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Here’s Why Keystone XL Is the Wrong Choice for Our Nation
Here’s Why Keystone XL Is the Wrong Choice for Our Nation
The new Republican majority in Congress wants to force approval of the Keystone XL pipeline for dirty tar sands oil. President Obama announced he will veto bills that bypass the official review of Keystone XL.
There are plenty of reasons to block these bills and this pipeline.
Keystone XL would carry the dirtiest oil on the planet from Canada through the American heartland. The vast majority of it would be shipped overseas, while people here at home cope with the threat of contaminated water and difficult-to-clean-up oil spills.
Polluters are fighting hard to get Keystone approved. The oil and gas industry pumped $53.1 million into last year’s congressional campaigns–87 percent of which went to Republican candidates. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell raked in$608,000 from the industry for his 2014 campaign, and now he is putting Keystone XL at the heart of his big polluter agenda.
But this isn’t just a battle over industry influence. This is a choice about the kind of nation we want to live in.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
New questions raised about U.S.-Saudi relationship
New questions raised about U.S.-Saudi relationship
Just before the holidays, Barack Obama signed a new law punishing Venezuela’s leaders for human rights violations — for persecution and imprisonment of union leaders, journalists and protesters, and for a general disregard for the law.
“The United States,” proclaimed the sanctions, “supports the people of Venezuela in their efforts to … advance representative democracy, human rights and the rule of law.”
Also, the State Department says, Venezuela is far too cozy with terrorists, maintaining a “permissive environment” for, among other villains, agents of Iran and Hezbollah.
Nasty, nasty Venezuela. How could Obama allow such sins to go unpunished?
Now, at about the same time as Obama was sanctioning Venezuela’s terrorist-coddling human rights violators, Loujain al Hathloul and Maysa al Hathmoudi were arrested at the border of Saudi Arabia, a close and loyal ally of the U.S. in its struggle against global terror.
Their crime was an act that’s actually encouraged in Venezuela; more on that in a minute.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
U.S. Media Dangerously Regurgitated Government Claims About North Korea and Sony – Truthdig
U.S. Media Dangerously Regurgitated Government Claims About North Korea and Sony – Truthdig.
By reflexively and uncritically repeating the Obama administration’s unsubstantiated claim that North Korea was behind the hack of Sony Pictures, the U.S. establishment press once again revealed itself to be a mouthpiece for—rather than a check on—power, and thus a danger to public security, Glenn Greenwald wrote at The Intercept on Thursday.
Greenwald began his critique by quoting President Obama’s Dec. 19 announcement that “we can confirm that North Korea engaged in this attack,” that the U.S. “will respond,” and that “we cannot have a society in which some dictator someplace can start imposing censorship here in the United States.”
Two days before the announcement, The New York Times “corruptly” granted anonymity to “senior administration officials” to “disseminate their inflammatory claims with no accountability.
“With virtually no skepticism about the official accusation, reporters David Sanger and Nicole Perlroth deemed the incident a ‘cyberterrorism attack’ and devoted the bulk of the article to examining the retaliatory actions the government could take against the North Koreans.
Yanukovych Proposes Solution to Ukraine’s Civil War; It Fits Obama’s Plan. Washington’s Blog
Yanukovych Proposes Solution to Ukraine’s Civil War; It Fits Obama’s Plan. Washington’s Blog.
The Ukrainian President whom U.S. President Obama overthrew in a violent coup this past February isnow proposing that “people will be able to negotiate and Ukraine will once again be united.”
The former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, in a lengthy interview published on Christmas Eve day in Russia’s weekly newspaper, “Arguments and Facts,” says this after having asserted in the very same statement, “Ordinary Ukrainians from the west and east have nothing to share.”
So: he’s advising that the people in Donbass in Ukraine’s southeast, who, since soon after his overthrow, are being bombed and gunned down by Ukraine’s military from Ukraine’s northwest, should nonetheless negotiate with and come to agreement with them — a government they played no part in electing and that has been trying to kill them. He says they should be ruled by a Government that’s largely elected by people in Ukraine’s northwest, with whom they “have nothing to share” (such as this Gallup poll confirmed to be the actual case: the gulf between Ukraine’s east and west is, indeed, enormous).
In other words, Yanukovych wants Donbass to be ruled by the Obama-installed gang that are trying to exterminate the residents in Donbass and to control the land in Donbass but with the residents gone from it.
