Weekend Economists Make War on Charlie Wilson August 22-24, 2014

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Last edited Fri Aug 22, 2014, 07:33 PM - Edit history (1)

You may have seen "Charlie Wilson's War" the adventure-comedy starring Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts. Frankly, I couldn't even watch the whole trailer, when it opened. The term "amiable dunce" may have been coined for Ronald Reagan by Clark Clifford, but I think it could equally apply to the former congressman, from Texas (of course), who found true love by funding the Afghan mujahideen during the Soviet invasion, thereby creating Al Quaida and bringing Osama binLadin to our national attention.

Charles Nesbitt "Charlie" Wilson (June 1, 1933 – February 10, 2010) was a United States naval officer and former 12-term Democratic United States Representative from Texas's 2nd congressional district.

Wilson is best known for leading Congress into supporting Operation Cyclone, the largest-ever Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) covert operation which, under the Carter and Reagan administration, supplied military equipment including anti-aircraft weapons such as Stinger antiaircraft missiles and paramilitary officers from their Special Activities Division to the Afghan Mujahideen during the Soviet war in Afghanistan. His behind-the-scenes campaign was the subject of the non-fiction book Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History by George Crile III and the subsequent film Charlie Wilson's War starring Tom Hanks as Wilson....
photo circa 1995
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Wilson_%28Texas_politician%29

This is his story, her story, Afghanistan's story, USSR's story, our story. We will try to piece it together: the good, the bad, the ugly, the stupid, and the consequences.

And for our accompanying culture tidbits, we will play upon the concept that "it takes two to tango". Charlie would never have gotten the idea if he weren't pursuing the indomitable Joanne King Herring, whom we will also delineate.

So, pick music that features some concept of "two". I'll start with Shostakovich's "Tahiti Trot":

Tahiti Trot, Op. 16, is Dmitri Shostakovich's 1927 orchestration of "Tea for Two" from the musical No, No, Nanette by Vincent Youmans.

Shostakovich wrote it in response to a challenge from conductor Nikolai Malko: after the two listened to the song on record at Malko's house, Malko bet 100 roubles that Shostakovich could not completely re-orchestrate the song from memory in under an hour. Shostakovich took him up and won, completing the orchestration in around 45 minutes.

Tahiti Trot was first performed in Moscow on 25 November 1928, and has been a popular encore ever since. It was used as an entr'acte for the ballet The Golden Age at the suggestion of conductor Aleksandr Gauk.

And, since Joanne King Herring was born in 1929, it all ties together...

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1. NO BANK FAILURE AS OF 7 PM EDT

Stay tuned for updates...

Hard to imagine that August is nearly over, summer is drawing to a close, but Daylight Savings time will linger like illness until November 2nd....

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2. Charlie Wilson's War bonus clip - Tom Hanks Who is Charlie Wilson?

Wilson's Early life and naval career

Wilson was born in the small town of Trinity, Texas, to Charles Edwin Wilson, an accountant for a local timber company, and Wilmuth (née Nesbitt), a local florist, on June 1, 1933. Wilson had one younger sister, Sharon Wilson Allison, former chair of Planned Parenthood and president of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, who currently resides in Waco, Texas.

Growing up, Wilson attended Trinity public schools and, upon graduation from Trinity High School in 1951, he attended one semester at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas, before being appointed to the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. While at Annapolis, Wilson earned the second most demerits in the history of the academy (his roommate, Robert Mullen, earned the most demerits). Despite the excessive number of demerits Wilson graduated eighth from the bottom of his class in 1956 with a B. S. in Engineering, specializing in electronics.

Between 1956 and 1960, Wilson served in the United States Navy, attaining the rank of lieutenant and gunnery officer on a destroyer. While in the Navy, Wilson's commanders reported that he was the "best officer on ship but the worst in port." Wilson's exploits in port did not impede his career in the Navy and he was assigned to the Pentagon as part of an intelligence unit that evaluated the Soviet Union's nuclear forces.

Early political career highlights

From a young age, Wilson took an interest in national security and foreign matters. Growing up during World War II encouraged Wilson to avidly read military history, including numerous articles and other literature on the war. This led Wilson to have a lifelong reverence for Winston Churchill. Wilson even took the opportunity as a child to “keep watch” over Trinity for Japanese aerial attacks from his post in the back yard. Wilson's early sense of patriotism and his strong interest in international affairs encouraged him to become politically active later in life.

According to Wilson himself, he first entered politics as a teenager by running a campaign against his next-door neighbor, city council incumbent Charles Hazard. When Wilson was thirteen years old, Wilson's fourteen year old dog entered Hazard's yard. Hazard retaliated by mixing crushed glass into the dog's food, causing fatal internal bleeding. Following this incident, Wilson obtained a driver's permit and drove ninety-six voters, primarily black citizens from poor neighborhoods, to the polls in his family's two-door Chevrolet. As patrons left the car, Wilson told each of them that he didn't want to influence their vote, but that the incumbent Hazard had purposely killed his dog. After Hazard was defeated by a margin of 16 votes, Wilson went to his house to tell him he shouldn't poison any more dogs. Wilson cited this as "the day he fell in love with America."

While Wilson worked at the Pentagon, he volunteered to help in John F. Kennedy's 1960 presidential campaign. While volunteering in Kennedy's campaign, Wilson took a 30-day leave from the Navy and entered his name into the race for Texas state representative of his home district on the Democratic ticket. This action violated Navy regulations, as active-duty service members are prohibited from holding public office. When Wilson returned to duty, his family and friends went door to door campaigning. In 1961, at age 27, he was sworn into office in Austin, Texas.

Temple Inland, Inc., an East Texas forest products producer owned by Arthur Temple, Jr., and Temple's son, Buddy Temple, employed Wilson during his incumbency in the Texas legislature, but business interests were nevertheless suspicious of Wilson's policies. While serving as a Texas state representative for twelve years, Wilson battled for the regulation of utilities, fought for Medicaid, tax exemptions for the elderly, the Equal Rights Amendment, and attempted to raise the state's minimum wage. He was also one of the few prominent Texas politicians to be pro-choice. All of these policies earned Wilson the reputation of being the "liberal from Lufkin."

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3. Art vs. Life (Clips from the film)

Congressional politics

In 1972, Wilson was elected to the United States House of Representatives from Texas's 2nd congressional district, taking office the following January. Re-elected eleven times, Wilson thoroughly enjoyed his job and always sought to "take care of the home folks" until his resignation on October 8, 1996. Although hawkish on foreign issues, he was liberal on other issues such as women's rights, social security and abortion.

As a freshman representative, Wilson achieved the designation of the Big Thicket in Southeast Texas as a National Preserve in 1974. This early achievement made his colleagues respect his political power and Wilson quickly earned an appointment on the House Appropriations Committee. During his incumbency, Wilson's colleagues regarded him as the "best horse trader in Washington" because of his ability to negotiate and trade votes with other congressmen to ensure passage of his favored bills.

Despite not having many, if any, Jewish constituents, Wilson developed a strong relationship with Israel during his entire congressional career. This bond began during Wilson's first year in Washington when the Yom Kippur War occurred. From a young age, Wilson had always supported the "underdog," and Wilson quickly went to Israel's defense as a self-proclaimed "Israeli commando." While on the Appropriations committee, Wilson increased U.S. aid to Israel to $3 billion annually and in return got continuous campaign contributions from Jews throughout the country. Later, Wilson's close ties with Israel enabled him to collaborate with Israeli defense engineers to create and transport man-portable anti-aircraft guns into Pakistan to be used in the Soviet-Afghan War.

As for domestic policy, Wilson ceaselessly championed for the individual's rights, especially women and minority rights. He continuously voted pro-choice and fought voting discrimination against African Americans, two of his largest constituent bases. Wilson respected his district's female vote so much that in 1974 he used the League of Women Voters to pass the Safe Drinking Water Act. In addition to supporting women's rights legislation, Wilson broke Washington tradition and hired female staffers. Although Wilson never had a female chief of staff, his office was filled with gorgeous women who tirelessly helped the congressman. "Charlie's Angels," as they were commonly referred to, handled constituent problems for Wilson to ensure none of his constituents lacked in aid and support. All of Wilson's "Angels" were brilliant and were dedicated in their service for the congressman. Wilson's staff quickly drew the attention of his colleagues and media. Although rumors of scandals surrounded Wilson's office, Wilson emphatically insisted that his staff should be respected and their diligent work for the representative enabled them to have freedom to work independently of Wilson.

Wilson worked on improving Americans' lives, especially those of the underprivileged. Wilson lobbied against business interests to maintain a $3.35 per hour minimum wage. Wilson also continuously sought to increase Medicare and Medicaid funding for the elderly and underprivileged and Veterans' Affairs funding for veterans. His efforts in these regards gained him the reputation of “taking care of the home folks” and gained funding to open the Veterans Affairs Hospital in Lufkin, Texas.

Wilson avidly supported the Second Amendment and the individual's rights to own firearms. His Second Amendment support created tension between Wilson and his sister Sharon Allison, but the siblings reached an agreement that Allison would leave Wilson alone about his second amendment support, and Wilson would support Allison's pro-choice agenda.

Wilson achieved a measure of success through his horse trading capabilities. Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill appointed Wilson to the House Ethics Committee in 1980 to help protect Representative John Murtha, Jr. from investigations during the Abscam scandal. In return for Wilson's appointment to this committee, O'Neill also gave him a coveted spot on the Kennedy Center Board of Trustees. Wilson also gained a position on the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee. This appointment enabled Wilson to funnel support money for Somoza in Nicaragua and support Mujahideen efforts to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan.

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4. Soviet-Afghan war and Retirement

In 1980, Wilson read an Associated Press dispatch on the congressional wires describing the refugees fleeing Soviet-occupied Afghanistan. The communist Democratic Republic of Afghanistan had taken over power during the Saur revolution and asked the Soviet Union to help suppress resistance from the mujahideen. According to biographer George Crile III, Wilson called the staff of the House Appropriations Committee dealing with "black appropriations" and requested a two-fold appropriation increase for Afghanistan. Because Wilson had just been named to the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense (which is responsible for funding CIA operations), his request went through.

That was not the last time he increased the CIA budget for its Afghan operation. In 1983, he won an additional $40 million, $17 million of which was allocated for anti-aircraft weapons to shoot down Mil Mi-24 Hind helicopters. The next year, CIA officer Gust Avrakotos directly approached Wilson—breaking the CIA's policy against lobbying Congress for money—asking Wilson for $50 million more. Wilson agreed and convinced Congress, saying, "The U.S. had nothing whatsoever to do with these people's decision to fight ... but we'll be damned by history if we let them fight with stones." Later, Wilson succeeded in giving the Afghans $300 million of unused Pentagon money before the end of the fiscal year. Thus, Wilson directly influenced the level of United States government support for the Afghan Mujahideen. Wilson has said that the covert operation succeeded because "there was no partisanship or damaging leaks." Michael Pillsbury, a senior Pentagon official, used Wilson's funding to provide Stinger missiles to the Afghan resistance in a controversial decision.

Joanne Herring, along with others, played a role in helping the Afghan resistance fighters get support and military equipment from the United States government. She persuaded Wilson to visit the Pakistani leadership, and after meeting with them he was taken to a major Pakistan-based Afghan refugee camp so he could see for himself the atrocities committed by the Soviets against the Afghan people. About that visit, Wilson later said that it "was the experience that will always be seared in my memory, was going through those hospitals and seeing, especially those children with their hands blown off from the mines that the Soviets were dropping from their helicopters. That was perhaps the deciding thing... and it made a huge difference for the next 10 or 12 years of my life because I left those hospitals determined, as long as I had a breath in my body and was a member in Congress, that I was going to do what I could to make the Soviets pay for what they were doing!" In 2008, Wilson said he had "got involved in Afghanistan because I went there and I saw what the Soviets were doing. And I saw the refugee camps."

For his efforts, Wilson was presented with the Honored Colleague Award by the CIA. He became the first civilian to receive the award. However, Wilson's role remains controversial because most of the aid was supplied to Islamist hardliner Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, now a senior Taliban leader and a supporter of al-Qaeda.

The decision of the Soviet Union to withdraw from Afghanistan and declare the invasion a mistake led to Wilson commending the Soviet leadership on the floor of the House of Representatives. He also supported United States involvement in the Bosnian War, touring the former Yugoslavia over five days in January 1993; on his return he urged the Clinton administration to lift the arms embargo on Bosnia, remarking "This is good versus evil and, if we do not want to Americanize this, then what do we want to Americanize? We have to stand for something."

"Good Time Charlie"

Wilson unashamedly lived an extravagant and flamboyant life. Beginning in his naval years, Wilson enjoyed partying and having nights on the town. Wilson was a self-proclaimed "ladies' man" and the news media reported on his exotic bedroom complete with hot tub and handcuffs where he engaged in romantic affairs. Wilson's "Good Time Charlie" image was first exposed to the public in a Washington Post editorial by Kathleen McLean in 1978. Over the course of his congressional career, when reporters questioned Wilson about his constituents' view of their representative, Wilson reported that they knew they were not electing a "constipated monk" to office. Wilson unashamedly embraced his playboy persona and never played down his "Good Time" image in public.

Wilson's enjoyment of parties led him to invest with two Texas businessmen to open the Elan-Washington Club. This club promised to offer an attractive spot where professionals could get together and relax from a long day at work. To increase the number of club patrons, Wilson passed out memberships to his congressional colleagues. Halfway through his passing out memberships, Wilson decided that his actions might not be deemed ethical by congress and commented that he "was ethicized right out of business."

