TBR News February 3, 2016
The Voice of the White House
Washington, D.C. February 3, 2016: ”There is an extensive file on the activities of Edward Snowden floating around on the deep internet that is absolutely fascinating to read…at least for those who have read it. It is the sort of report that ought to see wider distribution. It does not denigrate Snowden but it certainly does not speak well of his one-time employers. From a pragmatic point of view, it is not wise for an intelligence agency to hire an idealist.”
Conversations with the Crow
On October 8th, 2000, Robert Trumbull Crowley, once a leader of the CIA’s Clandestine Operations Division, died in a Washington hospital of heart failure and the end effects of Alzheimer’s Disease. Before the late Assistant Director Crowley was cold, Joseph Trento, a writer of light-weight books on the CIA, descended on Crowley’s widow at her town house on Cathedral Hill Drive in Washington and hauled away over fifty boxes of Crowley’s CIA files.
Once Trento had his new find secure in his house in Front Royal , Virginia, he called a well-known Washington fix lawyer with the news of his success in securing what the CIA had always considered to be a potential major embarrassment. Three months before, July 20th of that year, retired Marine Corps colonel William R. Corson, and an associate of Crowley, died of emphysema and lung cancer at a hospital in Bethesda, Md. After Corson’s death, Trento and his Washington lawyer went to Corson’s bank, got into his safe deposit box and removed a manuscript entitled ‘Zipper.’ This manuscript, which dealt with Crowley’s involvement in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, vanished into a CIA burn-bag and the matter was considered to be closed forever
After Crowley’s death and Trento’s raid on the Crowley files, huge gaps were subsequently discovered by horrified CIA officials and when Crowley’s friends mentioned Gregory Douglas, it was discovered that Crowley’s son had shipped two large boxes to Douglas. No one knew their contents but because Douglas was viewed as an uncontrollable loose cannon who had done considerable damage to the CIA’s reputation by his on-going publication of the history of Gestapo-Mueller, they bent every effort both to identify the missing files and make some effort to retrieve them before Douglas made any use of them.
Douglas had been in close contact with Crowley and had long phone conversatins with him. He found this so interesting and informative that he taped and later transcribed them.
These conversations have been published in a book: ‘Conversations with the Crow” and this is an excerpt.
Conversation No. 24
Date: Wednesday, July 17, 1996
Commenced: 9:20 AM CST
Concluded: !0:11 AM CST
RTC: Good day, Gregory.
GD: And a good day to you, too. How are you doing? RTC: A decent day today. And you?
GD: Busy with the new Mueller book.
RTC: Anything of interest to me? GD: No, probably not at this point. I am working on the real origins of the Second World War at this point. Not the he-said or they-said fictional crap and pap but the real meat. Taylor1 covered much of this in his book on the subject but there is more. I discuss the threat of Poland in 1932 to physically invade Germany if Hitler were not silenced. They moved troops to the borders but the threats gradually subsided. Hitler, on the other hand, did not forget this. And Beck, their foreign minister, was an idiot and could easily have diverted the German threat of aggression. But I look more into the economic aspect of the war. Germany lost all her gold reserves after the war because she had to pay everyone in sight for a war she did not start. Then the western states kept the corrupt Weimar government afloat with short-term and high-interest loans. Weimar was corrupt and degenerate but Germany was a great producer of saleable goods so she was encouraged to work more. All of this post-Wilsonian manipulation was directly responsible for the conditions that allowed Hitler to assume power. There were two things he did that assured eventual war with England and the United States. One, he instituted the barter system whereby Germany would trade, let us say, new locomotives to the Argentine in exchange for their beef and wheat. Normally, Germany would have gone to the London banking houses for a loan, high interest of course. Or the Argentine people would have done the same. The barter system completely bypassed them and they stood to lose billions of pounds thereby. And, do not forget, that the British bankers were almost all Jewish and there was on-gong anti-Semitism in Germany. It wasn’t Hitler’s aim, postwar bullshit pseudo-historians to the contrary, to kill off all the Jews. He only wanted to root them out of German society and force them to emigrate.
RTC: But to where? No one wanted any of them. Jews are not liked, you know.
GD: Nor trusted. Müller set up training schools so that Jews could learn farming and go to Palestine. Wonderful! The Arabs howled and so did the British. They did not want Jews there at all. Diplomatic representations were made and Ribbentrop ran to Hitler so the useful project was stopped. Then, Mueller told me he chartered the SS. St. Louis to take 900 Jews to Havana. Everything OK except that when Roosevelt found out about this, he forced the Cubans to cancel their landing permits. Isn’t that wonderful of him? And Roosevelt and Breckenridge Long did everything they could to keep Jewish Germans out of the country. Even little children. And parenthetically, note that in 1941, Roosevelt seized over two hundred million dollars in Jewish assets in this country and kept them. Never gave a penny back either. His son got some of it. Oh, all in the archives but believe me, Robert, not a word then, now or ever in our press. Can’t do that. It was all the evil Hitler, not Roosevelt.
RTC: You say that if Hitler were not such an anti-Semite, there might not have been a war? GD: Hitler was institutionally anti-Semitic, Robert. You see, the Germans had always gotten along with their Jews who had been in the country for a long time. No, after Pilsudski, the same one who threatened to invade Germany in ’32, came to power in Poland, he forced out huge numbers of Polish Jews, most of whom fled either to Germany or the United States. The German Jews were Sephardic, Semitic and cultured but the Polish Jews were Khazars, Mongoloid Turks, brutal, nasty and detested by both the Polish and the Imperial Russians. I have met a few in situ and believe me, they are all vicious swine. So, they flooded into a prostrate Germany in the early ‘20s and stole everything they could. By the way, these so called eastern Jews were detested by the German ones. But these were the Jews that enraged their German hosts and brought down the active persecutions and expulsions. Interesting to note that after the war when many of the Polish Jews were released from the detention camps, they tried to go back to Poland where they were promptly subjected to pogroms and wholesale death. No, they then went to Israel where they make up most of the population and now practice their filthiness on the defenseless Arabs. But that’s off the topic here. It was Hitler’s attitude towards the Jews coupled with the potentially lethal barter system that spelled his doom. The Jewish bankers both in Britain and here got together and started a huge propaganda campaign against the Germans and egged both Roosevelt and Churchill into making trouble.
