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'Clinton death list': 33 spine-tingling cases - 0 views

www.wnd.com/...-list-33-most-intriguing-cases Clinton-Body-Count
shared by Gary Edwards on 05 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 05 Feb 17
     
    "(Editor's note: This list was originally published in August 2016 and has gone viral on the web. WND is running it again as American voters cast their ballots for the nation's next president on Election Day.) How many people do you personally know who have died mysteriously? How about in plane crashes or car wrecks? Bizarre suicides? People beaten to death or murdered in a hail of bullets? And what about violent freak accidents - like separate mountain biking and skiing collisions in Aspen, Colorado? Or barbells crushing a person's throat? Bill and Hillary Clinton attend a funeral Apparently, if you're Bill or Hillary Clinton, the answer to that question is at least 33 - and possibly many more. Talk-radio star Rush Limbaugh addressed the issue of the "Clinton body count" during an August show. "I swear, I could swear I saw these stories back in 1992, back in 1993, 1994," Limbaugh said. He cited a report from Rachel Alexander at Townhall.com titled, "Clinton body count or left-wing conspiracy? Three with ties to DNC mysteriously die." Limbaugh said he recalled Ted Koppel, then-anchor of ABC News' "Nightline," routinely having discussions on the issue following the July 20, 1993, death of White House Deputy Counsel Vince Foster. In fact, Limbaugh said, he appeared on Koppel's show. "One of the things I said was, 'Who knows what happened here? But let me ask you a question.' I said, 'Ted, how many people do you know in your life who've been murdered? Ted, how many people do you know in your life that have died under suspicious circumstances?' "Of course, the answer is zilch, zero, nada, none, very few," Limbaugh chuckled. "Ask the Clintons that question. And it's a significant number. It's a lot of people that they know who have died, who've been murdered. "And the same question here from Rachel Alexander. It's amazing the cycle that exists with the Clintons. [Citing Townhall]: 'What it
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The Black Banners : Six Questions for Ali Soufan-By Scott Horton (Harper's Magazine) - 0 views

harpers.org/...hbc-90008292 Ali-Soufan FBI 911-Conspiracy-facts
shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 09 Jan 12
     
    3. The major still-unanswered question from 9/11 may be this: Why did the CIA keep information about Khalid Al-Mihdhar - the 9/11 team member who was identified before the attacks as having a U.S. visa and tracked into the United States - secret from the FBI and other law enforcement agencies? Clearly this information could have been used to stop the 9/11 plot, yet CIA officials lied about it repeatedly, and have never been held to account either for their failure to inform or their lies. Do you have an answer? My hands started shaking. I didn't know what to think. "They just sent these reports," the [CIA chief of station*] said, seeing my reaction. I walked out of the room, sprinted down the corridor to the bathroom, and fell to the floor next to a stall. There I threw up. I sat on the floor for a few minutes, although it felt like hours. What I had just seen went through my mind again and again. The same thought kept looping back: "If they had all this information since January 2000, why the hell didn't they pass it on?" My whole body was shaking… I got myself to the sink, washed out my mouth, and splashed some water on my face. I covered my face with a paper towel for a few moments. I was still trying to process the fact that the information I had requested about major al-Qaeda operatives, information the CIA had claimed they knew nothing about, had been in the agency's hands since January 2000. The SWAT agent asked, "What's wrong, bud? What the hell did he tell you?" "They knew, they knew." -From The Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against al-Qaeda. (*Redacted in original - text restored by Harper's). Reprinted by permission of W.W. Norton & Co., © 2011 Ali Soufan. Sadly no. To date we've never been told why the information wasn't passed to the team investigating the USS Cole attack, the State Department, or the Immigration and Naturalization Service, nor why he wasn't put on a no-fly list, al
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Eric Holder for AG should not be put forward: Debra Burlingame » 9/11 Familie... - 0 views

www.911familiesforamerica.org/?p=1126 911 terrorism clinton
shared by Gary Edwards on 21 Jan 09 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 21 Jan 09
     
    At the time Mr. Holder was pushing for the release of these terrorists in September of 1999, the suicide pilots for the 9/11 attacks had been selected and were already here or on their way here. Domestic and transnational terrorism was ramping up, as illustrated by the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1995 Tokyo subway Sarin attack, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the 1995 "Bojinka" conspiracy to hijack airplanes and crash them into buildings, the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, the 1996 Summer Olympics bombing, Osama bin Laden's 1996 and 1998 "Declarations of War" on America, the 1998 East African embassy bombings, the 2000 USS Sullivans bombing attempt, the 2000 USS Cole bombing, and the 2000 Millennium bombing plot. It is within this context which the FBI stated that "the release of these individuals will psychologically and operationally enhance the ongoing violent and criminal activities of terrorist groups, not only in Puerto Rico, but throughout the world."
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Audio Reveals What John Kerry Told Syrians Behind Closed Doors - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...john-kerry-syria-audio.html war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Syria Kerry Congress no-war
shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • Secretary of State John Kerry was clearly exasperated, not least at his own government. Over and over again, he complained to a small group of Syrian civilians that his diplomacy had not been backed by a serious threat of military force, according to an audio recording of the meeting obtained by The New York Times.
  • At the meeting last week, Mr. Kerry was trying to explain that the United States has no legal justification for attacking Mr. Assad’s government, whereas Russia was invited in by the government.
  • His frustrations and dissent within the Obama administration have hardly been a secret, but in the recorded conversation, Mr. Kerry lamented being outmaneuvered by the Russians, expressed disagreement with some of Mr. Obama’s policy decisions and said Congress would never agree to use force. 0:19
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • He also spoke of the obstacles he faces back home: a Congress unwilling to authorize the use of force and a public tired of war.
  • As time ran short, Mr. Kerry told the Syrians that their best hope was a political solution to bring the opposition into a transitional government. Then, he said, “you can have an election and let the people of Syria decide: Who do they want?” A State Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said later that Mr. Kerry was not indicating a shift in the administration’s view of Mr. Assad, only reiterating a longstanding belief that he would be ousted in any fair election. At one point, Mr. Kerry astonished the Syrians at the table when he suggested that they should participate in elections that include President Bashar al-Assad, five years after President Obama demanded that he step down. Mr. Kerry described the election saying it would be set up by Western and regional powers, and the United Nations, “under the strictest standards.” He said that the millions of Syrians who have fled since the war began in 2011 would be able to participate. 0:19
  • “Everybody who’s registered as a refugee anywhere in the world can vote. Are they going to vote for Assad? Assad’s scared of this happening.” But the Syrians were skeptical that people living under government rule inside Syria would feel safe casting ballots against Mr. Assad, even with international observers — or that Russia would agree to elections if it could not ensure the outcome. And that is when the conversation reached an impasse, with Ms. Shehwaro, an educator and social media activist, recalling hopes for a more direct American role. “So you think the only solution is for somebody to come in and get rid of Assad?” Mr. Kerry asked. “Yes,” Ms. Shehwaro said. “Who’s that going to be?” he asked. “Who’s going to do that?”
  • Paul Merrell on 12 Oct 16
     
