TBR News September 27, 2016

The Voice of the White House

Washington, D.C.  September 27, 2016: “It is always entertaining to read discussions of rising sea levels on the Internet. At first, rising sea levels was denied and even mocked but now that it is becoming very evident that we will be inundated soon enough, the “scientists” solemly iinform us that the sea is not rising but the land is sinking and that, anyway, in 500 years, the ocean levels will rise .005 cm. Of course neither postulation is correct but consider that when, not if, the US east coast is gradually flooded, the population will have to either move to higher ground or drown. This mass exodus will be costly and believe it, the greedy banks will not forgive mortgage holders, even if their mortgaged homes are under water. Where will the money come from to help the dislocated? Not from Washington who spends all the taxpayer’s money for more military activities. For this reason, the obedient New York Times, and other papers, chatter away about other subjects and the predominant theme on the flooding as well as the immense coming mortgage frauds and pray that all of this happens on someone else’s watch.”

Israel’s Netanyahu in a spin over dirty laundry

September 27, 2016

by Jeffrey Heller

Reuters

Jerusalam-Benjamin Netanyahu doesn’t want details of his dirty laundry aired in public – and he is suing his own office and Israel’s attorney general to try to prevent it.

Legal documents published on Tuesday showed that the prime minister, citing a right to privacy, is asking a Jerusalem court to overturn a decision to release his laundry bills and those of his family under the country’s Freedom of Information law.

Israeli media have focused in the past on food and beverage expenses at Netanyahu’s official and private homes. Three years ago, he drew flak over a $127,000 charge to fit a bedroom into a chartered plane for a flight to London to attend the funeral of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

The current case involves a request by The Movement for Freedom of Information, a group seeking greater public transparency in Israel, for details of all state-paid expenses in Netanyahu’s private home and official residence in 2014.

Netanyahu’s attorneys argue that the inclusion of laundry expenses would be tantamount to “peeping” into his private affairs, but Anat Revivo, who oversees compliance with the Freedom of Information law at the prime minister’s office, maintains that the public has a right to know.

When Revivo consulted Israel’s attorney-general on the matter, he agreed.

Netanyahu was given time to mount a legal challenge and on Monday filed a 27-page lawsuit against Revivo and Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit.

In the petition, which the Movement for Freedom of Information posted on its website, Netanyahu’s lawyers cited Israel’s Protection of Privacy Law, as well as Britain’s Human Rights Act and the European Convention on Human Rights to support their case.

“No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks on his honor and reputation,” the lawsuit said, quoting from the European treaty.

No date has been set for a ruling.

(Editing by Luke Baker and Raissa Kasolowsky)

Turkish spies had Kurdish trade unionist ‘assassinated’ in London cafe

September 27, 2016

RT

Declassified documents reveal how Turkish spies ordered the assassination of a Kurdish trade unionist in a London cafe, a British newspaper has reported, renewing fears of Ankara’s alleged black ops across Europe.

No one was charged with the murder of Mehmet Kaygisiz, 33, who was shot in the back of the head in 1994 while playing backgammon in a north London cafe.

Police at the time thought the crime was related to extortion rackets or growing animosity between Turks and Kurds in London as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party’s (PKK) guerrilla war intensified in Turkey’s southeast.

But evidence has now emerged linking Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT) to the killing, according to an investigation by the Times.

Documents submitted as part of a court case in Ankara named Nurettin Guven, 59, a drug dealer and former president of a Turkish football club, as the assassin working under instructions from the MIT.

The previously secret files reveal how Kaygisiz was added to a ‘kill list’ passed to the MIT by Turkey’s national police chief.

Relatives of Kaygisiz told the Times Guven denied the murder in the late 1990s and that the Metropolitan Police were aware of him and allegations of state-sponsored murder.

Confidential transcripts from 1995 claim MIT agents introduced Guven to Turkish national police chief Mehmet Agar, who reportedly encouraged him to carry out the murder with the words: “Come on my lion.”

Documents indicate Guven flew to London the next morning.

According to the Times Guven’s handler, Tarik Umit, allegedly told his superiors: “He [Guven] went to the Kurdish neighborhood in England. I called him two or three hours after our first call. He said: ‘My brother, I did it.’ I asked if he [Kaygisiz] is injured or something, he said: ‘No way. No one can save him.’”

Turkey’s MIT agency is believed to carry out ‘black operations’ across Europe with impunity.

German broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) reported last month that Germans of Turkish origin are being “menaced” by MIT informers and agents.

An unnamed “security politician” told DW Turkish spies had as many as 6,000 informants across Germany, or one for every 500 Germans of Turkish background.

In Cologne last year, German federal prosecutors investigated claims that three men – two Turks and one German – were instructed by MIT to spy on Erdogan’s critics in the city.

MIT is also suspected of involvement in the 2013 murder of three female PKK activists in Paris.

Welcome to the jungle – Calais as a French presidential battleground

France’s north-eastern port of Calais is the country’s gateway to the United Kingdom. As such, it’s long been a magnet for migrants, and has become a key battleground ahead of next year’s presidential campaign.

September 28, 2016

DW

“The situation is unacceptable and everyone here knows it,” President Francois Hollande said in the northern port city of Calais on Monday, pledging to shutter a camp housing between 7,000 and 10,000 refugees hoping to cross the English Channel and reach Britain.

“We must dismantle the camp completely and definitively,” Hollande said of the shanty town that has come to be known as “the jungle” in France and the UK. The process would move at pace, Hollande pledged, telling police securing the area that the camp would be removed by the end of the calendar year.

Jens Althoff, director of the Paris bureau of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, believes that the timeline is no coincidence, considering France’s presidential election schedule.

“In my view, this is quite clearly symbolic politics before the campaign,” Althoff told DW. “Hollande has said that he will announce in December – so after the leadership contest among the conservatives, among Les Republicains – whether or not he will stand for another term. So now, he is effectively embarking on three months of electioneering, trying to improve his chances or to see if there’s any movement in his favor before he makes this decision. This step was, in my view, a symbolic one against the backdrop of this three-month campaign for the president.”

Aidez-nous, Angleterre!

