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In the past 3 months there has been much discussion regarding the gruesome and barbaric beheadings by ISIS of western hostages. Yet surprisingly, a similar and just as barbaric tradition has been taking place for ages just a few hundred miles east of ISIS, in Saudi Arabia. It has been met with nothing but silence by the same indignant western societies who are quick to condemn ISIS villainy. Why the disconnect? According to the following interview by Canada’s CBC reporter Anna Maria Tremonti with Newsweek’s Janine Di Giovanni looking at the “shock over ISIS beheadings but silence over Saudi Arabia beheadings” the answer why few if any dare to criticize the Saudis is simple: oil.

From CBC:

The crimes committed by ISIS in Syria and Iraq are immense and repulsive. But videos of the extremists purportedly beheading captives appears deranged. Decapitation as a means of execution has terrified people as long as there have been sharp blades.

But while the world condemns ISIS, not so far away a nation routinely punishes its criminals in a similar way. And sometimes the punishment is for acts most people in the West wouldn’t even consider crimes.

Newsweek Middle East editor Janine Di Giovanni has investigated beheadings in Saudi Arabia and she joined us from Paris.

We called and emailed the Saudi embassy in Ottawa to see if anyone wanted to comment on the practice of beheadings in Saudi Arabia. We have not heard back, but that offer remains open.

The beheadings by ISIS and the Saudi Kingdom are the latest manifestation of an ancient horror. Frances Larson has looked into the terrifying and bizarre history of beheadings in her new book “Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found”. She is an honourary research fellow at the University of Oxford.

The full 27-minute interview can be found after the jump. The all too obvious reasons why the Saudis are immune from any western criticism, at least according to the Di Giovanni, are laid out 11 minutes into the recording. Also pay particular attention to the executioner saying he is “doing the god’s work.” One wonders if he works for Goldman too?

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/11djm9i Tyler Durden

Having been ‘guest-of-honor’ at the APEC Summit the previous week, it appears Russian President Vladimir Putin is getting the ‘Obama-at-APEC’ treatment at the G-20 meeting in Sydney. Following his ‘odd’ shaped convoy of protection last week, The Independent reports Putin chose a different type of entourage this week as he headed to Brisbane to meet the world’s leaders. Putin has stationed four warships close to Australian waters as he arrived in Australia. Having drawn ridicule from no lesser wit than Britain’s David Cameron who sarcastically bleeted, “I didn’t feel it necessary to bring a warship myself to keep myself safe at this G20, and I’m sure that Putin won’t be in any danger,” when it came time for the team photo, it was clear what ‘message’ was being sent…

As The BBC reports,

Australia says it is monitoring four Russian naval vessels that are approaching its waters to the north of the country.

 

 

The Australian Defence Force said two frigates and a surveillance aircraft had been sent to track the warships.

 

 

In a statement, it said the Russian vessels were heading towards Australia but remained in international waters.

 

Analysts say it is a show of force by Russian President Vladimir Putin ahead of the G20 summit in Brisbane.

 

“The movement of these vessels is entirely consistent with provisions under international law for military vessels to exercise freedom of navigation in international waters,” the ADF statement read.

 

 

The ADF said Russian naval vessels have previously been deployed in conjunction with major international summits, including the Apec summit in Singapore in 2009.

 

“A warship from Russia’s Pacific fleet also accompanied former Russian president Medvedev’s visit to San Francisco in 2010,” the statement added.

And then there’s David Cameron’s quip:

“I didn’t feel it necessary to bring a warship myself to keep myself safe at this G20, and I’m sure that Putin won’t be in any danger,” he said last night.

And a clear message sent via the team photo:

Last week’s APEC Summit… Putin between China’s Xi and Brunei’s Hassanal Bolkiah with Obama positioned with the wives…

 

 

 

This week’s G-20 Meeting… Obama front-and-center between China’s Xi and Brazil’s Rousseff, just in front of Britain’s Cameron with Putin almost out of shot

 

Source: BusinessWeek

Has the world’s diplomatic stability really deteriorated to 8-year-old playground antics? (or has it in fact always been there) Stand next to me! No, stand next to me!

*  *  *

And finally, there’s this… Spot the difference

 

Is it us or does that Koala look like it’s trying to get away?

