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Beltway Foreign Policy Groups to Congress: Stay Out of the Way on Iran! « Lob... - 0 views

www.lobelog.com/ss-stay-out-of-the-way-on-iran war & peace Iranian-nukes-myth negotiations Congress Obama
shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • The November 24 deadline for Iran and world powers to reach an agreement on Iran’s nuclear program is quickly approaching.
  • If there is a deal on Nov. 24, the White House indicated, in an article authored by David E. Sanger in Sunday’s New York Times, that it would not seek an immediate vote on the agreement or sanctions relief, instead asserting that the administration can, and may need to, roll back some sanctions unilaterally as part of immediate sanctions relief guarantees in a possible agreement. Hawks in Congress may want to portray their position as representing the mainstream consensus but a letter signed by thirty-seven organizations and sent to members of Congress on Thursday offers some indication that many foreign policy groups in the beltway are concerned by Congress’ latest effort to meddle in the final weeks of sensitive diplomacy before the November deadline. The signatories—which include the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation; J Street; MoveOn.org; the National Iranian American Council; Progressive Democrats of America; the United Methodist Church and VoteVets— expressed “deep concern with inaccurate and counterproductive rhetoric from a handful of Members of Congress regarding possible outcomes of the current negotiations.”
  • They continue: Particularly irresponsible are threats to oppose any comprehensive agreement limiting Iran’s nuclear program that initially suspends US sanctions on Iran through lawful executive action. Congress’ authorization of the President’s power to suspend and re-impose US sanctions on Iran is clear and unmistakable in each piece of legislation it has passed on the subject. Use of these provisions by the President to implement the initial phase of an agreement that ensures Iran does not acquire a nuclear weapon would reflect an affirmation, not a subversion, of Congress’ will. The echo chamber on Capitol Hill may give members of the House and Senate the impression that only the threat of military action or crushing sanctions are effective tools in bringing Iran to the negotiating table. (My colleague Ali Gharib and I discussed the disproportionate voice given to individuals from neoconservative organizations at congressional hearings on Iran in a July article in The Nation.)
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  • But the letter sent out on Thursday might give some congressional Democrats pause. Congress may lean hawkish but progressive groups in the beltway are throwing their weight behind the White House’s efforts to reach a diplomatic agreement on Iran’s nuclear program and are urging Congress to stay out of the way.
  • Paul Merrell on 26 Oct 14
     
    There's more behind this story than appears in its words. "Progressive" organizations have largely stood silent on the topic of war since Obama was elected because they are Obama fans and Obama has been anything but peaceful. But now they turn out because Obama needs Congress to stay out of the Iran situation until negotiations are complete and for some time afterward. The pressure on Congress to intervene is coming from the Israel Lobby. Keep in mind that it's been the consensus position of all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies for many years that Iran has no plans to create a nuclear weapon capability. Several Israeli intelligence and military leaders have said the same thing. The Iranian nukes myth is a propaganda theme of the ultra-right wing Israeli government leadership that has been used for several years in efforts to persuade the U.S. to invade Iran and bomb it back into the Stone Age. And their excuse for involving the U.S. military evaporates if the Obama Administration successfully negotiates an agreement with Iran that limits its lawful development of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes that will safeguard from any change of mind in Iran on development of nuclear weapons via, e.g., production limits and on-site inspections. The counter-argument is that such an agreement would have to be ratified by the Senate on grounds that it would be a treaty. But that argument falls short of the mark because: [i] the Executive has always had the unfettered right to negotiate and sign treaties; [ii] the U.S. government is not bound by treaties unless and until the Senate ratifies the treaty; and [iii] Congress already explicitly gave Obama authority to impose and suspend economic sanctions at his discretion. Meanwhile, part of the interim agreement with Iran so that negotiations can take place is a promise by the Obama Administration that it would veto any legislation imposing further sanctions on Iran during the period of negotiation. Because of the Israel Lobby'
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As Optimism Grows, Possible Iran Deal Gains Key Endorsement « LobeLog - 0 views

www.lobelog.com/ran-deal-gains-key-endorsement war & peace Iranian-nukes-myth negotiations Congress Obama
shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • Optimism that the US and world powers can, after all, strike a nuclear deal with Iran by or shortly after the current November 24 deadline appeared to grow here in Washington substantially this week. Such a deal also gained a critical endorsement, one that should provide a lot of political cover to shaky Democrats, as well as voices in the US Jewish community who, in contrast to the right-wing leadership of AIPAC and other “mainstream” Jewish organizations, have long favored President Obama’s diplomatic efforts. In an interview with the Jerusalem Post, Amb. Stuart Eizenstat, who played a key role in promoting sanctions against Iran under both Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton and who succeeded Dennis Ross as chairman of the Jerusalem-based Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI), challenged Israeli Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz’s recent claim in a New York Times op-ed that the failure to reach an agreement “can be regarded a qualified success, because it would represent the integrity of an international community adhering to its principles rather than sacrificing the future of global security.”
  • According to Eizenstat, whose experience in Democratic foreign policy circles was described as “vast” by none other than Bill Kristol’s Weekly Standard two years ago: No deal is not a success, because it means an unrestrained use of centrifuges, the Iranian plutonium plant at Arak continuing, no intrusive inspections, no elimination of 20-percent enriched uranium, and less likelihood of eliminating weaponization. …[A deal] would not be a bouquet of roses. It has a lot of thorns in it. But the alternative is nothing but thorns. It would almost force a military reaction, which even under the best circumstances  …would set back Iran two to three years and have ripple effects that would tremendously harm Israel, such as attacks from Hezbollah.
  • Eizenstat’s remarks came during a week in which, according to the Wall Street Journal’s well-connected Jay Solomon, the administration has begun actively promoting a possible nuclear deal with foreign allies, key members of Congress, and former senior foreign policy officials. While administration officials insist that important gaps between Iran and the P5+1 (US, UK, France, Russia, China and Germany) remain on some key issues, it appears that last week’s meetings in Vienna made important progress. The Journal also reported that the two sides may be moving toward a compromise on one key issue that has gained a lot of attention here—the number of centrifuges (around 4,000) that Iran could keep spinning to produce low-enriched uranium under an accord.
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  • The fact that the administration is indeed briefing interested parties on the likely parameters of a final accord—and apparently aggressively defending it—indicates a higher degree of confidence that it will get a deal than even ten days ago. Of course, the administration’s hand may have been forced somewhat by the backlash provoked by the very damaging—and, in my view, quite misleading (because the administration has never tried to hide its intentions in this regard)—New York Times article by David Sanger, “Obama Sees an Iran Deal That Could Avoid Congress.”
  • Again, administration officials privately stress that the deal is not yet done, but I think it’s pretty clear from the past week’s developments that the negotiators and the administration believe that one is definitely within reach, and within the next month or soon thereafter. In his interview, Eizenstat, who met with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif during the UN General Assembly in September and enjoys access to top administration officials as well, said he believed there was a 20-40% chance of reaching a comprehensive deal by Nov. 24, but the Post also noted that “he was certain a deal would be attained before President Obama leaves office in January 2017.”
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Goldberg Sees Crisis in US-Israel Ties, Blames Bibi « LobeLog - 0 views

