U.S. Currently Fighting 74 Different Wars … That It Will Publicly Admit

Washington’s Blog
May 11, 2013

And Many More Covert Wars Without Congressional Oversight … Let Alone Public Knowledge

Fire Dog Lake’s Kevin Gosztola notes:

Linda J. Bilmes and Michael D. Intriligator, ask in a recent paper, “How many wars is the US fighting today?”

Today US military operations are involved in scores of countries across all the five continents. The US military is the world’s largest landlord, with significant military facilities in nations around the world, and with a significant presence in Bahrain, Djibouti,Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, and Kyrgyzstan, in addition to long-established bases in Germany, Japan, South Korea, Italy, and the UK.  Some of these are vast, such as the Al Udeid Air Force Base in Qatar, the forward headquarters of the United States Central Command, which has recently been expanded to accommodate up to 10,000 troops and 120 aircraft.

Citing a page at US Central Command’s (CENTCOM) website, they highlight the “areas of responsibility” publicly listed:

The US Central Command (CENTCOM) is active in 20 countries across the Middle Eastern region, and is actively ramping-up military training, counterterrorism programs, logistical support, and funding to the military in various nations. At this point, the US has some kind of military presence in Afghanistan, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, U.A.E., Uzbekistan, and Yemen.

US Africa Command (AFRICOM), according to the paper, “supports military-to-military relationships with 54 African nations.”

[Gosztola points out that the U.S. military is also conducting operations of one kind or another in Syrian, Jordan, South Sudan, Kosovo, Libya, Yemen, the Congo, Uganda, Mali, Niger and other countries.]

Altogether, that makes 74 nations where the US is fighting or “helping” some force in some proxy struggle that has been deemed beneficial by the nation’s masters of war.

***

A Congressional Research Service (CRS) provides an accounting of all the publicly acknowledged deployments of US military forces

But those are just the public operations.

Gosztola notes that the covert operations are uncountable:

Beyond that, there are Special Operations forces in countries. Jeremy Scahill in Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield, writes, “By mid-2010, the Obama administration had increased the presence of Special Operations forces from sixty countries to seventy-five countries.

***

Scahill also reports, based on his own “well-placed special operations sources”:

…[A]mong the countries where [Joint Special Operations Command] teams had been deployed under the Obama administration were: Iran, Georgia, Ukraine, Bolivia, Paraguay, Ecuador, Peru, Yemen, Pakistan (including in Baluchistan) and the Philippines. These teams also at times deployed in Turkey, Belgium, France and Spain. JSOC was also supporting US Drug Enforcement Agency operations in Colombia and Mexico…

Since President Barack Obama has been willing to give the go ahead to operations that President George W. Bush would not have approved, operations have been much more aggressive and, presumably, JSOC has been able to fan out and work in way more countries than ever expected.

Global assassinations have been embraced by the current administration, opening the door to night raids, drone strikes, missile attacks where cluster bombs are used, etc. Each of these operations, as witnessed or experienced by the civilian populations of countries, potentially inflame and increase the number of areas in the world where there are conflict zones.

***

The world is literally a battlefield with conflicts being waged by the US (or with the “help” of the US). And, no country is off-limits to US military forces.

Of course, JSOC is not accountable to Congress … let alone the public:

JSOC operates outside the confines of the traditional military and even beyond what the CIA is able to do.

***

But it goes well beyond the war zones. In concert with the Executive’s new claims on extra-judicial assassinations via drone strikes, even if the target is an American citizen, JSOC goes around the world murdering suspects without the oversight of a judge or, god forbid, granting those unfortunate souls the right to defend themselves in court against secret, evidence-less government decrees about their guilt. As Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh said at a speaking event in 2009:

Congress has no oversight of it. It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on.

