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Octafish

(55,745 posts)
Fri Mar 25, 2016, 04:16 PM Mar 2016

Hillary Is the Candidate of the War Machine



Words of wisdom from a fellow Detroiter who's fought the good fight in public for as long as I can remember:



Hillary Is the Candidate of the War Machine

by Jeffrey D. Sachs
Common Dreams, Feb. 5, 2016

There's no doubt that Hillary is the candidate of Wall Street. Even more dangerous, though, is that she is the candidate of the military-industrial complex. The idea that she is bad on the corporate issues but good on national security has it wrong. Her so-called foreign policy "experience" has been to support every war demanded by the US deep security state run by the military and the CIA.

Hillary and Bill Clinton's close relations with Wall Street helped to stoke two financial bubbles (1999-2000 and 2005-8) and the Great Recession that followed Lehman's collapse. In the 1990s they pushed financial deregulation for their campaign backers that in turn let loose the worst demons of financial manipulation, toxic assets, financial fraud, and eventually collapse. In the process they won elections and got mighty rich.

Yet Hillary's connections with the military-industrial complex are also alarming. It is often believed that the Republicans are the neocons and the Democrats act as restraints on the warmongering. This is not correct. Both parties are divided between neocon hawks and cautious realists who don't want the US in unending war. Hillary is a staunch neocon whose record of favoring American war adventures explains much of our current security danger.

SNIP...

Hillary's record as Secretary of State is among the most militaristic, and disastrous, of modern US history. Some experience. Hilary was a staunch defender of the military-industrial-intelligence complex at every turn, helping to spread the Iraq mayhem over a swath of violence that now stretches from Mali to Afghanistan. Two disasters loom largest: Libya and Syria.

Hillary has been much attacked for the deaths of US diplomats in Benghazi, but her tireless promotion of the overthrow Muammar Qaddafi by NATO bombing is the far graver disaster. Hillary strongly promoted NATO-led regime change in Libya, not only in violation of international law but counter to the most basic good judgment. After the NATO bombing, Libya descended into civil war while the paramilitaries and unsecured arms stashes in Libya quickly spread west across the African Sahel and east to Syria. The Libyan disaster has spawned war in Mali, fed weapons to Boko Haram in Nigeria, and fueled ISIS in Syria and Iraq. In the meantime, Hillary found it hilarious to declare of Qaddafi: "We came, we saw, he died."

CONTINUED w/links...

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/02/05/hillary-candidate-war-machine


Wars without end. Amen.


67 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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Hillary Is the Candidate of the War Machine (Original Post) Octafish Mar 2016 OP
Yep! Jenny_92808 Mar 2016 #1
''War is a Racket.'' -- Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler, USMC Octafish Mar 2016 #9
So you. An promise me that nobody will be killed if Sanders is President? brooklynite Mar 2016 #20
At least he won't have Robert Kagan whispering in his ear..... think Mar 2016 #33
Not to mention he won't have arikara Mar 2016 #35
I think the Sander's support of the F35 cannot be overstated. nt msanthrope Mar 2016 #37
Are you kidding? You're not even on the same page... think Mar 2016 #48
Explain the person in this video please. PufPuf23 Mar 2016 #39
No. Bernie won't use War as a first choice. Octafish Mar 2016 #44
His support of the use of Drone warfare does indicate that he will wage war smarter.... msanthrope Mar 2016 #56
Doing something destructive Is better than doing nothing, and destruction=profit Dragonfli Mar 2016 #2
Her fans love her because she is "tough". nm rhett o rick Mar 2016 #6
She "gets things done" too! arcane1 Mar 2016 #8
She can't wait to show Iran just how tough she is. Heaven help us all. nm rhett o rick Mar 2016 #10
Oh goody, if she has her druthers we will finally see her "muscular" foreign policy chops /nt Dragonfli Mar 2016 #16
I cant wait to see President Drumpf rounding up millions of Americans in the middle of the Jackie Wilson Said Mar 2016 #51
Top Secret = I'm Stealing Money Octafish Mar 2016 #14
Last thing we need is a 'democratic' warmongering president... TheProgressive Mar 2016 #3
War and extraction industries are intertwined for some Swiss reason. Octafish Mar 2016 #15
+100000 amborin Mar 2016 #34
Clinton Tops List Of Arms Company Campaign Contributions Ichingcarpenter Mar 2016 #4
New York Times goes Fascist full bore! Octafish Mar 2016 #17
Dirty wars especially Sir. Just like mentors Kissinger, Allbright, Tenant, Brennan et al bobthedrummer Mar 2016 #5
Tyler Cowen (Baby BoomBoomer) on Naomi Klein Octafish Mar 2016 #42
"With Trump’s impending nomination, neocons are reaffirming what they’ve always thought: Hillary rhett o rick Mar 2016 #7
''When her fans say she can get things done, this is what they mean.'' Octafish Mar 2016 #12
The Powers That Be have complete control as far as I can tell. While I am participating rhett o rick Mar 2016 #21
the world is so peaceful today - 4 years after she was in government MariaThinks Mar 2016 #11
Three Little Words: WikiLeaks, Libya, Oil Octafish Mar 2016 #45
love the code words. what does she have to do with each of those? MariaThinks Mar 2016 #46
I explained it to you before. Are you playing dumb? Octafish Mar 2016 #47
dumb i am not. MariaThinks Mar 2016 #49
I'll take your word on that. Your lack of knowledge needs remediation. Octafish Mar 2016 #50
just so you know and there is no way to convince you but my knowledge is quite excellent MariaThinks Mar 2016 #57
That's why I linked to the other thread, where you post the same story. Octafish Mar 2016 #58
BCCI, Iran Contra relevance; UAE, Saudi, Pakistan, money and Bush family (ProSense DU 10-7-06) bobthedrummer Mar 2016 #62
Wars without end means profits without end, for the war profiteers. nt valerief Mar 2016 #13
But they can only bleed us so far. What will they do when we have nothing left to give? What will rhett o rick Mar 2016 #24
she would usher in an era of unending war on a massive scale amborin Mar 2016 #18
Otherwise, all that terror would be for nought. Octafish Mar 2016 #60
great post, Octafish! It needs to be a separate OP. amborin Mar 2016 #63
I have it on good authority that War Machine ROX CalvinballPro Mar 2016 #19
Ask your doctor if Operation NORTHWOODS is right enough for you. Octafish Mar 2016 #61
Absolutely. senz Mar 2016 #22
War is USA Business Plan, per NYT. Octafish Mar 2016 #65
Todays Democracy Now said the Justice Dept was trying to reign in Black Water but Hillary and Barack Zira Mar 2016 #23
I think the orders were coming from a higher paygrade. nm rhett o rick Mar 2016 #25
She and Barack were a team - he as the pres. and her as secretary of state handling foreign policy. Zira Mar 2016 #28
I think that Obama was "encouraged" to hire Clinton by people that have more power that he. rhett o rick Mar 2016 #29
Yes, you are right. Zira Mar 2016 #30
It's not that I want to be, but seems obvious to me. nm rhett o rick Mar 2016 #31
Weird, the reliance on the Republican Erik Prince and his Blackwater mercenaries. Octafish Mar 2016 #66
True.... daleanime Mar 2016 #26
Recommended. H2O Man Mar 2016 #27
k&r rhett o rick Mar 2016 #32
knr leveymg Mar 2016 #36
Hillary Clinton and Libya and War. Bernie Sanders and Peace. PufPuf23 Mar 2016 #38
Yapping Dogs of War.... John Poet Mar 2016 #40
I do not hate this person FlatBaroque Mar 2016 #41
K&R for the ugly truth Scuba Mar 2016 #43
So Bernie loves the F35 for what Flower power? MattP Mar 2016 #52
I don't think he is eager to USE it on people. djean111 Mar 2016 #53
No he just likes to waste billions on a obsolete plane MattP Mar 2016 #54
If Hillary supporters weren't so disingenuous about this issue it might be worth discussing. think Mar 2016 #55
+10 amborin Mar 2016 #64
He voted against having it made, because it's a sack of shit air frame. VulgarPoet Mar 2016 #59
What is wrong with War Macine Gwhittey Mar 2016 #67

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
9. ''War is a Racket.'' -- Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler, USMC
Fri Mar 25, 2016, 04:58 PM
Mar 2016

Gen. Butler received the Medal of Honor for gallantry above and beyond the call of duty, twice.



Smedley Butler Stopped American Fascist Conspiracy to Overthrow FDR.

 

think

(11,641 posts)
33. At least he won't have Robert Kagan whispering in his ear.....
Fri Mar 25, 2016, 08:11 PM
Mar 2016
Hillary's GOP Neocon foreign policy adviser while she was SOS...

