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Dick Cheney: Still attempting reality creation

Gary Leupp
Counterpunch
Mon, 23 Jun 2014 12:05 UTC
Cheney
© na
What Megyn Kelly should have asked

The former vice president got his comeuppance on Fox News last Wednesday, producing a minor news story.

Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz had published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal advocating renewed U.S. military involvement in Iraq to prevent a seizure of power by the al-Qaeda spin-off ISIS (or ISIL) and opining, "Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many."

Citing this comment, Fox anchor Megyn Kelly unexpectedly snapped, "But time and time again, history has proven that you got it wrong as well sir." She referred specifically to the false accusation about weapons of mass destruction used to sell the Iraq War. A flustered Cheney fumbled his interrogator's name ("Reagan, um, Megyn") before declaring, "You've got to go back and look at the track record." (As though Megyn were doing something other than precisely that.) "We inherited a situation where there was no doubt in anybody's mind about the extent of Saddam's involvement in weapons of mass destruction ... Saddam Hussein had a track record that nearly everybody agreed to."

In other words, the unfortunately mistaken but universal belief in Saddam's WMD preceded the Bush-Cheney administration, was part of its heritage but in no way its invention. Everybody was honestly mistaken. Thus he utterly rejects personal responsibility for crediting, promoting it, and using it to justify a war he badly wanted.

He is lying, of course. There had been much skepticism towards the Bush-Cheney claims. I for one was convinced by a talk I attended by former weapons inspector Scott Ritter that it was unlikely Saddam retained any usable WMDs. And by the embarrassing episode in January 2003, when George W. Bush falsely asserted that Iraq had sought to buy uranium from Niger (only to be refuted by the IAEA almost immediately, when the documents Bush had cited were revealed as crude forgeries).
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Quenelle

Russian PM Medvedev: Ukrainian leadership responsible for country's crisis


Voice of Russia
Tue, 24 Jun 2014 11:51 UTC
Medvedev
© RIA Novosti/Ekaterina ShtukinaAre we living in an alternate universe, where politicians tell the truth? Russian leaders, at least, like Medvedev (above), Lavrov, and Putin seem to support such a hypothesis!
All Ukrainian leaders, former and current, are responsible for the current events taking place in the country, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said. "We cannot but be alarmed by the events happening there. And what is happening there? Unfortunately, it is virtually a civil war," Medvedev said at a meeting with regional assets of the United Russia party.

"In my point of view, unfortunately, the main blame for what is happening in Ukraine today, is on those, who made decisions, how Ukraine itself should develop and how to create the state," the prime minister said, Interfax reports.

Medvedev said he did not refer to certain individuals in this case.

"So all Ukrainian leaders are responsible for what is happening in Ukraine today. Former and current ones. And those, who instigated the events in Kiev and assisted revolts which took place in early 2014, have a considerable share of responsibility as well," he said.


Comment: Diplomacy-speak translation: The Americans.

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Windsock

5 reasons why Hillary won't run

Tom Bevan
Real Clear Politics
Tue, 17 Jun 2014 00:00 UTC
Hillary Clinton
© abcnews.go.comHillary Clinton, 2016 Will she or won't she?
Hillary Clinton's minions are hard at work assembling a political machine and fine tuning it for another go at the White House. Mrs. Clinton is doing her part preparing for a run as well, churning out a bland memoir about the "hard choices" she faced as secretary of state and coyly positioning herself (again) as the inevitable nominee of the party. But after the troubled beginning to her book tour, we're beginning to see the reasons why Hillary may eventually decide to pull the plug on a 2016 presidential run. Here are five:

1) She's just not that good at campaigning. If the last two gaffe-prone weeks have reminded us of anything about Hillary, it's that she's a mediocre politician at best. Her shortcomings are significant: she can be stiff and wooden in public; she lacks the aura of a natural politician; she's not a great public speaker, and she can come across as politically flat-footed and tone deaf -- as she did with her "dead broke" response to a rather benign question about relating to the financial challenges of the average voter. People still seem to believe that the Clinton name is synonymous with political skill, but that assumption is only half-true: If Hillary possessed even half of Bill's political talent and acumen, she wouldn't have lost to Barack Obama in 2008.

Comment: The above are all good points, but let's face it - - Hillary is already running. To not do so, she has to quit running. Flaws? Strengths? So what. Look at the last two who were elected! The American public will have to dispel their mass illusion and see the sham our elections are to know it doesn't matter who the nominee is or for whom they vote. On some level it has already been decided and chances are the world will not be the better for it.

