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Does Our Military Know Something We Don't About Global Warming? - Forbes - 0 views

www.forbes.com/...g-we-dont-about-global-warming climate-change preparations DoD
shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Every branch of the United States Military is worried about climate change. They have been since well before it became controversial. In the wake of an historic climate change agreement between President Obama and President Xi Jinping in China this week (Brookings), the military’s perspective is significant in how it views climate effects on emerging military conflicts.
  • At a time when Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bush 41, and even British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, called for binding international protocols to control greenhouse gas emissions, the U.S. Military was seriously studying global warming in order to determine what actions they could take to prepare for the change in threats that our military will face in the future. The Center for Naval Analysis has had its Military Advisory Board examining the national security implications of climate change for many years. Lead by Army General Paul Kern, the Military Advisory Board is a group of 16 retired flag-level officers from all branches of the Service. This is not a group normally considered to be liberal activists and fear-mongers.
  • This year, the Military Advisory Board came out with a new report, called National Security and the Accelerating Risks of Climate Change, that is a serious discussion about what the military sees as the threats and the actions to be taken to mitigate them. “The potential security ramifications of global climate change should be serving as catalysts for cooperation and change. Instead, climate change impacts are already accelerating instability in vulnerable areas of the world and are serving as catalysts for conflict.”
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  • Bill Pennell, former Director of the Atmospheric Sciences and Global Change Division at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, summed up the threat in recent discussions about climate and national security: “The environmental consequences of climate change are a significant threat multiplier, which by itself, can be a cause for future conflicts. Global warming will affect military operations as well as its theaters of operations. And it poses significant risks and costs to military and civilian infrastructure, especially those facilities located on the coastline.” “The countries and regions posing the greatest security threats to the United States are among those most susceptible to the adverse and destabilizing effects of climate change. Many of these countries are already unstable and have little economic or social capital for coping with additional disruptions.” “Whether in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, or North Korea, we are already seeing how extreme weather events – such as droughts and flooding and the food shortages and population dislocations that accompany them – can destabilize governments and lead to conflict. For example, one trigger of the chaos in Syria has been the multi-year drought the country has experienced since 2006 and the Assad Regime’s ineptitude in dealing with it.”
  • So why is the country as a whole, and those who normally support our military, so loathe to prepare for possible threats from this direction? In 1990, Eugene Skolnikoff summarized the national policy issues surrounding global warming and why it has been so difficult to rationally develop policy to address it. “The central problem is that outside the security sector, policy processes confronting issues with substantial uncertainty do not normally yield policy that has high economic or political costs. This is especially true when the uncertainty extends not only to the issues themselves, but also to the measures to avert them or deal with their consequences.” “The climate change issue illustrates – in fact exaggerates – all the elements of this central problem. Indeed, no major action is likely to be taken until those uncertainties are substantially reduced, and probably not before evidence of warming and its effects are actually visible. Unfortunately, any increase in temperature will be irreversible by the time the danger becomes obvious enough to permit political action.” And this was in 1990!
  • As Arctic ice diminishes, the region will see new shipping routes, new energy zones, new fisheries, new tourism and new sources of conflict not covered by existing maritime treaties. Since the United States is not party to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) treaty, we will not have maximum operating flexibility in the Arctic. Even seemingly small administrative issues may become important in the new era, e.g., the Unified Command Plan presently splits Arctic responsibility between two Combatant Commands: U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) and U.S. European Command (EUCOM). This type of things needs to be resolved with the coming global changes in mind. Source: Center for Naval Analysis
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Battle of Aleppo is a must-win for Russia - RT Op-Edge - 0 views

www.rt.com/...736-battle-aleppo-syria-russia war & peace Syria Russia Iran HezbAllah Aleppo
shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Once again, whatever hangs in the future for Syria on both the political and military fronts depends on the new Battle of Aleppo. The city and its outskirts, with the influx of internal refugees, may be harboring up to three million people by now. It’s always about Aleppo.Here’s what’s going on, essentially, on the ground. West Aleppo is controlled by Damascus, via the Syrian Arab Army (SAA).Some of the northern parts are controlled by the Kurds from the PYD – which are way more engaged in fighting ISIS/ISIL/Daesh than Damascus. The PYD also happens to be considered an objective ally by the Obama administration and the Pentagon, much to the disgust of Turkey’s ‘Sultan’ Erdogan.
  • East Aleppo is the key. It is controlled by the so-called Army of Conquest, which includes Jabhat al-Nusra, a.k.a. Al-Qaeda in Syria, and the Salafi outfit Ahrar al-Sham. Other eastern parts are controlled by the “remnants” (copyright Donald Rumsfeld) of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), who refused to collaborate with the Army of Conquest.Across the Beltway, all of the above are somewhat considered “moderate rebels.”
  • Additionally, several hundred Iraqi Shi’ite fighters, under the supervision of superstar Iranian Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani, have been transferred from Latakia to Aleppo. And a roughly 3,000-strong, battle-hardened, armored Hezbollah brigade is also coming.What is shaping up is a kind of southern offensive. These forces will all be converging not only towards Aleppo but, in a second stage, will have to clear the terrain all the way to the Turkish-Syrian border, which is now a de facto Russian-controlled no-fly zone.The supreme target is to cut off the supply lines for every Salafi or Salafi-jihadi player – from “moderate rebels” to ISIS/ISIL/Daesh. That’s the meaning of Moscow’s insistence on the fight against all brands of terror, with no distinction. It does not matter that ISIS/ISIL/Daesh is not the main player in and around Aleppo.For all practical purposes the whole Syria campaign is now under Russian operational, tactical and strategic management – of course with key Iranian strategic input.
  • Paul Merrell on 27 Oct 15
     
    Pepe Escobar on a major battle that will kick off in Syria this week, the battle for East Aleppo and between it and the Turkish border.
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Exxon Knew Everything There Was to Know About Climate Change by the Mid-1980s-and Denie... - 0 views

www.thenation.com/...by-the-mid-1980s-and-denied-it environment climate-change Exxon prior-knowledge
shared by Paul Merrell on 25 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • A few weeks before the last great international climate conference—2009, in Copenhagen—the e-mail accounts of a few climate scientists were hacked and reviewed for incriminating evidence suggesting that global warming was a charade. Eight separate investigations later concluded that there was literally nothing to “Climategate,” save a few sentences taken completely out of context—but by that time, endless, breathless media accounts about the “scandal” had damaged the prospects for any progress at the conference. Ad Policy Now, on the eve of the next global gathering in Paris this December, there’s a new scandal. But this one doesn’t come from an anonymous hacker taking a few sentences out of context. This one comes from months of careful reporting by two separate teams, one at the Pulitzer Prize–winning website Inside Climate News, and the other at the Los Angeles Times (with an assist from the Columbia Journalism School). Following separate lines of evidence and document trails, they’ve reached the same bombshell conclusion: ExxonMobil, the world’s largest and most powerful oil company, knew everything there was to know about climate change by the mid-1980s, and then spent the next few decades systematically funding climate denial and lying about the state of the science.
  • Paul Merrell on 25 Oct 15
     