Robert Kagan Thinks America's Problem Is Too Little War

—By Kevin Drum | Mon Aug. 31, 2015 11:00 AM EDT

Over the weekend1 Robert Kagan wrote an essay in the Wall Street Journal titled "America's Dangerous Aversion to Conflict." That seemed....wrong, somehow, so I read it. Mostly it turned out to be a tedious history lesson about the run-up to World War II basically a long version of the "Munich!" argument that conservatives make every time we fail to go to war with somebody. But there was also this:

President George H.W. Bush and his national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, sent half a million American troops to fight thousands of miles away for no other reason than to thwart aggression and restore a desert kingdom that had been invaded by its tyrant neighbor.

....A little more than a decade later, however, the U.S. is a changed country. Because of the experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, to suggest sending even a few thousand troops to fight anywhere for any reason is almost unthinkable. The most hawkish members of Congress don't think it safe to argue for a ground attack on the Islamic State or for a NATO troop presence in Ukraine. There is no serious discussion of reversing the cuts in the defense budget, even though the strategic requirements of defending U.S. allies in Europe, Asia and the Middle East have rarely been more manifest while America's ability to do so has rarely been more in doubt.


This is one of the tropes that conservative hawks haul out with tiresome predictability, but it's flat wrong. Even now, when Americans have every reason to be skeptical of military action in the Mideast, poll after poll shows a surprising acceptance of it. Whether the subject is Iran, Syria, or ISIS, it's plain that many Americans are already primed for military action, and many more can be talked into it pretty easily. The United States has fought half a dozen major wars in the past quarter century, and the surprising thing isn't that we've gotten war weary. Quite the contrary: the surprising thing is that we're plainly ready to keep it up given the right incentive...

Read more:
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2015/08/robert-kagan-thinks-americas-problem-too-little-war


And here's a letter to President Clinton urging war with Iraq BEFORE 9/11. Please note the great company that Kagan surrounds himself with:

January 26, 1998

The Honorable William J. Clinton
President of the United States
Washington, DC

Dear Mr. President:

We are writing you because we are convinced that current American policy
toward Iraq is not succeeding, and that we may soon face a threat in the Middle
East more serious than any we have known since the end of the Cold War. In
your upcoming State of the Union Address, you have an opportunity to chart a
clear and determined course for meeting this threat. We urge you to seize that
opportunity, and to enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of
the U.S. and our friends and allies around the world. That strategy should aim,
above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power. We stand
ready to offer our full support in this difficult but necessary endeavor.

The policy of “containment” of Saddam Hussein has been steadily eroding over
the past several months. As recent events have demonstrated, we can no
longer depend on our partners in the Gulf War coalition to continue to uphold the
sanctions or to punish Saddam when he blocks or evades UN inspections. Our
ability to ensure that Saddam Hussein is not producing weapons of mass
destruction, therefore, has substantially diminished. Even if full inspections
were eventually to resume, which now seems highly unlikely, experience has
shown that it is difficult if not impossible to monitor Iraq’s chemical and biological
weapons production. The lengthy period during which the inspectors will have
been unable to enter many Iraqi facilities has made it even less likely that they
will be able to uncover all of Saddam’s secrets. As a result, in the
not-too-distant future we will be unable to determine with any reasonable level of
confidence whether Iraq does or does not possess such weapons.

Such uncertainty will, by itself, have a seriously destabilizing effect on the entire
Middle East. It hardly needs to be added that if Saddam does acquire the
capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction, as he is almost certain to do if
we continue along the present course, the safety of American troops in the
region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a
significant portion of the world’s supply of oil will all be put at hazard. As you
have rightly declared, Mr. President, the security of the world in the first part of
the 21st century will be determined largely by how we handle this threat.
Given the magnitude of the threat, the current policy, which depends for its
success upon the steadfastness of our coalition partners and upon the
cooperation of Saddam Hussein, is dangerously inadequate. The only
acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to
use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this
means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing.
In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from
power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.

We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your Administration's attention to
implementing a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from power. This will
require a full complement of diplomatic, political and military efforts.
Although we
are fully aware of the dangers and difficulties in implementing this policy, we
believe the dangers of failing to do so are far greater. We believe the U.S. has
the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps,
including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf. In any case,
American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on
unanimity in the UN Security Council.

We urge you to act decisively. If you act now to end the threat of weapons of
mass destruction against the U.S. or its allies, you will be acting in the most
fundamental national security interests of the country. If we accept a course of
weakness and drift, we put our interests and our future at risk.

Sincerely,

Elliott Abrams Richard L. Armitage William J. Bennett
Jeffrey Bergner John Bolton Paula Dobriansky
Francis Fukuyama Robert Kagan Zalmay Khalilzad
William Kristol Richard Perle Peter W. Rodman
Donald Rumsfeld William Schneider, Jr. Vin Weber
Paul Wolfowitz R. James Woolsey Robert B. Zoellick

http://zfacts.com/metaPage/lib/98-Rumsfeld-Iraq.pdf
 

msanthrope

(37,549 posts)
56. His support of the use of Drone warfare does indicate that he will wage war smarter....
Sat Mar 26, 2016, 11:44 AM
Mar 2016

I like that about him, and frankly we all would have been better off if Tora Bora had been smashed at buy a drone in November of 2001.

Dragonfli

(10,622 posts)
2. Doing something destructive Is better than doing nothing, and destruction=profit
Fri Mar 25, 2016, 04:23 PM
Mar 2016

IOW

"The Clinton Doctrine" it's like the Bush doctrine but with 40% more Destruction!
On sale now at polling places and Clinton Foundations near you.

[font size="1"] *No rules of engagement shall apply, no cluster bombing or innocent lives spared, we reserve the right to torture at our discretion.[/font]

She espouses a foreign policy vision that appears as if born the bastard son of Bush and Kissinger doctrines.

Jackie Wilson Said

(4,176 posts)
51. I cant wait to see President Drumpf rounding up millions of Americans in the middle of the
Sat Mar 26, 2016, 11:18 AM
Mar 2016

night and trucking them over the boarder.

That will be fun to watch, eh!





























Octafish

(55,745 posts)
14. Top Secret = I'm Stealing Money
Fri Mar 25, 2016, 05:24 PM
Mar 2016

"If ever time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin." -- Samuel Adams



Soldiers sign up to defend the country and get used for who knows what to do whatever it takes to grab as much as we can as fast as we can for as long as we can. Hey, DU: Anyone you know ever hear of Col. Ted Westhusing? They should.

Old news to you, Dragonfli, a complete and shocking story for most all the USA:

Meet The Carlyle Group

Former World Leaders and Washington Insiders Making Billions in the War on Terrorism


"When demagoguery and deceit become a national political movement, we Americans are in trouble, not just Democrats, but ALL of us…Corruption in public office is treason." -- Adlai Stevenson

Aspens, like, Scooter wrote the jailed Judy.

 

TheProgressive

(1,656 posts)
3. Last thing we need is a 'democratic' warmongering president...
Fri Mar 25, 2016, 04:25 PM
Mar 2016

Just one more reason to not vote for Clinton...

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
15. War and extraction industries are intertwined for some Swiss reason.
Fri Mar 25, 2016, 05:36 PM
Mar 2016
Phil Gramm used a gameplane inspired by Meyer Lansky. Gramm's genius was to have the taxpayers pick up the protection tab, and deduct any investment needed, such as bribes and props, in order to move the loot offshore.

Greg Palast explains how Barrick Gold became one of Poppy Bush's favorite charities. Of course, for pointing it out, Poppy wold make certain to give the big shaft to The Guardian and Greg Palast.





Poppy Strikes Gold

Sunday, April 27, 2008
Originally Posted July 9, 2003
By Greg Palast

EXCERPT...

And while the Bush family steadfastly believes that ex-felons should not have the right to vote for president, they have no objection to ex-cons putting presidents on their payroll. In 1996, despite pleas by U.S. church leaders, Poppy Bush gave several speeches (he charges $100,000 per talk) sponsored by organizations run by Rev. Sun Myung Moon, cult leader, tax cheat—and formerly the guest of the U.S. federal prison system. Some of the loot for the Republican effort in the 1997–2000 election cycles came from an outfit called Barrick Corporation.

The sum, while over $100,000, is comparatively small change for the GOP, yet it seemed quite a gesture for a corporation based in Canada. Technically, the funds came from those associated with the Canadian's U.S. unit, Barrick Gold Strike.