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1xDf0UG Tyler Durden

“The Chinese, among others, seem to be responding to the lower oil price with additional demand,” notes one tanker executive as Bloomberg reports the number of supertankers sailing toward China’s ports matched a record on Oct. 17 and is still close to that level now. The plunge in price has enabled China to add 35 million barrels to its inventories in the past three months as the nation fills its strategic petroleum reserves, OPEC said yesterday. Furthermore, though the oil slide is hurting nations from Venezuela to Iran – that depend on energy for revenues – ship owners serving the industry’s benchmark Middle East-to-Asia trade routes are reaping the best returns from charters in years as the slump drives down the industry’s single biggest expense. As one analyst notes, “we’ve seen the Chinese buying a lot from the Middle East and that’s really let rates cook.” So it appears the Chinese, in the face of the worst growth and economy in years, are rational enough to buy more at lower prices (as opposed to the buy-more-because-stocks-are-at-all-time-highs Western investors).

 

A near-record 113 tankers are destined for China…

 

As Bloomberg reports,

At a time when China’s economy is growing at the slowest pace in decades, its oil imports are rallying. The world’s second biggest economy purchased 25.5 million metric tons a month in the January-to-September period, heading for a record year. Falling prices may add to those figures as winter approaches.

 

“The main traders, they are typically more active in the tanker market when prices have dropped,” said Moerkedal of RS Platou Markets. “When you look at chartering in the last couple of weeks China has definitely been one of the most active buyers of oil.”

 

…

 

While the oil slide is hurting nations from Venezuela to Iran that depend on energy for revenues, companies including airlines and cement makers are benefiting as their fuel costs decline. Ship owners serving the industry’s benchmark Middle East-to-Asia trade routes are reaping the best returns from charters in years as the slump drives down the industry’s single biggest expense.

 

The biggest tankers earned an average of about $28,000 last month shipping Middle East oil to Asia, Baltic Exchange data show. The last time they made more during October was in 2008. Rates averaged almost $20,000 since the start of January, heading for the best year since 2010.

 

…

 

“We’ve seen the Chinese buying a lot from the Middle East and that’s really let rates cook,” Erik Stavseth, an analyst at Arctic Securities ASA in Oslo whose recommendations on shippers returned 15 percent in the past year, said by phone Nov. 11. “With oil prices low going into winter, that’s likely to continue.”

 

The number of supertankers sailing toward China’s ports matched a record on Oct. 17 and is still close to that level now. The country added 35 million barrels to its inventories in the past three months as the nation fills its strategic petroleum reserves, OPEC said yesterday.

*  *  *
So like Russia and gold, China sees low-priced oil as an opportunity to build inventories.

*  *  *

The biggest concern, of course, is that this burst of activity is interpreted by the all-knowing-ones as some sustainable pick up in aggregate demand that “means” growth is back baby… and thus begins another mini cycle of mal-investment.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1xDbpG2 Tyler Durden

Submitted by David Stockman via Contra Corner blog,

This is getting downright stupid. After the minor 8% correction in October, the dip buyers came roaring back and the shorts got sent to the showers still another time. Earlier this morning the S&P 500 was pushing 2050 – or up 12% in less than a month.

So the great con game remains in tact. The casinos run by the Fed and other central banks can’t go down for more than a few of days—until one or another central banker hints that more free money is on the way.

A few weeks ago it was James Bullard hinting at a QE extension. Next was Mario Draghi pronouncing that the whole ECB is unified behind a plan to expand its already swollen balance sheet by another $1.2 trillion. And then Haruhiko Kuroda, the certifiable madman running the BOJ, not only announced his 80 trillion yen buying scheme, but soon averred that falling oil prices—–a godsend to Japan—–were actually a threat to his mindless 2% inflation goal that might necessitate even more money printing. That is, after buying up 100% of the massive Japanese government bond market, the BOJ would not hesitate to monetize ETF’s, stocks, securitized real estate debt and, apparently, sea shells, if necessary.

Accordingly, bounteous wealth is seemingly to be had by the three second exercise of clicking  “buy” on the SPU (basket of S&P 500 stocks). Indeed, for the past 68 months running, the stock market has blown through every mini-correction, and has been traversing a near parabolic rise.

 

Needless to say, this relentless expansion of the bubble eventually kills off the bears, the skeptics, the prudent and even the militantly incredulous. Undoubtedly, that is where we are now because the global economic news has been uniformly negative since the October dip, yet the market has resumed its relentless melt-up.