    Sounding more and more like Obama won't be willing to commence another overt war. But look for more instances of the U.S. doing strategic bombing for ISIL and Al-Nusrah, as with the attack on the Syrian Army and blowing up the two bridges over the Euphrates that the Syrian Army needed to attack an ISIL stronghold.
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As Early As 2000 NSA Set Out To "Live On The Network" - 0 views

marketingland.com/t-to-live-on-the-network-47671 surveillance state NSA NSA-goals 2000 internet
shared by Paul Merrell on 31 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Significantly, the NSA issued a report in 2000 about the transition from 20th Century threats and information gathering to the 21st Century with its emerging digital demands and infrastructure. Below is an excerpt from that document (.pdf):
  • Note the final line (from 2000): “To perform both its offensive and defensive missions, NSA must ‘live on the network.’”
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9/11: Larry Silverstein Designed New WTC-7 One Year Before Attacks - 0 views

www.mintpressnews.com/...214821 war & peace 9-11 Silverstein WTC-7
shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • Larry Silverstein was caught admitting on camera that he planned to build an entirely new World Trade Center 7 (WTC-7) building one year before the 9/11 attacks had occurred.
  • Back in April 2000, one year and five months before the attacks, “Lucky Larry” held a meeting to discuss plans to replace building 7 in 2002.  As reported by Veterans Today: “We got the designs.  And the first design meeting was in April of 2000. And construction began shortly thereafter, in 2002.”
  • One slight problem: If he hadn’t been planning the illegal, un-permitted, homicidal demolitions of WTC-7 and the entire World Trade Center complex that took place on September 11th, 2001, there would have been no point to any such design meeting back in April, 2000 … and no opportunity for beginning construction of a new WTC-7 in 2002.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • With the supreme chutzpah that has become his trademark, Silverstein breezes over the demolitions of 9/11/2001 as if they were not even worth remarking on, instead going straight from his new-WTC-7 design meeting in April 2000 to the beginning of construction in 2002. In 2001, “Lucky Larry,” who had previously owned only WTC-7, orchestrated a deal with his fellow-ultra-Zionist Lewis Eisenberg, Chairman of the mobbed-up NY Port Authority, and another Zionist extremist billionaire, Frank Lowy, to sell the entire WTC complex to Silverstein and backers on a 100-year lease. The deal was finalized in July, 2001, and Larry took possession of the buildings … and security arrangements. But first, he hard-balled his insurers into doubling the terror insurance coverage and changing the terms to “instant cash payout.”
  • On September 11th, Larry hit the jackpot. The condemned-for-asbestos and largely vacant Twin Towers, with their obsolete communications infrastructure and money-hemorrhaging balance sheet, were both demolished for free – with 3,000 people inside.
  • Larry’s luck held out when he demanded double indemnity – on the basis that he had been “victimized” by two completely separate and unrelated terrorist attacks, namely the two planes – and got it, to the tune of 4. 5 billion dollars. That’s a hefty cash-payout return on a relatively minor investment. (Silverstein put up less than 15 million of his own money to buy the WTC, and his backers had added a little over 100 million.) Even after video proof emerged that he had confessed to “pulling” (i.e. demolishing) WTC-7, he still somehow evaded the hangman’s noose. Then he went back to court to ask for more than $10 billion more – this time not from his own insurers, but from those of the airlines he falsely blamed for the demolitions that he himself had conducted. But that didn’t stop not-quite-so-Lucky Larry from trying to steal another 500 million from the federal government through an EB-5 visa scam. Then last month, Larry’s inimitable chutzpah resurfaced when he said that his first thought on looking at the plans for the new South Tower was “it looks like it’s going to topple, it’s going to fall over.” At least if you “pull” on it hard enough, it might. Right, Larry? Larry’s chutzpah is so monumental that it became the basis of an annual award. Whatever will this unbelievable character do next?
  • Will someone finally arrest him? Will we ever see him swing from the gallows? Or will Lucky Larry’s luck hold out until he finally dies of natural causes, leaving his heirs billions of blood-stained dollars with which to conduct more outrageous Zionist mischief?
  • Paul Merrell on 17 Mar 16
     
    A year before 9-11, Larry Silverstein was just coming off a very big loss (from much larger deal than he had ever been able to finance before). He had no money. He was only a trip to the courthouse shy of being officially bankrupt. So he gets a 100-year-lease on the World Trade Center from the Port of New York. The then-existing buildings are mostly vacant and are in drastic need of a major asbestos removal. There are no prospects of paying off the loan, either over the short or mid-term, let alone turning a profit. But insure-and-burn seems to have been the business plan for a very quick and very large profit. Design for a new building to replace WTC-7 in the year before 9-11-200? Now can we get on to the folks who did the financing for the burn operation? Hint: It wasn't Osama bin Laden, who disavowed Al-Qaeda responsibility in the immediate aftermath. Another hint: It was the Israeli prime minister who first went public with the charge that Al-Qaeda was responsible.  
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New Data Reveals U.S. Far From Freest Country in the World - 0 views

theantimedia.org/om-freest-country-in-the-world U.S. economy economic-freedom ranking stats
shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • According to the annual Economic Freedom of the World report, the United States has dropped to #16 in an index of economic freedom. The list, released by the Fraser Institute, ranks countries around the world by a number of different factors that include the size and scope of government: expenditures, taxes, enterprises, legal structure and security of property rights, access to sound money, freedom to trade internationally, and regulation of credit, labor, and business were all evaluated. The study also considered income levels and poverty rates. As the introduction of the study details:“The cornerstones of economic freedom are (1) personal choice, (2) voluntary exchange coordinated by markets, (3) freedom to enter and compete in markets, and (4) protection of persons and their property from aggression by others. Economic freedom is present when individuals are permitted to choose for themselves and engage in voluntary transactions as long as they do not harm the person or property of others.”At the top of the list was Hong Kong, followed by Singapore, New Zealand, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, Mauritius, Jordan, Ireland, and Canada. The United Kingdom and Chile tied at #10. The United States followed behind at #16, continuing a downward trend that has grown for several years.
  • The report also noted that “Nowhere has the reversal of the rising trend in the economic freedom been more evident than in the United States. Throughout the period from 1970 to 2000, the United States ranked as the world’s freest OECD nation (generally the third freest economy overall behind only Hong Kong and Singapore). The chain-linked summary rating of the United States in 2000 was 8.65. By 2005, the US rating had slipped to 8.22. The slide has continued. The 7.73 chain-linked rating of the United States in 2013 was more than 0.9 of a unit lower than the 2000 rating. Thus, the decline in economic freedom in the United States has been more than three times greater than the average decline found in the OECD [emphasis added].”While the U.S. has never had a truly free economy, the new study makes it evident that Americans have far less economic freedom and opportunity than they did in the year 2000. Now that economic conditions are even worse in the U.S. than they were before, a culture of extreme economic control has taken over and exacerbated the growing recession — one that history may end up redesignating a depression.
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George W. Bush: The Biggest Spender Since LBJ : Business Insider / Cato Institute - 0 views

www.businessinsider.com/gest-spender-since-lbj-2009-12 GWB spending financial-crisis banksters
shared by Gary Edwards on 29 Dec 09 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 29 Dec 09
     
    Looking at the Facts.... on Dec 28, 4:18 PM said: Economy Comparison: William J. Clinton (WJC); George W. Bush (GWB) Average annual GDP growth: W.J. Clinton: 3.6%; G.W. Bush: 2.6% Real median household income: WJC: grew by $5,825; GWB: fell by $1,273 Unemployment: WJC: 7.3% -> 4.2%; GWB: 4.2% -> 6.5% Non-farm employment: WJC: 22.7 million jobs; GWB: 3 million jobs (worst record of any US president in 70 years) Poverty rate: WJC: fell 3.5% (6.4 million fewer people) GWB: rose 1.3% (5.4 million more people) Federal Spending as % of GDP: WJC: 22.1% (fiscal 1992) to 18.4% in 2000; GWB: back up to 20.8% -2006 Total executive branch employment (does not include classified numbers for CIA, DIA, NSA, & other intelligence agencies; does not include outsourced jobs): WJC: down by almost 450,000 (2.225 million -> 1.778 million); GWB: up by almost 100,000 (to 1.872 million). Federal Debt: WJC: inherited deficit of $290 billion -> surplus of $236 billion (fiscal 2000); GWB: increased by almost $3 trillion (as of 2006) Public Debt as % of GDP: WJC: -16.4%; GWB: +4.4%
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The Vineyard of the Saker: Mikhail Khazin Q&A with the Saker Community - 0 views

vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/...in-q-with-saker-community.html war & peace economic-warfare Khazin-interview Russia-politics
shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • t is a huge pleasure, and honor, for me to present you today with the Q&A between Mikhail Khazin and the Saker Community.  For those who might have missed it, here it is (including a biography of Mr Khazin): http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/2014/10/exclusive-mikhail-khazin-q-with-saker.html
  • Considering the importance of this document, I have decided to try to make it as easy to access, copy and distribute as possible.  First, I have made it available in 4 formats: ODT, PDF, HTML and DOCX.  Second, I have uploaded it to both the Internet Archive and Mediafire.  Here are the links: https://archive.org/details/KhazinQAENFinal https://www.mediafire.com/#t713dfdpadk0z Third, you will find below the text pasted in from the HTML file.
  • Paul Merrell on 06 Jan 15
     
