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Right-Wing DC Court of Appeals Upholds Unconstitutional Surveillance
by Stephen Lendman
Virtually unrestricted data mining tramples on Fourth Amendment rights brazenly. In December 2013, Federal District Court of the District of Columbia Judge Richard Leon ruled NSA spying unconstitutional, saying:
“The threshold issue is whether plaintiffs have a reasonable expectation of privacy that is violated when the Government indiscriminately collects their telephone metadata along with the metadata of hundreds of millions of other citizens without any particularized suspicion of wrongdoing, retains all of that metadata for five years, and then queries, analyzes, and investigates that data without prior judicial approval of the investigative targets."
"I cannot imagine a more 'indiscriminate' and 'arbitrary' invasion than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial approval." "Surely, such a program infringes on 'that degree of privacy' that the founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment."
Washington Intends Breaching Iran Nuclear Deal
by Stephen Lendman
The dawn of a new era in US/Iranian relations didn’t arrive on July 14 in Vienna - with consummation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOC). Far from it.
Washington’s deal-making history is deplorable - a record of betrayal, consistently breaching agreements since the beginning of the republic, proving its word isn’t its bond.
On Friday, Obama’s Treasury sanctions czar, Adam Szubin, arrived in Israel - to reassure its regime of continued US hardline anti-Iranian policy, ready to impose new “severe financial penalties for its (nonexistent) sponsorship of terrorism and support of military proxies,” according to The New York Times.
He’ll reassure Israeli officials about Washington’s “continued efforts to target Iran’s (nonexistent) malign activities” - intending “intensif(ied) sanctions (to) ensur(e) they bite even deeper,” he explained.
Washington agreeing in Vienna to remove Iranian sanctions was a Big Fat Lie. In return for ending some (on Iran’s nuclear program), new ones apparently will be imposed offsetting them, the usual US dirty game, pledging one thing, doing another with disturbing regularity.
Wall Street Rally: Hold the Cheers
by Stephen Lendman
Days of market turbulence likely haven’t ended. They’ve been more severe than any time since late 2008/early 2009.
Hindsight may show upswing days were classic dead-cat bounces - a combination of short-covering and market manipulation.
An August 26 Wall Street Journal article should give investors pause - headlined “Margin Calls Bite Investors, Banks,” saying:
“Loans backed by investment portfolios have become a booming business for Wall Street brokerages. Now the bill is coming due - for both the banks and their clients.”
Bank of America and other lenders are issuing margin calls. Investors either have to put up more money to cover portfolio losses or sell holdings underlying their loans.
Why and How All Large Estates Should Be Taxed to Death
Eric Zuesse
All non-taxation of estates at death is feudal; it’s systematic continuation of feudalism, into our own era.
Here’s a good example to show this: U.S. National Public Radio’s (NPR’s) reporter Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, headlined on August 25th, “For Brazil's 1 Percenters, The Land Stays In The Family Forever,” and she reported that, in that country, the aristocracy own half of the land, and that whenever a building on their land is sold, 2.5% of the sale price must go to the land’s owner, the heir-aristocrat, in a perpetual tithing-system to the hereditary Portuguese aristocracy (including the Roman Catholic Church), who have descended from the Portuguese colonizers to whom Portugal’s king had granted the land 515 years ago, in payment for their having conquered the native Indians and stolen their land for the king. The king didn’t give them all of what these conquistadors had stolen for him, but only what he felt they deserved for their services, of theft from the people who had previously owned the land, or lived on it. (Among the receiving aristocracy was the Roman Catholic Church, for its services assisting these thefts, by approving them — declaring them to reflect God’s will.)
Obama’s Ukrainian Forces Break Minsk Agreement: Resume Invasion
Eric Zuesse
The U.S.-backed Ukrainian Armed Forces, on Wednesday August 26th, resumed their all-out war against the breakaway Donbass region, according to an announcement on August 27th by the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) Deputy Commander, Eduard Basurin. Donetsk is the largest city in Donbass — the region that broke away from Ukraine after the February 2014 U.S. coup in Kiev, which threw out the democratically elected Ukrainian President, for whom the residents of Donbass had voted over 90%. If this apparent re-invasion of Donbass by U.S.-backed forces is true, it would flagrantly violate the Minsk II Agreement that Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s Francois Hollande had achieved, and that the warring parties had signed, six months ago, on February 11th.
