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75% of Americans say Iraq War was not worth the cost


RT
Tue, 24 Jun 2014 03:25 UTC
Marines in front of Hussein's palace, Iraq
© rt.com
U.S. Marines of the 1st LAR based in Camp Pendleton, CA, occupy Saddam Hussein's presidential palace in northern Iraq, Tekrit 2003.
As the insurgency in Iraq threatens the stability of the Shiite-led government there, only 18 percent of Americans think the Iraq War was worth the costs, according to a new poll.

The CBS/New York Times poll asked if the costs of the Iraq invasion, including monetary and loss of American lives, were worth it. A record 75 percent of those surveyed said that it wasn't worth the costs, up from 67 percent in November 2011 (just before the final withdrawal of US troops) and 45 percent in August 2003, five months after the invasion began.

"Our 2003 invasion of Iraq should be a warning that military force sometimes transforms a genuine problem into something worse. The war claimed 4,500 American lives and, according to a mortality study published in a peer-reviewed American journal, 500,000 Iraqi lives," Nicholas Kristoff wrote in a New York Times op-ed. "Linda Bilmes, a Harvard expert in public finance, tells me that her latest estimate is that the total cost to the United States of the Iraq war will be $4 trillion."

The survey released Monday found that 63 percent of Republicans and 79 percent each of independents and Democrats didn't think the war was worth the cost.

Comment: What was that definition of insanity...doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Ya know, once you put your combat boot in the door...it's like being just a little bit pregnant.

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Hardhat

Cracks in the alliance? Austria weighs EU exceptions to speed up South Stream gas flow from Russia


RT
Mon, 23 Jun 2014 20:19 UTC
South Stream pipeline
© Agence France-Presse
Gerhard Roiss, CEO of energy group OMV AG
The South Stream gas pipeline project is too important for the EU to be "put on ice", the head of Austrian energy group OMV, Gerhard Roiss, stressed, even speaking of possible European law exceptions for Gazprom in order to speed up negotiations.

In an interview with the WirtschaftsBlatt newspaper, Roiss said that it's unrealistic to suggest that Austria, which receives a third of its gas from Gazprom, and Europe as a whole, would be able to cope without Russian supplies.

"If we can obtain large amounts of gas from a particular region, then we need to give investors the chance to build gas highways," he explained. "Negotiations for South Stream should therefore be accelerated, but not put on ice."

The South Stream project must "undoubtedly" comply with European Law, but "there can be exceptions in some areas," Roiss added.

According to the OMV chief, it's up to Gazprom to negotiate those "exceptions" with the European Union authorities.

Roiss was speaking ahead of Vladimir Putin's visit to Vienna on Tuesday, which would see OMV and Gazprom signing a deal on bringing the South Stream gas pipeline to Austria as was agreed in April.

Comment: Austria seems to be taking a realistic view of its needs as a country, and appears to be positioning itself to make a deal with Russia's Gazprom, regardless of what the EU thinks.

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Stormtrooper

Massachusetts SWAT sued for refusing to release records, claiming they are a private entity despite public funding


RT
Wed, 25 Jun 2014 19:30 UTC
Image
© Reuters / Jessica Rinaldi
SWAT teams enter a suburban neighborhood to search an apartment for the remaining suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings in Watertown, Massachusetts April 19, 2013.
The American Civil Liberties Union released a report on Tuesday about the increasing militarization of the country's police departments. The Massachusetts chapter has sued a Baystate SWAT team agency for refusing to release records for the report.

The national ACLU report, called 'War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing', looked at the use of SWAT teams in law enforcement, especially when it comes to drug raids. Created in the late 1960s as "quasi-militaristic" units designed to handle emergency situations such as riots, hostage scenarios and active shooter situations, the number of SWAT squads have since surged, and are "used with greater frequency and, increasingly, for purposes for which they were not originally intended - overwhelmingly to serve search warrants in drug investigations," according to the report.