    This is a must-read if you want to learn about Russia's internal politics as they affect Russian economic foreign policy.  There is a video of a roundtable discussion including Khazin touching on the same topics here. http://goo.gl/3E4QWL (I've borrowed the clip below from that page.) Mikhail Khazin is a mathematician and economist in Russia (graduated from Moscow State University in 1984). After working in various government and banking positions, he was discharged from his position as Deputy Chief of the Economic Directorate for attempting to fight corruption during Russia's failed experiment at privatization in 1997. Since 2000, he has worked as a consultant. He's an acquaintance of President Putin and is well informed of Kremlin politics, including the behind-the-scenes power struggles.  Besides being an expert economist, he seems to have a knack for predicting major world events. In 2000 he predicted the 2008 economic collapse (having previously predicted Russia's 1998 default). Then, on 10 September 2001, he predicted large-scale, U.S.-organized terror attacks as a cover for the States' economic deterioration. Now, in August of this year he predicted the end of a period of consumption stimulated by credit and a fresh round of bankruptcies and unemployment in the last quarter of 2014.  Back in September he had this to say about the current 'dollar economy': "There is nothing we will gain anymore from the dollar model. It's run dry."
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Americans on Wrong Side of Income Gap Run Out of Means to Cope - 0 views

www.moneynews.com/...544365 financial-collapse income inequality statistics Obama Boehner
shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • “We’ve exhausted our coping mechanisms,” said Alan Krueger, an economics professor at Princeton University in New Jersey and former chairman of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers. “They weren’t sustainable.” The result has been a downsizing of expectations. By almost two to one — 64 percent to 33 percent — Americans say the U.S. no longer offers everyone an equal chance to get ahead, according to the latest Bloomberg National Poll. The lack of faith is especially pronounced among those making less than $50,000 a year, with close to three-quarters in the Dec. 6-9 survey saying the economy is unfair.
  • The diminished expectations have implications for the economy. Workers are clinging to their jobs as prospects fade for higher-paying employment. Households are socking away more money and charging less on credit cards. And young adults are living with their parents longer rather than venturing out on their own. In the meantime, record-high stock prices are enriching wealthier Americans, exacerbating polarization and bringing income inequality to the political forefront. Even independent government agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Reserve have been dragged into the debate.
  • “The basic bargain at the heart of our economy has frayed,” Obama said in a Dec. 4 speech in Washington. “This is the defining challenge of our time: Making sure our economy works for every working American.” Democratic lawmakers also intend to press next year for a higher minimum wage to tackle the yawning gap between rich and poor, Durbin said. Republicans aren’t ceding the issue. “The American dream is certainly more in doubt than in decades,” House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio said in response to Obama’s speech. “But after more than five years in office, the president has no one to blame but himself.”
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • Income inequality has been rising more or less steadily since the mid-1970s. The Gini coefficient, a broad-based measure of inequality, stood at a record high last year, according to Census Bureau data dating back 46 years.
  • Women who became unemployed during the recession and its aftermath have been slower to find new positions. Among women losing jobs they’d held for at least three years between January 2009 and the end of 2011, 50 percent were re-employed by the start of 2012, while the share for men was 61 percent, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report released in February. Households turned to stepped-up borrowing to help make ends meet, until that avenue was shut off by the collapse of house prices. About 10.8 million homeowners still owed more money on their mortgages than their properties were worth in the third quarter, according to Seattle-based Zillow Inc. The fallout has made many Americans less inclined to take risks. The quits rate — the proportion of Americans in the workforce who voluntarily left their jobs — stood at 1.7 percent in October. While that’s up from 1.5 percent a year earlier, it’s below the 2.2 percent average for 2006, the year house prices started falling, government data show.
  • “The middle has really collapsed,” said Lawrence Katz, an economics professor at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a former chief economist at the Labor Department in Washington. Even those with college degrees are having trouble keeping up, he said. While they earn more than those with less schooling, they’ve seen no real wage growth in recent years. The median income of men 25 years of age and older with a bachelor’s degree was $56,656 last year, 10 percent less than in 2007 after taking account of inflation, according to Census data.
  • It’s the richest of the rich who are reaping the most benefit as an increasingly interconnected and technologically sophisticated world puts a premium on those perceived to have the highest skills — a phenomenon dubbed “winner take all” by Cornell University Professor Robert Frank. Government policies also play a role. The Treasury Department, for instance, taxes capital gains racked up by the wealthy on the sale of shares, bonds and other assets at about half the rate of ordinary income. The top 1 percent captured 95 percent of the gains in incomes in the first three years of the recovery, based on analysis of tax returns by Saez. Those less well-off, meanwhile, are running out of ways to cope. The percentage of working-age women who are in the labor force steadily climbed from a post-World War II low of 32 percent to a peak of 60.3 percent in April 2000, fueling a jump in dual-income households and helping Americans deal with slow wage growth for a while. Since the recession ended, the workforce participation rate for women has been in decline, echoing a longer-running trend among men. November data showed 57 percent of women in the labor force and 69.4 percent of men.
  • The disparity has widened since the recovery began in mid-2009. The richest 10 percent of Americans earned a larger share of income last year than at any time since 1917, according to Emmanuel Saez, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley. Those in the top one-tenth of income distribution made at least $146,000 in 2012, almost 12 times what those in the bottom tenth made, Census Bureau data show. Economists have posited a variety of explanations for the growing differences in incomes. Manufacturing companies moved once high-paying jobs abroad, to China and elsewhere. Technological advances led to the loss of clerical and office work, especially relating to routine tasks. The decline of unions — 11.3 percent of workers were represented in 2012 compared with 20.1 percent in 1983 — has advantaged bosses at the expense of their employees.
  • Millennials — adults aged 18 to 32 — are still slow to set out on their own more than four years after the recession ended, according to an Oct. 18 report by the Pew Research Center in Washington. Just over one in three head their own households, close to a 38-year low set in 2010. Obama has proposed a raft of policies to attack the widening wage gap — from simplifying the tax code and increasing exports to enhancing worker training and boosting pre-kindergarten education. Yet in a divided Washington he hasn’t made much progress pushing them through. The president’s renewed focus on income inequality has more to do with politics than policy, said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, a self-described center- right institute in Washington.
  • “It’s great politics to demagogue income distribution and complain about the rich getting ahead and the poor falling behind,” said Holtz-Eakin, a former Congressional Budget Office director. “The substance of what he’s actually done doesn’t match the enormity of the problem as he’s portrayed it.”
  • The wage-gap debate has reverberated to other parts of Washington, as the SEC published a rule Sept. 18 that would compel public companies to reveal pay ratios between chief executives and their employees. While businesses have decried the requirement as overreach, some investors welcome the data as a way to help assess a company’s health.
  • Across companies in the S&P 500, the average multiple of CEO compensation to that of rank-and-file workers is 204, up 20 percent since 2009, according to data compiled by Bloomberg in April. The Fed also has been caught up in the debate over growing income disparities. Lawmakers from both parties have questioned whether its bond-buying policy, called quantitative easing, has benefited the rich at the expense of those less well-off by boosting prices of stocks and other assets.
  • The S&P 500 stock index has risen 29 percent in 2013. The richest third of U.S. households account for 89 percent of all equities ownership, according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.
  • Janet Yellen, nominated to take over as Fed chairman next year, defended the central bank’s actions at a Senate Banking Committee hearing on Nov. 14. “The policies we’ve undertaken have been meant to generate a robust recovery,” Yellen told the committee. The growing calls for action to reduce income inequality have translated into a national push for a higher minimum wage. Fast-food workers in 100 cities took to the streets Dec. 5 to demand a $15 hourly salary.
  • Paul Merrell on 02 Jan 14
     