They could well afford it. [font color="green"]In the final days of the Bush (Senior) administration, the Interior Department made an extraordinary but little noticed change in procedures under the 1872 Mining Law, the gold rush–era act that permitted those whiskered small-time prospectors with their tin pans and mules to stake claims on their tiny plots. The department initiated an expedited procedure for mining companies that allowed Barrick to swiftly lay claim to the largest gold find in America. In the terminology of the law, Barrick could "perfect its patent" on the estimated $10 billion in ore—for which Barrick paid the U.S. Treasury a little under $10,000. Eureka![/font color]

Barrick, of course, had to put up cash for the initial property rights and the cost of digging out the booty (and the cost of donations, in smaller amounts, to support Nevada's Democratic senator, Harry Reid). Still, the shift in rules paid off big time: According to experts at the Mineral Policy Center of Washington, DC, Barrick saved—and the U.S. taxpayer lost—a cool billion or so. Upon taking office, Bill Clinton's new interior secretary, Bruce Babbitt, called Barrick's claim the "biggest gold heist since the days of Butch Cassidy." Nevertheless, because the company followed the fast-track process laid out for them under Bush, this corporate Goldfinger had Babbitt by the legal nuggets. Clinton had no choice but to give them the gold mine while the public got the shaft.

Barrick says it had no contact whatsoever with the president at the time of the rules change.(1) There was always a place in Barrick's heart for the older Bush—and a place on its payroll. In 1995, Barrick hired the former president as Honorary Senior Advisor to the Toronto company's International Advisory Board. Bush joined at the suggestion of former Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney, who, like Bush, had been ignominiously booted from office. I was a bit surprised that the president had signed on. When Bush was voted out of the White House, he vowed never to lobby or join a corporate board. The chairman of Barrick openly boasts that granting the title "Senior Advisor" was a sly maneuver to help Bush tiptoe around this promise.

CONTINUED...

http://www.gregpalast.com/poppy-strikes-gold/



The guy really gave rise to compassionate conservative, as in helping the rich and their corporations.

The story continues, in which Mr. Palast details how said gold mining company employed pure fascist tactics to take over the mine, a plan which involved bulldozing the miners' homes and mines, some with the miners and their families still inside.

Let that, uh, sink in for a moment. For his trouble in reporting the story, Barrick threatened to sue.



The Truth Buried Alive

—By Greg Palast, From The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (Penguin/Plume, 2003)

Source: UTNE Reader
April 2003 Issue

EXCERPT...

Bad news. In July 2001, in the middle of trying to get out the word of the theft of the election in Florida, [font color="red"]I was about to become the guinea pig, the test case, for an attempt by a multinational corporation to suppress free speech in the USA using British libel law. I have a U.S.-based Web site for Americans who can’t otherwise read my columns or view my BBC television reports. The gold-mining company held my English newspaper liable for aggravated damages for my publishing the story in the USA. If I did not pull the Bush-Barrick story off my U.S. Web site, my paper would face a ruinously costly fight.(1)[/font color]

Panicked, the Guardian legal department begged me to delete not just the English versions of the story but also my Spanish translation, printed in Bolivia. (Caramba!)

The Goldfingers didn’t stop there. [font color="green"]Barrick’s lawyers told our papers that I personally would be sued in the United Kingdom over Web publications of my story in America, because the Web could be accessed in Britain. The success of this legal strategy would effectively annul the U.S. Bill of Rights.[/font color] Speak freely in the USA, but if your words are carried on a U.S. Web site, you may be sued in Britain. The Declaration of Independence would be null and void, at least for libel law. Suddenly, instead of the Internet becoming a means of spreading press freedom, the means to break through censorship, it would become the electronic highway for delivering repression.

And repression was winning. InterPress Services (IPS) of Washington, DC, sent a reporter to Tanzania with Lissu. They received a note from Barrick that said if the wire service ran a story that repeated the allegations, the company would sue. IPS did not run the story.

I was worried about Lissu. On July 19, 2001, a group of Tanzanian police interest lawyers wrote the nation’s president asking for an investigation–instead, Lissu’s law partner in Dar es Salaam was arrested. The police were hunting for Lissu. They broke into his home and office and turned them upside down looking for the names of Lissu’s sources, his whereabouts and the evidence he gathered on the mine site clearance. This was more than a legal skirmish. Over the next months, demonstrations by vicims’ families were broken up by police thugs. A member of Parliament joining protesters was beaten and hospitalized. I had to raise cash quick to get Lissu out, and with him, his copies of police files with more evidence of the killings. I called Maude Barlow, the “Ralph Nader of Canada”, head of the Council of Canadians. Without hesitation, she teamed up with Friends of the Earth in Holland, raised funds and prepared a press conference–and in August tipped the story to the Globe & Mail, Canada’s national paper.

CONTINUED...

http://www.mapcruzin.com/palast-2.htm



Telling the truth, including the bits about the buried alive gold miners, isn't a defense in countries where big corporations retain lawyers. So the Big Corporation sued and sued and sued Palast for exposing their murderous business. With their deep pockets, they can buy justice, judges, prime ministers and whoever and whatever else they need to turn a buck, even presidents and their dim sons and kissin' cousins. What they can't stop is the truth.

Ichingcarpenter

(36,988 posts)
4. Clinton Tops List Of Arms Company Campaign Contributions
Fri Mar 25, 2016, 04:27 PM
Mar 2016

Hillary Clinton has received more money from arms and military service companies than any other candidate during the 2016 presidential campaign, data from Open Secrets shows.

All but one of the world’s 10 biggest arms producers have contributed to Clinton’s previous campaigns, giving her — along with the top Republican receiver Ted Cruz — a significant margin over the other candidates.

The numbers, collected by the Federal Election Commission and compiled by Open Secrets, also reveal that Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders make the list of top 20 senators and top six presidential candidates to receive money from arms and defense companies.

http://www.mintpressnews.com/clinton-tops-list-of-arms-company-donations-this-content-was-originally-published-by-telesur-at-the-following-address-httpwww-telesurtv-netenglishnewsclinton-tops-list-of-arms-company-donat/212084/



Is Hillary Clinton World’s Evilest Arms Dealer Ever? Maybe!.




According to an exhaustive trillion-word report by the International Business Times, the Clinton State Department authorized approximately eleventeen metric fucktons of defense contracts between corporations and countries that, coincidentally uh huh sure right, happened to donate a whole bunch of money to the Clinton Foundation and to Bill Clinton (that’s her husband) for doing his high-priced speechifying thing:

In all, governments and corporations involved in the arms deals approved by Clinton’s State Department have delivered between $54 million and $141 million to the Clinton Foundation as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments to the Clinton family, according to foundation and State Department records.

It just so happens that some of those countries who were allowed to get their hands on some sweet, sweet weapons were also on the official United States Naughty List of Countries That Are Naughty, like Algeria and Qatar, who were condemned by the State Department while Clinton was secretary of it, for sucking super hard at human rights, and for things like “widespread corruption” and “arbitrary killing.” And yet they were allowed to buy all kinds of military hardware and chemical agents and other goodies. Plus there was a $29 billion — yes, with a “b” — deal to sell fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, which is supposed to be our pal in the Middle East even though its human rights abuses are pretty bad too, but the Saudis give us all that oil we need, so we just sort of ignore their naughty stuff. And yet all of those countries, who happened to have given money to the Clinton Foundation, were permitted to buy stuff from defense contractors who also happened to give money to the Clinton Foundation, HMMMMMMMMMM. Coincidence? Maybe. Or maybe not. But maybe?


Read more at http://wonkette.com/586746/is-hillary-clinton-worlds-evilest-arms-dealer-ever-maybe#tFybMkIk0wW7tuRx.99

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
17. New York Times goes Fascist full bore!
Fri Mar 25, 2016, 06:04 PM
Mar 2016
We Need More War - BFEE Business Plan is now the official American Economic Worldview.



And I do mean bore. Economist Tyler Cowen of George Mason University has seen the future and it looks bleak for most of us. Thankfully, the United States of America may be in for good times, especially for those perched atop the socio-economic pyramid scheme, should war break out.



The Pitfalls of Peace

The Lack of Major Wars May Be Hurting Economic Growth

Tyler Cowen
The New York Times, JUNE 13, 2014

The continuing slowness of economic growth in high-income economies has prompted soul-searching among economists. They have looked to weak demand, rising inequality, Chinese competition, over-regulation, inadequate infrastructure and an exhaustion of new technological ideas as possible culprits.

An additional explanation of slow growth is now receiving attention, however. It is the persistence and expectation of peace.

The world just hasn’t had that much warfare lately, at least not by historical standards. Some of the recent headlines about Iraq or South Sudan make our world sound like a very bloody place, but today’s casualties pale in light of the tens of millions of people killed in the two world wars in the first half of the 20th century. Even the Vietnam War had many more deaths than any recent war involving an affluent country.