Obama says Sony hack not an act of war | Reuters
Obama says Sony hack not an act of war | Reuters.
(Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama moved to prevent U.S. anger at North Korea from spiraling out of control on Sunday by saying the massive hacking of Sony Pictures was not an act of war but instead was cyber-vandalism.
Washington’s longstanding dispute with North Korea, which for years has centered on its nuclear weapons program, has entered new territory with the accusation that Pyongyang carried out an assault on a major Hollywood entertainment company.
Obama and his advisers are weighing how to punish North Koreaafter the FBI concluded on Friday that Pyongyang was responsible. North Korea has denied it was to blame.
2014 Year in Review: Part 2 – David Collum | Peak Prosperity
2014 Year in Review: Part 2 – David Collum | Peak Prosperity.
“Printing money out of thin air does not increase wealth, it only increases claims on existing wealth.”
~Charles Hugh Smith
In the olden days, claims that the rich were getting richer and the poor were getting poorer were a thinly veiled rallying cry for class warfare. Thomas Sowell reminds us that a growing economy lifts all boats, and those at the bottom strata percolate up generationally from garment worker to bookkeeper to doctors and lawyers (well, maybe just doctors). It feels different now, and the angst over wealth disparity resonates with growing numbers of adherents. It is no longer just the dregs of society but the increasingly struggling middle class, or what I prefer to call “the median class.”
“Only the wealthy can afford a middle-class lifestyle.”
~Zero Hedge
The contrasts are stunning. While 53% of adults earn less than $30,000 per year,ref 197 the rentier class—big-gun money managers—are muffin topping out at $3 billion.ref 198,199 David Tepper earned almost $500K per hour. Stevie Cohen ranked second in earnings as a full-time defendant for insider trading. The median retirement savings of a working-age adult is $2,000, yet we’ve got folks with the cash to pay for brain surgery on goldfish,ref 200 $60 million Steve Martin–like balloon art,ref 201 $500K watches,ref 202 and $2,000 glamburgers (“gluttonburgers”).ref 203 A full 47% of millennials are using >50% of their paychecks to pay down debt.ref 204Twenty percent of US families have no employed family members.ref 205 This is a problem demanding solutions for which none are obvious. The elite billionaire society, Beta Kappa Phi,ref 206 is dominated by the rentiers rather than wealth-creating capitalists. This is not about Bill Gates or Michael Dell. Wealth inequality is about the inordinately high pay for those who don’t actually create wealth and the inordinately low pay for those whose toils do. We have reached the apex of another gilded age.
Leaked Internal CIA Document Admits US Drone Program “Counterproductive” … Obama Did It ANYWAY Washington’s Blog
Previously-leaked documents showed that the CIA warned Obama that funding rebels doesn’t work … but Obama decided to fund the Syrian rebels anyway for cynical political gain.
Top CIA officers say that drone strikes increase terrorism (and see this). Indeed, virtually all aspects of the American “war on terror” strategy creates more terrorists and weakens our national security. Andsee this.
Now, a leaked internal CIA memo shows that the Agency told Obama that drone strikes might be counter-productive. The Sydney Morning Herald reports today:
According to a leaked document by the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence, “high value targeting” (HVT) involving air strikes and special forces operations against insurgent leaders can be effective, but can also have negative effects including increasing violence and greater popular support for extremist groups.
The leaked document is classified secret and “NoForn” (meaning not to be distributed to non-US nationals) and reviews attacks by the United States and other countries engaged in counter-insurgency operations over the past 50 years.
***
U.S., Cuba to restore ties after 50 years of hostility | Reuters
U.S., Cuba to restore ties after 50 years of hostility | Reuters.
(Reuters) – The United States will restore diplomatic relations it severed with Cuba more than 50 years ago, a major policy shift ending decades of hostile ties with the communist-ruled island, President Barack Obama said on Wednesday.
Announcing the end of what he called a “rigid” policy of isolation of Cuba that had been ineffective, Obama said the United States would move toward normal ties and would open an embassy inCuba.
Obama discussed the changes with Cuban President Raul Castro on Tuesday in a nearly hour-long telephone call. Castro spoke inCuba as Obama made his announcement on a policy shift made possible by the release of American Alan Gross, 65, who had been imprisoned in Cuba for five years.