RTC: But Churchill was not in power in the late ‘30s.
GD: I know but he had influence and wrote for the press. These bankers hired Winnie to front for them and whore that he was, he went right along with them. You can find some of this in Fuller and the rest in other unnoticed publications but it’s all there. Marx was right when he discussed the economic backgrounds to major wars. Yes, Robert, make room for General Fuller in your library and you will have a much clearer view. Of course none of this will ever get into the American press because guess who owns it? RTC: I well know, Gregory. But they work with us and I see no Don Quixote-like necessity to cut my own throat or that of the Company. The Jews have a great power in this country now and one does not attack them; one works with them if you take my drift.
GD: Oh, I understand fully. Do you like them, Robert?
RTC: Evil little rats, Gregory, treacherous, envious and dangerous in the extreme. I know this sounds terrible but even though I am well aware that Hitler never gassed them, he should have. All of them and then there would be peace. There will never be peace in the Middle East unless and until Israel grabs up all the useful Arab lands and expels them from the area the way they were expelled from Poland and Germany. Remember, Gregory, that the abused child becomes the abusing parent. Send me the references on Fuller and I will send you a stack of papers on this subject. And if you choose to use them, for the Lord God’s sake, keep me out of it. The Jews would make my life miserable here.
GD: I know. They would insert a newly discovered chapter into the fake Ann Frank diaries all about you visiting Holland during the war and shoving plump Jewish babies into bonfires. By the way, all seriousness aside, I have discovered rare documents that at least partially supports the silly Holocaust stories. Would I bore you?
RTC: No, certainly not.
GD: In April of 1943, all the Jews of Europe were transported to Berlin and when there, were jammed into the Alexander Platz in Berlin. At the stroke of noon on April 20th, his birthday, Hitler came out onto his balcony and addressed an immense crowd of German Girl Scouts and school children. A cannon was fired and this huge army of girls, all armed with weenie forks, charged into the Alexander Platz and butchered at least thirty million screaming Jews. My God, the Swedish Ambassador wrote that huge raging rivers of blood roared down the Berlin streets, swamping cars and drowning thousands of Berliners before running into the Spee and Havel rivers. Ah, Robert, the truth is worse than the fictions. And the SS and Postal Employees barbecued the remains, after removing interesting tattoos for the lampshade makers, and Berlin feasted for weeks afterwards.
RTC: (Loud and prolonged laughter) Gregory, you are really a terrible person. You will kill me with these stories. No, I know it isn’t true. I mean I knew that when you mentioned the Postal employees. If you ever told that story to a Jew, he would either beat you to death with his purse or literally explode with anger. Do tell that to Tom Kimmel, why don’t you? I would love to hear him when he rang me up, babbling about how psychotic you are. Or, better still, why not tell it to Wolfe?
GD: Oh, I think not. Bob is very old and getting senile and he might just melt down like the Wicked Witch of the West, leaving only a pair of sodden dignity pants and a beanie behind. No, I just thought you would like to hear what that nut Irving calls the Real Truth for once.
RTC: Well, such a nice history, lesson Gregory. The Hebrews should be happy you have a limited audience or they might get agitated.
GD: Pascal once said that to destroy a man, make a fool out of him. Humor is a great weapon and as I have said before when I tell my little stories, always look for the truth in the jest!
(Concluded at 10 :11 AM CST)
Family of Oregon occupier shot by law enforcement alleges cover-up
February 2, 2016
by Shelby Sebens
Reuters
PORTLAND, Ore.Relatives of a man shot dead by law enforcement officers after taking part in the armed occupation of a U.S. wildlife refuge in Oregon have accused the FBI and state police of covering up the circumstances of his death last week.
In a statement issued on Tuesday, family of Robert “LaVoy” Finicum called the shooting “unjustified” and said the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Oregon State Police were “seeking to manipulate and mislead the media and the American public about what really happened.”
The FBI declined to comment beyond directing attention to an aerial video of last Tuesday’s shooting that it released two days later and posted online.
The agency has contended the video shows Fincium outside his truck making a move for a gun in his coat pocket as he was shot to death by state police. The confrontation occurred on a snow-covered roadside after Finicum and others were stopped by police en route from the refuge to the town of John Day, Oregon, where they had planned to speak.
Finicum’s relatives said they believe officers opened fire before he left his truck, and that he was shot before he lowered his hands in what they said was a reflex to being shot.
They demanded release of any footage that may have been recorded by police body cameras or dashboard cameras, any audio recordings relating to the shooting, and close-up images of Finicum’s truck.
A statement on Tuesday from the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office that said it was leading an investigation into the shooting. State police did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Finicum, 54, a spokesman for the group that seized buildings at the remote Malheur National Wildlife Refuge on Jan. 2, was shot dead shortly after the arrest of protest organizers Ammon Bundy and Ryan Bundy and several others.The deadly encounter unfolded moments after Finicum sped away from law enforcement officers who had just taken the Bundy brothers into custody, then tried to run a police roadblock, plowing into a snowbank and narrowly missing an FBI agent.
Finicum can be seen raising his hands as he emerged from his vehicle, then turning as he apparently flails his arms and then falls to the ground, but his precise movements are difficult to discern from the video.
In their statement, his relatives said they had reached their conclusions about the shooting after speaking with Shawna Cox, who they said was in Finicum’s vehicle and was arrested at the shooting scene.
Cox was released from custody by a Portland judge on Friday to await trial on a charge of conspiracy to impede federal officers.
(Reporting by Shelby Sebens in Portland, Additional reporting by Sharon Bernstein in Sacramento, Writing by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Steve Gorman, Toni Reinhold)
Arrested Oregon militiamen have had extensive previous run-ins with the law
Eleven men charged in Malheur occupation have criminal histories involving domestic violence, illegal firearm possession and terrorist threats
February 2, 2016
by Sam Levin
The Guardian
The arrested militiamen of the Oregon refuge occupation have had extensive previous run-ins with the law – and a history of anti-government protests that federal officials are now using against them in court.
In recent filings in federal court in Portland, prosecutors have detailed the criminal histories of the 11 people facing felony charges for their involvement in the armed occupation of the Malheur national wildlife refuge, which began 2 January and continues to drag on this week with no end in sight.