Throughout the course of his life, Wilson drank heavily, which may have been a factor in his divorce from Jerry. While in Washington, Wilson became a functioning alcoholic and suffered from severe bouts of depression and insomnia, and his drinking intensified during his involvement in Afghanistan. Wilson's drunkenness also led to a scandal in 1980 when an eyewitness reported that Wilson's Lincoln Continental hit a Mazda in a hit-and-run accident on the Washington DC's Key Bridge the night before his first trip to Pakistan. Although he was never convicted, this accident illustrates Wilson's recklessness with alcohol during his involvement in Afghanistan.

During one of his foreign excursions Wilson was transported to a hospital in Germany where doctors told Wilson his heart was failing due to his excessive drinking. Wilson sought a second and third opinion at hospitals in Bethesda and Houston and the German doctors' conclusions were confirmed: Wilson had to stop drinking. After these diagnoses Wilson quit drinking hard liquor but continued to drink wine for several years. His excessive drinking and associated heart problems forced Wilson to have a heart transplant in September 2007. Despite his continuous struggle with alcoholism, Wilson finally quit drinking after marrying Barbara Alberstadt, a former ballerina, in 1999.

In addition to alcohol abuse, Wilson allegedly used illegal drugs. In 1980, Wilson was accused of using cocaine at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas; however, the investigation by Justice Department attorney Rudy Giuliani was dropped due to lack of evidence. Liz Wickersham told investigators that she saw Charlie use cocaine only once in the Cayman Islands, but this was outside United States jurisdiction. In "The Charlie Wilson Real Story" Wilson reveals he traveled to Las Vegas in the summer of 1980, and recalls an experience with two strippers in a hot tub.

The girls had cocaine, and the music was loud. It was total happiness. And both of them had ten long, red fingernails with an endless supply of beautiful white powder.... The feds spent a million bucks trying to figure out whether, when those fingernails passed under my nose, did I inhale or exhale, and I ain't telling.
— Charlie Wilson

When questioned about his past alleged cocaine use in 2007 Wilson reaffirmed "Nobody knows the answer to that and I ain't telling".

Wilson was also a lifelong rogue and continuously surrounded himself with gorgeous women. In addition to his "Angels" in the office, Wilson always had a female escort when he was not on the House floor. Wilson's primary motivator to be on the Kennedy Center Committee was so he always had a place to take a date. Also, following his second trip to Pakistan, Wilson always brought a female companion with him. At one point he even brought Carol Shannon to entertain his hosts with her belly dancing ability. Bringing women to Pakistan created tension between Wilson and the CIA in 1987 when the agency refused to fund his girl friend's travel expenses. In response, Wilson cut the agency's funding the next year. Wilson's exotic bedroom is indicative of his enjoyment of women, but his relationships were not just about sex. According to Joanne Herring, Wilson truly cared about his dates and he thoroughly enjoyed being a romantic. Although he was an "unapologetic sexist, chauvinistic redneck," he attracted many gorgeous ladies and treated them well.

Wilson has been said to have lived life as "one big party", and lived by the mantra that he could "take his job seriously without taking himself seriously."

Retirement

Wilson retired from Congress in October 1996 and became a lobbyist for Pakistan before retiring to Lufkin. He donated his congressional papers to Stephen F. Austin State University. In 1999, he married Barbara Alberstadt, his second marriage. Wilson received a heart transplant in 2007, and continued to follow the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where he expressed concerns about events in that region. In July 2009, the University of Texas System Board of Regents established the Charles N. Wilson Chair in Pakistan Studies, which encourages research in the geo-political importance of Pakistan, as well as its culture, history, and literature.

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5. Death of a Bad, Bad Boy

Wilson died on February 10, 2010, at Lufkin Memorial Hospital in Lufkin, Texas, after collapsing earlier in the day. He suffered from cardiopulmonary arrest. He was pronounced dead at 12:16 P.M. Central Time.

"America has lost an extraordinary patriot whose life showed that one brave and determined person can alter the course of history," said Robert Gates, then US Defense Secretary.

Wilson received a graveside service with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery on February 23, 2010. A six-piece jazz band punctuated each eulogy with Charlie's favorites "As Time Goes By", "My Way", and in honor of his years as a naval intelligence officer "Anchors Aweigh", and "Navy Hymn".

"He will be missed from the Golan Heights to the Khyber Pass, from the Caspian to the Suez and the halls in Congress, for his civility, and willingness to listen and help and not posture," said John Wing, who traveled with Wilson on his journeys to Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The front rows of the school's Temple Theater were packed with people such as Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, former U.S. Representative Martin Frost, former Lieutenant Governor Gov. Ben Barnes and Houston gas titan Oscar Wyatt and his wife Lynn.

After Sunday's service, his widow Barbara welcomed a small group of her late husband's intimates to their home on the golf course in Lufkin. Next to an American eagle sculpture in the living room, the words of Abdur Rahman Khan, emir of Afghanistan from 1880 to 1901, are emblazoned on a brass plaque: "My spirit will remain in Afghanistan even though my soul will go to God. My last words to you my son and successor are: Never Trust the Russians."

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13. The trailer

&list=PLB67ECE99BD23239C&index=1

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6. I'll agree with Calvin on this

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14. And that's why I seldom venture into the wider DU

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7. It's Time To Kill The Third Party Doctrine And Go Back To Respecting Privacy

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140816/06282828233/ron-wyden-its-time-to-kill-third-party-doctrine-go-back-to-respecting-privacy.shtml

For years, we've written about the third party doctrine and its troubling implications for the 4th Amendment and your privacy -- especially in the digital era.

The Stored Communications Act (SCA, codified at 18 U.S.C. Chapter 121 §§ 2701–2712) is a law that addresses voluntary and compelled disclosure of "stored wire and electronic communications and transactional records" held by third-party internet service providers (ISPs). It was enacted as Title II of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 (ECPA).

The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects the people's right "to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures…." However, when applied to information stored online, the Fourth Amendment's protections are potentially far weaker. In part, this is because the Fourth Amendment defines the "right to be secure" in spatial terms that do not directly apply to the "reasonable expectation of privacy" in an online context. In addition, society has not reached clear consensus over expectations of privacy in terms of more modern (and developing, future) forms of recorded and/or transmitted information.

Furthermore, users generally entrust the security of online information to a third party, an ISP. In many cases, Fourth Amendment doctrine has held that, in so doing, users relinquish any expectation of privacy. The Third-Party Doctrine holds "…that knowingly revealing information to a third party relinquishes Fourth Amendment protection in that information."

While a search warrant and probable cause are required to search one’s home, under the third party doctrine only a subpoena and prior notice (a much lower hurdle than probable cause) are needed to compel an ISP to disclose the contents of an email or of files stored on a server. The SCA creates Fourth Amendment-like privacy protection for email and other digital communications stored on the internet. It limits the ability of the government to compel an ISP to turn over content information and noncontent information (such as logs and "envelope" information from email). In addition, it limits the ability of commercial ISPs to reveal content information to nongovernment entities...wikipedia

If you're unfamiliar with it, the third party doctrine is the concept used by law enforcement (and, tragically, the courts) to say that you have no expectation of privacy or 4th Amendment rights in information you've given to a third party. The origins of this argument are not completely crazy, because there is a legitimate claim to the idea that if I entrust you with some private information, and you decide to disclose it, that my 4th Amendment rights haven't been violated. But that assumes a very different world. In today's digital world -- especially with cloud computing -- we "entrust" all sorts of information to third parties even though we still think of and treat that information like it's our own personal effects. These aren't cases in which I'm handing over a collection of journals to my neighbor to hold onto. Online services are treated as our own content -- which we can access, update and modify at any time from any device.

While the Supreme Court's recent decision in the Riley/Wurie cases suggests that it is becoming increasingly uncomfortable with law enforcement twisting old concepts onto new technologies to eviscerate privacy, the third party doctrine technically still stands -- and there has been little real discussion of it in Congress.

So it's good to see that Senator Ron Wyden is actually speaking out about why the third party doctrine needs to go. The speech is a good one, talking about oppressive governments and surveillance, and the rise of technology -- and how our laws have not kept pace when it comes to protecting our privacy against government intrusion. Then he digs in on the third party doctrine, noting that it was established by "judges who did not fully understand 20th Century technology, much less anticipate the technology we have today" and that it makes little sense considering the way we use technology today:

Some will still argue that by sharing data freely with Facebook, Google, Mint, Uber, Twitter, Fitbit, or Instagram, Americans are choosing to make that data public. But that is simply not the case. I might not have any expectation of privacy when I post a handsome new profile picture on Facebook, or when I send out a tweet to tell people I’ll be at the Tech Northwest conference. But when I send an email to my wife, or store a document in the cloud so I can review it later, my service provider and I have an agreement that my information will stay private. Neither of us have invited the government to have a peek. Basically, I think sharing this information with Google is like putting property in a safety deposit box, but the government thinks I’m posting it on a billboard out on I-5.

Citizens have agreed to a contract with Google or Mint that keeps their email or financial data private. In many cases these companies don’t even know what information they’re holding for you. Making information available to a service provider for a limited business purpose - so that they can give you a new app, or provide targeted ads, or do any other kind of business with you - is simply not the same as broadcasting that information to the public. In the view of the law this data should be as secure to your person as if it were sitting in a locked filing cabinet in your home office.

So how about fixing it? Well, he says, it needs to start by reforming the laws that cover the intelligence community, preventing them from bulk collection of the data you've handed to third parties.

I believe that any serious effort to reform this law needs to end the bulk collection of Americans’ personal information, starting with their phone records. I have been challenging this program for years on the grounds that isn’t just harmless old metadata. Furthermore, I believe that Congress needs to reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, to make it more transparent and to include an advocate for the American people. Additionally, there needs to be much greater transparency from intelligence agencies about the scale and scope of domestic surveillance activities, and private companies should be given the ability to disclose much more information about requests they receive from the government. Most of all, Congress must close the loophole that intelligence agencies are currently using to read a significant number of Americans’ communications without a warrant.

But that's just the start. He calls out Executive Order 12333, which we've been discussing lately. That's the Ronald Reagan-signed executive order that lets the NSA collect whatever the hell it wants outside of the US. As was recently revealed, this program, which has no Congressional or Judicial oversight, is really the core program that the NSA uses. All the domestic spying under Section 215 and 702? That's just to "fill in the gaps." Wyden thinks its time that EO 12333 got reviewed and reformed:

The next step will be to seriously examine collection that is done overseas. When the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was written in the late 1970s, it was written to only apply to collection done inside the United States. But that was back in an era when each country essentially had its own separate communications infrastructure.

Now those separate systems have been replaced by an integrated global communications network, in which calls and emails within one country might be routed through multiple different countries. When you combine that shift with new technology that makes it much easier to obtain large amounts of data, it no longer makes sense to assume that collection done overseas will not sweep up the communications of large numbers of law-abiding Americans.

This means that the rules that govern collection overseas will need to be substantially revised. These are governed by something called Executive Order twelve-triple-three, which is more than 30 years old and predates this sea-change in global communications. I was encouraged a few weeks ago when the Senate Intelligence Committee recognized this fact, and voted to advance a bill that would begin to establish some firmer rules in this area.

Finally, he talks about the need for ECPA reform -- another thing we've been discussing for years. ECPA is the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act which is so woefully out-of-date, it's not even funny. It's the one that assumes if any communication is sitting on a server for more than 180 days, then it's "abandoned." Go look at how many emails in your Gmail account are over 180 days old... Even though more than half of the House is co-sponsoring an ECPA reform bill, law enforcement folks are protesting it, because they like the easy access. The DOJ loves to go on fishing expeditions with ECPA, as does the SEC and the IRS. Wyden says it's time for real reform.

There's much more that can be done, some of which he refers to in his speech, but it would be nice if Congress finally realized just how truly dangerous the third party doctrine is to our privacy.

FRANKLY, MY DEAR, I DON'T THINK CONGRESS GIVES A DAMN.

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8. Engineering Failed States: The Strategy of Global Corporate Imperialism

newsjunkiepost.com/2014/02/18/engineering-failed-states-the-strategy-of-global-corporate-imperialism/

“Used with permission from NEWS JUNKIE POST. All rights not expressly granted herein are hereby reserved.”

Empires as national and cultural megalomaniac dreams

Once upon a time, national entities and cultures aspired to build empires. The impulse was the erroneous assumption of being a superior civilization. It was about exporting an extensive set of aspirations, a culture, and a value system. Romans thought that bringing water through aqueducts and paved roads to the “savages” of the north were the selfless gift of a superior civilization. Much more recently, France’s empire built its colonial towns, such as Saigon and Algier, following exactly the architectural model of French towns of the XIX century. In what could be an indication that history is on an accelerated course, the life span of empires is getting shorter. For example, the Egyptian empire lasted more than 3,000 years; the Mayan empire survived 2,900; the Chinese empire more than 1,600; the Roman empire itself, as a united empire, remained for 500 years while the Eastern Roman empire or Byzantine empire lasted an extra 1,000 after the split from the Western Roman empire.

