HASPEL-BLACK SITE LADY—A BLACK EYE FOR CIA AND NATION

NO TO HASPEL AS CIA DIRECTOR

“BLACK SITE” TORTURE LADY WILL BE A BLACK EYE FOR NATION

Ms Gina Haspel has been a secret CIA agent since 1985.  She has been picked by President Trump to be the next Director  of the CIA to replace Mike Pompeo.  Haspel’s choice drew praise from  the 007 crowd.  But she may come with just too much baggage for Director of CIA.  She is praised  by those who have worked with her as a person “who gets things done”. Like many of those who work themselves up through the ranks  of an organization, she is imbued with the culture (good and bad) of that organization.  And perhaps in the case of the CIA—and Ms Haspel—- the encomium that she “gets things done” is true. But “getting things done” even if they are immoral, illegal and unconstitutional may be a positive trait for a near invisible subordinate. Such traits and personal history would be an embarrassment,  and millstone around the neck for the formal head of a prestigious organization of the USA. 

Gina Haspel ran a “black site” in Thailand in 2002 codenamed “Cats Eye”.  Haspel was stated by some observers and commentators as being “up to her eyeballs” in torture.  She is our first openly designated female torturer.  Is that what those who are favoring her appointment as “the first woman CIA Director” would be able to tout or be proud of?

Haspel was in charge of the brutal, illegal and gruesome torture and detention of Abu Zubaydah a Saudi citizen who was captured in Pakistan in 2002 and remains in indefinite illegal detention with no chance of a trial sixteen years later.  Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in one month, he was forced into stress positions in a small box, subjected nudity, to sleep deprivation, loud noises, dietetic stress, and  beaten to the point of losing an eye.  His illegal torture made it impossible to use any charges against him in a formal tried...and although he provided no meaningful evidence or useful information he remains in legal limbo in Guantanamo.  After his brutal treatment, at the hands of Haspel and his other torturers they concluded that he had not provided them with any “useful” information.  

Finally, after her misdeeds were revealed and were being investigated by the Senate, Haspel played a vital role in the destruction of the CIA torture tapes at the sites she ran and at other black sites. For that she has been charged with destruction of evidence among other crimes.

The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights pressed criminal charges against Haspel and others for their abuse of detainees.   In 2017 a public arrest warrant for Haspel for crimes against humanity, in relation to the Zubaydah case,  was issued by the Public Prosecutor General of Germany.  

In response to charges of criminality against Haspel in her role as chief US “black site torturer” Haspel and her misguided supporter have sadly attempted to use the embarrassing and now infamous: “I was just following orders” defense, made by Nazi criminals during the post WWII Nuremberg Trials, and later was used by other heinous criminals like Adolph Eichmann.  These ignoramuses should be condemned to watch the tapes of those trials in their entirety for this horrible lack of historical knowledge and sensitivity. 

Haspel the” black site lady”will give any organization she heads a black eye.  The CIA already has its image problems—imagine what the detractors of that organization would say and do  with a head spy—who is accused as a criminal, and would be arrested were she to land in Europe.

Ms. Haspel was no doubt effective and useful as a dutiful subordinate who would “get things done” and “go all the way” under orders...even illegal or immoral orders.  But  such obedience and personal obsequious characteristics do not make such an individual an acceptable or effective DIRECTOR.  In the exposed and publicly known role as head of a prestigious national organization he or she must represent a higher order of allegiance—to the nation and its laws.  Ms Haspel’s past history and character prevents her from effectively assuming that role.  

  

BUILDING SHOOTER PROOF SCHOOLS -LIMITS FUNDS FOR REAL EDUCATION

A NO BRAINER—KEEP KIDS SAFE—-LIMIT BATTLEFIELD WEAPONS TO THE BATTLEFIELD.

SHOOTER-PROOFING SCHOOL  MEASURES USE FUNDS THAT CAN NOT BE SPENT ON EDUCATION

The Wall Street Jounral reports today (March 13, 2018) that many of the nation’s 100,000 public schools are or will be undergoing expensive modifications and or redesign to help protect students from wouldbe shooters.  Rather than make sensible decions to restrict military grade weapons from the civilian market our schools will spend vast sums on making fortresses out of our public schools and in the process restrict limited funds which would be spent on basic education.

