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NEW HAVEN – As the US Congress grapples with the ever-contentious Trans-Pacific Partnership – President Barack Obama’s signature trade legislation – a major stumbling block looms. On May 22, the Senate avoided it, by narrowly defeating – 51 to 48 – a proposed “currency manipulation” amendment to a bill that gives Obama so-called “fast-track” authority to negotiate the TPP. But the issue could be resurrected as the debate shifts to the House of Representatives, where support is strong for “enforceable currency rules.”

For at least a decade, Congress has been focusing on currency manipulation – a charge leveled at countries that purportedly intervene in foreign-exchange markets in order to suppress their currencies’ value, thereby subsidizing exports. In 2005, Senators Charles Schumer, a liberal Democrat from New York, and Lindsey Graham, a conservative Republican from South Carolina, formed an unlikely alliance to defend beleaguered middle-class US workers from supposedly unfair competitive practices. Stop the currency manipulation, went the argument, and America’s gaping trade deficit would narrow – providing lasting and meaningful benefits to hard-pressed workers.

A decade ago, the original Schumer-Graham proposal was a thinly veiled anti-China initiative. The ire that motivated that proposal remains today, with China accounting for 47% of America’s still outsize merchandise trade deficit in 2014. Never mind that the Chinese renminbi has risen some 33% against the US dollar since mid-1995 to a level that the International Monetary Fund no longer considers undervalued, or that China’s current-account surplus has shrunk from 10% of GDP in 2007 to an estimated 2% in 2014. China remains in the crosshairs of US politicians who believe that American workers are the victims of its unfair trading practices.

Read more at http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/currency-manipulation-legislation-tpp-by-stephen-s–roach-2015-05#VmdR75E4svhYI0m8.99

Emergency Powers Give Barack Obama Authority Over Just About Everything During A Major National Crisis

May 28, 2015

Emergency Powers Give Barack Obama Authority Over Just About Everything During A Major National Crisis

Presidents have always exercised emergency powers, but now thanks to dozens of new laws, regulations, court decisions and executive orders, Barack Obama is the most powerful president in all of U.S. history. Of course the U.S. Constitution does not actually give the president any special powers during a time of national emergency, but over time presidents have decided that they should be able to exercise such powers and the courts have generally agreed with them. During World War II and prior to that, these emergency powers were largely uncodified and were primarily used during times of war. But since World War II things have completely changed, and this has particularly been true since 9/11. Over the past decade or so, a whole host of extraordinary powers have specifically been given to the office of the president, and all that it takes to exercise them is a major “national emergency”. So if we do have a full-blown economic collapse, a historic natural disaster, a significant war or a massive pandemic, Barack Obama could use the emergency powers that he has been given to essentially take authority overeverything.

There is not a single document or series of documents that contain all of the emergency powers that Barack Obama could potentially wield during a major national emergency. As I mentioned above, these powers come from literally dozens of laws, regulations, court decisions and executive orders. But in this article I will discuss a few important documents. One of these is a presidential directive that was issued during the second term of George W. Bush. It is entitled NATIONAL SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE/NSPD – 51/HOMELAND SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE/HSPD – 20, and you can take a look at it on the FEMA website right here. This document is primarily concerned with the continuity of our federal government in the event of a catastrophic emergency. So precisely what would constitute a “catastrophic emergency”? The following is how the document defines that term…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Neo-feudal USA: The death of democracy — Gerald Celente

May 28, 2015

Neo-feudal USA: The death of democracy — Gerald Celente

Neither a conspiracy nor conjecture: By every quantitative measure, 21st century America has degenerated from being the beacon of democracy to a neo-feudal state.  From crime and punishment to the vast wealth and income-inequality gap, the rules are different for the political elite and economic nobility than they are for the common man bound to live by the letter of the law and brought to justice for minor infractions — all while political insiders, corporate charlatans and financial bandits are left free to rape, pillage and plunder.

What should have been headline news and met with outrage last Wednesday barely made the front page of newspapers or the top of broadcast news. Deemed not as important as the murder of a wealthy family who lived near Vice President Biden, or the motorcycle gang war that left nine dead, five of the world’s largest banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup, pleaded guilty to felony charges for rigging the $5.3 trillion-a-day foreign-exchange markets.