www.lobelog.com/-in-us-israel-ties-blames-bibi U.S.-foreign-policy Mideast Israel-divorce
shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • While everyone ritually insists that the bonds between Israel and the United States are “unbreakable,” yesterday’s analysis by Jeffrey Goldberg, “The Crisis in U.S.-Israel Relations Is Officially Here,” argues that they’re currently under unprecedented strain and that the fault lies mainly with Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. The analysis argues further that, post-November, the Obama administration may no longer be inclined to protect Israel (at least to the same pathetic extent) at the UN Security Council and may even be willing to go a step further by presenting “a public full lay-down of the administration’s vision for a two-state solution, including maps delineating Israel’s borders. These borders, to Netanyahu’s horror, would based on 1967 lines, with significant West Bank settlement blocs attached to Israel in exchange for swapped land elsewhere. Such a lay-down would make explicit to Israel what the U.S. expects of it.” I’m not a big fan of Goldberg, but this analysis is definitely worth a read if for no other reason than his voice is a very important one in the US Jewish community, including among the right-wing leadership of its major national organizations. And he essentially gives over most of the article—in a way that suggests he shares their views—to anonymous administration officials who have clearly grown entirely contemptuous of the Israeli leader, calling him, among other names, “chickenshit.” Goldberg himself describes the Netanyahu government’s policy toward Palestinians as being “disconnected from reality” and stresses what he calls the “unease felt by mainstream American Jewish leaders about recent Israeli government behavior.” It seems that his chief envoy and confidante here, Ron Dermer, is not doing a good job.
  • Of particular interest to readers of this blog, however, are Goldberg’s observations about how the administration views Bibi’s bluster about Iran: The official said the Obama administration no longer believes that Netanyahu would launch a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities in order to keep the regime in Tehran from building an atomic arsenal. “It’s too late for him to do anything. Two, three years ago, this was a possibility. But ultimately he couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger. It was a combination of our pressure and his own unwillingness to do anything dramatic. Now it’s too late.” This assessment represents a momentous shift in the way the Obama administration sees Netanyahu. In 2010, and again in 2012, administration officials were convinced that Netanyahu and his then-defense minister, the cowboyish ex-commando Ehud Barak, were readying a strike on Iran. To be sure, the Obama administration used the threat of an Israeli strike in a calculated way to convince its allies (and some of its adversaries) to line up behind what turned out to be an effective sanctions regime. But the fear inside the White House of a preemptive attack (or preventative attack, to put it more accurately) was real and palpable—as was the fear of dissenters inside Netanyahu’s Cabinet, and at Israel Defense Forces headquarters. At U.S. Central Command headquarters in Tampa, analysts kept careful track of weather patterns and of the waxing and waning moon over Iran, trying to predict the exact night of the coming Israeli attack.
  • Today, there are few such fears. “The feeling now is that Bibi’s bluffing,” this second official said. “He’s not Begin at Osirak,” the official added, referring to the successful 1981 Israeli Air Force raid ordered by the ex-prime minister on Iraq’s nuclear reactor. The belief that Netanyahu’s threat to strike is now an empty one has given U.S. officials room to breathe in their ongoing negotiations with Iran. This is a significant passage. It suggests that the administration has decided to essentially ignore Netanyahu and his threats to take unilateral action, including when they are conveyed by members of Congress close to the Israel lobby. It also suggests strongly that the administration will not back up Israel if it should indeed undertake a strike of its own in hopes that Washington would be dragged into to finishing the job.
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  • Goldberg’s analysis about the state of the relationship is, in some ways, mirrored by Bret Stephens’s weekly “Global View” column in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, “Bibi and Barack on the Rocks,” although he, entirely predictably given his pro-settler worldview, sees Bibi as the wronged party. And, unlike Goldberg, he doesn’t see the US as the more powerful. Noting how Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon was snubbed by senior administration officials with whom he requested to meet, Stephens, a former editor of the Jerusalem Post, writes: The administration also seems to have forgotten that two can play the game. Two days after the Yaalon snub, the Israeli government announced the construction of 1,000 new housing units in so-called East Jerusalem, including 600 new units in the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood that was the subject of a 2010 row with Joe Biden. Happy now, Mr. Vice President? Stephens calls for a “trial separation” by the two countries in which Israel will give up its $3 billion dollar/year US aid package to free itself from US interference
  • The administration likes to make much of the $3 billion a year it provides Israel (or, at least, U.S. defense contractors) in military aid, but that’s now less than 1% of Israeli GDP. Like some boorish husband of yore fond of boasting that he brings home the bacon, the administration thinks it’s the senior partner in the marriage. Except this wife can now pay her own bills. And she never ate bacon to begin with. It’s time for some time away. Israel needs to look after its own immediate interests without the incessant interventions of an overbearing partner. The administration needs to learn that it had better act like a friend if it wants to keep a friend. It isn’t as if it has many friends left. This is precisely where Goldberg believes current Israeli policy is leading it.
  • Netanyahu, and the even more hawkish ministers around him, seem to have decided that their short-term political futures rest on a platform that can be boiled down to this formula: “The whole world is against us. Only we can protect Israel from what’s coming.” …But for Israel’s future as an ally of the United States, this formula is a disaster.”
  • Paul Merrell on 30 Oct 14
     
    If Goldberg and Stephens have it right, a U.S./Israel divorce might just spell the end of the appartheid state of Israel. It is only the U.S. veto on the U.N. Security Council that has enabled Israel to continue to treat Palestinians with impunity and to retain control of and colonize the territory it seized in the 1967 war that it launched. (The right to acquire territory by conquest was abolished by the U.N. Charter and the Fourth Geneva Convention in the late 1940s.)  Israel is now a pariah state internationally, with only the U.S., Canada, and a few minor island nations dependent on the U.S. still voting for Israel even in the U.N. General Council. Moreover, the U.S. public is fed up with the foreign wars the U.S. has been waging in the Mideast in aid of Israel's empirical goal of destabilizing and Balkanizing Israel's Arab neighbors. A U.S./Israel divorce would almost certainly bring down Netanyahu's government. On the other hand, the Obama Administration's relationship with Israel has been a departure from the historical norm in the U.S. and Obama's likely successor, Hillary Clinton, has long been much more friendly with the Israel Lobby than Obama.  Many close observers believe that Netanyahu's strategy with Obama has been to wait until Obama is out of office, betting that his successor will be much more amenable to Bibi's desires. But with Bernie Sanders hat in the ring for Auction 2016 and possibly Elizabeth Warren as well, it's conceivable that issues they raise might push Hillary to adopt a less Israel-friendly stance. But on yet another hand, Obama's stance on ISIL is entirely consistent with Israel's longstanding goal of regime change in Syria and Balkanization of Iraq into three nations along ethnic/religious lines, an independent  Kurdistan in the north, a Shia-stan in the South, and a Sunni state in the middle. Note in this regard Obama's strategy of arming "moderate" Syrians only to defend territory ISIL has not yet seized, then to bring down t
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Blackwater Founder Remains Free and Rich While His Former Employees Go Down on Murder C... - 0 views

