  • The NSA's media defenders have similarly stressed that the NSA's eavesdropping and internet snooping requires warrants when it involves Americans. The Washington Post's Charles Lane told his readers: "the government needs a court-issued warrant, based on probable cause, to listen in on phone calls." The Post's David Ignatius told Post readers that NSA internet surveillance "is overseen by judges who sit on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court" and is "lawful and controlled". Tom Friedman told New York Times readers that before NSA analysts can invade the content of calls and emails, they "have to go to a judge to get a warrant to actually look at the content under guidelines set by Congress."This has become the most common theme for those defending NSA surveillance. But these claim are highly misleading, and in some cases outright false.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • What is vital to recognize is that the NSA is collecting and storing staggering sums of communications every day. Back in 2010, the Washington Post reported that "every day, collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications." Documents published by the Guardian last week detail that, in March 2013, the NSA collected three billions of pieces of intelligence just from US communications networks alone.In sum, the NSA is vacuuming up enormous amounts of communications involving ordinary Americans and people around the world who are guilty of nothing. There are some legal constraints governing their power to examine the content of those communications, but there are no technical limits on the ability either of the agency or its analysts to do so. The fact that there is so little external oversight is what makes this sweeping, suspicion-less surveillance system so dangerous. It's also what makes the assurances from government officials and their media allies so dubious.
  • Paul Merrell on 21 Jun 13
     
    Glenn Greenwald strikes again with hard proof from NSA documents, dissecting procedures used throughout the intelligence establishment from the NSA to the President to Congress, casting severe doubt on what we have been told by those defending the NSA surveillance program. I have highlighted only a few points from this lengthy article. As to Greenwald's discussion of the FISA Court's weaknesses, he omitted one that I believe is incredibly, the lack of an adversarial system with a lawyer opposing what the government asks the Court to authorize. True, search warrants are normally issued in the U.S. with only the government represented in the process. But there is a crucial difference: once someone is charged with a crime, the warrant must be disclosed to the defendant who can ask the court to suppress all evidence unlawfully obtained not only through the warrant but also the fruits of any unlawfully obtained evidence, meaning subsequently discovered evidence that would not have been found absent the unlawfully obtained evidence. The same result can happen if the warrant is found to be invalid for any of a variety of reasons, or the officers exceeded the scope of the search authorized.  So in the normal search warrant process, the participation of an adversary attorney is only delayed; it is not virtually eliminated as it is in the FISA Court. Thus far, only those ordered to disclose records to the NSA have been granted standing to oppose disclosure, not those who have been surveilled. The entire U.S. judicial system is built around the principle of an adversarial process. Judges are expected to be neutral arbiters between two or more sides to a dispute. We do not have an inquisitorial system, as is used for example in some European nations, where the judge is also the investigator. The FISA court is presently composed of 11 federal district court judges who also preside over normal cases in their individual districts. Steeped in the adversarial system and th
Gary Edwards

Jim Kunstler's 2014 Forecast - Burning Down The House | Zero Hedge - 0 views

www.zerohedge.com/...14-forecast-burning-down-house

Banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 08 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 08 Jan 14
     
    Incredible must read analysis. Take away: the world is going to go "medevil". It's the only way out of this mess. Since the zero hedge layout is so bad, i'm going to post as much of the article as Diigo will allow: Jim Kunstler's 2014 Forecast - Burning Down The House Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/06/2014 19:36 -0500 Submitted by James H. Kunstler of Kunstler.com , Many of us in the Long Emergency crowd and like-minded brother-and-sisterhoods remain perplexed by the amazing stasis in our national life, despite the gathering tsunami of forces arrayed to rock our economy, our culture, and our politics. Nothing has yielded to these forces already in motion, so far. Nothing changes, nothing gives, yet. It's like being buried alive in Jell-O. It's embarrassing to appear so out-of-tune with the consensus, but we persevere like good soldiers in a just war. Paper and digital markets levitate, central banks pull out all the stops of their magical reality-tweaking machine to manipulate everything, accounting fraud pervades public and private enterprise, everything is mis-priced, all official statistics are lies of one kind or another, the regulating authorities sit on their hands, lost in raptures of online pornography (or dreams of future employment at Goldman Sachs), the news media sprinkles wishful-thinking propaganda about a mythical "recovery" and the "shale gas miracle" on a credulous public desperate to believe, the routine swindles of medicine get more cruel and blatant each month, a tiny cohort of financial vampire squids suck in all the nominal wealth of society, and everybody else is left whirling down the drain of posterity in a vortex of diminishing returns and scuttled expectations. Life in the USA is like living in a broken-down, cob-jobbed, vermin-infested house that needs to be gutted, disinfected, and rebuilt - with the hope that it might come out of the restoration process retaining the better qualities of our heritage.
Gary Edwards