Regardless of “brazenly illegal behavior” on a “massive scale,” the trend is clear: Despite a long track record of “breathtaking flagrancy” of stealing billions, the government, in case after case, gently hits banks with a slap-on-the-wrist fine — and not one top bankster is sent to jail.  It’s the same with whistleblowers and those who leak government information — more of whom the Obama Administration has sent to prison that all presidents combined. And when Washington insider, former general and CIA Director David Petraeus is caught giving his mistress classified material for her book, a small fine and no prison time result.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Obama Has A Big Fat Greek Finger

May 20, 2015

Obama Has A Big Fat Greek Finger

Will this Greek stuff ever stop? Probably, but don’t hold your breath. I was reading up on China, but that will have to wait till tomorrow. A friend just sent me a Sputnik story -they’re a Russian news channel, so they can’t be trusted, right?!- that adds more juice to the Syriza vs troika tale. And whaddaya know, the king of Greece leaks, Paul Mason at Channel 4, is involved once again.

Let’s do Mason first. He’s in Athens and, wait for it, he scored another leak. But not a direct leak to Mason; this one concerns a European Commission document leaked to Greek newspaper To Vima. There are some useful numbers here. Mason:

Greece: Europe’s Last-Ditch Effort To Keep It In Euro?

According to To Vima, the EU commission boss (Juncker, ed.) has offered Greece a deal that delays the harshest austerity for two years, and releases €5bn of bailout money to help fill the gaps in the Greek budget. To get the money Greece has to:

• Run a primary surplus of 0.75% of GDP – much lower than the previous demands from the ECB and IMF. And a surplus of 2% of GDP in 2016.

• This rises to 3.5% for both of the next years, but would have to be seen as notional – as committing to anything in 2018 barely matters when you are three weeks from default.

• Greece has to raise VAT to 18% – with 15% for card transactions. This cleverly forces tax evaders into the formal economy by setting a relatively low rate.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“If The Public Knew About Obama’s Lies And Cover Ups, Mitt Romney Might Be President” – Judicial Watch

May 20, 2015

“If The Public Knew About Obama’s Lies And Cover Ups, Mitt Romney Might Be President” – Judicial Watch

When it comes to the countless lies of this administration (and that of the next one under Hillary Clinton) one has to just throw in the flag.

Days after Seymour Hersh exposed the biggest lie of Obama’s first term, a lie which we learned was also facilitated and perpetuated by the CIA as well (the topic of the latest Frontline documentary “How the CIA Helped Make “Zero Dark Thirty””), we get yet more evidence of the administration’s lies this time on a topic dear – and sensitive – for the person who may well be the next US president, Hillary Clinton, who as a reminder made up a story that the September 11, 2012 Benghazi embassy attack was a product of spontaneous protests of an obscure YouTube documentary by an American producer that lampooned Muslims.

Only later did the administration concede that the attack was a terrorist operation.

And now, according to a declassified Defense Department document obtained by Judicial Watch we learn that the Obama administration knew that “al Qaeda terrorists had planned the Benghazi attack ten days in advance.” Then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other senior level individuals including then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Obama White House National Security Council were given intelligence within hours of the Benghazi attackdescribing how it had been planned at least 10 days in advance “to kill as many Americans as possible.”

The heavily redacted Defense Department “information report” says that the attack on the Benghazi facility “was planned and executed by The Brigades of the Captive Omar Abdul Rahman (BCOAR).” The group subscribes to “AQ ideologies:”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Someone Finally Read Obama’s Secret Trade Deal And Admits The TPP “Will Damage This Nation”

May 19, 2015

Someone Finally Read Obama’s Secret Trade Deal And Admits The TPP “Will Damage This Nation”

There is a huge paradox surrounding what is supposed to be the crowning achievement of Obama’s second term, the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), a bill whose contents virtually nobody is familiar with or will be before it passes into law.

That’s not the paradox: the paradox is that back in October 2009, the White House Press secretary said that “the President has returned to a stance of transparency and ethics that hasn’t been matched by any other White House…. the President believes strongly in transparency… that transparency in that way in the best policy.”

Or to paraphrase Nancy Pelosi, “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”

And yet while everyone seems to have an opinion on the final formulation of the TPP bill, especially Elizabeth Warren and her circle of progressive democrats who have emerged as the bill’s most vocal critics, the truth is that none have actually read it for the simple reason that anyone who is familiar with its text could be jailed for disclosing its contents.

Most transparent administration indeed.

We won’t even comment that those who don’t care to have their opinion made public and do have access to the bill have also not read the massive bill which layers giveaway upon giveaway to mega corporations: in fact the only ones who are intimately familiar with the TPP’s contents are those who drafted it: America’s multinational corporations whose shareholders will be the biggest beneficiaries of the TPP.