***

There are legal restrictions on what the CIA can do in terms of covert operations. There has to be a finding, the president has to notify at least the “Gang of Eight” [leaders of the intelligence oversight committees] in Congress. JSOC doesn’t have to do any of that. There is very little accountability for their actions. What’s weird is that many in congress who’d be very sensitive to CIA operations almost treat JSOC as an entity that doesn’t have to submit to oversight. It’s almost like this is the president’s private army, we’ll let the president do what he needs to do.

The Coming Bancruptcy Of the World's Economic System

SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS!!! News
Mark Matheny
May 10, 2013

Mark Matheny covers an article written in 2010 by the late Elder Jacob O. Meyer, founder of the Assemblies of YAHWEH ministry.

The article is timely considering that he wrote this around two decades ago. He foresaw the economic collapse coming based on his knowledge of the scripture....

Tune in to this exciting episode!

Listen to internet radio with Mark Matheny on BlogTalkRadio

Gun Crimes are Down, But Media portrays them as increasing

SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS!!! News
Mark Matheny
May 9, 2013

Although gun violence and violence in general are declining since 1993, most Americans think they are increasing due to media propaganda.

Read the article Here

Free Syrian Army rebels defect to Islamist group Jabhat al-Nusra

The Guardian
May 9, 2013

The flag of the Islamist rebel group Jabhat al-Nusra flying over the main square of the city of Raqqa in Syria. Photograph: Reuters

Syria's main armed opposition group, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), is losing fighters and capabilities to Jabhat al-Nusra, an Islamist organisation with links to al-Qaida that is emerging as the best-equipped, financed and motivated force fighting Bashar al-Assad's regime.

Evidence of the growing strength of al-Nusra, gathered from Guardian interviews with FSA commanders across Syria, underlines the dilemma for the US, Britain and other governments as they ponder the question of arming anti-Assad rebels.

John Kerry, the US secretary of state, said that if negotiations went ahead between the Syrian government and the opposition – as the US and Russia proposed on Tuesday – "then hopefully [arming the Syrian rebels] would not be necessary".

The agreement between Washington and Moscow creates a problem for the UK and France, which have proposed lifting or amending the EU arms embargo on Syria to help anti-Assad forces. The Foreign Office welcomed the agreement as a "potential step forward" but insisted: "Assad and his close associates have lost all legitimacy. They have no place in the future of Syria." Opposition leaders were sceptical about prospects for talks if Assad remained in power.

Illustrating their plight, FSA commanders say that entire units have gone over to al-Nusra while others have lost a quarter or more of their strength to them recently.

Read the entire article

Hagel demands answers on 'rot' at Air Force nuclear missile base

Fox news
May 9, 2013

WASHINGTON –  Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is demanding details of turmoil at a North Dakota military base after revelations that an unprecedented 17 officers were removed from their duty of standing 24-hour watch over the Air Force's most powerful nuclear missiles.

Hagel reacted after The Associated Press on Wednesday reported the unprecedented sidelining of the officers at Minot Air Force Base, where one of their superiors complained of "such rot" in their unit that even the willful violation of missile safety rules -- including a possible compromise of launch codes -- was tolerated.

"We are, in fact, in a crisis right now," Lt. Col. Jay Folds, deputy commander of the 91st Operations Group, told subordinates in an email obtained by the AP. The group is responsible for all Minuteman 3 missile launch crews at Minot.

Read the entire article

Latest On Benghazi: Continual Live Updates

Infowars.com
May 8, 2013

Whistleblower: Hillary Was ‘The Only Person’ Who Could’ve Authorized More Benghazi Security
CNS News

Benghazi whistleblower Eric Nordstrom said the Benghazi consulate was listed as “high threat” before the attacks and the only person who could add more security personnel to a facility that does not meet standards is the Secretary of State – Hillary Clinton – at the time.

Nordstrom was asked: “By statute, Mr. Nordstrom, who has the authority to place personnel in a facility that does not meet the minimum OSPB standards?”