Under such circumstances, therefore, it is well to remember that we are in the middle of the greatest central bank fueled inflation in recorded history, and that this insidious inflation has been channeled into financial assets owing to the arrival of peak debt everywhere around the world.

Stated differently, households are saturated with debt and cannot borrow any more to spend on goods and services that have not been earned with prior production. So the massive tide of liquidity generated by the central banks never leaves the financial markets; it just cycles there, fueling the carry trades and every manner of speculation that modern technology-enabled bankers can concoct.

But that is the Achilles heel of the game. As the bubble takes on ever greater girth, it becomes increasingly susceptible to a negative shock to confidence. Part of the reason is technical.  When markets reach their current nose bleed levels there are no shorts left; and it is also likely that the day trading gamblers have become increasingly lax about absorbing the cost of even cheap “downside insurance” (i.e. puts on the S&P 500). That is, they are “long” and “unprotected”.

So if a sharp, sustained self-off gets underway due to an unexpected blow to confidence or the arrival of the proverbial “black swan”—- there are no shorts to cover and take their profits by buying the market as it craters; and there is a simultaneous scramble among the buy-the-dip longs for downside “protection” in order to ride out the storm. But in this context, market makers who sell such protection are not in the least inclined to write insurance or puts on a naked basis.  So they sell the index short in order to cover their exposure, thereby adding to the downward momentum.

That is part of the reason why central bank driven bubbles expand relentlessly for years, but then correct swiftly and violently in a few months or even weeks when the bubble finally cracks. Thus, the S&P pattern shown above unfolded in a similar manner during the 2002-2007 Greenspan Bubble—–and then crashed after the Lehman event.

During an appearance on Fox Business yesterday, I had an opportunity to address this pattern in greater detail in response to the skepticism of the show’s free market host, Stuart Varney. "Kuroda is a certifiable madman"

 

Yes, you can “loose” a lot of money on the way up.  The problem is, no one rings a bell at the top.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1uqzFvx Tyler Durden

If you thought Greek GDP was an impressive miracle of modern monetary policy manipulation… take a look at the ‘gap’ between European revenues and earnings…

 

 

h/t @Not_Jim_Cramer

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/11rh3jS Tyler Durden

Submitted by Adam Taggart via Peak Prosperity blog,

If you've watch the previous video chapter on Peak Cheap Oil, you may be wondering how any of that could be still be true given all the positive recent stories about shale oil and shale gas , many of which have proclaimed that “Peak Oil is dead”.

The mainstream press has faithfully repeated every press and PR statement made by the shale producers. And if you simply followed the headlines, you might even believe this about the US:

• It is soon going to be energy independent,
• Its oil production will surpass even Saudi Arabia putting it in the number one spot,and
• The US will even be exporting oil again like the days of old.

The only problem with this story is that it is misleading in some very important ways. And entirely false in others.

Here are there are five main things to know about the shale plays.

1. They deplete very quickly. The typical shale, or tight rock, well production declines by 80% to 90% within three years.
2. They are expensive. All oil and gas coming form them is several times more expensive than what we got from conventional oil plays.
3. They are environmentally damaging because the fracking fluid is highly toxic and much of it escapes during the blowback process and sometimes water wells are contaminated.
4. Because each well has low flow and depletes quickly, massive numbers of wells must be drilled creating significant infrastructure damage to roads and bridges. Currently no state or municipal authorities are capturing anything close to the total cost of the infrastructure damage from the shale operators which means taxpayers are gong to be left paying those bills. 
5. Not all shale plays are created equal – some are vastly superior to others.  And even within a given play there are sweet spots and dry holes which can only be determined by punching a well in and seeing what comes out.  Some call this the ‘mapping by braille’ approach.

When we put all of these together it adds up to a very expensive set of plays that will only last for a very short while.

To the extent that mainstream press has been conveying the message that peak oil is dead and that our energy concerns have been laid to rest is the extent to which they have been misleading us.

In many ways, the increased crude output from shale plays has bought us some time.  We can either use the temporary boost in energy supplies, expensive though they are, to build towards a future when these too eventually run out, or we can use them as an excuse to carry on with business as usual.