And yet someone appears to have finally read Obama’s TPP: that someone is Michael Wessel, a cleared liaison to two statutory advisory committees and a commissioner on the U.S. Trade Deficit Review Commission, as well as the international trade co-chair for the Kerry-Edwards Presidential Campaign.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Obama Flip-Flops: Plans To De-Militarize His Militarized Police

May 19, 2015

Obama Flip-Flops: Plans To De-Militarize His Militarized Police

Having enabled billions of dollars worth of militarized equipment to be unloaded into every police department in the nation – only to have alienated the very Americans that hoped for change the most – it appears President Obama is ready to uncross another red line. Following unrest in U.S. cities over the deaths of black men at the hands of police officers,Reuters reports, during his triup to Camden NJ, Obama announced his plans to put in place new restrictions on the use of military equipment by police departments.

Just six months ago, President Obama was discussing increasing the funding for the militarization of America’s police force.

Now, after various riots, deaths, and police excess, he appears to be flip-flopping away from that idea…

As Reuters reports,

Obama will ban police use of equipment such as explosive-resistant vehicles with tracked wheels like those seen on army tanks, the White House said in a fact sheet. For other types of equipment, such as MRAP (mine-resistant ambush protected) vehicles and riot shields, departments will have to provide added justification for their use.

…

In the aftermath of the Baltimore riots, Obama has been speaking out more about race, including in a speech in the Bronx on increasing opportunity for young minority men and during a panel discussion on poverty in Washington.

“Race issues have been more present over the past year for this country. We’ve seen, since Ferguson, issues that have been bubbling up in communities becoming much more present,” said Rashad Robinson, executive director of colorofchange.org, a group that aims to strengthen the black community’s political voice in America.

Obama’s remarks in Camden will be the fourth time in as many weeks that he has held an event to discuss his ideas for improving life for poor black communities. Obama, the country’s first black president, has often been reticent about discussing race issues.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Seymour Hersh: Obama’s Entire Account Of bin Laden’s Death Is One Big Lie; This Is What Really Happened

May 11, 2015

Seymour Hersh: Obama’s Entire Account Of bin Laden’s Death Is One Big Lie; This Is What Really Happened

The last time famed US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh made news in the global media was with his massive, 5000-word expose from April of 2014 “The Red Line and the Rat Line” revealing the true motives behind the Syrian near-war of 2013 including what we had said from the very beginning: the very professionally created YouTube clips showing the consequences of what was said to have been an Assad poison gas attack, were nothing but a fake (subsequent reports identified the propaganda source as Rami Abdul Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, whose entire operation has been funded by an unidentified European country.)

Fast forward to today when in a report whose word count doubles his previous record for the London Review of Books, Hersh targets a topic near and dear to the hearts of many Americans: the story of the capture and death of Osama bin Laden. Or rather the completely false and, according to Hersh, fabricated story, one made up entirely by the US president and spoon fed for popular consumption with the aid of a Hollywood blockbuster whose entire plot line is, if Hersh is correct, one big lie as well.

In a nutshell, and one really needs to read Hersh’s magnum opus as no amount of abbreviation will do it justice, Hersh accuses Obama of not only taking credit for the al Qaeda leader’s death, but fabricating the story that resulted from what has been widely reported to have been a Navy seal incursion into bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound in Pakistan. As a result the military and intelligence communities were forced to scramble and then corroborate the president’s version of events.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A Multinational Trojan Horse: The Trans-Pacific Partnership

May 10, 2015

A Multinational Trojan Horse: The Trans-Pacific Partnership

“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, … may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” – James Madison in The Federalist Papers.

You don’t have to know much about the “trade” deal called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) to be more than a little suspicious.

First, there are the very peculiar bedfellows. Supporting the TPP are President Obama and most Congressional Republicans, the same Republicans who’ve vehemently opposed his every initiative for the past six and one-half years.

Against the TPP are most (but not all) Congressional Democrats, Ford Motor Company, virtually all trade unions and environmental groups, watchdog groups such as Public Citizen, and usual Obama allies such as Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, who, in a testy open letter to the President on April 25, called for greater transparency on the TPP.

Furthermore, when asked to lend his support for so-called “Fast Track” authority for the TPP, Obama water-carrier and former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid chafed, “So the answer is not only no, but hell no.”