    Monetary policy of, by, and for banksters continues in the U.S. One irony is that banksters press for transition to an all digital currency so that savers can be penalized, a blatant "trickle-up"economic policy, whilst also pressing for more bank bailouts, wielding the thoroughly-discredited "trickle down" economic theory. But "trickle down" theory, in the context of bank bailouts, has not successfully trickled down and the only beneficiaries have been the few Americans who can still invest in the stock market, paying the highest dividends to the wealthiest among us. Has their ever been a time when the stock market's behavior has been so divorced from the well-being of the middle and lower economic classes? I doubt there has been at least in the last 50 years. Where would we be if the bank bail-out trillions had instead been mailed as checks to the middle and lower economic classes? "Trickle up" works and that is what built the American economy to its peak in inflation-adjusted dollars -- an affluent middle class. But do not expect leadership from Washington, D.C. in correcting income inquequality; only political rhetoric and a fight over extension of unemployment benefits, now lapsed. "According to the World Bank, the GINI coefficient "measures the extent to which the distribution of income or consumption expenditure among individuals households within an economy deviates from a perfectly equal distribution." Therefore it is used as an indication of income inequality within countries. ... In the late 2000s, Chile had the highest GINI coefficient, after taxes and transfers, among OECD member countries. The United States, Turkey and Mexico came right before it. At the other end of the scale, Slovenia, Denmark and Norway led the ranking with the lowest levels of income inequality." http://www.gfmag.com/tools/global-database/economic-data/11944-wealth-distribution-income-inequality.html#ixzz2pGpv4xGZ Higher minimum wages? How about instead abolishing the Feder
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The obscure legal system that lets corporations sue countries | Claire Provost and Matt... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...rtations-sue-states-ttip-icsid ISDS TTIP Banksters World-Banksters
shared by Gary Edwards on 10 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • Every year on 15 September, thousands of Salvadorans celebrate the date when much of Central America gained independence from Spain. Fireworks are set off and marching bands parade through villages across the country. But, last year, in the town of San Isidro, in Cabañas, the festivities had a markedly different tone. Hundreds had gathered to protest against the mine. Gold mines often use cyanide to separate gold from ore, and widespread concern over already severe water contamination in El Salvador has helped fuel a powerful movement determined to keep the country’s minerals in the ground. In the central square, colourful banners were strung up, calling on OceanaGold to drop its case against the country and leave the area. Many were adorned with the slogan, “No a la mineria, Si a la vida” (No to mining, Yes to life). On the same day, in Washington DC, Parada gathered his notes and shuffled into a suite of nondescript meeting rooms in the World Bank’s J building, across the street from its main headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue. This is the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID): the primary institution for handling the cases that companies file against sovereign states. (The ICSID is not the sole venue for such cases; there are similar forums in London, Paris, Hong Kong and the Hague, among others.) The date of the hearing was not a coincidence, Parada said. The case has been framed in El Salvador as a test of the country’s sovereignty in the 21st century, and he suggested that it should be heard on Independence Day. “The ultimate question in this case,” he said, “is whether a foreign investor can force a government to change its laws to please the investor as opposed to the investor complying with the laws they find in the country.”
  • Most international investment treaties and free-trade deals grant foreign investors the right to activate this system, known as investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), if they want to challenge government decisions affecting their investments. In Europe, this system has become a sticking point in negotiations over the controversial Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) deal proposed between the European Union and the US, which would massively extend its scope and power and make it harder to challenge in the future. Both France and Germany have said that they want access to investor-state dispute settlement removed from the TTIP treaty currently under discussion. Investors have used this system not only to sue for compensation for alleged expropriation of land and factories, but also over a huge range of government measures, including environmental and social regulations, which they say infringe on their rights. Multinationals have sued to recover money they have already invested, but also for alleged lost profits and “expected future profits”. The number of suits filed against countries at the ICSID is now around 500 – and that figure is growing at an average rate of one case a week. The sums awarded in damages are so vast that investment funds have taken notice: corporations’ claims against states are now seen as assets that can be invested in or used as leverage to secure multimillion-dollar loans. Increasingly, companies are using the threat of a lawsuit at the ICSID to exert pressure on governments not to challenge investors’ actions.
  • “I had absolutely no idea this was coming,” Parada said. Sitting in a glass-walled meeting room in his offices, at the law firm Foley Hoag, he paused, searching for the right word to describe what has happened in his field. “Rogue,” he decided, finally. “I think the investor-state arbitration system was created with good intentions, but in practice it has gone completely rogue.”
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  • The quiet village of Moorburg in Germany lies just across the river from Hamburg. Past the 16th-century church and meadows rich with wildflowers, two huge chimneys spew a steady stream of thick, grey smoke into the sky. This is Kraftwerk Moorburg, a new coal-fired power plant – the village’s controversial next-door neighbour. In 2009, it was the subject of a €1.4bn investor-state case filed by Vattenfall, the Swedish energy giant, against the Federal Republic of Germany. It is a prime example of how this powerful international legal system, built to protect foreign investors in developing countries, is now being used to challenge the actions of European governments as well. Since the 1980s, German investors have sued dozens of countries, including Ghana, Ukraine and the Philippines, at the World Bank’s Centre in Washington DC. But with the Vattenfall case, Germany found itself in the dock for the first time. The irony was not lost on those who considered Germany to be the grandfather of investor-state arbitration: it was a group of German businessmen, in the late 1950s, who first conceived of a way to protect their overseas investments as a wave of developing countries gained independence from European colonial powers. Led by Deutsche Bank chairman Hermann Abs, they called their proposal an “international magna carta” for private investors.
  • In the 1960s, the idea was taken up by the World Bank, which said that such a system could help the world’s poorer countries attract foreign capital. “I am convinced,” the World Bank president George Woods said at the time, “that those … who adopt as their national policy a welcome [environment] for international investment – and that means, to mince no words about it, giving foreign investors a fair opportunity to make attractive profits – will achieve their development objectives more rapidly than those who do not.” At the World Bank’s 1964 annual meeting in Tokyo, it approved a resolution to set up a mechanism for handling investor-state cases. The first line of the ICSID Convention’s preamble sets out its goal as “international cooperation for economic development”. There was sharp opposition to this system from its inception, with a bloc of developing countries warning that it would undermine their sovereignty. A group of 21 countries – almost every Latin American country, plus Iraq and the Philippines – voted against the proposal in Tokyo. But the World Bank moved ahead regardless. Andreas Lowenfeld, an American legal academic who was involved in some of these early discussions, later remarked: “I believe this was the first time that a major resolution of the World Bank had been pressed forward with so much opposition.”
  • now governments are discovering, too late, the true price of that confidence. The Kraftwerk Moorburg plant was controversial long before the case was filed. For years, local residents and environmental groups objected to its construction, amid growing concern over climate change and the impact the project would have on the Elbe river. In 2008, Vattenfall was granted a water permit for its Moorburg project, but, in response to local pressure, local authorities imposed strict environmental conditions to limit the utility’s water usage and its impact on fish. Vattenfall sued Hamburg in the local courts. But, as a foreign investor, it was also able to file a case at the ICSID. These environmental measures, it said, were so strict that they constituted a violation of its rights as guaranteed by the Energy Charter Treaty, a multilateral investment agreement signed by more than 50 countries, including Sweden and Germany. It claimed that the environmental conditions placed on its permit were so severe that they made the plant uneconomical and constituted acts of indirect expropriation.
  • With the rapid growth in these treaties – today there are more than 3,000 in force – a specialist industry has developed in advising companies how best to exploit treaties that give investors access to the dispute resolution system, and how to structure their businesses to benefit from the different protections on offer. It is a lucrative sector: legal fees alone average $8m per case, but they have exceeded $30m in some disputes; arbitrators’ fees at start at $3,000 per day, plus expenses.
  • Vattenfall v Germany ended in a settlement in 2011, after the company won its case in the local court and received a new water permit for its Moorburg plant – which significantly lowered the environmental standards that had originally been imposed, according to legal experts, allowing the plant to use more water from the river and weakening measures to protect fish. The European Commission has now stepped in, taking Germany to the EU Court of Justice, saying its authorisation of the Moorburg coal plant violated EU environmental law by not doing more to reduce the risk to protected fish species, including salmon, which pass near the plant while migrating from the North Sea. A year after the Moorburg case closed, Vattenfall filed another claim against Germany, this time over the federal government’s decision to phase out nuclear power. This second suit – for which very little information is available in the public domain, despite reports that the company is seeking €4.7bn from German taxpayers – is still ongoing. Roughly one third of all concluded cases filed at the ICSID are recorded as ending in “settlements”, which – as the Moorburg dispute shows – can be very profitable for investors, though their terms are rarely fully disclosed.
  • “It was a total surprise for us,” the local Green party leader Jens Kerstan laughed, in a meeting at his sunny office in Hamburg last year. “As far as I knew, there were some [treaties] to protect German companies in the [developing] world or in dictatorships, but that a European company can sue Germany, that was totally a surprise to me.”
  • While a tribunal cannot force a country to change its laws, or give a company a permit, the risk of massive damages may in some cases be enough to persuade a government to reconsider its actions. The possibility of arbitration proceedings can be used to encourage states to enter into meaningful settlement negotiations.
  • A small number of countries are now attempting to extricate themselves from the bonds of the investor-state dispute system. One of these is Bolivia, where thousands of people took to the streets of the country’s third-largest city, Cochabamba, in 2000, to protest against a dramatic hike in water rates by a private company owned by Bechtel, the US civil engineering firm. During the demonstrations, the Bolivian government stepped in and terminated the company’s concession. The company then filed a $50m suit against Bolivia at the ICSID. In 2006, following a campaign calling for the case to be thrown out, the company agreed to accept a token payment of less than $1. After this expensive case, Bolivia cancelled the international agreements it had signed with other states giving their investors access to these tribunals. But getting out of this system is not easily done. Most of these international agreements have sunset clauses, under which their provisions remain in force for a further 10 or even 20 years, even if the treaties themselves are cancelled.
  • There are now thousands of international investment agreements and free-trade acts, signed by states, which give foreign companies access to the investor-state dispute system, if they decide to challenge government decisions. Disputes are typically heard by panels of three arbitrators; one selected by each side, and the third agreed upon by both parties. Rulings are made by majority vote, and decisions are final and binding. There is no appeals process – only an annulment option that can be used on very limited grounds. If states do not pay up after the decision, their assets are subject to seizure in almost every country in the world (the company can apply to local courts for an enforcement order).
  • While there is no equivalent of legal aid for states trying to defend themselves against these suits, corporations have access to a growing group of third-party financiers who are willing to fund their cases against states, usually in exchange for a cut of any eventual award.
  • Increasingly, these suits are becoming valuable even before claims are settled. After Rurelec filed suit against Bolivia, it took its case to the market and secured a multimillion-dollar corporate loan, using its dispute with Bolivia as collateral, so that it could expand its business. Over the last 10 years, and particularly since the global financial crisis, a growing number of specialised investment funds have moved to raise money through these cases, treating companies’ multimillion-dollar claims against states as a new “asset class”.
  • El Salvador has already spent more than $12m defending itself against Pacific Rim, but even if it succeeds in beating the company’s $284m claim, it may never recover these costs. For years Salvadoran protest groups have been calling on the World Bank to initiate an open and public review of ICSID. To date, no such study has been carried out. In recent years, a number of ideas have been mooted to reform the international investor-state dispute system – to adopt a “loser pays” approach to costs, for example, or to increase transparency. The solution may lie in creating an appeals system, so that controversial judgments can be revisited.
  • Brazil has never signed up to this system – it has not entered into a single treaty with these investor-state dispute provisions – and yet it has had no trouble attracting foreign investment.
  • Gary Edwards on 10 Jun 15
     
