Wednesday, February 03, 2016

Obama Launching Massive Military Intervention In Libya And Iraq



US military personnel deploy in Libya

We were told back in 2008 that Barack Hussein Obama would become president and would be the peacemaker and joybringer would lead the would to a golden age of harmony and prosperity. That's not quite how it turned out of course, the foreign policy disasters, economic incompetence and social divisiveness have made him undisputed holder of the Worst President Ever title.

Back in 2008 some of us tried to warn you he was a neo con puppet (those who can search the dark web with immunity - and no, it's not all goat porn, for example I found Obama was backed by really nasty neo con world domination freaks). But you ignored our wise words and now, outside its own borders The USA is almost universally hated and universally mistrusted, the superpower that supports terrorists and stabs its allies in the back.

With a year of his presidency still to run it seems Obama has not had his fill of death and misery and fancies killiing a few million more third world peasants as Information Clearing House reports:

Almost five years after the United States and its NATO allies launched a campaign in Libya to overthrow Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the United States is on the verge of massively escalating its military operations in the war-torn country. According to the New York Times, the new effort is “expected to include airstrikes and raids by elite American troops.” It is unclear how long this newest effort will last.

The announcement comes on the heels of U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter announcing combat troops were going back to Iraq last week. While U.S special forces have been conducting “clandestine reconnaissance missions in Libya to identify militant leaders and map out their networks” over the past year, the New York Times report marks the first time overt combat troops will be deployed in the North African nation.

The 2011 campaign was itself something of a bait and switch. What was originally sold as simply a no-fly zone quickly became regime change. A few weeks after the UN-sanctioned bombing of Libya’s infrastructure and air capacity, the scope of the campaign pivoted when President Obama, along with Presidents Sarkozy and Cameron of France and the UK respectively, announced the entirely new objective: NATO airstrikes, in concert with ongoing CIA support of rebels, to overthrow the Qaddafi government.

After this was quickly achieved, the pundit classes rallied to congratulate a job well done. As Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept noted Wednesday:

War advocates such as Anne-Marie Slaughter and Nicholas Kristof were writing columns celebrating their prescience and mocking war opponents as discredited, and the New York Times published a front-page article declaring: “U.S. Tactics in Libya May be a Model for Other Efforts.”

It was widely expected that Hillary Clinton, one of the leading advocates for and architects of the bombing campaign, would be regarded as a Foreign Policy Visionary for the grand Libya success: “We came, we saw, he died,” Clinton sociopathically boasted about the mob rape and murder of Qaddafi while guffawing on 60 Minutes.

Despite the fanfare at the “overthrow” of Qaddafi (who suffered a brutal death at the hands of a mob), not much has been made of the U.S. military’s slow escalation of its involvement in Libya over the past year. This time the objective, much like in Iraq after the U.S. deposed its leader, is destroying the presence of ISIS, a process that could take, in the words of former Defense Secretary Panetta, “thirty years.” And it's an escalation that has largely gone under the public's radar.


Read full article


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War On Cash Gathers Momentum - Germany Unveils Cash Controls

by Ian R Thorpe

Money laubdering: big business or a sign of bankers' paranoia

On Monday (1 February, 2016) just two days ago, Bloomberg called on the central banks of the world to “bring on a cashless future” in an Op-Ed that calls notes and coins "dirty, dangerous, unwieldy, and expensive."

We can imagine it would be quite easy to harm someone by firing large coins at them from a gun and terrorists could probably stuff an improvised explosive device with small coins rather than nails or nuts and bolts. And if somebody tried hard enough they could probably choke on a bank note. But cash dirty? No more so than the hundreds of things we must touch in public areas in the course of our daily lives. Unwieldy? Not compared to the lead boxes we will have to carry to ensure our contactless cards don't debit our accounts every time we go near a suitable reader. And expensive? Not to us, we buy an item for £$€1 and that's exactly what we pay for it.

So like me and my colleagues, you probably never thought of your cash in any of those ways, but increasingly, authorities and the powers that be seem determined to lay the groundwork for the abolition of what Bloomberg calls “antiquated” physical money.

We’ve documented the cash ban calls and moves on a number of occasions including, most recently, the one from DNB, Norway’s largest bank where executive Trond Bentestuen complained that although "there is approximately 50 billion kroner in circulation, the Norges Bank (Norway's Central Bank) can only account for 40 percent of its use."

That mean, Bentestuen says, that 60 percent of money usage is outside of any control." "We believe," he continues, "that is due to under-the-table money and laundering." He really does have limited imagination if he seriously thinks that is all people use cash for.

DNB backed up its executive by claiming that after identifying “many dangers and disadvantages” associated with cash, the bank has concluded 'it should be phased out'.

On Tuesday we got more evidence that the thieving banks around the world are preparing to create a cashless “utopia” in which systems will be implemented to enable them to plunder our hard earned to cover the disasters their reckless gamblings incurs. German finance magizine Handelsblatt reported (in a piece called "The Death of Cash) that the Social Democrats - the junior partner in Angela Merkel’s coalition government - have proposed a €5,000 limit on cash transactions and the elimination of the €500 note.

“Limits on cash transactions would discourage foreign criminals from coming here to launder money,” says a study published by the Social Democrats. "If sums over €5,000 have to pass through traceable bank transactions, laundering would be severely hampered," it adds.

Today (3 Feb, 2016), we learned via the news feeds that German Deputy Finance Minister Michael Meister had confirmed the government's support for the idea when he told reporters that Germany is proposing a pan - European ban on cash transactions over €5,000 to combat terrorism financing and money laundering.

“Since money laundering and terrorism financing are cross-border threats,” it makes sense to adopt a bloc-wide “solution”, but “if a European solution isn’t possible, Germany will move ahead on its own,” he added. Really Herr Meister. Why not just close your borders and stop criminals entering the country.

This sudden outbreak of money laundering comes at a rather convenient time for policy makers in Europe. Interest base rates are already sitting at -0.30% and are likely to be cut by an additional 10bps (one hundredths of one per cent) in March. But that’s not likely to halt the disinflationary impulse. European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi isn’t anywhere close to his inflation target and efforts to stimulate European economies have been totally ineffective.

What is needed is a revival of consumer spending and the gradual phasing out of cash is seen as a way of stripping the public of its economic autonomy. At present Central banks can only control interest rates down to a certain "lower bound". Once negative rates are passed on to depositors - as Swiss and Japanese banks have already done, for different reasons - people will have to pull their money out of the banks and spend it rather than pay the banks for gambling with it. The more negative rates go, the faster those withdrawals will be.

Ban cash and this problem is eliminated. In a cashless society with a government-managed digital currency there is no effective lower limit. If the economy isn’t doing what bureaucrats want it to do, they can simply make interest rates deeply negative, forcing would-be savers to become consumers by making them choose between spending or watching as the bank simply confiscates their money in negative interest.

As for that money laundering bollocks, if you want to know who is really behind it: US Department Of Justice helped cover up Big Banks money laundering for drug cartels


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Elsewhere: [Boggart Blog]...[Little Nicky Machiavelli]... [ Ian's Authorsden Pages ]... [Scribd]...[Wikinut] ... [ Boggart Abroad] ... [ Greenteeth Bites ] ... Ian Thorpe at Flickr ] ... [ Tumblr ] ... [Ian at Minds ] ... [ The Original Boggart Blog] ... [ Authorsden blog ] ... [