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Panama Papers database of offshore companies goes public - Chicago Tribune - 0 views

www.chicagotribune.com/...c-database-20160509-story.html banksters Panama-Papers database
shared by Paul Merrell on 14 May 16 - No Cached
  • group of investigative journalists made live the names of thousands of offshore companies based on a massive trove of data on the finances of the rich and powerful that has become known as the Panama Papers.The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists made data on 200,000 entities available on Monday at 1 p.m. CT on its website. They contain basic corporate information about companies, trusts and foundations set up in 21 jurisdictions including Hong Kong and the U.S. state of Nevada. The data was obtained from Panamanian law firm Mossack Foneca, which said it was hacked.Users can search the data and see the networks involving the offshore companies, including, where available, Mossack Fonseca's internal records of the true owners.
  • It won't be the full cache of data commonly known as the Panama Papers, since the database will exclude information and documents on bank accounts, phone numbers and emails.The ICIJ said it was putting the information online "in the public interest" as "a careful release of basic corporate information" as it builds on an earlier database of offshore entities.Setting up an offshore company is not by itself illegal or evidence of illegal conduct, and Mossack Fonseca said it observed rules requiring it to identify its clients.But anti-poverty campaigners say shell companies can be used by the wealthy and powerful to shield money from taxation, or to launder the gains from bribery, embezzlement and other forms of corruption. The Group of 20 most powerful economies has agreed that individual governments should make sure authorities can tell who really owns companies, but implementation in national law has lagged.
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White House defends 'Cuban Twitter' to stir unrest - Yahoo News - 0 views

news.yahoo.com/ter-stir-unrest-222510641.html surveillance state propaganda psywar USAID State-Dept. Obama
shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • The Obama administration defended its creation of a Twitter-like Cuban communications network to undermine the communist government, declaring the secret program was "invested and debated" by Congress and wasn't a covert operation that required White House approval.
  • But two senior Democrats on congressional intelligence and judiciary committees said Thursday they had known nothing about the effort, which one of them described as "dumb, dumb, dumb." A showdown with that senator's panel is expected next week, and the Republican chairman of a House oversight subcommittee said that it, too, would look into the program.An Associated Press investigation found that the network was built with secret shell companies and financed through a foreign bank. The project, which lasted more than two years and drew tens of thousands of subscribers, sought to evade Cuba's stranglehold on the Internet with a primitive social media platform.First, the network was to build a Cuban audience, mostly young people. Then, the plan was to push them toward dissent.
  • Yet its users were neither aware it was created by a U.S. agency with ties to the State Department, nor that American contractors were gathering personal data about them, in the hope that the information might be used someday for political purposes.It is unclear whether the scheme was legal under U.S. law, which requires written authorization of covert action by the president as well as congressional notification. White House spokesman Jay Carney said he was not aware of individuals in the White House who had known about the program.
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  • USAID's top official, Rajiv Shah, is scheduled to testify on Tuesday before the Senate Appropriations State Department and Foreign Operations Subcommittee, on the agency's budget. The subcommittee's chairman, Patrick Leahy, a Democrat, is the senator who called the project "dumb, dumb, dumb" during an appearance Thursday on MSNBC.The administration said early Thursday that it had disclosed the initiative to Congress — Carney said the program had been "debated in Congress" — but hours later the narrative had shifted to say that the administration had offered to discuss funding for it with the congressional committees that approve federal programs and budgets."We also offered to brief our appropriators and our authorizers," said State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf. She added that she was hearing on Capitol Hill that many people support these kinds of democracy promotion programs. And some lawmakers did speak up on that subject. But by late Thursday no members of Congress had acknowledged being aware of the Cuban Twitter program earlier than this week.
  • Harf described the program as "discreet" but said it was in no way classified or covert. Harf also said the project, dubbed ZunZuneo, did not rise to a level that required the secretary of state to be notified. Neither former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton nor John Kerry, the current occupant of the office, was aware of ZunZuneo, she said.In his prior position as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kerry had asked congressional investigators to examine whether or not U.S. democracy promotion programs in Cuba were operated according to U.S. laws, among other issues. The resulting report, released by the Government Accountability Office in January 2013, does not examine whether or not the programs were covert. It does not say that any U.S. laws were broken.The GAO report does not specifically refer to ZunZuneo, but does note that USAID programs included "support for the development of independent social networking platforms."
  • "I know they said we were notified," Leahy told AP. "We were notified in the most oblique way, that nobody could understand it. I'm going to ask two basic questions: Why weren't we specifically told about this if you're asking us for money? And secondly, whose bright idea was this anyway?"The Republican chairman of a House oversight subcommittee said his panel will be looking into the project, too."That is not what USAID should be doing," said Rep. Jason Chaffetz, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform National Security Subcommittee. "USAID is flying the American flag and should be recognized around the globe as an honest broker of doing good. If they start participating in covert, subversive activities, the credibility of the United States is diminished."
  • At minimum, details uncovered by the AP appear to muddy the USAID's longstanding claims that it does not conduct covert actions, and the details could undermine the agency's mission to deliver aid to the world's poor and vulnerable — an effort that requires the trust and cooperation of foreign governments.Leahy and Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said they were unaware of ZunZuneo.
  • USAID and its contractors went to extensive lengths to conceal Washington's ties to the project, according to interviews and documents obtained by the AP. They set up front companies in Spain and the Cayman Islands to hide the money trail, and recruited CEOs without telling them they would be working on a U.S. taxpayer-funded project."There will be absolutely no mention of United States government involvement," according to a 2010 memo from Mobile Accord Inc., one of the project's creators. "This is absolutely crucial for the long-term success of the service and to ensure the success of the Mission."ZunZuneo was publicly launched shortly after the 2009 arrest in Cuba of American contractor Alan Gross. He was imprisoned after traveling repeatedly to the country on a separate, clandestine USAID mission to expand Internet access using sensitive technology that only governments use.The AP obtained more than 1,000 pages of documents about the ZunZuneo project's development. It independently verified the project's scope and details in the documents through publicly available databases, government sources and interviews with those involved.
  • The social media project began after Washington-based Creative Associates International obtained a half-million Cuban cellphone numbers. It was unclear to the AP how the numbers were obtained, although documents indicate they were done so illicitly from a key source inside the country's state-run provider. Project organizers used those numbers to start a subscriber base.ZunZuneo's organizers wanted the social network to grow slowly to avoid detection by the Cuban government. Eventually, documents and interviews reveal, they hoped the network would reach critical mass so that dissidents could organize "smart mobs" — mass gatherings called at a moment's notice — that could trigger political demonstrations, or "renegotiate the balance of power between the state and society."At a 2011 speech at George Washington University, Clinton said the U.S. helps people in "oppressive Internet environments get around filters." Noting Tunisia's role in the Arab Spring, she said people used technology to help "fuel a movement that led to revolutionary change."Suzanne Hall, then a State Department official working on Clinton's social media efforts, helped spearhead an attempt to get Twitter founder Jack Dorsey to take over the ZunZuneo project, documents indicate. Dorsey declined to comment.
  • The estimated $1.6 million spent on ZunZuneo was publicly earmarked for an unspecified project in Pakistan, public government data show, but those documents don't reveal where the funds were actually spent.ZunZuneo's organizers worked hard to create a network that looked like a legitimate business, including the creation of a companion website — and marketing campaign — so users could subscribe and send their own text messages to groups of their choice."Mock ad banners will give it the appearance of a commercial enterprise," one written proposal obtained by the AP said. Behind the scenes, ZunZuneo's computers were also storing and analyzing subscribers' messages and other demographic information, including gender, age, "receptiveness" and "political tendencies." USAID believed the demographics on dissent could help it target its other Cuba programs and "maximize our possibilities to extend our reach."
  • Executives set up a corporation in Spain and an operating company in the Cayman Islands — a well-known British offshore tax haven — to pay the company's bills so the "money trail will not trace back to America," a strategy memo said. Disclosure of that connection would have been a catastrophic blow, they concluded, because it would undermine the service's credibility with subscribers and get it shut down by the Cuban government.Similarly, subscribers' messages were funneled through two other countries — and never through American-based computer servers.Denver-based Mobile Accord considered at least a dozen candidates to head the European front company. One candidate, Francoise de Valera, told the AP she was told nothing about Cuba or U.S. involvement.
  • James Eberhard, Mobile Accord's CEO and a key player in the project's development, declined to comment. Creative Associates referred questions to USAID.For more than two years, ZunZuneo grew, reaching at least 40,000 subscribers. But documents reveal the team found evidence Cuban officials tried to trace the text messages and break into the ZunZuneo system. USAID told the AP that ZunZuneo stopped in September 2012 when a government grant ended.
  • Paul Merrell on 06 Apr 14
     