Empire strategy: destroy, rebuild, occupy and exploit

Closer to the modern era, and following the progress of technology in weapons and transport, Great Britain or France, during the rule of Napoleon, and even more recently Nazi Germany and its Japanese ally, had the lofty borderline-psychotic goal of complete world domination. In the ruins of World War II emerged the two winning empires, the United States and the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). To the winners belong the spoils of war, and in 1945 the world was de facto split in two. The two parts of Germany were rebuilt from complete wreckage in the image of their new respective masters; the US Marshall plan was the remedy prescribed to deal with West Germany’s ruins. In Japan, General MacArthur took charge of the mass murder, demolition and later reconstruction for the US empire. Germany and Japan were not rebuilt as free national entities but occupied vassals on a short leash. Almost 70 years after the end of World War II, US military boots are still on the ground in both countries. According to data from the US Department of Defense (DoD), more than 50,000 US troops were still in Germany and almost 40,000 were still occupying Japan in 2011. Overall, according to the DoD, the US military has troops stationed in almost 150 countries. (THAT THEY WILL ADMIT TO....DEMETER)

Global corporate empire: sovereign nations are the only obstacle

Imperialism has long been a collective disease for humanity. In its current perverse capitalist incarnation, imperialism’s methods have become even more brutal and ruthless. If the physical destruction of a country’s infrastucture is still in the foreground, this is used in conjunction with the creation or revival of civil wars, ethnic or bloody sectarian conflicts in previously stable national entities. Corporate imperialism aims to break the national spirit. The few remaining sovereign nations are the final obstacles to the looming threat of a global transnational corporate empire. Corporate imperialism’s only concern is the bottom line: it is on a permanent quest to maximize profit. It is not about bringing the supposed gift of civilization to savages anymore, unlike the old-fashioned imperialist adventures. In this context, why bother to rebuild the shattered countries when the only goal is to plunder resources, either natural or human? Public resources are allocated to reconstruction, but these resources usually disappear in black holes of corporate war profiteers such as Halliburton in the US. Wrecked countries are never rebuilt because they are easier to exploit while they are in a shambles.

Why bother with regime-change policy when failed states are so convenient?

The model for transnational corporate imperialism was set up in Iraq, then applied to Libya. This global imperialist strategy is in the works in Syria, the Ukraine, Mali, Central African Republic, and Venezuela. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) usually acts as the armed fist for this process, but sponsored proxy agents such as Jihadists in Syria or fascist factions in the Ukraine and Venezuela are also used to destabilize governments. In Venezuela on February 7, 2014, before the not so spontaneous protests started, Japanese car giant Toyota abruptly announced it was closing a plant employing 1,700 people. Is this pure coincidence or part of an overall ploy to crash Venezuela’s economy? There is a saying in Lebanon, that the country is “always five minutes away from civil war.” This tragic Lebanese reality has spread to the entire Middle East, Africa and is gaining ground in Eastern Europe. The old imperialist adage “divide and rule” is obsolete, the new motto seems to be “divide and steal from those divided.” The new strategy is to fuel ethnic or sectarian conflicts as much and as long as possible, and ideally maintain a permanent state of low-intensity civil war. In the Central African Republic, the clashes between the majority Christian population and the 15 percent Muslims gave France the perfect opportunity to send 2,000 troops. French troops are still in Mali to protect mining interests. In Iraq, the low-level sectarian warfare is a disaster for Iraqis but has worked well for corporate interests. The oil is flowing, and of course, just like in Syria, weapons dealers, mercenaries, and “reconstruction” contractors are making a killing.

AND THERE'S MUCH MORE AT LINK...MUST READ!

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9. The rise of the military’s secret military

They're called Special Operation Forces — and they're everywhere!

http://www.salon.com/2014/01/08/the_rise_of_the_militarys_secret_military_partner/

“Dude, I don’t need to play these stupid games. I know what you’re trying to do.” With that, Major Matthew Robert Bockholt hung up on me.

More than a month before, I had called U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) with a series of basic questions: In how many countries were U.S. Special Operations Forces deployed in 2013? Are manpower levels set to expand to 72,000 in 2014? Is SOCOM still aiming for growth rates of 3%-5% per year? How many training exercises did the command carry out in 2013? Basic stuff.

And for more than a month, I waited for answers. I called. I left messages. I emailed. I waited some more. I started to get the feeling that Special Operations Command didn’t want me to know what its Green Berets and Rangers, Navy SEALs and Delta Force commandos — the men who operate in the hottest of hotspots and most remote locales around the world — were doing.

Then, at the last moment, just before my filing deadline, Special Operations Command got back to me with an answer so incongruous, confusing, and contradictory that I was glad I had given up on SOCOM and tried to figure things out for myself...I started with a blank map that quickly turned into a global pincushion. It didn’t take long before every continent but Antarctica was bristling with markers indicating special operations forces’ missions, deployments, and interactions with foreign military forces in 2012-2013. With that, the true size and scope of the U.S. military’s secret military began to come into focus. It was, to say the least, vast.

A review of open source information reveals that in 2012 and 2013, U.S. Special Operations forces (SOF) were likely deployed to — or training, advising, or operating with the personnel of — more than 100 foreign countries. And that’s probably an undercount. In 2011, then-SOCOM spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told TomDispatch that Special Operations personnel were annually sent to 120 countries around the world. They were in, that is, about 60% of the nations on the planet. “We’re deployed in a number of locations,” was as specific as Bockholt would ever get when I talked to him in the waning days of 2013. And when SOCOM did finally get back to me with an eleventh hour answer, the number offered made almost no sense.

MORE AT LINK

[Demeter]

10. Blame Employers, Not Workers, for Any Skills Gap, Economist Says

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/08/18/blame-employers-not-workers-for-any-skills-gap-economist-says/?mod=WSJBlog

Ever since the the recession, job openings have far outpaced the number of people being hired. A common refrain from employers is that workers lack proper training and education for the available jobs–in other words, that a “skills gap” is to blame.

But the fault rest with employers, not workers, says a new working paper from Peter Cappelli, the director of the Center for Human Resources at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

“These complaints about skills are driving much of the debate around labor force and education policy, yet they have not been examined carefully,” writers Mr. Cappelli.

To quickly recap, the number of job openings has climbed quickly in the past five years. But many of these jobs are going unfilled, and the number of hires each month has not risen as fast as openings. Studies from consulting firms like Deloitte and McKinsey have looked at whether too few workers have the technological skills that modern manufacturers need and whether this skills gap will widen even further. The staffing firm ManpowerGroup has said 36% of global employers report difficulty finding candidates with the right skills. And, to be sure, employers are filling jobs more slowly than in the past. One index showing this is the Dice-DFH Vacancy Duration Measure, which uses Labor Department data to calculate how long job vacancies sit before being filled. In June, the latest month available, the average opening lingered for 24.9 working days before being filled, up from 15 days in 2009.

But does this result from employees with the wrong skills? Mr. Cappelli looks at major studies claiming a skills gap and criticizes their evidence. For example, the questions used in surveys where employers say they cannot find employees have often been badly written. Mr. Cappelli writes:

Questions that ask “Are you having difficulty finding the candidates you need to fill your vacancies?” are maddeningly ambiguous. It could be that simply following the many steps and issues to consider in textbook descriptions of recruiting and selection processes could constitute difficult. We also know that self-serving biases should inflate complaints: It is much easier to assert that there is something wrong with the candidates than to acknowledge that our own practices are at fault.

Mr. Cappelli says a better explanation of the inability to fill certain jobs rests with employers themselves. The “obvious solution” to “virtually all the skill problems reported by employers is to increase training and produce the skilled workers they want themselves.” Much of the evidence in support of a skills gap could be explained by employers who are no longer willing to train their employees or raise salaries, and instead want to be able to hire people with exactly the right skills–and on the cheap. Mr. Cappelli points to data showing apprenticeship programs are being abandoned. The number of apprentice programs registered with the Department of Labor declined to 21,000 in 2012 from 33,000 in 2002, and the number of apprentices has plunged from 280,000 from 500,000 a decade ago. If employers really faced a damaging shortage of workers, this would be an odd time to abandon programs to train employees.

Rather than facing an insurmountable skills gap, some employers may have a different agenda, he concludes: ”No doubt some component of the complaints is simply an effort to secure policy changes that lower labor costs.”

[antigop]

39. "simply an effort to secure policy changes that lower labor costs.”

Yep. That's EXACTLY what it is.

More h-1b and L1 visas.

[kickysnana]

11. So I posted a quip which inadvertently showed DU judges fail in knowledge of current events...

and anthropology. But it was my first hidden post so it was kind of exciting.

My next big excitement was at 6:15 pm when I found out it was Friday not Thursday. Somewhere this week I misplaced a day. Probably won't be any use in trying to find it now.

Have a great weekend everyone.

[Demeter]

12. Lack of sense of humor and knowledge of current events

is the hallmark of the GOP fundies. Maybe they were on the wrong site?

And if you are only missing one day, you re way ahead of me! I feel as if whole years were just whisked away.

[MattSh]

18. Couldn't make this one up if I tried.

Earlier this week, a video was posted about the war in Ukraine. It was locked as off-topic...

in "Video and Multimedia."

But if you listen to the MSM, apparently the whole war in Ukraine is a "conspiracy theory." If they don't report it, it ain't happening.

[Demeter]

21. It's like living in an insane asylum these days

in the paranoid-schizophrenic ward.

There are people with too much power who are suffering from Idée fixe and inflicting it upon the rest of us. They are totally impervious to the outside reality, trapped in the horrors in their minds.

And then, there are those that exploit these mentally-disabled people: the REAL Masters of the Universe, or so they would like to believe, unable to accept that their time on this earth, and therefore their power, is limited and subject to change without notice.

If there is any culture that survives the next 100 years, it would be interesting to see how this period of time is treated by historians...and what kind of historians are produced!

But now we have our old Racism issue to distract us...and it's amazing what doesn't automatically happen that should!

[kickysnana]

34. Please don't let them stop you from posting cause this place is unique and powerful.

[Crewleader]

15. Ziggy

[Demeter]

16. Good find!

I laughed, and then cried.

[Demeter]

17. Austerity Has Made Europe’s Depression Longer Than In The 1930s

http://ourfuture.org/20140822/austerity-has-made-europes-depression-longer-than-in-30s?utm_source=pmupdate&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20140822

Europe’s economic depression has now lasted longer than the Great Depression of the 1930s. Meanwhile, America’s “Great Recession” also drags on thanks to cutbacks in government spending since the stimulus...Europe’s leaders somehow were convinced that austerity – “deficit reduction” through cutbacks in government – would somehow lead them out of their economic doldrums. They believed that taking money out of the economy would help the economy. The result has been terrible. The Washington Post’s Wonkblog calls Europe’s austerity-lengthened depression “one of the biggest catastrophes in economic history.” To top it off, Europe’s governments are learning that cutting back on spending not only worsens the economic picture, causing terrible unemployment, poverty and human misery, but the worsened economic picture means less revenue coming in, thereby increasing deficits instead of lowering deficits. In other words, austerity cutbacks to fight deficits have instead made deficits worse and hurt people.

Europe’s Policy-Driven Depression

In “Worse than the 1930s: Europe’s recession is really a depression,” Matt O’Brien writes,

It’s a policy-induced disaster. Too much fiscal austerity and too little monetary stimulus have crippled growth like almost never before. Europe is doing worse than Japan during its “lost decade,” worse than the sterling bloc during the Great Depression, and barely better than the gold bloc then—though even that silver lining isn’t much of one. That’s because, at this rate, it’ll only be another year until the eurozone is well behind the gold bloc, too.

In Wonkblog’s chart, the black line shows Europe’s negative GDP doldrums since 2007.

The harmful effect of austerity is so obvious that even Europe’s policymakers are starting to get it. The New York Times, in “France Acknowledges Economic Malaise, Blaming Austerity,” reports that, “President François Hollande on Wednesday … indicated that the austerity policies France had been compelled to adopt to meet the eurozone’s budget deficit targets were making growth impossible.”

“The diagnosis is clear,” Mr. Hollande said in an interview published Wednesday in the French daily Le Monde. “Due to the austerity policies of the last several years, there is a problem of demand throughout Europe, and a growth rate that is not reducing employment.”

It was the most public rejection by France of the austerity medicine that Germany has long prescribed for the eurozone — which even the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, recently acknowledged might be impeding the currency bloc’s recovery.

Demand Drives An Economy

Here’s the deal. In a slowdown consumers and businesses are not bringing enough “demand” to an economy. This lack of customers causes businesses to lay off workers and those workers stop being consumers, so businesses have to cut back even more. So they lay off workers and those workers stop being consumers, so businesses have to cut back even more. You get the picture: “Death spiral.” This is when government (We the People) should step in. In the 20th century we learned a way out of recessions and depressions. During slowdowns government can spend, and this boosts the demand in the economy to make up for the demand shortfall from consumers and businesses. Government can invest in infrastructure, causing construction workers to be hired and suppliers of equipment and materials to thrive. Government can spend on things it needs like equipment and cars, etc. Government can hire to get things done that need to be done like teaching kids, daycare, adding police and firefighters … so many things. And all of those thing help make the lives of We the People better in the long run. Good, modern infrastructure, schools and teachers, universities, police, firefighters, parks, libraries, courts, scientific research, environmental protection, food inspectors, job-safety inspectors and all the rest of the things government does make our lives better – and boost our economy in the long term.

Stimulus Helped The U.S. Economy, Deficit-Cutting Hurt

Just after President Obama took office there were enough Democrats in the House and Senate to pass the “stimulus.” This was the result:



Unfortunately Republicans gained seats in the Senate and have filibustered every single attempt to help the economy since. The post Three Updated Charts to Email to Your Right-Wing Brother-In-Law explains how this has hurt us,

Government spending does not “take money out of the economy.” In fact it puts money into the economy, creates jobs and lays the foundation for future prosperity. … this chart from The Atlantic, “The Incredible Shrinking U.S. Government,” shows how government spending to create government jobs helped us get out of the 1981, 1990 and 2001 recessions. But since the 2007 “Great Recession,” we instead have laid off hundreds of thousands of government employees, obviously making unemployment even worse.

