The sleazy guy that spread perverted sex stories about Trump comes out:
Former UK agent breaks silence over Trump dossier
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/uk/former-uk-agent-breaks-silence-over-trump-dossier-35509802.html

Posted by: Lebonan | Mar 10 2017 11:43 utc | 3

2017 political definition of Left:
Anyone who can get a crowd laughing at the insanity of Right Wing Ideologues during a debate.

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Mar 10 2017 12:56 utc | 5

The latest theme with Rachel Maddow is that Wikileaks is the tool that Trump and Putin used to defeat HRC. The timing of Wikileaks releases offset Trump’s bad news, and undermined HRC in the month of October. (Never mind that J. Podesta was the lobbyist for the Saudis, and his brother was a lobbyist for the Russians, while the campaign was ongoing.) It follows that this week’s news implies that Trump responded to the barrage of of CIA/MSM challenges (remember that Sen. Schumer threatened Trump *on the Maddow show* “don’t challenge the CIA, they have their ways to hurt you” effectively) with the Wikileaks release of CIA espionage tools. If true, that is close to open warfare between Trump/Pentagon and the CIA. Or Russia/Trump and the CIA…which is how Maddow wants it.
I am waiting for the send-up where someone takes a tape of her show and inserts the word *Israel* every time she says the word *Russia* and then ends with film of Putin addressing a joint session of Congress to standing ovations.

Posted by: S.H.E. | Mar 10 2017 13:37 utc | 7

blues @4 99 luftbaloon
luft translated to English from the German means ‘air.’
The Luft Wing?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bp1Ma_-_U9w

Posted by: ALberto | Mar 10 2017 14:19 utc | 9

The “FSA” part of the Turkish army are attacking the Syrian army, despite Tukey’s acceptance of the Syrian army in Manbij. This could create a rift between the Turks and the FSA, their only ally. The Turks need the FSA as a cover up for the invasion. The FSA needs the Turks because they pay their salary and give them a legitimacy despite their numerous military failures.
It is yet to see if the FSA will accept to be prevented from attacking the Syrian army.
I guess that Qatar and Saudi Arabia are funneling money to the FSA to continue the ‘civil war’ and prevent Bashar al Assad victory in the next meeting in Astana. The Turks will be put in a very uncomfortable position vis a vis Russia if the FSA refuse to obey them.
Syria urges “immediate” withdrawal of Turkish forces from northern Syria

Posted by: virgile | Mar 10 2017 15:22 utc | 11

Ron Paul on US troop deployment in Syria:
Trump Invades Syria

Although the Syrian army, with its ally Russia, has made significant gains against ISIS over the past week or so, the Washington Post is reporting tonight that President Trump has for the first time sent regular US military personnel into that country in combat positions. This is an unprecedented escalation of US involvement in the Syrian war and it comes without Congressional authorization, without UN authorization, and without the authorization of the government of Syria. In short it is three ways illegal.

Looks like the belief that Trump was going to be better than Clinton regarding Syria was wishful thinking.

Posted by: Tobin Paz | Mar 10 2017 15:32 utc | 13

@13/14… i suppose it is all done under the banner of going after isis – a byproduct of the usa’s love affair with saudi arabia/qatar, isreal and etc… i would be curious to know the percentage of people in the usa working for the military… although trump says he is making america great again and bringing everything back home – these ongoing foreign military adventures implies he is full of shite.. either that, or employment in the usa is largely military based…that and snooping software and fast food industry related..

Posted by: james | Mar 10 2017 16:23 utc | 15

@15 half of our economy is based upon government or vending with government..
I would wager that the rest is made of of FIRE and the medical bureaucratic cartel complex.
A society based upon everybody (other than maybe the working class) getting their disproportionate cut

Posted by: aaaa | Mar 10 2017 16:42 utc | 17

@ Posted by: james | Mar 10, 2017 11:23:22 AM | 15
Budget request for 2017:
~$654 Billion USD for DOD
~$20.5 Billion USD for the AEC – Atomic Energy Defense Activities (Nukes)
~$48 Billion USD for the Dept of Homeland Security
~$165 Billion USD for the Dept of Veteran Affairs
~$72 Billion USD for the National Intelligence Program (NIP) & the DOD Military Intelligence Program (MIP)
Low-ball, publicly reported total = ~$959.5 Billion USD
Comment: The funding requests for DOD, AEC, NIP & MIP, etc do not include classified, ‘black’ or ‘off the books’ (compartmented) funding appropriations requests. These could easily add 100’s & 100’s of Billions USD more. So, ~1.3-1.5 Trillion USD given previous actual documented declassified/leaked classified/black/compartmented allocations in the past ?
Overseas bases/facilities, depending on definition, ~1,000 & Stateside bases/facilities, ~600, just re DOD, IIRC.
Note:
1. The NIP & MIP are in ‘constant value’ dollar terms being sustained at 80% above expenditures incurred at the height of Cold War 1.0 with USSR, in 1980 !
2. The National Defense Budget Function subsumes funding for the DoD, the Department of Energy Atomic Energy Defense Activities and some smaller support agencies (including Federal Emergency Management (FEMA) and Selective Service System (SSS)). It does not include funding for International Security Assistance (under International Affairs), nor for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Funding for civil projects administered by the DoD is also excluded.
Sources: Federation of American Scientists (FAS) 2017 budget request reports & International Institute for International Studies (IISS) Military Balance Report 2016/2017 (adjusted for updated requests)

Posted by: Outraged | Mar 10 2017 17:16 utc | 19

The only other website I regularly comment on is Portland Indymedia — A site that is very radically so-called “leftist”. But the only one of its kind that allows me to counter the Deep State anti-Trump campaign. They are DDoS-ed at least 33% of the time (being attacked by DDoS botnets).
Something surely is going on.