    More coming related to this story.
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Asia Times Online :: World Affairs - 0 views

www.atimes.com/...WOR-03-240414.html war & peace Ukraine E.U. China U.S.-foreign-policy
shared by Paul Merrell on 28 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • By Pepe Escobar Let's start with a flashback to February 1992 - only two months after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. First draft of the US government's Defense Planning Guidance. It was later toned down, but it still formed the basis for the exceptionalist dementia incarnated by the Project for the New American Century; and also reappeared in full glory in Dr Zbig "Let's Rule Eurasia" Brzezinski's 1997 magnum opus The Grand Chessboard. It's all there, raw, rough and ready: Our first objective is to prevent the reemergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on <a href='http://asianmedia.com/GAAN/www/delivery/ck.php?n=a9473bc7&cb=%n' target='_blank'><img src='http://asianmedia.com/GAAN/www/delivery/avw.php?zoneid=36&cb=%n&n=a9473bc7&ct0=%c' border='0' alt='' ></a> the order of that posed by the Soviet Union. This ... requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power. These regions include Western Europe, East Asia, the territory of the former Soviet Union, and Southwest Asia.
  • By Pepe Escobar Let's start with a flashback to February 1992 - only two months after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. First draft of the US government's Defense Planning Guidance. It was later toned down, but it still formed the basis for the exceptionalist dementia incarnated by the Project for the New American Century; and also reappeared in full glory in Dr Zbig "Let's Rule Eurasia" Brzezinski's 1997 magnum opus The Grand Chessboard. It's all there, raw, rough and ready: Our first objective is to prevent the reemergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on <a href='http://asianmedia.com/GAAN/www/delivery/ck.php?n=a9473bc7&cb=%n' target='_blank'><img src='http://asianmedia.com/GAAN/www/delivery/avw.php?zoneid=36&cb=%n&n=a9473bc7&ct0=%c' border='0' alt='' ></a> the order of that posed by the Soviet Union. This ... requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power. These regions include Western Europe, East Asia, the territory of the former Soviet Union, and Southwest Asia.
  • That's all one needs to know about the Obama administration's "pivoting to Asia", as well as the pivoting to Iran ("if we're not going to war", as US Secretary of State John Kerry let it slip) and the pivoting to Cold War 2.0, as in using Ukraine as a "new Vietnam" remix next door to Russia. And that's also the crucial context for Obama's Pax Americana Spring collection currently unrolling in selected Asian catwalks (Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and Philippines).
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  • The Spring collection is far from derailing other pivoting - whose latest offering is the current "anti-terrorist" campaign in eastern Ukraine by the Kiev regime changers, which follows a most curious calendar. CIA's John Brennan hits Kiev, and the regime changers launch their first war on terra. Dismal failure ensues. Vice President Joe Biden visits Kiev and the regime changers, right on cue, relaunch their war on terra. Thus the pivoting to Cold War 2.0 proceeds unabated, as in Washington working hard to build an iron curtain between Berlin and Moscow - preventing further trade integration across Eurasia - via instigation of a civil war in Ukraine. German Chancellor Angela Merkel remains on the spot: it's either Atlantic high-fidelity or her Ostpolitik - and that's exactly where Washington wants her.
  • How's Beijing reacting to all this hysteria? Simple: by reaping dividends. Beijing wins with the US offensive trying to alienate Moscow from Western markets by getting a better pricing deal on the supply of Eastern Siberian gas. Beijing wins from the European Union's fear of losing trade with Russia by negotiating a free-trade agreement with its largest trading partner, which happens to the be the EU. And then, the sterling example. Just compare Obama's Spring collection tour, as a pivoting appendix, to the current tour of Cuba, Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. It's a business bonanza, focused on bilateral financing and, what else, trade deals. It's all in the mix: Peruvian and Chilean copper; Brazilian iron and soybeans; support for Venezuelan social programs and energy development; support for Cuba in its interest for greater Chinese involvement in Venezuela, which supplies Cuba with subsidized energy.
  • And all this against the background of a Beltway so excited that the Chinese economy is in deep trouble. It's not - it grew at 7.4% year-on-year for the first quarter of 2014. Demand for iron and copper won't significantly slow down - as the Beijing-driven urbanization drive has not even reached full speed. Same for soybeans - as millions of Chinese increasingly start eating meat on a regular basis (soybean products are a crucial feedstock). And, of course, Chinese companies will not losee their appetite for diversifying all across South America. For the large, upcoming Chinese middle class - on their way to becoming full-fledged members of the number one economic power in the world by 2018 - this Spring collection is a non-starter. He or she would rather hit Hong Kong and queue up in Canton Road to buy loads of Hermes and Prada - and then strategically celebrate with Jiro quality, non-Fukushima-radiated, sushi.
  • Paul Merrell on 28 Apr 14
     