firstlook.org/...blackwater-guilty-verdicts war & peace Iraq Blackwater criminal-prosecution convictions
shared by Paul Merrell on 23 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • The incident for which the men were tried was the single largest known massacre of Iraqi civilians at the hands of private U.S. security contractors. Known as “Baghdad’s bloody Sunday,” operatives from Blackwater gunned down 17 Iraqi civilians at a crowded intersection at Nisour Square on September 16, 2007. The company, founded by secretive right-wing Christian supremacist Erik Prince, pictured above, had deep ties to the Bush Administration and served as a sort of neoconservative Praetorian Guard for a borderless war launched in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. While Barack Obama pledged to reign in mercenary forces when he was a senator, once he became president he continued to employ a massive shadow army of private contractors. Blackwater — despite numerous scandals, congressional investigations, FBI probes and documented killings of civilians in both Iraq and Afghanistan — remained a central part of the Obama administration’s global war machine throughout his first term in office.
  • Just as with the systematic torture at Abu Ghraib, it is only the low level foot-soldiers of Blackwater that are being held accountable. Prince and other top Blackwater executives continue to reap profits from the mercenary and private intelligence industries. Prince now has a new company, Frontier Services Group, which he founded with substantial investment from Chinese enterprises and which focuses on opportunities in Africa. Prince recently suggested that his forces at Blackwater could have confronted Ebola and ISIS. “If the administration cannot rally the political nerve or funding to send adequate active duty ground forces to answer the call, let the private sector finish the job,” he wrote. None of the U.S. officials from the Bush and Obama administrations who unleashed Blackwater and other mercenary forces across the globe are being forced to answer for their role in creating the conditions for the Nisour Square shootings and other deadly incidents involving private contractors. Just as the main architect of the CIA interrogation program, Jose Rodriguez, is on a book tour for his propagandistic love letter to torture, Hard Measures: How Aggressive CIA Actions After 9/11 Saved American Lives, so too is Erik Prince pushing his own revisionist memoir, Civilian Warriors: The Inside Story of Blackwater and the Unsung Heroes of the War on Terror.
  • While the Blackwater verdict is an important and rare moment of accountability in an overwhelmingly unaccountable private war industry, it does not erase the fact that those in power—the CEOs, the senior officials, the war profiteers—walk freely and will likely do so for the rest of their lives.
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  • Filmmaker Richard Rowley and I produced a 30 minute documentary on the Nisour Square massacre and the story of Ali Kinani for Democracy Now! and The Nation magazine:
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U.S. Sends Planes Armed with Depleted Uranium to Middle East | War Is A Crime .org - 0 views

warisacrime.org/...d-depleted-uranium-middle-east war & peace U.S.-military depleted-uranium
shared by Paul Merrell on 28 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • The U.S. Air Force says it is not halting its use of Depleted Uranium weapons, has recently sent them to the Middle East, and is prepared to use them. A type of airplane, the A-10, deployed this month to the Middle East by the U.S. Air National Guard's 122nd Fighter Wing, is responsible for more Depleted Uranium (DU) contamination than any other platform, according to the International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons (ICBUW). "Weight for weight and by number of rounds more 30mm PGU-14B ammo has been used than any other round," said ICBUW coordinator Doug Weir, referring to ammunition used by A-10s, as compared to DU ammunition used by tanks.
  • The crews will load PGU-14 depleted uranium rounds into their 30mm Gatling cannons and use them as needed, said Hubble. "If the need is to explode something -- for example a tank -- they will be used."
  • On Thursday, several nations, including Iraq, spoke to the United Nations First Committee, against the use of Depleted Uranium and in support of studying and mitigating the damage in already contaminated areas. A non-binding resolution is expected to be voted on by the Committee this week, urging nations that have used DU to provide information on locations targeted. A number of organizations are delivering a petition to U.S. officials this week urging them not to oppose the resolution. In 2012 a resolution on DU was supported by 155 nations and opposed by just the UK, U.S., France, and Israel. Several nations have banned DU, and in June Iraq proposed a global treaty banning it -- a step also supported by the European and Latin American Parliaments.
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  • DU is classed as a Group 1 Carcinogen by the World Health Organization, and evidence of health damage produced by its use is extensive. The damage is compounded, Jeena Shah at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) told me, when the nation that uses DU refuses to identify locations targeted. Contamination enters soil and water. Contaminated scrap metal is used in factories or made into cooking pots or played with by children. CCR and Iraq Veterans Against the War have filed a Freedom of Information Act Request in an attempt to learn the locations targeted in Iraq during and after the 1991 and 2003 assaults. The UK and the Netherlands have revealed targeted locations, Shah pointed out, as did NATO following DU use in the Balkans. And the United States has revealed locations it targeted with cluster munitions. So why not now?
  • "For years," Shah said, "the U.S. has denied a relationship between DU and health problems in civilians and veterans. Studies of UK veterans are highly suggestive of a connection. The U.S. doesn't want studies done." In addition, the United States has used DU in civilian areas and identifying those locations could suggest violations of Geneva Conventions.
  • Paul Merrell on 28 Oct 14
     
    Splattering radioactive depleted uranium around the globe is idiocy. The trick is to shut down nuclear power plants so they don't produce any more radioactive waste. Unless society decides it wants to foot the bill to shoot depleted nuclear fuel rods into the Sun. 
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Division over bank as Australia caught between China and US | nsnbc international - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...bank-australia-caught-china-us BRICS China Australia development-bank free-trade-agreements
shared by Paul Merrell on 19 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • Senior cabinet ministers are believed to be divided over whether Australia should sign up to an internationally funded infrastructure development bank that China is set to launch next month.
  • Australia has been under pressure from the United States not to participate in the new bank. The position of Prime Minister Tony Abbott is unclear on the issue, that could have ramifications for the final days of bedding down the Australia-China free trade agreement which the government wants concluded this year and preferably by the G20 leaders meeting in Brisbane next month. The Chinese plan is being viewed internationally in the wider geopolitical context of Chinese-US competition in the region. The Americans, who see the bank as potentially a way of China increasing its clout with countries in southeast Asia, have been strongly lobbying Australia to keep out of it. The issue is to come before cabinet imminently, as China plans to announce the bank at the APEC summit, which will be held in Beijing in November. Hockey will be in Beijing next week for the APEC finance ministers meeting, where the bank will be a topic of discussion.
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Land Destroyer: Entire "Occupy Central" Protest Scripted in Washington - 0 views

landdestroyer.blogspot.com/...-central-protest-scripted.html war & peace Hong-Kong U.S.-foreign-policy destabilization-activities
shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • The slogans, leaders, and agenda of the "Occupy Central" movement are supposedly the manifestations of Hong Kong's desire for "total democracy," "universal suffrage," and "freedom." In reality, the leaders of "Occupy Central" are verified to be directly backed, funded, and directed by the US State Department, its National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and its subsidiary, the National Democratic Institute (NDI). Despite admitting this overwhelming evidence, many "Occupy Central" supporters still insist the protests are genuine and now some propose that the "Occupy Central" leadership does not truly represent the people of Hong Kong. While the leadership of "Occupy Central" indeed in no way represent the people of Hong Kong, the fact still remains that the protest itself was prearranged at least as early as April 2014, revealed by "Occupy Central" co-organizers Martin Lee and Anson Chan before NED in Washington DC.
  • The talk titled, "Why Democracy in Hong Kong Matters," spanned an hour, with NED regional vice president Louisa Greve leading the duo through a full introduction of the "Occupy Central" movement, its characters, agenda, demands, and talking points. Anson Chan - Hong Kong’s Chief Secretary under British rule - in particular, with her perfect British accent, insisted repeatedly that the issue was China's apparent backtracking on "deals" made with the UK over the handover of Hong Kong in the late 1990's. Lee, as well as members of the audience, repeatedly stated that Hong Kong's role was to "infect" mainland China with its Western-style institutions, laws, and interests. Lee also repeatedly appealed to Washington specifically to ensure they remained committed to defending American interests in Hong Kong. Both Lee and Chan would also state that since China appears to be concerned over global perception of how it rules its people, this could be exploited to excise from Beijing concessions over Hong Kong's governance. This included mention of previous protests, including those led by "activist" Joshua Wong and his suspicious "Scholarism" organization that has been tracked since at least 2012 by the US State Department's NDI. And of course, future destabilization was submitted as a viable solution to bending Beijing toward Western concessions.
  • For those able to listen to the entire 1 hour interview as well as questions and answers, the entire "Occupy Central" narrative is laid bare, verbatim, in Washington DC months before demonstrations began in the streets of Hong Kong. For a supposed "pro-democracy" protest seeking self-governance and self-determination and denouncing "interference" from Beijing, that their leaders are funded by foreign interests, and the plans for "Occupy Central" laid in a foreign capital is ironic at best - utter and very intentional deceit at worst. Democracy indeed assumes self-governance and self determination. If the US State Department is colluding with, funding, and directing the politicians and protest leaders behind "Occupy Central," the people of Hong Kong are governing and determining nothing - Washington and Wall Street are. Martin Lee and collaborator Anson Chan complain about Beijing dictating policy in Hong Kong, while they sit together in a room full of foreign interests who would dictate Hong Kong's governance instead.  Laid bare is "Occupy Central's" true agenda. It is not about having Hong Kong vote for who they desire to see in power, it is about getting the foreign-backed political cabal behind "Occupy Central" into power, and disarming Beijing of any means to prevent what is for all intents and purposes the "soft" recolonization of Hong Kong, and a further attempt to divide and destabilize China as a whole.
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New FBI Tactic Hints at Big DC Cover-up of Saudi 9/11 Funding - WhoWhatWhy - 0 views