The men’s rap sheets include cases of domestic violence, illegal firearm possession, terrorist threats, resisting arrest and drug crimes, according to the court records.
Last Tuesday, militia leader Ammon Bundy was arrested on a remote highway in rural Harney County, occupation spokesperson LaVoy Finicum was shot and killed by police and a number of high-profile participants in the rightwing standoff were taken into custody.
The protesters, who say they seized government buildings to protest federal regulations of public lands, now face charges of impeding federal officers from discharging official duties, which could carry prison sentences of up to six years.
Last week, US magistrate Stacie Beckerman ordered Ammon, his brother Ryan Bundy and three others to remain in custody without bail.
Some of the men, including Ammon, have appealed the bail denials, and a series of new detention hearings are scheduled this week starting Tuesday.
Prosecutors have cited many of their past offenses, arguing that it would be too dangerous to release them while the case moves forward.
Jason Patrick, a 43-year-old Georgia resident and one of the last holdouts at the refuge, faced charges in August 2014 of “making terrorist threats” after he “threatened to kill everyone” inside a Georgia municipal court building, according to prosecutors.
Patrick posted bond in that case and was released, but agreed not to possess weapons – a condition that he has since violated. He was photographed with guns during the occupation, prosecutors noted.
Joseph O’Shaughnessy, a 45-year-old Arizona resident now facing charges for his role in the occupation, has previously been arrested for disorderly conduct, domestic violence and drug offenses, according to court records. O’Shaughnessy has argued that he was not a member of the militia, but was trying to keep the peace at the refuge.
Brian Cavalier, a 44-year-old Nevada man, has a series of felony convictions that restrict his access to firearms but has nonetheless consistently possessed weapons, prosecutors said. He often referred to himself as Ammon Bundy’s bodyguard.
Duane Ehmer, the Oregon occupier frequently photographed with his horse at the refuge, is a convicted felon banned from possessing firearms – but he, too, was carrying a pistol when he was arrested last week, according to the records. Prosecutors said he also recently posted a photo on Facebook with the threatening caption: “The only way to win a war is to kill enough of the enemy that they do not want to fight anymore.”
After he was arrested last week, Ryan Payne, a 32-year-old Montana man, “claimed to have an absolute duty to prevent the federal government from continuing to manage lands” and “claimed a right to use force to oppose an unlawful arrest”, prosecutors said. He has also repeatedly been involved in armed efforts to oppose the federal government, according to records.
Pete Santilli, the conservative radio host who live-streamed the occupation until his arrest, previously bragged on YouTube about refusing to turn in his guns in violation of a restraining order filed against him. Santilli, who is a vocal supporter of the Bundys, has argued that he was a journalist covering the protests.
Ryan Bundy was convicted of obstructing police in 2008 and again interfered with an arresting officer in 2015, prosecutors wrote in the filings. In the latter case, he reportedly had to be restrained by three court bailiffs attempting to take him into custody on a failure-to-appear warrant.
In arguing against bail for Ammon Bundy, prosecutors cited his repeated social media statements decrying the federal government and his resolve to fight.
Officials on Friday did agree to release Shawna Cox, the one woman arrested at the occupation. She has to wear an ankle bracelet.
Relatives of the jailed Bundys said they had little faith the court proceedings in Portland would be fair or that the judge would grant the men bail.
“You’re not going to get any justice in a federal court,” said Carol Bundy, wife of Cliven Bundy, the Nevada rancher who led the 2014 standoff with the government and on Monday called on the Oregon occupiers to stand their ground.
“They have unlimited power, or they feel that they do,” she continued. “You go in their court with their law and their judges … There will be no justice in there.”
Although Ammon Bundy has said from jail that it is time to continue the fight in the courtroom, his sister Bailey Logue, 24, said she wasn’t confident that a court battle would accomplish much in the Bundys’ fight against federal overreach. “We have to win it out here. If it could’ve been won in the courts, we wouldn’t be here.”
Thousands of refugee children simply disappear
They cross deserts and brave oceans to escape war, only to disappear without a trace in Europe – including in Germany, a prime destination for refugees. How can thousands of refugee children simply drop off the radar?
February 2, 2016
DW
Authorities handling Europe’s refugee crisis have lost track of about 10,000 unaccompanied minors – a conservative estimate – according to the European Union’s Europol police agency. One out of two disappeared once they had entered Italy, which is the first stop on European soil for many.
Inconceivable, says Germany’s SOS Children’s Villages aid organization.
It’s a shameful state of affairs, the group’s press spokesman Louay Yassin told DW. “The entire refugee situation is shameful – it’s not a refugee crisis at all, but a European political crisis.”
According to Germany’s Federal Association for Unaccompanied Minor Refugees (BumF), the country saw 35,000 to 40,000 new unaccompanied minors in 2015, mainly from Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Eritrea and Somalia.
Of those, an estimated 15 to 25 percent have disappeared. “The fact that the young people vanish – and they usually disappear within the first four weeks after arrival – has become normal, no one really asks after them,” says the association’s Nils Espenhorst.
Missing in Europe
The police will search for a vanished young refugee with the same intensity as “searching for a stolen bicycle,” he told DW.
In particular because youths traveling alone are so vulnerable, the figures are worrying, he says, adding that the number of unreported cases is presumably much higher.
There is little information on what happens to the children once they have vanished. They might just be continuing their journey to relatives or other contacts in northern Europe. No one knows whether they ever reach their destination.
There are, however, fears that organized crime rings are exploiting young refugees, forcing them into prostitution, begging, pornography, or other criminal activities.
Structural, logistical problems
In Germany, many are thought to disappear simply because they don’t like the place where they have been assigned. Others go underground before they turn 18 because they are worried they won’t be granted asylum.
The German Federal Criminal Office (BKA) lists 4,718 refugee minors unaccounted for by the start of the New Year on January 1. Less than ten percent are children, the others are teenagers aged 14 to 17. The data is based on missing persons’ reports filed with the police by parents, social workers and refugee shelters. The BKA stresses the likelihood that children were reported missing more than once.
Experts agree Germany may have created an additional problem by allocating youths away from the overburdened cities to rural areas much less attractive to young people.
Dodging official statistics
So they just up and leave again or join relatives elsewhere, says Claudia Kepp, press spokeswoman of the Save the Children aid organization. “A refugee shelter is after all no prison,” she told DW.