Cuba is also releasing an intelligence agent who spied for the United States and was held for nearly 20 years, and the United States in return freed three Cuban intelligence agents held in the United States.
PIGMEN WIN AGAIN « The Burning Platform
PIGMEN WIN AGAIN « The Burning Platform.
“The real owners are the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they’re an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehouses, the city halls. They’ve got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies, so that they control just about all of the news and information you hear. They’ve got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else.” – George Carlin
After the disgusting example of politicians of both spineless parties bowing down before Wall Street, the military industrial complex and corporate interests this weekend with the passage of a bloated pig of a spending bill totaling $1.1 trillion, how can anyone not on the payroll of the vested interests not admit there is only one party – and it serves only the needs of the wealthy business interests. Obama, champion of the common folk, signed this putrid example of political corruption and corporate capture of the American political system. For all the believers who voted for the red team in the November mid-terms, this is what you got – a bipartisanship screwing of the American people.
Obama To Sign Off On Lethal US Aid To Ukraine By End Of Week, Russian Response To Follow | Zero Hedge
As we reported over the weekend, in the tumult surrounding Citigroup’s annexation of Congress with the passage of the theatrically dramatic $303 trillion derivative quid-pro-$1.1 trillion spending quo,what most missed is that Congress also unanimously passed the The Ukraine Freedom Support Act of 2014, which not only expands Russian sanctions (read the details here) but far more impotantly, provides “lethal assistance to Ukraine’s military.” And as we explained, passage of this law is just the pretext some Russian legislators needed to push for a full-blown, preemptive military incursion in east-Ukraine.
“The decision of the US Senate is extremely dangerous. If it is supported by the House of Representatives and signed by their president, Russia must reply with adequate measures,” Mikhail Yemelyanov of the Fair Russia party told reporters on Friday.
“It is quite possible that we should return to the decision by our Upper House and give the Russian president an opportunity to use military force on Ukrainian territory preemptively. We should not wait until Ukraine is armed and becomes really dangerous,” the lawmaker stated.
Yemelyanov also noted that in his opinion the US Senate’s decision to arm Ukraine had revealed that Washington wasn’t interested in the de-escalation of the Ukrainian conflict. He then said that US actions gave him the impression they was seeking to turn Ukraine into some sort of an “international militant targeting the Russian Federation.”
“In a few years Ukraine will turn into a poor and hungry country with an anti-Russian government that will teach its population to hate Russia. They will be armed to the teeth and Ukraine and US reluctance to recognize the Russian Federation within its current borders would always provoke conflicts,” the MP said.
Tomgram: Engelhardt, War to the Horizon | TomDispatch
Tomgram: Engelhardt, War to the Horizon | TomDispatch.
It was the end of the road for Chuck Hagel last week and the Washington press corps couldn’t have been more enthusiastic about writing his obituary. In terms of pure coverage, it may not have been Ferguson or the seven-foot deluge of snow that hit Buffalo, New York, but the avalanche of news reports was nothing to be sniffed at. There had been a changing of the guard in wartime Washington. Barack Obama’s third secretary of defense had gone down for the count. In the phrase of the moment, he had “resigned under pressure.” Sayonara, Chuck!
With a unanimity that crossed political lines, the accounts read as if written by a single reporter. The story went something like this: two years earlier, President Obama had brought in Hagel, a decorated Vietnam War veteran and former Republican senator with a reputation for being leery about the overuse of American military power, to wind down the war in Afghanistan, rein in military critics, and put the Pentagon budget on something closer to a peacetime footing. After a bruising Senate confirmation hearing from which he never recovered, he proved poor at “messaging” the president’s policies, had a “crappy relationship” with National Security Adviser (and Obama buddy) Susan Rice, proved a weak manager at the Department of Defense as well as a “weak link” in the Obama national security team, and could never break into the president’s tight-knit circle of insiders who — everyone agreed — had a nasty habit of “micromanaging” America’s wars (rather than, it seemed, letting the military do what needed to be done). In the end, the president “lost confidence” in him. It was a “mutual” firing or at least Hagel had advanced somewhat voluntarily toward the edge of the cliff before being pushed off.
Uncertainty in Washington Poses Long List of Economic Perils – NYTimes.com
Uncertainty in Washington Poses Long List of Economic Perils – NYTimes.com.