Counterintuitive though it may sound, the greater peacefulness of the world may make the attainment of higher rates of economic growth less urgent and thus less likely. This view does not claim that fighting wars improves economies, as of course the actual conflict brings death and destruction. The claim is also distinct from the Keynesian argument that preparing for war lifts government spending and puts people to work. Rather, the very possibility of war focuses the attention of governments on getting some basic decisions right — whether investing in science or simply liberalizing the economy. Such focus ends up improving a nation’s longer-run prospects.

It may seem repugnant to find a positive side to war in this regard, but a look at American history suggests we cannot dismiss the idea so easily. Fundamental innovations such as nuclear power, the computer and the modern aircraft were all pushed along by an American government eager to defeat the Axis powers or, later, to win the Cold War. The Internet was initially designed to help this country withstand a nuclear exchange, and Silicon Valley had its origins with military contracting, not today’s entrepreneurial social media start-ups. The Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite spurred American interest in science and technology, to the benefit of later economic growth.

War brings an urgency that governments otherwise fail to summon. For instance, the Manhattan Project took six years to produce a working atomic bomb, starting from virtually nothing, and at its peak consumed 0.4 percent of American economic output. It is hard to imagine a comparably speedy and decisive achievement these days.

SNIP...

Living in a largely peaceful world with 2 percent G.D.P. growth has some big advantages that you don’t get with 4 percent growth and many more war deaths. Economic stasis may not feel very impressive, but it’s something our ancestors never quite managed to pull off. The real questions are whether we can do any better, and whether the recent prevalence of peace is a mere temporary bubble just waiting to be burst.

Tyler Cowen is a professor of economics at George Mason University.

SOURCE: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/14/upshot/the-lack-of-major-wars-may-be-hurting-economic-growth.html?_r=0



[font color="purple"]Dr. Cowen, from what I've read, is a fine person and not one to promulgate war. He's just sayin'.

He has commented on other Big Ticket economic themes impacting us today: "Inequality," for another instance.
[/font color]



Tired Of Inequality? One Economist Says It'll Only Get Worse

by NPR STAFF
September 12, 2013 3:05 AM

Economist Tyler Cowen has some advice for what to do about America's income inequality: Get used to it. In his latest book, Average Is Over, Cowen lays out his prediction for where the U.S. economy is heading, like it or not:

"I think we'll see a thinning out of the middle class," he tells NPR's Steve Inskeep. "We'll see a lot of individuals rising up to much greater wealth. And we'll also see more individuals clustering in a kind of lower-middle class existence."

It's a radical change from the America of 40 or 50 years ago. Cowen believes the wealthy will become more numerous, and even more powerful. The elderly will hold on to their benefits ... the young, not so much. Millions of people who might have expected a middle class existence may have to aspire to something else.

SNIP...

Some people, he predicts, may just have to find a new definition of happiness that costs less money. Cowen says this widening is the result of a shifting economy. Computers will play a larger role and people who can work with computers can make a lot. He also predicts that everyone will be ruthlessly graded — every slice of their lives, monitored, tracked and recorded.

CONTINUED with link to the audio...

http://www.npr.org/2013/09/12/221425582/tired-of-inequality-one-economist-says-itll-only-get-worse



For some reason, the interview with Steve Inskeep didn't bring up the subject of the GOVERNMENT DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT LIKE IN THE NEW DEAL so I thought I'd bring it up. Older DUers may recall the Democratic Party once actually did do stuff for the average American, from school and work to housing and justice. But, we can't afford that now, obviously, thanks to austerity or the sequester or the divided government.

What's important is that the 1-percent may swell to a 15-percent "upper middle class." Unfortunately, that may see the rest of the middle class go the other way. Why does that ring a bell? Oh yeah.

"Commercial interests are very powerful interests," said George W Bush on Feb. 14, 2007 White House press conference in which he added, "Let me put it this way, ah, sometimes, ah, money trumps peace." And then he giggled and not a single member of the callow, cowed and corrupt press corpse saw fit to ask a follow-up.



Gold Star mom Cindy Sheehan tried to bring it to our nation's attention back in 2007. I don't recall even one reporter from the national corporate owned news seeing it fit to comment. Certainly not many have commented on how three generations of Bush men -- Senator Prescott Sheldon Bush, President George Herbert Walker Bush and pretzeldent George Walker Bush all had their eyes on Iraq's oil.

I wish the Press had done its job. Those in authority would have to do their job. Millions might still be alive, the People might use the money spent on wars in better ways, and the Republic might see a return to Justice.
 

bobthedrummer

(26,083 posts)
5. Dirty wars especially Sir. Just like mentors Kissinger, Allbright, Tenant, Brennan et al
Fri Mar 25, 2016, 04:31 PM
Mar 2016

BCCI, Iran Contra relevance: UAE, Saudi, Pakistan, money and Bush family (ProSense 10-7-06 DU)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2870996

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
42. Tyler Cowen (Baby BoomBoomer) on Naomi Klein
Sat Mar 26, 2016, 08:26 AM
Mar 2016

Shock Jock

By TYLER COWEN | October 3, 2007
Book Review
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
by Naomi Klein

EXCERPT...

Ms. Klein's rhetoric is ridiculous. For instance, she attaches import to the fact that the word "tank" appears in the label "think tank." In her book, free market advocates are tarred with the brush of torture, because free market advocates often support unpopular policies, and torture also often supports unpopular policies. Clearly, by her tactic of freewheeling association, free market advocates must support torture. Often Ms. Klein's proffered connections are so impressionistic and so reliant on a smarmy wink to the knowing that it is impossible to present them, much less critique them, in the short space of a book review.

Rarely are the simplest facts, many of which complicate Ms. Klein's presentation, given their proper due. First, the reach of government has been growing in virtually every developed nation in the world, including in America, and it hardly seems that a far-reaching free market conspiracy controls much of anything in the wealthy nations. Second, Friedman and most other free market economists have consistently called for limits on state power, including the power to torture. Third, the reach of government has been shrinking in India and China, to the indisputable benefit of billions. Fourth, it is the New Deal — the greatest restriction on capitalism in 20th century America and presumably beloved by Ms. Klein — that was imposed in a time of crisis. Fifth, many of the crises of the 20th century resulted from anti-capitalistic policies, rather than from capitalism: China was falling apart because of the murderous and tyrannical policies of Chairman Mao, which then led to bottom-up demands for capitalistic reforms; New Zealand and Chile abandoned socialistic policies for freer markets because the former weren't working well and induced economic crises.

But the reader will search in vain for an intelligent discussion of any of these points. What the reader will find is a series of fabricated claims, such as the suggestion that Margaret Thatcher created the Falkland Islands crisis to crush the unions and foist unfettered capitalism upon an unwilling British public.

The simplest response to Ms. Klein's polemic is to invoke old school conservatism. This approach, most prominently represented by classical liberal Friedrich Hayek, rejected the idea of throwing out or revising all social institutions at once. Indeed the long history of conservative thought stands behind moderation in most matters of social and economic policy. That tradition does advise a scaling down of free market ambitions, no matter how good they may sound in theory, and is probably our best hedge against disasters of our own making. Such a simple — indeed sensible — point would not have produced a best-selling screed, however. And so we return to charging Friedman as an enabler of torture. The clash between democratic preferences and policy prescriptions is, if anything, a problem for Ms. Klein herself. Ms. Klein's previous book, "No Logo" (2000), called for rebellion against advertising and multinational corporations, two institutions which have proved remarkably popular with ordinary democratic citizens. Starbucks is ubiquitous because of pressure from the bottom, not because of a top-down decision to force capitalism upon the suffering workers in a time of crisis.

If nothing else, Ms. Klein's book provides an interesting litmus test as to who is willing to condemn its shoddy reasoning. In the New York Times, Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz defended the book: "Klein is not an academic and cannot be judged as one." So nonacademics get a pass on sloppy thinking, false "facts," and emotional appeals? In making economic claims, Ms. Klein demands to be judged by economists' standards — or at the very least, standards of simple truth or falsehood. Mr. Stiglitz continued: "There are many places in her book where she oversimplifies. But Friedman and the other shock therapists were also guilty of oversimplification." Have we come to citing the failures of one point of view to excuse the mistakes of another?

With "The Shock Doctrine," Ms. Klein has become the kind of brand she lamented in "No Logo." Brands offer a simplification of image and presentation, rather than stressing the complexity, the details, and the inevitable trade-offs of a particular product. Recently, Ms. Klein told the Financial Times, "I stopped talking about (the campaign against brands) about two weeks after ‘No Logo' was published." She admitted that brands were never her real target, rather they were a convenient means of attacking the capitalist system more generally. In the same interview, Ms. Klein also tellingly remarked, "I believe people believe their own bulls---. Ideology can be a great enabler for greed."