The Europol figures are deeply worrying, Kepp warns. “They show the huge gaps concerning child protection along the entire refugee route to Europe.”
Child protection for young refugees in Germany is insufficient, say both Kepp and Espenhost, who criticizes that Germany has yet to implement recommended EU guidelines on human trafficking, “developed in order to provide practical, rights-based policy guidance on prevention of human trafficking and the protection of the victims.”
How best to safeguard young people who took immensely risky journeys to reach safety in Europe?
Apart from registering the youths properly immediately upon arrival, fingerprints and all, Espenhorst says, “it’s of utmost importance to stabilize them emotionally and offer them prospects for the future.”
US debt hits record $19 trillion
February 3, 2016
RT
The United States federal debt has surpassed $19 trillion for the first time in history according to the Treasury Department. However, the real figure could exceed $65 trillion, according to a former US Comptroller General.
The official debt of $19 trillion represents almost $60,000 for every man, woman and child living in America today
President Barack Obama took office with $10.8 trillion debt that has grown more than $8 trillion in seven years. And such a record tempo is likely to continue, according to the Congressional Budget Office, quoted by the Washington Times.
This equals an additional $70,000 in net federal borrowing for each of the 117,480,000 American households, according to Census Bureau estimates.
About $13.7 trillion makes up public debt, and the rest comes from government borrowing.
The US currently functions without a debt ceiling. Legislation in November suspended it through March 2017 so borrowing can continue without a limit until that time.According to former Comptroller General of the United States [the director of the Government Accountability Office] David Walker, analysts understate the real extent of the US government’s financial commitments, which in reality exceed $65 trillion.
“You have to consider not just the public debt; you have to consider the debt we owe to the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, as well as the huge unfunded obligations for our social insurance programs. When you add all those numbers up, the number is over $65 trillion, rather than the lower numbers a lot of the economists want to talk about,” Walker, who served as the US’ top accountant in 1998-2008, told RT.
NSA merging anti-hacker team that fixes security holes with one that uses them
US spies will have to choose between keeping hackers out or acting like them to gather intelligence, going against recommendation of computer security experts
February 3, 2016
by Danny Yadron
The Guardian
A reorganization of America’s National Security Agency could increase pressure on US spies to choose between keeping hackers out – or acting like them to gather intelligence.
This week, the NSA is expected to announce an internal reshuffling that will merge its defensive and offensive cybersecurity missions, two former US officials said.
The defensive side, called the Information Assurance Directorate (IAD), works with private companies and government networks to plug security holes before they can be exploited in a cyberattack. The offensive side, called the Signals Intelligence Directorate, often seeks to leave such security holes unpatched so they can be used when they hack into foreign systems.
Merging the two departments goes against the recommendation of some computer security experts, technology executives and the Obama administration’s surveillance reform commission, all of which have argued that those two missions are inherently contradictory and need to be further separated.
The NSA could decide not tell a tech company to patch a security flaw, they argue, if it knows it could be used to hack into a targeted machine. This could leave consumers at risk.
NSA director admiral Michael Rogers has said a flatter structure is necessary to make the agency, which can get bogged down in military speak and red tape, more agile as foreign hackers become increasingly brazen. The US Office of Personnel Management announced in 2015 it was hit by a breach linked to China, and more recent attacks have included Iran-linked attacks on US critical infrastructure.
NSA hackers could probably work with its defenders on where to look for software flaws, or how to model enemy behavior, former US officials said.
“These core missions are critical as we position NSA to face complex and evolving threats to the nation,” an NSA spokesman said of the restructuring, described in an earlier report on 26 January by the Washington Post. “Out of respect for our workforce, we cannot comment on any details or speculation before the plan is announced.”
Still, several computer security experts and former intelligence officials acknowledged the new NSA may face additional tension in choosing between offense and defense. And, like in sport, offense is usually more alluring.
“When a lesser thing joins a greater thing there’s always the threat that the greater thing prevails,” said one former US official, who added he was supportive of NSA’s plans.
In its 2013 report to the White House, the President’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies suggested NSA’s IAD be broken out into its own agency.
“We are concerned that having IAD embedded in a foreign intelligence organization creates potential conflicts of interest,” it wrote. In 2014, one of computer security industry’s leaders, RSA executive chairman Art Coviello repeated these claims at the RSA Conference in San Francisco, the industry’s main trade show.
Coviello experienced the tension between the two sides of NSA during the last decade when his company adopted an encryption scheme backed by the defensive side of the agency. Years later, Reuters and others reported that type of encryption relied on a random number generator that could have been cracked by NSA hackers.
By going the other way, the NSA may make private companies – especially in Silicon Valley – less likely to work with the agency on defense. Former US officials supportive of the plan said any companies skeptical of the new structure probably already weren’t willing to work with NSA anyway.
Other former officials said the restructuring at Fort Meade just formalizes what was already happening there. After all, NSA’s hackers and defenders work side by side in the agency’s Threat Operations Center in southern Maryland.
“Sometimes you got to just own it,” said Dave Aitel, a former NSA researcher and now chief executive at the security company Immunity. “Actually, come to think of it, that’s a great new motto for them too.”
The Establishment’s Last Stand: The War Party holds on, but for how much longer
February 3, 2016
by Jason Raimondo
AntiWar
The good news for anti-interventionists out of Iowa is that Bernie Sanders has defied the conventional wisdom and effectively delayed the coronation of Hillary Rodham Clinton. In spite of a ramped up effort to isolate the Vermont socialist from the Democratic mainstream, Hillary is in for a bruising fight that will only get bloodier when Sanders smashes her in New Hampshire, as seems likely.
On the Republican side of the aisle, the news from Iowa is decidedly mixed. There are glad tidings in the fact that the two candidates not wholly-owned subsidiaries of the neocons came in first (Cruz) and second (Trump). Yet the unexpectedly strong third place finish by the War Twink Marco Rubio has the War Party celebrating. Not that we didn’t know Rubio was going to come in third all along: that’s what the polls told us, and they were right. Yet we were being primed in the run up to the actual balloting with the narrative that third place was actually a “victory” for the Cuban Bombshell. And we have the “mainstream” media chiming in with the usual neocon suspects when it comes to pushing this line.