 The WSJ article focuses  on a recently designed modern elementary school in Texas, The George H. Bush Elementary which was designed with the intention to help foil  potential shooters.  But ideas change with each new tragic school shooting; there have been 32 of them since 1990.  .  This new school has classroooms with large windows “so teachers can see out into the hall where intruders might come from”.  But after the tragic event in Broward Counnty, Florida on February 14, 2018, school officials now fear that the glass windows would also permit a shooter to “see potential victims in the classroom”.  Officials are uncertain and the debate continues there.  What would be better, covered or opened widows on doors?

The vast sums of money being spent by communities, even in face of the likelihood that these protocols and designs may change after the next tragic event, gives some of us pause.  Perhaps instead of showering vast sums of money on bullet proof glass, steel doors, high tech security cameras and similar hardware, communities were to focus on limiting access to banned weaponry and use those funds for improved education purposes rather than uncertain safety measures.

Another consideration is that expending funds for “safety” means restricting funds for needed educational purposes.  When the choice is between placeing bullet proof glass on all the windows in a school versus purchasing desperately needed basic computers for classrooms—-what administrator will go for the computers?


The decision for computers and educational excellence would be possible were our nation to face up to the fact that we MUST  restrict access of military weapons like the AR15 and other similar gas-operated, rapid-fire, high velocity cartrige, large magazine, automatic and semiautomatic weapons.

Keep our kids safe in school.
 

BUMPSTOCKS AND BALONEY

STUDENTS RIGHTS TO SAFE EDUCATION  VS GUN OWNER RIGHTS TO OWN MILITARY WEAPONS —WHO IS STANDING UP FOR STUDENTS? 

55 million innocent students vs 9 million gun owners.  More balance of rights is needed!

Governor Scott Walker of Florida just signed a $400 million dollar school safety bill that broke a legislative  impasse, but sadly will not do much to protect the lives of students in and around the  schools of the state.    Florida, at present, still permits almost anyone to carry concealed weapons.  The misguided legislature has encouraged senseless legislation  such as the “stand your ground” law which encourages a “Wild West’ mentality and has has led to deadly  confrontations.  However, in the “Wild West” of Florida, Gov Walker’s less than adequate actions are being attacked by the NRA on one side, and lauded as a watershed moment in the gun rights/student rights debate, on the other.  In other parts of the nation the bill seems to be more about “baloney and bump stocks”, but little else.  

The Florida school safety bill will spend vast sums to “harden” buildings by installing windowless metal doors, and bullet proof glass—but do nothing to limit access to military grade weapons.  The bill reasonably raises the age to purchase a gun from 18 to 21 years.  It stipulates a sensible three-day waiting period for most gun purchases and bans the sale of “bumpstocks” ( which effectively change a ‘semiautomatic” AR 15 into an automatic weapon).   The bill also includes a proviso to permit certain school personnel to carry concealed arms.  Most teachers groups are rightly opposed to allowing more concealed weapons on school grounds.  The opponents of arming teachers and staff envision the likelihood for even more mayhem and bloodletting with children in a crossfire between potential armed groups.  

What seems to be forgotten in the politicized  rush to “do something” is the need to balance the existential rights of one group of citizens to a safe education against the legal right to own any kind of weapon of another.  We seem to forget that one of the most important functions of any state or nation is the education of our young.  There are about 55 million elementary and secondary students in this nation.  These millions of students have as much (or more) rights to “life and pursuit of happiness (and an education)” as the approximately 9 million gun-owners of the nation.    These gun folks are guaranteed the right to own and “bear weapons” by our Constitution—-but that guarantee does not extend to any and all weapons systems.  We rightly restrict  Tommy guns, Browning Automatic Rifles,  hand-grenades,  armored vehicles and half tracks.  Our national laws clearly restrict automatic weapons.  But weapons like the AR15 which fire as many rounds as automatic weapons at similar rates, fall through the cracks in the law. These lethal weapons of war can still be purchased by anyone. 