whowhatwhy.org/...-cover-up-of-saudi-911-funding war & peace 9-11 Saudi-involvement FBI cover-up
shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • In the latest indication of a rolling government cover-up of the September 11, 2001, attacks, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is disowning an explosive internal report that suggests high-level Saudi involvement. And Washington seems only too happy to accept this latest peculiar FBI apologia.The same FBI that attempted to hide its prior relationship with accused Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev—until that link was outed by the Russian FSB security service—is now rewriting its involvement in the worst terror attack on American soil.In this bizarre development, the Bureau claims that an internal FBI document indirectly tying the alleged Al Qaeda hijackers to a prominent Saudi prince was fabricated.If the FBI is telling the truth and its own agent simply made the whole thing up, that would in itself be a remarkable and essentially unprecedented development.But since we have reason to believe—as you shall see—that the FBI agent did not make it up, the Bureau’s claim is prima facie evidence of a cover-up: one that could only be authorized at the highest levels, for reasons which will become apparent.
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Evo Morales Slams Washington During Speech at Summit | News | teleSUR - 0 views

www.telesurtv.net/...h-at-Summit-20150411-0026.html war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy criticism Summit-of-the-Americas Bolivia Morales
shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • Bolivian president Evo Morales harshly condemned the United States Government for creating chaos, for promoting destabilization, and for attacking the sovereignty of nations as it continues to move forward with imperialist attitudes against countries around the world. Morales also spoke about poverty in Latin America, saying that it was important to point out that the causes of the problem lie in Washington and their imposition of neoliberal measures in the region. “The United States continues to see Latin America and the Caribbean as its backyard and the people of the region as its slaves, and this is the cause of extreme poverty in the region,” Morales said. The Bolivian president accused Washington of all the military coups that affected Latin America during the second half of the 20th century. “It is important to remember,” he stated, “that in the relations between the U.S. and Latin America and the Caribbean there are more failures than successes. The relations are loaded with armed interventions by the United States, invasions and constant aggressions.”
  • He criticized the United States for labeling the countries of the region as villains, when all these nations want to do is defend their people, their sovereignty, their right to freedom and democracy. “I want to tell [President Barack] Obama that empires disappear, while democracies last for ever,” he stated. “I want to express that mistake the U.S. makes when calling the Latin American and Caribbean countries the evil ones, when all they want to do is defend their sovereignty, their resources and their people.” Morales rejected the attacks by Washington and its allies against the region, accusing them of promoting wars, terrorism and poverty around the world. “I ask the United States what have we done to deserve being treated as slaves in our own countries?” he said. “We want to tell you Obama that Latin America has changed forever.” He called on Obama to stop extorting and attacking the countries of Latin America.
  • The president also state that, “Latin America has been kidnapped by the United States and we no longer want this. We no longer want presidential decrees that call us a threat to their country, we no longer want to be spied on … we want to live in peace.” Morales, therefore, called on Obama to engage in peaceful talks with the countries of region and to leave its double standards behind. “The United States should dispose of that double morale, because, for example, it is the country that resorts to torture more than any other country,” he said, questioning the human rights discourse of Washington when justifying interventionist policies against another nation. “We ask that (The United States) stop destroying complete civilizations and to stop looking for ghosts … we want to live in peace because it is less painful and more satisfying.”
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  • Morales also questioned Washington's discourse of democracy. “How can you speak of democracy when you label countries of peace and democracy a threat to your security? … How can you speak of democracy when you send troops around the world menacing the sovereignty of other nations … How can you speak of threats to your security when your country is the largest producer of weapons in the world … weapons that are killing hundreds of thousands.” Morales also questioned Washington's discourse on human rights, saying it is the country that resorts to torture more than any other around the world, and when in the United States they have a grave crisis of racial discrimination and a serious human rights issue involving police against minorities. Evo Morales told Obama that the United States doesn't need to help Cuba, “what it needs to do is repair all the damages it has caused in that country.” Toward the end of his speech during the second day of the Summit of the Americas in Panama City, Morales criticized the United States for insisting on the aggressions against Venezuela despite the fact that 33 countries in the region have rejected them, while only two have agreed with them.
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US Special Forces Are Operating in More Countries Than You Can Imagine | The Nation - 0 views

www.thenation.com/...more-countries-you-can-imagine war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Special-Forces deployments
shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • During the fiscal year that ended on September 30, 2014, US Special Operations forces (SOF) deployed to 133 countries—roughly 70 percent of the nations on the planet—according to Lieutenant Colonel Robert Bockholt, a public affairs officer with US Special Operations Command (SOCOM). This capped a three-year span in which the country’s most elite forces were active in more than 150 different countries around the world, conducting missions ranging from kill/capture night raids to training exercises. And this year could be a record-breaker. Only a day before the failed raid that ended Luke Somers life—just 66 days into fiscal 2015—America’s most elite troops had already set foot in 105 nations, approximately 80% of 2014’s total. Despite its massive scale and scope, this secret global war across much of the planet is unknown to most Americans. Unlike the December debacle in Yemen, the vast majority of special ops missions remain completely in the shadows, hidden from external oversight or press scrutiny. In fact, aside from modest amounts of information disclosed through highly-selective coverage by military media, official White House leaks, SEALs with something to sell and a few cherry-picked journalists reporting on cherry-picked opportunities, much of what America’s special operators do is never subjected to meaningful examination, which only increases the chances of unforeseen blowback and catastrophic consequences.
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Tomgram: Peter Van Buren, In the Middle East, Bet on a Winner (Iran!) | TomDispatch - 0 views

www.tomdispatch.com/...2C_bet_on_a_winner_%28iran!%29 war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy unintended-consequences Iran-ascendency
shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • The U.S. is running around in circles in the Middle East, patching together coalitions here, acquiring strange bedfellows there, and in location after location trying to figure out who the enemy of its enemy actually is. The result is just what you'd expect: chaos further undermining whatever’s left of the nations whose frailty birthed the jihadism America is trying to squash. And in a classic tale of unintended consequences, just about every time Washington has committed another blunder in the Middle East, Iran has stepped in to take advantage. Consider that country the rising power in the region and credit American clumsiness for the new Iranian ascendancy.
  • Paul Merrell on 13 Apr 15
     