    Check out the links to the major article series for much more in-depth coverage.
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Senior UN official castigates World Bank over its approach to human rights | Global dev... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...ecial-rapporteur-philip-alston banksters World-Bank human rights
shared by Paul Merrell on 25 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • The World Bank’s approach to human rights is disingenuous, outdated and “deeply troubling”, an independent UN investigator has said. Professor Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, said that after 40 years of inconclusive internal discussions, the Washington-based organisation and its 188 member countries had to realise they could no longer separate human rights from development financing.
  • The World Bank has rejected Alston’s claims. In a recent and unusually scathing report, Alston described the bank’s approach to human rights as “incoherent, counterproductive and unsustainable”, adding that it was for most purposes, “a human rights free zone”, and an institution whose operational policies treat human rights “more like an infectious disease than universal values and obligations”.
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JFK Assassination Plot Mirrored in 1961 France: Part 3 - WhoWhatWhy - 0 views

whowhatwhy.org/...mirrored-in-1961-france-part-3 war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Dulles France CIA coup-attempts
shared by Paul Merrell on 25 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Without the knowledge or consent of President John F. Kennedy, Allen Dulles orchestrated the efforts of retired French generals, rightwing French, Nazi sympathizers, and at least one White Russian, to overthrow Charles de Gaulle, who wanted to give Algeria its independence. Dulles et al feared an independent Algeria would go Communist, giving the Soviets a base in Africa.And there was another reason to hang onto Algeria: its natural resources. According to the US Energy Information Administration, it is “the leading natural gas producer in Africa, the second-largest natural gas supplier to Europe outside of the region, and is among the top three oil producers in Africa.”
  • As we have said earlier, Dulles’s job, simply put, was to hijack the US government to benefit the wealthy.  And in this fascinating series of excerpts from David Talbot’s new biography on Dulles, we see how his reach extended deeply into the government of France.
  • This is the third of a three-part series of excerpts from Chapter 15 (“Contempt”) of  The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the,  Rise of the American Secret Government. HarperCollins Publishers, 2015.  Go here and here to see Parts 1 and 2. Previously, we presented excerpts from Chapter 20, and to see them, go here, here, and here.
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Hillary's Lies and the Benghazi Attack | nsnbc international - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...s-lies-and-the-benghazi-attack war & peace Benghazi-coverup Hillary Auction 2016
shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Hillary Clinton’s Benghazi testimony on Thursday certainly confirmed suspicions that she knew that the September 11, 2012 attack on the US Consulate was not a spontaneous protest by individuals enraged by an anti-Muslim video. Rather, as the emails she fought so fiercely to protect from public disclosure reveal, the attack was a pre-planned operation, involving fore- knowledge by the assailants of the whereabouts of Ambassador Christopher Stevens, among other details.
  • Clinton and the Obama Administration had attempted to place the blame for the attack, which resulted in the deaths of Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans, on an unplanned protest, a “spontaneous mob.” However, knowing that Clinton and other Administration officials lied extensively as to the genesis of the attack raises further questions. According to the Wall Street Journal, Clinton lied in order to “attempt to avoid blame for a terror attack in a presidential re-election year”  The WSJ article maintains that the House Select Committee on Benghazi, chaired by Representative Trey Gowdy, has ferreted out the deception. “What that House committee did Thursday was finally expose the initial deception,” writes WSJ reporter Kimberley Strassel.
  • It is known now, through the subsequent email and cable releases, that the responsibility for the attack was claimed by Ansar al Sharia, al Qaeda’s affiliate on the Arabian Peninsula. In an email to her daughter Chelsea, sent at 11:12 pm the night of the attack, Hillary Clinton wrote: “Two of our officers were killed in Benghazi by an Al Queda-like group.” Not by a spontaneous mob, protesting a YouTube video. But by a group which has already been exposed as having deep and covert ties to the United States intelligence agencies. Questions must be addressed as to why the Benghazi compound was not guarded. US Embassies abroad are known to be protected by an elite corps of US Marines. Known as the MSG (Marine Security Group), this elite group is pledged to protect US information and persons in Embassies and Consulates.
  • Paul Merrell on 26 Oct 15
     
    There's also an unanswered question why the consulate's existence had not been reported to the Libyan government, a serious breach of protocol for an official "consulate." (The article incorrectly refers to it as an "embassy," but the U.S. Embassy in Libya was in Tripoli. Seymour Hersh reported that Ambassador Stevens' role was only to provide political cover for a CIA team that was working on collecting and shipping via a "ratline"  Libyan weapons left from the Gadaffi government's military to Syria. Stevens was the logical choice, having served earlier in the year at Benghazi as the State Department's Special Representative to the Libyan National Transitional Council (from March 2011 to November 2011) during the Libyan "revolution." During the "revolution" the Transitional Council was located in Benghazi, the unofficial transitional capital of Libya while the war progressed. In other words, Stevens already had connections with the forces that overthrew Gaddafi, so would be able to pull strings to get access to the weapons. The lack of Marine guards is probably best explained by the fact that Stevens' mission was essentially clandestine.   
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Facebook Now Warns Users of Government - Sponsored Hack | nsnbc international - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...s-of-government-sponsored-hack surveillance state Facebook warnings
shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Facebook has added a new feature to warn users that there is a suspicion that their profile is under attack by a nation – state.
  • Alex Stamos, chief security officer at Facebook, posted a “notification for targeted attacks” that explains the social media site “will notify you if we believe your account has been targeted or compromised by an attacker suspected of working on behalf of a nation-state.” In order to secure a compromised account, Facebook has implemented the “additional warning … because these types of attacks tend to be more advanced and dangerous than others, and we strongly encourage affected people to take the actions necessary to secure all of their online accounts.”
  • And yet, Stamos cautions: “To protect the integrity of our methods and processes, we often won’t be able to explain how we attribute certain attacks to suspected attackers. That said, we plan to use this warning only in situations where the evidence strongly supports our conclusion.” To protect users, Facebook will turn on the “login approvals” feature. Facebook will send the compromised account user specific codes so that one particular user can access the profile from multiple locations: pc, app, or new device.
  • Paul Merrell on 20 Oct 15
     