“The OSPB standards go in tandem with SECA, which is Secure Embassy Construction,” Nordstrom testified. “It’s my understanding that, since we were the occupants of both facilities– Benghazi and Tripoli– the only person who could grant waivers or exceptions to those are the Secretary of State,” Nordstrom said.

Benghazi a premeditated terrorist attack, not a response to anti-Muslim video, say whistleblowers
Natural News


For weeks after the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, in which U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other operatives were killed, President Obama and his administration told the American people and the world that it all went down because of an anti-Muslim video made by a hapless California man.

“While the United States rejects efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others, we must all unequivocally oppose the kind of senseless violence that took the lives of these public servants,” Obama said immediately following news that the ambassador and some of his security staff had been killed on the eleventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks (Note: historical dates have significance in the world of Islamic terrorism).

In the days that followed, the administration circled its wagons around the narrative that the video, titled, “Innocence of Muslims,” was responsible.

Read more

Top U.S. Diplomat in Libya Knew Benghazi Was Terrorism
Daily Beast

For eleven days after the 9/11 anniversary assault on the U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, top Obama administration officials told the public that the assault stemmed from a protest of an anti-Muslim YouTube video. That was the public line from the White House in the closing weeks of a presidential election season, but it was not the view of several State Department officials at the time or the U.S. personnel on the ground in Libya.

At a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Benghazi Wednesday, Trey Goudy, a Republican from South Carolina, read into the record an email from Beth Jones, the acting assistant secretary of state for Near East Affairs. The September 12 email—disclosed for the first time on Wednesday—said Jones had spoken to Libya’s ambassador to Washington who said the attack was the work of former Gadhafi regime loyalists. Jones said she told the ambassador: “The group that conducted the attacks, Ansar al-Sharia, is affiliated with Islamic terrorists.”

Jones was not the only one who viewed the attack as the work of terrorists. Gregory Hicks, the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in Tripoli at the time, said there were no reports from U.S. personnel in Libya there was a demonstration. In often-dramatic testimony, Hicks provided new details of the attack in the evening of Benghazi. He said he had no doubt the assault on the U.S. compound in Benghazi at the time was a terrorist attack, noting that Ansar al-Sharia had claimed credit for the assault on its twitter feed. Indeed, the U.S. embassy in Tripoli believed it would be attacked next. Hicks said embassy personnel smashed hard drives, loaded weapons into armored vehicles and that the 55 embassy employees in Tripoli that evening were gathered in a safe annex all in anticipation of the attack.

Read the entire article 

Obamacare - Is the "Afforable Care Act" really affordable?

SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS!!! News
Mark Matheny
May 9, 2013

Mark matheny discusses the cost of Obamacare, and its impact on individuals and small businesses...

Tune In....

Listen to internet radio with Mark Matheny on BlogTalkRadio

The Beng­hazi Bus

The August Forecast & Review
May 9, 2013

The Beng­hazi scandal is unques­tion­ably the lowest point of Amer­ican for­eign policy in the last 50 years. It sends a mes­sage to all for­eign ser­vice workers that their gov­ern­ment will no longer rescue them when expe­ri­encing hos­tile sit­u­a­tions; this flies in the face of his­tor­ical mil­i­tary coda where all avail­able resources are brought to bear to rescue and pro­tect the wounded, trapped or endan­gered. Fur­ther­more, it brands our gov­ern­ment as unre­li­able and untruthful.

Hence­forth, diplo­mats and sol­diers every­where should beware of the “Beng­hazi Bus“, which could run over them at any incon­ve­nient time. Get­ting Beng­hazied may even become a new verb in diplo­matic language.

Today’s live tes­ti­mony of the “Beng­hazi Whistle blowers” before the House Over­sight & Gov­ern­ment  Reform Com­mittee could pro­vide the tes­ti­mony that takes down the Obama Admin­is­tra­tion. Or not. The ques­tion is, will Con­gress have the guts to impeach the public offi­cials who were respon­sible for the dis­aster and the sub­se­quent coverup. This writer’s guess is that no one will be held account­able in the end.