If we do choose business as usual as our operating strategy – I use that word very loosely – then we will just march straight into the shale oil peak around the year 2020 and be very disappointed with ourselves and our utterly inappropriate transportation infrastructure.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1sUrK4b Tyler Durden

 

Courtesy of the StealthFlation Blog

The zero sum game of competitive global currency devaluations is on like Donkey Kong.  Anyone still sleeping comfortably, confident that all will end well, best brace themselves for a resounding wake up call.  Be alarmed, Japan just jacked the joint, and the jerry rigged monetary jig is up.  Moving forward, all the other Asian export economies will promptly be forced to keep up with their FUBAR neighbor, the utterly juiced Japanese Joneses.

Each Nation State in the Far East is now completely compelled to competitively devalue in tandem, in order to maintain export market share, in a desperate attempt to avert their outbound container super ship cargoes from running westwards on empty.

Throughout the new millennium, China has made great technological strides, repositioning itself away from a predominantly low tech manufacturing economy, towards a value added high tech producing exporter. In this capacity it has converged with Japan.  The Japanese, on the other hand, over the same time period, have seen both the Chinese, Koreans and the other Asian Tigers ravenously devour more and more Hamachi and California rolls, promptly snatched from their stale sushi shop lunch box.  Take one quick look at the above chart, and you tell me why Mr. Xi nearly gagged when shaking hands with Mr. Abe the other day.

 

The following excerpt from a Bloomberg article titled; Japan’s Export Reach Three Year Low as Recession Looms, published shortly before Abe’s December 2012 election, clearly outlined the sagging soggy sushi state of affairs:

Japan is suffering its worst year for exports since the global contraction in 2009 as Europe’s crisis, China’s slowdown and a diplomatic dispute with the Chinese hurt manufacturers and deepen the risk of a recession.

 

Shipments totaled 53.5 trillion yen ($653 billion) for January through October, down 2.3 percent from the same period in 2011, according to data compiled by Bloomberg from Finance Ministry figures released in Tokyo today.  The trade deficit for 2012 so far is a record 5.3 trillion yen.

The so-called hollowing out of Japan’s export champions, highlighted by a cut in Panasonic Corp. (6752)’s debt rating to one step above junk status by Moody’s Investors Service yesterday, underscores the urgency of kindling domestic demand. Japan’s political parties are facing off ahead of an election next month on how hard to press the central bank to boost stimulus.

 

Japan’s exports fell for a fifth month, hampered by trade tensions with China and weak demand in Europe, pushing the world’s third-largest economy closer to recession ahead of December elections.

No wonder the hapless Captain Abe, slipping on his sinking sashimi ship, immediately pulled the ripcord releasing the emergency currency life boat, in a desperate effort to rapidly inflate the fiat rescue raft with fresh Yen air.  Can you really blame him?  After all, the Chinese have been buying a gazillion dollars’ worth of U.S. treasuries in order to suppress the value of their own Yuan for years now.

It was all good while Uncle Sam’s force fed extreme global trade imbalances were rocking and rolling on seemingly endless cheap U.S. credit, but that free ride has been bouncing along the bottom of the ocean these days, and may well be about to hit some very jagged rocks.  Be assured, extreme trade imbalances are not a good thing.  As Aristotle once said; Extremes are bad”. The massive capital and current account imbalances that global trading partners have been irresponsibly running over the past 25 years are coming home to roost.  The end result will be nothing short of shock and awe.

Ok, so we get the picture, all the nations on the Pacific rim side of the Globe are now locked into a monumental mortal martial arts fiat food fight for the ages.   As world’s GDP continues to falter, the gloves will come off, plates will start to fly, and eventually the zero sum situation will end up in crazed Kamikaze currency raids battling for each others industrial export capacity.  The trouble with all of this, of course, is that for the overall world economy it’s nothing short of committing Hari Kari.  Let’s move on to the west, and check in overthere, shall we.

Europe is certainly mired in what can only be viewed as a structurally cemented recession.  And guess what, the largest economic block on the planet exports a ton of stuff around the world.  So, like China, they too will get swamped by Admiral Abe’s crushing counterfeit currency wave.   In fact, the Eurozone actually exports more to the USA than China does.  Last year, the EU sent us a whopping total of just under $600 billion worth of merchandise, whereas the Chinese came in at a distant $440 billion.   Make no mistake, as the Pacific rim fake fiat food fight heats up, you can bet your bottom EURO that the Frogs and assorted Eurotrash will join right in, heaving their devalued moldy Camembert and debased wienerschnitzel right over the counter towards the others.