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2 + 2 = 4

Russian Foreign Ministry: EU should stop calling SE Ukraine residents 'pro-Russian separatists'


Voice of Russia
Tue, 24 Jun 2014 11:35 UTC
Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
© Flickr.com/Pepijn Schmitz/cc-by-nc-sa 3.0Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs reprimands EU for being pathological liars.
It is time for the European Union to stop calling the people of southeastern Ukraine "separatists," said the Russian Foreign Ministry in a statement on its website. "The EU still prefers to brand the population of southeastern Ukraine as 'pro-Russian separatists' and leave all our explanations unnoticed, Russia has repeatedly explained the purpose behind a number of our armed forces being near the Russian-Ukrainian border," the document said.

"We consider the persistent attempts by Brussels to punish the residents of Crimea and Sevastopol, for their fair and clear declaration in a referendum on the peninsula's fate, to be absolutely unacceptable," the Foreign Ministry said in regard to a Council of Europe statement on Ukraine passed on June 23, Interfax reports.

"If the EU is indeed interested in playing a serious positive role in resolving the Ukrainian crisis, it is time to start reconsidering its approach. It needs to adapt to the real situation and not fear inertia within the EU," the Russian Foreign Ministry said.


Comment: Good luck convincing a gang of psychopaths to face reality!


The Ministry described the statements adopted at the Council of the European Union on June 23 biased as far from reality. "Moscow has pointed out the 'conclusions' on the situation in Ukraine adopted at the session of the Council of the European Union on June 23," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a report posted on its website on Tuesday.

"We have to state again that the evaluations given by Brussels of events in Ukraine and the continuing silence on facts that are 'inconvenient' for the European Union are biased, politically motivated and far from reality and the accusations made against Russia are ungrounded, if not clearly falsified," the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

Comment: The Russian Foreign Ministry should read Political Ponerology. Psychopaths lie constantly, and the idiots running the show in the EU, U.S. and Kiev are no exception.

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Bell

Extreme inequality: The American people need to know they are being cheated, they need to get angry

Paul Buchheit
Commondreams.org
Mon, 16 Jun 2014 11:31 UTC
Image
© Light Brigading/cc/flickr
Examples of extreme inequality are becoming easier to find. Progressive leaders have us thinking about revolution. If a revolution is to take place, Americans - especially young Americans - need to know the facts, and they need to know how they're getting cheated, and they need to get angry. The following should help.

1. $1,000,000,000,000,000 in Sales. Not One Cent for Sales Tax

The trading volume on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) reached an incomprehensible $1 quadrillion in notional value in 2012. That's a thousand trillion dollars. In comparison, the entire U.S. GDP is $17 trillion.

On that quadrillion dollars of sales CME imposes transfer fees, contract fees, brokerage fees, Globex fees, clearing fees, and contract surcharges, many of them on both the buyer's and seller's side. As a result, the company had a profit margin higher than any of the top 100 companies in the nation from 2008 to 2010, and it's gotten even higher since then.

But not a penny in sales tax for the taxpayers who provide publicly-funded infrastructure, technology, systems of law, and security to help them process billions of financial transactions.

Comment: See Money as Credit for details on the origins of money.

See also:
SOTT Talk Radio: Interview with 'Web of Debt' author Ellen Brown - How the banking system controls the world

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Airplane

Drones pose serious threat to commercial air traffic! Close encounters with passenger aircraft increasing and FAA unable to handle problem

Craig Whitlock
The Washington Post
Mon, 23 Jun 2014 00:00 UTC
research team carry drone
© Eric Gay/Associated PressMembers of a research team at Texas A&M University at Corpus Christi carry a drone following a test flight near Sarita, Tex.
On the same day last month, airline pilots trying to land at two of the nation's busiest airports got on their radios to report the unnerving sight of small rogue drones buzzing at high altitudes.

In the first incident on May 29, the pilot of a commercial airliner descending toward LaGuardia Airport saw what appeared to be a black drone with a 10-to-15-foot wingspan about 5,500 feet above Lower Manhattan, according to a previously undisclosed report filed with the Federal Aviation Administration.

In the second, two airliners separately approaching Los Angeles International Airport soared past what they described as a drone or remote-controlled aircraft the size of a trash can at an altitude of 6,500 feet, FAA records show.

The records do not name the airlines involved or say how close the aircraft came to the drones when they flew past. FAA officials said their inspectors could not track down the unregistered drones or determine who was flying them. "In many cases, radar data is not available and the operators cannot be identified," the agency said in a statement.
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USA

Crimean officials say EU decision to ban imports was made under US influence and will have no effect on Crimean economy


The Voice of Russia
Tue, 24 Jun 2014 06:27 UTC
acting Crimean Head Sergei Aksyonov
© russ-edin.orgSergei Aksyonov
Sanctions against Crimea deprive EU countries of the opportunity to work in the local market and profit from it, acting Crimean Head Sergei Aksyonov said.