Also opposed: liberal icon Noam Chomsky, Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders, Republican hopeful Mike Huckabee, many Tea-Party groups, and conservative Republican editorialist and former presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan. Conspicuous by silence: Hillary Rodham Clinton.

What’s going on here? Why the strange alliances?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Obama Is More Hostile Towards The Press Than Any President In History

May 8, 2015

Obama Is More Hostile Towards The Press Than Any President In History

Obama HATES the Press

A brand new Politico poll of White House correspondents finds:

(1) 65% of reporters say that Obama is the least press-friendly president they’ve ever seen

(2) 78% of White House reporters believe “President Obama dislikes the press”

(3) 63% of the reporters have literally never asked Obama a question at any press conference

(4) 58% say they’ve never spoken to anyone at the White House other than a flack on the White House press team

(5) 5 times more reporters believe that Obama is becoming less and less open with the press than believe he’s getting more transparent with time

The Washington Post noted last month:

In the Committee to Protect Journalists report, former Washington Post executive editorLeonard Downie Jr. summarized the administration’s efforts to control information as “the most aggressive I’ve seen since the Nixon administration.” Downie was one of the editors involved in The Post’s coverage of Nixon’s Watergate crimes.

Veteran New York Times reporter James Risen said:

[The Obama administration is] the greatest enemy of press freedom that we have encountered in at least a generation.

[The administration wants to] narrow the field of national security reporting to create a path for accepted reporting.

[Anyone journalist who exceeds those parameters] will be punished.

New York Times Executive Editor Jill Abramson agrees:

This is the most secretive White House that I have ever been involved incovering, and that includes — I spent 22 years of my career in Washington and covered presidents from President Reagan on up through now, and I was Washington bureau chief of the Times during George W. Bush’s first term.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Ultra-Secrecy Surrounds Barack Obama’s New Global Economic Treaty

May 6, 2015

Ultra-Secrecy Surrounds Barack Obama’s New Global Economic Treaty

Barack Obama is secretly negotiating a global economic treaty which would destroy thousands of American businesses and millions of good paying American jobs. In other words, it would be the final nail in the coffin for America’s economic infrastructure. Obama knows that if the American people actually knew what was in this treaty that they would be screaming mad, so the negotiations are being done in secret. The only people that are allowed to look at the treaty are members of Congress, and even they are being banned from saying anything to the public. American workers are about to be brutally stabbed in the back, and thanks to all of this secrecy and paranoia they won’t even see it coming.

The name of this new treaty is “the Trans-Pacific Partnership”, and it is being touted as perhaps the most important trade agreement in history. But very few people in this country are talking about it, because none of us are allowed to see it. An article that was just released by Politico detailed the extreme secrecy that is surrounding this trade agreement…

If you want to hear the details of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal the Obama administration is hoping to pass, you’ve got to be a member of Congress, and you’ve got to go to classified briefings and leave your staff and cellphone at the door.

If you’re a member who wants to read the text, you’ve got to go to a room in the basement of the Capitol Visitor Center and be handed it one section at a time, watched over as you read, and forced to hand over any notes you make before leaving.

And no matter what, you can’t discuss the details of what you’ve read.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Challenging American Exceptionalism

April 28, 2015

Challenging American Exceptionalism

President Barack Obama stood behind the podium and apologized for inadvertently killing two Western hostages – including one American – during a drone strike in Yemen. Obama said, “one of the things that sets America apart from many other nations, one of the things that makes us exceptional, is our willingness to confront squarely our imperfections and to learn from our mistakes.” In his 2015 state of the union address, Obama described America as “exceptional.” When he spoke to the United Nations General Assembly in 2013, he said, “Some may disagree, but I believe that America is exceptional.”

American exceptionalism reflects the belief that Americans are somehow better than everyone else. This view reared its head after the 2013 leak of a Department of Justice White Paper that describes circumstances under which the President can order the targeted killing of U.S. citizens. There had been little public concern in this country about drone strikes that killed people in other countries. But when it was revealed that U.S. citizens could be targeted, Americans were outraged. This motivated Senator Rand Paul to launch his 13-hour filibuster of John Brennan’s nomination for CIA director.

It is this double standard that moved Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu to write a letter to the editor of the New York Times, in which he asked, “Do the United States and its people really want to tell those of us who live in the rest of the world that our lives are not of the same value as yours?” (When I saw that letter, I immediately invited Archbishop Tutu to write the foreword to my book, “Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues.” He graciously agreed and he elaborates on that sentiment in the foreword).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

What’s Obama Up to, with His TPP & TTIP?

