The Evil Empire Has The World In A Death Grip — Paul Craig Roberts

In my archives there is a column or two that introduces the reader to John Perkins’ important book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. An EHM is an operative who sells the leadership of a developing country on an economic plan or massive development project.

The Hit Man convinces a country’s government that borrowing large sums of money from US financial institutions in order to finance the project will raise the country’s living standards.

The borrower is assured that the project will increase Gross Domestic Product and tax revenues and that these increases will allow the loan to be repaid.

However, the plan is designed to over-estimate the benefits so that the indebted country cannot pay the principal and interest.

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Americans Mindless About the Grave Dangers They Face

by Stephen Lendman

Never before in history has the danger of possible humanity destroying nuclear war been greater. Fundamental rights Americans think they have don’t exist.

They’re deplorably out-of-touch, the most over-entertained, uninformed people anywhere, controlled by neocon infested bipartisan governance, lunatics threatening their welfare, security and world peace.

Public ignorance is shocking, why America gets away with high crimes at home and abroad. Lawless interventionism is longstanding policy.

Endless US wars on humanity rage. Human and civil rights are fast eroding en route toward disappearing altogether. Police state injustice rules, tyranny by any standard, heading toward becoming full-blown.

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DYK - Bernie Sanders was arrested while fighting for civil rights in 1963

A Chicago Tribune archival photo of a young man being arrested in 1963 at a South Side protest is Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders, his campaign has confirmed, bolstering the candidate's narrative about his civil rights activism.

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James Galbraith’s Letter to Former CEA Chairs

James Galbraith has written an excellent letter to the four former Chairs of the Council of Economic Advisers under Clinton and Obama regarding their letter to Professor Gerald Friedman and Senator Bernie Sanders. The full text is below.

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February 18, 2016

I was highly interested to see your letter of yesterday’s date to Senator Sanders and Professor Gerald Friedman. I respond here as a former Executive Director of the Joint Economic Committee – the congressional counterpart to the CEA.

You write that you have applied rigor to your analyses of economic proposals by Democrats and Republicans. On reading this sentence I looked to the bottom of the page, to find a reference or link to your rigorous review of Professor Friedman’s study. I found nothing there.

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UMass professor estimates Sanders’ programs would increase economic growth from 2.1 percent to 5.3 percent and increase median household income by $22,000 by 2026

The economic proposals of Senator Sanders can be grouped under three headings. First, he proposes spending programs for infrastructure, education, retirement, security, health care, and to address thethreat of climate change. Second, there are progressive tax increases to pay for these programs, and lastly there are regulatory changes to raise wages and to reduce discrimination against women.

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World Crisis Radio With a Report from Thierry Meyssan in Damascus, Syria February 20, 2016

Webster Tarpley covers the following issues during this broadcast:

• Erdogan of Turkey Still Threatening a Ground Invasion to Rescue His Terrorist Proxies
• The Clash of Warmongers and Realists at Munich Security Conference
• Russian Exposé on Turkish State Sponsored Terrorism Shocks Gathering
• Lavrov and Kerry Working to Stop Sabotage by Hillary Clinton Ally Jeffrey Feltman of United Nations
• Apple Boss Tim Cook Must Obey Court Orders or Face Incarceration

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TSA Rant - Ken O'Keefe

Statement of Ken O'Keefe

I am not surprised that the Orwellian TSA (Homeland Security) have denied me the ability to board a flight from LAX to Acapulco because I opted out of the body scanner procedure.

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Caucus problems: Cards not counted, computer issues

RGJ

Democratic caucus-goers in Northern Nevada are reporting a wide range of problems from long lines and cards not being counted to being turned away and too few paper ballots. (This story will be updated as reports come in.)

• "Confidential voters" turned away: Michael and Diana Jones were turned away from participating this morning in the caucus in Gardnerville despite being registered Democratic voters in Douglas County.

This is because they registered as “confidential voters,” meaning their names are not available as a public record to the Democratic Party, which runs the caucuses.

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Ankara Blast: Catastrophe of Convenience

The fireball from this week’s blast in Ankara had barely begun to fade before the world begun bracing itself for the predictable accusation that Syria’s Kurdish YPG (People’s Protection Units) were behind the blast. This is because Turkey has developed a transparently cynical strategy of staging blasts throughout its territory and behind to stoke fears, justify condemnation and retaliation and demonize not only it own enemies, but those of its partners in NATO and particularly, those of the United States.

Syria’s YPG was the obvious target of this blast and the barrage of accusations and threats that quickly followed because it is the YPG together with Syrian and Russian forces that now threaten to finally foil the US-NATO-GCC proxy by closing the Afrin-Jarabulus corridor, and specifically, the pivotal city of Azaz, located in Syria right along the Syrian-Turkish border.

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World War III – The New Axis of Evil

Storm Clouds Gathering is a popular YouTube channel that focuses on geopolitics. It recently created a video that outlines the case for World War III.

The video begins with the first side of the theater of war.

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America Is Now Fighting A Proxy War With Itself In Syria

Officials with Syrian rebel battalions that receive covert backing from one arm of the U.S. government told BuzzFeed News that they recently began fighting rival rebels supported by another arm of the U.S. government.

The infighting between American proxies is the latest setback for the Obama administration’s Syria policy and lays bare its contradictions as violence in the country gets worse.