CONTINUED...

http://www.nysun.com/arts/shock-jock/63867/

PS: Thank you for standing up to these demented warmongers, bobthedrummer.
 

rhett o rick

(55,981 posts)
7. "With Trump’s impending nomination, neocons are reaffirming what they’ve always thought: Hillary
Fri Mar 25, 2016, 04:45 PM
Mar 2016

Clinton’s foreign policy is right up their alley." And she won't have any trouble from the Neocon Republicons. When her fans say she can get things done, this is what they mean. Support the MIC with more wars.

Perle, who was sometimes referred to as the “Prince of Darkness” and who once predicted there would be “some grand square in Baghdad that is named after President Bush,” made clear his support for Clinton was not due to a lack of choices. “I heard about others on the list [for secretary of state] that I wouldn't be happy about,” he said. “Those were mostly Republicans.”


http://inthesetimes.com/article/18998/neocon-war-hawks-want-hillary-clinton-over-donald-trump.-no-surprisetheyve

There are lots of similar stories on the intertubes: Hillary Clinton Goes Full Neocon at AIPAC, Demonizes Iran, Palestinians
by
Juan Cole
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/03/22/hillary-clinton-goes-full-neocon-aipac-demonizes-iran-palestinians

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
12. ''When her fans say she can get things done, this is what they mean.''
Fri Mar 25, 2016, 05:15 PM
Mar 2016

Both of those are very important articles from excellent researchers. They demonstrate the interlocking business interests via "national security" and all its secret national policies and secret government agents and private beneficiaries who just happen to bank at UBS Switzerland.



We the People have made war on the Cradle of Civilization, , a nation from the dawn of history, 40,000 years ago. Think about that. Especially the next time you fill up, DU.



TRUTH EMERGENCY: INSIDE THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL MEDIA EMPIRE

Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff
Project Censored, May 3, 2010

“When it comes to the news, the corporate view is ‘objective,’ all else is ‘propaganda.’” —Studs Terkel(i)

Among the most important Project Censored news stories of the past decade, one is the fact that over one million people have died because of the United States military invasion and occupation of Iraq. This, of course, does not include the number of deaths from the first Gulf War, nor the ensuing sanctions placed upon the country of Iraq that, combined, caused close to an additional two million Iraqi deaths. In the current Iraq War, beginning in March of 2003, over a million people died violently primarily from US bombings and neighborhood patrols. These were deaths in excess of the normal civilian death rate under the prior government. Among US military leaders and policy elites, the issue of counting the dead was dismissed before the Iraqi invasion even began. In an interview with reporters in late March of 2002 when the War on Terror was in its infancy, US General Tommy Franks stated, “You know we don’t do body counts.”(i) Fortunately, for those concerned about humanitarian costs of war and empire, others do.

In a January 2008 report, the British polling group Opinion Research Business (ORB) reported that “survey work confirms our earlier estimate that over 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens have died as a result of the conflict which started in 2003. We now estimate that the death toll between March 2003 and August 2007 is likely to have been of the order of 1,033,000. If one takes into account the margin of error associated with survey data of this nature then the estimated range is between 946,000 and 1,120,000.”(ii)

The ORB report comes on the heels of two earlier studies conducted by Johns Hopkins University published in the Lancet medical journal that confirmed the continuing numbers of mass deaths in Iraq. A study done by Dr. Les Roberts from January 1, 2002 to March 18, 2003 put the civilian deaths at that time at over 100,000. A second study published in the Lancet in October 2006 documented over 650,000 civilian deaths in Iraq since the start of the US invasion. The 2006 study confirms that US aerial bombing in civilian neighborhoods caused over a third of these deaths and that over half the deaths are directly attributable to US forces.

The magnitude of these million-plus deaths and creation of such a vast refugee crisis is undeniable. The continuing occupation by US forces has guaranteed a monthly mass death rate of thousands of people—a carnage so severe and so concentrated as to equate it with the most heinous mass killings in world history. Further, more tons of bombs have been dropped in Iraq than all of World War II.(iii)

The American people are faced with a serious moral dilemma. Murder and war crimes have been conducted in America’s name. Yet most Americans have no idea of the magnitude of the deaths and tend to believe that the deaths are only in the thousands and are primarily Iraqis killing Iraqis. Corporate mainstream media is in large part to blame.

The question then becomes, how can this mass ignorance and corporate media deception exist in the United States of America, and what impact does this have on peace and social justice movements in the country?(iv)

CONTINUED...

http://www.projectcensored.org/truth-emergency-inside-the-military-industrial-media-empire/



I know you know, rhett o rick, but for those new to the subject: These are par'lous times. And We the People certainly have no time for ignorance. People's lives depend on it.
 

rhett o rick

(55,981 posts)
21. The Powers That Be have complete control as far as I can tell. While I am participating
Fri Mar 25, 2016, 07:50 PM
Mar 2016

as hard as I can, I am not sure that it isn't useless. It's my feeling that Obama is more progressive that he was allowed to be. I think that the NSA/CIA Security State has a lot of control and have "helped" Obama make some non-progressive choices. So my question is, how do you feel about what I just said? And how is this going to play out from here? The people are turning out in large numbers in support of Sanders. If they don't get some satisfaction, and cake ain't gona be enough, sooner or later they will be in the streets. If the Powers That Be are smart they will heed Machiavelli and not take everything until we have nothing to lose. But greed and hubris will cloud their judgement and they will kill the goose.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
45. Three Little Words: WikiLeaks, Libya, Oil
Sat Mar 26, 2016, 09:10 AM
Mar 2016

Remember how the world works for the monied class:

"Libya has some of the biggest and most proven oil reserves — 43.6 billion barrels — outside Saudi Arabia, and some of the best drilling prospects."

http://www.medialens.org/index.php/component/acymailing/archive/view/listid-3-alerts-precis/mailid-74-three-little-words-wikileaks-libya-oil.html


Hoarding it is all they care about.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
50. I'll take your word on that. Your lack of knowledge needs remediation.
Sat Mar 26, 2016, 11:13 AM
Mar 2016

Specifically, in regards to the reasons for all the War for Empire.

Remember Richard Perle, Prince of Darkness and the PNAC poster boy? Just after September 11 and the Washington-Wall Street axis of war profiteering was heating up, Perle hit up Adnan (Iran-Contra/BCCI) Khashoggi for $100 million to make his new "Trireme Partnerships" take off.



Khashoggi's money would help launch the Carlyle Group-like investment group Perle founded. The petromoney was not for arms, directly. It was for investing in companies that were going to be making a killing off of homeland security related areas.

Interesting selling point: Perle already had secured financing from in from Boeing and some other bigwigs like Henry Kissinger.

One of the most important articles The New Yorker ever published:



Lunch with the Chairman

by Seymour M. Hersh
17 March 2003

At the peak of his deal-making activities, in the nineteen-seventies, the Saudi-born businessman Adnan Khashoggi brokered billions of dollars in arms and aircraft sales for the Saudi royal family, earning hundreds of millions in commissions and fees. Though never convicted of wrongdoing, he was repeatedly involved in disputes with federal prosecutors and with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and in recent years he has been in litigation in Thailand and Los Angeles, among other places, concerning allegations of stock manipulation and fraud. During the Reagan Administration, Khashoggi was one of the middlemen between Oliver North, in the White House, and the mullahs in Iran in what became known as the Iran-Contra scandal. Khashoggi subsequently claimed that he lost ten million dollars that he had put up to obtain embargoed weapons for Iran which were to be bartered (with Presidential approval) for American hostages. The scandals of those times seemed to feed off each other: a congressional investigation revealed that Khashoggi had borrowed much of the money for the weapons from the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (B.C.C.I.), whose collapse, in 1991, defrauded thousands of depositors and led to years of inquiry and litigation.

Khashoggi is still brokering. In January of this year, he arranged a private lunch, in France, to bring together Harb Saleh al-Zuhair, a Saudi industrialist whose family fortune includes extensive holdings in construction, electronics, and engineering companies throughout the Middle East, and Richard N. Perle, the chairman of the Defense Policy Board, who is one of the most outspoken and influential American advocates of war with Iraq.

The Defense Policy Board is a Defense Department advisory group composed primarily of highly respected former government officials, retired military officers, and academics. Its members, who serve without pay, include former national-security advisers, Secretaries of Defense, and heads of the C.I.A. The board meets several times a year at the Pentagon to review and assess the country’s strategic defense policies.