The Purchase Of Our Republic | Zero Hedge - 0 views

www.zerohedge.com/...purchase-our-republic

shared by Gary Edwards on 06 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • The massive consolidation of wealth, combined with the removal of any limits on money in campaigns, has allowed for the purchase of our government. Today I am publishing a comprehensive and important guest essay, The Purchase of Our Republic, by longtime correspondent Y. Falkson.
  • Americans know that something is wrong, deeply wrong. They see signs of the problem everywhere: income inequality, growing concentration and power of mega corporations, political donations/corruption, the absence of jobs with decent salaries, the explosion of the US prison population, healthcare costs, student loan debt, homelessness, etc. etc.  However, the true causes and benefactors behind these problems are purposely hidden from view. What Americans see is Kabuki Theater of a functioning form of capitalism and democracy, but beyond this veneer our country has devolved into the exact opposite. Those who benefit from this crony capitalist state go to extreme lengths to paper over the reality and convince Americans that the system works, the American Dream is still a reality and that American democracy is in fact democratic. Below I hope to begin to outline some of the underlying dynamics and trends that have evolved in recent decades and led us so far from what we once were. As fun as it would be, the answer is not some evil conspiracy by the Illuminati, but rather the unfortunate result of three long term and mutually reinforcing components that have been attacking the fundamental roots of the structure of our Republic. The first is the increased concentr
  • ation of corporate and private wealth. Both of which are quickly yelled down in the media as anti-free market and class war hysteria. The second is the use of this wealth to capture all three branches of government in order to ensure the continued extraction of capital from the many and to the few.The rich might have climbed the ladder because they earned it, but they have then purchased government to pull up the ladder behind them. The consequence of the first two components is a democracy in name only that represents the very few.
  • ...28 more annotations...
  • 1. Faux Capitalism = Wealth Consolidation / Income Inequality
  • While there is no true beginning to the story, we can start with the incredible build up and concentration of wealth among corporations in recent decades. The USA now boasts a cartel-like set of corporate titans in almost every industry. It goes beyond, but certainly includes, our Too Biggerer To Fail banks, merged from what was 37 banks in 1995 into a Frankenstein’s monster like 5 (Citigroup, JP Morgan-Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs). In agriculture, Monsanto alone controls over 85% of all corn and soy bean crops, four companies control 83% of the beef market, 66% of the hog market and 58% of the chicken market. So while shopping at the grocery store might appear to be the manifestation of capitalism at its finest, it doesn’t take much digging to look behind the curtain to see how little competition truly exists.
  • When the average American goes to pick up some groceries, they are shopping at Walmart and buying something from P&G that is mostly made of Monsanto corn. Is that true choice? The same story plays out with our news and media (and other industries) where we have gone from 50 companies in 1983 to the big 6 which control over 90% of all media. Is choosing to watch one of 30 news channels, all of which are owned by News Corp (Rupert Murdoch) a real choice? This is not capitalism and they are not competing, not in the true sense of the word. Along with this consolidation of corporations in recent decades, their senior leaders have taken up a larger and larger piece of the pie at the expense of their employees. In particular, the ratio of CEO-to-worker pay has increased 1,000 percent since 1950. Unsurprisingly, Walmart is both the largest employer in the country and the worst CEO pay offender with a ratio of over 1000:1. This is at a time where worker productivity has increased significantly, something that historically correlated with increased pay. But no more. It’s a new twist on the old Soviet saying “we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us”, but now it’s closer to “we do all of the work and they pretend to pay us”.
  • Private Wealth: As a consequence of the royal tribute we pay to the C-suite class these days, we have likely surpassed the pre-Depression Roaring Twenties in terms of inequality.
  • This, amazingly, has only accelerated since the crisis in 2008 in thanks to bailouts, Quantitative Easing and other gifts from Congress and the Fed. The wealthy 1% and in particular the .01% have now grown their fortunes to levels that tax comprehension and even their ability to spend it (the decisions by a few billionaires such as Bill Gates to essentially donate his fortune is a tacit acknowledgement that our current system over provides wealth to a select few).
  • So what is an incredibly wealthy capitalist CEO of a mega-corporation do once they control their industry and have essentially limitless wealth? Well in a competitive market, the only way to go from the top is down and the only thing that can make that happen is competition. Consequently, competition must be avoided whenever possible.
  • To squash or prevent competition, the oligopolies and oligarchs target their resources on the one place that can make competition illegal, our government.Something to keep in mind the next time you see a corporate billionaire grandstanding about the importance of “Free Markets” when their strategy is quite the opposite. As this capture of the government has taken place we have essentially shifted from capitalism and to crony capitalism. So we now have industries that have mastered the art of faking capitalism by turning our government into one that fakes democracy. This government takeover took time, but the purchase of all 3 branches of government has almost been completed by 2014. You don’t have to take my word for it, luckily that has now been empirically proven in an analysis of over 20 years of government policy where the clear conclusion was that policy makers respond solely to those in the top 90th percentile and essentially ignore the large majority of Americans.
  • 2. Wealthy Purchase of Government Institutions / Elections
  • Purchase of the Executive Branch:
  • Let’s take a step back and take a glimpse at how the government was purchased, beginning with the executive branch. In 1980, Reagan’s election cost less than $300 million. When Bush beat Kerry in 2004, it cost almost 3x times as much, almost $900 Million. 4 years later, the 2008 election cost a record $1.3 Billion. It was in this election where Obama hammered the final nail in the coffin for government funded for elections. Obama, more so than any other candidate in recent decades had the widespread support of millions of small donors, but in the end I guess it wasn’t enough. So when Obama “leaned to the green”, it forever set the precedent that you can’t win without the backing of our nation’s oligarchs. Consequently, the money has only gushed in since as the cost of Obama’s reelection in 2012 skyrocketed to an unfathomable $7 billion. Needless to say this is slightly above the rate of inflation. Our Presidents are now preselected exclusively by a tiny fraction of Americans can have the money to fund what has become necessary for a legitimate run. Summary: Candidates spend years courting the super-rich to build up a multi-billion dollar war chest. Only those who succeed can actually run a campaign that an average American will be aware of. Then Americans get to choose one of the pre-selected “candidates”. No wonder voter turnout is so low… Executive branch, check!
  • – Note that media corporations benefit doubly as they can use their cash to fund elections, but are also the beneficiary of all that money as it is used for campaign spending.
  • Purchase of the Legislative Branch:
  • The process has progressed similarly in Congress. In 1978, outside groups spent $303,000 on congressional races. In 2012 that was up to $457,000,000. That is over 1,500 times the level in 1978. It would be funny, if it was so blatant and terrifying. By many accounts, our “leaders” in Congress spend 50% or more of their time working the phones or fundraisers rather than trying (and failing) to actually do the “people’s business”. Let’s also take a minute to appreciate the hypocrisy of anyone that pretends that the money doesn’t influence our government. Businesses do not give to politicians for charity. This is a payment for services that has proven exceedingly reliable and profitable. The ROI for money invested in purchasing Congressman is what CEO dreams are made of. No wonder the incentive is to invest in Congress rather than R&D or marketing. There are very few places in the world or times in history where you can find ROI’s in the thousands, or even the tens of thousands.
  • Review: Congressmen beg for money to get elected, make sure to vote the way your benefactors would like, consequently get more money to get elected again. If at any point they do lose or quit, they take the big payday to work for those who have been paying them all along. Legislative Branch, Check!
  • In addition, increasingly those who work on Congress (and regulators) were previously employed by these large corporations or expect to work there later. A recent example is Chris Dodd who left the Senate the head lobbyist for Hollywood at the MPAA, the guys behind SOPA and PIPA, but there are many many others.
  • Judicial Branch Endorsement of the Purchase of Government:
  • Last but not least, we have the enabling Judicial Branch. It only took a few purchased presidents to ensure the appointment of a majority of “free market” and “pro-business” judges. For instance, and disgracefully, Clarence Thomas was once legal counsel for Monsanto, but has not once recused himself from any cases involving Monsanto and always votes in their favor. These radicals have now fully endorsed and enabled the influx of money used to purchase the other branches. Specifically, 2 major decisions have completely opened the floodgates, Citizens United and McCutcheon. The first allowed unlimited contributions of corporate money into elections and brought us the notorious declaration that “corporations are people” and that “money is free speech”. This was more recently followed up with the private wealth equivalent in McCutcheon. In this ruling, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts said as part of his majority opinion (presumably with a straight face) “… nor does the possibility that an individual who spends large sums may garner influence over or access to elected officials or political parties”. And with this, the Supreme Court has fully endorsed both major sources of immense wealth to purchase our elections and consequently our government. Review: The rich fund Presidential elections, Presidents nominate “business-friendly” judges and then the bought Congress approves their nominations. New judge then votes to ensure even more money is allowed to purchase elections. Judicial Branch, CHECK!
  • 3. A Faux Republic Dependent Upon the Funders and Not the Voters
  • The Founder’s Hope and the Sad Reality:
  • Acknowledging where we are as a country, it is often helpful to look to where we started for some perspective. Unsurprisingly, this type of problem was not overlooked back in the 18th century. In 1776, James Madison stated that his goal was to design a republic in which “powerful interest groups would be rendered incapable of subdoing the general will”. Madison hoped, perhaps naively, that factions would be thwarted by competing with other factions. Sadly, we are now in a time where factions (aka wealthy special interests) subdue the will of the people and ensure the government responds to them alone on those issues where they have a “special interest” and consequently asymmetric stakes in the game (Charles Hugh Smith). As a result, these groups essentially collude to allocate their resources to their own issues, but do not “thwart” or compete with other factions as they do the same. It’s a pretty great system, as long as you’re one of the wealthy few who can use their money to drown out the poor and voiceless many. And just like that, what was once a Republic has become a corrupt shell of its past self. All the signs are still there; votes, elections, campaigns, branches of government, etc., but behind the scenes the only ones represented are those who can afford to be heard.
  • Summary: This massive consolidation of wealth, combined with the removal of any limits on money in campaigns, has allowed for the purchase of our government, or as Dick Durban once stated, “frankly they [the banks in this case] own the place”. If money = free speech, then those with all the money, have all the free speech.
  • What Might Help? Now that I have likely and thoroughly depressed the reader, let’s bounce around some ideas for what can be done. As stated in the beginning, this is not an unknown problem and many people are promoting a number of ways to fix or at least ameliorate the problem. I will briefly describe just a few which I think provide some direction any of us could easily implement or support.
  • Change the Rules: Laurence Lessig of Harvard Law has put forward a visionary proposal for re-writing the way that campaigns are financed in his book, Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress--and a Plan to Stop It. Put simply, he would like to empower every voter with a stipend, say $150 per election to give to whatever candidate or candidates they prefer. If you would like to accept this money, you would need to forgo any other contributions or support (one would hope including the indirect PAC kind). This would actually provide even more money than is used in current elections, but would effectively democratize the funding process. While there would still be a “funding election” that takes place before the actual election, the funding would not be unequally provided. Lessig’s work has only begun, as this sort of bill or likely constitutional reform is nearly impossible to achieve, but he has undertaken and I assume will continue to implement many brave and creative ways of bringing about the change all American’s should support. Most recently he has suggested we begin to fund, ironically enough, a Super PAC to end all Super PACs. It would be funded with the solitary goal of changing how money impacts our elections. Please support them here: www.mayone.us/
  • Change Our Day-to-Day: At the more micro level, Charles Hugh Smith believes that we will inevitably see our overly centralized and inefficient system erode away as it is replaced by more resilient, local and efficient businesses and societies outside of the current system. With that in mind, he recommends that “all anyone can do is the basic things--lower our energy footprint, stay healthy and avoid unnecessary medications and procedures, support local businesses, organic food growers, etc. In other words, what we can do is support local businesses that are part of the emerging economy rather than support corporate cartels.” Your Vote Does Matter: Do you live in Ohio, Florida or New Hampshire? Probably not. Despite what we are told every 4 years, there are actually states outside of the “swing states”, and even more surprising, the very large majority of Americans live in those states where your “vote doesn’t matter”. New Yorkers an Californians all know their state will turn Blue no matter who the candidates are and either don’t vote at all, or often vote for the Blue team in order to feel like they are on the winning side.
  • The truth is that if you see the election as Red vs. Blue, you vote probably doesn’t matter. But here is the trick, if all the people who think their vote didn’t matter decided to vote for whom they might actually believe in, then their votes just might matter.
  • What if all the growing number of “Independents” (who usually still vote Blue), chose to vote for a third party? What if a third party candidate won a state like New York or California? What if that candidate was one whose primary promise to the voters was to champion a change to the role of money in government (perhaps in line with what Lessig proposes)? Would you vote for such a person?I would argue you should. If California alone (with 55 electoral votes) were to vote for a 3rd party that would likely prevent either Red or Blue candidate from winning the requisite 270 electoral votes.
  • Think about the message that would send to both parties. I would predict that both sides would start to bend over backwards for an endorsement from that 3rd party and they would have to get it by taking up the same primary cause for reforming money in government. Consequently, at the root of our corrupted system which is perpetually ignored as both sides might suddenly become the big issue of the election. Then maybe we might begin to turn things around.
  • Sources: Charles Hugh Smith (oftwominds, Surivival+, etc.), Yves Smith (Naked Capitalism, Econned), Laurence Lessig (Republic Lost, multiple TED Talks), Matt Taibbi (blog at Rolling Stone and now at The Intercept), Zero Hedge, John Robb, Max Keiser, Clay Shirky (Cognitive Surplus), Aldous Huxley (Brave New World, Brave New World Revisited), George Orwell (1984), Michael Lewis, Daniel Kahneman (Thinking Fast and Slow), James Richards (Currency Wars), Han Joon Chang (23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism) and Joseph Stiglitz (Mismeasuring Our Lives) 
Paul Merrell