… This chart from Roger Hickey’s post, Continued Jobs Growth. But Highway Bill Shows Austerity Still Hurts., shows how “conservative budget cutting has undermined growth from mid-2010 through 2014″:

“As you can see, the impact of austerity on the economy is projected to be reduced over the next two quarters, but the next budget is not expected to be expansionary – and Republicans are still writing budgets under the mistaken conservative theory that spending cuts somehow stimulate growth.”

Government spending obviously helps boost a flagging economy. Cutting government spending during a slowdown obviously takes badly needed money out of the economy at the very times it needs the help.

Some Believe Government Is Bad And “Markets” Should Make The Decisions

There are those who think that it is wrong for government (We the People) to be able to do things like this, and these decisions should be left to “the market.” They want “limited government” and demand that government get “out of the way” of “the market” – i.e. those with money – and let the big corporations and the billionaires behind them make the decisions, not We the People. Terms like “the market” and “free enterprise” is modern wording applied to the age-old fight between those who already have great wealth and power, and regular people who are powerless unless they are able to band together in democracy to protect each other from the power of the wealthy.

The thing is, the “private sector” is the very sector that is in a downward spiral during slowdowns. Without an outside force – government – stepping in to boost demand there is nothing to interrupt the downward spiral. “Austerity” cutbacks in government literally take money out of the economy. Austerity cuts back on maintaining the infrastructure and teachers and police and firefighters and construction workers and scientific research – all at the very time that businesses are also laying people off. We have seen this in the United State because of budget cuts forced by Republicans – especially the “sequester” forced by the debt-ceiling standoff. But in Europe, the austerity has been much worse than here, and the result have been much more devastating to Europe’s economy and people.

We can only hope that Europe’s leaders are starting to get it that taking money out of the economy takes money out of the economy.

[MattSh]

19. Musical Interlude

Seems this song is having a bit of a renaissance lately here in East Europe. Some are saying the makers of the video were somehow prophetic. Watch it and see if you can see the prophesy.

Warning: catchy tune, even catchier video, IMHO.

[Demeter]

20. That was an interesting view

So, calling for Reunification-Little Russia and Big Russia?

Stranger things have happened.

It's amazing how this music video (I don't know what the correct term is) incorporates all the aspects of a big Broadway musical in so little time...why is it in English, though? Is that trendy? Or to make it more universally accessible?

(I love her hat, just as I love the white fox hat Tonya wore in Dr. Zhivago. I've always wanted one like that, but search in vain. The hats in this country don't suit my face, frankly. I look good in a babuska, too. It's genetic.)

[MattSh]

41. You might be thinking a bit too much into it...

But first a few notes...

Basement Jaxx are a British electronic dance music duo consisting of Felix Buxton (born 1971) and Simon Ratcliffe (born 1 December 1969). The pair got their name from the regular night club they held in their hometown of Brixton, London, UK.[3] They first rose to popularity in the late 1990s.[4] As the British Hit Singles & Albums book duly noted "they surfaced from the underground house scene, are regular transatlantic club chart-toppers and won the BRIT Award for Best Dance Act in 2002 and 2004".[5] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basement_Jaxx

So this has no roots in East Europe. Blame the Brits! They might not have been looking to make any statement at all; but subsequent events led people to make their own interpretation of this video. Also note the song's release date (2006) and the video's posted date (2012).

One interpretation of this video assigns the female singer the role of Crimea. She's looking for someone, anyone she can relate to, but with no luck until a Russian in a tank comes to rescue her. Another interpretation puts her among Russians, and the man in the tank is a Ukrainian coming to rescue her and return her to Ukraine. Now I'm quite sure the people who did this video was thinking of none of this when they put this together.

[Ghost Dog]

38. Joder.

[xchrom]

22. Obama Is Begging Congress To Save This One Crucial Bank

http://www.businessinsider.com/r-obama-to-business-tell-your-lawmakers-to-renew-ex-im-bank-2014-8

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama on Saturday urged business owners to press Congress to reauthorize the U.S. Export-Import Bank, which could halt any new financing Sept. 30 - as some conservative Republicans hope it will - if lawmakers fail to act.
The little-known institution provides loans to buyers of U.S. products abroad. Obama said in his weekly radio address that if Congress lets the bank close, it would be stunting U.S. export growth and impeding economic expansion.

"If Congress fails to act, thousands of businesses, large and small, that sell their products abroad will take a completely unnecessary hit," the president said.

While playing a relatively small role in the U.S. export universe, the bank has become a political flashpoint. Conservative Republicans single it out as an unnecessary and potentially risky government program, while moderates and most Democrats defend it as providing a useful boost to businesses seeking new markets.

Household names such as Boeing Co, Caterpillar Inc and General Electric Co are big beneficiaries of the bank's services. Ex-Im Bank's critics say aiding well-established firms such as those serves little purpose and puts taxpayers at risk.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/r-obama-to-business-tell-your-lawmakers-to-renew-ex-im-bank-2014-8#ixzz3BDOCN1wS

[Demeter]

25. THOSE COMPANIES COULD USE THE HOARD OF CASH THEY ARE SITTING ON

...just saying...and the small ones could crowd-source, or the govt. could do some seed-money grants...


the image of Obama begging Congress for anything....acknowledging that Congress 1) exists 2) has power....boggles the mind.

It's late in the game to start currying favor and building friendships in Congress. Harry Reid has pretty much written the White House off.

[xchrom]

23. This Chart From Mario Draghi Reveals The Slow-Motion Catastrophe That Is The Eurozone

http://www.businessinsider.com/in-one-chart-heres-the-slow-motion-catastrophe-that-is-the-eurozone-2014-8

Mario Draghi's Jackson Hole speech is out.

And there are charts! The first one basically tells the entire story of the US and the Eurozone since the financial crisis.

Basically, the US had a severe economic contraction very fast once the crisis started, and then it improved rapidly.

Europe just chugged along, getting worse and worse, and now in 2014 has still barely recovered any ground.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/in-one-chart-heres-the-slow-motion-catastrophe-that-is-the-eurozone-2014-8#ixzz3BDPSQyBY

[Demeter]

26. Point of Order! The US numbers are lies, as has been reported here regularly

In truth, if there was any truth, the graphs would probably track pretty closely.

[Demeter]

24. For the female of the species is more deadly than the male--Kipling: JOANNE KING HERRING

Joanne King Herring (born July 3, 1929) is an American socialite, businesswoman, political activist, philanthropist, diplomat, and former television talk show host. Hailing from Houston, Texas, she is most known for her long association and political relation with the President of Pakistan Zia-ul-Haq (1977–88). Herring also served as the honorary consular at the Consulate-General of Pakistan based in Houston; she is also the recipient of Jinnah Medal– one of Pakistan's highest honors.

Throughout the 1980s, Herring played a role in helping the U.S. Representative Charlie Wilson to persuade the U.S. government to train and arm the Mujahideen resistance fighters to fight in the Soviet war in Afghanistan, which began in 1979. These events inspired the book Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History; Herring is portrayed by actress Julia Roberts in the 2007 film Charlie Wilson's War. Since the September 11 attacks, Herring has stated that she "did not make al-Qaeda," and that she "cannot predict the future."

Herring remains very active in social circles in Houston, and regularly contributes to and participates in benefits to help American troops and the Afghan people. Her second book, Diplomacy and Diamonds: My Wars from the Ballroom to the Battlefield, was scheduled for release on October 19, 2011.

Biography

Born in Houston as Joanne Johnson, Herring grew up in the city's affluent River Oaks neighborhood, and her childhood acquaintances included James A. Baker, III, who would later serve as Secretary of State. She enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin, but left after her sophomore year to marry real estate developer Robert King.

A fixture on the Houston social circuit, Herring became notorious for the lavish, decadent birthday party her husband threw for her in 1959. The "Roman orgy"-themed affair included period costumes and a mock slave auction, and was covered by Life magazine and various local news media. In the late 1950s, she began a 15-year-long hosting tenure for the self-titled daytime talk show "The Joanne King Show" on Houston's KHOU-TV station. By 1974, her show had moved to KPRC.

After her divorce from Robert King, by whom she had two sons, Beau and Robin, she met oilman Robert Herring and married him after only five dates. During that time Joanne served as honorary consul to Pakistan. After Robert Herring's death, she married Lloyd Davis, owner of Fisk Electric.

Media appearances

Herring appears as herself in the comic 1999 documentary feature Five Wives, Three Secretaries and Me and the 1970s German television news series V.I.P.-Schaukel. In the former — the story of a Houston businessman who marries five times — Herring playfully introduces herself by saying, "Well, my name is Joanne Johnson King Herring Davis, and I've had almost as many husbands as he's had wives."

Herring has also appeared on CNN with Ali Velshi multiple times to discuss continued American involvement in Afghanistan.

Marshall Plan Charities

In 2009, Herring founded Marshall Plan Charities, which seeks to "complement the ongoing U.S. military effort in Afghanistan by rapidly and effectively redeveloping normal, healthy civilian life village by village." The organization unites the efforts of various NGO's concerned with the Afghan people in hopes of providing villages with clean water, food, health care, schools, and jobs. With those five things, villages will no longer have to rely on the Taliban to provide them.

Involvement with Zia-ul-Haq

Herring is well known and remembered for her long association and politics relation with President of Pakistan Zia-ul-Haq. Her contacts and relations with Zia dated back to early 1970s, when he, as Brigadier-General, was a contingent commander of overseas Pakistan military formations in Jordon. In 1980, President Zia convened and held an honorary dinner to Robert and Joanne Herring in Islamabad. About the military intelligence program ran against the Prime minister Zulfikar Bhutto, Herring reportedly defended Zia's action, and well quoted: Zulfikar Bhutto had a trial by his own appointed judges and convicted him of a murder. The Koran serves as the (unofficial) Constitution of Pakistan. It exacts as an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. If you murder, you must die. The only thing Zia did was not to commute Bhutto's sentence. In a country whose constitution demand a capital punishment, Zia did not violate the Law."

In a reference written in Charlie Wilson's War by George Crile III maintained that "Herring was said to have been a most trusted American adviser." It was Herring who acquainted Charlie Wilson with Zia who later secured major funding for Pakistan's anticommunist policies.

Over the years, Herring's influence on Zia and his military administration grew further, and President Zia became so enamoured with Joanne he would interrupt cabinet meetings to take her call. In the memoirs of Foreign minister Yaqub Khan who quoted: "She absolutely had his ear, it was terrible!." President Zia neglected the protocols and equally dismayed the Foreign Office when he appointed her his honorary consular at the Houston-based Consulate-General of Pakistan. In a public ceremony held in Pakistan, President Zia personally honored her with Pakistan's highest civilian honor, Tamgha-e-Quaid-e-Azam (lit. Jinnah Medal). In 2011, she paid a huge tribute to President Zia on her autobiography published in 2011.

Awards

Received the Freedom Foundation at Valley Forge Award in the 1960s
Was knighted by the King of Belgium in the 1970s
Was made roaming Ambassador of Pakistan in the 1980s, and received the Tamgha-e-Quaid-e-Azam, the highest honor given by the nation of Pakistan.
Was made a Dame in Order of St. Francis in 2011
Was inducted into the Texas Women's Hall of Fame in 2014



I THINK THE MOST APPALLING ASPECT OF THIS WOMAN'S CAREER, ASIDE FROM HER COMPLETE FAILURE AT WHAT SHE TRIES TO ACCOMPLISH, IS THAT IT IS INTENSELY UNDEMOCRATIC. SHE REPRESENTS AMATEUR HOUR AT THE "ABUSE OF POWER" GAMES.

THAT ONE PERSON, SO LITTLE QUALIFIED FOR THE HALLS OF POWER, COULD MAKE SO MANY PEOPLE DEAD, UNINTENTIONALLY, IS JUST APPALLING. BUT THAT'S WHAT TEXAS GIVES THE NATION: W, RICK PERRY, ETC....

[Demeter]

27. Podcast Interview with Herring

http://www.acloserlookradio.com/philanthropist-author-and-former-ambassador-joanne-king-herring-march-8-2012.html

Julia Roberts played her in “Charlie Wilson’s War”, but the real-life Texan is far more interesting than any movie could capture. The international socialite, global political activist and former Texas television anchor, Joanne King Herring is known for her improbable fight with the Mujahedeen against the former Soviet Union. But her full story – with all its God, guns and Gucci glory – is even more remarkable.

Born in a man’s world at a time when women had limited choices, Joanne King Herring blazed a trail with allies as unlikely as Charlie Wilson, Pierre Cardin and President Ronald Reagan, and in so doing forged new paths for women in Pakistan, Afghanistan and America.

Now she is doing it again – this time without guns. Joanne has a plan to rebuild Afghanistan one village at a time through food, water and education. Currently, her Marshall Plan Charities group is building a model village in Northern Afghanistan to prove that an entire village of 10,000 people can be structured for the cost of keeping one soldier in the field for a year. She is determined to bring American troops home and equip Afghanistan to stand on its own.

Joanne hosted the Joanne King Show on television for 15 years, was made roaming Ambassador of Pakistan and received the Quaid-e-Azam award, the highest honor given by the nation of Pakistan. She was made Dame by the Order of St. Francis and has been knighted by the King of Belgium. She is also the recipient of the Freedom Foundation at Valley Forge Award and co-chaired the Special Olympics in New York City with Henry Kissinger.

She tells her fascinating continuing story in her own words with charm and delight in her extraordinary new memoir, Diplomacy and Diamonds: My Wars from the Ballroom to the Battlefield (available now). Joanne lives in Houston, as do her two sons.

Joanne has appeared as a guest on Fox News Channel programs “Fox & Friends”, “On The Record with Greta Van Susteren”, “Hannity”, “Lou Dobbs Tonight,” and “Huckabee”. She has also appeared on Bloomberg Business News and is a reappearing guest on CNN’s “American morning with Ali Velshi.” Her book, Diplomacy and Diamonds was also featured in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Observer, the New York Social Diary and PW Weekly.