Symbolism may also help explain Hollande’s vocal appeal to Britain – ultimately the beneficiary of the jungle refugee camp’s existence – to pull its weight in the port city. As neither a member of the open-border Schengen zone, nor a country that agreed to EU plans for refugee quotas among European members, Britain is not an easy country for refugees to reach. Many in the jungle hope to smuggle themselves across on heavy goods vehicles as they cross the Channel tIt’s a peculiar situation, Calais, because you have a concentration of refugees and they come here not because they particularly want to settle in northern France, but because they are hoping to make it to Britain, which doesn’t want to welcome them,” says Philippe Marliere, professor of French and European politics at University College London. “At the moment I think Britain doesn’t do much to help, but at least it gives money, I understand, quite a lot of money to secure the place.”

That money is becoming visible in the form of a wall designed to stop refugees from approaching the entrance to the undersea Channel Tunnel; construction began last week.

Under a deal signed in 2002, Britain’s official border crossing post was moved from the shores of south-east England to French soil, with France carrying out many of the controls. Precisely what “Brexit” – the UK leaving the EU – will mean for this bilateral accord signed between two EU members remains unclear.

The proximity to Britain and to a large part of cross-Channel traffic has long made the region a hot-spot for refugees – with the Sangatte camp near Calais coming to prominence in the 1990’s as a base for people looking to flee the Balkan Wars for Britain.

Nicolas Sarkozy closed that camp during his time as interior minister. Hollande’s visit came just days after Sarkozy pledged beefed-up border controls around France to stop the country from being “flooded” with migrants. Of the two front-runners for the nomination from Les Republicains, Sarkozy is painting himself as the hard-liner, with Bordeaux mayor Alain Juppe trying to strike a softer note.

Three-way battleground in national elections

Like much of northern France, Calais has undergone quite a political shift in recent years, turning the north-east into a key battleground for presidential elections in April and May next year. Front National leader and presidential candidate Marine Le Pen sought to become the city’s mayor in December’s municipal elections, missing out to a conservative despite an extremely strong showing in the first round of voting.

Calais and the wider region Nord-Pas-de-Calais remains a densely-populated and somewhat run-down area with industrial difficulties, what’s changing are people’s voting habits.

Transporting cargo.

“When you think that a town like Calais used to be run for a very long time by a communist mayor – so a very left-wing city sociologically and politically – now it’s run by a conservative Les Republicains mayor, and the FN is strong there too,” Marliere tells DW, saying that Marine Le Pen and her far-right Front National is now reaping the benefit of a long-term strategy to woo disgruntled voters.

“It shows above all that the population, who used to be very faithful to the left and [Hollande’s] Socialists, have given up on them,” Marliere says. “And of course Le Pen and the Front National have been shrewd enough to understand that. They have put in place local people, people who know the towns and the locals, and have also adapted the traditional FN rhetoric. In the south it’s a bit different, but they’ve adapted it to give it a more social ring, so that it can really attract and appeal to a working class which comes from the left.”

Althoff agrees that the FN has rather split its strategy, playing a more racially-charged deck in its traditional stronghold in the south.

Based on current opinion polls, a conservative candidate is favorite to win France’s election next year, ahead of the FN’s Le Pen, with Socialist incumbent Hollande currently a distant third if he were to stand again. Only once, in 2002, did the FN manage to reach the second-round runoff in a French presidential vote; that was also at the expense of a Socialist nominee, Lionel Jospin.

Win, Lose, or Draw

U.S. Special Operations Command Details Dismal U.S. Military Record

by Nick Turse

Tom Dispatch

Winning: it’s written into the DNA of the U.S.A.  After all, what’s more American than football legend Vince Lombardi’s famous (if purloined) maxim: “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing”?

Americans expect to be number one.  First Lady Michelle Obama recently called the United States the “greatest country on Earth.” (Take that, world public opinion, and your choice of Germany!) Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton went even further, touting America as “the greatest country that has ever been created.”  Her rival, Donald Trump, who for political gain badmouths the country that made him rich and famous, does so in the hope of returning America to supposedly halcyon days of unparalleled greatness.  He’s predicted that his presidency might lead to an actual winning overload.  “We’re going to win so much,” he told supporters.  “You’re going to get tired of winning. You’re going to say, ‘Please, Mr. President… don’t win so much’… And I’m going to say, ‘No, we have to make America great again… We’re gonna keep winning.’”

As Trump well knows, Americans take winning very seriously.  Look no further than the U.S. gold medal count at the recent Rio Olympics: 46. The next highest total?  Great Britain’s 27, almost 20 fewer than those of the country whose upstart rebels bested them in the eighteenth century, the nation’s ur-victory.  The young United States then beat back the Brits in the early 1800s, and twice bailed them out in victorious world wars during the twentieth century.

In the intervening years, the U.S. built up a gaudy military record — slaughtering native tribes, punishing Mexico, pummeling Spain — but the best was yet to come.  “Our troops are the finest fighting force in the history of the world,” boasted President Barack Obama in this year’s State of the Union address.  In this he echoed his predecessor, George W. Bush, who, in May 2001, declared that “America today has the finest [military] the world has ever seen.”

In the years between those two moments of high-flown rhetoric, the United States military fought in nine conflicts, according to a 2015 briefing produced by U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), the umbrella organization for America’s most elite forces including Navy SEALs and Army Green Berets.  The record of the greatest fighting force in the history of the world, according to SOCOM: zero wins, two losses, and seven ties.

This dismal record is catalogued in a briefing slide produced by SOCOM’s Intelligence Directorate last September and obtained by TomDispatch via the Freedom of Information Act.  “A Century of War and Gray Zone Challenges” — a timeline of conflicts ranked as wins, losses, and ties — examines the last 100 years of America’s wars and interventions.

“Gray zone” is an increasingly popular term of the trade for operations conducted somewhere on the continuum between war and peace.  “Traditional war is the paradigm,” the briefing slide asserts.  “Gray zone conflict is the norm.”

While he finds a great deal to fault in SOCOM’s analysis, retired Army colonel Andrew Bacevich, a professor of history and international relations at Boston University, believes its assessment of post-9/11 conflicts “is quite accurate.”  Although American politicians like Hillary Clinton regularly insist that the U.S. possesses “the greatest military” on the planet, they avoid addressing the question of what the country’s armed interventions have actually accomplished when it comes to policy goals — the true measure of success in war.  “We have not shown an ability to achieve our stated political aims in a conclusive way at an acceptable cost,” Bacevich says.  “That’s simply a fact.”