    Not good enough. It's known from the Snowden documents that NSA gets total access to Facebook accounts under FISA court orders that prohibit it from warning its users.
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Afghan defense minister says Taliban hid in bombed hospital - 0 views

bigstory.ap.org/...ys-taliban-hid-bombed-hospital war & peace Afghanistan Konduz hospitals war crimes U.S.-foreign-policy
shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Afghanistan's acting defense minister said Monday that the Doctors Without Borders hospital bombed by U.S. forces in the northern city of Kunduz was being used by insurgents as a "safe place." The hospital was bombed by a U.S. AC-130 gunship in the early hours of Oct. 3, killing at least 22 people and wounding many more. The main building was destroyed and the hospital has been shut down. "That was a place they wanted to use as a safe place because everybody knows that our security forces and international security forces were very careful not to do anything with a hospital," Defense Minister Masoom Stanekzai told The Associated Press, adding that a Taliban flag had been mounted on one of the hospital's walls.
  • Paul Merrell on 20 Oct 15
     
    That's a public relations defense, not a legal defense to a war crime. Hospitals with staff and patients are strictly off-limits as targets during wartime. Notably, even if one took what Stanekzai said at face value, it constitutes an admission that the Taliban were using the hospital as a safe harbor, not as a fortification from which to direct fire. But he could also be sweeping in wounded Taliban who were among the patients being treated. Would the fact that American troops are being treated for wounds in an Afghan hospital be viewed as making it permissible for the Taliban to target the hospital for rocket fire? Hardly. 
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Russia - USA sign MoA on Coordinating Flights over Syria | nsnbc international - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...oordinating-flights-over-syria war & peace Syria U.S.-foreign-policy Russia Turkey air-coordination
shared by Paul Merrell on 21 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Russia and the United States signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoA) on the coordination of military flights over Syria. Once in effect, the agreement will result in 24/7 communication channels to prevent dangerous situations in the ever more crowded aerial military theater in Syria’s airspace. Meanwhile the situation on the ground has changed with some insurgent brigades disintegrating while a new front appears to be opened in Idlib province. 
  • Russia and Turkey have already established a hotline to prevent unwanted incidents. The agreement between the two countries was reached after two incidents in which Russian jets briefly entered Turkish airspace. Russia has also held talks with Jordanian and Israeli officials to avoid unwanted incidents. U.S. and Russian military have previously held video conferences to discuss coordination to avoid incidents. Once the new MoU comes into effect there will be a 24/4 line of communications between Russia and the USA. A meeting between U.S. and Russian politicians is scheduled for later this week.
  • On Monday Syria’s Ambassador to Moscow, Riad Haddad, stated that airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition also had become more effective after Russia began its air campaign in Syria on September 30 – October 1. Coordination between Russia and the United States as well as Turkey may also have consequences for Syrian civil aviation. Thus far, Russia is the only country that has a legal mandate for operating military flight in Syrian airspace. The Russian military coordinates its sorties with both Syrian military and civil aviation authorities. Coordination between Russia and the U.S. led coalition could eventually also contribute to avoiding tragic civil air disasters in the increasingly crowded Syrian airspace. While air raids have caused several, especially ISIL brigades to flee in disarray, there appears to be opening a new front in Idlib province. Both Syrian and Russian military sources report of insurgents’ attempts to regroup and of a large influx of mercenaries in Idlib province. Another of the significant strongholds of foreign-sponsored insurgents is the town of Al-Shaykh in Daraa province. Resistance there may, however, soon cease due to the lacking supplies of ammunition.
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  • Reports from Syria suggest that the populations in territories controlled by ISIL, Jabhat Al-Nusrah, The Southern Front, and other brigades increasingly deny cooperation with the self-proclaimed authorities even though such refusal comes at great risk.
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A-10 Warthogs replace American F-16s at İncirlik Air Base - 0 views

national.bgnnews.com/...10461 war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Incirlik A-10 F16 reassignment
shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • "On Oct. 20, airmen and 12 A-10 Thunderbolt IIs from the 75th fighter squadron from Moody AFB, Georgia, arrived at İncirlik Air Base, Turkey, where they will operate in support of Operation Inherent Resolve," according to the defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity. The official said the bombers will replace the six F-16s that arrived in August which are currently repositioned with their crews and support personnel at the Aviano Air Base in Italy. "The A-10s repositioned from an undisclosed location in the CENTCOM area of operations," the official said. Turkey opened the İncirlik Air Base in August and began strikes on Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) targets inside Syria in late August after Turkey and the U.S. finalized a deal on Turkey's involvement in air operations against the militant group.  "Turkey is a NATO ally, close friend of the United States and an important partner in the international Coalition against ISIL," the official said. "The use of Turkish bases for U.S. strike and supporting aircraft has been a very important force multiplier." The A-10 Thunderbolt II is coveted for its agility at "low air speeds and altitude" and "is a highly accurate and survivable weapons-delivery platform”. It can fly over battlefields "for extended periods of time and operate in low ceiling and visibility conditions", according to the U.S. military.
  • Paul Merrell on 22 Oct 15
     