    Escobar's point that for the U.S., Ukraine is about building an iron curtain between Russia and the E.U. should not be missed. 
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Furious Russia, Downgraded To Just Above Junk By S&P, Proposes "Scorched Earth" Retalia... - 0 views

www.zerohedge.com/...scorched-earth-retaliation-aga war & peace sanctions Russia U.S.-foreign-policy monetary-policy BRICS
shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • a few hours ago that joke of a rating agency, Standard & Poor's, which also earlier announced it was "affirming" France at an AA rating making it very clear it will no longer accept being sued for telling the truth and downgrading sovereigns or otherwise have its offices abroad raided, not only upgraded Cyprus from B- to B (please deposits your funds in Cyprus banks now: they are safe, S&P promises), but - far more importantly - delivered a political message to the Kremlin, and downgraded Russia from BBB to BBB-, one short notch away from junk status. This was the first downgrade of Russia by S&P since December 2008.
  • Russia's response was prompt. First, in retaliation to the downgrade, Russian economy minister Alexei Ulyukaev said S&P’s downgrade of Russia’s rating was expected by investors, won’t significantly change their behavior, adding the obvious that the decision to cut Russia’s rating was partly political, partly based on economic situation. In other words, entirely symbolic - it is not as if Russia has access to bond markets anyway, plus as we wrote earlier this week in "Why Putin Is Smiling At The Bond Market's Blockade Of Russia", it is not as if it needs them. But far more importantly, and ahead of yet another round of western sanctions which appears imminent unless Obama is to look even more powerless than he currently is (granted, a difficult achievement), Russian presidential adviser Sergei Glazyev proposed plan of 15 measures to protect country’s economy if sanctions applied, Vedomosti newspaper reports, citing Glazyev’s letter to Finance Ministry. According to Vedomosti as Bloomberg reported, Glazyev proposed:
  • Russia should withdraw all assets, accounts in dollars, euros from NATO countries to neutral ones Russia should start selling NATO member sovereign bonds before Russia’s foreign-currency accounts are frozen Central bank should reduce dollar assets, sell sovereign bonds of countries that support sanctions Russia should limit commercial banks’ FX assets to prevent speculation on ruble, capital outflows Central bank should increase money supply so that state cos., banks may refinance foreign loans Russia should use national currencies in trade with customs Union members, other non-dollar, non-euro partners In other words, a full-blown scorched earth campaign by Russia.
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  • Granted, Russian holdings of US Treasurys are not that substantial (and could be monetized entirely in three months of POMO by the Fed), and western financial linkages to Russia, aside from trade routes, are not life-threatening, but if Russia were to take the baton, and other BRIC countries, already furious by the recent US decision to not boost their IMF status, follow suit, then Obama's life is about to become a living nightmare. Especially, if that most important BRIC member - China - does any of the many things it can do to indicate if, in this brand new Cold War, it is with or against the US... Finally, those curious what are the linkages between the west and Russia are, review our recent post on the matter: All You Need To Know About Russia, In Charts.
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Tony Blair should be sacked as Middle East envoy, say former ambassadors | Politics | T... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...ddle-east-envoy-quartet-sacked war & peace Blair-impeachment UK banksters JPMorgan
shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • A group of former British ambassadors have joined a campaign calling for Tony Blair to be removed from his role as Middle East envoy after his recent attempt to "absolve himself" of responsibility for the crisis in Iraq.The letter, organised by the makers of George Galloway's film The Killing of Tony Blair, says the 2003 invasion of Iraq was to blame for the rise of "fundamentalist terrorism in a land where none existed previously".The signatories, led by Blair's former ambassador to Iran Sir Richard Dalton, describe the former prime minister's achievements as Middle East envoy as "negligible".
  • The letter says: "We, like many, are appalled by Iraq's descent into a sectarian conflict that threatens its very existence as a nation, as well as the security of its neighbours. We are also dismayed, however, at Tony Blair's recent attempts to absolve himself of any responsibility for the current crisis by isolating it from the legacy of the Iraq war."In reality, the invasion and occupation of Iraq had been a disaster long before the recent gains made by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis). The sectarian conflict responsible for much of the war's reprehensible human cost was caused in part by the occupying forces' division of the country's political system along sectarian lines."It added: "In order to justify the invasion, Tony Blair misled the British people by claiming that Saddam had links to al-Qaida. In the wake of recent events it is a cruel irony for the people of Iraq that perhaps the invasion's most enduring legacy has been the rise of fundamentalist terrorism in a land where none existed previously. We believe that Mr Blair, as a vociferous advocate of the invasion, must accept a degree of responsibility for its consequences."
  • The signatories say that Blair has failed to achieve any breakthrough as the quartet's representative, though they acknowledge his limited mandate that involves building the governance of the Palestinian Authority.The letter says: "It is our view that, after seven years, Mr Blair's achievements as Envoy are negligible, even within his narrow mandate of promoting Palestinian economic development. Furthermore, the impression of activity created by his high-profile appointment has hindered genuine progress towards a lasting peace."Seven years on there are still over 500 checkpoints and roadblocks in the West Bank. The Gaza Strip, severely damaged by Israel's 2009 bombing, remains in a humanitarian crisis, with 80% of its population reliant on foreign aid for survival. Israel continues to build settlements that are illegal under international law. According to the Palestinian Authority's former Chief Negotiator, Nabil Shaath, Tony Blair has "achieved so very little because of his gross efforts to please the Israelis".
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  • The letter is also critical of Blair's business interests. "Tony Blair's conduct in his private pursuits also calls into question his suitability for the role. Mr Blair has been widely criticised for a lack of transparency in the way he organises his business dealings and personal finances, and for blurring the lines between his public position as Envoy and his private roles at Tony Blair Associates and the investment bank JPMorgan Chase."The letter is addressed to John Kerry, the US secretary of state; Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister; Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general; and Cathy Ashton, the EU's foreign policy chief.
  • George Galloway said: "I have begun the process of parliamentary impeachment of Tony Blair. The House of Commons will vote on that later this year. His position is collapsing along with the state of Iraq he helped destroy. His tenure as Quartet envoy is now untenable"
  • The spokesperson said of the criticisms of Blair's business interests: "Mr Blair has done no work for JP Morgan in the Middle East – he is the chair of their International Advisory Council – where he provides advice on global political issues."
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Tomgram: Engelhardt, A Record of Unparalleled Failure | TomDispatch - 0 views

www.tomdispatch.com/...record_of_unparalleled_failure war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy military-failure
shared by Paul Merrell on 11 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • The United States has been at war -- major boots-on-the-ground conflicts and minor interventions, firefights, air strikes, drone assassination campaigns, occupations, special ops raids, proxy conflicts, and covert actions -- nearly nonstop since the Vietnam War began.  That’s more than half a century of experience with war, American-style, and yet few in our world bother to draw the obvious conclusions. Given the historical record, those conclusions should be staring us in the face.  They are, however, the words that can’t be said in a country committed to a military-first approach to the world, a continual build-up of its forces, an emphasis on pioneering work in the development and deployment of the latest destructive technology, and a repetitious cycling through styles of war from full-scale invasions and occupations to counterinsurgency, proxy wars, and back again. So here are five straightforward lessons -- none acceptable in what passes for discussion and debate in this country -- that could be drawn from that last half century of every kind of American warfare:
  • 1. No matter how you define American-style war or its goals, it doesn’t work. Ever. 2. No matter how you pose the problems of our world, it doesn’t solve them. Never. 3. No matter how often you cite the use of military force to “stabilize” or “protect” or “liberate” countries or regions, it is a destabilizing force. 4. No matter how regularly you praise the American way of war and its “warriors,” the U.S. military is incapable of winning its wars. 5. No matter how often American presidents claim that the U.S. military is “the finest fighting force in history,” the evidence is in: it isn’t.
  • And here’s a bonus lesson: if as a polity we were to take these five no-brainers to heart and stop fighting endless wars, which drain us of national treasure, we would also have a long-term solution to the Veterans Administration health-care crisis.  It’s not the sort of thing said in our world, but the VA is in a crisis of financing and caregiving that, in the present context, cannot be solved, no matter whom you hire or fire.  The only long-term solution would be to stop fighting losing wars that the American people will pay for decades into the future, as the cost in broken bodies and broken lives is translated into medical care and dumped on the VA.
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US air war against jihadists in Syria begins - The Long War Journal - 0 views