The Greatest Journeyman Military in History?

Twelve wins and nine losses.  In baseball, it’s the annual record of a journeyman pitcher like Bill Caudill of the Seattle Mariners in 1982, Dave LaPoint of the Saint Louis Cardinals in 1983, or Norm Charlton of the Cincinnati Reds in 1990, to mention just three examples.  It’s certainly not the record of an ace.

Likewise, 12 victories and nine losses is a far-from-dazzling stat when it comes to warfare, especially for a nation that prides itself on its martial prowess.   But that was the SOCOM Intelligence Directorate’s assessment of the last century of American war: 12 and 9 with a mind-boggling 43 “ties.”

Among those 64 conflicts, the command counts just five full-fledged wars in which the U.S. has come up with three wins (World War I, World War II, and Desert Storm), one loss (Vietnam), and one tie (Korea).  In the gray zone — what SOCOM calls “the norm” when it comes to conflict — the record is far bleaker, the barest of winning percentages at 9 victories, 8 losses, and 42 draws.

“If you accept the terms of analysis, that things can be reduced to win, loss, and tie, then this record is not very good,” Bacevich says.  “While there aren’t many losses — according to how they code — there’s a hell of a lot of ties, which would beg the question of why, based on these criteria, U.S. policy has seemingly been so ineffective.”

The assessments of, and in some instances the very inclusion of, numerous operations, missions, and interventions by SOCOM are dubious.  Bacevich, for example, questions its decision to include pre-World War II U.S. military missions in China (a draw according to the command).  “I don’t know on what basis one would say ‘China, 1912 to 1941’ qualifies as a tie,” he adds, noting on the other hand that a good case could be made for classifying two of SOCOM’S gray zone “ties” — in Haiti and Nicaragua — during the same era as wins instead of draws based on the achievement of policy aims alone.

It’s even harder to imagine why, for example, limited assistance to Chad in its conflict with Libya and indigenous rebels in 1983 or military assistance in evacuating U.S. personnel from Albania in 1997 should make the list.  Meanwhile, America’s so-called longest war, in Afghanistan, inexplicably ends in 2014 on SOCOM’S timeline.  (That was, of course, the year that the Obama administration formally ended the “combat mission” in that country, but it would assuredly be news to the 8,400 troops, including special operators, still conducting missions there today.)  Beyond that, for reasons unexplained, SOCOM doesn’t even classify Afghanistan as a “war.”  Instead, it’s considered one of 59 gray-zone challenges, on a par with the 1948-1949 Berlin Airlift or small-scale deployments to the restive Congo in the 1960s.  No less bizarre, the command categorizes America’s 2003-2011 occupation of Iraq in a similar fashion.  “It deserves to be in the same category as Korea and Vietnam,” says Bacevich, the author of America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History.

Killing People and Breaking Things

Can the post-9/11 U.S. military simultaneously be the finest fighting force in history and unable to win wars or quasi-wars?  It may depend on our understanding of what exactly the Department of Defense and its military services are meant to do.

While the 1789 act that established its precursor, the Department of War, is sparse on details about its raison d’être, the very name suggests its purpose — presumably preparing for, fighting, and winning wars.  The 1947 legislation creating its successor, the “National Military Establishment” was similarly light on specifics concerning the ultimate aims of the organization, as were the amendments of 1949 that recast it as the Department of Defense (DoD).

During a Republican primary debate earlier this year, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee offered his own definition.  He asserted that the “purpose of the military is to kill people and break things.”  Some in the armed forces took umbrage at that, though the military has, in fact, done both to great effect in a great many places for a very long time.  For its part, the DoD sees its purpose quite differently: “The mission of the Department of Defense is to provide the military forces needed to deter war and to protect the security of our country.”

If, in SOCOM’s accounting, the U.S. has engaged in relatively few actual wars, don’t credit “deterrence.” Instead, the command has done its best to simply redefine war out of existence, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, in favor of those “gray zone challenges.”  If one accepts that quasi-wars are actually war, then the Defense Department has done little to deter conflict.  The United States has, in fact, been involved in some kind of military action — by SOCOM’s definition — in every year since 1980.

Beyond its single sentence mission statement, a DoD directive delineating the “functions of the Department of Defense and its major components” provides slightly more details.  The DoD, it states, “shall maintain and use armed forces to:

1. Support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
2. Ensure, by timely and effective military action, the security of the United States, its possessions, and areas vital to its interest.
3. Uphold and advance the national policies and interests of the United States.”

Since the Department of Defense came into existence, the U.S. has — as the SOCOM briefing slide notes  — carried out deployments, interventions, and other undertakings in Lebanon (1958), Congo (1964 and 1967), the Dominican Republic (1965), Cambodia (1975), Iran (1980), El Salvador (1980-1992), Grenada (1983), Chad (1983), Libya (1986), the Persian Gulf (1987-1988), Honduras (1988), Panama (1989), Somalia (1992-1995), Haiti (1994-1995), and Albania (1997), among other countries.

You may have no memory of some (perhaps many) of these interventions, no less a sense of why they occurred or their results — and that might be the most salient take-away from SOCOM’s list.  So many of these conflicts have, by now, disappeared into the gray zone of American memory.

Were these operations targeting enemies which actually posed a threat to the U.S. Constitution?  Did ceaseless operations across the globe actually ensure the safety and security of the United States?  Did they truly advance U.S. policy interests and if so, how?

From the above list, according to SOCOM, only El Salvador, Grenada, Libya, and Panama were “wins,” but what, exactly, did America win?  Did any of these quasi-wars fully meet the Defense Department’s own criteria?  What about the Korean War (tie), the Bay of Pigs (loss), the Vietnam War (loss), or the not-so-secret “secret war” in Laos (loss)?  And have any of SOCOM’s eight losses or ties in the post-9/11 era accomplished the Defense Department’s stated mission?

“I have killed people and broken things in war, but, as a military officer, that was never the end. There was a purpose, a reason, a goal,” wrote Major Matt Cavanaugh, a U.S. Army strategist, in response to Huckabee’s comment.  He then drew attention to the fact that “Joint Publication 1: Doctrine for the Armed Forces of the United States” asserts that “military power is integrated with other instruments of national power to advance and defend U.S. values, interests, and objectives.”