Turkey sends tentative Signals about normalizing Ties to Egypt and Syria | nsnbc international - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...lizing-ties-to-egypt-and-syria

war & peace Turkey Syria Russia

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • Ankara sent a tentative signal for a possible normalization of Turkish – Egyptian, and possibly Turkish – Syrian ties.
  • Reporters asked Bilgiς about the possible normalization of Turkey’s ties to Egypt in response to a statement by Turkey’s Vice Prime Minister Bülen Arinς, who said that it could be possible to achieve a normalization of relations to a number of countries, including Syria and Egypt.
  • Several analysts noted that the statement by Turkey’s Vice Prime Minister Bülen Arinς, that Turkey possibly could review a normalization of ties to a number of nations, including Egypt and Syria could be a consequence of diplomatic efforts to improve Turkish – Russian relations and the ongoing Russian efforts to facilitate meetings between Syria’s foreign-backed “opposition” and the Syrian government.
  • Paul Merrell on 27 Dec 14
     
    A further sign that Turkey has become transitioning from the U.S. Empire to the BRICS? If Turkey ends its support of  mercenaries battling to overthrow the Syrian government, it would be a gigantic blow to U.S. strategy in the region. 
Paul Merrell

White House surveillance reform plan - The Washington Post - 0 views

apps.washingtonpost.com/...388

surveillance state NSA Obama surveillance-reform

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • President Obama announced plans to pursue reforms that would open the legal proceedings surrounding the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs to greater scrutiny. » Obama announces proposals to reform NSA surveillance Obama administration white paper on NSA surveillance oversight
Paul Merrell