Posted by: blues | Mar 10 2017 17:21 utc | 21

I’m planning to hit the streets soon:
MIKE PENCE IS NOT MY VICE PRESIDENT

Posted by: blues | Mar 10 2017 17:30 utc | 23

@8, @6
I’m with you here. jfl really sharp and intelligent but forgotten . . . The Repub. will do what they say but the Dem. will do exactly the opposite what they say, do it more aggressively than the Repub. There are exceptions.
From recent history (Bill Clinton to Trump) proofs it. However, mine believe the Dem. propaganda machineries are far superior then Repub. superior – numerically foots soldiers, MSM fakes news and voters’ database, above all better liars.
If free slaves continue to believe in “Amerika dreams” – freedom, democracy, human right, and the rest of the shits we will forever enslave to the system… Example “Amerika dreams”. We work hard, study hard, raise a family, buy a house, 2 or more cars, go vacations, watch football, baseball, superbowl, Oscar, you’re fired, or whatever….. participate communitiess’ events… blah, blah, blah…
Now the truth… forever paying high interests on house, cars, students loans, credits debts., blah, blah,
(self censer unfit for reading)………….. use your imagination what I have to say….

Posted by: OSJ | Mar 10 2017 17:52 utc | 25

Disgraced Trump adviser Mike Flynn admits he worked as a “foreign agent” for the Turkish government
Good riddance!

Posted by: virgile | Mar 10 2017 17:58 utc | 27

Merkel, who has been dealing on a one to one basis with Putin for a deacde or so now, has been asked by Trump to share with him her insight into and experience of dealing with Putin.
Is Trump now using Merkel as balast for dealings with RF?
That Trump is showing interest in such a way seems to be good news for US relations with both Europe and Russia … But how seriously can we take Trump? (I am not qualified to get into a spat about the man, but genuinely interested!)
Made me smaile anyway.
(link below in Russian only, I’m afraid)
http://www.vz.ru/news/2017/3/10/861383.html

Posted by: AtaBrit | Mar 10 2017 18:22 utc | 29

There’s an additional deployment of 2,500 U.S. troops happening. This administration is trying to bypass Congress putting more and more boots on the ground in Syria without Congressional and U.N. authorization and in violation of Syrian sovereignty.
https://www.rt.com/usa/380111-us-troops-deployment-kuwait/
Trump is quietly escalating in Syria with the healthcare rollout as a distraction and Ron Paul is right to call this 3-way illegal.
Trump is sending in the cavalry at the 11th hour intent on claiming victory in Syria and carving it out into KSA, Israeli and Turkish safe zones. And is this a pretext for another U.S. base as well after the Syrian Army, Russia, Iran and Hezbollah spent all kinds of treasure in months and years (in the case of some parties) of battle there?
Putin dropped the ball again like he did with Libya. Give the U.S. an inch and they’ll take a mile. This is extremely troubling. A meeting of the Security Council should be called immediately. Have the parameters of this invasion been put in a legal agreement with terms and restrictions? This looks like a hot mess about to explode. Was the Russian Ambassador to the U.N. replaced? Putin needs to put a stop to this escalation now.

Posted by: Circe | Mar 10 2017 18:35 utc | 31

Confusing to say the least..
http://russia-insider.com/en/damascus-demands-turkish-troops-immediately-withdraw-syrian-territory-un-accuses-ankara-serious

Posted by: Lozion | Mar 10 2017 18:39 utc | 33

Chipnik must be drinking dumpster scrap vodka, scrabbling for insects and pond weeds, or SWAT has detained him at his workcenter bunkhouse.

Posted by: wisco_hillbilly | Mar 10 2017 18:46 utc | 35

@ blues | 4
Very interesting post.
In the UK at least I have wondered a lot recently whether the left – right classification can even survive. Brexit has become extremely divisive and it transcends traditional political classifications, in addition to which people seem far more likely to refer to themselves as pro- or anti- Brexit nowadays.
I had thought it would pass but if anything its becoming more entrenched.

Posted by: AtaBrit | Mar 10 2017 18:56 utc | 37

@ AtaBrit
Add this piece from Nikki Haley to what we are seeing in Syria ….
“The United States absolutely supports Staffan de Mistura and the work that he’s doing, we support the U.N. process, we support the talks in Geneva, we want to see them continue,” Haley said.
“This is very much about a political solution now … and that basically means that Syria can no longer be a safe haven for terrorists, we’ve got to make sure we get Iran and their proxies out, we’ve got to make sure that, as we move forward, we’re securing the borders for our allies as well,” she said.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-usa-idUSKBN16F2WV
Going off what Trump has said about Iran in the past, I would guess that what Haley is saying is Trump’s position.

Posted by: Peter AU | Mar 10 2017 19:21 utc | 39

Here is a complete US Asshole grilling a moron.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljx46FKycQ0

Posted by: harrylawh | Mar 10 2017 19:30 utc | 41

State Department obtained a gag order to prevent release of Medical Examiner’s report on autopsy of Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-officials-won-release-russian-ambassador-autopsy-results-article-1.2994404

Posted by: Circe | Mar 10 2017 20:15 utc | 43

blues #4, AtaBrit #37
I don’t think the old labels work anymore. Seems pointless even to use terms such as “left” and “right”.
The two labels that still hold true and have always been true are those of the rich against the poor. All other labels serve to divide the poor among themselves, while the rich have no labels, and are never referred to in any real vocative sense.
The dynamic seems to be something like this. The rich steal from the poor, and this is how they make their money. Furthermore, their actions create the poor, whom they then instinctively and culturally hate and despise, and would kill en masse without a care.
But the thief knows that the victim must be left able to produce more wealth, or the thief’s livelihood is gone. Therefore the poor must be kept alive and functioning, to some degree. The classical divergence between right and left is really about that degree: how much should the welfare of the poor be lifted by the state (how much of the state’s levy in tax should be returned to the poor) – versus – how much does the state have a right to moderate the thievery by the rich?
I suppose this could sound like a cynical sketch, but I intend it as a deadly serious description.

Posted by: Grieved | Mar 10 2017 20:36 utc | 45

Just a historical note to set the source straight: The terms “left” and “right,” as political terms, began in the French Assembly in the 1790s. In very general terms, those delegates of the parties that favored democracy sat on the left side of the chamber while those who sat on the right favored the monarchy.

Posted by: AntiSpin | Mar 10 2017 21:03 utc | 47

@ AntiSpin | Mar 10, 2017 4:03:55 PM | 47
It is still a false dichotomy.
It forces each “side” to acknowledge the necessity of the other.