Did the wars in Vietnam or Laos defend those same values?  What about the war waged in Iraq by the “finest fighting force” in world history?

In March 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld laid out U.S aims for that conflict.  “Our goal is to defend the American people, and to eliminate Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, and to liberate the Iraqi people,” he said, before offering even more specific objectives, such as having U.S. troops “search for, capture, [and] drive out terrorists who have found safe harbor in Iraq.”  Of course, the invasion and occupation of Iraq would turn that country into a terrorist magnet, leading to the ultimate safe harbor; a terror caliphate extending over swaths of that country and neighboring Syria.  The elimination of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction would prove impossible for obvious reasons.  The “liberation” of its people would lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands; the forced displacement of millions; and a country divided along sectarian lines, where up to 50% of its 33 million inhabitants may suffer from the effects of trauma brought on by the last few decades of war.  And what about the defense of the American people?  They certainly don’t feel defended.  According to recent polling, more Americans fear terrorism today than just after 9/11.  And the particular threat Americans fear most?  The terror groupborn and bred in America’s Iraqi prison camps: ISIS.

This record seems to matter little to the presidential candidate who, as a senator, voted for the invasion of Iraq.  Regarding that war and other military missions, Hillary Clinton, as Bacevich notes, continues to avoid asking the most obvious question: “Is the use of the American military conclusively, and at reasonable costs, achieving our political objectives?”

Trump’s perspective seems to better fit SOCOM’s assessment when it comes to America’s warfighting prowess in these years.  “We don’t win.  We can’t beat ISIS.  Can you imagine General Douglas MacArthur or General Patton?  Can [you] imagine they are spinning in their grave right now when they see the way we fight,” he recently told FOX News’s Bill O’Reilly, invoking the names of those military luminaries who both served in a “draw” in Mexico in the 1910s and U.S. victories in World Wars I and II, and in the case of MacArthur a stalemate in Korea as well.

Neither the Clinton nor Trump campaigns responded to TomDispatch’s requests for comment.  SOCOM similarly failed to respond before publication to questions about the conclusions to be drawn from its timeline, but its figures alone — especially regarding post-9/11 conflicts — speak volumes.

“In order to evaluate our recent military history and the gap between the rhetoric and the results,” says Andrew Bacevich, “the angle of analysis must be one that acknowledges our capacity to break things and kill people, indeed that acknowledges that U.S. forces have performed brilliantly at breaking things and killing people, whether it be breaking a building — by putting a precision missile through the window — or breaking countries by invading them and producing chaos as a consequence.”

SOCOM’s briefing slide seems to recognize this fact.  The U.S. has carried out a century of conflict, killing people from Nicaragua and Haiti to Germany and Japan; battering countries from the Koreas and Vietnams to Iraq and Afghanistan; fighting on a constant basis since 1980.  All that death and devastation, however, led to few victories.  Worse yet for the armed forces, the win-loss record of this highly professionalized, technologically sophisticated, and exceptionally well-funded military has, since assuming the mantle of the finest fighting force in the history of the world, plummeted precipitously, as SOCOM’s Intelligence Directorate points out.

An American century of carnage and combat has yielded many lessons learned, but not, it seems, the most important one when it comes to military conflict.  “We can kill people, we can break things,” Bacevich observes, “but we don’t accomplish our political goals.”

Bomb attacks target mosque, conference hall in Dresden, Germany

September 27, 2016

RT

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Two improvised explosive devices have gone off in the eastern German city of Dresden, targeting a mosque and an international conference center. No one was injured, according to police, although the mosque was severely damaged.

Both explosions took place on Monday evening. Police first responded to an emergency call informing them of an explosion at a mosque on Hühndorfer Street.

The authorities said that the imam and his family had been inside the mosque at the time of the detonation, but had managed to escape unharmed. The door of the mosque was pushed inward by the force of the blast and the building was heavily covered in soot.

The second explosion took place shortly afterwards, in front of Dresden’s International Congress Center on Devrientstrasse. The bar of a nearby hotel was evacuated.

More than 50 police officers were deployed to the sites of the blasts, including the crime scene group of the State Criminal Office of Saxony. Authorities say they found parts of hand-crafted explosive devices at both locations.

Although the investigation is ongoing, police believe the motive behind the blasts was xenophobic.

“Both attacks are related in timing. Although there is no claim of responsibility so far, we must go on the basis that the motive was xenophobic,” Horst Kretzschmar, head of Dresden police, said in a statement.

Michael Opperskalski, journalist and expert on international affairs, told RT he also sees a xenophobic background to the attacks in Dresden, noting that the nationalist sentiment gradually gaining popularity in Germany is a political threat to the country.

“We are talking about a political threat here. I do not think that the [right-wing Alternative for Germany party/AfD] will start an uprising or something like this, for various reasons they are not going to do that. But under the umbrella of the AfD you have these kinds of hard-liners from different angles, different groups, different tendencies, they’re hiding behind the AfD and quite successfully, and they are a threat.

“As you see with the bomb attacks, although they were still homemade and not very professionally [made], these guys are learning and this might be really a terrorist organization in the future,” Opperskalski predicted.

Security measures have now been increased at all of Dresden’s mosques and other Muslim institutions.

Kretzschmar also noted that police suspect a connection between the timing of the attacks and the upcoming celebration of the 26th anniversary of the unification of East and West Germany to be held in Dresden next Monday.

“The events will have an impact on our ongoing preparations for [the celebrations]. We will now operate in an emergency mode,” he added.

The ceremonies will be attended by Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Joachim Gauck.

Germany was the target of several violent attacks this summer, with three of them committed by migrants. In two cases the assailants pledged allegiance to Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).

On July 24, a 27-year-old Syrian refugee, who had pledged allegiance to the terrorist group, detonated a bomb in the Bavarian town of Ansbach, killing himself and injuring 15 people.

On 18 July, a 17-year-old refugee armed with an ax and knife injured five people when he attacked passengers on a train near the city of Wuerzburg, also in Bavaria, before being shot by police. The attack was later claimed by IS.