Ideologically, Rubio is the perfect neocon vehicle. He is not only opposed to the Iran deal, he has also suggested war with Tehran is practically inevitable. He avers that we should’ve been arming the Syrian Islamist rebels from the very beginning, a view he shares with Hillary Clinton. He has run ads complaining that the US spies on Israel – but hasn’t said a word about extensive Israeli spying on the US. He wants to add $1 trillion to the military budget: he wants to shoot down Russian aircraft over Syria and confront Moscow in Ukraine. And his dog whistle to the neocons is his campaign theme: he touts “a new American century,” limning the battle-flag of the old Project for a New American Century that did so much to give us the invasion of Iraq.
The Rubio campaign, in essence, is the GOP Establishment’s last stand against the roiling tides of populist backlash that threaten to bring it down. Which is why the donor class is rapidly moving into Rubio’s camp. The Cruz campaign is an attempt to straddle the fence: while the Canadian-born Senator has been critical of the neocons, he’s such a consummate opportunist that he isn’t above placating them as long as he gains some political benefit. And his foreign policy stance contains elements of neoconservatism, as well as a somewhat attenuated realism. Trump, as this perceptive piece on his foreign policy team makes clear, is an unambiguous realist, which is why the neocons have pulled out all the stops in their effort to derail the Trump Train.
Lost in the shuffle, unfortunately, is the long shot campaign of Sen. Rand Paul, who hoped to utilize the libertarian network in the GOP built up by his father. Having squandered that legacy by pandering to the neocons, coming up with a Cruz-esque “conservative realism” to stand in for libertarian anti-interventionism, and being a little too clever for his own good, Sen. Paul cut the ground out from under his own feet. Which just goes to show that “pragmatism” isn’t all that pragmatic. The Rand Paul campaign wound up being co-opted by Cruz, who made an open – and seemingly successful – bid for the Paulian base. The sort of snobbery and cultural leftism rife among libertarians who disdain populism as a matter of “principle” ensured that those former Ron Paul voters not scarfed up by Cruz would defect to Trump.
It’s theoretically possible that Paul, having learned his lesson and gone back to his “radical” roots, could rebound in New Hampshire – but I wouldn’t bet the farm on it.
The lesson to be learned here is identical to the one members of the Libertarian Party were taught in 1980, when LP candidate Ed Clark, backed by Koch money, announced that libertarianism is the equivalent of “low-tax liberalism.” As Murray Rothbard put it at the time: “And they didn’t even get the votes!”
On the Democratic side of the equation, the populist insurrection against the Establishment scored a stunning victory in Iowa. In spite of a number of dicey Clintonesque incidents – thanks to some very questionable shenanigans, the real results may never be known – the Sanders team managed to fight the Clintonians to a draw. That is a huge blow to Queen Hillary’s coronation plans. She is looking at a looming defeat of major proportions in New Hampshire – that is if the poll numbers hold – and what two major beatings prefigure on Super Tuesday is anybody’s guess.
So far the Sanders campaign has gone easy on Hillary, with the candidate declaring his indifference to the email scandal – in spite of the fact that whistleblowers have suffered grievously for what she appears to be getting away with – and stupidly insisting on running a “positive” campaign. Some observers, this one included, have seen this as evidence that the Sanders campaign, instead of being a genuine rebellion, is in fact a means for the Clintonians to herd reluctant leftists into the Democratic column in the general election. After all, if Bernie fails to get the nomination, is there any doubt that he’ll endorse Hillary?
Yet this matters less than either Sanders or Team Clinton imagine. Unlike the Trumpist revolt on the Right, the Sanders “political revolution” has little to do with the personality of its leader. It seems genuinely to be about ideology. A stunning 48% of Iowa voters described themselves as “democratic socialists” in one poll: there lies the future of the Democratic party. The vast majority of those voters are, like Sanders, opposed to the endless wars and an expensive empire that drains the country of funds they want to maintain the welfare state.
The future of the GOP is far less clear. This is a party that has had the neocons’ claws embedded in it for quite some time, and they aren’t about to voluntarily relax their iron grip any time soon. They have the backing of the donor class, and the mainstream media, both of which are viscerally hostile to any variety of populism arising from the right side of the spectrum.
The neocons have their candidate in Rubio, but they could live with Cruz, however uneasily. The Donald, however, is a different matter entirely. Trump’s unabashedly realist foreign policy is diametrically opposed to the neocons’ effusive globalism. If he should beat the odds and get the GOP nomination, the neocons’ will flee the party, with some of them glomming on to Hillary and the rest glumly sitting out the election while throwing spitballs from the sidelines.
The GOP is really two parties, and has been for quite some time. The country club Republicans pay lip service to “free market” economics but are in thrall to crony capitalism just as much as the Democrats (except they owe their fealty to different capitalists.) They oppose eminent domain seizures of private property – but not where the Keystone pipeline is concerned, because they stand to make a bundle off it. They think Charles Krauthammer is an intellectual worth listening to and opine that if only we’d stayed in Iraq everything would be hunky dory over there.
On the other hand, grassroots Republican voters are a different lot entirely. Like most Americans, they see the Iraq war as a disaster and could care less about what happens in the next town over, let alone thousands of miles away. They wonder why the federal government is letting millions of illegal immigrants break the law and get away with it when their own encounters with law enforcement are likely to end less benignly. And their own faith in free market economics has been shaken by government bailouts of the big boys and the growing certainty that the whole game is rigged.
These two tendencies are irreconcilable. If the Establishment prevails, the base defects. If the grassroots win, the “leadership” commits suicide.
What this all means in terms of the politics of foreign policy in this country is that the bipartisan interventionist consensus, which has ruled the roost in Washington since the end of World War II, is under heavy assault from both the left and the right. Whether this pincer movement can succeed in ousting the mandarins of Empire remains to be seen: but one thing we do know – it’s going to be an epic battle.
So get out the popcorn, and pull up a chair – the show’s already started!
Iraq’s about to plunge off a fiscal cliff — and the consequences could be dire
by Armin Rosen
Business Insider
The plunge in oil prices is already having far-reaching effects on countries whose economies are dependent on oil exports.
But in Iraq, the stakes of cheap oil are even higher than in Saudi Arabia, which is instituting unprecedented taxation and austerity, or in Nigeria, which is now asking for an $11 billion World Bank loan.