The report examined 818 SWAT operations from July 2010 to last October, which were conducted by more than 20 law enforcement agencies in 11 states.

The ACLU of Massachusetts (ACLUM) also released a report on the agencies in the commonwealth.
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Brick Wall

Convicted of nothing: Canadian police records ruin innocent lives

Robert Cribb
The Toronto Star
Sun, 22 Jun 2014 18:39 UTC
Image
© Bernard Weil/Toronto Star
Ellen Richardson was prevented from going on a March of Dimes organized cruise because a U.S. border agent said she was hospitalized for mental health issues in 2012.
Routine release of police data on people convicted of nothing is undermining careers, volunteer work and travel to the U.S. for hundreds of thousands of innocent Canadians

Andrew's career-limiting moment of humiliation unfolded in front of a distinguished colleague in the security line at Pearson International Airport. The 42-year-old Toronto area businessman was on his way to a prestigious trade conference in the United States last year that promised valuable networking opportunities for his construction firm. He'd prepared for months.

But it was all about to be undermined thanks to a minor contact with a police officer 24 years earlier that torpedoed the biggest business trip of his career and continues to compromise his professional credibility and prospects. Together with a senior industry executive who invited Andrew to attend the conference, the two men entered the U.S. customs area together for the flight to Las Vegas. Andrew, whose name is being withheld to protect from further repercussions, would never pass through.

He is among thousands of Canadians whose names are captured in massive police databases - accessible to U.S. border authorities - despite having never been convicted of a crime, an ongoing Star investigation has found. The specific reason behind his detainment left him stunned.

Comment: "Power is not a means; it is an end." George Orwell

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Sheeple

How the Iraq War launched the modern era of political BS

Chris Mooney
Mother Jones
Wed, 25 Jun 2014 06:00 UTC
Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush, and Dick Cheney
© Cherie A. Thurlby/Wikimedia Commons
War criminals Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush, and Dick Cheney
Factual divides over whether Iraq had WMD, and whether Saddam was working with Osama, set the stage for today's battles over reality.

That queasy sensation of déjà vu you're experiencing is understandable. With Iraq back in the news, and Paul Wolfowitz and Bill Kristol on TV sounding off about the situation, there's every reason to worry that a new wave of misinformation is on the way.

There is no debate that the Iraq War was sold to the American public with a collection of claims that ended up being proved false. Iraq was said to have weapons of mass destruction, but this wasn't the case. Advocates for the war insinuated that Saddam Hussein was colluding with Al Qaeda and was somehow involved in the 9/11 attacks. That, too, was false.

Yet many Americans (and some of their leaders) still believe this stuff. It's a tragedy, but it's also a kind of natural experiment in misinformation, its origins, and its consequences. And since 2003 social scientists, psychologists, and pollsters have been busy examining why false beliefs like these are embraced even in the face of irrefutable evidence - and what impact this sort of disinformation has on American political discourse.

The resulting research shows that the Iraq War looks like an early version of a current phenomenon: the right wing rooting its stances in simple untruths about the world (see climate change). So here's a quick trip through some of the ground-breaking scholarship on how the Iraq war polarized the US public over the acceptance of basic facts:

Comment: The false beliefs don't stop with the Republicans. How many Democrats still believe Obama is "Change We Can Believe In"?

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Binoculars

No justice: Microsoft lawyer says future is 'bleak' because of NSA surveillance


RT
Wed, 25 Jun 2014 00:00 UTC
Stop_spying
© Reuters/Larry Downing
Microsoft's top lawyer doesn't see much reason to be optimistic going forward if the National Security Agency doesn't stop its bulk collection of private data, pointing to a "bleak future" and a lack of justice and accountability.

Speaking at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC on Tuesday, Microsoft's executive vice president and general counsel Brad Smith urged Congress and the White House to end "the unfettered collection of bulk data," criticizing the NSA and the whole surveillance court system as secretive, uninterested in a duty to "promote justice" and painting a pessimistic view of the coming decades.