Posted by: blues | Mar 10 2017 21:07 utc | 49

@24 atabrit, ‘”… the restoration of the territorial integrity of Syria is, in our mind, an obligatory condition for full-fledged settlement,” Putin said.
that’s a reassuring signal. putin constantly acknowledges that lasting peace is a long, arduous task … but what other choice is there? yes, indeed, he says what means, means what he says, makes western pols look like the red-nosed, floppy-shoed, bad-actors they are.
not only are they clowns, they are killer clowns.

Posted by: jfl | Mar 10 2017 23:14 utc | 51

Posted by: dh | Mar 10, 2017 1:07:30 PM | 28
Oil
ISIS oil map
I think US and Russia are united in keeping Turkey from annexing the valuable parts of Syria which was Erdogan’s strategy all along.

Posted by: somebody | Mar 10 2017 23:46 utc | 53

EU summit reveals sharp divisions within Europe and tensions with US

Before travelling to Brussels, Merkel noted in a statement to the German parliament “that Europe will act together against unfair and protectionist trade practices, and firmly defend its interests, whenever and wherever this is necessary.”
In order to pursue these global interests militarily, Germany and other European powers are seeking to establish a European army. Ahead of Thursday’s summit, a meeting of European foreign and defence ministers on Monday agreed to the creation of a joint command centre for military interventions. According to diplomats, the headquarters will begin work this month and be fully operational by June.

that quote from merkel is jaw-dropping … sounds just like the usa. could have been written by a us neo-liberal … i don’t know that the ‘european army’ is anything more than talk.
the article also touches on ‘tensions’ between germany and poland … poland seems to be the us’ main ally in pushing confrontation with russia … the brits are right at the us’ side with respect to provocations in the baltic states.
wonder what merkel will have to say about It Is Official, The Nazi Ukraine Junta Has Confirmed It Is Backing Out Of The Minsk Agreements And Tearing Up UN Resolution 2202 !?
wasn’t it merkel, hollande, putin and whatshisname, the ‘ukrainian’, who signed the minsk agreement?
gives france and germany an excuse to walk away from the sinking ship. i guess the ukraine is throwing itself into the arms of the usa?

Posted by: jfl | Mar 11 2017 0:04 utc | 55

@53 somebody, txs for the interesting article..
@55 Could be a sign the Atlanticists are losing their grip on Germany.. Trump was right about NATO, it should be desolved and replaced by European national armies but the whole process would be long and complex, giving Russia to much breathing space for some..

Posted by: Lozion | Mar 11 2017 6:24 utc | 57

World Faces Largest Humanitarian Crisis Since 1945, UN Says

The world faces the largest humanitarian crisis since the United Nations was founded in 1945 with more than 20 million people in four countries facing starvation and famine, [Stephen O’Brien] the U.N. humanitarian chief said Friday.
He urged an immediate injection of funds for Yemen, South Sudan, Somalia and northeast Nigeria plus safe and unimpeded access for humanitarian aid “to avert a catastrophe.”

that was the end of the third reich. which lasted 12 years.
the us reign of terror, a sitz- not a blitzkreig, has lasted 14 … so far … and has now reached the level of death, devastation, and destruction achieved by the third reich in 12 … in just 4 countries, 3 in africa. if they counted afghanistan, iraq, libya, syria, and ukraine the total would be at least 16 or 18 high, just adding in the corpses in those 5 countries. two to 4 million in iraq alone.
something tells me this is just a setup for MORE intervention …

During his recent visit to Yemen, O’Brien said he met senior leaders of the government and the Shiite Houthi rebels who control the capital Sanaa, and all promised access for aid.
“Yet all parties to the conflict are arbitrarily denying sustained humanitarian access and politicize aid,” he said, warning if that behavior doesn’t change now “they must be held accountable for the inevitable famine, unnecessary deaths and associated amplification in suffering that will follow.”
“The famine in South Sudan is man-made,” he said. “Parties to the conflict are parties to the famine – as are those not intervening to make the violence stop.”

… to move in and finish them off. r2p => rip. o’brien is rooted in an imperial colonial family from tanganyika.

Posted by: jfl | Mar 11 2017 11:58 utc | 59

jfl 60
where to ?
most likely diego garcia.
who has the mean and motive to hijack mh370 ?
uncle scam has the mean, checked !
he definitely has the motive.
cui bono ?
* classic divide n conquer,
recall the typical headline..
‘beijing/kl embroiled in bitter recriminations over the death of 250 chinese onboard mh370’ [1]
pm Najib didnt mince words when he said
‘somebody is trying to drive a wedge bet us and beijing’ [1]
*payback to malaYsia for hosting a tribunal which indicted bush/cheney/blair as war criminals.
*soros who had a long running feud with dr mahathir, exacting his pound of flesh.
[plausibly]
*preventing a cutting edge chip tech to fall into chinese hands.
one stone killing five birds !
[1]
one of the best ‘conspiracy theory’,
cuz thats the very first thought that crossed my mind !
http://www.rense.com/general96/mh370.html

Posted by: denk | Mar 11 2017 16:13 utc | 61

india, the master of double dealing.
as BRICS member, reaping the benefits of AIIB, chinese investments, russian tech transfer.
as a de facto member of naato, aka the asian nato, enjoying all the trappings befitting a murkkan poodle !
hehehehe
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/03/07/inus-m07.html

Posted by: denk | Mar 11 2017 16:34 utc | 63

Denk 63
Became obvious some time ago Denk. Do some serious research on the cult Modi is into, Hinduvta, and their beliefs as far as geo-politics goes. Very pro US, anti all others as imperialists/Communists. Modi’s India is bad news.

Posted by: Peter AU | Mar 11 2017 20:03 utc | 65

@ Posted by: Noirette | Mar 11, 2017 11:32:13 AM | 62

The ‘real’ numbers are therefore impenetrable.