    "Luis Parada's office is just four blocks from the White House, in the heart of K Street, Washington's lobbying row - a stretch of steel and glass buildings once dubbed the "road to riches", when influence-peddling became an American growth industry. Parada, a soft-spoken 55-year-old from El Salvador, is one of a handful of lawyers in the world who specialise in defending sovereign states against lawsuits lodged by multinational corporations. He is the lawyer for the defence in an obscure but increasingly powerful field of international law - where foreign investors can sue governments in a network of tribunals for billions of dollars. Fifteen years ago, Parada's work was a minor niche even within the legal business. But since 2000, hundreds of foreign investors have sued more than half of the world's countries, claiming damages for a wide range of government actions that they say have threatened their profits. In 2006, Ecuador cancelled an oil-exploration contract with Houston-based Occidental Petroleum; in 2012, after Occidental filed a suit before an international investment tribunal, Ecuador was ordered to pay a record $1.8bn - roughly equal to the country's health budget for a year. (Ecuador has logged a request for the decision to be annulled.) Parada's first case was defending Argentina in the late 1990s against the French conglomerate Vivendi, which sued after the Argentine province of Tucuman stepped in to limit the price it charged people for water and wastewater services. Argentina eventually lost, and was ordered to pay the company more than $100m. Now, in his most high-profile case yet, Parada is part of the team defending El Salvador as it tries to fend off a multimillion-dollar suit lodged by a multinational mining company after the tiny Central American country refused to allow it to dig for gold."
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In deal with police, former Netanyahu aide to hand over recordings of Netanyahu and wif... - 0 views