"I want law enforcement to do its job in an effective way pursuant to the rule of law," he said, according to the CNET. "If we can't get to that world, then law enforcement is going to have a bleak future anyway."

Although the debate around individual privacy has been a conversation that reaches far back into the United States' past, Smith said the rapidly advancing nature of technology means it's imperative to set surveillance boundaries as soon as possible, especially as the world becomes increasingly interconnected.

"By the end of this decade there will be 50 billion devices connected to the Internet of Things around the world," he added. "This issue is going to become more important, not less."

Comment: There are reports that major corporations are in bed with spying agencies despite the occasional cry for Justice. Is it for Justice or simple damage control?.

Damage Control? Microsoft Inc, whose collaboration with the NSA was exposed earlier this year, to 'encrypt its Internet traffic' because it 'suspects' NSA is spying on it

Hypocrisy much? Government snitches Google and Microsoft call for government to be more transparent

Microsoft caught up in fresh privacy storm

UK gov. plans switch from Microsoft to open source

Microsoft Intercepting and Censoring Chats in Windows Live Messenger

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War Whore

Disinformation Nation: The media is dominated by shills and war criminals

Donn Marten
OpEdNews
Wed, 25 Jun 2014 14:12 UTC
Dick Cheney
© youtube
Dick Cheney on "This Week"
With all that is currently going on with the Obama regime's continuation of the neocon war on the world - Iraq, Iran, Ukraine, Syria, Nigeria, Russia and the ongoing government war on civil liberties in The Homeland it was wholly expected that this past weekend's Sunday morning propaganda shows would feature a spectacular upchucking of bullshit to sell to the masses in the upcoming week. The major television networks and selected cable "news" titans certainly didn't fail as they trotted out a parade of fiends and war criminals with the heavyweights being right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu and arguably the greatest mass murderer in the history of the United States Dick Cheney for tour de force performances that will reverberate through the war machine echo chamber for days.
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Heart - Black

Norway plans to criminalize begging - fines and up to 3 months in prison


RT
Wed, 25 Jun 2014 20:13 UTC
Image
© Reuters/Sergey Karpukin
Norway, one of the richest countries in the world, plans to introduce a ban on begging. More than 60 percent of the population say it should be considered a crime. Beggars would face fines and up to 3 months in prison.

If adopted, the new law will allow local municipalities to introduce an immediate ban on begging and will take effect nationally by summer 2015, the Financial Times (FT) reports.

The idea follows a poll showing that two-thirds of Norwegians equate begging to a crime as the majority of beggars are not Norwegians. According to a government-commissioned report from the Nova research institute there are up to 1,000 foreign beggars among the country's 5 million population.

"In the past few years we have seen an increase in beggars in many cities and towns in Norway and we have a deep concern for the association between the flow of beggars from outside Norway and organized criminality," the FT quotes Himanshu Gulati, State Secretary at the Justice Ministry and a member of the populist Progress Party.

Comment: "Pathocracy is a form of a totalitarian government created by a small pathological mentality minority that takes control over a society or group of normal people. It has various forms, but it usually tends to attach itself to any fair system under the disguise of a democracy and pretends to offer a solution or improvement. With time, these systems eventually get corrupted and perverted carrying little resemblance of the original idea or objective. Here are some of the characteristics of pathocracy:
  • fanatical ideology/excessive, unfairness and rigid laws legislation/rule by force or fear-mongering.
  • suppression of individualism, creativity and artistic values.
  • violation of basic human rights (eg water, food, water, shelter)
  • the power of decision making is reduced via centralization of power
  • widespread corruption/intolerance and suspicion to a point of paranoia of anyone who is different or who disagrees with the status quo.
  • secrecy within government but surveillance of the general populace.
  • an attitude of content and hypocrisy of the ruling class towards the ideology and the citizens they claim to represent.
  • controlled media domination through propaganda and use of bullying techniques and corrupted psychological reasoning such as double-talk, suppression of free speech etc.
  • extreme inequality between the richest and poorest with arbitrary divisions in the population based on class, social status or ethnicity, with lower classes to be considered as a 'human resource' and to be exploited."
Empathy & Apathy - Focus on Ponerology & Pathocracy

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Map

Mosul calm under ISIS control, for now

John Beck
VICE News
Tue, 24 Jun 2014 18:05 UTC
peshmerga isis

A peshmerga fighter points at the ISIS checkpoint on the Erbil to Mosul road.
When the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) overran Iraq's second city of Mosul, many feared sectarian massacres and brutal violence from the extremist Sunni militants. As many 500,000 people fled the city on the first day, according to the UN.

