national security

"The U.S. government has grown strangely quiet on the accusation that it was Russia or her allies that brought down the Malaysian airliner with a buk anti-aircraft missile... When evidence contradicts our government’s accusations, the evidence is never revealed to the public—for national security reasons, of course... Too bad we can’t count on our government to just tell us the truth and show us the evidence. I’m convinced that it knows a lot more than it’s telling us."

... Who America and Her Close Allies SUPPORT (the Terrorists, That Is) ...

Sorry Ukraine, but when Europe has to choose between you and Russian gas, the gas wins every time.

With Ukraine shelling having killed 52 civilians in the city of Horlikva (Donetsk region) over the last two weeks alone, Russia is growing increasingly vocal of the need for a humanitarian cease-fire (notably with Germany also "concerned about the humanitarian situation" in Ukraine). However, as AP reports, fighting raged once again today as Ukrainian forces killed 1 and injured 10 in Donetsk, ignoring calls for a cease-fire. Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, said the only way for the rebels in Donetsk to save their lives would be to "lay down their arms and give up." Meanwhile, just as we warned, the mainstream media is starting to pick up on the 'other' border dispute that Russia is involved in as Putin mediates talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Bridges Versus Bombs?

U.S. Has Lost the Immune System Created by the Founding Fathers

The late, great critic of the American Imperium, Chalmers Johnson, popularized the salient concept of “blowback”. That is, the notion that if you bomb, drone, invade, desecrate and slaughter - collaterally or otherwise - a people and their lands, they might find ways to return the favor.

"The U.S. Administration in particular has passionately thrown off the mantle of leadership and replaced it with a combination of naïve denial and incoherent mumbling... if the world perceives a superpower as strong, reliable and willing to take action to back its promises, that perception can and does preserve stability, and the opposite can encourage mischief and danger. The world is currently experiencing a surfeit of the latter. There is no way to tell how deep and consequential the danger, or the surprising ways and places in which this interconnected problem will be resolved. The range of potential outcomes, however, is negative to very bad."

"War Crimes" ... Recommend International Criminal Court Investigation

In an unbelievable display of arrogance and self-importance, the Australian government recently announced the most sweeping changes to their national security legislation since 9/11. Basically they’re telling everyone that they should just be afraid… and that the government must spy on citizens in order to protect them. This is how it always happens... and we can watch yet another country slide rapidly into a police state.

White House: Iraq is approaching a "catastrophe"

Just in case there weren't enough potential GDP-boosting war hotzones around the world, Obama is now preparing to go back to ground zero, Iraq, where the NYT just reported he is "considering airstrikes or airdrops of food and medicine to address a humanitarian crisis among as many as 40,000 religious minorities in Iraq who have been dying of heat and thirst on a mountain top after death threats from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, administration officials said on Thursday."

The White House has previously said that talks between Russia and Iran were a matter of "serious concern". Currency wars are set to escalate as the petro dollar’s decline continues. U.S. and European Union sanctions against Russia threaten to hasten a move away from the petro dollar that’s been slowly occurring since the global financial crisis.

Moments ago CNN blasted a headline stating that the US believes there is a new, post-Snowden leaker exposing national security. Why? The reason is the following article that was released a few hours ago by the Intercept, and which is an expose on yet another classified system called Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE), in which we read: "The documents, obtained from a source in the intelligence community, also reveal that the Obama Administration has presided over an unprecedented expansion of the terrorist screening system. Since taking office, Obama has boosted the number of people on the no fly list more than ten-fold, to an all-time high of 47,000—surpassing the number of people barred from flying under George W. Bush." And there is Snowden 2.0.

• Second Ebola patient to arrive in U.S. on Tuesday (Reuters)
• Ebola Drug Made From Tobacco Plant Saves U.S. Aid Workers (BBG)
• Egypt plans to dig new Suez Canal costing $4 billion (Reuters)
• Apple Buybacks Pay Most Ever as CEOs Spend $211 Billion (BBG)
• DeMark Says Sell China Stocks Now After World’s Best Gain (BBG)
• Investors Stung by Losses After Exiting Struggling Property Fund in China (WSJ)
• B.A. in BTFD: MIT May Consider Granting Degrees in Less Than Four Years (BBG)
• Too late, money's already been spent: GPIF Needs Overhaul Before Asset Changes, Shiozaki Says (BBG)
• Oh look, another "truce": Israel withdraws troops, 72-hour Gaza truce begins (Reuters)

"If you look at the entire radar screen of things developing both domestically and internationally, we are plunging deep into a perfect storm of policy failure. There is blowback everywhere. First, the wreckage of prior policy mistakes of our intervention with foreign policy is coming home to roost. Second, monetary central planning is now coming to a dead-end. It is inflating the third financial bubble of the century and the Fed is now clueless as to how it will manage to unwind the massive balance sheet expansion it has been undertaken. And third, the fiscal doomsday machine continues to crank on. Washington is ignoring the fact that we are six years into a business cycle expansion and we are still running massive deficits and there is no cushion for the next upset that comes to the economy. Now, why is all of this important? Because I think the foreign policy failures -- the collapse of the American Imperium as I call it -- is at the center of this, and it will push all of these things in the wrong direction."