April 26, 2015

What’s Obama Up to, with His TPP & TTIP?

The motivation behind U.S. President Barack Obama’s trans-Pacific trade-deal TPP, and his trans-Atlantic trade-deal TTIP — the motivation behind both of these enormous international trade-deals — is the same, and Democratic U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown are correct: it is not at all progressive. It is instead to transfer political power away from the public in a democracy, and for that power to go instead to the international aristocracy (i.e., to go as far away from any national democracy as is even possible to go). This is to be done by switching the most fundamental thing of all: the global power-base itself. Instead of that power-base being democratic votes of the national publics, who elect their political representatives who determine the laws and regulations, that national democratic political system becomes instead the exact opposite: the global aristocratic stockholder votes of the international aristocracy who elect the corporate directors of international companies, who will, in their turn, then be selecting the members to the international-trade-panels which, in TPP and TTIP, will, in their turn, be determining the rules and enforcements regarding especially workers’ rights, product-safety, and the environment.

The international aristocracy’s weakening of these national rules will enable lowering wages of the public, who are the people who don’t control international corporations but who control only their own personal labor, which goes down in value to the lowest hourly wage in the entire international trading-area. This new system will also enable minimizing regulation of the safety of foods and other products and thus maximizing the ability of international corporations to avoid any expenses that companies would otherwise need to devote to raising the safety of their products.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Bad Guys Pushing THIS WEEK to Promote Global Tyranny Run By Corporations

April 23, 2015

Bad Guys Pushing THIS WEEK to Promote Global Tyranny Run By Corporations

Here’s How to STOP Them

The powers-that-be are pushing this week to fast track a horrible treaty which would destroy America.

The treaty is called the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP).

The U.S. Trade Representative – the federal agency responsible for negotiating trade treaties – has said that the details of the TPP are classified due to “national security”.

Why’s the deal being kept secret? Because it would be impossible to pass if the public knew what was really in it:

Ron Kirk, until recently Mr. Obama’s top trade official, was remarkably candid about why he opposed making the text public: doing so, he suggested to Reuters, would raise such opposition that it could make the deal impossible to sign.

Senator Elizabeth Warren notes:

Supporters of the deal say to me, “They have to be secret, because if the American people knew what was actually in them, they would be opposed.”

But it’s not only being hidden from the American people … it’s being hidden even from most U.S.Congress members.

A Congressman who has seen the text of the treaty says:

There is no national security purpose in keeping this text secret … this agreement hands the sovereignty of our country over to corporate interests.

It would also allow foreign corporations to challenge U.S. laws. It will literally override American law. As the New York Times headlines in Trans-Pacific Partnership Seen as Door for Foreign Suits Against U.S.:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

War with Russia Now Much Likelier

April 6, 2015

War with Russia Now Much Likelier

Ukraine’s Leading Nazi Gets American Weapons & Support

news report from German Economic News, translated and with closing commentary by Eric Zuesse

http://deutsche-wirtschafts-nachrichten.de/2015/04/06/ukraine-rechtsextremist-jarosch-wird-berater-der-armee-fuehrung/

Ukraine: right-wing extremist Jarosch is consultant to the Army leadership

German Economic News | Published: 06/04/15 00:00 clock

The Ukrainian army has appointed the right-wing Dimitri Jarosch as official adviser to the army leadership. His militias are officially part of the army — under the leadership of the independent Jarosch. Thus, the right-wing extremists also gain access to US weapons, and weapons that are financed by European taxpayers.

Russia will interpret this as a threat.

The militias of the “right sector” in Ukraine are now greatly enhanced by this appointment, which was made on Sunday, April 5th. The chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, General Viktor Muschenko, is thus incorporating the far-right militias into his army. Muschenko announces that the Ukrainian army has become one of the strongest in Europe. The soldiers of this army have proved that they know how to fight. [Whereas the regular army of Ukraine has, thus far, performed poorly, top to bottom, the forces under Yarosh’s control, and under his fellow-nazi Andrei Biletsky’s, have been on a par with the local forces of the Donbass, against whom they’ve been fighting. But now, with the military expertise of the nazis and of their American advisors, training everyone starting on April 20th (which is Hitler’s birthday), this will be a different war, and could have a radically different outcome, which will then force a Russian invasion of Ukraine, especially because both Yarosh and Biletsky are lifelong-committed to conquering Russia.]

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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