Now, many citizens have returned. Instead of imposing its extreme interpretation of Islamic law and carrying out threats of killing Shiites wherever it found them, ISIS has remained more moderate. As a result, it has found support among local residents, some of whom told VICE News that they are happy with life under their new leaders.

At the borders between Iraqi Kurdistan and the newly seized ISIS territory in Northern Iraq, Kurdish peshmerga fighters describe the militants as terrorists and are obviously uncomfortable with their new neighbors.

Nevertheless, on the road from Erbil to Mosul, things have remained quiet between the forces. It's only 500 yards from the last peshmerga position to the first ISIS checkpoint. While that's as close to Mosul as it's sensible to get for an obvious non-Iraqi with a healthy aversion to kidnapping, local residents travel easily between the two territories. Traffic flows both ways and those people going in and out say the militants manning the ISIS checkpoint aren't ruthlessly hunting down non-Sunnis. A quick glance inside and each car is waved on.

A peshmerga fighter points at the ISIS checkpoint on the Erbil to Mosul road.

Elsewhere in Iraq, ISIS-led militants are involved in heavy fighting with government forces, and south of Kirkuk it has clashed with peshmerga as well. It has also bragged about mass atrocities, posting pictures on social media channels claiming to show some of the 1,700 Shiite troops it says it has executed.

This appears to be part of an overall ISIS strategy to drag Iraq into an all-out sectarian conflict and further its goal of establishing a cross-border Sunni Islamist caliphate. But Mosul is a huge prize for ISIS, and it seems either to have been running a hearts-and-minds operation to get local residents on its side, or ceded some control to local Sunni nationalist militant groups.

Comment: It looks like ISIS is softening up the population with essential services before putting harsher laws and systems into effect (what amounts to a religious pathocracy). The U.S., in contrast, not only skipped step one in their own invasion/occupation and moved right into home invasions, mass murder, torture, and fomenting sectarian violence; they destroyed infrastructure. It will be interesting to see what ISIS does once it has some firm support.

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Document

Greedy U.S. unhappy with South Stream project will deliver Russian gas to Europe


RT
Wed, 25 Jun 2014 16:52 UTC
south stream
© AFP
This picture taken on October 31, 2013, shows workers welding pipes during the symbolic start of the construction of the Bulgarian section of Russian gas giant Gazprom's South Stream pipeline near the village of Rasovo.
The US opposes the Russian South Stream gas pipeline project because it wants to supply gas to Europe itself, President Putin said on Tuesday. He called the situation an "ordinary competitive struggle."

"They do everything to disrupt this contract. There is nothing unusual here. This is an ordinary competitive struggle. In the course of this competition, political tools are also being used," the Russian president said after holding talks with his Austrian counterpart, President Heinz Fischer, in Vienna.

"We are in talks with our contract partners, not with third parties. That our US friends are unhappy about South Stream, well, they were unhappy in 1962 too, when the gas-for-pipes project with Germany was beginning. Now they are unhappy too, nothing has changed, except the fact that they want to supply to the European market themselves," Putin stated.

Should this happen, American gas "will not be cheaper than Russian gas - pipe gas is always cheaper than liquefied gas," Putin stressed.

Russia and Austria have signed an agreement to construct the Austrian arm of the US$45 billion South Stream gas pipeline project, which is expected to deliver 32 billion cubic meters of Russian gas to the country, bypassing Ukraine.
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