Perle is also a managing partner in a venture-capital company called Trireme Partners L.P., which was registered in November, 2001, in Delaware. Trireme’s main business, according to a two-page letter that one of its representatives sent to Khashoggi last November, is to invest in companies dealing in technology, goods, and services that are of value to homeland security and defense. The letter argued that the fear of terrorism would increase the demand for such products in Europe and in countries like Saudi Arabia and Singapore.

CONTINUED...

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/03/17/030317fa_fact



A bit on the new TRIREME business...



At Hollinger, Big Perks in A Small World

By Steven Pearlstein
Wednesday, November 19, 2003; Page E01

It's amazing the coincidences you find digging into Hollinger International, the publishing empire that includes Chicago's Sun-Times and London's Daily Telegraph and is quickly slipping from Conrad Black's control.

Let's start with the board of directors, which includes Barbara Amiel, Conrad's wife, whose right-wing rants have managed to find an outlet in Hollinger publications.

And there's Washington superhawk Richard Perle, who heads Hollinger Digital, the company's venture capital arm. Seems that Hollinger Digital put $2.5 million in a company called Trireme Partners, which aims to cash in on the big military and homeland security buildup. As luck would have it, Trireme's managing partner is none other than . . . Richard Perle.

Perle, of course, has been pushing hard for just such a military buildup from his other perch at the Pentagon's secretive and influential Defense Policy Board, where there are a number of other Friends of Hollinger.

CONTINUED (archived nowadays)...

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-309818.html



If you get to reading and understand, you might find that the to-bomb list grows longer and the system stronger every damn day.

MariaThinks

(2,495 posts)
57. just so you know and there is no way to convince you but my knowledge is quite excellent
Sat Mar 26, 2016, 12:15 PM
Mar 2016

and I have studied the issues. The fact that you think I don't know is more a reflection of your ignorance than mine.

we can all copy shit from the internet, it doesn't mean you understand it or even that it's real.

you get the last word, I'm not going to bother responding.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
58. That's why I linked to the other thread, where you post the same story.
Sat Mar 26, 2016, 12:26 PM
Mar 2016

Sorry if you took the criticism the wrong way. It's not personal, it's what you posted.

 

bobthedrummer

(26,083 posts)
62. BCCI, Iran Contra relevance; UAE, Saudi, Pakistan, money and Bush family (ProSense DU 10-7-06)
Sat Mar 26, 2016, 03:41 PM
Mar 2016
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2870996

Absorb this into your extensive knowledge MariaThinks and rethink.

 

rhett o rick

(55,981 posts)
24. But they can only bleed us so far. What will they do when we have nothing left to give? What will
Fri Mar 25, 2016, 07:59 PM
Mar 2016

we do? In the 1930's when people in the US and Europe were hurting, they looked for a solution. We were fortunate we had FDR and a shit-load of resources. Italy and Germany looked to tough authoritarian leaders like we see running today in both parties.

Sanders would like to bring back the New Deal. Clinton would like to continue the status quo that sees the Wealthy 1% looting the lower classes. The Sanders supporters want to stand up to the Ruling Class and make them pay their share. The Clinton supporters are looking forward to a Clinton Aristocracy with corporate profits continuing to rise.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
60. Otherwise, all that terror would be for nought.
Sat Mar 26, 2016, 12:36 PM
Mar 2016

And when the stakes are measured in trillions of dollars, the thought of peace makes the people who profit from war very uncomfortable.

Also why all the spy:



Ideas like "Justice," "Liberty" and "Democracy" may be missing from humanity's thoughts in the future if we don't wake the heck up now.

Why does any of that matter, when my house is about to get foreclosed because my job got offshored? It's tied in, DU, when Wall Street and War Inc. are where the really Big Bucks go to get made. For We the People are the ones who ALWAYS get "the haircut."

Surveillance and Scandal

Time-Tested Weapons for U.S. Global Power

By Alfred McCoy
Tomgram, Jan. 19, 2014

For more than six months, Edward Snowden’s revelations about the National Security Agency (NSA) have been pouring out from the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Guardian, Germany’s Der Spiegel, and Brazil’s O Globo, among other places. Yet no one has pointed out the combination of factors that made the NSA’s expanding programs to monitor the world seem like such a slam-dunk development in Washington. The answer is remarkably simple. For an imperial power losing its economic grip on the planet and heading into more austere times, the NSA’s latest technological breakthroughs look like a bargain basement deal when it comes to projecting power and keeping subordinate allies in line -- like, in fact, the steal of the century. Even when disaster turned out to be attached to them, the NSA’s surveillance programs have come with such a discounted price tag that no Washington elite was going to reject them.

For well over a century, from the pacification of the Philippines in 1898 to trade negotiations with the European Union today, surveillance and its kissing cousins, scandal and scurrilous information, have been key weapons in Washington’s search for global dominion. Not surprisingly, in a post-9/11 bipartisan exercise of executive power, George W. Bush and Barack Obama have presided over building the NSA step by secret step into a digital panopticon designed to monitor the communications of every American and foreign leaders worldwide.

What exactly was the aim of such an unprecedented program of massive domestic and planetary spying, which clearly carried the risk of controversy at home and abroad? Here, an awareness of the more than century-long history of U.S. surveillance can guide us through the billions of bytes swept up by the NSA to the strategic significance of such a program for the planet’s last superpower. What the past reveals is a long-term relationship between American state surveillance and political scandal that helps illuminate the unacknowledged reason why the NSA monitors America’s closest allies.

[font color="green"]Not only does such surveillance help gain intelligence advantageous to U.S. diplomacy, trade relations, and war-making, but it also scoops up intimate information that can provide leverage -- akin to blackmail -- in sensitive global dealings and negotiations of every sort. The NSA’s global panopticon thus fulfills an ancient dream of empire. With a few computer key strokes, the agency has solved the problem that has bedeviled world powers since at least the time of Caesar Augustus: how to control unruly local leaders, who are the foundation for imperial rule, by ferreting out crucial, often scurrilous, information to make them more malleable.[/font color]

A Cost-Savings Bonanza With a Downside

Once upon a time, such surveillance was both expensive and labor intensive. Today, however, unlike the U.S. Army’s shoe-leather surveillance during World War I or the FBI’s break-ins and phone bugs in the Cold War years, the NSA can monitor the entire world and its leaders with only 100-plus probes into the Internet’s fiber optic cables.

This new technology is both omniscient and omnipresent beyond anything those lacking top-secret clearance could have imagined before the Edward Snowden revelations began. Not only is it unimaginably pervasive, but NSA surveillance is also a particularly cost-effective strategy compared to just about any other form of global power projection. And better yet, it fulfills the greatest imperial dream of all: to be omniscient not just for a few islands, as in the Philippines a century ago, or a couple of countries, as in the Cold War era, but on a truly global scale.

CONTINUED...

http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175795/tomgram%3A_alfred_mccoy,_it's_about_blackmail,_not_national_security/


Sometimes a fortune rests on a mere scrap of information, like in a "Fistful of Dollars."





CIA moonlights in corporate world

In the midst of two wars and the fight against Al Qaeda, the CIA is offering operatives a chance to peddle their expertise to private companies on the side — a policy that gives financial firms and hedge funds access to the nation’s top-level intelligence talent, POLITICO has learned.

In one case, these active-duty officers moonlighted at a hedge-fund consulting firm that wanted to tap their expertise in “deception detection,” the highly specialized art of telling when executives may be lying based on clues in a conversation.

The never-before-revealed policy comes to light as the CIA and other intelligence agencies are once again under fire for failing to “connect the dots,” this time in the Christmas Day bombing plot on Northwest Flight 253.

SNIP...

But the close ties between active-duty and retired CIA officers at one consulting company show the degree to which CIA-style intelligence gathering techniques have been employed by hedge funds and financial institutions in the global economy.

The firm is called Business Intelligence Advisors, and it is based in Boston. BIA was founded and is staffed by a number of retired CIA officers, and it specializes in the arcane field of “deception detection.” BIA’s clients have included Goldman Sachs and the enormous hedge fund SAC Capital Advisors, according to spokesmen for both firms.

CONTINUED...

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/32290.html#ixzz0eIFPhHBh





Then there's the signature tradition of playing both sides off the middle, like selling rifles to both the Allies and the Central Powers during World War I, or the bounty hunters in "For a Few Dollars More" getting one inside to work out.



Stratfor: executive boasted of 'trusted former CIA cronies'

By Alex Spillius, Diplomatic Correspondent
9:08PM GMT 28 Feb 2012
The Telegraph

A senior executive with the private intelligence firm Stratfor boasted to colleagues about his "trusted former CIA cronies" and promised to "see what I can uncover" about a classified FBI investigation, according to emails released by the WikiLeaks.