[Demeter]

28. She has her own website...

http://joanneherring.com/

[Demeter]

29. And lots of fan boys among the 1%

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-luce/joanne-king-herring_b_1065460.html

[Demeter]

30. Boys Like Girls - Two Is Better Than One

[Demeter]

31. Two Steps From Hell - Archangel

[Demeter]

35. Two Steps from Hell - Black Blade

[xchrom]

32. 41 Percent of American Workers Let Paid Vacation Days Go to Waste

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/08/41-percent-of-american-workers-let-their-paid-vacation-go-to-waste/378950/

A friend recently told me about an automatic email reply she had received from a colleague. It began innocuously enough—“I will be out of the office next Monday and Tuesday"—but it grew more alarming as it went on. “Because I have accumulated too many days of paid vacation," it said, "I have scheduled a trip to Chicago for the weekend in order to use some of them.” (I’ve changed some details here to protect identities.)

As an anecdote, this autoreply stands as a tidy illustration of one man’s work ethic. When stretched, it might color a picture of what the work culture at my friend’s company is like.

That’s why I was surprised to read a report this week that suggested that an indifference to—or perhaps even fear of—taking vacation isn't just limited to that one employee at that one company. According to the report, put out by the U.S. Travel Association, four in 10 American workers allow some of their paid vacation days to go unused and expire—even though 96 percent of workers claim to see the virtue in taking time off. Another report, from 2013, found that workers were letting an average of 3.2 vacation days expire, unused.

[Demeter]

33. How Joanne Herring won Charlie Wilson's War By Philip Sherwell

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1571233/How-Joanne-Herring-won-Charlie-Wilsons-War.html

Joanne Herring was a pampered Texan until she took to the mountains of Afghanistan to fight the Red Menace. As her astonishing story comes to the big screen, she talks to Philip Sherwell

Joanne Herring speaks in the slow, refined drawl of a Southern belle. With her svelte figure, surgeon-assisted features, dyed blonde hair and obligatory sunglasses, she looks far younger than her 78 years, as she drives around Houston's ritzy suburbs in a red Jaguar convertible, accompanied by her two bandana-wearing black poodles. Thrice-married socialite, hostess, philanthropist, businesswoman, diplomat, television chat-show presenter and God-fearing ultra-conservative, Mrs Herring has been compared to a cross between Scarlett O'Hara and Dolly Parton in her various incarnations of Texan royalty. But the most extraordinary role in her remarkable life is about to be portrayed by Julia Roberts in a new Hollywood blockbuster, Charlie Wilson's War, to be released in America on December 21. For Mrs Herring also changed the course of history.

A few months after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, she smuggled herself into that mountainous land to film the atrocities that the Russian forces were inflicting as they strafed villages from helicopter gunships. Mrs Herring nearly became a casualty of those same tactics, surviving a helicopter attack by Soviet forces on their mujahideen foes while she was filming the battle with her combat photographer son, Robin King, and Charles Fawcett, an adventurer and movie-maker. The footage they brought back was pivotal in persuading America to arm secretly and fund the tribal warriors fighting the Red Army. The biggest covert war in history turned Afghanistan into Moscow's "Vietnam", culminating in humiliating defeat for the Kremlin and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

"Many times I wondered what a nice girl from Texas was doing in a place like that," she told The Sunday Telegraph last week. "Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought I would have ended up in the underbelly of the world fighting the demons of communism."

LISTEN TO HER WORDS, AND ASK YOURSELF, HOW IS JOANNE DIFFERENT FROM OSAMA BIN LADIN?

IS IT MEET AND PROPER FOR AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY TO BE THE PLAYTHING OF SOCIALITES, NO MATTER HOW WELL-INTENTIONED?

SHOULD PRESIDENTS BE LISTENING TO THIS WOMAN, OR TAKING HER MONEY?

SHOULD CONGRESSMEN BE "DATING" HER?

SHE'S DAMN LUCKY THAT THE COLLAPSE OF THE WORLD ECONOMY DISTRACTED ATTENTION AWAY FROM HER EXPLOITS. SHE COULD HAVE ENDED UP LIKE JULIAN ASSANGE....OR EDWARD SNOWDEN, WHO ACTUALLY ARE SERVING THE WORLD AND THE IDEAL OF DEMOCRACY, NOT THEIR GUILT-RIDDEN CONSCIENCES, ADDLED MORALS, AND LUST FOR POWER.

[Demeter]

36. Why did the USSR invade Afghanistan?

Since this invasion ticked Joanne Herring off, I thought it a legitimate question to ask...

Daryl Morini at http://www.e-ir.info/2010/01/03/the-soviet-union%E2%80%99s-last-war/

The Soviet intervention in Afghanistan was a costly and, ultimately, pointless war. Historical hindsight has made this evident. However, exactly why the Red Army wound up in direct military conflict, embroiled in a bitter and complicated civil war—some 3,000 kilometres away from Moscow—is a point of historiographical uncertainty. The evidence available suggests that geopolitical calculations were at the top of the Kremlin’s goals. These were arguably to deter US interference in the USSR’s ‘backyard’, to gain a highly strategic foothold in Southwest Asia and, not least of all, to attempt to contain the radical Islamic revolution emanating from Iran. The subsidiary goal of the invasion was to secure an ideologically-friendly régime in the region. Furthermore, the fateful Politburo decision was not conceived by Brezhnev, but by a small, cabalistic group of the Soviet Union’s most powerful figures. Little known and appreciated for its significance, the Soviet-Afghan War was one of the turning points of the late Cold War.

SO, THE USSR HAD ITS OWN JOANNE HERRINGS?!

On the evening of the 27th of December 1979, the Afghan government was effectively decapitated. During Operation Storm, a seven hundred-strong unit of Soviet special forces infiltrated the city of Kabul. They were disguised as regular Afghan soldiers, and had come to fulfil one objective: killing Prime Minister Hafizullah Amin. Two days earlier, the Fortieth Army had moved in thousands of armed personnel and vehicles from the Soviet border town of Termez. Within several weeks, all of the country’s cities and major roads were under Soviet occupation. Upon receiving intelligence reports to this effect, Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, wrote to the President: “We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War. Indeed,” he could add retrospectively, “for almost ten years, Moscow had to carry on a war…that brought about the demoralisation and finally the break-up of the Soviet empire.” The most basic, yet contentious question is that of why the army was brought in, to begin with... As a direct result of the so-called ‘Brezhnev doctrine’, the USSR asserted its “right and duty” to go to war in foreign countries “if and when an existing socialist regime was threatened.” This accounts for the increased overseas military, political, and economic support being given at this time to pro-Marxist régimes in Nicaragua, Angola, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Yemen, etc. Such expeditions were in line with the twin geopolitical objectives of the Soviet Union. The first Soviet policy consisted of preparing the Red Army for a potential conventional and, probably, nuclear confrontation with the US. Secondly, Moscow pledged to continue supporting “wars of national liberation” abroad. The latter resulted in what some analysts cleverly called the Third World War. It would be decisively challenged in the deserts and mountains of Afghanistan.

The Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan was primarily motivated by geopolitical interests in the region. Another obvious factor in the decision was related to the soft power commitments of socialist ideology, which predisposed the Soviet Union to safeguard a friendly régime. After all, in the zero-sum game between both Cold War superpowers, one ally lost almost certainly meant an enemy gained. At this stage, however, a key historiographical problem arises. This is namely the profound difficulty of disentangling the two motives. Was raison d’état or ideology a more important factor in shaping the thinking of Soviet strategists in the late Cold War? It does not help that the Politburo was inherently secretive and opaque, leaving behind very few reliable records of the group’s conversations. In practice, however, both motives were inextricably mixed. Soviet foreign policy, as Stalin had designed it, embodied this ambiguous approach. Explained Ronald Suny: “In a circular way ideology was subordinated to state interests, but interests were understood in terms of ideology.” It is imperative to note that the Soviet Union was ideologically-bound to the socialist régime in Kabul. At their core, the Politburo’s aims were primarily statist. But the Soviets acted as self-interested international players, concerned with advancing the USSR’s own position in the Cold War contest.

The People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) was a Soviet-backed Marxist group. They had come to power through a putsch in April 1978. Directly after their ‘April Revolution’ it became clear that the communist and, hence, atheistic island of Kabul—surrounded by an overwhelmingly Muslim ocean—would need Moscow’s support in order to survive. President Nur Mohammad Taraki understood this crucial fact. He made numerous desperate demands for his benefactors to send in direct military support to Afghanistan—up to six times in one recorded dialogue. The conservative Islamic rebels, named Mujahideen (soldiers of God), increasingly threatened Taraki’s besieged government. For quite some time, the Soviet leadership was unwilling to commit itself to sending any more than token military advisors and some weapons to Afghanistan. This was probably due to Brezhnev’s much reiterated fear of nuclear escalation with the US, at a time when the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty II (SALT II) had just been concluded. However, détente was by then moribund in all but name. Soviet assertiveness throughout the Third World was partly to blame, but Afghanistan was the last nail in the coffin. The further deterioration of Afghanistan’s situation in early 1979 moved Moscow’s leadership out of its inertia, and directly into a trap...

MUCH MORE AT LINK

OTHER ANALYSES AGREE WITH ADDITIONAL POINTS ADDED

OVERREACHING ON THE PART OF THE USSR, AND FEAR OF THE DREAD MUSLIMS...

[Ghost Dog]

37. Well, if it's that kind of twosome...

[DemReadingDU]

40. Sacramento federal court jury acquits 4 in local mortgage fraud case

8/23/14 Sacramento federal court jury acquits 4 in local mortgage fraud case

In an unprecedented trial, four people charged with mortgage fraud were acquitted Friday by a jury in Sacramento federal court after defense attorneys argued the real culprits are the so-called “victim lenders.” According to experts, it is the first time in such a trial that a court has allowed the defense to present evidence that lenders ignored gaping holes and blatant lies in loan applications during the years leading up to the economic meltdown.

“The big banks and other lenders made as many loans based on patently false information as they could, packaged them as securities and passed them up the chain to Wall Street’s investment and management bankers, who peddled them to an unsuspecting public,” said defense lawyer Tim Pori after the verdict. “No bank executives have been prosecuted,” Pori said. “Sure, there have been multibillion-dollar settlements with some big banks, but none of their officers – the ones who really pulled the strings – will ever see the inside of a cell.”
.
.
.
William Black, who boasts long academic and regulatory careers, was a key expert witness for the defense, again over Coppola’s objection. Black is an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and the “distinguished scholar in residence for financial regulation” at the University of Minnesota’s School of Law. His testimony purportedly connected the fraud in the Sacramento case directly to the lenders, and he explained to the jury why the false information on the applications had no bearing on lending decisions.

“This is the first time that the overwhelming fraud at the banks has been discussed in a criminal courtroom by the person with the greatest expertise on the issue, William Black,” said defense lawyer Toni White after the verdict. “Prosecutors have refused to criminally prosecute the elite bankers responsible for the mortgage crisis that decimated our economy. The jurors heard shocking testimony from ‘control fraud’ expert William Black that regular people who got loans they were unable to pay back did not (defraud) the banks. The elite bankers commit the fraud while prosecutors look the other way and prosecute the wrong people.”

http://www.sacbee.com/2014/08/22/6648529/sacramento-federal-court-jury.html


via twitter...
Retweeted by William K. Black
Julie Mumma ‏@sunshinetruthx Bill black led charge against prosecutors who refuse to indict banks - so federal jury said not guilty if no banks!

[Demeter]

42. Way to go, Bill Black! Truth WILL Out!

and maybe, just maybe, before we are all dead, justice will prevail.

God bless the internet!

[MattSh]

43. The War Breaks The Spine of Ukraine’s Economy

Ukraine was already limping along, but the Russia-backed separatist rebellion in the east has crippled its economy

By Maxim Eristavi

What you need to know:

- Ukraine’s hryvnia is in freefall, now the second-worst performing currency in the world
- Ukrainian economy is in the middle of a two year-long recession that is expected to deepen later this year
- Ukraine was already limping along, but the Russia-backed separatist rebellion in the east has crippled its economy. The country struggles to afford paying its war bills

In Kyiv, barely a day passes by without hearing of someone being laid off or getting their paycheck cut. Usual traffic jams have almost vanished, and on Saturday nights bars and restaurants are half-empty.

Post-revolutionary Kyiv

It’s easy to spot the frustration of locals as they pass by currency exchange offices: the hryvnia is in free fall, having plunged to record 40 percent against the U.S. dollar this year. It’s now the second-worst performing currency in the world—even the Syrian pound is doing better.

Complete story at - https://medium.com/MaximEristavi/the-war-breaks-the-spine-of-ukraines-economy-d752a776ce95

Note that they mention that hot water has been cut off in Kiev. But our flat still has it. One reason might be that we're in a "touristy" district and they don't want visitors to Kiev to go home and tell everybody Ukraine is a Third World Country.

[MattSh]

44. 'Buy firewood & coal': MP warns Ukrainians after US, EU get access to national gas pipes

The decision by the Ukrainian parliament to allow companies from the US and EU to co-manage the country’s gas pipelines could lead to the country being left with no gas supplies in the coming winter, an MP has warned in an emotional online address.

Nikolay Rudkovsky, an independent MP in Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada, believes the law allowing 49 percent of Ukraine’s national gas transportation system (GTS) to be managed by foreign companies is a big mistake.

“People, my advice to you is: buy firewood and coal! After the Law on reforming the management system of the united gas transportation system of Ukraine (#4116) was passed today, our country has been left with almost no chances of staying with gas,” Rudkovsky said on Facebook, following the Rada session.