The confusion is playing out on the battlefield — with the U.S. effectively engaged in a proxy war with itself. “It’s very strange, and I cannot understand it,” said Ahmed Othman, the commander of the U.S.-backed rebel battalion Furqa al-Sultan Murad, who said he had come under attack from U.S.-backed Kurdish militants in Aleppo this week.

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Big Victory: Judge Pushes Jewel v. NSA Forward

EFF

We won a groundbreaking legal victory late Friday in our Jewel v. NSA case, which challenges the NSA’s Internet and telephone surveillance. Judge Jeffrey White has authorized EFF, on behalf of the plaintiffs, to conduct discovery against the NSA. We had been barred from doing so since the case was filed in 2008, which meant that the government was able to prevent us from requesting important information about how these programs worked.

This marks the first time a party has been allowed to gather factual evidence from the NSA in a case involving the agency’s warrantless surveillance. The government had fought all our requests to proceed with this lawsuit, arguing that the state secrets privilege protects it against both discovery and liability.

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Your retirement plan may be supporting the 'most overpaid' CEOs

In 2011, investors began getting the right to have their "say on pay," a rule in the Dodd-Frank financial reform act that requires companies to let shareholders cast an advisory vote on the CEO's pay package. But many big investors don't have much to say against it -- at least publicly with these votes -- even when it comes to the CEOs deemed to be the most overpaid relative to performance. A report released Wednesday from As You Sow, a nonprofit that focuses on corporate social responsibility, named the 100 CEOs it said have the most outsize pay packages, using an analysis of both shareholder returns and a range of compensation indicators the nonprofit said raise red flags about their pay. Those among the top names included Discovery Communications CEO Jeffrey Zaslav at No. 1, whose 2014 compensation was valued at $156 million, thanks to his signing of a six-year employment agreement with big equity and option awards designed to encourage long-term ownership that will vest over time.

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Controversial Illinois law charges people with murders they didn't commit

CHICAGO TRIBUNE

Before they entered the darkened house, Justin Doyle and his friends checked to make sure it was empty. They knocked on the front door and cased the exterior. Then they threw a rock through the window.

The three teens knew the owner of the house they planned to burglarize that night in 2008 was in the hospital. They had not anticipated that his friend was asleep inside. Awakened by the breaking glass and fearful for his life, the man grabbed a gun from a dresser drawer. When one of the teens opened the bedroom door, the man fired.

The youngest of the three intruders, a slight 14-year-old in a red hoodie named Travis Castle, was killed.

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The Federal Reserve and the Global Fracture

Michael-Hudson.com/

The Federal Reserve supports the status quo. It would not want to create a crisis before the election. Today it is part of the Democratic Party’s re-election campaign, and its job is to serve Hillary Clinton’s campaign contributors on Wall Street. It is trying to spur recovery by resuming its Bubble Economy subsidy for Wall Street, not by supporting the industrial economy. What the economy needs is a debt writedown, not more debt leveraging such as Quantitative Easing has aimed to promote. But the Fed is in a state of denial that the U.S. and European economies are plagued by debt deflation.

The Fed uses only one policy: influencing interest rates by creating bank reserves at low give-away charges.

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US Marshals are arresting people who haven't paid back their student loans

US Marshals in Houston are arresting residents who are behind on paying their student loan debt.

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NSA’s director lying about Paris attacks to justify snooping

National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers declared that the terrorists involved in last November's attacks in Paris used at least some encrypted communications to plan their actions, preventing NSA from being able to warn French officials in advance.

How do we know he's lying?

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White House Is Either Lying About Apple Order Or Doesn't Understand What A Backdoor Is

During a White House press briefing on Wednesday, Press Secretary Josh Earnest apparently kept brushing aside questions about the order to Apple to remove certain security features that would enable the FBI to brute force the passcode and decrypt the contents of Syed Farook's iPhone. However, eventually he insisted that the DOJ is not asking for a backdoor:

In a briefing with reporters, White House spokesman Josh Earnest deferred to the Justice Department but said it's important to recognize that the government is not asking Apple to redesign its product or "create a new backdoor to its products."

Earnest said the case was instead about federal investigators learning "as much as they can about this one case."

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Yes, The Backdoor That The FBI Is Requesting Can Work On Modern iPhones Too

TECH DIRT

So... over the past couple days, plenty of folks (including us) have reported that the backdoor demanded by the FBI (and currently granted by a magistrate judge) would likely work on the older iPhone model in question, the iPhone 5C, but that it would not work on modern iPhones that have Apple's "Secure Enclave" -- basically a separate chip that stores the key.

Plenty of reports -- including the Robert Graham post that we linked to, and a story by Bruce Schneier -- suggested that an attempt to follow through with the FBI's request in the presence of the Secure Enclave would effectively eliminate the key and make decryption nearly impossible.

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Wisconsin Supreme Court Grants Law Enforcement Broader Justifications For Warrantless Searches

In a 4-3 decision, the Wisconsin Supreme Court has again broadened an exception to allow police to seize and use evidence obtained from private places without the owner's consent to a search warrant. The dissent called the majority's interpretation so broad as to "swallow the Fourth Amendment," which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures. The decision Wednesday was also notable in that Justice Rebecca Bradley joined the majority that reversed the Court of Appeals, even though she had not heard arguments in the case, which occurred before her appointment Oct. 9 by Gov. Scott Walker. She replaced Justice Patrick Crooks, who died in his court chambers Sept. 21, and she is now running for election to a 10-year term against two challengers, Court of Appeals Judge JoAnne Kloppenburg and Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Joseph Donald.

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