    Very interesting analysis of the rise of Iran largely due to unintended consequences of U.S. foreign policy. For another analysis of the topic from another perspective see http://nsnbc.me/2015/04/12/iran-and-a-possible-new-energy-geopolitics/
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Jeb Bush's Administration Steered Florida Pension Money to George W. Bush's Fundraisers - 0 views

www.ibtimes.com/ge-w-bushs-fundraisers-1880592 Auction 2016 Jeb-Bush bribery
shared by Paul Merrell on 15 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • Four years before the financial collapse, Goldman Sachs executive George Herbert Walker IV had much to be thankful for. "I've been fortunate to be a small part of teams leading U.S. restructurings, European privatizations, global pension management and now hedge fund and private equity investing,” he said in the annual report of a banking colossus that would soon be known as the “great vampire squid” of Wall Street. “The world,” said Walker, “just keeps getting more interesting." As the head of Goldman Sachs’ alternative investment unit, Walker’s ebullience was understandable. At the same time he was raising $100,000 for his cousin George W. Bush’s successful presidential re-election effort, the administration of another cousin, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, returned the family favor, delivering $150 million of Florida pension money to an alternative investment fund run by Walker’s firm. Like other executives whose companies received Florida pension money, Walker is now renewing the cycle, reportedly attending in February a high-dollar fundraiser for Jeb Bush’s political committee.
  • Walker is not alone: He is one of 19 top fundraisers for George W. Bush -- known as “Pioneers” and “Rangers” -- whose financial firms received state business from Jeb Bush’s administration in Tallahassee. In all, an International Business Times’ review of government documents shows Jeb Bush oversaw Florida directing at least $1.7 billion of state workers’ retirement money to the financial firms of his elder brother’s major donors. As Jeb Bush oversaw the State Board of Administration (SBA) that runs Florida’s massive public pension system, the state shifted billions of dollars into higher-risk, higher-fee alternative investments, benefiting the same sector of the investment industry he would work in upon leaving office. Many of those state deals delivered returns that fell short of projections. Roughly 20 percent of that system’s 53 private investment deals during Bush’s governorship went to companies that employed his brother’s Pioneers. Those financial firms, in turn, delivered more than $5 million of campaign cash to George W. Bush, the Republican National Committee and Jeb Bush’s Republican Party of Florida. (Click here to see the full list of Bush Pioneers whose firms received Florida pension investments from Jeb Bush’s administration).
  • Ethics experts say the connection between Bush family donors and Florida pension deals raises questions about whether the investments were properly insulated from political influence. “If not an actual conflict of interest, these examples would provide fodder for apparent conflicts of interest,” said Common Cause Florida’s Peter Butzin. “Those folks who give … expect something in return. And if that something in return is not blatantly sending business their way or resulting in a particular vote, it most certainly is at least providing an opportunity for access, to get the foot in the door, so that they can make the case with that official.” Jeb Bush’s aides did not respond to questions from IBTimes, and Walker declined to comment for this story. Dennis MacKee, an SBA spokesperson, said the agency’s “elected Trustees do not now, nor did they during Governor Bush’s term, participate in the selection of individual investments.” MacKee’s statement conflicts with emails reviewed by IBTimes that show that, as governor, Jeb Bush was deeply involved in the state’s investment decisions, periodically brokering conversations between Florida officials and individual financial firms, including one whose top executive was a longtime Bush family donor.
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Russia Impinges on Israeli 'Right' to Bomb Iran | Consortiumnews - 0 views

consortiumnews.com/...-on-israeli-right-to-bomb-iran war & peace neocons Russia Iran Israel S-300 anti-aircraft-missiles
shared by Paul Merrell on 15 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • American neocons are in a lather over Russia’s decision to go ahead with the sale of anti-aircraft missiles to Iran. The apparent outrage is that Iran thinks it has a right to protect its citizens from Israel’s right to launch airstrikes into Iran’s territory, as ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern explains.
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Washington Misses Bigger Picture of New Chinese Bank « LobeLog - 0 views

www.lobelog.com/er-picture-of-new-chinese-bank
shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Bibi Netanyahu’s election, persistent violence through much of the Middle East and North Africa, and intensified efforts to forge a nuclear deal between the P5+1 and Iran topped the news here in Washington this week. But a much bigger story in terms of the future order of global politics was taking place in Europe and Beijing. The story was simply this: virtually all of the closest European allies of the United States, beginning with Britain, defied pressure from Washington by deciding to apply for founding membership in the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). This Chinese initiative could quickly rival the World Bank and the Asia Development Bank as a major source of funding for big development projects across Eurasia. The new bank, which offers a serious multilateral alternative to the Western-dominated international financial institutions (IFIs) established in the post-World War II order, is expected to attract about three dozen initial members, including all of China’s Asian neighbors (with the possible exception of Japan). Australia, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and other Gulf states are also likely to join by the March 31 deadline set by Beijing for prospective co-founders to apply. Its $50 billion in initial capital is expected to double with the addition of new members, and that amount could quickly grow given China’s $3 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves. More details about the bank can be found in a helpful Q&A here at the Council on Foreign Relations website.
  • Along with the so-called BRICS bank—whose membership so far is limited to Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa—the AIIB poses a real “challenge to the existing global economic order,” which, of course, Western nations have dominated since the establishment of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank in the final days of World War II. As one unnamed European official told The New York Times, “We have moved from the world of 1945.” That Washington’s closest Western allies are now racing to join the AIIB over U.S. objections offers yet more evidence that the “unipolar moment” celebrated by neoconservatives and aggressive nationalists 25 years ago and then reaffirmed by the same forces after the 2003 Iraq invasion is well and truly. And yet, these same neoconservatives continue to insist that—but for Obama’s weakness and defeatism—the United States remains so powerful that it really doesn’t have to take account of anyone’s interests outside its borders except, maybe, Israel’s. (That Washington’s closest Western allies are now racing to join the new bank over U.S. objections could also presage a greater willingness to abandon the international sanctions regime against Iran if Washington is seen as responsible for the collapse of the P5+1 nuclear negotiations with Tehran. Granted, Iran’s economy—and its potential as a source of investment capital—is itsy-bitsy compared to China.)
  • Indeed, commentators are depicting US allies’ decision to join the AIIB (see here, here, and here as examples) as a debacle for U.S. diplomacy. The Wall Street Journal editorial board has predictably blamed Obama for defeat, calling it a “case study in declining American influence” (although it also defended Washington’s decision against joining and accused Britain of “appeasing China for commercial purposes.”) What the Journal predictably didn’t mention was a key reason why the administration did not seek membership in the new bank: there was virtually no chance that a Republican-dominated Congress would approve it. Indeed, one reason Beijing launched its initiative and so many of our allies in both Asia and Europe have decided to join is their frustration with Republicans in Congress who have refused to ratify a major reform package designed to give developing countries, including China, a little more voting power on the Western-dominated governing boards of the IMF and the World Bank. The Group of 20 (G20) biggest economic powers actually proposed this reform in 2010, and it doesn’t even reduce Washington’s voting power, which gives it an effective veto over major policy changes in both institutions. As a result of this intransigence, the United States is the only G-20 member that has failed to ratify the reforms, effectively blocking their implementation.
  • Paul Merrell on 22 Mar 15
     