www.haaretz.com/...f-netanyahu-and-wife-1.5870469 Israel Netanyahu corruption litigation
shared by Paul Merrell on 08 Mar 18 - No Cached
  • Nir Hefetz, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's "spin doctor" and confidant, will hand over recordings of Netanyahu and his wife Sara as part of a deal with police to turn state's evidence in the bribery case involving the Bezeq telecom giant and the Walla news site. Netanyahu, currently in the U.S. for AIPAC and a meeting with Trump, received the news at the Blair House, where he is a guest of the White House. In return for testifying against Netanyahu, Hefetz will not stand trial, face prison time or be fined. While he testifies, he will be housed at an isolated installation.
  • According to assessments regarding the deal, Hefetz will also give information regarding the other cases against the prime minister and his wife. Keep updated: Sign up to our newsletter Email* Please enter a valid email address Sign up Please wait… Thank you for signing up. We've got more newsletters we think you'll find interesting. Click here Oops. Something went wrong. Please try again later. Try again Thank you, The email address you have provided is already registered. Close Hefetz is the third Netanyahu confidant to turn against the prime minister in the ongoing corruption cases. Hefetz is suspected of receiving bribes and obstructing justice as part of what is called Case 4000. He is also a key figure in 1270, and is second fiddle in Case 2000. In Case 4000, Hefetz liaised between the Netanyahu couple and the Walla news website, owned by Bezeq. Hefetz arranged for flattering items on the couple and censorship of less flattering items, Haaretz's Gidi Weitz reported. In Case 1270, Hefetz allegedly served as the prime minister's confidant who sought to elucidate how Judge Hila Gerstl felt about closing a case against Sara Netanyahu. Allegedly a trial balloon was floated, hinting to Gerstl that she would be promoted to Israel's next attorney-general if she closed the case down. Hefetz claims that it all boiled down to idle chatter and hadn't been coordinated with the prime minister and his wife. In Case 2000, Hefetz had involvement on both sides of the coin. He was head of public relations for Netanyahu, before which he served as senior editor in the Yedioth Ahronoth group, owned by Arnon Mozes. In 2009, Mozes is suspected of agreeing to provide sweetheart coverage of Netanyahu, who in turn allegedly promised to get the rival (free) newspaper Israel Hayom to stop printing a weekend edition, which stood to hugely benefit Yedioth.
  • Channel 10 reports that Hefetz will be providing information on other cases – some of which the public hasn't even heard of yet.
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  • At the heart of Case 4000 is the suspicion that Netanyahu acted to provide Bezeq and its former chairman, Shaul Elovitch, with financial breaks worth hundreds of millions of shekels in exchange for positive coverage in the telecommunications company’s popular Walla website. The prime minister has rejected the accusations and insisted that all his decisions “were made in businesslike fashion and based on professional factors, professional testimonies and legal counsel.” Hefetz testified in the case in December. Since his arrest two weeks ago, he has been questioned under caution not only in the telecom case but also for a suspected bribery offer to a former judge. So far he had refused to answer the investigator's questions. Hefetz, Haaretz has learned, will testify that he never received orders from Sara or Benjamin Netanyahu to make the offer to the judge, allegedly made through an intermediary. Hefetz will claim that the talks with Eli Kamir, the alleged conduit, were just "empty words." Two former Netanyahu confidants have already turned against him. One is former Chief of Staff Ari Harow who testified in cases 2000 and 1000 - which, respectively, relate to discussions of a quid-pro-quo deal with newspaper publisher Arnon Mozes and lavish gifts received from businessmen Arnon Milchan and James Packer. The other is Sholmo Filber, former director general of the Communications Ministry under Netanyahu, who is suspected of granting financial benefits to Shaul Elovitch, the controlling shareholder of Bezeq, Israel's largest telecom company, on behalf of the prime minister.
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Data Entry Jobs VACANCY, Income Rs. 35,000/ - per Month, 2000 Job Vacancy in your city. - 0 views

www.portalmarkets.com/...44735.html entry data jobs vacancy income month job city
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  • ashkif as on 11 Jan 19
     
    Free registration Data Entry Jobs, Income Rs. 35,000/ - per Month, 2000 Job Vacancy in your City, Data entry jobs in INDIA, USA, UK, AUSTRALIA, start earning with "Universal Info Service TM (ISO9001:2015 Certified) "Presents Easy Data Typing, Easy ad posting, Easy Proof reading Job for Indian and International Students, House-wife, retired persons & job seekers. Only required basic knowledge of computer & Laptop and internet, Mobile No- +91-9434019000, +91-9474425752 - Advertiser GYU6678...
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75 Economic Numbers From 2012 That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe - 0 views

theeconomiccollapseblog.com/...re-almost-too-crazy-to-believe economic-collapse Obammunism Obamanomics
shared by Gary Edwards on 13 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 13 Jan 13
     
    Thanks to Marbux we have this extraordinary collection of facts and figures describing the economic catastrophe that has hit the USA.  excerpt: "What a year 2012 has been!  The mainstream media continues to tell us what a "great job" the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve are doing of managing the economy, but meanwhile things just continue to get even worse for the poor and the middle class.  It is imperative that we educate the American people about the true condition of our economy and about why all of this is happening.  If nothing is done, our debt problems will continue to get worse, millions of jobs will continue to leave the country, small businesses will continue to be suffocated, the middle class will continue to collapse, and poverty in the United States will continue to explode.  Just "tweaking" things slightly is not going to fix our economy.  We need a fundamental change in direction.  Right now we are living in a bubble of debt-fueled false prosperity that allows us to continue to consume far more wealth than we produce, but when that bubble bursts we are going to experience the most painful economic "adjustment" that America has ever gone through.  We need to be able to explain to our fellow Americans what is coming, why it is coming and what needs to be done.  Hopefully the crazy economic numbers that I have included in this article will be shocking enough to wake some people up. The end of the year is a time when people tend to gather with family and friends more than they do during the rest of the year.  Hopefully many of you will use the list below as a tool to help start some conversations about the coming economic collapse with your loved ones.  Sadly, most Americans still tend to doubt that we are heading into economic oblivion.  So if you have someone among your family and friends that believes that everything is going to be "just fine", just show them these numbers.  They are a good summary of the problems that the U
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Netanyahu questioned by police for third time in alleged corruption probe - Israel News... - 0 views

www.haaretz.com/...1.767775 Netanyahu criminal-investigation corruption
shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was questioned by police investigators at his residence in Jerusalem on Friday morning regarding two pending investigations against him. One case, known as Case 1000, involves allegations that he illegally accepted valuable gifts for himself and his family from business figures, notably Australian billionaire James Packer and Israeli Hollywood film producer Arnon Milchan. The other, Case 2000, relates to conversations between the prime minister and the publisher of the Yedioth Aharonoth daily, Arnon Mozes, where Netanyahu allegedly offered to pursue legislation benefitting Mozes' news business in exchange for favorable news coverage for the prime minister. Mozes was questioned again on that case by police on Thursday.
  • Police have concluded that the corruption investigations of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have yielded sufficient evidence to confirm that he committed at least some of the crimes of which he is suspected.   A senior legal source said that some of the suspicions in the graft case were found to be backed up by conclusive evidence. This reinforces assessments that police will recommend bringing charges against Netanyahu. In internal discussions, members of the national fraud unit tasked with investigating Netanyahu say they are confident about the evidence they have collected, especially with regard to the graft case. With respect to Case 2000, there is no dispute regarding the evidence but there is not yet consensus regarding the legal significance of the evidence.
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Netanyahu scandals reflect corruption at the heart of Israeli society - Mondoweiss - 0 views