“Don’t the MPs understand that we are now guaranteed to have a winter with no heating?” he asked

Complete story at - http://rt.com/news/180512-ukrainian-mp-firewood-coal/

One possible problem with this. A huge percentage of the Soviet era apartment buildings have no facilities to burn wood or coal.

[Demeter]

46. Well, if we had to find a bad boy or girl behind this, Victoria Nuland and husband

have volunteered....

[MattSh]

45. Putin Says The Petrodollar Must Die, "The Dollar Monopoly In Energy Trade Is Damaging Russia's Econo

On one hand, despite initial weakness following Europe's triple-dip red alert, futures declined only to surge higher after some headline or another out of Russia was again spun to suggest imminent Ukraine de-escalation (something which Russia whose only interest is to keep crude prices high, has absolutely zero interest in), perpetuating a rumor which was set off by a Russian media outlet tweet last week that has sent S&P futures over 50 higher in less than a week on... nothing.

On the other, Putin just said the following, which no matter how one spins it, shows precisely how Russia is inclined vis-a-vis future (un-de-counter) escalations.

PUTIN SAYS RUSSIA SHOULD AIM TO SELL OIL AND GAS FOR ROUBLES GLOBALLY, AS DOLLAR MONOPOLY IN ENERGY TRADE IS DAMAGING ECONOMY

Reuters adds:

President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday Russia should aim to sell its oil and gas for roubles globally because the dollar monopoly in energy trade was damaging Russia's economy.

"We should act carefully. At the moment we are trying to agree with some countries to trade in national currencies," Putin said during a visit to the Crimea region, which Moscow annexed from Ukraine earlier this year.

Countries such as China, India, Iran, Brazil, and virtually every other non-insolvent, that is to say "developed, Western" country.

And now, bring on the Russian "isolation" (which is about to push Europe, not Russia, into a triple-dip recession) and further de-escalation.

Complete story at - http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-08-14/putin-says-petrodollar-must-die-dollar-monopoly-energy-trade-damaging-russias-econom

[Demeter]

47. Implication: the sudden crash in oil futures to squeeze the Russian bear?

I suppose it's possible...but that would be ticking off the Saudis.

[xchrom]

48. Goldman Sachs Partners’ Ownership at Lowest Since 2010

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-22/goldman-sachs-partners-ownership-at-lowest-since-2010.html

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) partners cut their ownership of the firm to the lowest level since 2010 by exercising options dating from the financial crisis, as the total reaped this year from such awards nears $400 million.

The partners owned 8.52 percent of the New York-based company’s shares on Aug. 13, down from 9.45 percent in May, according to a regulatory filing today. Individuals exercised options from July 16 to Aug. 12 that yielded $107 million after covering the cost of the options and some tax withholding, the filing shows.

The conversions bring the total netted by partners this year from the 2008 options to about $390 million, as the employees benefited from a doubling in the firm’s stock price since the financial crisis. The options vested over three years ended in January 2012, and shares gained through such awards couldn’t be sold until this year.

In December 2008, Goldman Sachs granted 36 million options in an effort to give top performers an incentive to stay after the bank reduced compensation expense by almost half during the credit crunch. More than 34 million of those options were still outstanding at the end of 2013. The partners have exercised almost 9 million of the options this year, according to filings.

[xchrom]

49. Wisconsin’s Walker Routed Cash to Outside Group

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-23/wisconsin-s-walker-routed-cash-to-outside-group-prosecutor-says.html

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker diverted campaign contributions to the conservative issue-advocacy group Wisconsin Club for Growth, lawyers for the special prosecutor investigating him said in court papers.

The probe into whether Walker and those working on his 2012 recall election violated Wisconsin campaign finance laws was put on hold in May by a federal judge in Milwaukee after a Club for Growth executive sued claiming it infringed political activity protected by the U.S. Constitution.

Special prosecutor Francis Schmitz has appealed that ruling. Documents in the case were unsealed yesterday by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago that is set to hear arguments next month on whether the investigation can resume.

Walker is one of a trio of potential 2016 Republican presidential candidates shadowed by investigations into potential wrongdoing. Texas Governor Rick Perry last week was indicted in an abuse-of-power case and has pleaded not guilty. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and his allies are being probed by federal prosecutors over his subordinates’ orders to create traffic tie-ups at the George Washington Bridge to punish a mayor who didn’t support his re-election.

[Demeter]

57. Maybe this will destroy the MONEY= FREE SPEECH argument

we can but hope!

[xchrom]

50. Home Flipping Wanes as U.S. Investors Find Fewer Bargains

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-22/home-flipping-wanes-as-u-s-investors-find-fewer-bargains.html

Home flipping, in which a buyer resells a property quickly for a profit, is on the decline as U.S. residential price gains slow and foreclosures dwindle.

Almost 31,000 single-family houses were flipped in the second quarter, representing 4.6 percent of U.S. home sales, RealtyTrac said in a report today. That’s down from 6.2 percent a year earlier and the smallest share since the first three months of 2012, when prices bottomed after the crash, according to the Irvine, California-based data company, which defines a flip as a property sold within 12 months of purchase.

Real estate investors are making smaller profits and finding fewer opportunities for deals after a two-year surge in property values that’s now slowing. The median existing-home price climbed 4.9 percent in July from a year earlier, compared with a 13.1 percent jump in the same month of 2013, the National Association of Realtors said yesterday. Distressed homes accounted for the lowest share of sales since at least 2008.

“The flippers’ formula is to buy a property that they can add value to at a discount and sell at a premium,” Daren Blomquist, vice president at RealtyTrac, said in a telephone interview. “Now, home-price appreciation has slowed dramatically in many of the flipping meccas and the availability of discounted distressed properties has dried up.”

[xchrom]

51. Too Much Corn With Nowhere to Go as U.S. Sees Record Crop

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-22/too-much-corn-with-nowhere-to-go-as-u-s-sees-record-crop.html

The ripening corn and soybean fields stretch for miles in every direction from Dennis Wentworth’s farm in Downs, Illinois. As he marveled at his best-yielding crops ever, he wondered aloud where the heck he’ll put it all.

“Logistics are going to be a huge problem for everyone,” the 62-year-old grower said, adding that he has invested in boosting output rather than grain bins. When harvesting starts in a few weeks, Wentworth expects his 150-year-old family farm to produce 10 percent more than last year’s record. “There are going to be some big piles of grain on the ground this fall.”

From Ohio to Nebraska, thousands of field inspections this week during the Pro Farmer Midwest Crop Tour show corn output in the U.S., the world’s top producer, will be 0.4 percent above the government’s estimate. Months of timely rains and mild weather created ideal growing conditions, leaving ears with more kernels than normal on 10-foot (3-meter) corn stalks and more seed pods on dark, green soy plants.

Prospects of bumper harvests sent Chicago futures tumbling into bear markets last month, two years after a drought eroded output and sparked the highest prices ever. Cheaper grain is bolstering profit for buyers including Tyson Foods Inc. and Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. (ADM), encouraging some cattle producers in the Great Plains to expand herds, and eroding income for farmers who say increased output will make up for some of the slump.

[xchrom]

52. Whatever the Question, Americans Think Economic Pressure Is the Answer

http://go.bloomberg.com/market-now/2014/08/21/whatever-the-question-americans-think-economic-pressure-answer/

For two decades “It’s the economy, stupid,” has been the short-form gospel of American politics. The economy is what the public cares about, the thinking goes, so no smart politician is ever going to do anything that damages the economy.

Whether or not this is true in American politics, this four-word philosophy doesn’t export well. It’s given Americans a persistently optimistic idea of the powers of economic pressure. Whatever the issue at stake, Americans tend to think that other countries will follow the U.S. model and act in their economic self-interest.

The difficulty comes when the public in those countries is convinced that a higher value is at stake. That’s what’s going on now in both the Argentine debt crisis and the Russian standoff over Ukraine’s separatist movement. In the first, investors have assumed that if not paying off bondholders is painful enough for Argentina, then Cristina Kirchner’s government is bound to come to some kind of accommodation. In the second, U.S. policy makers assume that if they can cause enough pain to the Russian financial system, Vladimir Putin will decide that backing the separatist movement is just not worth it.

Unfortunately, in both crises foreign leaders have made standing up to economic pressure a point of national pride. Whether or not that’s fair — and the situations are absolutely not equivalent otherwise — they have their respective populaces in their corner. In Argentina, the assumption that economic pressure will force a solution is already costing some bondholders dearly.

[Demeter]

58. Considering how America hasn't worked in its OWN self-interest for 30+ years

and the whole world knows it, why should they follow OUR example?


And seeing as how America's ability to successfully wage economic war is even less successful than its attempts at conventional warfare, the American Empire is fast drawing to a merciful close.

Maybe we can get Washington DC to pay some attention to needs at home...

[xchrom]

53. Europe Refinery Profits Seen Lowest Since ’11 on Imports

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-22/europe-refinery-profits-seen-lowest-since-11-on-imports.html

European refiners are already enduring the worst slump in decades. A growing heating-oil glut is about to make it worse.

Profit this year will be the lowest since 2011 because of competition from heating-oil imports, according to Wood Mackenzie, a consulting company. Inventories in Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp, the center of European trading, are the highest for the time of year since 2009, according to data from PJK International BV, a researcher in the Netherlands.

“We’re looking at very weak margins,” Jonathan Leitch, a senior analyst at Wood Mackenzie in London, said by phone yesterday. “Summer has been disappointing. If you think that hasn’t been great, wait until you get to autumn and winter.”

European refineries are shutting or converting to storage depots at the fastest pace since the 1980s as demand for oil products dropped for seven years and competition from U.S., Russian and the Middle Eastern supplies intensified. Seventeen plants closed in the past six years, says the International Energy Agency, the Paris-based adviser to 29 nations.

[xchrom]

54. Unemployed Activists At Jackson Hole Hope Their Charts Convince Central Bankers To Hold Off On Rate

http://www.businessinsider.com/r-unemployed-take-their-case-to-fed-officials-at-jackson-hole-2014-8


Fischer, vice chairman of the Federal Reserve System, speaks with a demonstrator at the Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium in Jackson Hole

Reginald Rounds was among those present at the Federal Reserve's high-flying monetary conference here, enjoying the chance to button hole two top officials of the U.S. central bank.

The St. Louis resident is neither an economist nor a central banker. He's a 57-year-old unemployed worker, who said he is trained in the green technology field and can't find a job.

He was among a group of activists who gathered on the sidelines of the Fed's annual symposium wearing green t-shirts with "What Recovery?" on the front and a chart depicting sluggish U.S. wage growth on the back.

"From the world where I reside, there is no recovery. We need a boost. We need a jump start," said Rounds. "The key is jobs creation."


Derek Laney of St. Louis protests during the Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

[xchrom]

55. Fed chief Yellen says slack remains in US jobs market

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-28901515

US Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen has said there is still "remaining slack in the labour market".

It was understated by the unemployment rate, at 6%, she said.

She called for the slack to be "more nuanced" in the way it was assessed, due to "considerable uncertainty" about the level of employment.

Speaking to an annual Fed conference in the mountain resort of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, she also remained relaxed about the low interest rate policy.

[xchrom]

56. US Is One Of Last Developed Countries Where It Can Still Take Days For Money To Show Up In

http://www.businessinsider.com/banks-have-been-feeding-you-peace-of-mind-while-charging-you-for-not-2014-8

The US Is One Of The Last Developed Countries Where It Can Still Take Days For Money To Show Up In Your Bank Account

You know how, when you when you send money to someone else's bank account, the funds aren't available right away?

It turns out that the U.S. is one of the last developed countries to have this problem.

And while regulators and some financial institutions are finally recognizing this should no longer be the case, it will likely take years for any reforms to take effect.

In 2012, the UK's Faster Payments Service went into operation, replacing its BACS system, which like ACH dates from the early '70s. Other countries' same-day services, like those in Switzerland, Japan, India and Mexico, have been around for a decade or more.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/banks-have-been-feeding-you-peace-of-mind-while-charging-you-for-not-2014-8#ixzz3BJeXnMqv

[kickysnana]

59. Mostly because our Masters want to be able to get notified and get a warrant n/t

[Demeter]

60. So, We've Met the Bad Boy, We've Met the Femme Fatale; What Was the Game?

THEY CALLED IT "OPERATION CYCLONE"[/b]

Operation Cyclone was the code name for the United States Central Intelligence Agency program to arm and finance the Afghan mujahideen prior to and during the Soviet war in Afghanistan, 1979 to 1989. The program leaned heavily towards supporting militant Islamic groups that were favored by neighboring Pakistan, rather than other, less ideological Afghan resistance groups that had also been fighting the Marxist-oriented Democratic Republic of Afghanistan regime since before the Soviet intervention. Operation Cyclone was one of the longest and most expensive covert CIA operations ever undertaken; funding began with $20–$30 million per year in 1980 and rose to $630 million per year in 1987. Funding continued after 1989 as the Mujahideen battled the forces of Mohammad Najibullah's PDPA during the Civil war in Afghanistan (1989–1992).

Background

In April 1978, the communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) seized power in Afghanistan in the Saur Revolution. Within months, opponents of the communist government launched an uprising in eastern Afghanistan that quickly expanded into a civil war waged by guerrilla mujahideen against government forces countrywide. The Pakistani government provided these rebels with covert training centers, while the Soviet Union sent thousands of military advisers to support the PDPA government. Meanwhile, increasing friction between the competing factions of the PDPA – the dominant Khalq and the more moderate Parcham – resulted in the dismissal of Parchami cabinet members and the arrest of Parchami military officers under the pretext of a Parchami coup.