    U.S. global hegemony is rapidly disintegrating as former puppet states in Europe jump from the dwindling dollar economy to the rising remnimbi/ruble BRICS economies. And many of the "stans" south of Russia threatened by U.S. mercenaries provided by the Gulf Coast States are jumping in that direction too, along with Turkey, a NATO member. The Stans involved are oil and natural gas rich; combined with Russian oil and gas, they have enough oil and gas reserves to rival the Gulf Coast States.  The most interesting part to me is the debate now under way in the EU over dropping out of NATO and creating a replacement European mutual defense force that excludes the U.S. I'm beginning to hit some chatter about inviting Russia into that hypoethesized treaty. That makes sense for the EU because it would give Europe the benefit of Russian nuclear deterrence, both in land and submarine-based ICBMs. I'm not convinced that Russia would sign on. Russia is already running joint military exercises with China, which is playing the role of Russia's economic savior at this point. So China might have the final say on that scenario. A pan-Eurasian mutual defense treaty? What would be left of the U.S. Empire without NATO, particularly given that the dollar would surely collapse before such a treaty were signed? The War Party in Congress has only one tool to work with, war, and when all you have is a hammer, all problems look like nails. Current U.S. military power is built around the capacity to wage two major wars concurrently, but is very heavily dependent on NATO to do so. I'm not sure at all that the War Party has what it takes to cope with a peaceful group boycott by other NATO members. 
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A coming crackdown on Federal Reserve power? - Jennifer Liberto - POLITICO - 0 views

www.politico.com/...eral-reserve-power-116267.html banksters Fed reform
shared by Paul Merrell on 23 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • A move to shift power away from the New York Federal Reserve Bank is finding some powerful friends in Congress amid lingering worries that a key part of the central bank is too cozy with Wall Street. Two Republicans running the banking committees have both said they plan to explore proposals from the outspoken, former Dallas Federal Reserve Bank President Richard Fisher that would roll back a long-standing provision that gives the president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank an automatic position as vice chairman of a powerful committee and weaken New York’s oversight of Wall Street banks. Story Continued Below The politics may be ripe for chipping away at the power of the Federal Reserve, uniting liberals who want to crack down on Wall Street, Republicans who don’t like the Fed’s easy money policies and libertarians who are suspicious of the Fed altogether.
  • Fisher, who retired Thursday after 10 years at the Dallas Fed, wants to yank the New York Fed’s permanent position as vice chair of the all-powerful Federal Open Market Committee, the panel charged with making monetary policy decisions, which met Wednesday. While the New York Fed president could still participate in monetary policy discussions, he or she would no longer always get a vote. Fisher suggested the job should rotate among the regional Federal Reserve Banks every two years.
  • The move would upend the current structure, as the New York Fed has had a lock on that spot since 1936, thanks largely to its role as the infrastructure, which supplies the trading desk that carries out the Fed’s monetary policy decisions. Fisher is also proposing that other regional Fed banks oversee some of the Wall Street giants in a move aimed at addressing criticism the New York Fed missed warning signs of the financial crisis, is too soft on Wall Street and holds too much power and influence at the Fed. “The greatest concern appears to be the problem of regulatory capture by the largest and most powerful institutions,” Fisher said in a February speech in New York laying out his plan. Wall Street critics have been suspicious of the New York Fed since it and its then leader, Timothy Geithner, played a key role in responding to the 2008 financial crisis and the bailouts that entailed.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Late last year its current president, William Dudley, was hauled before the Senate Banking Committee after reports from ProPublica and NPR’s This American Life that focused on a New York Fed examiner who said her warnings about certain business practices and deals at Goldman Sachs were ignored or brushed aside by her superiors. She provided recordings of her dealings with Fed officials to back up her case. “We’ve got on tape higher-ups at the New York Fed calling off the regulators,” Warren told Dudley at the November hearing. “And I’m just asking the same kind of question — is there a cultural problem at the New York Fed? I think the evidence suggests that there is.”
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U.S. Borrowers Cross the Atlantic to Sell Record Junk Debt - Bloomberg Business - 0 views

www.bloomberg.com/...ell-record-amount-of-junk-debt banksters U.S. junk-bonds Europe
shared by Paul Merrell on 23 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • U.S. borrowers have sold a record amount of junk bonds in Europe this year to take advantage of investor demand for risky assets. VWR Corp., a laboratory products supplier, Huntsman Corp., Infor Inc. and IMS Health Holdings Inc. raised 1.43 billion euros ($1.53 billion) of high-yield debt this week, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The issuance boosted 2015 sales to 3.28 billion euros, the busiest start to a year since the single currency was introduced in 1999. American companies are capitalizing on demand from investors who’ve seen yields quashed as the European Central Bank purchases bonds as part of its quantitative easing program. Bondholders are taking on more risk as yields on government securities from Austria to Finland turn negative and investment-grade notes pay record-low premiums.
  • “It all revolves around QE and the dynamic that it’s creating, which is forcing people out of low-yielding government paper into higher-yielding assets,” said Stuart Stanley, a London-based high-yield fund manager at Invesco Asset Management Ltd., which manages about $800 billion.
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Costa Rican Ambassador Fired for Defending Venezuelan Government Amid Escalating Media ... - 0 views