Fred Burton, vice president of intelligence at the Texas firm, also informed members of staff that he had a copy of the confidential indictment on Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.

The second batch of five million internal Stratfor emails obtained by the Anonymous computer hacking group revealed that the company has high level sources within the United States and other governments, runs a network of paid informants that includes embassy staff and journalists and planned a hedge fund, Stratcap, based on its secret intelligence.

SNIP...

Mr Assange labelled the company as a "private intelligence Enron", in reference to the energy giant that collapsed after a false accounting scandal.

CONTINUED...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9111784/Stratfor-executive-boasted-of-trusted-former-CIA-cronies.html





Then, there's Booz Allen, NSA's go-to private spyhaus, vacuums and filters the right stuff for Carlyle Group, a buy-partisan business which always seems to know where and what to bomb and make a buck, but the lines between sides turned out be fuzzy and amorphous nebula-like -- like in "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly."



The Knights of the Revolving Door

When War is Swell: the Carlyle Group and the Middle East at War

by JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
CounterPunch, Weekend Edition September 6-8, 2013

Paris.

A couple of weeks ago, in a dress rehearsal for her next presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton, the doyenne of humanitarian interventionism, made a pit-stop at the Carlyle Group to brief former luminaries of the imperial war rooms about her shoot-first-don’t-ask-questions foreign policy.

For those of you who have put the playbill of the Bush administration into a time capsule and buried it beneath the compost bin, the Carlyle Group is essentially a hedge fund for war-making and high tech espionage. They are the people who brought you the Iraq war and all those intrusive niceties of Homeland Security. Call them the Knights of the Revolving Door, many of Carlyle’s executives and investors having spent decades in the Pentagon, the CIA or the State Department, before cashing in for more lucrative careers as war profiteers. They are now licking their chops at the prospect for an all-out war against Syria, no doubt hoping that the conflagration will soon spread to Lebanon, Jordan and, the big prize, Iran.

For a refresher course on the sprawling tentacles of the Carlyle Group, here’s an essay that first appeared in CounterPunch’s print edition in 2004. Sadly, not much has changed in the intervening years, except these feted souls have gotten much, much richer. – JSC

Across all fronts, Bush’s war deteriorates with stunning rapidity. The death count of American soldiers killed in Iraq will soon top 1000, with no end in sight. The members of the handpicked Iraqi Governor Council are being knocked off one after another. Once loyal Shia clerics, like Ayatollah Sistani, are now telling the administration to pull out or face a nationalist insurgency. The trail of culpability for the abuse, torture and murder of Iraqi detainees seems to lead inexorably into the office of Donald Rumsfeld. The war for Iraqi oil has ended up driving the price of crude oil through the roof. Even Kurdish leaders, brutalized by the Ba’athists for decades, are now saying Iraq was a safer place under their nemesis Saddam Hussein. Like Medea whacking her own kids, the US turned on its own creation, Ahmed Chalabi, raiding his Baghdad compound and fingering him as an agent of the ayatollahs of Iran. And on and on it goes.

Still not all of the president’s men are in a despairing mood. Amid the wreckage, there remain opportunities for profit and plunder. Halliburton and Bechtel’s triumphs in Iraq have been chewed over for months. Less well chronicled is the profiteering of the Carlyle Group, a company with ties that extend directly into the Oval Office itself.

Even Pappy Bush stands in line to profit handsomely from his son’s war making. The former president is on retainer with the Carlyle Group, the largest privately held defense contractor in the nation. Carlyle is run by Frank Carlucci, who served as the National Security advisor and Secretary of Defense under Ronald Reagan. Carlucci has his own embeds in the current Bush administration. At Princeton, his college roommate was Donald Rumsfeld. They’ve remained close friends and business associates ever since. When you have friends like this, you don’t need to hire lobbyists..

Bush Sr. serves as a kind of global emissary for Carlyle. The ex-president doesn’t negotiate arms deals; he simply opens the door for them, a kind of high level meet-and-greet. His special area of influence is the Middle East, primarily Saudi Arabia, where the Bush family has extensive business and political ties. According to an account in the Washington Post, Bush Sr. earns around $500,000 for each speech he makes on Carlyle’s behalf.

One of the Saudi investors lured to Carlyle by Bush was the BinLaden Group, the construction conglomerate owned by the family of Osama bin Laden. According to an investigation by the Wall Street Journal, Bush convinced Shafiq Bin Laden, Osama’s half brother, to sink $2 million of BinLaden Group money into Carlyle’s accounts. In a pr move, the Carlyle group cut its ties to the BinLaden Group in October 2001.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/09/06/when-war-is-swell-the-carlyle-group-and-the-middle-east-at-war/



Sorry to cut and paste, but the subject needs mention. The reality is that underneath what shows for public navigators is one enormous iceberg made from blood-red ice, invisible to the proles and serfs who are doing their best to keep afloat in a frozen sea of austerity, endless war and debt servitude in what are, by far, the wealthiest times in human history.

The planet's people are going on a ride that's not of our choosing or making. About time someone asked the scary driver to pull over before the bus flies off the cliff. [font color="blue"]The one with guts enough for that publicly thankless job is Bernie Sanders -- with the support from amborin and millions of bird followers.[/font color]

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
61. Ask your doctor if Operation NORTHWOODS is right enough for you.
Sat Mar 26, 2016, 12:44 PM
Mar 2016
Some in lackademia agree: the lack of wars aren't good for the economy.

U.S. Military Wanted to Provoke War With Cuba

By David Ruppe, ABC News, May 1, 2001

In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba.

Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.

The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba's then new leader, communist Fidel Castro.

America's top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," and, "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation."

SNIP...

"These were Joint Chiefs of Staff documents. The reason these were held secret for so long is the Joint Chiefs never wanted to give these up because they were so embarrassing," Bamford told ABCNEWS.com.

CONTINUED...

http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=92662


But that wasn't the end of the story. It got worse.

DCI Dulles and JCS chair Lemnitzer counseled JFK launch all-out attack on USSR in 1961.

They said that the best time for attack was "sometime in the fall of 1963," ensuring the nation's maximum nuclear superiority over the Soviet Union. To them, an all-out surprise nuclear attack would end communism, once and for all. The thought that nuclear war might end us "forever," too, must not have occurred to them.



Did the U.S. Military Plan a Nuclear First Strike for 1963?

Recently declassified information shows that the military presented President Kennedy with a plan for a surprise nuclear attack on the Soviet Union in the early 1960s.

James K. Galbraith and Heather A. Purcell
The American Prospect | September 21, 1994

During the early 1960s the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) introduced the world to the possibility of instant total war. Thirty years later, no nation has yet fired any nuclear missile at a real target. Orthodox history holds that a succession of defensive nuclear doctrines and strategies -- from "massive retaliation" to "mutual assured destruction" -- worked, almost seamlessly, to deter Soviet aggression against the United States and to prevent the use of nuclear weapons.

The possibility of U.S. aggression in nuclear conflict is seldom considered. And why should it be? Virtually nothing in the public record suggests that high U.S. authorities ever contemplated a first strike against the Soviet Union, except in response to a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, or that they doubted the deterrent power of Soviet nuclear forces. The main documented exception was the Air Force Chief of Staff in the early 1960s, Curtis LeMay, a seemingly idiosyncratic case.

But beginning in 1957 the U.S. military did prepare plans for a preemptive nuclear strike against the U.S.S.R., based on our growing lead in land-based missiles. And top military and intelligence leaders presented an assessment of those plans to President John F. Kennedy in July of 1961. At that time, some high Air Force and CIA leaders apparently believed that a window of outright ballistic missile superiority, perhaps sufficient for a successful first strike, would be open in late 1963.

The document reproduced opposite is published here for the first time. It describes a meeting of the National Security Council on July 20, 1961. At that meeting, the document shows, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the director of the CIA, and others presented plans for a surprise attack. They answered some questions from Kennedy about timing and effects, and promised further information. The meeting recessed under a presidential injunction of secrecy that has not been broken until now.

CONTINUED...

http://prospect.org/article/did-us-military-plan-nuclear-first-strike-1963



Makes one see where they got the idea for "Better Dead than Red."



The Real Eisenhower: Planning to Win Nuclear War

by Ira Chernus
Common Dreams
March 18, 2008

Peace activists love to quote Dwight Eisenhower. The iconic Republican war hero spoke so eloquently about the dangers of war and the need for disarmament. He makes a terrific poster-boy for peace. But after years of research and writing three books on Ike, I think it's time to see the real Eisenhower stand up. The president who planned to fight and win a nuclear war, saying "he would rather be atomized than communized," reminds us how dangerous the cold war era really was, how much our leaders will put us all at risk in the name of "national security," and how easily they can mask their intentions behind benign images.