    The A-10 is the U.S. military's premier close air support fighter, primarily a tank-killer.  ISIL and other al-Qaida factions in Syria have very few captured tanks. The Syrian Army has lots. So whose tanks is it that the U.S. intends to obliterate?
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Japanese Gov admits "One" Fukushima Cleanup Worker contracted Cancer | nsnbc international - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...eanup-worker-contracted-cancer environment Fukushima cover-up deaths
shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • The Japanese Labor Ministry announced that it has recognized that one Fukushima cleanup worker has contracted cancer. Some 44,000 workers have participated in the cleanup after the nuclear disaster in 2011. Most of the workers’ health history is undocumented while the government cracks down on journalists who document the government’s and Fukushima Daiichi operator TEPCO’s cover-up of the impact on workers’ health.
  • Some 44,000 workers have participated in the cleanup operation at the crippled Fukushima Daichi Nuclear Power plant since the plant was struck by three reactor core meltdowns, spent fuel fires, and the distribution of highly radioactive spent fuel rods and pellets during an explosion. The vast majority of the cleanup workers belong to socio-economically underprivileged strata of Japan’s society, including long-term unemployed and the homeless. Fukushima Daiichi operator TEPCO has been criticized for outsourcing the recruitment of cleanup workers to sub-contractors with ties to Japan’s organized crime network, the Yakuza. While the Labor Ministry’s admission that one cleanup worker contracted leukemia due to exposure to radioactive nucleides during his work at the disaster site may seem like “progress”, it merely covers the tip of an iceberg. Several factors contribute to what amounts to a systematic cover-up of the true impact on the health of cleanup workers. For one, there is Japanese legislation that threatens anyone, including journalists who disclose unauthorized information about the disaster and its detrimental health and environmental impact with up to ten years imprisonment.
  • Another factor is the systematic intimidation and threats against investigative journalists by the Japanese government, Japanese police, TEPCO, as well as by organized crime networks. One example is the case of independent journalist Mako Oshidori who interviewed and documented the cases of numerous cleanup workers. In 2014 Mako reported that she discovered a TEPCO memo, in which the Fukushima Daiichi operator TEPCO instructs officials to “cut Mako-chan’s (questions) short, appropriately”. Mako Oshidori was enrolled in the School of Life Sciences at Tottori University Faculty of Medicine for three years. Mako revealed that TEPCO and the government cover-up the death of Fukusjima workers and that government agents began following her around after she began investigating the cover-up.
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  • “As of now, there are multiple NPP workers who have died, but only the ones who died on the job are reported publicly. Some of them have died suddenly while off work, for instance, during the weekend or in their sleep, but none of their deaths are reported. … “Not only that, they are not included in the worker death count. For example, there are some workers who quit the job after a lot of radiation exposure, such as 50, 60 to 70 mili Sieverts, and end up dying a month later, but none of these deaths are either reported, or included in the death toll. This is the reality of the NPP workers”.
  • The Labor Ministry’s admission that “one cleanup worker contacted cancer” can, arguably, be perceived as nothing but a continuum of the cover-up of hard scientific data, the prevention of independent studies and the intimidation and criminalization of journalists who could disclose that thousands of Fukushima cleanup workers have fallen critically ill and/or have died.
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Exclusive: NATO nations to keep presence in Afghanistan, officials say | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...xclusive-idUSKCN0SD1SS20151019 war & peace Afghanistan war-extension NATO
shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • ermany, Turkey and Italy are set to keep their deployments in Afghanistan at current levels, senior NATO officials said on Monday after the U.S. government decided to prolong its 14-year-old military presence there.The Taliban's brief takeover of a provincial capital has raised concern about the strength of Afghan state forces and both the United States and its NATO allies now say events, rather than timetables, must dictate gradual troop reductions.Gen. Philip Breedlove, NATO's top commander in Europe, said he had assurances that NATO countries will continue alongside the nearly 10,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. While discussions of exact numbers are still continuing, the biggest national deployments are not in doubt, he said."Several of our largest contributors have already communicated with us that they will remain in their current posture," Breedlove told Reuters. He declined to give details. But a second senior NATO official said Germany, Turkey and Italy were willing to remain in Afghanistan at their current levels.
  • A U.S. military strike in Kunduz that hit an Afghan hospital run by Doctors Without Borders, or Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), also generated international outcry and underscored the perils of leaving a fragile country too quickly.
  • Paul Merrell on 20 Oct 15
     
    That last highlighted paragraph is a doozy when it comes to spin. A U.S. military airstrike on a hospital "underscored the perils of leaving a fragile country too quickly." Wow! I'd say that it underscores the need to admit that it's a war that can't be won and to end our participation in it.
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JFK Assassination Plot Mirrored in France: Part 2 - WhoWhatWhy - 0 views