Where’s the end game in all of this you ask?  Well, so far, the USD seems to have dodged the flying currency cup cakes.  The strict adult monitor in the mess hall is not partaking in the flying fiat food fest. As such, many macro mavens are touting the second coming of king dollar as a sure sign of the rebirth of the renown American exceptionalismwhich has brought about yet another economic renaissance, fantastically fueled by an endless reservoir of ingenious technology and new found shale energy.   Myself, I wouldn’t break out the pompoms quite so fast.

The last thing the U.S. needs is more fast flying overseas capital piling into the dollar.  An appreciating dollar has several very serious unintended consequences.  Clearly, one issue is that it will create headwinds for the newly revitalized export sector which had been one of the substantive bright spot for the U.S. economy over the past few years.  Another, conundrum is that as the devalued overseas capital flows seek refuge in the USD from the deliberate debasement abroad, it will serve to only exacerbate the already frothy asset bubbles which have been steadily forming in most asset classes (Stocks, Bonds, Real Estate, Art, Collectibles….etc).

Finally, and most importantly, it will create a massive deflationary wave, which is the last thing the largest debtor Nation in the history of the planet needs.  In fact, this is the Fed’s worst nightmare,  as not only does it increase the real cost of our external sovereign debt loads, but also, the strong dollar deflation will further depress the velocity of money which already sits at historic lows.  And therein lies the rub.  How is the Fed going to achieve its wet dream of 2% inflation that it deems to be so crucial to generating the escape velocity that is essential for self sustaining economic growth?   I’m afraid, my friends, that the only answer the FED has in store for us will be more of the same.

Can you say QE 4.0?  Welcome to the Keynesian circle jerk end game.   Picture a dog chasing its own tail until it finally drops from exhaustion, let’s call our dog “Fido Fed”.

Les jeux sont fait, let the games begin.   Got Gold?

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/11ra9uS Bruno de Landevoisin

“We are growing concerned about the potential for a pause or near term correction in the S&P500,” warns BofAML’s MacNeil Curry, as the options market flashes a warning to US equity bulls.

 

S&P500 volatility warns of complacency

 

We are bullish stocks, with the S&P500 targeting 2080/2100 into year end. However, in the near term, equity volatility warns of complacency and the POTENTIAL for a correction. Specifically, the VXV/VIX ratio (VXV is the BBG ticker for 3m SP500 Volatility) has reached levels that have often led to a market pause/correction.

While such a pullback would ultimately be corrective, BE ALERT.

 

Source: BofAML

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1A0hIqG Tyler Durden

Pulitzer-prize winning reporter James Risen reminds us:

We are now in the longest continuous period of war in American history. And yet there is remarkably little debate about it.

Many Americans assume “because 9/11″.

But regime change in Iraq, Lybia, Syria and Afganistan (and see this) was planned before 9/11.

Let’s take Iraq, for example.  Former CIA director George Tenet said that the White House wanted to invade Iraq long before 9/11, and inserted “crap” in its justifications for invading Iraq. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill – who sat on the National Security Council – also says that Bush planned the Iraq war before 9/11. Top British officials say that the U.S. discussed Iraq regime change even before Bush took office. And in 2000, Cheney said a Bush administration might “have to take military action to forcibly remove Saddam from power.”

Cheney apparently even made Iraqi’s oil fields a national security priority before 9/11. And the Sunday Herald reported: “Five months before September 11, the US advocated using force against Iraq … to secure control of its oil.” (remember that Alan Greenspan, John McCain, George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, a high-level National Security Council officer and others all say that the Iraq war was really about oil.)

Indeed, we’ve seen it all before.

We explained last year:

We are in the middle of a perpetual series of wars. See this, this, this and this.

 

As just one example, in 2010 the war in Afghanistan became the longest war in U.S. history. 

 

***

 

Why is the war of terror being waged indefinitely?

 

Many have said that “war is the health of the state”,  and Thomas Paine wrote in the Rights of Man:

In reviewing the history of the English Government, its wars and its taxes, a bystander, not blinded by prejudice, nor warped by interest, would declare, that taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes.

George Washington – in his farewell address of 1796 – said:

Overgrown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty.

James Madison said:

In time of actual war, great discretionary powers are constantly given to the Executive Magistrate. Constant apprehension of War, has the same tendency to render the head too large for the body. A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.