www.longwarjournal.org/...us_launches_airstrik.php war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Syria ISIL al-Nusra war-begins
shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • The United States and "partner nation forces" have expanded airstrikes against the Islamic State into Syria, broadening the war with the jihadist group beyond Iraq. Additionally, the US targeted the Khorasan Group, a coordinating council made up of al Qaeda leaders in Syria. US military officials involved in the operation told The Long War Journal that the strike package includes US B-1 bombers, carrier-based F/A-18 fighters and ground-based F-15s and F-16s, remotely piloted drones, and Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from warships. Airstrikes targeted Islamic State command and control centers in Raqqah, the jihadist group's de facto capital in Raqqah province in eastern Syria, as well as arms caches, supply depots, and ground units near the Iraqi border. Rear Admiral James Kirby, the Pentagon's spokesman, confirmed that airstrikes have begun. "I can confirm that US military and partner nation forces are undertaking military action against ISIL [Islamic State] terrorists in Syria using a mix of fighter, bomber and Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles," Kirby said in a statement obtained by The Long War Journal. In the early morning of Sept. 23, US Central Command, or CENTCOM, which is directing the operations in Iraq and Syria, provided further details of the attack.
  • Fourteen strikes against the Islamic State were executed using by "a mix of fighters, bombers, remotely piloted aircraft and Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles," according to a statement by CENTCOM. Forty-seven cruise missiles were "launched from the USS Arleigh Burke and USS Philippine Sea, which were operating from international waters in the Red Sea and North Arabian Gulf." "The strikes destroyed or damaged multiple ISIL targets in the vicinity of the towns of Raqqah in north central Syria, Dier al Zour, and Abu Kamal in eastern Syria and Hasakah in northeastern Syria," the statement says. "The targets included ISIL fighters, training compounds, headquarters and command and control facilities, storage facilities, a finance center, supply trucks and armed vehicles." According to the Syrian Observator for Human Rights, more than 70 Islamic State fighters were killed in the strikes and and over 300 were wounded. Other countries that participated in the operation include Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Additionally, the US launched eight airstrikes against "a network of seasoned al Qaeda veterans - sometimes referred to as the Khorasan Group - who have established a safe haven in Syria to develop external attacks, construct and test improvised explosive devices and recruit Westerners to conduct operations." The strikes targeted "training camps, an explosives and munitions production facility, a communication building and command and control facilities" as part of an effort "to disrupt the imminent attack plotting against the United States and Western interests."
  • CENTCOM did not provide details on the names or numbers of Islamic State and al Qaeda fighters killed. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that "no less than 50 fighters from Jabhat al-Nusra (most of them were Syrian fighters), were killed by air strikes by the warplanes of the international coalition." In addition, eight civilians, including three children and a women, are reported to have been killed. CENTCOM was clear that only the US targeted al Qaeda's network in Syria. The Khorasan Group is closely tied to the Al Nusrah Front and other jihadist groups in Syria, which are at odds with the Islamic State. These groups are poised to gain from any setbacks to the rival Islamic State. President Barrack Obama stated 13 days ago that the US air campaign against the Islamic State, which began in northern Iraq on Aug. 7, would be expanded into Syria. US and French warplanes are now operating over Irbil, Sinjar, Kirkuk, the Mosul and Haditha dams, southwest of Baghdad (likely in Jurf al Sakhar in northern Babil), and somewhere on the Euphrates River. According to CENTCOM, the US has launched 194 airstrikes in Iraq since Aug. 7. The Islamic State has threatened to retaliate against the US and other Western countries that participate in military action against the jihadist group. Just yesterday, Abu Muhammad al Adnani, the spokesman for the Islamic State, called for Muslims in Western countries to wage jihad. [See Threat Matrix report, Islamic State spokesman again threatens West in new speech.]
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The Dark Side of Development: Displacement, Eviction in World Bank Projects and Ethiopi... - 0 views

www.newsecuritybeat.org/...world-bank-projects-ethiopia-2 globalization banksters World-Bank population-displacement
shared by Paul Merrell on 17 May 15 - No Cached
  • With the help of international aid, foreign land grabs in the Gambella region of Ethiopia have resulted in environmental degradation, more severe economic and social inequality, and human rights abuses, according to a new study by the Oakland Institute. We Say The Land Is Not Yours collects testimony from victims of “villagization,” a policy of forced displacement started under the military Derg dictatorship and, according to many, continued to this day under the guise of land investment. The ultimate aim, according to the report, is to resettle up to 1.5 million people. Land cultivated for generations is being degraded by industrialized agriculture in hopes that foreign currency entering the economy will improve infrastructure, create jobs, and “have beneficial trickle-down effects,” the authors say. Communication between the government and locals has been limited to false promises of employment and compensation, according to the report, and victims are silenced out of fear of torture, imprisonment, or death. The Ethiopian government responded to the report, saying the accusations don’t provide sufficient detail to be verified and the “vast majority of Ethiopians have benefitted from the growth and sustainable development program.”
  • A new project from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) critically analyzes the World Bank’s safeguards to protect marginalized populations from the negative impacts of its own projects. The result of a year’s worth of research by 50 journalists from 21 countries, the collection of stories claims World Bank-funded projects have displaced an estimated 3.4 million people over the last decade and “financed governments and companies accused of human rights violations such as rape, murder, and torture.” In Ethiopia, ICIJ claims officials siphoned millions of dollars from the bank’s investments in health and education to fund mass eviction campaigns. Citing current and former Bank employees, ICIJ says a new safeguard policy released in 2014 would actually “give governments more room to sidestep the Bank’s standards and make decisions about whether local populations need protecting.” Oxfam’s Land Rights Policy Lead Kate Geary said in a response that these findings are supported by the Bank’s internal audits which reveal they “simply lost track of people who had to be ‘resettled.’” She called for the Bank to provide grant funding to those who have been displaced and negatively impacted, and implement fundamental reforms to live up to its own commitments to protect people.
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The Liberal Apologies for Obama's Ugly Reign » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts,... - 0 views