whowhatwhy.org/...plot-mirrored-in-france-part-2 war & peace CIA JFK France coup-attempts
shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • What the colonial powers have done in Muslim countries is well known. Less well known are the machinations of Allen Dulles and the CIA in one of these colonial powers, France.Without the knowledge or consent of President John F. Kennedy, Allen Dulles orchestrated the efforts of retired French generals, rightwing French, Nazi sympathizers, and at least one White Russian, to overthrow Charles de Gaulle, who wanted to give Algeria its independence. Dulles et al feared an independent Algeria would go Communist, giving the Soviets a base in Africa.And there was another reason to hang onto Algeria: its natural resources. According to the US Energy Information Administration, it is “the leading natural gas producer in Africa, the second-largest natural gas supplier to Europe outside of the region, and is among the top three oil producers in Africa.”We note with great interest that the plot to bring down Charles De Gaulle — the kind of people involved, the role of Allen Dulles, the motive behind it — all bear an eerie similarity to the circumstances surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy. But that is another story.
  • As we have said earlier, Dulles’s job, simply put, was to hijack the US government to benefit the wealthy. And in this fascinating series of excerpts from David Talbot’s new biography on Dulles, we see how his reach extended deeply into the government of France.WhoWhatWhy Introduction by Milicent CranorThis is the second of a three-part series of excerpts from Chapter 15 (“Contempt”) of The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of the American Secret Government. HarperCollins Publishers, 2015. Go here to see Part 1. Previously, we presented excerpts from Chapter 20, and to see them, go here, here, and here.
  • When the coup against de Gaulle began three months later, Kennedy was still in the dark. It was a tumultuous time for the young administration. As he continued to wrestle with fallout from the Bay of Pigs crisis, JFK was suddenly besieged with howls of outrage from a major ally, accusing his own security services of seditious activity.
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  • It was a stinging embarrassment for the new American president, who was scheduled to fly to Paris for a state visit the following month. To add to the insult, the coup had been triggered by de Gaulle’s efforts to bring French colonial rule in Algeria to an end — a goal that JFK himself had ardently championed.The CIA’s support for the coup was one more defiant display of contempt — a back of the hand aimed not only at de Gaulle but at Kennedy.JFK took pains to assure Paris that he strongly supported de Gaulle’s presidency, phoning Hervé Alphand, the French ambassador in Washington, to directly communicate these assurances. But, according to Alphand, Kennedy’s disavowal of official US involvement in the coup came with a disturbing addendum — the American president could not vouch for his own intelligence agency. Kennedy told Alphand that “the CIA is such a vast and poorly controlled machine that the most unlikely maneuvers might be true.”
  • But at eight o’clock that evening, a defiant de Gaulle went on the air, as nearly all of France gathered around the TV, and rallied his nation with the most inspiring address of his long public career. He looked exhausted, with dark circles under his eyes. But he had put on his soldier’s uniform for the occasion, and his voice was full of passion.De Gaulle began by denouncing the rebellious generals. The nation had been betrayed “by men whose duty, honor and raison d’être it was to serve and to obey.” Now it was the duty of every French citizen to protect the nation from these military traitors. “In the name of France,” de Gaulle shouted, thumping the table in front of him, “I order that all means — I repeat all means — be employed to block the road everywhere to those men!”De Gaulle’s final words were a battle cry. “Françaises, Français! Aidez moi!” And all over France, millions of people did rush to the aid of their nation. The following day, a general strike was organized to protest the putsch. Led primarily by the left, including labor unions and the Communist Party, the mass protest won broad political support.Over ten million people joined the nationwide demonstrations, with hundreds of thousands marching in the streets of Paris, carrying banners proclaiming “Peace in Algeria” and shouting, “Fascism will not pass!” Even police officers associations expressed “complete solidarity” with the protests, as did the Roman Catholic Confederation, which denounced the “criminal acts” of the coup leaders, warning that they “threaten to plunge the country into civil war.”
  • In the wake of the crises in Cuba and France provoked by his own security officials, Kennedy began to display a new boldness. JFK’s assertiveness surprised CIA officials, who had apparently counted on Kennedy to be sidelined during the French coup.Agency officials assured coup leaders that the president would be too “absorbed in the Cuban affair” to act decisively against the plot. But JFK did react quickly to the French crisis, putting on high alert Ambassador Gavin, a decorated paratrooper commander in World War II who could be counted on to keep NATO forces in line. The president also dispatched his French speaking press spokesman, Pierre Salinger, to Paris to communicate directly with Élysée Palace officials.As Paris officials knew, the new American president already had something of a prickly relationship with de Gaulle, but he had strong feelings for France — and they made sure to absolve JFK of personal responsibility for the coup in their leaks to the press. French press accounts referred to the CIA as a “reactionary state within a state” that operated outside of Kennedy’s control.
  • But it was de Gaulle himself, and the French people, who turned the tide against the coup. By Sunday, the second day of the coup, a dark foreboding had settled over Paris. “I am surprised that you are still alive,” the president of France’s National Assembly bluntly told de Gaulle that morning. “If I were Challe, I would have already swooped down on Paris; the army here will move out of the way rather than shoot…. If I were in the position Challe put himself in, as soon as I burst in, I would have you executed with a bullet in the back, here in the stairwell, and say you were trying to flee.” De Gaulle himself realized that if Challe did airlift his troops from Algiers to France, “there was not much to stop them.”
  • This admission of presidential impotence, which Alphand reported to Paris, was a startling moment in US foreign relations, though it remains largely unknown today. Kennedy then underlined how deeply estranged he was from his own security machinery by taking the extraordinary step of asking Alphand for the French government’s help to track down the US officials behind the coup, promising to fully punish them.“[Kennedy] would be quite ready to take all necessary measures in the interest of good Franco-American relations, whatever the rank or functions of [the] incriminated people,” Alphand cabled French foreign minister Maurice Couve de Murville.
  • Hundreds of people rushed to the nation’s airfields and prepared to block the runways with their vehicles if Challe’s planes tried to land. Others gathered outside government ministries in Paris to guard them against attack. André Malraux, the great novelist turned minister of culture, threaded his way through one such crowd, handing out helmets and uniforms. Meanwhile, at the huge Renault factory on the outskirts of Paris, workers took control of the sprawling complex and formed militias, demanding weapons from the government so that they could fend off rebel assaults.“In many ways, France, and particularly Paris, relived its great revolutionary past Sunday night and Monday — the past of the revolutionary barricades, of vigilance committees and of workers’ councils,” reported The New York Times.
  • De Gaulle’s ringing address to the nation and the massive public response had a sobering effect on the French military. Challe’s support quickly began melting away, even — humiliatingly — within the ranks of his own military branch, the air force. Pilots flew their planes out of Algeria, and others feigned mechanical troubles, depriving Challe’s troops of the air transport they needed to descend on Paris.Meanwhile, de Gaulle moved quickly to arrest military officers in France who were involved in the coup. Police swooped down on the Paris apartment of an army captain who was plotting pro-putsch street riots, and de Gaulle’s minister of the interior seized the general in charge of the rebel forces that were gathered in the forests outside Paris. Deprived of their leader, the insurrectionary units sheepishly began to disperse.By Tuesday night, Challe knew that the coup had failed. The next day, he surrendered and was flown to Paris. Challe emerged from the plane “carrying his own suitcase, looking crumpled and insignificant in civilian clothes,” according to Time. “He stumbled at the foot of the landing steps, [falling] heavily on his hands and knees.” It was an ignominious homecoming for the man who had fully believed that, with US support, he was to replace the great de Gaulle.
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Netanyahu Loses an Important Canadian Ally « LobeLog - 0 views

lobelog.com/ses-an-important-canadian-ally Canada Trudeau election Israel Netanyahu Likud
shared by Paul Merrell on 21 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Coming up soon in LobeLog, an actual Canadian will analyze the implications for Canada’s Middle East policy of Monday’s victory of the Liberal Party’s Justin Trudeau over Prime Minister Stephen Harper in the parliamentary elections. For now, however, it’s worth noting that Bibi Netanyahu cannot be happy with the results. Without predicting what Trudeau will do, it’s clear that Bibi has just lost a very important international ally in Ottawa and within the Group of Seven (G-7). 
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Saudi Arabia Will Be Broke In 5 Years, IMF Predicts | Zero Hedge - 0 views