Belhaj v. Straw: UK Supreme Court Hearing Case on UK Complicity in US Rendition and Torture | Just Security - 0 views

www.justsecurity.org/...k-complicity-rendition-torture

war & peace CIA rendition torture UK Supreme-Court legal-remedies

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • The United Kingdom Supreme Court heard arguments this week in two critical cases concerning the UK’s role in the United States’ rendition, detention, and interrogation efforts in the years after 9/11. In both cases, the UK government is arguing that the claims cannot be considered by English courts. If the government succeeds, one potential practical implication would be to limit the extent to which individuals could seek redress for wrongs done against them, including torture, where the alleged wrongs involve other States. The first case, Belhaj & another v. Straw & others, involves one of the most controversial claims of rendition involving the UK. The government has appealed against the lower court’s ruling, which found against the government for its alleged role in the 2004 abduction of Libyan national, Abdul-Hakim Belhaj, and his wife, and their subsequent rendition to Libya and mistreatment at the hands of US and other foreign officials. In December 2013, the High Court dismissed a civil suit brought by Belhaj on the basis that it lacked jurisdiction because of the act of state doctrine (a rule of English law which prevents courts from considering claims where the court would have to examine the acts of a foreign state). But in October 2014, the UK Court of Appeal ruled that the act of state doctrine did not preclude Belhaj’s claim against the British government, citing, among other reasons, the universal condemnation of torture and the “stark reality” that these allegations would escape judicial investigation unless the English courts were able to exercise jurisdiction over the case.
  • Specifically, the Court found that: [T]he present case falls within the established limitation on the act of state doctrine imposed by considerations of public policy on grounds of violations of human rights and international law and that there are compelling reasons requiring the exercise of jurisdiction. The Court of Appeal also rejected the government’s controversial attempt to invoke the domestic law on immunity of foreign states from domestic proceedings as a bar to any claim against the UK government whenever the conduct of foreign states may be called into question, a concept known as the doctrine of indirect impleader in state immunity.
  • The government’s appeal against the Court of Appeal’s decision in Belhaj is being heard jointly with the appeal in another case, Ministry of Defense and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office v. Yunus Rahmatullah, involving a Pakistani citizen captured by British forces in Iraq. In 2004, Rahmatullah was transferred from UK to US custody in Iraq and thereafter rendered to Bagram air base in Afghanistan, with UK knowledge and in breach of Article 45 and Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Held by the US without trial for more than a decade, Rahmatullah was denied access to a lawyer and subjected to numerous acts of torture and mistreatment before being repatriated to Pakistan and released without charge in May 2014. He now seeks to sue the British government for damages. The main thrust of the UK government’s argument, in both cases, is that the litigation will most likely damage the UK’s relationship with the United States. If accepted by the Supreme Court, this argument may lead the Court to find that it lacks jurisdiction to hear the claims. The far-reaching implications of such a ruling would be to protect individual states and their institutions from the scrutiny of British courts in cases where it is alleged that they acted in concert with other states, even if their actions were unlawful. Such an expansive interpretation of a “but they did it too” excuse would constitute a notable limitation on British courts’ jurisdiction in the context of events arising from the so-called global war on terror. Since Belhaj and Rahmatullah, and others like them, are unlikely to secure redress directly in a US court, a ruling in favor of the government would essentially preclude them from securing redress in any forum. You can find the full Court of Appeal judgment here and below.   Belhaj v. Straw – Court of Appeal Judgment (30 Oct 2014) by Just Security
  • Paul Merrell on 16 Nov 15
     
    Hopefully, the "we can't be held liable because it would upset the U.S." defense won't be sustained by the Supreme Court. What a brazen assertion of UK subservience to the U.S.!
Paul Merrell

Head of UN agency resigns after refusing to retract report calling Israel an 'apartheid regime' - 0 views

mondoweiss.net/...resigns-refusing-apartheid

war & peace Israel Palestine apartheid U.N.-report

shared by Paul Merrell on 18 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • ima Khalaf, the head of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA). resigned today after she was asked to withdraw a report her agency published earlier this week that stated Israel is an “apartheid regime.” “The secretary-general demanded yesterday that I withdraw the report, and I refused,”Khalaf told reporters at a press conference in Beirut today, according to the Middle East Eye. “It was expected that Israel and its allies would put enormous pressure on the United Nations secretary general to renounce the report,” she also said, according to Reuters. Then Khalaf stated that the United Nations “had scrubbed the report from its website.” While the webpage for the report, titled “Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid,” was removed, the link to the executive summary of the report is still active on the UN website here. Here is the full report: Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid by Mondoweiss on Scribd
Gary Edwards

New Snowden Statement: 'The Obama Administration Is Afraid of You' - 0 views

pjmedia.com/...dministration-is-afraid-of-you

Edward-Snowden NSA-Patriot-Act-NDAA freedom-liberty American-Revolution

shared by Gary Edwards on 03 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 03 Jul 13
     
    "This just released by WikiLeaks: July 1st Statement from Super Patriot & NSA Whistleblower extraordinaire, Edward Snowden .......... One week ago I left Hong Kong after it became clear that my freedom and safety were under threat from my government for revealing the truth. My continued liberty has been owed to the efforts of friends new and old, family, and others who I have never met and probably never will. I trusted them with my life and they returned that trust with a faith in me for which I will always be thankful. On Thursday, President Obama declared before the world that he would not permit any diplomatic "wheeling and dealing" over my case. Yet now it is being reported that after promising not to do so, the President ordered his Vice President to pressure the leaders of nations from which I have requested protection to deny my asylum petitions. This kind of deception from a world leader is not justice, and neither is the extralegal penalty of exile. These are the old, bad tools of political aggression. Their purpose is to frighten, not me, but those who would come after me. For decades the United States of America have been one of the strongest defenders of the human right to seek asylum. Sadly, this right, laid out and voted for by the U.S. in Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is now being rejected by the current government of my country. The Obama administration has now adopted the strategy of using citizenship as a weapon. Although I am convicted of nothing, it has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person. Without any judicial order, the administration now seeks to stop me exercising a basic right. A right that belongs to everybody. The right to seek asylum. In the end the Obama administration is not afraid of whistleblowers like me, Bradley Manning or Thomas Drake. We are stateless, imprisoned, or powerless. No, the Obama administration is afraid of you. It is afraid of an informed, angry public de
Gary Edwards

The List: Unnecessarily Shut Down by Obama to Inflict Public Pain - 0 views

www.breitbart.com/...st-obama-closures-for-shutdown

government-shutdown Obammunism financial-crisis

shared by Gary Edwards on 08 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 08 Oct 13
     
    "The media may or may not report on these individual occurrences, but what they will never do is provide the American people with the full context and scope of Obama's shrill pettiness. Below is a list of illogical, unnecessary, and shockingly spiteful moves our government is making in the name of essential and non-essential. This list will be regularly updated, and if you have something you feel should be added, please email me at jnolte@breitbart.com or tweet me @NolteNC.Please include a link to the news source. -- 1. Treatments for Children Suffering From Cancer - The GOP have agreed to a compromise by funding part of the government, including the National Institutes of Health, which offers children with cancer last-chance experimental treatment. Obama has threatened to veto this funding. 2. The World War II Memorial - The WWII memorial on the DC Mall is a 24/7 open-air memorial that is not regularly staffed. Although the White House must have known that WWII veterans in their eighties and nineties had already booked flights to visit this memorial, the White House still found the resources to spitefully barricade the attraction.  The Republican National Committee has offered to cover any costs required to keep the memorial open. The White House refused. Moreover, like the NIH, the GOP will pass a compromise bill that would fund America's national parks. Obama has threatened to veto that bill. 3. Furloughed Military Chaplains Not Allowed to Work for Free - Furloughed military chaplains willing to celebrate Mass and baptisms for free have been told they will be punished for doing so. 4. Business Stops In Florida Keys - Although the GOP have agreed to compromise in the ongoing budget stalemate and fund the parks, Obama has threatened to veto that funding. As a result, small businesses, hunters, and commercial fisherman can't practice their trade. While the feds have deemed the personnel necessary to keep this area open "non-essential," the "enforcement office
Paul Merrell