www.counterpunch.org/...pologies-for-obamas-ugly-reign Auction 2016 Obaba-apologists Hillary Progressives banksters
shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • My favorite story indicating the depth and degree of Obama’s loyalty to the wealthy Few comes from the spring of 2009. In his important book Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President (2011), the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron Suskind tells a remarkable story from March of 2009. Three months into Barack Obama’s supposedly progressive, left-leaning presidency, popular anger at Wall Street was intense and the nation’s leading financial institutions were weak and on the defensive in the wake of the financial collapse and recession they had created. The new president called a meeting of the nation’s top 13 financial executives at the White House. The banking titans came into the meeting full of dread. As Suskind noted: “They were the CEOs of the thirteen largest banking institutions in the United States… And they were nervous in ways that these men are never nervous. Many would have had to reach back to their college days, or even grade school, to remember a moment when they felt this sort of lump-in-the-throat tension…As some of the most successful men in the country, they weren’t used to being pariahs… [and] they were indeed pariahs. The populist backlash against the financial sector—building steadily since September—was finally beginning to cause grave discomfort on Wall Street. As unemployment ballooned and credit tightened, the country began to look inward, toward the origins of the panic and its disastrous consequences.”
  • In the end, however, the anxious captains of high finance left the meeting pleased to learn that Obama was totally in their camp. For instead of standing up for those who had been harmed most by the crisis—workers, minorities, and the poor – Obama sided unequivocally with those who had caused the meltdown. “My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks,” Obama said. “You guys have an acute public relations problem that’s turning into a political problem. And I want to help…I’m not here to go after you. I’m protecting you…. I’m going to shield you from congressional and public anger.” For the banking elite who destroyed millions of jobs in their lust for profit, there was, as Suskind puts it, “Nothing to worry about. Whereas [President Franklin Delano] Roosevelt had [during the Great Depression] pushed for tough, viciously opposed reforms of Wall Street and famously said ‘I welcome their hate,’ Obama was saying ‘How can I help?’” As one leading banker told Suskind, “The sense of everyone after the meeting was relief. The president had us at a moment of real vulnerability. At that point, he could have ordered us to do just about anything and we would have rolled over. But he didn’t – he mostly wanted to help us out, to quell the mob.” When “the bankers arrived in the State Dining Room,” Suskind notes, “Obama had them scared and ready to do almost anything he said…. An hour later, they were upbeat, ready to fly home and commence business as usual” (Confidence Men).
  • This remarkable episode happened in the White House in a time when, to repeat, the Democrats held the majority in both houses of Congress along with an angry populace ready with good reason for Wall Street and 1% blood. And what did the populace get from this seemingly progressive alignment of the stars? The venerable left liberal journalist William Grieder put it very well in a March 2009 Washington Post Op-Ed: “a blunt lesson about power, who has it and who doesn’t.” Americans “watched Washington rush to rescue the very financial interests that caused the catastrophe. They learned that government has plenty of money to spend when the right people want it. ‘Where’s my bailout,’ became the rueful punch line at lunch counters and construction sites nationwide. Then to deepen the insult, people watched as establishment forces re-launched their campaign for ‘entitlement reform’ – a euphemism for whacking Social Security benefits, Medicare and Medicaid.”
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Britain takes axe to spending in new austerity drive - Yahoo News - 0 views

news.yahoo.com/landmark-budget-081513190.html economy UK austerity
shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • British finance minister George Osborne unveiled fresh austerity measures Wednesday to slash debt, evoking the plight of crisis-hit Greece in the first purely Conservative budget for almost two decades. Chancellor of the Exchequer Osborne drastically cut welfare spending to honour campaign promises to forge ahead with austerity, which saw his centre-right Conservative party sweep to an unexpected majority in a May general election and return David Cameron as prime minister.Speaking to lawmakers in his post-election budget statement to parliament, Osborne said welfare spending would be slashed by an accumulated total of £12 billion ($18.4 billion, 16.6 billion euros) by the end of parliament in five years' time. At the same time, the government will introduce a "national living wage" that could reach £9.0 an hour by 2020 that will apply to workers only aged 25 and over. That compares with the current national minimum wage of £6.50 an hour for those aged 21 and over, which will continue to exist alongside the "living wage."
  • n all, the government plans to save £37 billion over the next five years: £12 billion from welfare cuts, £5 billion from tax changes and reducing evasion, and the rest largely from cuts to government departments, Osborne said.
  • Osborne confirmed there would be no change to income tax thresholds or value added taxation (VAT) for at least five years.Corporation tax, levied on business profits, will be reduced from 20 percent to 19 percent in 2017 and 18 percent by 2020.
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Israel Joins Chinese Bank, Defies U.S.  « LobeLog - 0 views

www.lobelog.com/-joins-chinese-bank-defies-u-s war & peace economic-warfare Israel China AIIB U.S.-foreign-policy
shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • Updating the post I wrote a couple of weeks ago on how the U.S. failed to persuade some of its closest allies not to join the new Chinese-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), it’s worth noting that Israel has also abandoned Washington by signing up for membership. The Israeli foreign ministry announced on March 31–the deadline for applying to join the new bank–that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had signed “a letter of application to join the [AIIB], a result of the initiative of the President of China.”
  • The process of joining the bank was led by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in recognition of the importance of joining major Asian organizations on the continent. Israel’s membership in the Bank will open opportunities for integration of Israeli companies in various infrastructure projects, which will be financed by the bank. …It should be noted that the establishment of the bank is a Chinese diplomatic achievement. China initially intended that 35 countries should join, and to date 50 countries have joined. The establishment of AIIB is one of the most important initiatives in terms of Chinese foreign policy and in particular for President Xi Jinping, as this is his personal initiative.
  • Needless to say, Israel’s decision, which is perfectly defensible on the grounds of national interest, constitutes another slap at the Obama administration, which in the view of many experts stupidly lobbied U.S. allies against membership. (Of Washington’s closest allies, only Canada and Japan did not apply.) Israel has substantial commercial interests in China, particularly in the hi-tech and defense sectors. In fact, the Pentagon has long complained about Israeli transfers of sensitive U.S. military technology to China. In 2004, the Bush administration even sent then-Undersecretary of Defense for Policy and Greater Israel advocate Douglas Feith to Jerusalem to demand the resignation of the director general of the Israeli Defense Ministry, Amos Yaron, for allegedly concealing details of the sale and upgrade of an Israel-made Harpy attack drone to China.
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  • Of course, one of the reasons Obama lobbied allies against joining the bank is that he knew that a Republican Congress would itself reject Washington’s accession. The same Republican Congress has steadfastly refused to ratify a long-pending governance reform of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank that would give Beijing and some other middle-income countries a somewhat bigger voice in the two western-dominated Bretton-Woods institutions (even without diluting the U.S. voting power on their boards). And, yes, this is the same Republican Congress that invited Netanyahu to speak to it, that approves virtually any appropriation desired by Israel, and that is trying its utmost to derail a multilateral nuclear agreement with Iran largely at Bibi’s behest.
  • Like most small countries, Israel practices realpolitik. Despite claims by AIPAC, neoconservatives, and many Christian Zionists that Israel is our “closest ally” in the Middle East, if not the world, and that its “values” are identical to our own, in fact, it pursues its own interests abroad with little regard for Republican (or anyone else’s) sensibilities. As we have reported before, it is also providing support to al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, but no Republican that I know of has raised the slightest objection. Indeed, in their devotion to Netanyahu and his Likud Party, no doubt well lubricated by the millions of dollars in campaign and other political contributions offered by Sheldon Adelson, Paul Singer, and other Republican Jewish Coalition donors, most Republican lawmakers appear perfectly comfortable with Israel’s Middle East policies, including continued settlement-building and expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the de facto blockade against Gaza, and demands that Israel be recognized as a Jewish State. These actions and others serve not only to radicalize the Palestinians and other Arabs but also make it more difficult for the United States and its military to gain goodwill and operate effectively throughout the region, as then-CentCom Commander Gen. David Petraeus told the Senate Armed Services Committee shortly after Netanyahu became prime minister. Indeed, no one has undermined U.S. credibility in the region and beyond over the past six years as much as Bibi himself.
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The Big Wall Street Banks Are Already Trying To Buy The 2012 Election - 0 views