A picture says a thousand words, even using ‘official’ western figures, deliberately ‘low-ball’ re US & Allies and ‘inflated’ for ‘justification effect’ re nominated ‘enemies’, from ‘Janes’:

World Military Spending – Top 20 Countries – 2016 (Billions$ USD)

A Russian defense advocate using the Janes’ metric in Chart 2 could argue that:
(1) Russia is now spending slightly less than Saudi Arabia, less than India, and less than the UK
(2) the size of Russia’s budget is only a quarter of China’s, and
(3) the size of Russia’s defense budget is an astonishing one-twelfth of that of the United States!
Add to the U.S. defense budget the contributions of its allies and close friends and the spending balance in favor the U.S. and its allies to that of Russia alone becomes an astounding 21 to 1!
Even if Russia could trust China to be a reliable ally — which it can’t — the current spending imbalance is over four to one in favor of the U.S. and its allies on the one hand and Russia and China on the other.

An imbalance of 21 to 1 is supposed to justify ‘FEAR & Warmongering’ for Cold War 2.0 re the Evil™ Russkies ?! 🙁
Further:

Sleepwalking Into a Nuclear Arms Race with Russia (Counterpunch Feb2417)
… Adding to Obama’s expansion of our nuclear posture is President Trump’s intention to fulfill his campaign promises to strengthen all nuclear offensive and defensive forces, with particular emphasis on spending a lot more for the ballistic missile defense (BMD) program — which implies expanding the current deployments of BMD weapons in eastern Europe within a few hundred miles of the Russian border.
Early cost estimates — really guesses — for Obama’s entire nuclear modernization program are for one trillion dollars over the next 30 years. No missile defense costs are included in this estimate — nor are the costs of Trump’s promised expansions…
The money for all of these programs is just beginning to flow into hundreds of congressional districts. As the torrent of money builds up over the next decade, the flood of sub-contracting money and jobs in hundreds of congressional districts guarantees the entire nuclear spend-up will acquire a political life of its own — and the taxpayer will be burdened with yet another unstoppable behemoth.
Locking hundreds of congressmen and senators into this nuclear modernization program guarantees that the money flow and cost overruns will increase without interference for the next thirty to fifty years … makes it obvious that the initial buy-in guess of a trillion dollar total will turn into at least a three trillion dollar price tag by the end of three decades…
… Once this multi-trillion dollar, self-sustaining money gusher is sluicing steadily into the boiler rooms of the Military – Industrial – Congressional Complex (MICC), U.S. force deployments, alliances, treaties and threat assessments will be shaped even more heavily than now to support the domestic politics of ever-increasing spending for the MICC…

And:

The 20 worst Military Spending on Useless projects & Weapons
The staggering amount of money available to the US Armed Forces has resulted in wasteful military spending on a grand scale and some of the worst military spending in history. As technology changes and improves, new designs in tanks, planes, weapons, and vehicles have to be developed – all of which cost huge amounts. But the military is plagued by bureaucratic inefficiency, redundancy, procurement issues, changing priorities, and a process that simply takes too long.
As a result, the last 30 years are littered with futuristic, pointless military projects that never saw a day of action. Lasers, stealth ships, high-tech tanks and guns, communications systems, even uniforms – all have been developed at massive costs, and done little to nothing to keep the nation or its armed forces safe. The most egregious, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, might top out at $1.5 trillion – more than the GDP of all but 11 countries on earth – and it’s never fired a shot.
Rampant military spending isn’t a new phenomenon, as numerous European countries during after World War II wasted staggering sums on defenses that provided no defense. But when it comes to wasting money, nobody can beat the US from the Cold War until now. Here are the most egregious examples of military spending gone haywire, from WWII until today…

And:

A Golden Age for Pentagon Waste
Ridiculous Pentagon spending may be reaching historic levels…

And:

The 10 Most Blatantly Wasteful Defense Items In The Recent $1.8 Trillion Spending Bill
…
4. Enormous non-budgeted “submarine spending fund.” This is a new fund that is meant to keep the super-expensive new nuclear missile submarine outside the normal shipbuilding budget. It’s the “National Sea-Based Deterrence Fund.” Every dollar of the submarine costs, which is a $90 billion – plus program, comes out of the Treasury, just, it will not be weighed against other Navy choices…
6. Protecting wasteful bases. Periodically, the President and Congress go through a round of base-closing to close facilities that are no longer needed. President Obama asked to start such a round, and officials thought it would save $2 billion/year but Congress would have none of it. Members of Congress hate seeing bases closed in their districts or states. Congress took the extraordinary step, not merely to refuse to start a round, but even to bar studying or considering one.
7. Mississippi’s cutter. The New York Times said it all: “Language inserted into the federal budget over the objection of the Obama administration by Senator Thad Cochran, Republican of Mississippi, directed the Coast Guard to build a $640 million National Security Cutter in Mississippi that the Coast Guard says it does not need.”
8. Maine’s destroyer. Again, the New York Times said it all: A provision “which Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, helped secure, appropriated an extra $1 billion for a Navy destroyer that is likely to be built at Bath Iron Works in her state. The Defense Department had not requested money for the additional ship in this year’s budget.”
9. The grossly excessive “Littoral Combat Ship” (LCS) program. The LCS is a Navy ship meant to be able to sail close to shore. It has had several negative reports by the GAO, and one of the newest LCSs broke down at sea in December. Nonetheless, Austal USA just announced an award within a $3.5 billion LCS contract. So the LCS program is still funded, even though the Secretary of Defense is trying to cut the program back.
10. Last but not least: Guantanamo. A recent estimate was that Guantanamo costs $454 million annually, perhaps $2.7 million per inmate.

Lastly, my personal ‘infamous’ favorites, in succint ‘detail’ :

30 Years: Future Combat Systems — Acquisition Gone Wrong
It’s hard to overstate the disastrous effect that the Future Combat Systems (FCS) program has had on Army acquisition. Meant to catapult the service toward a new generation of ground-warfare equipment, the effort instead ended up as a textbook example of roughly $18 billion in taxpayer money wasted — though there are still officials who’d like to believe some good came out of it, somehow.