But that “baloney” distinction between automatic (banned) and semiautomatic (pull the trigger for each shot) is meaningless under the present state and national laws in the USA.  The distinction between automatic and semiautomatic is a form of useful but meaningless  terminology which permits the powerful weapons-manufactures in this nation to aggressively hawk military-equivalent hardware designed to kill as many humans as possible to any one with the cash to purchase one—teenagers, addicts, felons, illegal aliens, the mentally unstable.  

In the recent deadly massacre at Florida’s, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, 19 year old, mentally disturbed perpetrator—Nicholas Cruze is known to have fired off 150 rounds in six minutes.  That fact is significant.  It means that teenager Cruze, armed with his military-style AR15, with a thirty round magazine (he must have carried at least five magazines) was in effect armed as one of our Marines or Special Forces would have been.    Cruze was not a formally-trained marksman—and even with time expended to reload five of his 30 round magazine clips into the weapon and time to take aim at his innocent young victims —was still able to  fire off on average 25 rounds per minute, or one deadly, high-velocity bullet @ every two seconds!   

The M16  that Cruz’s weapon was styled after has been the standard arm of the US military since Vietnam.  This is the weapon issued to all our military forces since the Vietnam War, and was used and remains in use in all our wars and military actions since then.  It is perfectly effective for what it was designed to do.  Kill as many enemy soldiers as is possible in the shortest possible time. 

Cruze’s AR15 is the semi-automatic version of the M16. But the difference between them is just as thin as a see-through slice of baloney.  The M16 weapon in the hands of a trained US military marksmen has a safe sustained rate of fire of 15 rounds a minute, and as much as 60 rounds a minute, firing in its semi-automatic mode.  So Cruz’s rate of fire was well within the range of what one would expect from one of our troopers fighting for his life in Afghanistan or Iraq.   Faster rates of fire will heat up the M16 barrel and could cause disastrous barrel failure.  

Thus it is plain that there is no significant difference in lethality of the two weapons.  The M16 fires the same ammo, has the same sights and mechanisms, and the same gas-fired reloading action as Cruze’s  AR15.   The only difference is that the M16  can fire automatically as well as semiautomatically.  In battle, that (automatic) mode of use is almost never used.  It burns up too much ammo too fast and can cause the barrel to heat up and  burst.  

The  weapon that youngster Cruz purchased and used with such tragic effect—the AR15 which can fire off 25 rounds (or more) in a minute is designed for the theater of war...not for recreation, hunting or target shooting.  It does not belong in the hands of civilians.  It should be banned. 

No one is proposing that our citizens give up their legitimate weapons..as per the Second Amendment.  But the government has the right and the duty to protect all of its citizens from the deadly misuse of lethal weapons of war.   The government has a clear right to limit automatic weapons and equally lethal semiautomatic weapons which have no other function than to kill humans effectively.   Then too, we must balance conflicting rights.  The rights of citizens to own and use military weapons of war does not trump the rights of students to a safe, gun-free, anxiety-free school where they can be secure in their devotion to the important goal education. Though the public debate and the resulting legislative actions would seem to belie that fact. 

What is plain as a baloney sandwich, is that it is necessary to restrict the possession of weapons like the AR15 (and others just like it)—-designed only for the theater of war—- from every civilian Tom, Dick and Harriet in the State of Florida.  Had that proviso been part of the Florida bill—-it  would have been something to crow about. 

TRUMP DESERVES CREDIT ON NK BREAKTHROUGH. NYT CAN NOT GIVE IT!

The NYT Editorial:  “North Korea Has Put the Ball in Trump’s Court” March 6, 2018 is typical NYT negative opinion writing when Mr. Trump is the story..  We know from objective news analysis that 91% of Mr. Trump’s coverage by the main stream media is negative.  The Times continues that trend in this opinion piece with a very misleading headline.  Most unbiased observers would state that a it was Mr. Trump’s policies which forced the North Koreans to pick up the ball put it into play. 