By mid-1979, the United States had started a covert program to finance the mujahideen. President Carter's National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, was later quoted as saying that the goal of the program was to "induce a Soviet military intervention", but later clarified that this was "a very sensationalized and abbreviated" misquotation and that the Soviet invasion occurred largely because of previous U.S. failures to restrain Soviet expansionism. According to Eric Alterman, writing in The Nation, Cyrus Vance's close aide Marshall Shulman "insists that the State Department worked hard to dissuade the Soviets from invading and would never have undertaken a program to encourage it, though he says he was unaware of the covert program at the time. Indeed, Vance hardly seems to be represented at all in Gates's recounting".

In September 1979, Khalqist President Nur Muhammad Taraki was assassinated in a coup within the PDPA orchestrated by fellow Khalq member Hafizullah Amin, who assumed the presidency. Distrusted by the Soviets, Amin was assassinated by Soviet special forces in December 1979. A Soviet-organized government, led by Parcham's Babrak Karmal but inclusive of both factions, filled the vacuum. Soviet troops were deployed to stabilize Afghanistan under Karmal in more substantial numbers, although the Soviet government did not expect to do most of the fighting in Afghanistan. As a result, however, the Soviets were now directly involved in what had been a domestic war in Afghanistan.

At the time some believed the Soviets were attempting to expand their borders southward in order to gain a foothold in the Middle East. The Soviet Union had long had a dearth of warm water ports, and their movement south seemed to position them for further expansion toward Pakistan in the East, and Iran to the West. American politicians, Republicans and Democrats alike, feared the Soviets were positioning themselves for a takeover of Middle Eastern oil. Others believed that the Soviet Union was afraid Iran's Islamic Revolution and Afghanistan's Islamization would spread to the millions of Muslims in the USSR.

After the invasion, President Jimmy Carter announced what became known as the Carter Doctrine: that the U.S. would not allow any other outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf. He terminated the Soviet Wheat Deal in January 1980, which was intended to establish trade with USSR and lessen Cold War tensions. The grain exports had been beneficial to people employed in agriculture, and the Carter embargo marked the beginning of hardship for American farmers. That same year, Carter also made two of the most unpopular decisions of his entire Presidency: prohibiting American athletes from participating in the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, and reinstating registration for the draft for young males. Following the Soviet invasion, the United States supported diplomatic efforts to achieve a Soviet withdrawal. In addition, generous U.S. contributions to the refugee program in Pakistan played a major part in efforts to assist Afghan refugees.

The program

On 3 July 1979, Carter signed a presidential finding authorizing funding for anticommunist guerrillas in Afghanistan. Following the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in December Operation Storm-333 and installation of a more pro-Soviet president, Babrak Karmal, Carter announced, "The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan is the greatest threat to peace since the Second World War".

President Reagan greatly expanded the program as part of the Reagan Doctrine of aiding anti-Soviet resistance movements abroad. To execute this policy, Reagan deployed CIA Special Activities Division paramilitary officers to equip the Mujihadeen forces against the Red Army. Although the CIA and Texas Congressman Charlie Wilson have received the most attention for their roles, the key architect of the strategy was Michael G. Vickers, a young CIA paramilitary officer working for Gust Avrakotos, the CIA's regional head who had a close relationship with Wilson. Vicker's strategy was to use a broad mix of weapons, tactics, logistics, along with training programs, to enhance the rebels' ability to fight a guerilla war against the Soviets. Reagan's program assisted in ending the Soviet's occupation in Afghanistan. A Pentagon senior official, Michael Pillsbury, successfully advocated providing Stinger missiles to the Afghan resistance, according to recent books and academic articles.

The program relied heavily on the Pakistani President Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, who had a close relationship with Wilson. His Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) was an intermediary for funds distribution, passing of weapons, military training and financial support to Afghan resistance groups. Along with funding from similar programs from Britain's MI6 and SAS, Saudi Arabia, and the People's Republic of China, the ISI armed and trained over 100,000 insurgents between 1978 and 1992. They encouraged the volunteers from the Arab states to join the Afghan resistance in its struggle against the Soviet troops based in Afghanistan.

According to Peter Bergen, writing in Holy War, Inc., no Americans trained or had direct contact with the mujahideen. The skittish CIA had fewer than 10 operatives in the region because it "feared it would be blamed, like in Guatemala". Civilian personnel from the U.S. Department of State and the CIA frequently visited the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area during this time, and the US contributed generously to aiding Afghan refugees.

The U.S.-built Stinger antiaircraft missile, supplied to the mujahideen in very large numbers beginning in 1986, struck a decisive blow to the Soviet war effort as it allowed the lightly armed Afghans to effectively defend against Soviet helicopter landings in strategic areas. The Stingers were so renowned and deadly that, in the 1990s, the U.S. conducted a "buy-back" program to keep unused missiles from falling into the hands of anti-American terrorists. This program may have been covertly renewed following the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan in late 2001, out of fear that remaining Stingers could be used against U.S. forces in the country.

With U.S. and other funding, the ISI armed and trained over 100,000 insurgents. On 20 July 1987, the withdrawal of Soviet troops from the country was announced pursuant to the negotiations that led to the Geneva Accords of 1988, with the last Soviets leaving on 15 February 1989. Soviet forces suffered over 14,000 killed and missing, and over 50,000 wounded.

Funding

The U.S. offered two packages of economic assistance and military sales to support Pakistan's role in the war against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan. The first six-year assistance package (1981–87) amounted to US$3.2 billion, equally divided between economic assistance and military sales. The U.S. also sold 40 F-16 aircraft to Pakistan during 1983–87 at a cost of $1.2 billion outside the assistance package. The second six-year assistance package (1987–93) amounted to $4.2 billion. Out of this, $2.28 billion were allocated for economic assistance in the form of grants or loan that carried the interest rate of 2–3 per cent. The rest of the allocation ($1.74 billion) was in the form of credit for military purchases. Sale of non-U.S. arms to Pakistan for destination to Afghanistan was facilitated by Israel. More than $20 billion in U.S. funds were funneled into the country to train and arm the Afghan resistance groups.

The program funding was increased yearly due to lobbying by prominent U.S. politicians and government officials, such as Charles Wilson, Gordon Humphrey, Fred Ikle, and William Casey. Under the Reagan administration, U.S. support for the Afghan mujahideen evolved into a centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy, called the Reagan Doctrine, in which the U.S. provided military and other support to anti-communist resistance movements in Afghanistan, Angola, Nicaragua, and elsewhere.

The mujahideen benefited from expanded foreign military support from the United States, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other Muslim nations. Saudi Arabia in particular agreed to match dollar for dollar the money the CIA was sending to the Mujahideen. When Saudi payments were late, Wilson and Avrakotos would fly to Saudi Arabia to persuade the monarchy to fulfill its commitments.

Levels of support to the various Afghan factions varied. The ISI tended to favor vigorous Islamists like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar of Hezb-i-Islami, and Jalaluddin Haqqani. Some Americans agreed. However others favored the relative moderates like Ahmed Shah Massoud. These included two Heritage Foundation foreign policy analysts, Michael Johns and James A. Phillips, both of whom championed Massoud as the Afghan resistance leader most worthy of US support under the Reagan Doctrine.

The U.S. shifted its interest from Afghanistan after the withdrawal of Soviet troops. American funding of Afghan resistance leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and his Hezbi Islami party was cut off immediately. The U.S. also reduced its assistance for Afghan refugees in Pakistan.

In October 1990, U.S. President George H. W. Bush refused to certify that Pakistan did not possess a nuclear explosive device, triggering the imposition of sanctions against Pakistan under the Pressler Amendment (1985) in the Foreign Assistance Act. This disrupted the second assistance package offered in 1987 and discontinued economic assistance and military sales to Pakistan with the exception of the economic assistance already on its way to Pakistan. Military sales and training programs were abandoned as well and some of the Pakistani military officers under training in the U.S. were asked to return home.

As late as 1991 Charlie Wilson persuaded the House Intelligence Committee to give the Mujahideen $200 million for fiscal year 1992, and the Saudi agreement to match dollar for dollar brought the budget to $400 million.


Criticism

Critics assert that funding the mujahideen played a role in causing the September 11 attacks.

The U.S. government has been criticized for allowing Pakistan to channel a disproportionate amount of its funding to controversial Afghan resistance leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who Pakistani officials believed was "their man". Hekmatyar has been criticized for killing other mujahideen and attacking civilian populations, including shelling Kabul with American-supplied weapons, causing 2,000 casualties. Hekmatyar was said to be friendly with Osama bin Laden, founder of al-Qaeda, who was running an operation for assisting "Afghan Arab" volunteers fighting in Afghanistan, called Maktab al-Khadamat. Alarmed by his behavior, Pakistan leader General Zia warned Hekmatyar, "It was Pakistan that made him an Afghan leader and it is Pakistan who can equally destroy him if he continues to misbehave."

In the late 1980s, Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, concerned about the growing strength of the Islamist movement, told President George H. W. Bush, "You are creating a Frankenstein."

The U.S. says that all of its funds went to native Afghan rebels and denies that any of its funds were used to supply Osama bin Laden or foreign Arab mujahideen. However, even a portion of those native Afghan rebels would form parts of the Taliban, fighting against the US military.

While there is no evidence that the CIA had direct contact with Osama Bin Laden and US funding was directed to Afghan Mujahedin groups, critics of U.S. foreign policy consider Operation Cyclone to be substantially responsible for setting in motion the events that led to the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, a view Brzezinski has dismissed. William Hartung argues that the early foundations of al-Qaida were built in part on relationships and weaponry that came from the billions of dollars in U.S. support for the Afghan mujahadin during the war to expel Soviet forces from that country. According to Christopher Andrew and Vasily Mitrokhin, there is "no support" in any "reliable source" for "the claim that the CIA funded bin Laden or any of the other Arab volunteers who came to support the mujahideen." Peter Bergen writes that "the real problem is not that the CIA helped bin Laden during the 1980s, but that the Agency simply had no idea of his possible significance until the bin Laden unit was set up within the CIA in January 1996."...wikipedia

IT'S CALLED BLOWBACK, WEEKENDERS...CREATE A VACUUM, AND IT WILL BE FILLED....

[Demeter]

61. The CIA's "Operation Cyclone" - Stirring The Hornet's Nest Of Islamic Unrest

http://www.rense.com/general31/cyc.htm

Zbigniew Brzezinski not long ago revealed that on July 3, 1979, unknown to the American public and Congress, President Jimmy Carter secretly authorized $500 million to create an international terrorist movement that would spread Islamic fundamentalism in Central Asia and "de-stabilise" the Soviet Union...

The CIA called this Operation Cyclone and in the following years poured $4 billion into setting up Islamic training schools in Pakistan (Taliban means "student&quot .

Young zealots were sent to the CIA's spy training camp in Virginia, where future members of al-Qaeda were taught "sabotage skills" - terrorism.

Others were recruited at an Islamic school in Brooklyn, New York, within sight of the fated Twin Towers.

In Pakistan, they were directed by British MI6 officers and trained by the SAS.

The result, quipped Brzezinski, was "a few stirred up Muslims" - meaning the Taliban.

The Wall Street Journal declared: "The Taliban are the players most capable of achieving peace. Moreover, they were crucial to secure the country as a prime trans-shipment route for the export of Central Asia's vast oil, gas and other natural resources."

No American newspaper dares suggest that the prisoners in Camp X-Ray are the product of this policy, nor that it was one of the factors that led to the attacks of September 11.

Nor do they ask: who were the real winners of September 11?

The day the Wall Street stock market opened after the destruction of the Twin Towers, the few companies showing increased value were the giant military contractors Alliant Tech Systems, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon (a contributor to New Labor) and Lockheed Martin.

As the US military's biggest supplier, Lockheed Martin's share value rose by a staggering 30 per cent.

Within six weeks of September 11, the company (with its main plant in Texas, George Bush's home state) had secured the biggest military order in history: a $200 billion contract to develop a new fighter aircraft. The greatest taboo of all, which Orwell would surely recognize, is the record of the United States as a terrorist state and haven for terrorists.

This truth is virtually unknown by the American public and makes a mockery of Bush's (and Blair's) statements about "tracking down terrorists wherever they are."

They don't have to look far.

Florida, currently governed by the President's brother, Jeb Bush, has given refuge to terrorists who, like the September 11 gang, have hi-jacked aircraft and boats with guns and knives.

Most have never had criminal charges brought against them.

Why? All of them are anti-Castro Cubans.

Former Guatemalan Defence Minister Gramajo Morales, who was accused of "devising and directing an indiscriminate campaign of terror against civilians", including the torture of an American nun and the massacre of eight people from one family, studied at Harvard University on a US government scholarship.

During the 1980s, thousands of people were murdered by death squads connected to the army of El Salvador, whose former chief now lives comfortably in Florida.

The former Haitian dictator, General Prosper Avril, liked to display the bloodied victims of his torture on television. When he was overthrown, he was flown to Florida by the US government, and granted political asylum.

A leading member of the Chilean military during the reign of General Pinochet, whose special responsibility was executions and torture, lives in Miami.

THE Iranian general who ran Iran's notorious prisons, is a wealthy exile in the US.

One of Pol Pot's senior henchmen, who enticed Cambodian exiles back to their certain death, lives in Mount Vernon, New York.

What all these people have in common, apart from their history of terrorism, is that they either worked directly for the US government or carried out the dirty work of US policies.

The al-Qaeda training camps are kindergartens compared with the world's leading university of terrorism at Fort Benning in Georgia. Known until recently as the School of the Americas, its graduates include almost half the cabinet ministers of the genocidal regimes in Guatemala, two thirds of the El Salvadoran army officers who committed, according to the United Nations, the worst atrocities of that country's civil war, and the head of Pinochet's secret police, who ran Chile's concentration camps.