30 Years: F-35 — Too Big To Fail?
The F-35 joint strike fighter, doubtlessly the single most notorious program in the history of defense acquisition, is a study in extremes…

:((

Posted by: Outraged | Mar 11 2017 22:27 utc | 67

Trump administration invokes “state secrets” in CIA torture case

On Wednesday, the Trump administration filed a brief invoking the “state secrets” privilege in an attempt to block current and former Central Intelligence Agency officials from testifying in a civil suit brought by former detainees who were subjected to torture at a secret CIA interrogation center, or “black site,” in Afghanistan.
The motion, filed by the Trump Justice Department based on an affidavit by CIA Director Mike Pompeo, also seeks to quash the release of portions of 172 internal CIA documents.
Among the CIA officials the government is seeking to shield from being forced to testify is Gina Haspel, named by President Trump to the post of deputy CIA director and confirmed by the US Senate. Haspel, a 32-year veteran of the agency, ran a CIA torture site in Thailand in 2002, during the Bush administration, where she oversaw the torture of Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, both of whom were repeatedly waterboarded.
She also gave the order in 2005 to destroy videotapes of the interrogation sessions at the Thai site.
The administration, headed by a man who boasts of his enthusiasm for torture, including waterboarding, intervened in the case of Salim v. Mitchell, which is underway in Federal District Court in Spokane, Washington under the purview of Judge Justin Quackenbush. The suit was filed in 2015 by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on behalf of Suleiman Abdullah Salim and Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud, who survived a savage regime of CIA torture, and the family of Gul Rahman, who died at the Afghan site in 2002 after being left naked and shackled to a wall in the freezing cold.

tee-rump licks the hand that beats him. he seems just a tamed sideshow act at this point.

Posted by: jfl | Mar 12 2017 1:36 utc | 69

@69 noirette, ‘The US is on a permanent war-footing to support … its economy …’
and has been since 26 july 1947. it’s just that now that the civilian (‘defense’) interstate highway system and the civilian (‘defense’) space program are ‘finished’, and less well-‘educated’ us civilians have been replaced in civilian manufacturing exported abroad, and more well-‘educated’ us civilians are being replaced in civilian design by labor imported from abroad, and ‘defense’ (aggressive warfare) has become so bloated and expensive, and all but the repressive government services have had to be cut to keep it going … only now that the president of the united states must have to stand naked.

Posted by: jfl | Mar 12 2017 1:52 utc | 71

@64 cspoleta
are you using chrome? or on an apple? others detailed what seemed to be fake dns servers from same, i.e. typed in by hand the url worked … allowing location bar completion brought up … can’t get there from here … or whatever.
i had a problem myself the other day … pc/linux/firefox … but it seemed transitory. i chalked it up to thailand’s big dic. i’ll keep an eye out in future? good idea to post hardware/software combinations when trouble perceived. says i.

Posted by: jfl | Mar 12 2017 2:00 utc | 73

Peter AU | Mar 11, 2017 3:03:36 PM | 65
india has always been a willing comprador for the west, whether its under congress party or bjp, the difference is only in degrees of subservience.
for example, india was supported by both usa and ussr during the 1962 war. the indians have never forgiven china for that humuliating defeat even tho delhi was the provocateur.
india proclaimed its devotion to murkkan ‘containment’ of china right
after the war.
ever heard of naato ?
this concept of asian nato was suggested by india way back in 2005.
the current posse of india/jp/sk/oz is already the de facto naato, they just stop short of calling it as such.
‘Nalapat’s solution to the new security problems is thus an Asian NAATO based on economics. Unlike NATO, which was set up to help contain the former Soviet Union, NAATO would not have any country as its target, unless that state attacked one of the NAATO members. Central to this theme is the linking of democracies in North America and Asia in a security relationship.
……………………
This definition automatically includes Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar in the Middle East; Australia, India, the Philippines, Singapore in South and Southeast Asia and the Pacific; Japan and South Korea in East Asia; and the US and Canada in North America. It excludes China, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Nalapat argues that those three countries could be included when they become democracies. “I have included Oman, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait, as they are on the road to democracy [sic !]
……………
This alliance would actually be beneficial to the PRC,[sic !] Nalapat said, as it would enable the moderates to keep hotheads at bay, once it became clear that an attack on Taiwan would result in a war not just with Taipei but with Washington, New Delhi and Tokyo as well.’
cheeky eh, prof nalapat !
*indians* speaking in forked tongue, chief ‘big foot’ must be turning in his grave,
hehehe
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/FC09Df02.html

Posted by: denk | Mar 12 2017 2:31 utc | 75

Thanks to those who’ve mentioned they get this or similar error message when trying to connect to Moon.

This site can’t be reached
moonofalabama.org refused to connect.
ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED

I was afraid something had been done to my iMac (running Chrome) by my friend who just pushes any old key or combinations of keys when frustrated. So, it sounds like an outside cause….
Any ideas as to what could be going on? This has come up for me since early this past week. Before then, no problems.

Posted by: jawbone | Mar 12 2017 3:18 utc | 77

jawbone | Mar 11, 2017 10:18:39 PM | 77 “Any ideas as to what could be going on?”
Google…. no don’t fuckin google it… fuck google off.
Use nothing google.

Posted by: Peter AU | Mar 12 2017 4:16 utc | 79

Jackbunny 76
Do we have to be politicly correct at this pub?

Posted by: Peter AU | Mar 12 2017 4:24 utc | 81

denk | Mar 11, 2017 11:26:38 PM | 82
You covered it well denk.
Part of the real life “Orwell 1984” is this “innocent until proven guilty”. In all things, the US empire must be considered guilty until proven innocent. If that rule is not followed, the rest of humanity will not survive.