Read on into the piece and discover that the Times actually does report the basic facts.  But they do not clearly state that it was Mr. Trump’s outstanding achievement of forcing the North Korean regime to the table using unprecedented sanctions, threats, saber rattling, tweets and hard nosed diplomacy with the Chinese, South Koreans and the Russians.  These efforts of Mr. Trump were the motivation for more serious talks by the North.  Mr. Trump’s bluster and threats clearly forced the hand of the South Koreans, who during and after the Winter Olympic Games held serious talks with Mr. Kim Young Un for the very first  time.  Their efforts have been reported to indicate that Mr. Un is now willing to discuss “denuclearization” with Mr. Trump in serious talks.  If true this could be a turning point in the long, sad, disappointing history between the US and North Korea.  President Trump deserves praise for his steadfastness and efforts.  

But the Times simply can not give credit where credit is due.  They have encased their understated   approval of Mr. Trump’s  achievement (we are all still uncertain of the actual outcome of these efforts by the South Koreans) with a veneer of snide asides, negativism, and innuendo so (perhaps) they could state the bare facts of Trump’s achievement and still keep their hard core Trump-hating readership with partisan misconceptions of President # 45 intact and in error.  

This policy clearly reinforces the perception that The NY Times can not report facts or opine on Mr. Trump without negative jibes and dissimulation.  This NYT editorial policy neither serves the truth, a peaceful resolution of the Korean situation, the national interest of all American citizenry, or the NYT reputation as an honest broadsheet. 

For the rest of us who attempt to make more of an effort to see Mr. Trump and the rest of the world without a jaundiced eye, try to imagine the following:  The time is two years ago...and Mr. Obama is sitting in the Oval Office,  imagine what the blaring headline would have been under the same circumstances.   “Mr. Obama’s Sterling Diplomacy, Toughness  and Determination has forced the North Koreans to the Bargaining Table!”   Substitute “Mr. Trump” for “Mr. Obama” and that’s what the Time’s headline should have been.  

That will never be the case for Mr. Trump— the outsider and Populist.  Yet his accomplishments, in the case of a truly existential threat posed by the North Koreans, fully deserves our praise and a valid, honest encomium.  

WEAK DOLLAR? FUGGEDABOUDIT

BIG SHOTS FEAR THE WEAK DOLLAR

WORKING FOLKS FAVOR IT

Professor Larry Summers former Secretary of the Treasury  to President Obama and presently President of  elite Harvard University (wealthiest university in the world) penned a piece for the Washington Post, entitled: “The dollar is getting weaker. That should worry us.” (March 5, 2018) In it he journalistically grinds his teeth and whines  about the weakening dollar.  Sommers points out that the dollar has dropped in value recently against the average “basket” of other currencies, falling close to 10%, and has fallen even lower against the euro.  Summers claims the weak dollar may be the result of expectations of higher inflation in the US in coming years.   In his gilded palatial digs at Harvard, Summers sees little of the common folk—hoi polloi.  Perhaps his concern is that with a cheaper dollar his imported footwear, tailored Oxford Street duds and French champagne will cost him somewhat more than at present.  He apparently knows little of and cares less for the working folks that have been economically scarred by the “strong dollar” policy he has favored over the years.  

His Wapo piece rehashes the “strong dollar” baloney that has been US policy for decades..a policy that has created only hardship for average Americans.  

Let’s look at what the strong dollar policy from the Clinton era has got us.  Flight of massive amounts of capital from the nation.  The exponential growth of Chinese jobs, national wealth and military prowess.  Loss of profitable US industries which once were the source of good middle class jobs and which supported the economy of whole regions of the heartland. The hollowing out of our middle class and the plunge of vast areas of our countryside into “rust belts”.  Shift of our jobs and industries abroad. Massive imbalance of trade.   Cheap imports competing with and neutering our domestic businesses.  What’s so good about the strong dollar? 