mondoweiss.net/...netanyahu-scandals-corruption Israel corruption Netanyahu criminal-investigation
shared by Paul Merrell on 04 Feb 17 - No Cached
  •       Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in danger of being brought down, possibly soon, over what initially appears to be little more than an imprudent taste for Cuban cigars and pink champagne. In truth, however, the allegations ensnaring Netanyahu reveal far more than his personal flaws or an infatuation with the high life. They shine a rare light on the corrupt nexus between Israel’s business, political and media worlds, compounded by the perverse influence of overseas Jewish money. Of the two police investigations Netanyahu faces (there are more in the wings), the one known as Case 1000, concerning gifts from businessmen worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, is most likely to lead to his downfall. But it is the second investigation, Case 2000, and the still-murky relationship between the two cases, that more fully exposes the rot at the heart of Israel’s political system. This latter case hinges on a tape recording in which Netanyahu plots with an Israeli newspaper tycoon to rig media coverage in his favor. Leads from both cases suggest that Netanyahu may have been further meddling, together with his billionaire friends, in the shadowy world of international espionage.
  • Netanyahu’s appetite for a free lunch has been common knowledge in Israel since his first term as prime minister in the late 1990s. Then, he was twice investigated for fraud, though controversially charges were not brought in either case. Police discovered along the way that he and his wife, Sara, had horded many of the gifts he received during state visits. More than 100 were never recovered. The clarifications that were issued more than 15 years ago, as a result of those investigations, make it hard for Netanyahu to claim now that he did not understand the rules. According to justice ministry advice in 2001, government and state officials cannot keep gifts worth more than $100 without risking violating Israeli law. The gifts Netanyahu received from one of the Israeli businessmen involved in Case 1000, Hollywood film producer Arnon Milchan, amounted to as much as $180,000. Netanyahu has argued that these presents, ranging from cigars to jewelry, were expressions of a close friendship rather than bribes to him in his capacity as prime minister. The problem, however, is that Netanyahu appears to have reciprocated by using his position as head of the Israeli government to lobby John Kerry, the then U.S. secretary of state, to gain Milchan a 10-year U.S. residency visa. He may have done more.
  • Also being investigated are his family’s ties to a friend of Milchan’s, Australian billionaire James Packer, who made his fortune in the media and gambling industries. Packer has similarly lavished gifts on the Netanyahu family, especially Yair, Netanyahu’s eldest son. At the same time, Packer, now a neighbor of the Netanyahus in the coastal town of Caesarea, has been seeking permanent residency and the enormous benefits that would accrue with tax status in Israel. As a non-Jew, Packer should have no hope of being awarded residency. There are suspicions that Netanyahu may have been trying to pull strings on the Australian’s behalf. Many of these gifts were apparently not given freely. The Netanyahus asked for them. Indicating that Netanyahu knew there might be legal concerns, he used code words – “leaves” for cigars and “pinks” for champagne – to disguise his orders to Milchan. Police are reported to be confident, after questioning Netanyahu three times, that they have enough evidence to indict him. If they do, Netanyahu will be under heavy pressure to resign.
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  • Yossi Cohen was appointed head of the Mossad a year ago, after a government vetting committee accepted that he had no personal ties to Netanyahu. But Cohen forgot to mention that he is extremely close to Netanyahu’s high-flying friends – connections that are now under investigation. Milchan set up a global security firm in 2008 called Blue Sky International, stuffed with Israeli security veterans. Packer soon became a partner. They developed close ties to Cohen, first while he was a senior official at the Mossad and later when he headed Israel’s national security council. Before Cohen was appointed head of Mossad in December 2015, the pair had hoped to recruit him to their cyber-security operations. Cohen received several gifts from Packer, in violation of Israeli government rules, including a stay at one of his luxury hotels. A source speaking to Haaretz said Blue Sky had “more than [a] direct line” to Netanyahu. They “would pull him out from anywhere, at any time, on any occasion.” According to Haaretz’s military analyst, Amir Oren, the new disclosures raise serious questions about whether Milchan and Packer twisted Netanyahu’s arm to parachute Cohen into the post over the favored candidate. In return, Packer may have been hoping that Cohen would authorise exceptional Israeli residency for him, classifying him as a security asset.
  • From Hollywood to Mossad Cases 1000 and 2000 share at least one figure in common. Milchan gave Netanyahu extravagant gifts over many years, but he is also reported to have acted as go-between, bringing arch-enemies Netanyahu and Mozes together. Milchan has his own financial stake in the media, in his case a holding in the Channel 10 TV station. In addition, Milchan introduced Netanyahu to sympathetic businessmen, including his friend Packer, to discuss taking the ailing Yedioth media group off Mozes’ hands. Only last October he arranged for media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s son, Lachlan, to fly to Israel for one night for a secret meeting with Netanyahu. Milchan is undoubtedly at the centre of the shadowy world of power and finance that corrupts public life in Israel. Not only is Milchan a highly influential Hollywood figure, having produced more than 100 films, but he has admitted that he is a former Mossad agent. He used his Hollywood connections to help make arms deals and secure parts for Israel’s nuclear weapons program. One can only wonder whether Milchan was not effectively set up in his Hollywood career as a cover for his Mossad activities. But Milchan, it seems, is still wielding influence in Israel’s twilight world of security.
  • eyond this, one one can only speculate about how Cohen’s indebtedness to Milchan, Packer and Netanyahu might have influenced his decisions as head of the Mossad. It was only a few years ago that the former Mossad chief, Meir Dagan, was reported to have wrestled furiously with Netanyahu to stop him launching a military strike on Iran. Prosecution drags feet It is unclear for the time being whether the revelations are drawing to a close or will lead deeper into Israel’s twin netherworlds of financial corruption and security. But what has emerged so far should be enough to finish off Netanyahu as prime minister. Whether it does so may depend on the extent of Israel’s compromised legal system. Attorney general Avichai Mendelblit was appointed by Netanyahu and is a political ally. He appears to have been dragging his feet as much as possible to slow down the police investigation, if not sabotage it. But the weight of evidence is looking like it may prove too overwhelming. As political analyst Yossi Verter observed: “There’s no way that a police commissioner … appointed [by Netanyahu] and a cautious attorney general, who in the past was part of his close circle and one of his loyalists, would be putting him through the seven circles of hell if they weren’t convinced that there’s a solid basis for indictment and conviction.” The next question for Netanyahu is whether he will step down if indicted. He should, if Olmert’s example is followed. But his officials are citing a 1993 high court ruling that allows a cabinet minister under indictment to remain in office. Certainly if Netanyahu chooses to stay on, his decision would be appealed to the court again. However, the judges may be reluctant to oust a sitting prime minister. The court of public opinion is likely to be decisive in that regard. A recent poll shows few Israelis believe Netanyahu is innocent of the allegations. Some 54 per cent think he broke the law, while only 28 believe him. Opinion, however, is split evenly on whether he should resign.
  • If past experience is any measure, Netanyahu will try to turn public opinion his way by increasing friction with the Palestinians and exploiting the international arena, especially his relations with the Trump administration. He may be expected to encourage Trump at the very least to posture more stridently against Iran. Nonetheless, most observers assume Netanyahu is doomed – it is simply a matter of when. The odds are on an indictment in late spring, followed by elections in the fall, say Israeli analysts. At this stage, none of his political rivals wants to be seen stabbing Netanyahu in the back. Most are keeping quiet. But behind the scenes, political leaders are hurrying to forge new alliances and extract political concessions while Netanyahu is wounded.
  • Who might succeed Netanyahu? Yair Lapid, of the centre-right Yesh Atid, is heading the polls, but that may in part reflect the disarray in Netanyahu’s Likud party. In a sign of where the deeper currents in Israeli society are leading, a Maariv poll last week showed that settler leader Naftali Bennett would win an election if he were to head the Likud. Netanyahu now needs the help of all the powerful friends he can muster. His biggest ally, U.S. casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, may not be among them. After the revelations that Netanyahu was conspiring against him with Mozes, Adelson has cut back on Israel Hayom’s circulation and is reported to be offering less favorable coverage of the Netanyahus. That could prove the final straw, sealing Netanyahu’s fate.
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The Top Twelve Reasons Why You Should Hate the Mortgage Settlement « naked ca... - 0 views

www.nakedcapitalism.com/...e-the-mortgage-settlement.html Obama-banksters crony-banksterism Mortgage-fraud Foreclosure-Gate Banksters Banksters-of-America Obammunism
shared by Gary Edwards on 10 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 10 Feb 12
     
    Must read stuff.  The Obama Foreclosure Settlement Act is a clever exit strategy for criminal Banksters having committed the most egregious fraud.  A $9 Trillion dollar problem, rife with criminal activities, is settled for a mere $25 Billion, much of which will come out of the taxpayers hide thanks to Fannie and Freddie guarantees.  This deal stinks of typical Obama crony banksterism.  Now we need to watch for how many millions the Banksters pour into the newly authorized Obama Super PACS.  Should be interesting. excerpt: As we've said before, this settlement is yet another raw demonstration of who wields power in America, and it isn't you and me. It's bad enough to see these negotiations come to their predictable, sorry outcome. It adds insult to injury to see some try to depict it as a win for long suffering, still abused homeowners. 1. We've now set a price for forgeries and fabricating documents. It's $2000 per loan. This is a rounding error compared to the chain of title problem these systematic practices were designed to circumvent. The cost is also trivial in comparison to the average loan, which is roughly $180k, so the settlement represents about 1% of loan balances. It is less than the price of the title insurance that banks failed to get when they transferred the loans to the trust. It is a fraction of the cost of the legal expenses when foreclosures are challenged. It's a great deal for the banks because no one is at any of the servicers going to jail for forgery and the banks have set the upper bound of the cost of riding roughshod over 300 years of real estate law....... 12. We'll now have to listen to banks and their sycophant defenders declaring victory despite being wrong on the law and the facts. They will proceed to marginalize and write off criticisms of the servicing practices that hurt homeowners and investors and are devastating communities. But the problems will fester and the housing market will continue to suffer. Inv
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How can Obama say the economy is getting better? | Western Free Press - 0 views

www.westernfreepress.com/...-the-economy-is-getting-better Banksters Economy Great-Recession Obammunism
shared by Gary Edwards on 20 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 20 Feb 12
     