www.zerohedge.com/...-be-broke-5-years-imf-predicts war & peace Saudis IMF Saudi-economy Syria
shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • As crazy as it sounds, the Saudis are going broke. Of course you wouldn’t know it if you read the account of King Salman’s latest visit to Washington which included booking the entire DC Four Seasons and procuring a veritable fleet of Mercedes S-Class sedans.
  • You’d also be inclined to think that everything is fine if you simply looked at SAMA holdings (i.e. FX reserves) which still total nearly $700 billion. 
  • The problem however, is the outlook.  Fighting wars costs money and so does bribing the citizenry to ensure you don’t get some kind of Arab Spring-type uprising. When you endeavor to artificially suppress the price of the export that is the source for your wealth and international prestige (all in an epic attempt to bankrupt the competition and secure geopolitical “ancillary benefits”) you don’t do yourself any favors from a financial perspective and now, the Saudis are staring down a massive budget deficit and a current account that’s in the red for the first time in ages. So while things may look on the up and up from an FX reserve perspective (even as the cushion is at its lowest level since 2013) and while the kingdom has plenty of capacity to borrow with a debt-to-GDP ratio of just a little over 2%, things are about to get ugly very quickly going forward and if Riyadh decides to plunge headlong into Syria’s civil war, it will only get worse. Note that while debt levels are likely to stay low relative to a world where countries like Japan are borrowing so much that the number of decimal places won't even fit into a title, going from basically 0% to ~16% of GDP in the space of just 24 months isn't exactly a good sign:
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Homan Square revealed: how Chicago police 'disappeared' 7,000 people | US news | The Gu... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...o-police-disappeared-thousands police Chicago-PD Homan stats
shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Police “disappeared” more than 7,000 people at an off-the-books interrogation warehouse in Chicago, nearly twice as many detentions as previously disclosed, the Guardian can now reveal.
  • From August 2004 to June 2015, nearly 6,000 of those held at the facility were black, which represents more than twice the proportion of the city’s population. But only 68 of those held were allowed access to attorneys or a public notice of their whereabouts, internal police records show. The new disclosures, the result of an ongoing Guardian transparency lawsuit and investigation, provide the most detailed, full-scale portrait yet of the truth about Homan Square, a secretive facility that Chicago police have described as little more than a low-level narcotics crime outpost where the mayor has said police “follow all the rules”. The police portrayals contrast sharply with those of Homan Square detainees and their lawyers, who insist that “if this could happen to someone, it could happen to anyone”. A 30-year-old man named Jose, for example, was one of the few detainees with an attorney present when he surrendered to police. He said officers at the warehouse questioned him even after his lawyer specifically told them he would not speak.
  • “The Fillmore and Homan boys,” Jose said, referring to police and the facility’s cross streets, “don’t play by the rules.” According to an analysis of data disclosed to the Guardian in late September, police allowed lawyers access to Homan Square for only 0.94% of the 7,185 arrests logged over nearly 11 years. That percentage aligns with Chicago police’s broader practice of providing minimal access to attorneys during the crucial early interrogation stage, when an arrestee’s constitutional rights against self-incrimination are most vulnerable. But Homan Square is unlike Chicago police precinct houses, according to lawyers who described a “find-your-client game” and experts who reviewed data from the latest tranche of arrestee records obtained by the Guardian.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • The narcotics, vice and anti-gang units operating out of Homan Square, on Chicago’s west side, take arrestees to the nondescript warehouse from all over the city: police data obtained by the Guardian and mapped against the city grid show that 53% of disclosed arrestees come from more than 2.5 miles away from the warehouse. No contemporaneous public record of someone’s presence at Homan Square is known to exist. Nor are any booking records generated at Homan Square, as confirmed by a sworn deposition of a police researcher in late September, further preventing relatives or attorneys from finding someone taken there.
  • But those documents do not tell the entire story of Homan Square. Chicago police have not disclosed any figures at all on people who were detained at Homan Square but never ultimately charged. Nor has it released any information about detentions or arrests before September 2004, claiming that information is burdensome to produce because it is not digital. (Chicago purchased the warehouse in 1995.) “It’s hard to believe that 7,185 arrests is an accurate number of arrestees at Homan Square,” said the University of Chicago’s Futterman. “Even if it were true that less than 1% of Homan arrestees were given access to counsel, that would be abhorrent in and of itself.”
  • 11.8% of detainees in the Homan Square logs were Hispanic, compared with 28.9% of the population. 5.5% of the detainees were white, compared with 31.7% of the population. Of the 68 people who Chicago police claim had access to counsel at Homan Square, however, 45% were black, 26% were Hispanic and another 26% were white.
  • Despite the lack of booking and minimal attorney access at Homan Square, it is not a facility for detaining and interrogating the most violent of Chicago’s criminals. Drug possession charges were eventually levied in 5,386 of the disclosed Homan Square arrests, or 74.9%; heroin accounted for 35.4% of those, with marijuana next at 22.3%. The facility’s use by police has intensified in recent years. Nearly 65% of documented Homan Square arrests since August 2004 took place in the five years since Rahm Emanuel, formerly Barack Obama’s top aide, became mayor. (The Guardian has filed a Foia request with Emanuel’s office to disclose the extent of its involvement in Homan Square.) The 68 documented attorney visits are actually slightly higher, statistically speaking, than the extremely minimal legal access Chicago police provide suspects in custody during the initial stages of their arrest. The 2014 citywide total at declared police stations, according to First Defense Legal Aid, was 0.3%. On face value, the lawyer visit rate at Homan Square, according to the newly disclosed documents, was 0.9% over nearly 11 years.
  • Twenty-two people have told the Guardian that Chicago police kept them at Homan Square for hours and even days. They describe pressure from officers to become informants, and all but two – both white – have said the police denied them phone calls to alert relatives or attorneys of their whereabouts. Their accounts point to violations of police directives, which say police must “complete the booking process” regardless of their interest in interrogating a suspect and must also “allow the arrestee to make a reasonable number of telephone calls to an attorney, family member or friend”, usually within “the first hour” of detention. The most recent disclosure of Homan Square data provides the scale behind those accounts: the demographic trends within the 7,185 disclosed arrests at the warehouse are now far more vast than what the Guardian reported in August after launching the transparency lawsuit – but are consistently disproportionate in terms of race and constitutional access to legal counsel. 82.2% of people detained at Homan Square were black, compared with 32.9% of the Chicago population.
  • Chicago attorneys say they are not routinely turned away from police precinct houses, as they are at Homan Square. The warehouse is also unique in not generating public records of someone’s detention there, permitting police to effectively hide detainees from their attorneys. “Try finding a phone number for Homan to see if anyone’s there. You can’t, ever,” said Gaeger. “If you’re laboring under the assumption that your client’s at Homan, there really isn’t much you can do as a lawyer. You’re shut out. It’s guarded like a military installation.”
  • “Often,” Futterman continued, “prisoners aren’t entered into the central booking system until they’re being processed – which doesn’t occur at Homan Square. They’re supposed to begin that processing right away, under CPD procedures, and at Homan Square the reality is, that isn’t happening or is happening sporadically and inconsistently, which leads to the whole find-your-client game.”
  • According to police, when they took a woman the Guardian will identify as Chevoughn to Homan Square in May 2007 regarding a theft, they allowed her attorney to see her. Chevoughn says that never happened. “I was there a very long time, maybe eight to 10 hours,” said Chevoughn, who remembered being “petrified”, particularly as police questioned her in what she calls a “cage”. “I went to Harrison and Kedzie,” Chevoughn said, referring to the cross streets of central booking. “That’s where I slept. It’s where they did fingerprinting, all that crap. That’s when my attorney came.”
  • Police arrested another man, whom the Guardian will call Anthony, in 2006 on charges of starting a garbage fire, and moved him to Homan Square. Police identified him as receiving an attorney there. But Anthony told the Guardian: “That’s not true.”
  • Paul Merrell on 20 Oct 15
     