Following the attacks, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere warned that over 520 more people in the country are capable of committing “unexpected” and potentially “high-profile” terrorist attacks, stressing that the terrorist threat in Germany is “very real.”

Last week, German police special forces (SEK) arrested a 16-year-old refugee from Syria in Cologne after allegations he had become radicalized and prayed for Islamic State.

Several days prior, three Syrian nationals suspected of having ties with IS were arrested after federal police raided refugee camps in northern Germany.

The terrorism threat prompted numerous attacks on refugees in the country, including arsons and attacks on asylum centers. In one of the most recent incidents of the kind, 40 people, including eight children, were pepper-sprayed in a refugee facility by an employee of a building company working at the site of the shelter.

TWA Flight 800: The Gathering of the Nuts

by Brian Harring

On July 17, 1996, TWA Flight 800, a Boeing 747-131 registered as N93119, took off  from John F. Kennedy International Airport (New York) enroute to Charles De Gaulle International Airport (Paris).

The aircraft was flying more than eight miles off the cost of East Moriches, New York (part of Long Island) when the fuel tank exploded. The aircraft banked and the front part of the aircraft broke off. The wind pushed the aircraft into a climb. Then, the aircraft went into a dive, causing the wings to break off the aircraft. Pieces of the aircraft plummeted down into the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 230 passengers on board.

After what has been billed as the longest and most expensive accident investigation in American aviation history, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigation found that the flammable fuel/air mixture of the center wing fuel tank probably ignited due to electrical failure in the center fuel tank, causing the plane to explode in flight. The FBI agreed that there had been no criminal act after examining all the plane’s wreckage that had been recovered. In May of 1997, mechanics discovered a fuel leak in a Boeing 737-200 that they believed was caused by the kind of electrical arcing suspected of causing the TWA Flight 800 fatal explosion. NTSB investigators believed that the same kind of arcing from the wiring in the center fuel tank of TWA Flight 800 sparked the explosion that brought the plane down. As a result of extensive and very through testing, the NTSB issued an “airworthiness directive” requiring the immediate inspection of the wiring of older 747s. In April, it recommended further inspections and design changes in the wiring of 747s and in Boeing 707s and C-130 transport planes, as well. Eight years after the crash, in February 2004, the FAA indicated that it would start the process of ordering airlines to install a fuel tank inerting system in most of their aircraft. It was stated that the order would probably actually be issued within two years, and then the airlines would be required to install the devices over the subsequent seven years. The FAA stated that, including the TWA Flight 800 crash, there had been three fuel tank explosions in airliners over the previous 14 years (the two others having occurred on the ground),

Various groups and individuals continue to maintain that the plane was downed by a bomb or missile, and that there was a subsequent cover-up to disguise the real cause of the crash.

The “terrorist theory” was, as usual, one of the first to be mentioned, especially due to the fact that the accident happened during the Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta, where a bomb exploded ten days later (see Centennial Olympic Park bombing). In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks, these alternate explanations have been revisited, as some officials and commentators have mentioned this disaster among lists of terrorist attacks. One such theory can be found in Mohammed Samir Ferrat

Cmdr. William S. Donaldson, a retired naval officer who conducted an independent investigation, disagrees with the official theory. According to Commander Donaldson, “jet airliners built by the American aerospace industry have logged at least 150 thousand years of flight time. Not once has there ever been a spontaneous fuel tank explosion on any fuel tank while airborne” (Letter to NTSB 11-14-97).

Donaldson concluded that the airplane was shot down by missiles. He interviewed hundreds of witnesses and said he reconstructed the flight paths of these missiles by triangulating the eyewitness accounts. Soon after, a photo that a passenger of a North American Airlines plane arriving at JFK supposedly took, seemed to support the missile theory because the “photo” showed a “missile” missing the NA Airlines jet narrowly.

Pierre Salinger, a former White House press secretary to President John F. Kennedy and ABC News journalist, prominently and repeatedly claimed he had proof that the flight was downed by a missile from a U.S. Navy ship. The documents on which he relied were later found to be rumors that had been distributed over Usenet, with attributions only to many “unnamed experts”. Some people briefly gave the name of Pierre Salinger Syndrome to the tendency to believe things that one reads on the Internet.

One such theory has the US Navy conducting tests of submarine-to-air missiles, accidentally hitting Flight 800, and then covering up the fatal error. After initial denials, the U.S. Navy later admitted that USS Wyoming (SSBN-742), commissioned only days before, was conducting sea trials in the area, and that USS Trepang (SSN-674) and USS Albuquerque (SSN-706) were conducting unspecified operations in the area. It should be noted that all three of these submarines lacked any surface to air missile armament as part of their standard munitions loadout (as do all submarines). It is possible that any of the three subs could have been carrying MANPADS missiles, however all three subs were more than 50 miles (80 km) away from the crash site, very far outside the range of any MANPADS missile in the world. One suggested possibility is that the type of missile involved may be classified. Another possible alternate theory involving the US Navy is that a missile was fired from the USS Normandy (CG-60), operating 185 nautical miles (340 km) south of the TWA 800 crash site. This is well outside of the range of currently deployed Standard Missiles carried by US ships, almost double the range of the current Block IIIB versions, and just within the future Block IV ER versions. Even if this were a test of a Block IV version, although there is no evidence for this, at the extreme range in question the engine would have long burned out and the warhead would be gliding. This contradicts the main claim that a missile was involved, which is a number of eyewitness accounts claiming to have seen a missile trail almost vertical under the explosion site. Furthermore, inventories of USS Normandy’s missile complement immediately following the crash of TWA 800 showed no missiles missing from the inventory, according to the US Navy

Regardless of the possibility of any number of missiles and missile launch platforms being in the vicinity of TWA 800 at the time of the accident, no evidence of a missile impact exists within the recovered wreckage according to a study conducted by the Department of Defense’s Office of Special Technology

However, at least one individual involved at higher levels with the FBI’s portion of the recovery operations has stated publicly that he saw during his involvement predominant evidence in the state of the wreckage, the form of the wreckage field, the state of the victim’s remains, public and confidential actions by the airlines, investigation officials, and the Navy following the event, and other factors that convinced him the crash was the result of an accidental missile strike