What little remains of Iraq’s government and social order might collapse if oil remains in its current price trough — with dire consequences.
According to a Monday AFP report, Iraq is now selling oil at half of the country’s apparent fiscal break-even price. Right now, Iraq is selling its oil at around $22 a barrel, half of what it would need to fetch for the country to be able to fund the upcoming year of government budgetary obligations, the report said.
But Iraq’s situation is actually even worse. As recently as the 2014 fiscal year, Iraq was formulating its national budget on the assumption that oil would remain at around $90 a barrel and that the country’s oil exports would continue to climb (which they have).
Iraqi government revenue experienced dramatic annual increases between 2009 and 2013, almost entirely because of oil (see the chart on the left). That’s all over, now that oil is expected to stay under $40 a barrel through the end of the year.
Though Iraqi oil is comparatively cheap to extract, it also contains unusually high levels of sulfur, meaning that it typically sells for around 10% less than Brent crude, the global price benchmark. The Iraqi government is still making money pumping oil — just not nearly enough to fund the country’s anticipated national budget.
Such a daunting fiscal cliff would be challenging for a stable or politically coherent country. But it’s potentially disastrous in a place like Iraq, where the majority of territory is split between the terrorist group ISIS and the Kurdistan Regional Government. Even the areas still under some semblance of federal control are fought over by a constellation of militia groups with ties to recognized political parties.
Ali Khedery, the CEO of Dubai-based Dragoman Partners, a former adviser to US Central Command, and a former Exxon executive with extensive on-the-ground experience in Iraq, warned that cheap oil threatens the country’s last remaining semblance of order.
“You are looking at a significant possibility of state collapse due to civil unrest,” he told Business Insider.
Cheap oil will eat into the Iraqi state’s ability to continue fighting ISIS, which still controls Mosul, the country’s second-largest city. And it could have an alarming effect on the patronage, corruption, and militancy that buoys the already dysfunctional Iraqi state.
As Khedery explained to Business Insider, the number of Iraqi government employees is believed to have shot up from around 850,000 at the time of the US-led invasion in 2003 to more than 2.5 million by early 2015. It’s a revealing statistic, considering Iraq’s transition from a strong, centralized state under Saddam Hussein to a loose and often-violent federation under its current system.
Khedery said that people were added to government rolls because of family, sectarian, or tribal connections. Some officials would pocket money through “ghost job” scams, embezzling salaries from employees that didn’t actually exist. Some of the government’s oil revenues would go towards militias with ties to official Iraqi political parties — organizations like the powerful Badr Group.
“Why did the number of government employees go up 200%? The reason is that Iraq is a kleptocracy built on systemic corruption and patronage as a means of buying votes,” Khedery told Business Insider.
As a result, Iraq has little ability to hedge against against a plunge in oil prices.
“Unlike Russia or Saudi, which have hundreds of billions in hard currency reserves and trillions in assets and state owned entities, Iraq is insolvent and bankrupt,” he said.
In a price crunch, Saudi Arabia has the option of selling off chunks of Saudi Aramco, its perhaps multi-trillion-dollar state oil concern — which is exactly what Riyadh is reportedly planning on doing.
Russia is a major gas exporter, and has a more-diversified economy than many other rentier states. Iraq, on the other hand, has little to show for the nearly half-trillion dollars in oil-export revenue the country received just in the decade after the 2003 invasion. It’s largely been stolen, or dispensed to militia groups.
As Khedery explained, an Iraqi “hard landing” has some alarming ramifications.
A plunge in federal revenue would only harden the division between Baghdad-administered Iraq and the Kurdistan Regional Government, which already has is own oil ministry, government, and security apparatus, and which sells more than 600,000 barrels of oil a day independently of Baghdad.
In addition to hastening the country’s breakup, a budget plunge would also badly destabilize Basra, the southern export point for the vast majority of Iraq’s oil.
The city has already seen increases in violence between Shi’ite militia groups that the federal government has been unable to disarm. Once organizations like Khataib Hezbollah, Jaysh al-Mahdi, and Asaib Ahl al-Haq see their bottom line threatened, the city on which much of the Iraqi economy is dependent could begin to erupt.
“The militias are going to start turning on the state, and they’re going to start turning on each other,” Khedery told Business Insider. “They’re basically vultures who feasted on ethno-sectarian hatreds and high oil prices and patronage. And now they’re going to have to start fighting each other for the scraps as the oil-funded pie has shrunk by more than 80%.”
Japan warns N. Korea against rocket launch
North Korea’s plans to launch a satellite into space have been met with stark opposition by its southern neighbors. Japan says a rocket fly-by would be considered a provocation.
February 3. 2016
DW
Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani ordered the sea-based Aegis and ground-based Patriot anti-ballistic missile systems to be put on on alert, citing the “possibility that North Korea will launch a missile it calls a ‘satellite’ within coming days.”
The heightened alert comes after Pyongyang notified the UN’s maritime, telecommunication and civil aviation agencies that it would launch a space rocket between February 8 and 25 in a move North Korea’s neighbors and the United States say is a disguised ballistic missile test.
Japan also said on Wednesday it would shoot down any North Korean missile that threatened its territory.
The projected trajectory of the North Korean missile launch would send it near the south-western island of Okinawa and its neighboring islands, Nakatani said.
Echoing concerns from the United States and South Korea, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said during a parliament committee session that the launch would violate UN Security Council resolutions and constitute “a grave act of provocation toward Japan’s security.”
Meanwhile, China, with which the hermit country has open relations, cautioned its neighbor on Wednesday against launching a satellite. The US has put pressure on China to exert its influence over Pyongyang and also back extending sanctions.
North Korea has tested four nuclear bombs, including what it said was an H-bomb in early January. But Western intelligence assessments have determined the January test was a normal atom bomb rather than an H-bomb, which has a much greater explosive force.
UN resolutions forbid North Korea from developing or testing ballistic missile technology. The international community imposed penalties following a successful three-stage rocket launch in December 2012.
In New Hampshire, TV Station Partners With Interest Groups That Push Candidates on War and Austerity
February 3, 2016
by Lee Fang
The Intercept
A New Hampshire television news network owned by a former Republican candidate for Senate is working closely with conservative interest groups that are pressuring presidential candidates to take more aggressive positions on use of military force, entitlement reform and tax cuts.