endoftheamericandream.com/...rying-to-buy-the-2012-election Banksters Campaign-finance Political-Corruption Crony-Capitalism
shared by Gary Edwards on 19 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 19 Oct 11
     
    Wall Street Banksters bought Obama in 2008, providing over 1/3 of his total financial contributions.  The Banksters are at it again, but this time they are forsaking the democrat-socialist establishment  Obama for the repubican establishment candidate Romney.    The following are the overall donation numbers from employees of the big Wall Street banks and their wives, compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics: Mitt Romney: $813,300 Barack Obama: $198,874 Tim Pawlenty: $101,515 Rick Perry: $58,900 Jon Huntsman: $28,250 Ron Paul: $13,104 Herman Cain: $2,715 Michelle Bachmann: $1,500 Newt Gingrich: $1,250 These numbers paint a very disturbing picture.  Even though Romney's poll numbers are in the mid to low 20s most of the time, employees of the big Wall Street banks gave him $813,300 during the first 9 months of this year and they only gave $105,719 to the rest of the Republican candidates combined.
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Wall Street's Win on Swaps Rule Shows Washington Resurgence - Bloomberg - 0 views

www.bloomberg.com/...-resurgence-in-washington.html banksters economy legislation Dodd-Frank Lincoln-Amendment derivatives
shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • Wall Street is re-emerging as a force in Washington as it closes in on one of its biggest wins against regulation since the financial crisis. With must-pass spending legislation making its way through Congress this week, banks seized on an opportunity to attach a measure that would halt a planned restriction on derivatives trading they had long opposed. The industry’s lobbying extended to the highest levels of finance with JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon pressing lawmakers to support the change.
  • Wall Street’s success, after four years of struggling to persuade Congress to ease the Dodd-Frank Act, is a precursor to more fights next year against some of the law’s hallmarks: the consumer protection bureau and stiff oversight of big financial companies whose failure could threaten the financial system. “The Wall Street interests -- the big banks -- they’re back,” said Richard Durbin of Illinois, the Senate’s second-ranking Democrat. The $1.1 trillion spending measure cleared its biggest hurdle when the House passed it last night and sent it to the Senate for consideration today. Banks had modest expectations even under the new Republican Congress that will convene in January, a group they presume will be more receptive to their agenda. Their surprising success this week may embolden lenders to seek deeper regulatory changes as Republicans take control of the Senate from Democrats.
  • The derivatives provision would let JPMorgan, Citigroup Inc. (C), Bank of America Corp. and other banks trade almost all swaps in divisions that have government backstops like deposit insurance. It would repeal a requirement that some of the trades be pushed out to separate units, which Wall Street argued would drive up costs for clients and increase risk in the financial system by moving the trades to firms less regulated than banks. Lawmakers put the requirement in Dodd-Frank, which was passed in 2010 after banks’ losses on souring derivative trades spurred a taxpayer bailout of Wall Street in 2008. The inclusion of the Dodd-Frank changes in the spending bill spurred a week-long opposition campaign by Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic lawmakers. Their news conferences, TV interviews, emergency meetings on Capitol Hill and pressure from allies including the AFL-CIO labor federation prompted President Barack Obama to call lawmakers urging them to vote for the broader bill to avoid a government shutdown.
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Lawmakers Say TPP Meetings Classified To Keep Americans in the Dark | Global Research - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5437233 U.S.-foreign-policy trade agreements TPP secrecy Congress
shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • US Trade Representative Michael Froman is drawing fire from Congressional Democrats for the Obama adminstration’s continued imposition of secrecy surrounding the Trans-Pacific Parternship. (Photo: AP file) Democratic lawmaker says tightly-controlled briefings on Trans-Pacific Partnership deal are aimed at keeping US constituents ignorant about what’s at stake Lawmakers in Congress who remain wary of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement are raising further objections this week to the degree of secrecy surrounding briefings on the deal, with some arguing that the main reason at least one meeting has been registered “classified” is to help keep the American public ignorant about giveaways to corporate interests and its long-term implications.
  • As The Hill reports: Members will be allowed to attend the briefing on the proposed trade pact with 12 Latin American and Asian countries with one staff member who possesses an “active Secret-level or high clearance” compliant with House security rules. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) told The Hill that the administration is being “needlessly secretive.” “Even now, when they are finally beginning to share details of the proposed deal with members of Congress, they are denying us the ability to consult with our staff or discuss details of the agreement with experts,” DeLauro told The Hill. Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) condemned the classified briefing. “Making it classified further ensures that, even if we accidentally learn something, we cannot share it. What is [Froman]working so hard to hide? What is the specific legal basis for all this senseless secrecy?” Doggett said to The Hill. “Open trade should begin with open access,” Doggett said. “Members expected to vote on trade deals should be able to read the unredacted negotiating text.”
  • “I’m not happy about it,” Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) told the Huffington Post, referring to the briefing with Froman and Labor Secretary Thomas Perez on Wednesday. The meeting—focused on the section of the TPP that deals with the controversial ‘Investor-State Dispute Settlement’ (ISDS) mechanism—has been labeled “classified,” so that lawmakers and any of their staff who attend will be barred, under threat of punishment, of revealing what they learn with constituents or outside experts. According to the Huffington Post: ISDS has been part of U.S. free trade agreements since NAFTA was signed into law in 1993, and has become a particularly popular tool for multinational firms over the past few years. But while the topic remains controversial, particularly with Democrats, many critics of the administration emphasize that applying national security-style restrictions on such information is an abuse of the classified information system. An additional meeting earlier on Wednesday on currency manipulation with Froman and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew is not classified.
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  • Among its other critics, Sen. Elizabeth Warren has slammed the idea of ISDS provisions as a surrender of democratic ideals to corporate interests. According to Warren, ISDS would simply “tilt the playing field in the United States further in favor of big multinational corporations.” By having unchallenged input on secretive TPP talks, Warren argued last month, these large companies and financial interests “are increasingly realizing this is an opportunity to gut U.S. regulations they don’t like.” According to Grayson, putting Wednesday’s ISDS briefing in a classified setting “is part of a multi-year campaign of deception and destruction. Why do we classify information? It’s to keep sensitive information out of the hands of foreign governments. In this case, foreign governments already have this information. They’re the people the administration is negotiating with. The only purpose of classifying this information is to keep it from the American people.”
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Jim Crow returns | Al Jazeera America - 0 views