Posted by: Peter AU | Mar 12 2017 5:19 utc | 83

I’ve just come across this gem: The Largest Empire In the History of the World
by Jeffrey Steinberg Printed in The American Almanac, August 25, 1997

In the minds of the political, industrial, and intellectual elites of the overwhelming majority of nations of the world today, there exists a deadly dangerous myth: that the British Empire has disappeared from the face of the Earth; and that Great Britain, the United Kingdom, is of little consequence in world affairs.
According to this fairy tale, Britain’s royal family is a powerless relic of days gone by, collecting its modest pension, fulfilling its ceremonial obligations, and, perhaps, drawing in a few tourist dollars, to justify its upkeep. In the extreme version of this Big Lie, today’s Britain is cast in the role of a benign force in world affairs, a “friend of the downtrodden,” and “diligent defender of human rights.”
Even the recent, shameless public displays of marital infidelities by Queen Elizabeth II’s “Baby Boomer” offspring, and the voluminous “soap opera” news coverage that they have generated, have only added to this mis-evaluation. (When dealing with hereditary monarchies, decadence can never be reliably used as an indicator of decline. Rather, it must be understood as a way of life. See, for example, 18th Century British intelligence figure Jeremy Bentham’s “In Defense of Pederasty,” the companion piece to his more widely known “In Defense of Usury.” These two documents convey an efficient definition of the monarchical-oligarchical outlook.)
In the minds of many leading world figures, including in Russia, the “enemy image” of the British Empire of old, has been replaced by that of a modern “imperial power,” the United States of America.
The authorship of both of these complementary hoaxes–the demise of the British Empire, and its replacement by the U.S.A. as the new “Great Satan”–is traceable to Britain’s own vast propaganda and intelligence apparatus, associated with such institutions as British Broadcasting Corp., Reuters News Service, the Hollinger Corp., the Tavistock Institute, the Mont Pelerin Society, Oxford and Cambridge universities, the British Commonwealth, and His Royal Highness Prince Philip’s World Wildlife Fund. With the recent enthusiastic revival of the century-old Anglo-French Entente Cordiale, French intelligence agents and propagandists have joined in the America-trashing campaign, especially inside Russia.
From Khartoum, to Moscow, to Buenos Aires, among policymakers and culture-shapers, this British-orchestrated game of historical revisionism has taken deep root. Its disorienting effect has opened the door to possibly grave and irreversible policy blunders.
Hence, this EIR strategic study.
Strategic Importance of Debunking the Myth
If the human race is to survive the coming global financial and monetary blowout, without going through a protracted New Dark Age, in which billions needlessly die, it will be necessary for the United States, Russia, and China–as the three great world powers today–to revive the World War II alliance against the British Empire, which was the cornerstone of the late U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s post-colonial strategic vision.
The first order of business of such a revived “FDR Coalition,” is to dump the International Monetary Fund (IMF) system and organize a new set of global financial and monetary agreements, based on sound principles of national banking and scientific and technological progress. These principles formed the basis for the U.S. Constitution and what came to be known, during the nineteenth century, as the American System of Political Economy.
Although neither Russia nor China ever achieved the full status of nation-statehood, there are powerful forces inside both countries today, that aspire to such a circumstance. They are potential natural allies of the United States in an anti-world government, anti-British Empire, anti-IMF concert.
To achieve that goal, the circumstances of the collapse of that Roosevelt policy must be grasped.
With the untimely death of FDR on April 12, 1945, a great moment found a little man, FDR’s successor and Winston Churchill’s willing dupe, Harry S Truman. Truman succumbed to Sir Winston’s vision of a postwar Anglo-American strategic partnership–the proverbial “British brains,” joined with “American brawn.” He approved the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, even though the Japanese emperor had sent clear signals (via the Vatican and certain reliable U.S. Office of Strategic Services personnel) that Japan was prepared to surrender, and even though American military strategists were aware that Japan had already been effectively defeated, largely through the effects of a successful U.S. naval embargo.
With Churchill’s 1947 “Iron Curtain” speech in Fulton, Missouri, the last prospects of Russian-American and Sino-American cooperation were scotched, and the Cold War was on.
Under Cold War conditions, and, as the result of the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Lord Bertrand Russell’s scheme for using thermonuclear terror (“mutually assured destruction,” or MAD) as a battering ram against the nation-state, and as a weapon for forging a one-world government, under United Nations rubric, proceeded apace.
At only one point during the Cold War era, during the John F. Kennedy Presidency, was there a glimmer of hope of the United States breaking from the Russellite paradigm. Twenty years before Ronald Reagan, President Kennedy invoked the idea of “peace through strength” and strategic defense, launched the Apollo program to put a man on the Moon, and revived facets of the American System of Political Economy, through investment tax credits, and the printing of U.S. Treasury bills, the first step in a move that, had he lived, would have likely led to a severe curtailment of the independent power of the Federal Reserve System. Kennedy paid with his life for this break with Britain and with the Russellite one-world empire. Lord Russell and British intelligence figure Sir Hugh Trevor-Roper, in 1964, launched the “British Who Killed Kennedy Committee,” the first “critique” of the Warren Commission report, to ensure that London’s hand in the JFK murder and coverup was never exposed.
With a very few exceptions, the United States, and the world, have been in an accelerated economic and cultural decline ever since the Kennedy assassination.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, bringing to an end the Cold War, defined a moment of great opportunity. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and her obedient lap-dog, U.S. President George Bush, instead accelerated the drive to implement Lord Russell’s “world government,” calling it “the new world order.” They set about imposing, upon the states of the former Warsaw Pact, IMF conditionalities, as harsh as those which spread genocide in Africa, Asia, and Ibero-America over the previous 15 years. With the 1991 “coalition” war against Iraq, the precedent was set for the final implementation of the new empire.