The strong dollar of the past decades was favored by the big multinational industries which sell goods in the USA (the world’s premiere market). Their balance sheets show big profits. A strong dollar also makes investment in the US more attractive to foreign companies and investment firms.  Costs for borrowing money by the government and by banks and businesses is lower.  These entities thus prefer a strong dollar.    Tourists going abroad carry more valuable dollars into countries with weaker currencies.  Interest rates tend to stay low with a strong dollar..since investment money flows into the county with the stronger currency and the more money means it is cheaper to borrow money. These big business interests have held sway in Washington in the last decades...to the detriment of vast swaths of the nation and the American workers who live there. 

But as we know from experience a strong dollar does not help to create jobs.  If the dollar is strong—US products cost more abroad.  Industries must keep their costs very low to compete effectively with their foreign counterparts.  As a result of the stiff price completion, businesses strive for high levels of efficiency. The first action they take is to cut employment to the bone. They hire staff for temporary slots. Then fire them as soon as the need evaporates.  Does this sound familiar? Strong dollar means stagnant wages...intense competition for jobs...in other words least eight years,,,,the Obama economy.  

Let’s not worry too much about a weaker dollar.  It is a good thing for our suffering small businesses and our working and middle classes.  

Oh perhaps that bottle of Veuve Clicquot champagne will go up a few tens of bucks, and it might be more expensive to buy a foreign made car. But middle class and working folks with better paying jobs will not notice that too much .  

CHRIS STEELE: WHITWASHED BY NEW YORKER PIECE

If you are looking for enlightenment, don’t bother to read Ms Mayer’s piece on Christopher Steele, “The Man Behind the Trump Dossier”.  The long, boring and carefully staged piece by Jane Mayer in the New Yorker (March 5, 2018) is a classical case of journalistic whitewash akin to the “oppo” research the subject of her article produced.    Read the whole piece and learn only what a top spy Christopher Steele was and why we should believe him without reservation.    Nowhere does Ms Mayer actually come to terms with the facts Mr. Steele was at one time a well respected MI 6 spy—but  who in more recent times had turned himself into a well-paid  “propaganda salesman” for politicians.  Yes he did spend a part of his career as a spy in Russia.  But for this present “dossier” he sat in his London office and composed a ten page commercial document without ever leaving his London office.  She fails miserably to distinguish between Steele the “former British spy”, and the current  grubby, street-corner-gossip—flogger—who made himself a member of the nouveau riche of London as a “political information entrepreneur”.  

This latter person (who does not appear in Mayer’s piece) was the actual author responsible for the so called Steele (Trump) Dossier—not the former spy.  No where does Mayer make clear that Steele was actively hawking his opposition research  for huge personal profits.   She ignores the greed motive.  The fact that at the juncture where his original Republican client backed out, Steele  (now with a salable product in hand) moved with uncommon alacrity to aggressively hawk his work to the media and to potential new purchasers in the roiling political arena of the USA in 2016.  And what a lucrative process that was.  Steel made himself a rich man and a fortune selling his political opposition “research”. 

Mayer, like the rest of the left wing zealots and Trump haters would like to emphasize  Steele’s former occupation as a legitimate British spy, rather than the money grubbing reality of his present employment as the self promoting hawker of his own sleazy product.   She completely ignores the fact of Steel’s transformation —like many who go through the “revolving door” in DC—from a poorly paid government official into a high paid political entrepreneur.  His motives changed and so did the kind of product he produced.  His  lucrative private business was suppling “dirt” to politicians on their political opponents.