NSA Whistleblower: Snowden Never Had Access to the "Juiciest" Intelligence Documents | Global Research - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5386231

surveillance state NSA Snowden-documents NSA-domestic-surveillance Tice must-read

shared by Paul Merrell on 11 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • NSA whistleblower Russel Tice was a key source in the 2005 New York Times report that blew the lid off the Bush administration’s use of warrantless wiretapping. Tice told PBS and other media that the NSA is spying on – and blackmailing – top government officials and military officers, including Supreme Court Justices, highly-ranked generals, Colin Powell and other State Department personnel, and many other top officials:
  • He says the NSA started spying on President Obama when he was a candidate for Senate:
  • Many of Tice’s allegations have been confirmed by other government whistleblowers. And see this. Washington’s Blog called Tice to find out more about what he saw when he was at NSA.
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  • NSA Has Hidden Its Most Radical Surveillance Operations … Even from People Like Snowden Who Had General “Code Word” Clearance WASHINGTON’S BLOG: Glenn Greenwald – supposedly, in the next couple of days or weeks – is going to disclose, based on NSA documents leaked by Snowden, that the NSA is spying on all sorts of normal Americans … and that the spying is really to crush dissent.  [Background here, here and here.] Does Snowden even have documents which contain the information which you’ve seen? RUSSELL TICE:  The answer is no. WASHINGTON’S BLOG: So you saw handwritten notes. And what Snowden was seeing were electronic files …?
  • RUSSELL TICE: Think of it this way.  Remember I told you about the NSA doing everything they could to make sure that the information from 40 years ago – from spying on Frank Church and Lord knows how many other Congressman that they were spying on – was hidden? Now do you think they’re going to put that information into Powerpoint slides that are easy to explain to everybody what they’re doing? They would not even put their own NSA designators on the reports [so that no one would know that] it came from the NSA.  They made the reports look like they were Humint (human intelligence) reports.  They did it to hide the fact that they were NSA and they were doing the collection. That’s 40 years ago.  [The NSA and other agencies are still doing "parallel construction", "laundering" information to hide the fact that the information is actually from mass NSA surveillance.] Now, what NSA is doing right now is that they’re taking the information and they’re putting it in a much higher security level.  It’s called “ECI” - Exceptionally Controlled Information  – and it’s called the black program … which I was a specialist in, by the way. I specialized in black world – DOD and IC (Intelligence Community) – programs, operations and missions … in “VRKs”, “ECIs”, and “SAPs”, “STOs”. SAP equals Special Access Program. It’s highly unlikely Mr. Snowden had any access to these. STO equals Special Technical Operations  It’s highly unlikely Mr. Snowden had any access to these.
  • Now in that world – the ECI/VRK world – everything in that system is classified at a higher level and it has its own computer systems that house it.  It’s totally separate than the system which Mr. Snowden was privy to, which was called the “JWICS”: Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System.  The JWICS system is what everybody at NSA has access to.  Mr Snowden had Sys Admin [systems administrator] authority for the JWICS. And you still have to have TS/SCI clearance [i.e. Top Secret/ Sensitive Compartmented Information - also known as “code word” - clearance] to get on the JWICS. But the ECI/VRK systems are much higher [levels of special compartmentalized clearance] than the JWICS. And you have to be in the black world to get that [clearance]. ECI = Exceptionally Controlled Information. I do not believe Mr. Snowden had any access to these ECI controlled networks). VRK = Very Restricted Knowledge. I do not believe Mr. Snowden had any access to these VRK controlled networks. These programs typically have, at the least, a requirement of 100 year or until death, ’till the person first being “read in” [i.e. sworn to secrecy as part of access to the higher classification program] can talk about them.  [As an interesting sidenote, the Washington Times reported in 2006 that – when Tice offered to testify to Congress about this illegal spying – he was informed by the NSA that the Senate and House intelligence committees were not cleared to hear such information.]
  • It’s very compartmentalized and – even with stuff that they had – you might have something at NSA, that there’s literally 40 people at NSA that know that it’s going on in the entire agency. When the stuff came out in the New York Times [the first big spying story, which broke in 2005] – and I was a source of information for the New York Times –   that’s when President Bush made up that nonsense about the “terrorist surveillance program.” By the way, that never existed. That was made up. There was no such thing beforehand. It was made up … to try to placate the American people. The NSA IG (Inspector General) – who was not cleared for this – all of a sudden is told he has to do an investigation on this; something he has no information or knowledge of. So what they did, is they took a few documents and they downgraded [he classification level of the documents] – just a few – and gave them to them to placate this basic whitewash investigation.
  • Snowden’s Failure To Understand the Most Important Documents RUSSELL TICE: Now, if Mr. Snowden were to find the crossover, it would be those documents that were downgraded to the NSA’s IG. The stuff that I saw looked like a bunch of alphanumeric gobbledygook.  Unless you have an analyst to know what to look for – and believe me, I think that what Snowden’s done is great – he’s not an intelligence analyst.  So he would see something like that, and he wouldn’t know what he’s looking at. But that would be “the jewels”. And the key is, you wouldn’t know it’s the jewels unless you were a diamond miner and you knew what to look for. Because otherwise, there’s a big lump of rock and you don’t know there’s a diamond in there. I worked special programs. And the way I found out is that I was working on a special operation, and I needed information from NSA … from another unit. And when I went to that unit and I said “I need this information”, and I dealt with [satellite spy operations], and I did that in the black world. I was a special operations officer. I would literally go do special missions that were in the black world where I would travel overseas and do spooky stuff.
  • Cheney Was Running the Show WASHINGTON’S BLOG: You said in one of your interviews that Dick Cheney ordered the intercepts that you found in the burn bags [the bags of documents which were slated to be destroyed because they were so sensitive]. Is that right … and if so, how do you know that? RUSSELL TICE: I did not know one way or the other until I talked to a very senior person at NSA who – much later – wanted to have a meeting with me. And we had a covert, clandestine style meeting. And that’s when this individual told me that the whole thing was being directed and was coming from the vice president’s office … Cheney, through his lawyer David Addington. WASHINGTON’S BLOG:  It sounds like it wasn’t going through normal routes?  It’s not like Cheney or Addington made formal requests to the NSA … through normal means? RUSSELL TICE: No, not normal at all. All on the sly … all “sneaky pete” under the table, in the evening when most NSA employees are gone for the day. This is all being done in the evenings … between like 7 [at night] and midnight.
  • NSA Is Spying On CONTENT as Well as Metadata WASHINGTON’S BLOG: And from what you and others have said, it’s content as well as metadata? RUSSELL TICE: Of course it is. Of course. [Background. But see this.] NSA Spying On Journalists, Congress, Admirals, Lawyers … RUSSELL TICE: In 2009, I told [reporters] that they were going after journalists and news organizations and reporters and such. I never read text of Congressman’s conversations. What I had was information – sometimes hand-written – of phone numbers of Congressmen, their wives, their children, their staffers, their home numbers, their cellphone numbers, their phone numbers of their residence back in Oregon or whatever state they’re from, and their little offices back in their state. Or an Admiral and his wife, and his kids and his staffers …
  • The main thing I saw more than anything else were lawyers and law firms. I saw more lawyers or law firms being wiretapped than anything else. These are the phone numbers I saw written. And then I would see those numbers incorporated into those lists with the columns of information about the phone number, and the serial number and the banks of recorders and digital converters and the data storage devices. I could see handwritten phone numbers and notes, sometimes with names, sometimes not.
  • Paul Merrell on 11 Jun 14
     