projects.aljazeera.com/...index.html voting-rights Interstate-Cross-Check voter-fraud-fraud civil-liberties
shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • Election officials in 27 states, most of them Republicans, have launched a program that threatens a massive purge of voters from the rolls. Millions, especially black, Hispanic and Asian-American voters, are at risk. Already, tens of thousands have been removed in at least one battleground state, and the numbers are expected to climb, according to a six-month-long, nationwide investigation by Al Jazeera America. At the heart of this voter-roll scrub is the Interstate Crosscheck program, which has generated a master list of nearly 7 million names. Officials say that these names represent legions of fraudsters who are not only registered but have actually voted in two or more states in the same election — a felony punishable by 2 to 10 years in prison. Until now, state elections officials have refused to turn over their Crosscheck lists, some on grounds that these voters are subject to criminal investigation. Now, for the first time, three states — Georgia, Virginia and Washington — have released their lists to Al Jazeera America, providing a total of just over 2 million names.
  • The Crosscheck list of suspected double voters has been compiled by matching names from roughly 110 million voter records from participating states. Interstate Crosscheck is the pet project of Kansas’ controversial Republican secretary of state, Kris Kobach, known for his crusade against voter fraud. The three states’ lists are heavily weighted with names such as Jackson, Garcia, Patel and Kim — ones common among minorities, who vote overwhelmingly Democratic. Indeed, fully 1 in 7 African-Americans in those 27 states, plus the state of Washington (which enrolled in Crosscheck but has decided not to utilize the results), are listed as under suspicion of having voted twice. This also applies to 1 in 8 Asian-Americans and 1 in 8 Hispanic voters. White voters too — 1 in 11 — are at risk of having their names scrubbed from the voter rolls, though not as vulnerable as minorities.If even a fraction of those names are blocked from voting or purged from voter rolls, it could alter the outcome of next week’s electoral battle for control of the U.S. Senate — and perhaps prove decisive in the 2016 presidential vote count.
  • Based on the Crosscheck lists, officials have begun the process of removing names from the rolls — beginning with 41,637 in Virginia alone. Yet the criteria used for matching these double voters are disturbingly inadequate.
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  • In practice, all it takes to become a suspect is sharing a first and last name with a voter in another state. Typical “matches” identifying those who may have voted in both Georgia and Virginia include:Kevin Antonio Hayes of Durham, North Carolina, is a match for a man who voted in Alexandria, Virginia, as Kevin Thomas Hayes.John Paul Williams of Alexandria is supposedly the same man as John R. Williams of Atlanta, Georgia.Robert Dewey Cox of Marietta, Georgia is matched with Robert Glen Cox of Springfield, Virginia.
  • That was the sales pitch. But the actual lists show that not only are middle names commonly mismatched and suffix discrepancies ignored, even birthdates don’t seem to have been taken into account. Moreover, Crosscheck deliberately ignores Social Security mismatches, in the few instances when the numbers are even collected. The Crosscheck instructions for county election officers state, “Social Security numbers are included for verification; the numbers might or might not match.”
  • There are 6,951,484 names on the target list of the 28 states in the Crosscheck group; each of them represents a suspected double voter whose registration has now become subject to challenge and removal. According to a 2013 presentation by Kobach to the National Association of State Election Directors, the program is a highly sophisticated voter-fraud-detection system. The sample matches he showed his audience included the following criteria: first, last and middle name or initial; date of birth; suffixes; and Social Security number, or at least its last four digits.
  • Al Jazeera America visited these and several other potential double voters. John Paul Williams of Alexandria insists he has never used the alias “John R. Williams.” “I’ve never lived in Georgia,” he says.Jo Cox, wife of suspected double voter Robert Glen Cox of Virginia, says she has a solid alibi for him. Cox “is 85 years old and handicapped. He wasn’t in Georgia. Never voted there,” she says. He has also never used the middle name “Dewey.” Twenty-three percent of the names — nearly 1.6 million of them — lack matching middle names. “Jr.” and “Sr.” are ignored, potentially disenfranchising two generations in the same family. And, notably, of those who may have voted twice in the 2012 presidential election, 27 percent were listed as “inactive” voters, meaning that almost 1.9 million may not even have voted once in that race, according to Crosscheck’s own records.
  • Mark Swedlund is a specialist in list analytics whose clients have included eBay, AT&T and Nike. At Al Jazeera America’s request, he conducted a statistical review of Crosscheck’s three lists of suspected double voters. According to Swedlund, “It appears that Crosscheck does have inherent bias to over-selecting for potential scrutiny and purging voters from Asian, Hispanic and Black ethnic groups. In fact, the matching methodology, which presumes people in other states with the same name are matches, will always over-select from groups of people with common surnames.” Swedlund sums up the method for finding two-state voters — simply matching first and last name — as “ludicrous, just crazy.”
  • elen Butler is the executive director of Georgia’s Coalition for the Peoples’ Agenda, which conducts voter drives in minority communities. Any purge list that relies on name matches will contain a built-in racial bias against African-Americans, she says, because “We [African-Americans] took our slave owners’ names.” The search website PeopleSmart notes that 86,020 people in the United States have the name John Jackson. And according to the 2000 U.S. Census, which is the most recent data set, 53 percent of Jacksons are African-American.
  • In North Carolina, state officials have hired former FBI agent Charles W. “Chuck” Stuber, who played a major role in the campaign finance fraud case brought against former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, to, in the words of their press release, “investigate cases of possible voter fraud identified by an interstate cross-check comparing election records from 28 states.”
  • But despite knowing the names and addresses of 192,207 supposed double voters in the state, Stuber has not nabbed a single one in his five months on the job. Josh Lawson, a spokesman for the board of elections, says, “This agency has made no determination as to which portion of these [lists] represent data error or voter fraud.” In fact, to date, Lawson admits that Stuber has found only errors and not one verified fraudulent voter.
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Financiers linked to George Soros donate to Kasich campaign - RT USA - 0 views

