Files found at a Libyan government building show strong cooperation between the CIA and Muammar Gaddafi’s intelligence agencies

open quoteFiles found at a Libyan government building show strong cooperation between the CIA and Muammar Gaddafi’s intelligence agencies, including shipping terror suspects to the North African country for interrogation, a report said Friday.

The Central Intelligence Agency, under the administration of then-president George W Bush, brought terror suspects to Libya and suggested questions that Libyan interrogators should ask them, the Wall Street Journal said, citing documents found at the headquarters of Libya’s External Security agency.

The CIA also moved to set up in 2004 “a permanent presence” in the country, the Journal said, according to a note from CIA top operative Stephen Kappes to Libya’s intelligence chief, at the time, Moussa Koussa, was head of Libyan intelligence.

Suggesting the close relationship between the two top clandestine services officials, the note begins “Dear Musa” and was signed “Steve,” said the Journal.

An unnamed US official quoted by the daily noted that, at the time, Libya was breaking diplomatic ice with the West.

“Let’s keep in mind the context here: By 2004, the US had successfully convinced the Libyan government to renounce its nuclear-weapons program and to help stop terrorists who were actively targeting Americans in the US and abroad,” said the official.

The files were uncovered by Human Rights Watch researchers who toured the Libyan government building, and gave copies to the Journal.close quote (Read more from blogs.aljazeera.net)

Veterans Can Proceed With Drug- Experimentation Suit Against CIA

open quoteA federal judge refused to dismiss a lawsuit that claims the CIA used U.S. veterans as human guinea pigs in Cold War-era drug experiments.
Vietnam Veterans of America filed a class action against the Army and CIA in 2009, claiming that at least 7,800 soldiers had been used as guinea pigs in Project Paperclip.
Soldiers were allegedly administered at least 250 and as many as 400 types of drugs, among them Sarin, one of the most deadly drugs known, amphetamines, barbiturates, mustard gas, phosgene gas and LSD.
Using tactics it often attributed to the Soviet enemy, the U.S. government sought drugs to control human behavior, cause confusion, promote weakness or temporary loss of hearing and vision, induce hypnosis and enhance a person’s ability to withstand torture, according to the complaint.
The veterans say that some soldiers died, and others suffered seizures and paranoia. They say the CIA knew it had to conceal the tests from “enemy forces” and the “American public in general” because the knowledge “would have serious repercussions in political and diplomatic circles and would be detrimental to the accomplishment of its mission.”

. . . .

The parties disputed the number of claims at issue. While the CIA claimed the “secrecy oath” claim is the only one remaining, the veterans say the government had an obligation to notify them of the drugs’ effects and provide them health care.close quote (Read more from )

Hoppe on Knowledge

These two lectures speak to a very subtle, but very important topic underlying economics.

There’s a struggle between empiricists who insist there is no knowledge without experiment, and rationalists who believe in the triumph of reason. When the former, the empiricists reign, economics gets treated like just an opinion true only until it can be refuted, with all theories (including socialism) being valid until experiments are conducted.

The second of these two lectures by Hans Hermann Hoppe is more accessible than the first.

The Labelling on my Yogurt

In some states it is illegal to label your milk rBGH free. rBGH is a hormone which is occasionally linked to illness immediately before the scientist conducting the study decides to retire.

On my “Liberte” brand yogurt it says “rBGH free: Milk produced without the use of recombinant bovine somatotropin.”

This is immediately followed by: “No significant difference has been shown between milk derived from rBGH treated and non rBGH treated cows.”

I’m certain that food and chemical companies are so effective at using regulation to strangle competition that someone could go to jail for selling this yogurt without that last note about the safety of rBGH.

I urge my leftist friends to be careful when they call for regulation. They’ll usually get it.

bloomberg article in praise of Marx

open quotePolicy makers struggling to understand the barrage of financial panics, protests and other ills afflicting the world would do well to study the works of a long-dead economist: Karl Marx. The sooner they recognize we’re facing a once-in-a-lifetime crisis of capitalism, the better equipped they will be to manage a way out of it.close quote (more on bloomberg.com)

. . . . because economics is just an opinion, and all opinions are equally valid.

Hurricane strikes our Moscow on the Hudson

Moscow on the Hudson because people are surrounded by impressive monuments and incompetent government.

open quotePraise God that Hurricane Irene didn’t pound New York City nearly as severely as the State and its media threatened it would!

No church this morning: since the City shut down the subways and buses, congregants can’t assemble. Mayor “Nanny” Bloomberg advised us all to sleep late, as if neither the Lord nor His day of worship exist. And yet Christians support the State.

Meanwhile, the storm graphically proved the superiority of freedom and the market: while Our silly Rulers cowered and quavered, bars and restaurants posted placards: “Pre-Hurricane Party! C’mon in!” The tax-supported library didn’t even bother opening yesterday though we enjoyed a fine lunch of shrimp chow fon and chicken with cashews right next door. The City ordered everyone to stay home, and tried to force obedience by pulling the plug on public transit, but workers valiantly struggled to reach their jobs. A friend told me over our chow fon that he’d gone to his office that morning without knowing whether he’d gain access to the building or not: the staff that unlocks its doors might have stayed home since the subways were closing before their shift ended. In fact, when he arrived, not only did the porter admit him, he was on the phone with his replacement, asking whether he should pull a double shift or if the guy would find a way in from Brooklyn to Manhattan. Yep, Mr. Replacement said, he’d be there.

The State: utterly useless. The market: brave, inspiring, dedicated, dependable — and even providing delicious dinners and open offices despite impending rain.close quote (Read more from lewrockwell.com)

No, Paul Krugman, WWII Did Not End The Great Depression

Wow! Can’t believe this is making it into mainstream publications!

open quoteIt’s a recurring fantasy for left wing academics fascinated by central planning that in cyclical downturns government should act decisively on a scale equivalent to war. Nobel Prize recipient Paul Krugman exemplifies this intellectual longing to steer our lives.

Krugman effortlessly slides into a war footing espousing intervention comparable to America’s crusade against Hitler, who, take note, centrally planned an economy himself:

“World War II is the great natural experiment in the effects of large increases in government spending, and as such has always served as an important positive example for those of us who favor an activist approach to a depressed economy.”

After WWII until its glaring failures manifest in the Seventies, Keynesianism inundated economic thought. Paul Samuelson’s textbooks became mainstays across the academy. Samuelson championed mathematical analysis, which transformed macroeconomics into a pseudo science spawning waves of budding planners infatuated with statistics.

From this basis the myth prevails that WWII finally overcame the Great Depression. History has revised Hoover, easily the most meddlesome peacetime president before FDR, into a laissez-faire reactionary. The New Deal – a disastrous example of everything not to do during downturns became beneficial, only it supposedly wasn’t aggressive enough.close quote (Read more from forbes.com)

U.S.: We will stop aid to Palestinians if UN bid proceeds

open quoteThe United States will stop all financial aid to the Palestinian Authority if they proceed with plans to ask the United Nations for recognition of an independent state in September, a U.S. official warned Friday.

U.S. Consul General in Jerusalem, Daniel Rubinstein, told chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat in the name of the Obama administration, that the U.S. would veto a UN Security Council resolution calling for recognition of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip within the June 4, 1967 borders and for UN membership. close quote (Read more from haaretz.com)