    Whistleblower Russell Tice says that there are super-classified domestic surveillance records that Edward Snowden, Congressional oversight committees, and the NSA Inspector-General did not have access to. Must-read.
Paul Merrell

Tomgram: Nick Turse, How "Benghazi" Birthed the New Normal in Africa | TomDispatch - 0 views

www.tomdispatch.com/...rthed_the_new_normal_in_africa

war & peace Africa AFRICOM Benghazi

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 May 14 - No Cached
  • Amid the horrific headlines about the fanatical Islamist sect Boko Haram that should make Nigerians cringe, here’s a line from a recent Guardian article that should make Americans do the same, as the U.S. military continues its “pivot” to Africa: “[U.S.] defense officials are looking to Washington’s alliance with Yemen, with its close intelligence cooperation and CIA drone strikes, as an example for dealing with Boko Haram.” In fact, as the latest news reports indicate, that “close” relationship is proving something less than a raging success.  An escalating drone campaign against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has resulted in numerous dead “militants,” but also numerous dead Yemeni civilians -- and a rising tide of resentment against Washington and possibly support for AQAP.  As the Washington-Sana relationship ratchets up, meaning more U.S. boots on the ground, more CIA drones in the skies, and more attacks on AQAP, the results have been dismal indeed: only recently, the U.S. embassy in the country’s capital was temporarily closed to the public (for fear of attack), the insurgents launched a successful assault on soldiers guarding the presidential palace in the heart of that city, oil pipelines were bombed, electricity in various cities intermittently blacked out, and an incident, a claimed attempt to kidnap a CIA agent and a U.S. Special Operations commando from a Sana barbershop, resulted in two Yemeni deaths (and possibly rising local anger).  In the meantime, AQAP seems ever more audacious and the country ever less stable.  In other words, Washington’s vaunted Yemeni model has been effective so far -- if you happen to belong to AQAP.
  • One of the poorer, less resource rich countries on the planet, Yemen is at least a global backwater.  Nigeria is another matter.  With the largest economy in Africa, much oil, and much wealth sloshing around, it has a corrupt leadership, a brutal and incompetent military, and an Islamist insurgency in its poverty-stricken north that, for simple bestiality, makes AQAP look like a paragon of virtue.  The U.S. has aided and trained Nigerian “counterterrorism” forces for years with little to show.  Add in the Yemeni model with drones overhead and who knows how the situation may spin further out of control.  In response to Boko Haram’s kidnapping of 276 young women, the Obama administration has already sent in a small military team (with FBI, State Department, and Justice Department representatives included) and launched drone and "manned surveillance flights," which may prove to be just the first steps in what one day could become a larger operation.  Under the circumstances, it’s worth remembering that the U.S. has already played a curious role in Nigeria’s destabilization, thanks to its 2011 intervention in Libya.  In the chaos surrounding the fall of Libyan autocrat Muammar Qaddafi, his immense arsenals of weapons were looted and soon enough AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenades, and other light weaponry, as well as the requisite pick-up trucks mounted with machine guns or anti-aircraft guns made their way across an increasingly destabilized region, including into the hands of Boko Haram.  Its militants are far better armed and trained today thanks to post-Libyan developments.
  • All of this, writes Nick Turse, is but part of what the U.S. military has started to call the “new normal” in Africa.  The only U.S. reporter to consistently follow the U.S. pivot to that region in recent years, Turse makes clear that every new African nightmare turns out to be another opening for U.S. military involvement.  Each further step by that military leads to yet more regional destabilization, and so to a greater urge to bring the Yemeni model (and its siblings) to bear with... well, you know what effect.  Why doesn’t Washington?
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • The U.S. Military’s New Normal in Africa A Secret African Mission and an African Mission that’s No Secret By Nick Turse What is Operation New Normal? 
  • Paul Merrell on 16 May 14
     
    With the kidnaped girls in Nigeria, the lid is beginning to come off the U.S. military's pivot to Africa, with violence exacerbated by the flood of weapons flowing from Libya and lately, funding from Qatar. The Washington Post has finally noticed that blowback from our military intervention throughout Africa is occurring. But TomDispatch's Nick Turse is the only western journalist who has been nipping at AFRICOM's heels, for more than a year, with a steady flow of leaked documents and hard-hitting reporting. If you are interested in backtracking this emerging regional war the U.S. has instigated in resource-rich Africa to send the Chinese government's investments in Africa packing, do a TomDispatch site search for "nick turse".      
Gary Edwards

Five pieces of evidence suggesting that California drought may be a HAARP-manufactured event - NaturalNews.com - 0 views

www.naturalnews.com/trails_California_drought.html

chemtrails Low-Pressure-Zones California-Man-Made-Drought

shared by Gary Edwards on 27 May 15 - No Cached
  • For years, many of those who've been paying attention have wondered what the purpose is of these clearly artificial chemtrails. Well, based on the extensive research findings by The HAARP Report, it seems as though these fake sprayings are helping to redirect and alter weather patterns -- in this case, to steer rain away from California."Chemtrails create a hot air layer at 30,000 feet, capping inversion," explains the report. "They [the powers that be] want that to overrun this low pressure area and prevent this low pressure from forming," as low pressure is what produces precipitation, explains the report.
  • Fukushima: a cover for HAARP and chemtrail-induced atmospheric damage killing our planet
  • A HAARP Report video posted to YouTube on April 19, 2015, lists the following five pieces of evidence suggesting that California's drought is a man-made attack on Californians:1) Low pressure areas out in the Pacific Ocean that would normally move in a counterclockwise direction have been detected moving in an anomalous clockwise direction. The HAARP Report, highlighting exclusive imagery captured on April 10, 2015, shows a "burst" of clockwise, high pressure cloud movement that would never occur naturally, and that clearly suggests weather manipulation activity meant to break up cloud formation and prevent precipitation.More on how this is accomplished through ionospheric heating is explained in the video report:YouTube.com.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • 2) After breaking up the areas of low pressure that would have produced rain for California, HAARP's weather weaponry and associated chemtrails generate areas of very dry air that, under normal circumstances, would be humid. Satellite imagery captured in the days following April 10 show this dry air sitting stagnant rather than rotating, breaking up the potential formation of thunderstorms.3) As it turns out, HAARP's weather manipulation machines can only operate when the D layer in the ionosphere has formed, which occurs after the sun has been up for three or four hours and ends in the evening. In the video, The HAARP Report shows how a storm that starts to pop up during this window of time is literally pushed to the right and destroyed. Dry air is pressed down, and once again the center is not moving in a counterclockwise direction as it should.
  • 4) Looking again at a massive area of dry air brought about by HAARP and chemtrails, the report points out how satellite imagery of a ring of rising air and a central column of falling air captured at 10 a.m. in California on April 9 proves that a HAARP downburst sent high pressure descending air into the jet stream, once again preventing rain.5) As this air descends, it just keeps getting bigger and bigger in the satellite imagery. And as it begins to reform, another HAARP downburst is observed on the north side of the front, with a signature clockwise flow around a high pressure area as it's sent downward. Put simply, the developing storm was basically broken up by HAARP, where it later reformed around Mexico and sent rain over New Mexico and Texas rather than California."Don't think for a minute that this drought in California is natural. They're using a variety of techniques to maintain this drought," warns The HAARP Report."The oceans are dying because of increasing ultraviolet-B. The modern HAARP transmitters punch holes in the ozone layer, since they must drive a plasmoid from 30 miles high down to the jet stream... mixing the chemtrails vertically, which breaks down the protective ozone layer.""The Pacific is dying because the base of the food chain, phyto-plankton, are being killed by the high UV-B, created by ionospheric heaters. Radiation from Fukushima is killing the Pacific, but not as fast as the lack of plankton, which can't survive the high UV-B. Fukushima is being used as a 'cover' for the excess UV-B caused by HAARP and chemtrails. That would explain the complete lack of action to stop the radiation from leaking into the Pacific."
  • Be sure to watch the full HAARP Report video here:
  • Gary Edwards on 27 May 15
     