www.rt.com/...financiers-george-soros-kasich Auction 2016 Kasich Soros donations
shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • Fresh off a second-place primary finish in New Hampshire, Republican presidential candidate John Kasich has come under more scrutiny, particularly for donations to his PAC New Day for America made by two fund managers who made billions for George Soros. Scott Bessent and Stanley Druckenmiller contributed $588,375 to the Ohio governor’s “soft money” fund, according to Federal Election Commission records.Druckenmiller donated a total of $103,375 to Jeb Bush’s Super PAC Right to Rise and $100,000 to America Leads, a PAC supporting New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who dropped out of the race after a poor showing in Tuesday’s primary.Bessent was Soros’s chief investment manager until December of last year, while Stanley Druckenmiller manages a $4.5 billion hedge fund in which $2 billion of Soros’ money is invested.
  • Druckenmiller was lead fund manager for Soros from 1998 to 2000, and together they “broke” the Bank of England in 1992 when Soros dumped £10 billion, leading to the currency’s devaluation and $1 billion in profit for him.Ohio Governor John Kasich came in second in the New Hampshire primary with 15.8 percent of the vote, edging out Ted Cruz with 11.7, but falling well-behind Donald Trump’s 35.3.Kasich spent 18 years in Congress before becoming a managing director for Lehman Brothers from 2001 until their collapse in 2008. He also hosted a program for the Fox News Channel.These donations have been getting a lot of attention because Soros is usually known for his support of Democratic candidates and progressive causes.
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Why GOP Bigwigs Fear Trump - Consortiumnews - 0 views

consortiumnews.com/...why-gop-bigwigs-fear-trump Trump GOP Banksters
shared by Gary Edwards on 10 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • An even bigger disjunction represented by the Republican Party is between the economic interests of a wealthy elite and the fears, xenophobia, and social-issue fixations of the hoi polloi whose votes the elite relies on to put its preferred economic policies in place. Not only is there no logical, substantive connection between these two aspects of what has come to be the Republican agenda; the economic policies are contrary to the interests of most of the ordinary citizens who are casting the votes.
  • The basic divide underlying this part of the Republican disjunction is between the one percent that provides the money to political candidates and that portion of the 99 percent that is the target of the campaigns that this money finances and who have been voting for those candidates.
  • Gary Edwards on 10 Mar 16
     
    "A desperate Republican establishment is going all out to stop Donald Trump who has rallied the GOP "base" that the bigwigs have long manipulated and sold out, explains ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar. By Paul R. Pillar The Donald Trump phenomenon and the suddenly frantic efforts within the Republican Party to try to stop Trump have led some observers to believe American politics are at a major inflection point, one where a familiar line-up of political parties and their backers could be substantially revised. Even some commentators who generally support the Republican Party are talking seriously about the possibility of the party breaking up. There is some valid basis for such talk, given that this party has come to embrace positions and interests that have no business sticking together. The political coalition has more or less worked, but it has not rested on substantive logic. So a destabilizing iconoclast with just enough political cleverness, as Trump has, can expose the artificiality of it rather easily. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Foreign policy is not the main front on which the exposure is taking place, but it may be among the first places where exposure becomes too obvious to ignore. Neoconservatives, whose realization of their earlier plans, culminating in the launching of a major offensive war in the Middle East, was made possible by infiltrating the foreign policy of a Republican administration, already are looking for a new home. That process may accelerate if Marco Rubio loses the Florida primary. The fragility of this part of what has been the Republican coalition is demonstrated by how little Trump has had to do to cause the neoconservative alarm bells to sound. He has not even advanced a coherent alternative foreign policy to shoot down. All he has done is to stray slightly from neoconservative orthodoxy: pointing out that the Iraq War was a big mistake and - even though Trump declares himself to be a strong supporte
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First to Fall? Panama Papers Bring Down Iceland PM, Portending Future Fallout | Common ... - 0 views

www.commondreams.org/...d-pm-portending-future-fallout Auction 2016 Hillary Panama-Papers Iceland Ukraine British-Virgin-Isles Chile
shared by Paul Merrell on 07 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • In the first instance of a prominent politician taken down by the 11.5 million documents leaked in the Panama Papers, Iceland Prime Minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson resigned on Tuesday after fully 10 percent of Iceland's population rallied in protest of his wife's secret, offshore shell company holding millions. Gunnlaugsson was asked about the account on the day the leak was announced in a television interview, and he walked out rather than answer the question:
  • The next day, "an estimated 22,000 Icelanders slung eggs and protested outside the Parliament building" demanding his resignation, as Common Dreams reported. Gunnlaugsson initially refused to bow to the public pressure, but eventually announced his resignation on Tuesday evening.
  • News editor of the Reykjavík Grapevine Paul Fontaine said Tuesday, "While the Prime Minister's particular role in the Panama Papers leak is huge, and I don't want to downplay it, I also don't want to downplay the involvement other Icelanders—and the countless others around the world—also had in this." "This extends beyond the prime minister; it reaches parliament, it reaches Reykjavík City Hall, and it reportedly reaches hundreds of as yet unnamed Icelandic businesspeople," Fontaine pointed out. "The greater crime, which the Panama Papers illustrate comprehensively, is that we have a secret economy connected to and even supporting some of the worst aspects of the global capitalist system."
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  • Meanwhile, Ukraine's president faces possible impeachment proceedings for his offshore holdings in the British Virgin Islands, and the Chilean head of anti-corruption group Transparency International resigned Tuesday after the Panama Papers revealed his own use of secret shell companies.
  • Relatively few Americans have been named in the leak thus far, perhaps pointing to the country's status as one of the foremost locales for creating shell corporations like those documented in the Panama Papers. "Americans can form shell companies right in Wyoming, Delaware or Nevada," said Shima Baradaran Baughman, a law professor at the University of Utah, in an interview with Fusion. "They have no need to go to Panama to form a shell company to use for illicit activities."
  • David Dayen explored in depth the paltry U.S. regulations around onshore shell companies in Salon: "While we force foreign financial institutions to give up information on accounts held by U.S. taxpayers through the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act of 2010, we don’t reciprocate by complying with international disclosure requirements standardized by the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) and agreed to by 97 other nations. As a result, the U.S. is becoming one of the world’s foremost tax havens."
  • President Barack Obama addressed the Panama Papers leak for the first time on Tuesday, condemning the laws that make offshore tax havens legal. But those words rang hollow to many observers who recalled that the Obama Administration was behind the very trade deal, Panama TPA, that enshrined the rights of firms such as Mossack Fonseca to funnel millions into untraceable offshore shell companies. As Common Dreams noted, "Much of [Mossack Fonseca's] activities were not necessarily illegal—thanks to agreements such as the Panama TPA." It is worth noting that Bernie Sanders advocated against the deal.
  • Reform also seems unlikely should Hillary Clinton become the Democratic party's nominee, considering that she and her husband own a shell corporation such as the ones documented in the Panama Papers, as the Associated Press reported last year. Unnamed officials told the AP that "the entity was a 'pass-through' company designed to channel payments to the former president." Thanks to the nature of the laws surrounding such corporations, Clinton is not required to disclose the company's existence or earnings in her campaign finance reports. Still, observers are hopeful that this record-shattering leak will drum up enough public pressure to not only topple prominent politicians, but to also propel the efforts of groups seeking real legislative reform. "The Panama Papers are a boost to the global movement to stop tax-haven abuse and recapture trillions of the hidden wealth of nations," wrote author Chuck Collins in The Nation. "This story isn’t going away anytime soon."
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