One group, Americans for Peace, Prosperity, and Security, was formed last year on behalf of military contractors to hold events in early primary states with the explicit goal of pushing the candidates to support military engagement abroad.
And while local television stations regularly work with non-partisan, non-ideological groups to host and broadcast events such as candidate debates, the NH1 News network owned by Bill Binnie has gone a step further, providing its on-air talent to press the candidates on issues championed by its interest group partners.
Binnie’s NH1 News network, which operates WBIN-TV and includes over a dozen radio stations, also hosts a special interview series called “Fiscal Fridays” on behalf of Fix the Debt and the Concord Coalition, two groups bankrolled by billionaire Pete Peterson. Both groups encourage candidates to adopt the recommendations of the Simpson-Bowles commission – which in practice translates into pushing for corporate tax cuts and reductions in Social Security and Medicare.
Binnie, who amassed a fortune in plastic and manufacturing, did not respond to a request for comment. Binnie has said he began building his media empire after his failed 2010 Senate campaign. His television station caused a minor uproar in 2013 when it suspended its nightly news broadcast in favor of a celebrity gossip show called OMG! Insider.
Marco Rubio appeared at an NH1/APPS forum at the University of New Hampshire in Manchester last week. The candidate discussed his opposition to receiving Syrian refugees, the war against ISIS, and other foreign policy-related issues.
APPS was the official host, while NH1 was “the media partner for APPS and for this great series,” said NH1 News anchor Paul Steinhauser, who moderated the event. Steinhauser kicked off the forum by asking Rubio a question provided to him by APPS “honorary chairman” Mike Rogers – the former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee turned CNN national security contributor — about how he would respond to reports that Russian president Vladimir Putin had ordered the assassination of former KGB operative Alexander Litvinenko.
“Chairman Rogers wants to know how you would reassert the U.S. and how you would kind of stymie Vladimir Putin if you were in the White House,” Steinhauser said. Rubio responded that he would boost the defense capabilities and back more missile defense programs.
The Fiscal Friday program, which began in October of last year, was billed as a forum for critical information about the nation’s budget. But Fix the Debt has come under fire for promoting only a narrow set of policies. Fix the Debt organizers are given talking points that encourage activists to ask about tax reform that must include reducing corporate rates, and entitlement reforms that raise the eligibility age and reduce benefits.
When Martin O’Malley appeared on the program, NH1 News’ Steinhauser pressed the former Maryland governor on whether his idea of tax reform would include lowering the corporate tax rate.
Similarly, when Chris Christie appeared on the Fiscal Friday program, Steinhauser noted that other Republican candidates had proposed killing off entire federal agencies, and asked if he would do the same.
During both programs, neither candidate was asked about debt-reduction strategies that fall outside the Peterson network’s comfort zone, such as a financial transactions tax.
The Peterson network has also flooded Iowa and New Hampshire with television ads promoting its vision of debt reduction through entitlement cuts and tax reform. Records show the Peterson groups have purchased advertising on Binnie’s WBIN-TV.
Timothy Karr, the senior director of strategy at Free Press, a media watchdog, says this is not the first time he’s seen a television station company uses the public airwaves to promote a narrow agenda during a presidential election. In 2004, Sinclair Broadcasting Group, media company owned by a Republican donor, aired “Stolen Honor,” an election year movie designed to tar Democratic candidate John Kerry.
For Binnie’s television network, Karr says, “it’s not really a new phenomenon but a blatant brand of influence peddling that station owners believe they can engage in with impunity.”
German scientists to conduct nuclear fusion experiment
Angela Merkel to attend test in which team will heat hydrogen until it becomes plasma in bid for clean nuclear power
February 3, 2015
AP
Scientists in Germany are poised to conduct a nuclear fusion experiment they hope will advance the quest for a clean and safe form of nuclear power.
In a test expected to be attended by Angela Merkel, the chancellor, researchers will inject a tiny amount of hydrogen into a special device and heat it until it becomes a super-hot gas known as plasma – mimicking conditions inside the sun.The experiment at the Max Planck Institute in Greifswald, north-east Germany, is part of a worldwide effort to harness nuclear fusion – a process in which atoms join at extremely high temperatures and release large amounts of energy.
Merkel, who is a doctor of physics, is expected at Wednesday’s event, which is happening in her constituency.
Advocates of nuclear fusion acknowledge the technology is probably decades away but argue that it could replace fossil fuels and conventional nuclear fission reactors.
Construction has begun in southern France on ITER, a huge international research reactor that uses a strong electric current to trap plasma inside a doughnut-shaped device long enough for fusion to take place. The device, known as a tokamak, was conceived by Soviet physicists in the 1950s and is considered fairly easy to build but extremely difficult to operate.
The team in Greifswald is focused on a rival technology invented by the American physicist Lyman Spitzer in 1950. Called a stellarator, the device has the same doughnut-shape as a tokamak but uses a complicated system of magnetic coils to achieve the same result.
That device should be able to keep plasma in place for much longer, said Thomas Klinger, who heads the project. “The stellarator is much calmer,” he said. “It’s far harder to build but easier to operate.”
Known as the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator, the €400m (£300m) device was first fired up in December using helium, which is easier to heat. Helium also has the advantage of “cleaning” any minute dirt particles left behind during the construction of the device.
David Anderson, a professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin, who isn’t involved in the project, said the project in Greifswald looked promising.
“The impressive results obtained in the startup of the machine were remarkable,” he said. “This is usually a difficult and arduous process. The speed with which W7-X became operational is a testament to the care and quality of the fabrication of the device and makes a very positive statement about the stellarator concept itself. W7-X is a truly remarkable achievement and the worldwide fusion community looks forward to many exciting results.”
While critics have said the pursuit of nuclear fusion is a waste of money that could be better spent on other projects, Germany has forged ahead in funding the project, which in the past 20 years has cost €1.06bn if staff salaries are included.
Over the coming years, W7-X, which isn’t designed to produce any energy itself, will test many of the extreme conditions such devices will be subjected to if they are ever to generate power, said John Jelonnek, a physicist at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany.