These plans were disrupted, however, with the 1992 election of William Jefferson Clinton as President of the United States. President Clinton, with some institutional backing, has broken the Anglo-American “special relationship,” and gotten into what Lyndon LaRouche has described as “a war and a half” with the British….
The first step is to bust up the prevailing mythology that the British Empire is a thing of the past.
Alive and prospering
The British Empire is very much alive and well today. Behind closed doors at such locations as Chatham House, the London headquarters of the Royal Institute for International Affairs (RIIA), blueprints for the consolidation of one-world empire, drawing upon the resources of the British Commonwealth and the United Nations Organization (UNO), have already been drawn up, and construction is under way.
The fact that the most powerful nations on Earth (not including the British Empire, which is not a nation)–the United States; a temporarily impaired, but thermonuclear-armed Russia; and China–have, so far, stood impotent in the face of IMF diktats, and made no effort to prevent the formation of the World Trade Organization, the “third leg” of the United Nations world financial dictatorship, illustrates the extent to which supranational world government is already a reality.
The United Kingdom itself has very little to do with the new British Empire. England, Scotland, Wales, and, especially, Northern Ireland, are today little more than slave plantations and social engineering laboratories, serving the needs of a collection of families, numbering no more than 3,000-5,000 people, who live and work in and around the City of London, a one-mile-square financial and corporate district, which represents the greatest concentration of financial power ever assembled in one location.
These families constitute a financier oligarchy; they are the power behind the Windsor throne. They view themselves as the heirs to the Venetian oligarchy, which infiltrated and subverted England from the period 1509-1715, and established a new, more virulent, Anglo-Dutch-Swiss strain of the oligarchic system of imperial Babylon, Persia, Rome, and Byzantium.
Among their own ranks, these financier oligarchs refer to themselves as the Club of the Isles, after the original “Prince of the Isles,” Edward Albert (King Edward VII), the son of Queen Victoria, who orchestrated the Crimean War, the Opium Wars, the Russo-Japanese War, and World War I, to consolidate Britain as the primus inter pares (first among equals) of the European monarchies and feudal families. The Club of the Isles, under the direction of the British monarchy, draws in resources and personalities from the Netherlands, Switzerland, France, Germany, and Italy, and orchestrates the actions of a caste of terminally Anglophilic Americans, typified by Henry Kissinger and former President George Bush.
To begin to understand the breadth and scope of the British Empire today, it is necessary to look first at the British Commonwealth, as the Club of the Isles is itself looking at it.
In 1995, the RIIA published Discussion Paper 60, by Katharine West, titled “Economic Opportunities for Britain and the Commonwealth.” West, an Australian professor and business consultant on retainer with Chatham House, made a compelling case, that the 52 nations that comprise the British Commonwealth have the potential to dominate every regional economic bloc in the world, from the Group of 77, to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), to the Organization of African Unity (OAU), to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and, even the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The Commonwealth, which includes one of every three nations on this planet, comprises the largest single voting bloc in the UN General Assembly, making the Warsaw Pact at the height of Soviet Russian power, pale by comparison (see Figure 1).
The City of London dominates the world’s speculative markets (see (Table 1). A tightly interlocking group of corporations, involved in raw materials extraction, finance, insurance, transportation, and food production, controls the lion’s share of the world market, and exerts virtual “choke point” control over world industry.
In a recent column in the Club of the Isles’ flagship publication, the London Times, Washington, D.C. Sunday Times bureau chief James Adams candidly admitted that the banking houses in the City of London are now laundering $400 billion per annum in illegal narcotics profits. The British Commonwealth subsumes many of the world’s most notorious flight-capital and hot-money havens. The Mont Pelerin Society, the radical-free market secret organization founded in 1947 by Friedrich von Hayek, and patronized today by Prince Philip, maintains the most accurate accounting ledgers on the world’s underground economy. How is that possible? Because the Club of the Isles, since the era of the Opium Wars against China, and the escapades of Lord Palmerston’s personal agent Giuseppe Mazzini in the last century, has been the leading sponsor and controller of global organized crime.
The importance of Club of the Isles control over organized crime cannot be understated. Lord William Rees-Mogg, a life peer in the House of Lords, a former editor-in-chief of the London Times, and British intelligence’s current chief case officer for the propaganda war against U.S. President Clinton, has written recently that the world is moving into a post-industrial “Third Wave” paradigm, which will see the erosion of nation-states, and their replacement by a form of one-world “electronic feudalism.” In Rees-Mogg’s Brave New World, only 5% of the population, the “cognitive elite” or what he calls the “Brain Lords,” will prosper and enjoy the fruits of modern technology. The vast majority of peoples of the world are doomed to a life of misery.
To prevent social unrest under these brutal conditions, the British financier oligarchy has gone to great lengths, since the Kennedy assassination, to foster a drug-rock-sex counterculture, that creates, in the words of Aldous Huxley, as “a concentration camp of the mind.” From the ranks of that counterculture, Prince Philip, his World Wildlife Fund, and its “1,001 Club” adjunct, have recruited a radical environmentalist movement, a neo-pagan gang like the Hitler Youth of the 1920s.
To achieve world empire, as Prince Philip has admitted, 80% of the world population must be eliminated within two generations. Over 4 billion people are to die to realize the Windsor/Club of the Isles New Dark Age!
Treat this report as a combat manual for a war against the British Empire. The survival of all nations, and billions of human beings, depends on victory over this new empire, and that victory begins with knowledge of the nature of the enemy.