    Devastating charts comparing the percentage of Americans in the work force from January 2000 through February 2012.  The most interesting numbers show that the recession began in December of 2007, and ended in June of 2009 - yet it is after that June 2009 date that the % of Americans in the workforce begins to drop like a rock!  This is after the Obmaulous stimulous $1.2 Trillion, the Federal Reserve Bankster Cartels secret $16.1 Trillion, and, the magnificent cash-for-clunkers crap. Meanwhile, back in la la land, Obama thinks the problem is that we all need free contraceptives, free abortions and free sex-change coverage in our health insurance.  The Obama Spend-Borrow-Bail train has left the station.  Next stop?  War with Iran.  More powerful a phony narrative than contraceptives, abortions, and fear of a conservative repubican praying in the White House.  Besides, those bastards are refusing to use the dollar as the settlement currency for their oil sales!  Time to put them in the dirt along with that rogues gallery of tyrants who also defied the Federal Reserve International Bankster Cartel, demanding settlement currencies measured in GOLD instead of paper dollars; gallery includes notables such as Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, and the Shah of Iran. Nothing like the Marines and the Seventh Fleet being unleashed to turn around the dismal poll numbers stubbornly connected to the even more dismal disaster known throughout the hinterland of bitter clingers as the economic truth. excerpt: Is President Obama relying on the Bureau of Labor statistics to manipulate the unemployment numbers to make them look better than they are? The real rate is probably more like 11.5%, and we have seen analyses that indicate that unemployment hasn't actually fallen at all under Obama: So what is going on here? The big problem is that people are giving up. Obama and the Democrats' job-killing regulations and climate of uncertainty are stifling innovation and inv
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The U.S. Government And The Sinaloa Cartel - Business Insider - 0 views

www.businessinsider.com/-and-the-sinaloa-cartel-2014-1 Mexico DEA Holder Fast&Furious war on drugs™ gun-running
shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • An investigation by El Universal found that between the years 2000 and 2012, the U.S. government had an arrangement with Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel that allowed the organization to smuggle billions of dollars of drugs while Sinaloa provided information on rival cartels. Sinaloa, led by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, supplies 80% of the drugs entering the Chicago area and has a presence in cities across the U.S.
  • There have long been allegations that Guzman, considered to be "the world’s most powerful drug trafficker," coordinates with American authorities. But the El Universal investigation is the first to publish court documents that include corroborating testimony from a DEA agent and a Justice Department official. The written statements were made to the U.S. District Court in Chicago in relation to the arrest of Jesus Vicente Zambada-Niebla, the son of Sinaloa leader Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada and allegedly the Sinaloa cartel’s "logistics coordinator."
  • El Universal, citing court documents, reports that DEA agents met with high-level Sinaloa officials more than 50 times since 2000.
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  • "The DEA agents met with members of the cartel in Mexico to obtain information about their rivals and simultaneously built a network of informants who sign drug cooperation agreements, subject to results, to enable them to obtain future benefits, including cancellation of charges in the U.S.," reports El Universal, which also interviewed more than one hundred active and retired police officers as well as prisoners and experts. Zambada-Niebla's lawyer claimed to the court that in the late 1990s, Castro struck a deal with U.S. agents in which Sinaloa would provide information about rival drug trafficking organizations while the U.S. would dismiss its case against the Sinaloa lawyer and refrain from interfering with Sinaloa drug trafficking activities or actively prosecuting Sinaloa leadership. "The agents stated that this arrangement had been approved by high-ranking officials and federal prosecutors," Zambada-Niebla lawyer wrote.
  • After being extradited to Chicago in February 2010, Zambada-Niebla argued that he was also "immune from arrest or prosecution" because he actively provided information to U.S. federal agents. Zambada-Niebla also alleged that Operation Fast and Furious was part of an agreement to finance and arm the cartel in exchange for information used to take down its rivals. (If true, that re-raises the issue regarding what Attorney General Eric Holder knew about the gun-running arrangements.)
  • El Universal reported that the coordination between the U.S. and Sinaloa, as well as other cartels, peaked between 2006 and 2012, which is when drug traffickers consolidated their grip on Mexico. The paper concluded by saying that it is unclear whether the arrangements continue. The DEA and other U.S. agencies declined to comment to El Universal.
  • Paul Merrell on 14 Jan 14
     
    Another chapter in the long-running history of U.S. government participation in drug-smuggling and gun-running. This one breathes new life into the notorious Fast & Furious scandal.
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"The War is Worth Waging": Afghanistan's Vast Reserves of Minerals and Natural Gas | Gl... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...19769 war & peace war crimes wars of aggression 9-11 war on terror™ Afghanistan
shared by Paul Merrell on 09 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • US and NATO forces invaded Afghanistan more than 13 years ago in October 2001.   Afghanistan is defined as a state sponsor of terrorism. The war on Afghanistan continues to be heralded as a war of retribution in response to the 9/11 attacks.  This article, first published in June 2010, points to the “real economic reasons”  why US-NATO forces invaded Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11. 
  • The legal argument used by Washington and NATO to invade and occupy Afghanistan under “the doctrine of collective security” was that the September 11 2001 attacks constituted an undeclared “armed attack” “from abroad” by an unnamed foreign power, namely Afghanistan. Under the proposed Afghan-US security pact,  which is an integral part of Obama’s Asian pivot, Washington and its NATO partners are preparing to ensure a permanent military presence in Afghanistan, with military facilities located in proximity of China’s Western frontier.  The pact would allow the US to maintain their nine permanent military bases, strategically located on the borders of  China, Pakistan and Iran as well as Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. In addition to its vast mineral and gas reserves, Afghanistan produces more than 90 percent of the World’s supply of opium which is used to produce grade 4 heroin. US military bases in Afghanistan are also intent upon protecting the multibillion narcotics trade.  Narcotics, at present, constitutes the centerpiece of Afghanistan’s export economy.
  • The heroin trade, instated at the outset of the Soviet-Afghan war in 1979 and protected by the CIA, generates cash earnings in Western markets in excess of $200 billion dollars a year. “The highest concentration of NATO servicemen in Afghanistan is being accompanied with the highest concentration of opium poppy, ….  That situation causes doubts about the anti-terrorist mission and leads to the conclusion about catastrophic consequences of the eight-year stay [of coalition forces] in Afghanistan,” (Russia’s Federal Drug Control Service head Viktor Ivanov, January 2010)
  • Paul Merrell on 09 Dec 13
     
    It bears notice that Afghanistan was one nation targeted for capture by the neocon Project for the New American Century's Rebuilding American Defenses report in 2000, specifically because of Afghanistan's abundant natural resources detailed in this article. The PNAC report also advocated for a natural gas pipeline passing through Afghanistan. That is the same report that said a "new Pearl Harbor" would be needed to create public support for the plan's execution. Enter 9-11 from stage left as just such a justification for invasion of Afghanistan (and later Iraq, another targeted nation). Several of the PNAC report authors and signatories went on to become high ranking members of the U.S. State and Defense departments when Bush II took office in January 2001. Notably, the PNAC report and above history provides irrefutable evidence that key U.S. policymakers had military goals for Afghanistan before 9-11 because of that nation's natural resources.  
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