venezuelanalysis.com/11299 war & peace Venezuela U.S.-foreign-policy coup-attempts Costa-RIca kidnapping
shared by Paul Merrell on 28 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • The Costa Rican government fired its recently appointed ambassador to Venezuela yesterday after the latter expressed support for the Bolivarian government in an interview with a prominent rightwing Venezuelan newspaper.Costa Rican President Luis Guillermo Solis stated that his government did not share the opinions of ex-ambassador Federico Picado, which have generated an uproar in the small Central American country with rightwing politicians demanding the ambassador's immediate dismissal.In his interview with La Nacion conducted via email, the 69 year-old ex-ambassador ridiculed suggestions of a lack of press freedom in Venezuela and attributed scarcities of essential goods to sabotage by "political factors" and "big business" seeking "internal destabilization". Picado also contrasted the image of the country presented by international media externally and the reality that he experienced on the ground.
  • Picado praised the example of Venezuela in the area of citizens' referenda and advocated that Costa Rica institute the option of midterm plebiscites for unseating inefficient leaders from their elected posts.However, not all Costa Rican political leaders sanctioned the firing of Picado.Patricia Mora of the leftwing Broad Front party stood up for the ex-ambassador, informing La Nacion, “It seems that they were objective declarations, he is experiencing what is happening [in Venezuela].”Kidnapping False ClaimThe dismissal of the Costa Rican ambassador for voicing support for the Bolivarian government comes in midst of an intensifying misinformation campaign directed against Venezuela in the international media.
  • Over the past few days, news headlines and social media feeds have been dominated by the story of an alleged kidnapping of a child in Venezuela.Nevertheless, Chief Prosecutor Luisa Ortega Diaz announced today that there was no kidnapping and that the child's mother was paid $18,000 of a total of $1 million Bolivars in order to issue the false claim.Carmen Yanet Briones, who is of Ecuadorian nationality, was detained yesterday, along with those accused of paying her, after the child's father dismissed the claim as false.President Nicolas Maduro denounced the false kidnapping as an instance of "psychological war" waged against Venezuela and called for those responsible to be brought to justice, mentioning the name of rightwing Venezuelan media consultant and fugitive J.J. Rondón.
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  • The Venezuelan leader compared the plot to previous misinformation campaigns against Venezuela and other revolutionary governments, invoking the example of "Operation Peter Pan" in the 1960s, in which the CIA circulated the lie that the Cuban government intended to take custody of the island's children, while transporting thousands of Cuban children to the United States and placing them under foster care.Venezuelan authorities have stated that they will release further information on the case as it becomes available.
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US-Saudi Blitz into Yemen: Naked Aggression, Absolute Desperation | Global Research - C... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5439141 war & peace Yemen Houthi Saudis invasion U.S.-foreign-policy terrorists™
shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • The “proxy war” model the US has been employing throughout the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and even in parts of Asia appears to have failed yet again, this time in the Persian Gulf state of Yemen. Overcoming the US-Saudi backed regime in Yemen, and a coalition of sectarian extremists including Al Qaeda and its rebrand, the “Islamic State,” pro-Iranian Yemeni Houthi militias have turned the tide against American “soft power” and has necessitated a more direct military intervention. While US military forces themselves are not involved allegedly, Saudi warplanes and a possible ground force are. Though Saudi Arabia claims “10 countries” have joined its coalition to intervene in Yemen, like the US invasion and occupation of Iraq hid behind a “coalition,” it is overwhelmingly a Saudi operation with “coalition partners” added in a vain attempt to generate diplomatic legitimacy. The New York Times, even in the title of its report, “Saudi Arabia Begins Air Assault in Yemen,” seems not to notice these “10” other countries. It reports:
  • Saudi Arabia announced on Wednesday night that it had launched a military campaign in Yemen, the beginning of what a Saudi official said was an offensive to restore a Yemeni government that had collapsed after rebel forces took control of large swaths of the country.  The air campaign began as the internal conflict in Yemen showed signs of degenerating into a proxy war between regional powers. The Saudi announcement came during a rare news conference in Washington by Adel al-Jubeir, the kingdom’s ambassador to the United States.
  • Indeed, the conflict in Yemen is a proxy war. Not between Iran and Saudi Arabia per say, but between Iran and the United States, with the United States electing Saudi Arabia as its unfortunate stand-in. Iran’s interest in Yemen serves as a direct result of the US-engineered “Arab Spring” and attempts to overturn the political order of North Africa and the Middle East to create a unified sectarian front against Iran for the purpose of a direct conflict with Tehran. The war raging in Syria is one part of this greater geopolitical conspiracy, aimed at overturning one of Iran’s most important regional allies, cutting the bridge between it and another important ally, Hezbollah in Lebanon. And while Iran’s interest in Yemen is currently portrayed as yet another example of Iranian aggression, indicative of its inability to live in peace with its neighbors, US policymakers themselves have long ago already noted that Iran’s influence throughout the region, including backing armed groups, serves a solely defensive purpose, acknowledging the West and its regional allies’ attempts to encircle, subvert, and overturn Iran’s current political order.
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  • What may result is a conflict that spills over Yemen’s borders and into Saudi Arabia proper. Whatever dark secrets the Western media’s decades of self-censorship regarding the true sociopolitical nature of Saudi Arabia will become apparent when the people of the Arabian peninsula must choose to risk their lives fighting for a Western client regime, or take a piece of the peninsula for themselves. Additionally, a transfer of resources and fighters arrayed under the flag of the so-called “Islamic State” and Al Qaeda from Syria to the Arabian Peninsula will further indicate that the US and its regional allies have been behind the chaos and atrocities carried out in the Levant for the past 4 years. Such revelations will only further undermine the moral imperative of the West and its regional allies, which in turn will further sabotage their efforts to rally support for an increasingly desperate battle they themselves conspired to start.
  • The aerial assault on Yemen is meant to impress upon onlookers Saudi military might. A ground contingent might also attempt to quickly sweep in and panic Houthi fighters into folding. Barring a quick victory built on psychologically overwhelming Houthi fighters, Saudi Arabia risks enveloping itself in a conflict that could easily escape out from under the military machine the US has built for it. It is too early to tell how the military operation will play out and how far the Saudis and their US sponsors will go to reassert themselves over Yemen. However, that the Houthis have outmatched combined US-Saudi proxy forces right on Riyadh’s doorstep indicates an operational capacity that may not only survive the current Saudi assault, but be strengthened by it. Reports that Houthi fighters have employed captured Yemeni warplanes further bolsters this notion – revealing tactical, operational, and strategic sophistication that may well know how to weather whatever the Saudis have to throw at it, and come back stronger.
  • The unelected hereditary regime ruling over Saudi Arabia, a nation notorious for egregious human rights abuses, and a land utterly devoid of even a semblance of what is referred to as “human rights,” is now posing as arbiter of which government in neighboring Yemen is “legitimate” and which is not, to the extent of which it is prepared to use military force to restore the former over the latter. The United States providing support for the Saudi regime is designed to lend legitimacy to what would otherwise be a difficult narrative to sell. However, the United States itself has suffered from an increasing deficit in its own legitimacy and moral authority. Most ironic of all, US and Saudi-backed sectarian extremists, including Al Qaeda in Yemen, had served as proxy forces meant to keep Houthi militias in check by proxy so the need for a direct military intervention such as the one now unfolding would not be necessary. This means that Saudi Arabia and the US are intervening in Yemen only after the terrorists they were supporting were overwhelmed and the regime they were propping up collapsed. In reality, Saudi Arabia’s and the United States’ rhetoric aside, a brutal regional regime meddled in Yemen and lost, and now the aspiring global hemegon sponsoring it from abroad has ordered it to intervene directly and clean up its mess.
  • the Yemeni people are not being allowed to determine their own affairs. Everything up to and including military invasion has been reserved specifically to ensure that the people of Yemen do not determine things for themselves, clearly, because it does not suit US interests. Such naked hypocrisy will be duly noted by the global public and across diplomatic circles. The West’s inability to maintain a cohesive narrative is a growing sign of weakness. Shareholders in the global enterprise the West is engaged in may see such weakness as a cause to divest – or at the very least – a cause to diversify toward other enterprises. Such enterprises may include Russia and China’s mulipolar world. The vanishing of Western global hegemony will be done in destructive conflict waged in desperation and spite. Today, that desperation and spite befalls Yemen.
  • Paul Merrell on 29 Mar 15
     