This writer’s orig­inal analysis of the Sep­tember 11, 2012 Beng­hazi attack and coverup can be read in these two articles:

• The Beng­hazi Affair: Tri­lat­eral Policy Failure Or Success?
• Update on Benghazi

Those tes­ti­fying before the House Com­mittee are high-profile whistle blowers, including the former deputy chief of mis­sion in Libya, Greg Hicks. Hicks imme­di­ately became the chief of mis­sion when it was learned that his boss, Amb. Chris Stevens was killed during the attack. Eric Nord­strom was the former regional secu­rity officer in Libya, respon­sible for overall secu­rity of U.S. and diplo­matic per­sonnel. Mark Thompson is the deputy assis­tant Sec­re­tary of State for counterterrorism.

After lis­tening to the entire live tes­ti­mony on C-Span, and reading numerous reports on this and the other 8 Con­gres­sional hear­ings, it is evi­dent that there were two layers of oper­a­tion in Beng­hazi. First, there was a blackops group cen­tered in and oper­ating out of the CIA com­pound that was just down the road from the diplo­matic mis­sion: Exactly what they were doing in Libya will never be fully known.

Sec­ondly, there was the diplo­matic mis­sion that was in the chain of com­mand under the Depart­ment of State. By con­trast, we now know a lot about this.

According to eye-witness tes­ti­mony, the 9/11 (2012) attack was clearly planned and exe­cuted by a known ter­rorist group and everyone in Libya under­stood this to be the case. This infor­ma­tion was clearly passed up the ladder to direct lead­er­ship in Wash­ington, who chose to ignore it and instead cooked up an entirely dif­ferent story for the world press.

Hicks, Nord­strom and Thompson tes­ti­fied that a mil­i­tary stand-down order was indeed issued that pre­vented a team of Spe­cial Oper­a­tions troops from flying into Beng­hazi. They could not even get a simple fighter jet fly­over to take place, which would have quickly dis­persed the attackers. (The ter­ror­ists are deathly afraid of laser-guided arma­ments car­ried by U.S. air­planes because once they are “locked”, they are as good as dead.)

The only impor­tant ques­tions that remain con­cern who threw the Beng­hazi mis­sion under the bus in the first place, and then who orches­trated the coverup.

Read the entire article

When It Comes to Health-Care Reform, the IRS Rules

CNBC
May 7, 2013

Get ready for the Internal Revenue Service to play a dominant role in health care. When Obamacare takes full effect next year, the agency will enforce most of the laws involved in the reform—even deciding who gets included in the health-care mandate.

"The impact of the IRS on health-care reform is huge," said Paul Hamburger, a partner and employee benefits lawyer at Proskauer.

"Other agencies like Social Security will be checking for mistakes, but the IRS is the key enforcer," Hamburger said. "It's also going to help manage who might get health care."

In its 5-4 ruling last year, the Supreme Court upheld the law's mandate that Americans have health insurance, saying that Congress can enforce the mandate under its taxing authority and through the IRS.

As a result, the agency has to administer 47 tax provisions under Obamacare. They include the right to levy a penalty against businesses and individuals who don't provide or acquire insurance. Noting that the IRS will collect the penalties, the decision labeled them a tax.

The IRS also has to determine how to distribute annual subsidies to 18 million people who make less than $45,000 a year and thus qualify for subsidies in buying health coverage, as well as how to deliver tax credits to small businesses that buy coverage for workers.

In addition, the agency will collect taxes on medical devices and a Medicare surtax on people making more than $200,000 a year, as well as conducting compliance audits of tax-exempt hospitals.

The financial burden for all this IRS enforcement is expected to total $881 million for fiscal years 2010 through 2013, according to the Treasury Department.

But former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman told Congress last year that he would need another $13.1 billion for the job in 2014. It's uncertain as to whether the funds will be forthcoming from Congress, which has cut the IRS's budget in each of the past two years.