    Excellent article with video demonstration explaining the drought in California, and how chemtrails are used to break up a low pressure zone. Amazing stuff. Using chemtrails, the counter clockwise spinning rotation of a low pressure zone is neutralized and even reversed, with the low pressure zone breaking up and dispersing. After watching this video, I noticed that three low pressure zones off the mid and southern coast of California were broken up with the clouds dispersing as they passed over California, Arizona and New Mexico. And guess what? The clouds came together in a new giant low pressure zone over Texas - where four days of thunderstorms and tornadados wrecked havoc. The farm land in California is being laid waste, and farm land in Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska and Iowa is getting more water than the land can handle. "California is embroiled in a crisis of epic proportions as it continues to struggle through one of the worst droughts in state history. But emerging evidence suggests that the Golden State's water woes aren't a natural occurrence at all, and that a covert military operation involving "chemtrails" and other weather modification weaponry may be to blame. A recent episode of The HAARP Report, which tracks the activities of the U.S. military's so-called "High Frequency Auroral Research Program" (which the federal government falsely claims has been shut down), provides five pieces of compelling evidence from recently captured satellite imagery that points to deliberate weather modification as the cause of California's drought. You may have heard of "chemtrails" before -- those unnatural-looking cloud trails occasionally produced by airplanes that don't dissipate normally, and that end up blanketing the skies with a hazy muck. They differ entirely from water vapor contrails produced when water vapor condenses and freezes around small aerosol particles released from aircraft exhaust. The following image shows a sky filled with chemtrails:"
Paul Merrell

George Bush was "angry" when US intelligence said Iran hadn't got an active nuclear weapons programme - 0 views

www.david-morrison.org.uk/...iran-bush-on-nie.htm

war & peace Bush-II Iranian-nukes-myth

shared by Paul Merrell on 23 May 14 - No Cached
  • In the National Intelligence Estimate, Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities, produced in November 2007, the 16 US intelligence services expressed the consensus view that Iran hadn’t got an active nuclear weapons programme at that time.  That is still their view today.   As he revealed in his memoir Decision Points, instead of being pleased that Iran was almost certainly not developing nuclear weapons, President Bush was “angry” that his intelligence services had expressed this view.  He was “angry” because it cut the ground from under his efforts to gain international support for what he termed “dealing with Iran”, which clearly went beyond ensuring that it did not possess nuclear weapons.  The NIE had a big impact, he concluded – and not a good one.   His full comments on the NIE in Decision Points are as follows:
  • In November 2007, the intelligence community produced a National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear program. It confirmed that, as we suspected, Iran had operated a secret nuclear weapons program in defiance of its treaty obligations. It also reported that, in 2003, Iran had suspended its covert effort to design a warhead – considered by some to be the least challenging part of building a weapon.  Despite the fact that Iran was testing missiles that could be used as a delivery system and had announced its resumption of uranium enrichment, the NIE opened with an eye-popping declaration: “We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.”   The NIE’s conclusion was so stunning that I felt certain it would immediately leak to the press. As much as I disliked the idea, I decided to declassify the key findings so that we could shape the news stories with the facts. The backlash was immediate. Ahmadinejad hailed the NIE as “a great victory.”  Momentum for new sanctions faded among the Europeans, Russians, and Chinese. As New York Times journalist David Sanger rightly put it, “The new intelligence estimate relieved the international pressure on Iran – the same pressure that the document itself claimed had successfully forced the country to suspend its weapons ambitions.”   In January 2008, I took a trip to the Middle East, where I tried to reassure leaders that we remained committed to dealing with Iran. Israel and our Arab allies found themselves in a rare moment of unity. Both were deeply concerned about Iran and furious with the United States about the NIE. In Saudi Arabia, I met with King Abdullah and members of the Sudairi Seven, the influential full brothers of the late King Fahd.   “Your Majesty, may I begin the meeting?” I said. “I’m confident that every one of you believes that I wrote the NIE as a way of avoiding taking action against Iran.”
  • No one said a word. The Saudis were too polite to confirm their suspicion aloud.   “You have to understand our system,” I said. “The NIE was produced independently by our intelligence community. I am as angry about it as you are.”   The NIE didn’t just undermine diplomacy.  It also tied my hands on the military side. There were many reasons I was concerned about undertaking a military strike on Iran, including its uncertain effectiveness and the serious problems it would create for Iraq’s fragile young democracy. But after the NIE, how could I possibly explain using the military to destroy the nuclear facilities of a country the intelligence community said had no active nuclear weapons program?   I don’t know why the NIE was written the way it was. I wondered if the intelligence community was trying so hard to avoid repeating its mistake on Iraq, that it had underestimated the threat from Iran.  I certainly hoped that intelligence analysts weren’t trying to influence policy. Whatever the explanation, the NIE had a big impact – and not a good one.
Paul Merrell