    It's good to see The Guardian following through on this story.
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Are The Middle East Wars Really About Forcing the World Into Dollars and Private Centra... - 0 views

www.washingtonsblog.com/...d-private-central-banking.html banksters dollar reserve currrencies Libya Iran Africa Gadafhi
shared by Paul Merrell on 23 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • Why is the U.S. targeting Iran’s central bank? Well, multi-billionaire Hugo Salinas Price told King World News: What happened to Mr. Gaddafi, many speculate the real reason he was ousted was that he was planning an all-African currency for conducting trade. The same thing happened to him that happened to Saddam because the US doesn’t want any solid competing currency out there vs the dollar. You know Gaddafi was talking about a gold dinar. And as I noted in August: Ellen Brown argues in the Asia Times that there were even deeper reasons for the war than gold, oil or middle eastern regime change. Brown argues that Libya – like Iraq under Hussein – challenged the supremacy of the dollar and the Western banks: Later, the same general said they planned to take out seven countries in five years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran. What do these seven countries have in common? In the context of banking, one that sticks out is that none of them is listed among the 56 member banks of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). That evidently puts them outside the long regulatory arm of the central bankers’ central bank in Switzerland.
  • The most renegade of the lot could be Libya and Iraq, the two that have actually been attacked. Kenneth Schortgen Jr, writing on Examiner.com, noted that “[s]ix months before the US moved into Iraq to take down Saddam Hussein, the oil nation had made the move to accept euros instead of dollars for oil, and this became a threat to the global dominance of the dollar as the reserve currency, and its dominion as the petrodollar.” According to a Russian article titled “Bombing of Libya – Punishment for Ghaddafi for His Attempt to Refuse US Dollar”, Gaddafi made a similarly bold move: he initiated a movement to refuse the dollar and the euro, and called on Arab and African nations to use a new currency instead, the gold dinar. Gaddafi suggested establishing a united African continent, with its 200 million people using this single currency. *** And that brings us back to the puzzle of the Libyan central bank. In an article posted on the Market Oracle, Eric Encina observed:
  • One seldom mentioned fact by western politicians and media pundits: the Central Bank of Libya is 100% State Owned … Currently, the Libyan government creates its own money, the Libyan Dinar, through the facilities of its own central bank. Few can argue that Libya is a sovereign nation with its own great resources, able to sustain its own economic destiny. One major problem for globalist banking cartels is that in order to do business with Libya, they must go through the Libyan Central Bank and its national currency, a place where they have absolutely zero dominion or power-broking ability. Hence, taking down the Central Bank of Libya (CBL) may not appear in the speeches of Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy but this is certainly at the top of the globalist agenda for absorbing Libya into its hive of compliant nations.
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  • Adding credence to the theory about why Gadhafi had to be overthrown, as The New American reported in March, was the rebels’ odd decision to create a central bank to replace Gadhafi’s state-owned monetary authority. The decision was broadcast to the world in the early weeks of the conflict. In a statement describing a March 19 meeting, the rebel council announced, among other things, the creation of a new oil company. And more importantly: “Designation of the Central Bank of Benghazi as a monetary authority competent in monetary policies in Libya and appointment of a Governor to the Central Bank of Libya, with a temporary headquarters in Benghazi.” The creation of a new central bank, even more so than the new national oil regime, left analysts scratching their heads. “I have never before heard of a central bank being created in just a matter of weeks out of a popular uprising,” noted Robert Wenzel in an analysis for the Economic Policy Journal. “This suggests we have a bit more than a rag tag bunch of rebels running around and that there are some pretty sophisticated influences,” he added. Wenzel also noted that the uprising looked like a “major oil and money play, with the true disaffected rebels being used as puppets and cover” while the transfer of control over money and oil supplies takes place.
  • Similar scenarios involving the global monetary system — based on the U.S. dollar as a global reserve currency, backed by the fact that oil is traded in American money — have also been associated with other targets of the U.S. government. Some analysts even say a pattern is developing. Iran, for example, is one of the few nations left in the world with a state-owned central bank. And Iraqi despot Saddam Hussein, once armed by the U.S. government to make war on Iran, was threatening to start selling oil in currencies other than the dollar just prior to the Bush administration’s “regime change” mission. While most of the establishment press in America has been silent on the issue of Gadhafi’s gold dinar scheme, in Russia, China, and the global alternative media, the theory has exploded in popularity.
  • Posted on January 13, 2012 by WashingtonsBlog The Reason for the Wars in the Middle East and North Africa:  Dollars The Middle Eastern and North African wars – planned 20 years ago – don’t necessarily have much to do with fighting terrorism. See this,  this and this. They are, in reality, about oil. And protecting Israel (and read the section entitled “Securing the Realm” here). But as AFP reports today, there is another major motivation for the expanding wars: The latest round of American sanctions are aimed at shutting down Iran’s central bank, a senior US official said Thursday, spelling out that intention directly for the first time. “We do need to close down the Central Bank of Iran (CBI),” the official told reporters on condition of anonymity, while adding that the United States is moving quickly to implement the sanctions, signed into law last month. *** Foreign central banks that deal with the Iranian central bank on oil transactions could also face similar restrictions under the new law, which has sparked fears of damage to US ties with nations like Russia and China. “If a correspondent bank of a US bank wants to do business with us and they’re doing business with CBI or other designated Iranian banks… then they’re going to get in trouble with us,” the US official said.
  • Paul Merrell on 23 Jun 14
     
    I only highlighted snippets. Lots more and lots of links. 
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Does Trump Trump? Angelo Codevilla on Our Present Moment | Power Line - 1 views

www.powerlineblog.com/...illa-on-our-present-moment.php Angelo-Codevilla Trump ruling-class-elites
shared by Gary Edwards on 29 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • Angelo Codevilla is a former staff member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, professor emeritus of international relations at Boston University, and the author of more than a dozen fine books on politics, arms control, and intelligence (if I had to pick a favorite it might be The Character of Nations), including a fine translation of Machiavelli’s Prince published by Yale University Press. Most recently his essay-turned-book The Ruling Class: How They Corrupted America and What We Can Do About It caught the attention of Rush Limbaugh and many others. It argues that our fundamental political problem is not “big government,” but the creation of a ruling class, inhabiting both parties, that is steadily increasing its authoritarian control over the nation. In a conversation a few months ago Angelo remarked, “The 2016 election is simple; the person who runs on the platform ‘Who do they think they are?’ will win.”
  • Donald Trump leapt atop other contenders for the Republican presidential nomination when he acted on the primordial fact in American public life today, from which most of the others hide their eyes, namely: most Americans distrust, fear, are sick and tired of, the elected, appointed, and bureaucratic officials who rule over us, as well as their cronies in the corporate, media, and academic world.
  • Trump’s attraction lies less in his words’ grace or even precision than in the extent to which Americans are searching for someone, anyone, to lead against this ruling class, that is making America less prosperous, less free, and more dangerous.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • three fifths of Democratic voters approve the conduct of their officials, only about one fifth of Republican voters approve what theirs do.
  • Moreover, Americans are becoming increasingly skeptical about their celebrities’ integrity. With good reason. McCain is just a minor example of a phenomenon that characterizes our ruling class: reputations built on lies and cover-ups, lives of myth protected by mutual forbearance, by complicitous journalists, or by records deep-sixed, including in in government archives.
  • As they lord it over us, they live lives that cannot stand scrutiny.
  • The point here is simple: our ruling class has succeeded in ruling not by reason or persuasion, never mind integrity, but by occupying society’s commanding heights, by imposing itself and its ever-changing appetites on the rest of us. It has coopted or intimidated potential opponents by denying the legitimacy of opposition. Donald Trump, haplessness and clownishness notwithstanding, has shown how easily this regime may be threatened just by refusing to be intimidated.
  • At increasing speed, our ruling class has created “protected classes” of Americans defined by race, sex, age, disability, origin, religion, and now homosexuality, whose members have privileges that outsider do not. By so doing, they have shattered the principle of equality – the bedrock of the rule of law. Ruling class insiders use these officious classifications to harass their socio-political opponents. An unintimidated statesman would ask: Why should not all “classes” be equally protected? Does the rule of law even admit of “classes”? Does not the 14th amendment promise “the equal protection of the laws” to all alike? He would note that when the government sets aside written law in favor of what the powerful want, it thereby absolves citizens any obligation to obey government.
  • Gary Edwards on 29 Jul 15
     