For instance, the following affidavit, dated Jan 2003 (and which looks very much like information that was passed around the internet shortly after the crash), is being listed as one of the articles of evidence in recent FOIA suits pressed by Captain Ray Lahr against the National Transportation Safety Board: [1]. This document states he viewed radar tapes and took part in phone conversations which convinced him Flight 800 was a victim of friendly fire, and that he later passed on this information to Pierre Salinger (Note such anomalies as the doubling of every statement in the affidavit, the second half being a reworded version of the first half).  Elaine Scarry, in a number of articles [2] in the New York Review of Books has raised the possibility of electromagnetic interference being responsible for the accident

A number of alternate theories surrounding TWA 800 rely on eye witness accounts as collected by the FBI. However, very few of the witnesses were within five miles (8 km) of TWA 800 at the time of the accident, according to a witness map provided by the NTSB. The vast majority of the witnesses were too far away from the accident scene to discern any significant details, and some witnesses describe events that are well beyond the visual acuity of humans

Fired CBS Investigator Kristina Borjesson, (email: FKLB@aol.com) and co-workers (including Oliver Stone) were on a documentary project for ABC, until it was aborted Ms. Borjesson also worked on a documentary about the scores of eyewitnesses who claimed  they saw “something streaking from the ocean toward the plane.” This documentary was for a show, Declassified, that was being produced by Oliver Stone and slated to air on ABC. But the Stone connection grew controversial, and ABC canceled the program. CBS dissociated itself from Ms. Borjesson. Josh Howard, a senior producer at 60 Minutes, said, “Her official relationship with CBS ended before she pitched that story. (About mythic ‘rocket fuel’ being found on a strip of cloth alleged to have come from one of the passenger seats on Flight 800) She had maybe a month to go on her contract. She was anxiously looking around for other projects to prolong her employment.”

The flight number was retired and replaced with flight 924 after the crash, although TWA continued to operate flights between New York and Paris. In spring 2001, TWA merged with American Airlines.

The Great MERS Swindle

by Harry von Johnston, PhD

“Although only bankers are aware of it, there is a second wave of economic disaster starting to build up that will make the earlier one pale into insignificance. Let us start out with MERS, shall we?

MERS = Mortgage Electronic Registration Inc.holds approximately 60 million Amerrican mortgages and is a Delaware corporation whose sole shareholder is Mers Corp. MersCorp and its specified members have agreed to include the MERS corporate name on any mortgage that was executed in conjunction with any mortgage loan made by any member of MersCorp. Thus in place of the original lender being named as the mortgagee on the mortgage that is supposed to secure their loan, MERS is named as the “nominee” for the lender who actually loaned the money to the borrower. In other words MERS is really nothing more than a name that is used on the mortgage instrument in place of the actual lender. MERS’ primary function, therefore, is to act as a document custodian. MERS was created solely to simplify the process of transferring mortgages by avoiding the need to re-record liens – and pay county recorder filing fees – each time a loan is assigned. Instead, servicers record loans only once and MERS’ electronic system monitors transfers and facilitates the trading of notes. It has very conserbatively estimated that as of February, 2010, over half of all new residential mortgage loans in the United States are registered with MERS and recorded in county recording offices in MERS’ name

MersCorp was the created in the early 1990’s by the former C.E.O.’s of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Indy Mac, Countrywide, Stewart Title Insurance and the American Land Title Association. The executives of these companies lined their pockets with billions of dollars of unearned bonuses and free stock by creating so-called mortgage backed securities using bogus mortgage loans to unqualified borrowers thereby creating a huge false demand for residential homes and thereby falsely inflating the value of those homes. MERS marketing claims that its “paperless systems fit within the legal framework of the laws of all fifty states” are now being vetted by courts and legal commentators throughout the country.

The MERS paperless system is the type of crooked rip-off scheme that is has been seen for generations past in the crooked financial world. In this present case, MERS was created in the boardrooms of the most powerful and controlling members of the American financial institutions. This gigantic scheme completely ignored long standing law of commerce relating to mortgage lending and did so for its own prsonal gain. That the inevitable collapse of the crooked mortgage swindles would lead to terrible national reprecussions was a matter of little or no interest to the upper levels of America’s banking and financial world because the only interest of these entities was to grab the money of suckers, keep it in the form of ficticious bonuses, real estate and very large accounts in foreign banks.. The effect of this system has led to catastrophic metldown on both the American and global economy.

MERS, it has clearly been proven in many civil cases, does not hold any promissory notes of any kind.. A party must have possession of a promissory note in order to have standing to enforce and/or otherwise collect a debt that is owed to another party. Given this clear-cut legal definition,  MERS does not have legal standing to enforce or collect on the over 60 million mortgages it controls and no member of MERS has any standing in an American civil court.

MERS has been taken to civil courts across the country and charged with a lack of standing in reprossion issues. When the mortgage debacle initially, and invevitably, began, MERS always rotinely broght actions against defauilting mortgage holders purporting to represent the owners of the defaulted mortgages but once the courts discovered that MERS was only a front organization that did not hold any deed nor was aware of who or what agencies might hold a deed, they have been routinely been denied in their attempts to force foreclosure.  In the past, persons alleging they were officials of MERS in foreclosure motions, purported to be the holders of the mortgage, when, in fact, they nor only were not the holder of the mortgage but, under a court order, could not produce the identity of the actual holder. These so-called MERS officers have usually been just employees of entities who are servicing the loan for the actual lender. MERS, it is now widely acknowledged by the courty, has no legal right to foreclose or otherwise collect debt which are evidenced by promissory notes held by someone else.

The American media routinely identifies MERS as a mortgage lender, creditor, and mortgage company, when in point of fact MERS has never loaned so much as a dollar to anyone, is not a creditor and is not a mortgage company. MERS is merely a name that is printed on mortgages, purporting to give MERS some sort of legal status, in the matter of a loan made by a completely different and almost always,a totally unknown enitity.

The infamous collapse of the American housing bubble originated, in the main, with one Angelo Mozilo, CEO of the later failed Countrywide Mortgage.

Mozilo started working in his father’s butcher shop, in the Bronx, when he was ten years old. He graduated from Fordham in 1960, and that year he met David Loeb.. In 1968, Mozilo and Loeb created a new mortgage company, Countrywide, together. Mozilo believed the company should make special efforts to lower the barrier for minorities and others who had been excluded from homeownership. Loeb died in 2003

In 1996, Countrywide created a new subsidiary for subprime loans.