One step the IRS has taken on health-care exchanges is drawing another round of lawsuits that accuse it of forcing more people into the system.

Read the entire article

Obama vs. The Founding Fathers

The Schiff Report
May 8, 2013




Listen to the Peter Schiff Show
Weekdays 10am to noon ET on http://www.SchiffRadio.com

Federal Europe will be 'a reality in a few years', says Jose Manuel Barroso

The Telegraph

May 8, 2013

A fully fledged federal Europe may seem like "political science fiction" today but will soon become reality for all European Union countries whether inside or outside the euro, Jose Manuel Barroso has said.

AP Photo

The president of the European Commission has fanned the flames of British debate over EU membership by insisting that fiscal union in the eurozone will lead to "intensified political union" for all 27 member states.

"This is about the economic and monetary union but for the EU as a whole," he said.

"The commission will, therefore, set out its views and explicit ideas for treaty change in order for them to be debated before the European elections."

"We want to put all the elements on the table, in a clear and consistent way, even if some of them may sound like political science fiction today. They will be reality in a few years' time."

Mr Barroso's announcement that he will set out plans for a European federation next spring, before elections to the European Parliament in May 2014, will further deepen Conservative divisions over the EU.

The intervention will add weight to the argument made by Lord Lawson, and other anti-EU Tories, that it is pointless to try and improve Britain's membership terms when the dynamic, set by the eurozone, is towards a fully-fledged federal Europe.

The commission president's argument is that as the eurozone adopts federalist structures on fiscal and economic policy, supported by Britain as necessary for financial stability, there will also be a need for political structures that will fundamentally change the way the EU works.

"Further economic integration would transcend the limits of the intergovernmental method of running the EU and the eurozone in particular," Mr Barroso said.

Read the entire article

OBAMA 'ON VERGE' OF BACKING FBI PLAN TO TAP WEB USERS...

New York Times
May 8, 2013

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration, resolving years of internal debate, is on the verge of backing a Federal Bureau of Investigation plan for a sweeping overhaul of surveillance laws that would make it easier to wiretap people who communicate using the Internet rather than by traditional phone services, according to officials familiar with the deliberations.

The F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, has argued that the bureau’s ability to carry out court-approved eavesdropping on suspects is “going dark” as communications technology evolves, and since 2010 has pushed for a legal mandate requiring companies like Facebook and Google to build into their instant-messaging and other such systems a capacity to comply with wiretap orders. That proposal, however, bogged down amid concerns by other agencies, like the Commerce Department, about quashing Silicon Valley innovation.

While the F.B.I.’s original proposal would have required Internet communications services to each build in a wiretapping capacity, the revised one, which must now be reviewed by the White House, focuses on fining companies that do not comply with wiretap orders. The difference, officials say, means that start-ups with a small number of users would have fewer worries about wiretapping issues unless the companies became popular enough to come to the Justice Department’s attention.

Read the entire article

Americans Convinced Gun Homicides Soar Despite Actual Plunge In Gun Crimes

Zero Hedge
May 8, 2013

In yet another example of the massive gap between the American people’s perception of what is going on around them (whether by propaganda channels or simply cognitive bias) and the actual reality, Reuters reports that while gun-related homicides are down 39% from the 1993 peak, only 12% of people believe that gun crimes have fallen. Non-fatal firearm crimes declined by 69% to 467,300 in the same period but 56% of Americans believe that gun crime is higher now than it was 20 years ago, the Pew Research Center said its poll showed. The dichotomy between record food stamp usage (and non-employment) and multi-year highs in consumer sentiment comes to mind – we wonder which is more ‘real’.

Highlights of the report:

- Firearm-related homicides declined 39%, from 18,253 in 1993 to 11,101 in 2011.

- Nonfatal firearm crimes declined 69%, from 1.5 million victimizations in 1993 to 467,300 victimizations in 2011.

- For both fatal and nonfatal firearm victimizations, the majority of the decline occurred during the 10-year period from 1993 to 2002.

