Interview 977 – Financial Survial: Torture, Terror and Oil
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On this week’s appearance on Financial Survival with Alfred Adask, James discusses the Senate report on CIA torture and what it says about the overturning (or revelation) of “American values” and the normalization of immorality. We also talk about the plummeting oil price and begin exploring its economic and geopolitical implications.
SHOW NOTES:
Senate report: Harsh CIA tactics didn’t work
Declassified (Redacted) Senate report on torture (PDF)
China: Torture report undercuts U.S. on rights
The beauty products from the skin of executed Chinese prisoners
The One Man Jailed For CIA Torture Tried To Expose It
It’s official: America is now No. 2
U.S. economy still bigger than China’s, but maybe not as crucial
Bank of America sees $50 oil as Opec dies
Why Oil Is Plunging: The Other Part Of The “Secret Deal” Between The US And Saudi Arabia
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James,
You are an information moonshiner. Picking the information fruit of the internet, breaking it down, fermenting, distilling it into something more clear and pure and powerful stuff. Thank you.
I’m pretty sure that’s the first time I’ve ever been called an “information moonshiner,” but I’ll take it as a compliment. Thanks, cush350!
If you lived near me, James, you would absolutely have to take that complimentarily.
But, truth to tell your work strikes me more like taking the potential of truth, like a small seed, finding fertile ground and cultivating it into something ingestible. The planting, nurture and pruning then suspending judgement until the material involved has opportunity to fully air, cure, if you will.
Finally, time to light it up, sit back and converse in long strains of free flow thought and analysis until it’s time, for want of a better metaphor, to hit that old bong hard once again!
At least 420 elevating reasons or more to subscribe, in my most humble view from deepest Appalachia. Cheers.
Excellent intelligent discussion – many thanks.
I’m curious about the noise this issue of USA forces / alphabet groups practising torture has raised. It’s been known for some time after all. The TV apologist series JAG, in 2005, ran an episode in which defence of an accused is that evidence given against him was obtained under torture, and has the Judge allowing that, whilst torture as a practice threatens the soul of a nation, in war it is acceptable. Another TV series, Boston Legal, also highlighted the use and acceptance of torture in and by America in about 2007-8. It’s been known for ages. So why the brouhaha now??? Because the document accusing them comes from outside the USA?
I truly don’t know.
Like James – I think it will make little to no difference to the USA – or indeed to anywhere else. It will fade from the MSN and thus from the consciousness of 99% of the American public. And those of us who retain memory of it are those who see the world and the wrongs of the ruling psychopaths with a different vision anyway.
“Research shows approximately every penny decline in the price of a gallon of gasoline translates to about $1 billion in additional disposable income for American households.”
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/10/14/cheaper-gas-means-not-so-cheap-consumer
It could be the answer to why TPTB engineered (or decided to allow) a precipitous drop in the price of oil has a more proximate source: to vent building economic inflation pressures coinciding with the usual last quarter focus on consumer spending, end of year sales figures, and stock market rallies. I’ve noticed some price deflation at the grocery stores, that alone will be a boon to many and also combat a growing perception that the average person is struggling just to tread water, much less “keep up with the Joneses” or put aside rainy day funds.
I hope Alfred Adask comes to recognize that when the global elite give the Saudis and OPEC a command to jump the response is “How high?” Energy production is too tightly intertwined with economic and geopolitical power for anything to be left to chance or market rivalry. I will go further and speculate that the Saudi oligarchs had to have been given some kind of heads up a little over a year ago that a sizable economic contraction was going to significantly impact them on some level in the relative near future and that is the reason they were in a mad frenzy to deport 2 million migrant workers. For perspective, before the deportations, it was estimated the Saudi population was 30 million, including 8 million expat workers. Using the US for scale, that would be equivalent to a mass round up and deportation of 20 million immigrants. There may be additional factors to consider adding to the rushed and highly chaotic/disruptive deportations, including (1) advance knowledge of a metastasizing elite created terrorist cell (ISIS) that could possibly trigger some wider regional stability directly affecting KSA, and (2) the manufactured Ebola “crisis” with ground zero in Africa where apparently many of the migrants originated.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/29/saudi-arabia-foreign-labour-crackdown-migrants
Thank you, James, for another mind expanding discussion with Alfred Adask. Normalization of torture and decline of morality indeed, with more mainstream media compartmentalized dissent. Oh my.
James or anyone else,
Is there evidence that CIA black sites continue to operate and that torture is still used? I find it hard to believe in light of CIA’s traits of avoiding legal restraint, that now that torture is banned, that it actually stopped. It seems logical that those in the CIA would know better than most that torture does not yeild reliable information, so what do you suppose is really going on there? Mind-control or just torture for torture’s sake, or something else?
-long time listener
I’ll believe the CIA has stopped torture (or criminality in general) when the CIA has been officially disbanded and abolished from the face of the earth. And even then…But even the MSM is pointing out that the Executive Order that supposedly stopped this torture in 2009 doesn’t apply to other agencies like JSOC, which the new Senate report admits was (?) running its own detention sites:
http://www.ibtimes.com/does-cia-still-torture-suspects-senate-report-raises-questions-about-obama-1747908
Well what if under torture you could get people to confess to being in league with the devil? To confess to meeting the devil and be instructed by the devil?
Ok I am referring to the trial of alleged witches in North Berwick 1590. “his Maiestie saide they were all extreame lyars”, that was a comment on James VI of Scotland (later James I of England as well). In the end he was convinced and the accused were put to death.
Seems to me a 400 year old example of torture not working, it appears you can get people to say anything under torture and have been able to for hundreds of years.
A line stands out to me from an Education Scotland page on the trial;
http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/scotlandshistory/unioncrownsparliaments/northberwickwwitchtrials/index.asp
“He took back everything he had confessed, saying he only told the tales for fear of torture.â€
Also if interested the “Newes from Scotland “covered the trial at the time;
http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/exhibns/month/aug2000.html