Jelonnek’s team is responsible for a key component of the device, the massive microwave ovens that will turn hydrogen into plasma, eventually reaching 100 million degrees Celsius (180 million Fahrenheit).
Compared with nuclear fission, which produces huge amounts of radioactive material that will be around for thousands of years, the waste from nuclear fusion would be negligible, he said.
“It’s a very clean source of power, the cleanest you could possibly wish for. We’re not doing this for us but for our children and grandchildren.”
Syrian Civil War: Could Turkey be Gambling on an Invasion?
January 30, 2016
by Patrick Cockburn
The UNZ Review
A month before Turkey shot down a Russian bomber which it accused of entering its airspace, Russian military intelligence had warned President Vladimir Putin that this was the Turkish plan. Diplomats familiar with the events say that Putin dismissed the warning, probably because he did not believe that Turkey would risk provoking Russia into deeper military engagement in the Syrian war.
In the event, on 24 November last year a Turkish F-16 shot down a Russian bomber, killing one of the pilots, in an attack that had every sign of being a well-prepared ambush. Turkey claimed that it was responding to the Russian plane entering its airspace for 17 seconds, but the Turkish fighters made every effort to conceal themselves by flying at low altitude, and they appear to have been on a special mission to destroy the Russian aircraft.
The shooting-down – the first of a Russian plane by a Nato power since the Korean War – is important because it shows how far Turkey will go to maintain its position in the war raging on the southern side of its 550-mile border with Syria. It is a highly relevant event today because, two months further on, Turkey now faces military developments in northern Syria that pose a much more serious threat to its interests than that brief incursion into its airspace, even though Ankara made fresh claims yesterday over a new Russian violation on Friday.
The Syrian war is at a crucial stage. Over the past year the Syrian Kurds and their highly effective army, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), have taken over half of Syria’s frontier with Turkey. The main supply line for Islamic State (Isis), through the border crossing of Tal Abyad north of Raqqa, was captured by the YPG last June. Supported by intense bombardment from the US Air Force, the Kurds have been advancing in all directions, sealing off northern Syria from Turkey in the swath of territory between the Tigris and Euphrates.
The YPG only has another 60 miles to go, west of Jarabulus on the Euphrates, to close off Isis’s supply lines and those of the non-IS armed opposition, through Azzaz to Aleppo. Turkey had said that its “red line” is that there should be no YPG crossing west of the Euphrates river, though it did not react when the YPG’s Arab proxy, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), seized the dam at Tishrin on the Euphrates and threatened the IS stronghold of Manbij. Syrian Kurds are now weighing whether they dare take the strategic territory north of Aleppo and link up with a Kurdish enclave at Afrin.
Developments in the next few months may determine who are the long-term winners and losers in the region for decades. President Bashar al-Assad’s forces are advancing on several fronts under a Russian air umbrella. The five-year campaign by Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s to overthrow Assad in Damascus, by backing the armed opposition, looks to be close to defeat.
Turkey could respond to this by accepting a fait accompli, conceding that it would be difficult for it to send its army into northern Syria in the face of strong objections from the US and Russia. But, if the alternative is failure and humiliation, then it may do just that. Gerard Chaliand, the French expert on irregular warfare and the politics of the Middle East, speaking in Erbil last week, said that “without Erdogan as leader, I would say the Turks would not intervene militarily [in northern Syria], but, since he is, I think they will do so”.
Erdogan has a reputation for raising the stakes as he did last year when he failed to win a parliamentary majority in the first of two elections. He took advantage of a fresh confrontation with the Turkish Kurds and the fragmentation of his opponents to win a second election in November. Direct military intervention in Syria would be risky, but Mr Challiand believes that Turkey “is capable of doing this militarily and will not be deterred by Russia”. Of course, it would not be easy. Moscow has planes in the air and anti-aircraft missiles on the ground, but Putin probably has a clear idea of the limitations on Russia’s military engagement in Syria.
Omar Sheikhmous, a veteran Syrian Kurdish leader living in Europe, says that the Syrian Kurds “should realise that the Russians and the Syrian government are not going to go to war with the Turkish army for them”. He warns that the ruling Kurdish political party, the PYD, should not exaggerate its own strength, because President Erdogan’s reaction is unpredictable.
Other Kurdish leaders believe that Turkish intervention is unlikely and that, if it was going to come, it would have happened before the Russian jet was shot down. That led to Russia reinforcing its air power in Syria and taking a much more hostile attitude towards Turkey, giving full support for Syrian Army advances in northern Latakia and around Aleppo.
For the moment, the Syrian Kurds are still deciding what they should do. They know that their quasi-state, known as Rojava, has been able to expand at explosive speed because the US needed a ground force to act in collaboration with its air campaign against Isis. Russian and American bombers have, at different times, supported the advance of the SDF towards Manbij. On the chaotic chess board of the Syrian crisis, the Kurds at this time have the same enemies as the Syrian Army, but they know that their strong position will last only as long as the war.
If there is no Turkish intervention on a significant scale then Assad and his allies are winning, because the enhanced Russian, Iranian and Lebanese Hezbollah intervention has tipped the balance in their favour. The troika of regional Sunni states – Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey – have failed, so far, to overthrow Assad through backing the Syrian armed opposition.
Their enthusiasm for doing so is under strain. Saudi Arabia has a mercurial leadership, is enmeshed in a war in Yemen, and the price of oil may stay at $30 a barrel. Qatar’s actions in Syria are even more incalculable. “We can never figure out Qatar’s policies,” said one Gulf observer in frustration. A more caustic commentator, in Washington, adds that “Qatari foreign policy is a vanity project”, comparing it to Qatar’s desire to buy landmark buildings abroad or host the football World Cup at home.
In Syrian and Iraqi politics almost everybody ends up by overplaying their hand, mistaking transitory advantage for irreversible success. This was true of a great power like the US in Iraq in 2003, a monstrous power like Isis in 2014, and a small power like the Syrian Kurds in 2016. One of the reasons that Iran has, thus far, come out ahead in the struggle for this part of the Middle East is that the Iranians have moved cautiously and step by step.
Turkey is the last regional power that could reverse the trend of events in Syria by open military intervention, a development that cannot be discounted as the Syrian-Turkish border is progressively sealed off. But, barring this, the conflict has become so internationalised that only the US and Russia are capable of bringing it to an end.