Over the weekend, the Saudi foreign minister threatened to sell $750 billion in US dollar holdings if Congress passes legislation removing the kingdom’s sovereign immunity from liability should Saudi official involvement in the 9/11 attacks be demonstrated. What would happen to the dollar should a huge dump like this occur? It would have significant impact on global markets, says Ron Paul in today’s Liberty Report. Why are the Saudis so nervous? Will their blackmail keep the 28 pages of the 9/11 Report secret? What will Obama say in Riyadh on Wednesday?
Last week Dan Sanchez proposed that one way to protest war and criminally inept government is to stop attending political events and not voting in elections. I agree with him on this much: that to boycott public appearances by warmonger politicians makes a powerful statement. (On the other hand, chatting, texting, and taking selfies during a speech might embarrass a demagogue politician even more.)
But I definitely don’t agree with Dan when it comes to not voting. It isn’t necessarily clear to the powers that be what mere abstention signifies. They might take it to mean people have given up, beaten into what psychologists call learned helplessness. That would be positive reinforcement: nothing would please the political establishment more than for us to give up and accept serfhood.
Instead I believe it’s much better to take positive action by voting for antiwar and pro-peace candidates. This registers dissatisfaction with the war-duopoly much more directly and effectively. The Democrat/Republican establishment will covet every vote an antiwar Green, Libertarian or independent gets.
So once again people from The World’s Most Frightened Country (C) fully overreacted to nothing. One of the 230 million people worldwide who speak Arabic happened to be on an airplane and happened to use one of the most common expressions in his language.
Hilarity ensued. Bigoted, frightened, discriminatory hilarity, in keeping with the American Way.
UC Berkeley student Khairuldeen Makhzoomi, 26, above, whose family fled Iraq in 2002 after his diplomat father was killed under Saddam Hussein’s regime, was booted from a Southwest Airlines flight and questioned by the FBI after another passenger heard him speaking Arabic. Makhzoomi was flying home from attending a dinner at the Los Angeles World Affairs Council with Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon when he stopped to make a call to an uncle.
Jesselyn Radack, who blew the whistle on Department of Justice malfeasance in the handling of the “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh. Jess went on to become a key part of Edward Snowden’s defense team (full disclosure: Jess was also one of my lawyers in my own whistleblower struggle with the State Department.)
Tom Drake, who blew the whistle on NSA domestic spying in the years right after 9/11, and who is cited by Edward Snowden as an important example as he decided whether or not to further expose the unconstitutional acts of the National Security Agency. In return for his truth telling, Tom was rewarded by being prosecuted under the Espionage Act, a tactic the Obama administration has now used seven times against intelligence whistleblowers, more than all previous administrations combined.
We had a terrific lunch, and if only the walls could talk…
Rules are for fools, and in this case the fools in question are you, me and what’s left of the American democratic system. Obama, in an interview, basically made it clear nobody is going to indict Hillary Clinton for exposing classified material via her unclassified email server, even if it requires made-up rules to let her get away with it.
The president’s comments in an interview last Sunday that “there’s classified and then there’s classified” made clear he imagines national security law allows for ample, self-determined fudge room when exposing classified material.
Does Over-Classification Matter?
In case you are still not sure, nope, that is not the way the law works, and everyone (including me, for 24 years) who has held a security clearance knows it.
Washington (under pressure from “allies” Turkey and Saudi Arabia) has taken advantage of the ceasefire in Syria to ship massive amounts of weapons to the “moderates.” Even the mainstream media has reported that 50 percent of what is shipped to the “moderate” Free Syrian Army finds its way into the hands of al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front, a US-designated terrorist organization. Plus, State Department Spokesman Mark Toner has admitted that the “moderate” rebels are “co-mingled” with al-Qaeda in Syria. So this new US “Plan B” is for the CIA to arm those who are explicitly dedicated to attacking and overthrowing the Syrian government now that the Russians have succeeded in marginalizing ISIS. Is de-facto US/al-Qaeda alliance in Syria morally justifiable?