- Firearm violence accounted for about 70% of all homicides and less than 10% of all nonfatal violent crime from 1993 to 2011.

- About 70% to 80% of firearm homicides and 90% of nonfatal firearm victimizations were committed with a handgun from 1993 to 2011.

- From 1993 to 2010, males, blacks, and persons ages 18 to 24 had the highest rates of firearm homicide.

- In 2007-11, about 23% of victims of nonfatal firearm crime were injured.

- About 61% of nonfatal firearm violence was reported to the police in 2007-11.

- In 2007-11, less than 1% of victims in all nonfatal violent crimes reported using a firearm to defend themselves during the incident.

- In 2004, among state prison inmates who possessed a gun at the time of offense, less than 2% bought their firearm at a flea market or gun show and 40% obtained their firearm from an illegal source.

- Males, blacks, and persons ages 18 to 24 were most likely to be victims of firearm violence

Directly from the government:

Breakdown of homicides by age and sex:

Breakdown of violence by region:

And the full data:

Read the full report here

Inflation in the most important things: Inflation hitting housing, tuition, and medical services. Is the Fed reinventing another debt based bubble?

MyBudget360
May 7, 2013

Household income is a vital measure of the overall well-being for most Americans.  This is why it is important to try to understand why overall household incomes are back to levels last seen in 1995.  This is a critical barometer that measures the health of the US middle class.  Yet we continually see the argument that inflation is a good thing and since the CPI is registering such a low level of inflation, that the Fed should have a free-ride when it comes to digitally printing our way out of the recession.  Yet even a tiny level of inflation is going to hurt when wages are stagnant.  That is our current predicament.  The one area where Americans spend their most money, housing is becoming more expensive courtesy of the Fed.  Inflation is around you if you actually pay attention.

The cost of easy money

It is interesting to note that the big rise in home values has come because of the Fed artificially pushing rates to record low levels.  Because of this, home values are trending higher:

While this might on the surface appear to be good, a large push has come from big financial institutions fighting over what little inventory is out in the market crowding out regular home buyers.  Income strapped Americans are having to now deal with higher home prices but also, higher rents.  This is fine if incomes were rising as well but they are not.  So while the overall inflation rate might appear to be low in relative terms, the current wage growth is simply not there for average families.

Take a look at actual income growth:

It is hard to really look at the above chart and mistake this for a solid recovery.  If you have less money and more access to debt, all you are doing is repeating the debt bubble that led us into this crisis in the first place.  The Fed seems to think it is smart to re-inflate the housing market even though wage growth is nowhere to be found on the radar.

Low wage America

A large part of our country works in the low wage service sector.  Some of the biggest employers in the United States are part of this lower wage economy:

This is a very high number of Americans working in very low paid industries.  In fact one of the interesting parts of the current economic recovery is that most of the new jobs have come in the low wage sector.  A bulk of the good paying jobs lost during the recession never returned.  They simply fell off the map.

We see this with the figures of where jobs were lost:

For example, in the last jobs report we find the following for added jobs:

+31,000 for temporary help services

+38,000 for food services and places of drink

+7,000 for social assistance

While adding jobs is certainly a positive, nearly half of the added jobs were low wage positions.  So you think that having inflation moving up is a positive thing when incomes are constrained?  The Fed continues to blow debt based bubbles here since the public is too broke to purchase anything with actual income.  Finance a car.  Get a mortgage for a home with almost nothing down.  Go into deep debt with student loans.  Yet we should not worry about inflation while more of America is employed in the low wage sector and to make up for a lack of income growth, Americans are encouraged to go into debt.

Medical care inflation is holding steady and this is one sector where more Americans are going to utilize these services as we become an older nation:

No need to worry about the lack of wage growth.  Just go into maximum debt and let inflation eat away any of your current obligations.  No wonder why the Fed is the only player when it comes to buying up mortgage backed securities.