"They deprived themselves of markets to sell their products and of the opportunity to participate in investment program of Crimea," Aksyonov told reporters in Simferopol on Tuesday.

The stance of the European Union, which banned imports from Crimea and Sevastopol, is not constructive, Aksyonov said.

"It is a dead-end stance to punish citizens for the opinion on what country they should be in," he said.

The EU decision to ban imports from Crimea was made under US influence, Aksyonov said. "General agitation over Crimea's accession to Russia has calmed down in the EU. As far as I understand in this case the US authorities push this stance," he said.

Crimea's accession to Russia is irreversible, he said.
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Black Magic

Monsanto: The complete history of the world's most evil corporation

E Hanzai
Global Research
Sun, 22 Jun 2014 06:28 UTC
Of all the mega-corps running amok, Monsanto has consistently outperformed its rivals, earning the crown as "most evil corporation on Earth!" Not content to simply rest upon its throne of destruction, it remains focused on newer, more scientifically innovative ways to harm the planet and its people.

Monsanto founders
© UnknownThe company is founded by John Francis Queeny, a member of the Knights of Malta, a thirty year pharmaceutical veteran married to Olga Mendez Monsanto, for which Monsanto Chemical Works is named.
1901: The company is founded by John Francis Queeny, a member of the Knights of Malta, a thirty year pharmaceutical veteran married to Olga Mendez Monsanto, for which Monsanto Chemical Works is named. The company's first product is chemical saccharin, sold to Coca-Cola as an artificial sweetener.

Even then, the government knew saccharin was poisonous and sued to stop its manufacture but lost in court, thus opening the Monsanto Pandora's Box to begin poisoning the world through the soft drink.
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Calculator

Summary of US vs Syria: How to lose a war in 3 years

Tony Cartalucci
The Land Destroyer
Tue, 24 Jun 2014 05:59 UTC
Syrian army
© Unknown
The government in Damascus and the Syrian Arab Army have begun restoring order across the country after over 3 years of devastating fighting. The so-called "capital of the revolution," the city of Homs, has been reclaimed by government forces and people have begun returning home. A recent election carried out across Syria and throughout expatriated Syrian communities around the world portrayed widespread support for the government in Damascus and more over, the idea of Syria as a nation itself.

It is becoming increasingly difficult for the West to prolong recognizing the obvious, that the Syrian government has prevailed. In a recent TIME Magazine article titled, "In Syria, Victory is Written in Ruin," it admits:
Defying expectations that he would be the next domino to fall in the Arab Spring's chute of regional dictators, Assad stands stronger than ever. His military, augmented by fighters from the Lebanon-based Shi'ite militia Hizballah, funded in part by Iran and armed with Russian weapons and ammunition, has consolidated control over a strategic corridor connecting the capital, Damascus, to the coast.
TIME then attempts to make excuses as to why Syrians support the government. The article claims:
...the war's toll has more and more Syrians turning, reluctantly, toward the regime. Not because they support Assad but because they are desperate to return to some semblance of normal life.
But perhaps the most deliberate distortion TIME makes is its revision of how the war unfolded in the first place. It claims:
For the rebel brigades and exiled opposition leaders, the involvement of extremist groups was an unfortunate stain on an otherwise pure uprising against tyranny. To the regime, it was proof of a foreign-funded scheme to destabilize Syria.
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Quenelle

The disconnect of the elite: Hillary claims she and Bill were 'dead broke' when they left the White House

Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse Blog
Mon, 23 Jun 2014 05:52 UTC
Hillary Clinton
© John Thys/AFP
During a recent interview with Diane Sawyer, Hillary Clinton claimed that Bill and her were "dead broke" when they left the White House. And then on Sunday, Hillary told the Guardian that they are not "truly well off" despite having earned about a hundred million dollars since leaving the White House and owning a couple of luxury homes. This is yet another shocking example of how disconnected our political elite have become to the rest of the American people. Perhaps Hillary Clinton is not "truly well off" when compared to some of the ultra-wealthy individuals that she rubs shoulders with at Democratic fundraisers, but according to numbers provided by the Social Security Administration, the Clintons would easily be in the top 0.01% of all income earners in America since leaving the White House. So was Hillary Clinton joking, or is she really this out of touch with ordinary Americans?
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