Countrywide Financial’s former management

• Angelo R. Mozilo, cofounder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer
• David S. Loeb, cofounder, President and Chairman from 1969 to 2000
• David Sambol, president, chief operating officer, director
• Eric P. Sieracki, chief financial officer, executive managing director
• Jack Schakett, executive managing director, chief operating officer
• Kevin Bartlett, executive managing director, chief investment officer
• Andrew Gissinger, executive managing director, chief production officer, Countrywide Home Loans[14]
• Sandor E. Samuels, executive managing director, chief legal officer and assistant secretary
• Ranjit Kripalani, executive managing director and president, Capital Markets
• Laura K. Milleman, senior managing director, chief accounting officer
• Marshall Gates, senior managing director, chief administrative officer
• Timothy H. Wennes, senior managing director, president and chief operating officer, Countrywide Bank FSB
• Anne D. McCallion, senior managing director, chief of financial operations and planning
• Steve Bailey, senior managing director of loan administration, Countrywide Home Loans

The standard Countrywide procedure was to openly solicit persons who either had no credit or could not obtain it, and, by the use of false credit reports drawn up in their offices, arrange mortgages. The new home owners were barely able to meet the minimum interest only payments and when, as always happens, the mortgage payments are increased to far, far more than could be paid, defaults and repossessions were inevitable. Countrywide sold these mortgages to lower-tier banks which in turn, put them together in packages and sold them to the large American banks. These so-called “bundled mortgages” were quickly sold these major banking houses to many foreign investors with the comments that when the payments increased, so also would the income from the original mortgage. In 1996, Countrywide created a new subsidiary for subprime loans..

At one point in time,Countrywide Financial Corporation was regarded with awe in the business world. In 2003, Fortune observed that Countrywide was expected to write $400 billion in home loans and earn $1.9 billion. Countrywide’s chairman and C.E.O., Angelo Mozilo, did rather well himself. In 2003, he received nearly $33 million in compensation. By that same year, Wall Street had become addicted to home loans, which bankers used to create immensely lucrative mortgage-backed securities and, later, collateralized debt obligations, or C.D.O.s—and Countrywide was their biggest supplier. Under Mozilo’s leadership, Countrywide’s growth had been astonishing.

He was aiming to achieve a market share—thirty to forty per cent—that was far greater than anyone in the financial-services industry had ever attained. For several years, Countrywide continued to thrive. Then, inevitably, in 2007, subprime defaults began to rocket upwards , forcing the top American bankers to abandoned the mortgage-backed securities they had previously prized. It was obvious to them that the fraudulent mortgages engendered by Countrywide had been highly suceessful as a marketinig program but it was obvious to eveyone concerned, at all levels, that the mortgages based entirely on false and misleading credit information were bound to eventually default. In August of 2007, the top American bankers cut off

Countrywide’s short-term funding, which seriously hindered its ability to operate, and in just a few months following this abandonment,  Mozilo was forced to choose between bankruptcy orselling out to the best bidder.. In January, 2008, Bank of America announced that it would buy the company for a fraction of what Countrywide was worth at its peak. Mozilo was subsequently named a defendant in more than a hundred civil lawsuits and a target of a criminal investigation. On June 4th, 2007 the S.E.C., in a civil suit, charged Mozilo, David Sambol, and Eric Sieracki with securities fraud; Mozilo was also charged with insider trading. The complaint formalized a public indictment of Mozilo as an icon of corporate malfeasance and greed.

In essence, not only bad credit risks were used to create and sell mortgages on American homes that were essentially worthless. By grouping all of these together and selling them abroad, the banks all made huge profits. When the kissing had to stop, there were two major groups holding the financial bag. The first were the investors and the second were, not those with weak credit, but those who had excellent credit and who were able, and willing to pay off their mortgages.

Unfortunately, as no one knows who owns the title to any home, when the legitimate mortgage holder finally pays off his mortgage, or tries to sell his house, a clear title to said house or property cannot ever be found so, in essence, the innocent mortgage payer can never own or sell his house. This is a terrible economic time bomb quietly ticking away under the feet of the Bank of America and if, and when, it explodes, another bank is but a fond memory.

Readers wishing to find out if their title is secure should write to Vermont Trotter, an investigative reporter whose own mortgage ended up in the courts. Mr. Trotter is embarking on a series of articles on this subject and is able, and willing, to forward requests for information to attorneys specializing in the subject.

Vermont Trotter: wordpress@chinkinthearmor.net If you want to know how to get in touch w/ Mr. Trotter or how to find the pre-eminent lawyer on this subject,  go to: www.ChinkintheArmor.net,  leave a comment on any article and he will respond.

EMERGING MARKETS-Turkey downgrade whacks emerging markets

September 26. 2016

by Karin Strohecker

Reuters

LONDON-Turkish stocks, bonds and the lira sold off on Monday after a credit rating downgrade to junk while rising unease over U.S. politics and a meeting of oil exporters spurred broader emerging markets weakness.

Late on Friday, Moody’s cut Turkey’s sovereign rating to ‘junk’, citing worries about the rule of law after a failed putsch and risks from a slowing economy in a move which could push up the costs of borrowing for the country.

Stocks in Istanbul dropped 4 percent, dollar-denominated bonds slipped across the curve while local bond yields rose into double-digit territory and the lira weakened around 1 percent against the dollar.

The assets later recovered some of the losses.

“You’ve had the coup, you have had various terrorist attacks, you have a central bank that is cutting interest rates and it is far from clear…that it should be cutting rates and then the downgrade,” said Paul Fage, senior emerging market strategist at TD Securities.

“But that said, (Turkish assets) did not get killed by any stretch of imagination and would have given investors positive returns since the start of the year, and that is a reflection of its high carry-currency and that we are still in a reasonably risk-on environment for EM.”

JPMorgan, which runs the most widely used emerging debt indexes, estimated earlier this year that a cut to junk could force funds to dump around $10 billion worth of Turkish bonds with over 10 percent of hard currency Turkish debt at risk of forced selling

Emerging stocks also suffered. MSCI’s index fell 1.3 percent – the steepest daily loss in two weeks – as focus switched from central banks to American politics ahead of the first U.S. presidential debate later in the day.