WASHINGTON — As House Republicans mull another round of fiscal brinkmanship with President Obama, a dark cloud is threatening to return to otherwise clearing economic skies: fiscal and political uncertainty.
Republican leaders moved Tuesday to finesse their way around another government shutdown next week, but the fiscal gantlet extends well beyond Dec. 11, when the current stopgap spending law that funds much of the federal government expires.
Absent congressional action, a host of business and personal tax breaks expires on Jan. 1. The government’s borrowing limit is reinstated on March 16, although the government might not actually hit the ceiling until August.
On March 28, unless lawmakers act, physician reimbursements fromMedicare drop off a cliff. On May 31, the highway trust fund runs out of money. In June, the Export-Import Bank, which helps finance overseas purchases of American exports, might shut in the face of conservative opposition to its mission. Then on Sept. 30, the entire Children’s Health Insurance Program faces its expiration. A few days later, across-the-board spending cuts loom once again.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Biggest Scandal in America Is Its Controlled Press Washington’s Blog
The Biggest Scandal in America Is Its Controlled Press Washington’s Blog.
How many Americans know that the current regime in Ukraine was installed in a very bloody February 2014 coup d’etat, that was planned in the U.S. White House, and overseen by an Assistant Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, and run by the CIA, and carried out for the White House by one of Ukraine’s two racist-fascist, or nazi, political parties, whose founder and leader still controls Ukraine though not officially, even these many months after his coup, and which nazi party has been up to their elbows since then in a genocidal policy to exterminate the people in the region of Ukraine that had voted approximately 90% for the man whom Obama and those nazis overthrew in February? (Click onto that link, and to the more-detailed evidence that’s linked to there, in order to see the ultimate documentations of this entire horrific history, because it is history now, even though the American public were never informed about it while it was news — while and when it was happening, which it still is.)
And how many Americans know that one of the two main suspects in the bringing-down of the Malaysian MH17 airliner over Ukraine on July 17th has been given veto-power over the report that is to be issued from the official ‘investigation’ of the black boxes and other evidence in the case?
The ongoing hiding of all of this from the American public is perhaps even more stunning to the present writer than is the bloody American policy (including Obama’s personal role in it) itself.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Talking to James Risen About “Pay Any Price,” the War on Terror and Press Freedoms – The Intercept
Talking to James Risen About “Pay Any Price,” the War on Terror and Press Freedoms – The Intercept.
Jim Risen, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005 for exposing the NSA warrantless eavesdropping program, has long been one of the nation’s most aggressive and adversarial investigative journalists. Over the past several years, he has received at least as much attention for being threatened with prison by the Obama Justice Department (ostensibly) for refusing to reveal the source of one of his stories, a persecution that, in reality, is almost certainly the vindictive by-product of the U.S. Government’s anger over his NSA reporting.
He has published a new book on the War on Terror entitled “Pay Any Price: Greed, Power and Endless War.” There have been lots of critiques of the War on Terror on its own terms, but Risen’s is one of the first to offer large amounts of original reporting on what is almost certainly the most overlooked aspect of this war: the role corporate profiteering plays in ensuring its endless continuation, and how the beneficiaries use rank fear-mongering to sustain it.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Obama’s Appalling Hypocrisy On Ukraine—–NATO Started It, Not Putin | David Stockman’s Contra Corner
Obama’s Appalling Hypocrisy On Ukraine—–NATO Started It, Not Putin | David Stockman’s Contra Corner.
For a man who had taken a stunning electoral blow two weeks earlier, Barack Obama completed his Asian trip with an air of unperturbed leadership of the world—whatever the Republicans at home thought about who was in charge of what now will happen in the United States.
The nation and its politicians have since the Cold War been so confident of American supremacy over the whole of Western civilization that not only allies have ceased to count but enemies. Americans are the leaders who make the decisions on how the world should work, even when this clearly is not what experience teaches, as one might think had been learned in recent years in the Middle East and Afghanistan.
The president signed a carbon emissions agreement with China. He went to Myanmar hoping to bestow a gold star for merit on Aung San Suu Kyi but found it necessary to chide the generals in power in the country that they must do better in matters of human rights—at a moment when a scandalous forced expulsion of a Burmese Muslim minority was taking place. Another time for Madame Aung San Suu Kyi.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