Posted by: ProPeace | Mar 12 2017 7:38 utc | 85

Update on False ‘Russia Disinformation’ Story Promulgated By Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister
https://www.newcoldwar.org/update-false-russia-disinformation-story-promulgated-canadas-foreign-affairs-minister/
And note the Tass link appended also quoting Russian Foreign Affairs official Zakharova:
“Moreover, according to the information that we have, Canada has begun to supply the Ukrainian military with ammunition that is sure to be delivered to the conflict-zone,’ the Russian diplomat pointed out. ‘The Canadians should realize that the consequences of such steps will be on their conscience.”
It would be if the Canadian media bothered to report it. Instead we get endless virulent, outrageous Russophobia:
Russia’s Coming Attack on Canada
http://macleans.ca/news/world/russias-coming-attack-on-canada
“The smear job on Chrystia Freeland is only the start..”

Posted by: John Gilberts | Mar 12 2017 8:04 utc | 87

The Empire never relents and admits, nothing … in a just world Cambodia would be receiving $Billions USD in reparations.
First saw this on a twisted self-serving propaganda piece on VOA … this isn’t getting any MSM, ‘air’. Here’s something a little more omission free, from AUS:

Fury in Cambodia as US asks to be paid back hundreds of millions in war debts
The Sydney Morning Herald – ‎Mar 10, 2017‎
Half a century after United States B-52 bombers dropped more than 500,000 tonnes of explosives on Cambodia’s countryside Washington wants the country to repay a $US500 million ($662 million) war debt. The demand has prompted expressions of indignation and outrage from Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh…
The bombings drove hundreds of thousands of ordinary Cambodians into the arms of the Khmer Rouge, an ultra-Marxist organisation which seized power in 1975 and over the next four years presided over the deaths of more than almost two million people through starvation disease and execution.
The debt started out as a US$274 million loan mostly for food supplies to the then US-backed Lon Nol government but has almost doubled over the years as Cambodia refused to enter into a re-payment program…

Posted by: Outraged | Mar 12 2017 15:36 utc | 89

@ Posted by: jfl | Mar 11, 2017 11:19:54 PM | 80
@ Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Mar 12, 2017 11:48:19 AM | 90
Hm, … now also having persistent trouble ‘reviewing’, posting or even opening or refreshing pages for more than ~16 hours now.
Use multiple/alternate non-poisoned Secure DNS, in non 14-Eyes host nations. Comms is via multi-tunnel secure VPNs hosted & exiting in non 14-Eyes host nations. High bandwidth/speed/reliability connection/s (including alternate means). Have tested on alternate physical comms, service provider & devices. Symptoms persist. So not caused at my endpoint or services/routers/devices utilized … Issues persist with MOA, only …
Beginning to suspect possible DDOS on MOA (ProPornOT paranoid?) or is it merely recurring issues with Typepad hosting/access … very, hmmm ?

Posted by: Outraged | Mar 12 2017 16:52 utc | 91

History matters! as Outraged writes in other thread.
USA. Besides agression towards outsiders, > other countries, etc. (long horrific history…) What will see the end of USA hegemony is, amongst other things set aside for now, a punitive, controlling, and conquering ideology within the USA itself.
While all the historical native inhabitants were ‘genocided’, by European colonialists, and the slaves brought in for farming and other (Chinese, the Blacks, etc.) the PTB simply cannot stop violent and repressive measures all over the board, following that old model, including at home. US cohesion reached a ‘peak’ in say 1970 or around (Vietnam left out) at an economic apogee, having a huge slice of world GDP, per capita income, etc. At that point a sort of scrappy ‘love for all’, manifested in the ‘hippies’ and re-distributive policies. All was golden – the 1980 photos are rather yellow and sparkle – and internal quarrels were not taken very seriously.
As soon as the shoe pinched a little, repression, cruelty, discrimination (not only ‘racist’), etc. hit the road hard. The war on drugs, the prison industry, the repression of Unions/labor, the lowering of salaries, the grip of Corporations who were given free reign, the Med-Pharma-Insurance industry that went all out for profits in a cruel fashion, Big Agri, etc.
Sadism was unleashed on the land, to put it extravagantly.
Whereas before the ideology of the ‘free-market rogue’ profit making was still tempered by some ‘community’ criteria, opposition, rational economic argument, group scepticism.
The end point is that internally about half the population is considered rubbish to be gotten rid of, corralled, imprisoned, tortured, etc. Different factions disagree about who exactly these are. Trump made a vague stab at national solidarity, mostly by using the old tactic of blaming invaders outside or from the outside, Muslims and Mexicans (making it short.)
This is of course just one aspect.

Posted by: Noirette | Mar 12 2017 17:27 utc | 93

Posted by: Outraged | Mar 12, 2017 1:15:05 PM | 92
North Korea (and some South Koreans the MSM can’t find) think Former President Park is a US stooge. The Yankees didn’t like South Korea’s Sunshine Policy of friendly SK-NK engagement and co-operation.
If North Korea says she’s a US stooge then she’s a US stooge.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunshine_Policy

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Mar 12 2017 18:31 utc | 95

@ Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Mar 12, 2017 2:31:01 PM | 95
Well, then, this poster finds oneself agreeing with Evil™ NK and ~96%(?) dissident ‘deplorable(?)’ SKs 😉

In 2016, it emerged that Park Geun-hye, President of South Korea since 2013, has been sharing national security documents with Choi Soon-sil, whose father Choi Tae-min was a cult-leading, pseudo-religious figure. This lead to suggestions that she was a puppet leader. A November 2016 poll found her popularity was below 4%.[1] In spite of millions of Koreans regularly protesting against her leadership, she refused to resign, and was subsequently, impeached.
Election rigging
“Park benefited from the Korean National Intelligence Service’s unlawful rigging of the election in her favor. It hired “trolls” to set up numerous fake Twitter accounts to create the illusion of widespread public support for Park.”[2]
Media silence
“The Chosun Papers (the country’s largest daily), had likely been aware of critical components of the scandal all along, and simply kept quiet. Critics perceived this as a deliberate attempt by the media to execute its own master plan for puppeteering Park.”[2]
References: (1) and (2)

Her father and fellow general’s were installed in a CIA sponsored/managed(?) coup, that conveniently toppled South Korea’s first genuinely democratic government, how very ubiquitous! It’s candidly referenced in JFKs tapes & declassified docu. The head of KCIA which assassinated her ‘Dictator father Hero‘ in ’79 openly testified he did ‘it’ with the advance support and consent of the CIA Station Chief and the US Ambassador. Agree re the ‘Sunshine Policy’. Like father like daughter ?
Sth Korea is today what Sth Vietnam, had it not regained sovereignty yet somehow continued to exist, would have become, an occupied & suborned corrupt militarized dagger perpetually threatening Nth Korea and China, IMV. Exporting ‘Freedom & Democracy’, my ass!
Some interesting observations & perspectives in that NK piece you linked earlier, cheers.

Posted by: Outraged | Mar 12 2017 19:41 utc | 97

62 noirette
Just how many are there? OPM hack got 21.5 million names. They are not all spooks and goons, but they are all militarized. The twin towers had businesses (and spooks)that were perpetrating the policies of economic warfare, and I suggest they were militarized and were legit targets (although I don’t believe the official story line). Total spectrum domination and bondage to them means we’re all targets or tools.
“I cannot tell a lie. Mistakes were made, but use of ladders did not happen without permission. At some point it was determined that it was a failed tree and a decision was made to ‘just pull it’. The remaining cherries is a small number, about four or five.”
Thanks b and end all, good health as the season changes.

Posted by: failure of imagination | Mar 13 2017 5:50 utc | 99