On currency markets Russia’s rouble was trading flat against the dollar as oil prices rose 0.5 percent following a 4 percent drop on Friday.

OPEC and other big oil producers start a meeting in Algeria later in the day where they will discuss a possible output-limiting deal.

Israel’s shekel weakened 0.2 percent ahead of a central bank meeting where policy makers are expected to leave interest rates unchanged for the 19th straight month after data showed economic growth remains healthy even as a deflation trend persists.

In central and eastern Europe, Polish stocks led losses on bourses across the region, down 1.6 percent and extending losses posted since Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo said on Friday that she would reshuffle her government.

The forint eased 0.2 percent to the euro, pulling back from 16-month highs amid some unease caused by a blast on the weekend in Budapest, while Hungarian stocks fell 0.7 percent to one-week lows.

U.S. Murders Surged in 2015, F.B.I. Finds

September 26, 2016

by Timothy Williams and Monica Davey

New York Times

The country’s murder rate jumped more last year than it had in nearly half a century, newly released federal crime data showed, although the number of homicides remained far below the levels of the 1980s and ’90s.

The data, part of an annual report released on Monday by the F.B.I., showed that the murder rate rose 10.8 percent across the United States in 2015, part of a nearly 4 percent increase in violent crime.

Fueling the surge in murders was street violence in a handful of major cities, notably Baltimore, Chicago, St. Louis, Washington, D.C., and Milwaukee, where most of the victims were young African-American males. The F.B.I. reported that guns were used in nearly three-quarters of the nation’s 15,696 murders during 2015.

Police officials and criminologists say there is no single explanation for the increase nationally, but point to disputes that more often end in gun violence and turf battles over a growing, and highly profitable, heroin trade.

“It’s too early to call this an end to the crime drop, but we are facing a one-year rise in murders that is quite substantial — the largest in about half a century,” said Richard Rosenfeld, a criminology professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, and an authority on crime trends.

“Alarm is not the appropriate response,” he said, “but the priority should be in improving police-community relations, particularly in disadvantaged African-American communities.”

The data was released on a day when a gunman in Houston wounded nine people before being fatally shot by the police, and in the midst of a heated presidential campaign in which the Republican candidate, Donald J. Trump, has made law and order a central tenet.

Saying that “crime is out of control, and rapidly getting worse,” Mr. Trump has pledged to make the country safe again. He suggested last week that stop-and-frisk policing, a tactic that has been ruled unconstitutional and subsequently discontinued in New York City, might be a model for other cities.

The Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, has called for an overhaul of the justice system and a rebuilding of trust between law enforcement officers and the communities they serve. She has also called for stricter gun control.

The murder rate last year was far below the levels of 30 to 40 years ago, when violent crime, fueled partly by gang violence during the crack cocaine epidemic, reached a peak. The overall 3.9 percent increase in violent crime in 2015 was lower than levels from five and 10 years ago, the F.B.I. said.

“It is important to remember that while crime did increase over all last year, 2015 still represented the third-lowest year for violent crime in the past two decades,” Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch said Monday.

The pace of murders in Baltimore, Milwaukee, St. Louis and Washington has since fallen in 2016, according to police data from those cities. (Homicides classified as murder or non-negligent manslaughter are included in the F.B.I. data for murder.)

Still, the White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, said that President Obama, who has pushed for stricter gun control, “believes there’s more that we can and should do.”

“And there’s no area where the president has been more outspoken than taking action on common-sense gun safety measures that would make it harder for criminals and others who shouldn’t have them to buy a gun,” Mr. Earnest said.

James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, has suggested that the increase in violence in some urban centers may be the result of police officers’ being less aggressive in confronting potential crime as departments have been subjected to intense scrutiny over questionable shootings that have been captured on video and watched by millions on the internet

Mr. Comey’s remarks have been disputed by police chiefs and criminologists, who say there is no reliable data that supports his premise.

The F.B.I. report said that about 1.2 million violent crimes occurred in 2015, up from 1.15 million in 2014. In 1996, when cities experienced a wave of violent crime, there were about 1.7 million violent crimes, according to the data.

The number of murders in 2015 was about the same as the 15,399 committed in 2009. Still, the 10.8 percent increase in the murder rate in 2015 is the most since a rise of more than 11 percent from 1967 to 1968, Dr. Rosenfeld said.

By contrast, property crimes fell 2.6 percent in 2015, according to the F.B.I. data.

Chicago, one of the cities responsible for a significant part of the nation’s homicide increase, had 411 murders in 2014 and 478 in 2015, according to the F.B.I. data.

As of late September, more than 500 people had been killed in Chicago so far this year, passing the city’s total for all of 2015, and more than 3,000 people have been shot.

Officials in Chicago have struggled to explain the uptick in killings. The law enforcement authorities point to a rising number of increasingly splintered gangs on the city’s South and West Sides, as well as an abundance of guns and what they view as weak penalties for gun violations.

Community leaders identify more profound roots for the violence, including disinvestment in neighborhoods, poverty and unemployment.

Last week, Chicago officials announced efforts to try to slow the violence, including the addition of nearly 1,000 officers who are expected to join the Chicago Police Department, which is already the nation’s second-largest municipal police force.

Relations between the Chicago police and residents have grown especially tense since late 2015 when city officials made public a video showing a police officer shooting Laquan McDonald, an African-American teenager, 16 times. The Department of Justice is investigating the Chicago police.

Los Angeles had 282 murders in 2015, compared with 262 in 2014, while New York had 352 murders last year, and about 333 in 2014, the report said.

Other cities that had large increases in murders in 2015 — including Baltimore, where they rose to 344 from 211 in 2014, and Milwaukee, where they increased to 145 from 90 — have seen murders drop this year.

“There are four or five cities that are big enough to drive a significant portion of the increase,” said Ronal Serpas, a former police chief in Nashville and New Orleans, who is now a criminal justice professor at Loyola University New Orleans.

But homicides have increased during the first nine months of this year in several other cities, including Charlotte, N.C., where Keith Lamont Scott, a black man, was fatally shot by the police last week. Those numbers are expected to lead to an even higher increase in the murder rate for 2016, according to a report published this month by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law.