Phony Reports of Russian Casualties in Ukraine Resurface
by Stephen Lendman
Russian Casualties in Ukraine
Throughout 17 months of Kiev aggression on Donbass, reports of alleged “Russian aggression” have been a complete fabrication - including fake numbers of nonexistent military casualties.
No matter. Phony anti-Russian accusations persist - the latest from Forbes magazine (its motto: “The Capitalist Tool”). Its source: a dubious Delovaya Zhizn (Business Life) Russian web site.
Its March 2015 article headlined “Increases in Pay for Military in 2015” claimed “official figures (reveal) the number of Russian soldiers killed or made invalids in eastern Ukraine” - the story a complete hoax, falsified information later removed, picked up in its original form by Forbes, then reported by NBC News, the London Independent, The Times Europe, the International Business Times, Daily Beast, other publications and Washington’s Radio Free Europe/Radio Europe propaganda - all repeating the same Big Lie without checking sources for verification. None exist.
Ukrainians Overwhelmingly Oppose Junta Rule
by Stephen Lendman
Ukraine is a Nazi-infested police state - an illegitimate US-installed coup d’etat regime, run by criminal thugs, wrecking the economy, abolishing freedoms, waging war on their own people.
No wonder a poll conducted by Rating Group Ukraine found 0% full support for its regime. Poroshenko scored 3% full support, 21% partial support, and overwhelming opposition to his rule.
Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk had 0% full support. Kiev’s Verkhovna Rada (parliament) scored 1%. Random sampling included respondents from all Ukrainian regions except Donbass - victimized by Kiev aggression.
Results conflict with regime claims about achieving “national consensus.” None whatever exists. People worldwide want fundamental freedoms. Kiev offers none. Poll numbers show the regime is overwhelmingly despised.
Ukraine’s mismanaged economy is dysfunctional - teetering toward collapse. Borrowed money is used to wage war.
The Greatness of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Or not?
Eric Zuesse,
Many people are aware that U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt skillfully lured Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor so as to get the American public to support joining England’s war against Adolf Hitler’s Nazis.
Until the Pearl Harbor attack, all of FDR’s efforts to win the U.S. public’s support for going to war against Hitler had failed miserably, and time was rapidly running out to turn the war’s tide away from Hitler and global dictatorship, and toward Churchill and a possible world future of democracy (the latter being the world future which has made our lives as good as they are, not the hell that Hitler had intended them to be). FDR’s effort to join the war was blocked by congressional Republicans, allied with a few determinedly pacifist Democrats such as Montana’s Senator William E. Borah, people who ignored the ideological stakes, vast though those were, if they even opposed fascism at all (which in many cases is questionable). Communism was widely hated because America’s rich hated it and propagandized heavily against it; so, Stalin’s perfidies were well-publicized, but Hitler’s and other fascists’ vilenesses weren’t so clearly and unambiguously presented, especially because many of America’s aristocrats were very profitably doing business with Nazis and were hoping to become invited onto what then seemed likely to be the winning team after the war between Churchill and Hitler would be over. Both the Congress and the American public were against FDR on the war-issue, and yet FDR needed to turn all of them around on it, and to do it fast. The process to do this violated moral rules; and, in some respects, it even violated U.S. laws; but FDR did what he had to do, in order to save the world, by joining Churchill’s war against Hitler.
US/Israeli Attempted Color Revolution in Lebanon?
by Stephen Lendman
Longstanding US/Israeli plans call for redrawing the Middle East map, replacing independent governments with pro-Western puppet regimes, balkanizing Iraq, Syria, Iran and other regional countries for easier control, looting their resources, and exploiting their people.
Analyst Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya says plans call for "creating an arc of instability, chaos, and violence extending from Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria to Iraq, the Persian Gulf, Iran, and the borders of NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan” - by color revolutions or wars. Violent protests rock Beirut - ongoing for days, a so-called “You Stink” campaign over uncollected rubbish, people demanding “corrupt” government officials resign for letting it pile up.
Israel Flagrantly Violates Core International Law
by Stephen Lendman
Israel wages daily war on millions of Palestinians, filling its gulag with thousands for their political beliefs, including politicians for belonging to the wrong parties.
Currently, 14 PLC members are imprisoned - six on fabricated charges and kangaroo military court convictions, eight uncharged, untried, solely for their political affiliations. None committed any crimes.
Israel is an apartheid police state, far worse than South Africa’s former regime. A previous article said the following: In 2002, Archbishop Desmond Tutu visited Israel. He was "very deeply distressed" by what he saw. He condemned Israeli apartheid. It's worse now than ever.
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