There is terrible irony at work here. The humane response of people all over the world to the terrorism of September 11 has long been hijacked by those running a rapacious great power with a history of terrorism second to none. Global supremacy, not the defeat of terrorism, is the goal; only the politically blind believe otherwise.



http://www.sianews.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=271&mode=&order=0&thold=0

[Demeter]

62. America's spies paid and trained their nation's worst enemies, reveals Andrew Marshall in Washington

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/terror-blowback-burns-cia-1182087.html

THE CENTRAL Intelligence Agency has its own argot for describing the hallucinatory world within which its employees move. None of its esoteric terms are more euphemistic than "blowback", the term coined to describe operations which end up rebounding against their creators.

But as the Americans slowly unravel the international network surrounding Osama bin Laden, the man they blame for the embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, "blowback" is exactly what they are finding.

Last week, it was revealed that one of those under arrest is a former Egyptian soldier named Ali Mohamed, who is alleged to have provided training and assistance to Mr bin Laden's operatives. Yet Mr Mohamed, it is clear from his record, was working for the US government at the time he provided the training: he was a Green Beret, part of America's Special Forces.

Mr Mohamed's arrest seems to be part of a pattern, as the US slowly moves towards the realisation that many of those now arrayed against it with Mr bin Laden were once its allies in the war in Afghanistan. The two sides turned against each other as the war in Afghanistan unwound, and America, not Russia, came to be seen as the enemy.

The US poured cash into Afghanistan throughout the 1980s in an effort to defeat - or at least tie down - the Russians. Its principal ally was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a ferociously anti-communist and militant Islamist leader. The US and Saudi Arabia both sent about $500m (pounds 300m) annually between 1986 and 1989 to fund the mujahedin, and other rich individuals from the Gulf - including Mr bin Laden - spent an extra $20m every month. The US funded the construction of the camps at Khost which it attacked two months ago in response to the embassy bombs.

It had already been known that in those days, the US and Mr bin Laden were on the same side, but it now appears that America may actually have aided Mr bin Laden's organisation and even trained some of those who it now contends are "terrorists". Mr Ali may be the missing link...

ON, AND ON, AND ON....

[Demeter]

63. IN CONCLUSION:

There are probably only three people outside the US government who ever knew exactly what role the Al-Kifah refugee centre really played, and how far the US helped to build up Mr bin Laden's organisation. One was Mr Azzam, the charismatic Palestinian who ran the Peshawar operation. He was killed by a car bomb in 1989. The second was Mustafa Shalabi, who ran Al-Kifah. He was murdered in 1991. The third is Osama bin Laden, and he is not telling.

And the US government is certainly not about to explain whether it helped create what it now refers to as Public Enemy Number One.

AND JUST TO MAKE SURE NOBODY TRIED TO IMPERSONATE THE LONG-DEAD OSAMA AND STIR THE BLOWBACK POT ANY FURTHER, WE HAD THE "GREAT ADVENTURE" OF KILLING SOMEONE WHO LOOKED LIKE HIM, AND THEN DISPOSING OF THE BODY AT SEA, SO NO ONE COULD PROVE IT WASN'T.

[Demeter]

64. WHICH BRINGS US TO TODAY: The Ukraine crisis: Operation Cyclone redux By Joseph Diaferia

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/12421


Posted on March 17, 2014 by Joseph Diaferia


...Far from being an unintended consequence of the Carter administration’s funding program, the Soviet intervention into Afghanistan (it is imprecise to characterize it as an invasion) was Brzezinski’s proclaimed intention. Indeed, Brzezinski would later boast of how Operation Cyclone drew the Soviets into their own Vietnam-like quagmire, and how the Soviet Union collapsed as a result of the war’s economic drain and the demoralization of its people. When asked if Cyclone was ultimately counterintuitive in that it also empowered Islamic extremists, Brzezinski responded wryly, “What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war [sic]?”

Conventional histories to the contrary, the implosion of the Soviet Union brought no end to the Cold War. Inasmuch as the two global superpowers are now in every sense capitalist—each regarding the other as an impediment to its own imperial geostrategy—we are living in a far more dangerous world than that which existed between 1945 and 1991. In the early 1990s, as Eastern Europe began to reconfigure itself into new territorial boundaries and political alliances (a cartographer’s worst nightmare, as one Western journalist described it), calls came from influential Westerners for Russia’s encirclement, destabilization, and eventual division into many smaller entities, lest it ever re-emerge as a political and military check against U.S. and Western hegemony.

In his 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, Brzezinski writes quite approvingly of the rapacious and extractive character of U.S. foreign policy, and thus, of the “need” to absorb former Soviet allies into the Western sphere. Further, Brzezinski writes that the absorption of Ukraine, in particular, into the Western orbit would effectively doom Russia’s rebirth as a global political power. Similarly, according to former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates in his recently published memoirs, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, then Defense Secretary (later Vice-President) Dick Cheney called for the eventual dismantlement of all of Russia in order that it could never again threaten the U.S.’s global predominance.

Since 1991, Western strategy has proceeded, relatively, according to plan. Presently, all of the former Warsaw Pact Nations, and three former Soviet Republics—Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia—are now members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Moreover, two former Yugoslav Republics—Croatia and Slovenia—are also NATO members. Yugoslavia, as readers might recall, was thrown into a brutal civil war in the early 1990s as a result of a U.S. foreign appropriations law (101–513, 1991) that brought forth ethnic enmities that had been kept in check for 45 years. Later in the 1990s, the fragmentary remnants of Yugoslavia were subjected to a torrent of NATO vandalism for their failure to privatize their economies as the rest of Europe had done by then.

As this is written in March of 2014, events in Ukraine bear eerie similarity to those in Afghanistan in 1979. Having failed to conscript Ukraine into the Western realm in 2004–2005, the U.S. and NATO now appear to have divested Ukraine of its political and economic sovereignty via the recent neo-Nazi coup d’état. Like Operation Cyclone, which saw the ascendancy of a host of benighted clerical regimes in Afghanistan, the fascist mobs now in power in Ukraine have succeeded with the assistance of Western covert action. Once again, the U.S. has used covert means to elicit an overt Russian response, thereby making Russia appear to be an unprovoked and unilateral aggressor. In this instance, U.S. intelligence has been aided and abetted by the intelligence agencies of Britain, Germany, and Poland and perhaps others. Additionally, the U.S.’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED), The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS)—a Serbian NGO with significant U.S. sponsorship—have contributed munificently to Ukraine’s political meltdown.

While there are pointed similarities between Cyclone in 1979 and today’s events in Ukraine, the latter are, needless to say, far more dangerous. In 1979, the U.S. successfully inveigled Soviet intervention into a nation in which there was no ethnic Russian population, no historical territorial claim by the Soviets, and no threat to the Soviet Union’s territorial integrity. By contrast, the U.S. and its Western allies have fomented a coup in a country that was actually once a part of Russia; they have helped to engender a fascist social order that is, among other things, militantly Russophobic; they have maintained a continuing policy of encirclement by acquiring former Russo-Soviet allies into the Western alliance; and of course in doing so, they have brought the world closer to an omnicidal global conflagration.

In a move so reckless as to cause alarm even to the most notorious of war criminals, Henry Kissinger, the U.S. has commissioned the deployment of at least one naval vessel to the Black Sea, and tactical military aircraft to the Baltic region, while demanding Russia remove its troops from the Crimean Peninsula. At this point the current crisis has long surpassed the gravity of the events of 1979, as it has escalated to the point that neither side appears willing to acquiesce to the wishes or demands of the other. A belligerent and intransigent Western foreign policy directed against an intensely nationalistic people is not likely to be resolved at the executive or ministerial levels of government. Instead, one can only hope that the working classes of all the nations involved will take action. They (We) must, if there is to be any hope of defusing this potentially cataclysmic crisis.

When ethnic and religious strife are attributed to external clandestine skullduggery such as what we are witnessing in Ukraine, it is not uncommon to hear such dismissive refrains as “conspiracy theory” and/or “they’ve been fighting for centuries.” To be sure, not each and every instance of civil unrest in one or another country is the result of foreign covert action. However, those who would argue that the events of today are merely the latest installments in the historic discomfiture between Russia and Ukraine should be reminded that Western intelligence personnel have a thorough knowledge of history and know precisely how to re-ignite ethnic and sectarian antagonisms that may have gone dormant. The CIA, for example, would not create some improbable ethnic or partisan conflict out of a vacuum, in order to destabilize a targeted government. It would exploit an existing one.

Still, a complete excavation of history could serve the purpose of achieving peace just as effectively. To any observer of world events from World War II forward, the political discord between the U.S and Russia (or the Soviet Union) is self-evident. However, it is not an original historical circumstance. Unknown to most Americans is the reality that if not for Russia, the United States may not exist as we know it. During the American Civil War, the Russian Navy, in a show of solidarity with the Union States, arrived in New York and San Francisco to discourage a threatened intervention by Britain and France on the side of the Confederacy. Czar Alexander II made it painfully clear the British and French that their navies would be sunk if they made any attempt to aid the Confederacy militarily.

A peace movement consisting of the working class, as called for in a previous paragraph, could derive some of its guiding philosophy from the historical reality of the American and Russian partnership. The United States and Russia are nations of great people, and neither can permit their respective governments to carry the world in which we live into the abyss of nuclear holocaust.

The consequences of Operation Cyclone and the attendant war in Afghanistan were horrendous, with a combined loss of life numbered at 1.3 million. The prospect of further escalation and direct U.S. involvement—both distinct possibilities—are such that no decent human being would want to begin to contemplate. The world is perilously close to such an eventuality. All that has changed since 1979 are the names and some of the national identities of the players. The reality of mutually assured destruction is still with us. This insanity must be stopped.

Joseph Diaferia has taught college-level political science and history at various institutions in New York and New Jersey since 1996. In 2012, Professor Diaferia was the Green Party’s Nominee for the U.S. House of Representatives in New York’s 16th Congressional District. He can be reached at: [e-mail].

SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS

[Demeter]

65. Here Endeth Today's Lesson

Go now and Make Peace, Dammit!

[magical thyme]

66. the more I read here, the sadder I get

I need to share a dream I had in early 2008, before I found DU, and then another dream I had a couple months ago. Just as a preamble, I had always been an independent until W. I joined the Dem party to help get anybody but W in office. Very disappointed in Kerry's campaign. Have never been active in a party before, and not active since. Also note I have a little history of precognitive and clairvoyant dreams over the decades, starting when I was 17.

Anyway, Hillary appeared in a dream inviting me to, "Come join my team!" It was the salesperson-Hillary that you see in the "Ready for Hillary ads." The giant smile and pointing at a "friend" in the audience Hillary. Frankly it was wierd. That she would show up in my dream just creeped me out. She ended up being my 2nd to last choice, with Obama my last choice due to his inexperience.

Back I think in May or June, early on in Russia's explicit intervention Ukraine crisis, when it was just coming into my awareness, I dreamed that I was much older, north and inland of where I currently am (Maine coast) tending a herd of horses that I had bred to preserve their lines and type for the upcoming climate and energy upheaval. (This is a fantasy or plan I am trying to make happen over the next few years.) Putin was at my farm and I was describing their bloodlines and introducing him to them. He was not what I would imagine him to be. Quiet, yes, but kind and respectful. I presume it was the common interest.

I don't know what to make of the dreams. I had forgotten the Hillary one, but the Putin one brought it back. That and a conspiracy thread somewhere about the 1% enacting some mind control thing or other, lol.

[Demeter]

67. It's maddening, that this country is in the power of greedy idiots

and that's only when it's not under actual Dr. Evil-types like Cheney.

We have to repurpose Government, and either replace or make irrelevant the two parties that dominate. It's a big job, a multi-generational job, but America CAN do it, if the information gets around.

And that's why the Internet scares the 1% Power Elitists so much. Because we the People aren't as stupid as they say we are: WE ARE OPPRESSED, KEPT IN THE DARK, LIED TO ON A DAILY AND HOURLY BASIS, AND OUR WEALTH IS STOLEN FROM US WITHOUT RECOURSE.


BUT!

We outnumber them, out-think them, and we will ultimately prevail. Anything else is temporary. As Susan B. said:

Failure is Impossible.

[DemReadingDU]

68. What if the electric power grid is taken offline?

This event occurred in April 2013, but not widely reported until February this year

2/11/14 Sophisticated but low-tech power grid attack baffles authorities
They came after midnight, two or more armed individuals so deft that they cut telecommunication cables in an underground vault and outsmarted security cameras and motion sensors at the power substation in a remote corner of Santa Clara County.

At daylight, FBI agents began poring over time-lapse photographs from the surveillance cameras. But the photos revealed only staccato muzzle flashes from a semiautomatic weapon and sparks as shots hit rows of transformers. There was not a face, not a shadow, of who was doing the firing.

The shooters disappeared into the gloom minutes before the first police car arrived.
The military-style raid on April 16 knocked out 17 giant transformers at the Metcalf Transmission Substation, which feeds power to Silicon Valley. The FBI is still working the case, and agents say they are confident it was not the work of terrorists.
What they do not have is a motive, fingerprints or suspects.

But theories are piling up. Was it a modern-day Monkey Wrench Gang bent on eco-terrorism? Was it a test of the vulnerability of the U.S. electrical grid? Was it a dress rehearsal for a larger attack to come?
more...
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-grid-attack-20140211-story.html#page=1

[Demeter]

69. Anonymous?

Perhaps that's why the NSA and all are jumping all over them....Anyone who can do that trick can put a real crimp in the Police State.