Steele’s operation in the US 2016 election era was hugely profitable at a time when the Clinton campaign was desperate for anything to undermine the popularity of  their opponent Mr. Trump.  Nearly $7 billion dollars was eventually spent during the 2016 election season by all candidates.  And the Clinton campaign, funded with foreign money through the Clinton Global Initiative was awash in the stuff. The Clinton’s and the DNC would eventually spend as much as $1.2 billion dollars in their attempt to win the election.   Steele who only to provide just the kind of dirty info they wanted—- would get a good chunk of that cash.   The “dirt” need not be accurate or verifiable.  This oppo research  information would have only a very short “shelf life”.   It’s only requirement was that it had to be sensational enough to arouse a starkly divided and susceptible electorate.  Steele must have been buoyed by these considerations into a sloppy carelessness concerning the accuracy of his product, being well aware that once the election was over...no one would bother to check on the veracity of his “opposition research” offerings.  It was a great way to make a fast buck—turning a list of old Russian informants and one’s past reputation derived from a legitimate credible career into ready cash. So it must be clear to any observer that the commercial product Steel was motivated to produce (more at the supermarket tabloid trash level than “research”) certainly did not (nor need it) rise to the level of his former British spy-service-level of “intelligence” gathering.   Real “intelligence  requires that the raw data gathered by first person observations or interrogations must be field-verified then checked, cross referenced, and rechecked by others for accuracy.  Steele’s commercial dossier information had no need to be accurate. It would never be used by a nation-state to make formal decisions of an existential nature. This kind of information would be useful for one or two months and then pass into oblivion.  

The “research” materials Steele generated—sitting at his ornate desk in London—was not “intelligence”.  It was rumor, innuendo, unfounded suspicions and bar-stool gossip for which  Steele paid his informants with funds supplied by the  DNC and the well heeled Clinton campaign.   It was a  “pay for information” operation. Steel made it known he was looking for sleaze and would pay for it. And what do you expect?  He got what he paid for.   As a persona non grata in Russia (where he had been outed as a British agent)  he could not enteto even make cursory verifications of his informants statements.  We can be assured he never went to Russia.  He must have been wildly jubilant with his London deal— just sitting in his London office collecting unverified data, composing a brief ten page dossier, then hawking it in the USA. Then sitting back to collect bulging monthly checks.  

Ms Mayer does not wish to inform her readers concerning the real Christopher Steele and the actual character of his dossier.  She, like Steele, prefers to produce better paying “opposition research” rather than real “intelligence”. 

TRUMP CORRECT ON TARIFFS

It’s a no brainer.  We must protect industries that are critical to our own survival.   We can’t have a nation (or an independent military to protect it) without viable, healthy steel and aluminum industries.  If we do nothing now our steel and aluminum industries will simply fold up in the face of unfair pricing and competition from China and other nations.  

China does not operate a free capitalist economy.  The Chinese political hierarchy controls all aspects of its economy.  In order to remain in power it must keep a massive and restive populace fully employed.  Too many Chinese unemployed can lead  to restiveness, uprisings and even revolution. There lies the reason for the support for the Chinese aluminum and steel industries.  Keeping people employed producing steel and aluminum even== when there is no domestic market for the product results in OVERPRODUCTION.  When a nation overproduces a product it has a strong motivation to DUMP overseas.  Dumping it at home would be counterproductive.  The free and open US market has been a constant target for these dumped products. The result has been collapsing industries, lost jobs, rust belts and the the hollowing our of our middle class.  

The Chinese produce cheap steel and aluminum then—dump these metals abroad—at prices way below normal costs of production.   Our own steel and aluminum industries are fully capable of competing on a level playing field.  But state supported industries in Asia, and Europe are not playing the game fairly.  Trump is right to impose tariffs on imported aluminum and steel—to protect these critical industries.  

The media and TV talking heads are ready—too ready—to criticize.  They claim placing US  tariffs on these commodities will cause retaliation and a trade war.  But our products often face higher tariffs abroad than we impose on for example autos and food products.  The critics also claim that US “downstream” industries which use these commodity will be impacted by the higher prices—since they will no longer be able to take advantage of cheap dumped steel and aluminum.  They will have to pay more realistic prices for their raw materials.  Perhaps a can of beer—may cost a penny more..or a vehicle a fifty or more bucks more.  

We must weigh these costs against doing nothing and letting the steel workers and aluminum workers loose their jobs and those industries go the way of the electrical, shoe, clothing and other industries which we have blithely let die and disappear.  

They were not critical for our survival.  Steel and aluminum are.