Madison also noted that never-ending war tends to destroy both liberty and prosperity:

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied: and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals, engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

Greenwald noted in October:

As the Founders all recognized, nothing vests elites with power – and profit – more than a state of war. That is why there were supposed to be substantial barriers to having them start and continue – the need for a Congressional declaration, the constitutional bar on funding the military for more than two years at a time, the prohibition on standing armies, etc. Here is how John Jay put it in Federalist No 4:

“It is too true, however disgraceful it may be to human nature, that nations in general will make war whenever they have a prospect of getting anything by it; nay, absolute monarchs will often make war when their nations are to get nothing by it, but for the purposes and objects merely personal, such as thirst for military glory, revenge for personal affronts, ambition, or private compacts to aggrandize or support their particular families or partisans. These and a variety of other motives, which affect only the mind of the sovereign, often lead him to engage in wars not sanctified by justice or the voice and interests of his people.”

In sum, there are factions in many governments that crave a state of endless war because that is when power is least constrained and profit most abundant.

Indeed, top American military officials and national defense experts say that our specific actions in the “war on terror” are creating more terrorists and more war.

 

As Greenwald points out today, the endless nature of the war on terror is a feature, not a bug:

There’s a good reason US officials are assuming the “War on Terror” will persist indefinitely: namely, their actions ensure that this occurs.

 

***

 

There’s no question that this “war” will continue indefinitely. There is no question that US actions are the cause of that, the gasoline that fuels the fire. The only question – and it’s becoming less of a question for me all the time – is whether this endless war is the intended result of US actions or just an unwanted miscalculation.

 

It’s increasingly hard to make the case that it’s the latter. The US has long known, and its own studies have emphatically concluded, that “terrorism” is motivated not by a “hatred of our freedoms” but by US policy and aggression in the Muslim world. This causal connection is not news to the US government. Despite this – or, more accurately, because of it – they continue with these policies.

 

***

 

There is zero reason for US officials to want an end to the war on terror, and numerous and significant reasons why they would want it to continue. It’s always been the case that the power of political officials is at its greatest, its most unrestrained, in a state of war. Cicero, two thousand years ago, warned that “In times of war, the law falls silent” (Inter arma enim silent leges).

 

***

 

If you were a US leader, or an official of the National Security State, or a beneficiary of the private military and surveillance industries, why would you possibly want the war on terror to end? That would be the worst thing that could happen. It’s that war that generates limitless power, impenetrable secrecy, an unquestioning citizenry, and massive profit.

 

Just this week, a federal judge ruled that the Obama administration need not respond to the New York Times and the ACLU’s mere request to disclose the government’s legal rationale for why the President believes he can target US citizens for assassination without due process. Even while recognizing how perverse her own ruling was – “The Alice-in-Wonderland nature of this pronouncement is not lost on me” and it imposes “a veritable Catch-22″ – the federal judge nonetheless explained that federal courts have constructed such a protective shield around the US government in the name of terrorism that it amounts to an unfettered license to violate even the most basic rights: “I can find no way around the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the executive branch of our government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws while keeping the reasons for their conclusion a secret” (emphasis added).

 

Why would anyone in the US government or its owners have any interest in putting an end to this sham bonanza of power and profit called “the war on terror”? Johnson is right that there must be an end to this war imminently, and Maddow is right that the failure to do so will render all the due-process-free and lawless killing and imprisoning and invading and bombing morally indefensible and historically unforgivable.

 

But the notion that the US government is even entertaining putting an end to any of this is a pipe dream, and the belief that they even want to is fantasy. They’re preparing for more endless war; their actions are fueling that war; and they continue to reap untold benefits from its continuation. Only outside compulsion, from citizens, can make an end to all of this possible.

Indeed,  the American government has directly been supporting Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups for the last decade.  See this, this, this, this and this.

 

***

 

And the American government lies – and even kills its own – to justify new wars.

 

Top American economists say that endless war has ruined our economy.  It benefits a handful of elites, while levying a tax on the vast majority of Americans.

 

Congress members – part of the super-elite which has made money hand over fist during this economic downturn – are heavily invested in the war industry, and routinely trade on inside information … perhaps even including planned military actions.

 

No wonder the American government is making the state of war permanent, and planning to unleash new, widespread  wars in the near future.

 

Postscript: Under Bush, it was the “war on terror”. Obama has re-branded the perpetual fighting as “humanitarian war”.

 

But – underneath the ever-changing marketing and branding campaign – it’s really just the good ‘ole military-industrial-and-banking complex consolidating their power and making money hand over fist.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1qKTXuh George Washington