Provocations as Pretexts for Imperial War: From Pearl Harbor to 9/11 | Global Research - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...9063

war & peace U.S.-wars provocations false-flag

shared by Paul Merrell on 21 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • Wars in an imperialist democracy cannot simply be dictated by executive fiat, they require the consent of highly motivated masses who will make the human and material sacrifices. Imperialist leaders have to create a visible and highly charged emotional sense of injustice and righteousness to secure national cohesion and overcome the natural opposition to early death, destruction and disruption of civilian life and to the brutal regimentation that goes with submission to absolutist rule by the military. The need to invent a cause is especially the case with imperialist countries because their national territory is not under threat. There is no visible occupation army oppressing the mass of the people in their everyday life. The ‘enemy’ does not disrupt everyday normal life – as forced conscription would and does. Under normal peaceful time, who would be willing to sacrifice their constitutional rights and their participation in civil society to subject themselves to martial rule that precludes the exercise of all their civil freedoms?
  • The task of imperial rulers is to fabricate a world in which the enemy to be attacked (an emerging imperial power like Japan) is portrayed as an ‘invader’ or an ‘aggressor’ in the case of revolutionary movements (Korean and Indo-Chinese communists) engaged in a civil war against an imperial client ruler or a ‘terrorist conspiracy’ linked to an anti-imperialist, anti-colonial Islamic movements and secular states. Imperialist-democracies in the past did not need to consult or secure mass support for their expansionist wars; they relied on volunteer armies, mercenaries and colonial subjects led and directed by colonial officers. Only with the confluence of imperialism, electoral politics and total war did the need arise to secure not only consent, but also enthusiasm, to facilitate mass recruitment and obligatory conscription. Since all US imperial wars are fought ‘overseas’ – far from any immediate threats, attacks or invasions – -US imperial rulers have the special task of making the ‘causus bellicus’ immediate, ‘dramatic’ and self-righteously ‘defensive’. To this end US Presidents have created circumstances, fabricated incidents and acted in complicity with their enemies, to incite the bellicose temperament of the masses in favor of war.
  • The pretext for wars are acts of provocation which set in motion a series of counter-moves by the enemy, which are then used to justify an imperial mass military mobilization leading to and legitimizing war. State ‘provocations’ require uniform mass media complicity in the lead-up to open warfare: Namely the portrayal of the imperial country as a victim of its own over-trusting innocence and good intentions. All four major US imperial wars over the past 67 years resorted to a provocation, a pretext, and systematic, high intensity mass media propaganda to mobilize the masses for war. An army of academics, journalists, mass media pundits and experts ‘soften up’ the public in preparation for war through demonological writing and commentary: Each and every aspect of the forthcoming military target is described as totally evil – hence ‘totalitarian’ – in which even the most benign policy is linked to demonic ends of the regime. Since the ‘enemy to be’ lacks any saving graces and worst, since the ‘totalitarian state’ controls everything and everybody, no process of internal reform or change is possible. Hence the defeat of ‘total evil’ can only take place through ‘total war’. The targeted state and people must be destroyed in order to be redeemed. In a word, the imperial democracy must regiment and convert itself into a military juggernaut based on mass complicity with imperial war crimes. The war against ‘totalitarianism’ becomes the vehicle for total state control for an imperial war.
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  • In the case of the US-Japanese war, the US-Korean war, the US-Indochinese war and the post-September 11 war against an independent secular nationalist regime (Iraq) and the Islamic Afghan republic, the Executive branch (with the uniform support of the mass media and congress) provoked a hostile response from its target and fabricated a pretext as a basis for mass mobilization for prolonged and bloody wars.
  • Wars in an imperialist democracy cannot simply be dictated by executive fiat, they require the consent of highly motivated masses who will make the human and material sacrifices. Imperialist leaders have to create a visible and highly charged emotional sense of injustice and righteousness to secure national cohesion and overcome the natural opposition to early death, destruction and disruption of civilian life and to the brutal regimentation that goes with submission to absolutist rule by the military. The need to invent a cause is especially the case with imperialist countries because their national territory is not under threat. There is no visible occupation army oppressing the mass of the people in their everyday life. The ‘enemy’ does not disrupt everyday normal life – as forced conscription would and does. Under normal peaceful time, who would be willing to sacrifice their constitutional rights and their participation in civil society to subject themselves to martial rule that precludes the exercise of all their civil freedoms?
  • Paul Merrell on 21 Aug 14
     
    Lengthy look at provocations and pretexts used to start U.S. foreign wars. 
Paul Merrell

Three House panels to investigate whether ISIS intelligence was cooked | TheHill - 0 views

thehill.com/...ions-committees-to-investigate

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy ISIL intelligence-cooking Congressional-investigations

shared by Paul Merrell on 15 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • Three House committees will jointly investigate allegations U.S. Central Command altered intelligence reports, their chairmen announced Friday.“Today, the House Armed Services Committee, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Appropriations Committee established a Joint Task Force to investigate allegations that senior U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) officials manipulated intelligence products,” Reps. David Nunes (R-Calif.), Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) and Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.) said in a joint statement.Analysts at Centcom have alleged that senior officials altered their reports to paint a rosier picture of the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).The Pentagon’s inspector general is already conducting an investigation into the allegations.Magazine Foreign Policy reported last month that the task force would be formed.
  • In their statement, Nunes, Thornberry and Frelinghuysen said the task force would look into the specific allegations, as well as whether there are “systemic problems across the intelligence enterprise in CENTCOM or any other pertinent intelligence organizations.”Reps. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) and Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) will lead the investigation.“Any accusation of intelligence being altered to fit a political narrative must be fully investigated and those responsible held accountable,” Pompeo said in a written statement. “This matters both to those who gather the intelligence, often at great risk to their personal safety, and to the policymakers who use this intelligence to make what are often life threatening decisions.”In an interview on Fox News, Thornberry said the issue was too important to wait to investigate until after the inspector general.
  • Democrats are participating, too, he said in the interview.  “They are participating in the investigation,” he said. “Their staff had been involved in the discussions we have had with a variety of folks from Centcom and elsewhere. So again we want to be careful and do it right, but it's important.” The task force expects to have preliminary results early next year, according to the chairmen’s statement.
Paul Merrell

EU Cannot Go On Fighting Russia, "We can not have our relationship towards Russia dictated by Washington" EU Commission President | Global Research - Centre for Research on Globalization - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5482055

war & peace economic-warfare EU Russia U.S.-foreign-policy

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Note: This article originally appeared at German Economic News. Translated from German by Boris Jaruselski Huge reversal: the EU seeks a normal relationship with Russia. It seems that the EU is being greatly affected by the actions of Vladimir Putin in Syria: suddenly the EU President Jean-Claude Junker is saying that the EU must not let the US dictate their relationship with Russia. He has demanded a normalization of relations – and indirectly, the end of sancitons.  The EU Commission President advocated a relaxation in the conflict with Russia. “We have to achieve a sustainable relationship with Russia. It’s not sexy, but has to be done. We can’t go on like this anymore”, he said on Thursday in Passau. It isn’t necessary to achieve overall understanding, but a sensible conversational basis. “The Russians are a proud people”, the country has “a role to play”, said Junker: “One must not remove them from the bigger picture, otherwise they’ll call again, very quickly, as we seen already.” He critisized US Presidnet Barack Obama, for having downgraded Russia as “regional power”. “Russia needs to be treated correctly”, the Luxemburgian explained. “We can not have our relationship towards Russia dictated by Washington. It’s simply not on.”
  • Paul Merrell on 17 Oct 15
     
    Memo to Obama: The natives in Europe are dissatisfied with your leadership. Time to take out a few key leaders with drone strikes?
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