    Usually I agree with Tony Cartalucci, but I think it's too early to pick winners and losers in Yemen. At least a couple of other nations allied with the Saudis are flying aerial missions and there's a commitment of troops and air support by Egypt, although it isn't clear that these would enter Yemen, but may just deploy to "protect" the waters approaching the Suez Canal from the Yemenis. The Saudis have a surfeit of U.S. weaponry but their military is inexperienced. The House of Saud has preferred proxy wars conducted by Salafist mercenaries over direct military intervention. How effective its military will be is a very big unknown at this point. But I like Cartalucci's point that if the House of Saud has to send in its ISIL mercenaries, it will go a long way toward unmasking the U.S. excuse for invading Syria and resuming boots on the ground in Iraq.
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Court Accepts DOJ's 'State Secrets' Claim to Protect Shadowy Neocons: a New Low - The I... - 0 views

firstlook.org/...busing-state-secrets-privilege Dark-State state-secrets Restis litigation
shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • A truly stunning debasement of the U.S. justice system just occurred through the joint efforts of the Obama Justice Department and a meek and frightened Obama-appointed federal judge, Edgardo Ramos, all in order to protect an extremist neocon front group from scrutiny and accountability. The details are crucial for understanding the magnitude of the abuse here. At the center of it is an anti-Iranian group calling itself “United Against Nuclear Iran” (UANI), which is very likely a front for some combination of the Israeli and U.S. intelligence services. When launched, NBC described its mission as waging “economic and psychological warfare” against Iran. The group was founded and is run and guided by a roster of U.S., Israeli and British neocon extremists such as Joe Lieberman, former Bush Homeland Security adviser (and current CNN “analyst”) Fran Townsend, former CIA Director James Woolsey, and former Mossad Director Meir Dagan. One of its key advisers is Olli Heinonen, who just co-authored a Washington Post Op-Ed with former Bush CIA/NSA Director Michael Hayden arguing that Washington is being too soft on Tehran.
  • This group of neocon extremists was literally just immunized by a federal court from the rule of law. That was based on the claim — advocated by the Obama DOJ and accepted by Judge Ramos — that subjecting them to litigation for their actions would risk disclosure of vital “state secrets.” The court’s ruling was based on assertions made through completely secret proceedings between the court and the U.S. government, with everyone else — including the lawyers for the parties — kept in the dark. In May 2013, UANI launched a “name and shame” campaign designed to publicly identify — and malign — any individuals or entities enabling trade with Iran. One of the accused was the shipping company of Greek billionaire Victor Restis, who vehemently denies the accusation. He hired an American law firm and sued UANI for defamation in a New York federal court, claiming the “name and shame” campaign destroyed his reputation.
  • Up until that point, there was nothing unusual about any of this: just a garden-variety defamation case brought in court by someone who claims that public statements made about him are damaging and false. That happens every day. But then something quite extraordinary happened: In September of last year, the U.S. government, which was not a party, formally intervened in the lawsuit, and demanded that the court refuse to hear Restis’s claims and instead dismiss the lawsuit against UANI before it could even start, on the ground that allowing the case to proceed would damage national security. When the DOJ intervened in this case and asserted the “state secrets privilege,” it confounded almost everyone. The New York Times’s Matt Apuzzo noted at the time that “the group is not affiliated with the government, and lists no government contracts on its tax forms. The government has cited no precedent for using the so­-called state­ secrets privilege to quash a private lawsuit that does not focus on government activity.” He quoted the ACLU’s Ben Wizner as saying: “I have never seen anything like this.” Reuters’s Allison Frankel labeled the DOJ’s involvement a “mystery” and said “the government’s brief is maddeningly opaque about its interest in a private libel case.”
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • But in this case, there is no apparent U.S. government conduct at issue in the lawsuit. At least based on what they claim about themselves, UANI is just “a not-for-profit, non-partisan, advocacy group” that seeks to “educate” the public about the dangers of Iran’s nuclear program. Why would such a group like this even possess “state secrets”? It would be illegal to give them such material. Or could it be that the CIA or some other U.S. government agency has created and controls the group, which would be a form of government-disseminated propaganda, which happens to be illegal? What else could explain the basis for the U.S. government’s argument that allowing UANI to be sued would risk the disclosure of vital “state secrets” besides a desire to cover up something quite untoward if not illegal? What “state secrets” could possibly be disclosed by suing a nice, little “not-for-profit, non-partisan, advocacy group”?
  • This sham worked. This week, Judge Ramos issued his ruling dismissing the entire lawsuit (see below). As a result of the DOJ’s protection, UANI cannot be sued. Among other things, it means this group of neocon extremists now has a license to defame anyone they want. They can destroy your reputation with false accusations in a highly public campaign, and when you sue them for it, the DOJ will come in and whisper in the judge’s ear that national security will be damaged if — like everyone else in the world — UANI must answer in a court of law for their conduct. And subservient judicial officials like Judge Ramos will obey the U.S. government’s dictates and dismiss your lawsuit before it begins, without your having any idea why that even happened. Worse, in his written ruling, the judge expressly acknowledges that dismissal of the entire lawsuit at the start on secrecy grounds is what he calls a “harsh sanction,” and also acknowledges that “it is particularly so in this case because Plaintiffs not only do not get their day in court, but cannot be told why” (emphasis added). But he does it anyway, in a perfunctory 18-page opinion that does little other than re-state some basic legal principles, and then just concludes that everything the government whispered in his ear should be accepted.
  • Paul Merrell on 27 Mar 15
     
    Unless the district court decision is overturned by a higher court, the Restis case looks to be over. The secrecy concerns of the Dark State trump justice, again. It should be noted that the Constitution is silent on the issue of state secrets (the so-called "state secrets privilege" was manufactured from whole cloth by the Supreme Court in the early 1950s). On the other hand, several provisions of the Constitution expressly require that justice be done, not the least of which is the Due Process clause.  
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Senators skewer Obama's Syria policy | TheHill - 0 views

thehill.com/...rs-shred-obamas-syria-strategy war & peace Syria U.S.-foreign-policy Senate-Armed-Services McCain Graham
shared by Paul Merrell on 28 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Senators on Tuesday blasted President Obama's Syria strategy as incoherent, questioning efforts to force Bashar Assad to step down and grilling Defense Secretary Ash Carter on efforts to counter extremists.Carter at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing discussed new changes to the administration's strategy against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in Syria, where the U.S. and allies are currently launching airstrikes and arming about a dozen Syrian Arab groups to counter ISIS.ADVERTISEMENTCarter said the U.S.-led military coalition hopes to strengthen the new Syrian Arab Coalition, intensify the air campaign, and target more ISIS leaders and the group's oil operations.“If done in concert as we intend, all those actions on the ground and from the air should help shrink ISIL’s territory into a smaller and smaller area and create new opportunities for targeting ISIL — ultimately denying this evil movement any safe haven in its supposed heartland,” Carter said, using another acronym for ISIS.“This is a half-assed strategy at best,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a Republican presidential candidate and a leading defense hawk in the Senate.
  • Committee members questioned how the U.S.-led coalition intended to support Syrian rebels going after ISIS when the Syrian regime — assisted by Hezbollah, Russia and Iran — was targeting them in a bid to shore up Assad’s grip on power in the country’s four-year civil war.Carter said the U.S. was only obligated to protect the small number of rebels who had taken part in a now-defunct Pentagon plan to train and equip a rebel force against ISIS, leaving many senators incredulous.That program only yielded 145 rebels, out of a planned force of 5,000 this year.Carter acknowledged that Russian forces were already hitting moderate Syrian rebel groups — including some supported by the coalition — but said the U.S. was not obligated to protect them since they were not Pentagon-trained.His comments come amid reports that the Russian strikes have targeted groups that were trained by the CIA.  Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committed, called that policy “immoral.”“You are making a distinction without a difference, Mr. Secretary,” he said, exasperated. “These are American-supported and coalition-supported men who are going in and being slaughtered.”The administration has tried to avoid actions that would bring them into direct conflict with Syria or Russia, and maintains the coalition is supporting rebels who will target ISIS, not the Assad regime. 
  • Paul Merrell on 28 Oct 15
     
    I watched that hearing last night on CSPAN. It was surreal. We are led by idiots or liars; let them take their pick of the two possibilities. The neocons were all pushing for regime change, blissfully unaware that the U.S. legal excuse for bombing in Syria is less than tenuous but extends only to fighting ISIL on grounds of protecting Iraq from that group. Bombing Syrian government targets would be an act of war, a war of aggression. 
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