From first to last, Eisenhower was a confirmed cold warrior. Years before he became president, while he was publicly promoting cooperation with the Soviet Union, he wrote in his diary: "Russia is definitely out to communize the world....Now we face a battle to extinction." On the home front, he warned that liberal Democrats were leading the U.S. "toward total socialism."

SNIP…

For Eisenhower, the point of amassing a huge nuclear arsenal was not to deter war but to win it. This was enshrined as official policy in NSC 5810/1: "The United States must make clear its determination to prevail if general war occurs." The only meaningful war aim, he told the NSC, was "to achieve a victory." He described his war plan as "Hit the guy fast with all you've got if he jumps on you"; "hit 'em ... with everything in the bucket."

SNIP…

Eisenhower assumed that a post-holocaust America would be a totalitarian state, ruled by martial law. But he worried about (among other things) what would happen to the credit structure of the country and how to print and sell war bonds to finance the next war if Washington were destroyed. At one NSC meeting he complained that if the President and the Vice President were "knocked off," the "damnable" law of succession would result in the Democrats (he called them "the other team&quot taking the White House. "To assure against that happening, the President thought the Vice President should be put in cotton batting."

SNIP…

And we ignore it at our peril, because it was a policy that put anticommunist ideology above human life, made by a man who would "push whole stack of chips into the pot" and "hit 'em ... with everything in the bucket"; who would "shoot your enemy before he shoots you"; who believed that the U.S. could "pick itself up from the floor" and win a nuclear war, even though "everybody is going crazy," as long as "only" 25 or 30 American cities got "shellacked" and nobody got too "hysterical."

CONTINUED…

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/03/18/7742



Besides those cockroaches crawling out with Henry Kissinger and Donald Rumsfeld from the undermountain secret command bunker, there might not be many Americans around after hitting them with "everything in the bucket," but, hey! As Eisenhower and crazy Gen. Powers said, even if only one American survives and no Russians, "We win!"

So, while it is disgusting, killing innocent civilians is a disgusting tactic employed by a certain class of covert operator, including members of the civilian and military leadership.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
65. War is USA Business Plan, per NYT.
Thu Mar 31, 2016, 11:54 AM
Mar 2016

From the Paper o' Record, ideas for the future:



The Pitfalls of Peace

The Lack of Major Wars May Be Hurting Economic Growth


Tyler Cowen
The New York Times, JUNE 13, 2014

The continuing slowness of economic growth in high-income economies has prompted soul-searching among economists. They have looked to weak demand, rising inequality, Chinese competition, over-regulation, inadequate infrastructure and an exhaustion of new technological ideas as possible culprits.

An additional explanation of slow growth is now receiving attention, however. It is the persistence and expectation of peace.

The world just hasn’t had that much warfare lately, at least not by historical standards. Some of the recent headlines about Iraq or South Sudan make our world sound like a very bloody place, but today’s casualties pale in light of the tens of millions of people killed in the two world wars in the first half of the 20th century. Even the Vietnam War had many more deaths than any recent war involving an affluent country.

Counterintuitive though it may sound, the greater peacefulness of the world may make the attainment of higher rates of economic growth less urgent and thus less likely. This view does not claim that fighting wars improves economies, as of course the actual conflict brings death and destruction. The claim is also distinct from the Keynesian argument that preparing for war lifts government spending and puts people to work. Rather, the very possibility of war focuses the attention of governments on getting some basic decisions right — whether investing in science or simply liberalizing the economy. Such focus ends up improving a nation’s longer-run prospects.

It may seem repugnant to find a positive side to war in this regard, but a look at American history suggests we cannot dismiss the idea so easily. Fundamental innovations such as nuclear power, the computer and the modern aircraft were all pushed along by an American government eager to defeat the Axis powers or, later, to win the Cold War. The Internet was initially designed to help this country withstand a nuclear exchange, and Silicon Valley had its origins with military contracting, not today’s entrepreneurial social media start-ups. The Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite spurred American interest in science and technology, to the benefit of later economic growth.

War brings an urgency that governments otherwise fail to summon. For instance, the Manhattan Project took six years to produce a working atomic bomb, starting from virtually nothing, and at its peak consumed 0.4 percent of American economic output. It is hard to imagine a comparably speedy and decisive achievement these days.

SNIP...

Living in a largely peaceful world with 2 percent G.D.P. growth has some big advantages that you don’t get with 4 percent growth and many more war deaths. Economic stasis may not feel very impressive, but it’s something our ancestors never quite managed to pull off. The real questions are whether we can do any better, and whether the recent prevalence of peace is a mere temporary bubble just waiting to be burst.

Tyler Cowen is a professor of economics at George Mason University.

SOURCE: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/14/upshot/the-lack-of-major-wars-may-be-hurting-economic-growth.html?_r=0



NSA! NSA! NSA!
 

Zira

(1,054 posts)
23. Todays Democracy Now said the Justice Dept was trying to reign in Black Water but Hillary and Barack
Fri Mar 25, 2016, 07:53 PM
Mar 2016

kept handing them contracts. It was hard for them to say in court that what Eric Prince and Black Water were doing was illegal because Hillary and Barack wouldn't stop giving them work.

 

Zira

(1,054 posts)
28. She and Barack were a team - he as the pres. and her as secretary of state handling foreign policy.
Fri Mar 25, 2016, 08:02 PM
Mar 2016

She was absolutely in there.

 

rhett o rick

(55,981 posts)
29. I think that Obama was "encouraged" to hire Clinton by people that have more power that he.
Fri Mar 25, 2016, 08:05 PM
Mar 2016

I think they 'encourage" him quite a bit on foreign policy. While presidents come and go, those that run the NSA/CIA Security State goes on and on.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
66. Weird, the reliance on the Republican Erik Prince and his Blackwater mercenaries.
Thu Mar 31, 2016, 11:57 AM
Mar 2016

Mebbe the guy's true loyalty is to the almighty dollar.



ERIK PRINCE IN THE HOT SEAT

Blackwater’s Founder Is Under Investigation for Money Laundering, Ties to Chinese Intel, and Brokering Mercenary Services


by Matthew Cole, Jeremy Scahill
The Intercept, March 24, 2016

EXCERPT...

But behind the back of corporate leadership at FSG, Prince was living a double life.

Working with a small cadre of loyalists — including a former South African commando, a former Australian air force pilot, and a lawyer with dual citizenship in the U.S. and Israel — Prince sought to secretly rebuild his private CIA and special operations enterprise by setting up foreign shell companies and offering paramilitary services, according to documents reviewed by The Intercept and interviews with several people familiar with Prince’s business proposals.

Several of the proposals for private security services in African nations examined by The Intercept contained metadata in the digital files showing Prince and his inner circle editing and revising various drafts.

Since 2014, Prince has traveled to at least half a dozen countries to offer various versions of a private military force, secretly meeting with a string of African officials. Among the countries where Prince pitched a plan to deploy paramilitary assets is Libya, which is currently subject to an array of U.S. and United Nations financial and defense restrictions.

-- https://theintercept.com/2016/03/24/blackwater-founder-erik-prince-under-federal-investigation/



Seems like just the other day, young Erik was giving President Obama advice on who to kill by drone.

Blackwater managed CIA Predator drone assassination program



Ah, (FONDLY) they grow out of office and favor so fast! Good thing for old school ties and cash.

PufPuf23

(8,687 posts)
38. Hillary Clinton and Libya and War. Bernie Sanders and Peace.
Sat Mar 26, 2016, 01:21 AM
Mar 2016




How could anyone in good conscious support the person in that video for POTUS?



Peace.
 

djean111

(14,255 posts)
53. I don't think he is eager to USE it on people.
Sat Mar 26, 2016, 11:25 AM
Mar 2016

No comparison to Hillary's Neo-con ambitions and record, sorry.

 

think

(11,641 posts)
55. If Hillary supporters weren't so disingenuous about this issue it might be worth discussing.
Sat Mar 26, 2016, 11:31 AM
Mar 2016

VulgarPoet

(2,872 posts)
59. He voted against having it made, because it's a sack of shit air frame.
Sat Mar 26, 2016, 12:31 PM
Mar 2016

He voted for having it built in Vermont after the majority said "fuck the A-10, let's make a swiss army fighter jet" because hey, it's the economy, stupid.

Much like he voted against Iraq, but after the treasonous majority decided "let's invade Iraq even though Afghanistan attacked us", he voted to at least arm us better because y'know, he gives a shit about the troops even if he detests war.

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