    "Does Trump trump? By Angelo M. Codevilla "In the land of the blind," so goes the saying, "the one-eyed man is king." Donald Trump leapt atop other contenders for the Republican presidential nomination when he acted on the primordial fact in American public life today, from which most of the others hide their eyes, namely: most Americans distrust, fear, are sick and tired of, the elected, appointed, and bureaucratic officials who rule over us, as well as their cronies in the corporate, media, and academic world. Trump's attraction lies less in his words' grace or even precision than in the extent to which Americans are searching for someone, anyone, to lead against this ruling class, that is making America less prosperous, less free, and more dangerous. Trump's rise reminds this class's members that they sit atop a rumbling volcano of rejection. Republicans and Democrats hope to exorcise its explosion by telling the public that Trump's remarks on immigration and on the character of fellow member John McCain (without bothering to try showing that he errs on substance), place him outside the boundaries of their polite society. Thus do they throw Br'er Rabbit into the proverbial briar patch. Now what? The continued rise in Trump's poll numbers reminds all that Ross Perot - in an era that was far more tolerant of the Establishment than is ours - outdistanced both Bush 41 and Bill Clinton before self-destructing, just by speaking ill of both parties before he self destructed. Republicans brahmins have the greater reason to fear. Whereas some three fifths of Democratic voters approve the conduct of their officials, only about one fifth of Republican voters approve what theirs do. If Americans in general are primed for revolt, Republican (and independent) voters fairly thirst for it. Trump's barest hints about what he opposes (never mind proposes) regarding just a few items on the public agenda have had such effect because they accord with
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Clinton Email Hints that Oil and Gold Were Behind Regime Change In Libya Washington's Blog - 0 views

www.washingtonsblog.com/...ehind-regime-change-libya.html war & peace Libya Hillary Gadafi gold-dinar petrodollar banksters
shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • On New Year’s Eve, 3,000 emails from Hillary Clinton’s private email server were released. One of them confirms – an email dated April 2, 2011 to Clinton from her close confidante Sidney Blumenthal – that: Qaddafi’s government holds 143 tons of gold, and a similar amount in silver. *** This gold was accumulated prior to the current rebellion and was intended to be used to establish a pan-African currency based on the Libyan golden Dinar. This plan was designed to provide the Francophone African Countries with an alternative to the French. franc (CFA).
  • (Source Comment [This is in the original declassified email, and is not a comment added by us]: According to knowledgeable individuals this quantity of gold and silver is valued at more than $7 billion. French intelligence officers discovered this plan shortly after the current rebellion began, and this was one of the factors that influenced President Nicolas Sarkozy’s decision to commit France to the attack on Libya. According to these individuals Sarkozy’s plans are driven by the following issues: A desire to gain a greater share of Libya oil production, Increase French influence in North Africa, Improve his internal political situation in France, Provide the French military with an opportunity to reassert its position in the world, Address the concern of his advisors over Qaddafi’s long term plans to supplant France as the dominant power in Francophone Africa) This may confirm what some of us have been saying for years.
  • Paul Merrell on 12 Jan 16
     
    Time to check in again with that first link in the last sentence, then recall: [i] that series in the Washington Times on Hillary ignoring the intelligence reports saying that Libyan government forces were not in fact massacring civilians; [ii] the interview with the guy who was the source of the "massacre" reports admitting that his only source of information on the massacres he claimed were taking place had been provided by the Libyan "rebels;" [iii] the reported role of the French government, the CIA, and future Dept. of State Ambassador Stevens (killed in Benghazi post-coup) in launching the rebellion with mercenaries provided by Qatar; [iv] Hillary suckering the Russians into not vetoing the Security Council resolution authorizing a no-fly zone over Libya; [v] the U.S. and allies promptly exceeding that authority to serve as the mercenaries' air force in accomplishing regime change; [vi] Gadafi's death after being repeatedly sodomized with a knife; and [vii] Hillary's cackling, "we came, we saw, he died" video. That's what happens if you try to establish gold as Africa's currency. The western banksters don't like that. May the fleas of a thousand camels infest each of their armpits.   
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"Thank God This Is Happening": Russia Says Time Has Come To Ditch The Dollar | Zero Hedge - 0 views

www.zerohedge.com/...ays-time-has-come-ditch-dollar war & peace economic-warfare de-dollarization Russia Turkey Iran China
shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Aug 18 - No Cached
  • With the US unveiling a new set of sanctions against Russia on Friday, Moscow said it would definitely respond to Washington’s latest sanctions and, in particular, it is accelerating efforts to abandon the American currency in trade transactions, said Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov. "The time has come when we need to go from words to actions, and get rid of the dollar as a means of mutual settlements, and look for other alternatives," he said in an interview with International Affairs magazine, quoted by RT. "Thank God, this is happening, and we will speed up this work,” Ryabkov said, explaining the move would come in addition to other “retaliatory measures” as a response to a growing list of US sanctions. Previously, Russian Energy Minister Aleksandr Novak said that a growing number of countries are interested in replacing the dollar as a medium in global oil trades and other transactions. “There is a common understanding that we need to move towards the use of national currencies in our settlements. There is a need for this, as well as the wish of the parties,” Novak said.
  • According to the minister, it concerns both Turkey and Iran, with more countries likely to join the growing dedollarization wave. “We are considering an option of payment in national currencies with them. This requires certain adjustments in the financial, economic, and banking sectors” to accomplish. Last week, we reported that the Kremlin was interested in trading with Ankara using the Russian ruble and the Turkish lira. India has also vowed to pay for Iranian oil in rupees. Meanwhile, the world’s second-largest economy and Washington's trade war nemesis, China, has been taking steps to challenge the greenback's dominance with the launch of an oil futures contract backed by Chinese currency, the petro-yuan. China and Iran have already agreed to stop using the dollar in global trade as China has ramped up purchases of Iranian oil in defiance of US sanctions.
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