Adnan Al-Daini

The economic crash is not caused by workers having too much power, or employment laws stifling business. It is the result of a deregulated financial system, greed and usury in a market that is not free but rigged.

Exploitation and oppression have been with us since the dawn of time, by the strong of the weak, men of women, the rich of the poor.  A measure of civilised societies is their effectiveness in mitigating and controlling such unfair and unjust practices.

Laws and regulations limiting the powerful have been won through constant struggle and sacrifices by the masses, led by remarkable individuals to whom we should be grateful.  They stood up to tyranny and the orthodoxy of the time. Without them, for example, women would not have the vote, and slavery would still be with us today. 

It is no accident that exploitation of workers by corporations and the wealthy is worse in developing countries.  The conditions for such exploitation are present; they have no unions to protect the workers, no health and safety laws, chronic unemployment, no welfare safety net for the unemployed, disabled and vulnerable, and endemic corruption of politicians and officials.

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Stephen Lendman

Syria's conflict isn't an uprising, revolution or civil war. It's lawless Western aggression. It targets an independent government and its people. Doing so violates fundamental international law. Washington planned it years ago. It wants puppet leaders installed. It's Afghanistan/Iraq/Libya 2.0. America destroys nations to control and plunder them. War on humanity is waged for unchallenged global dominance. Syria is ground zero. Other targeted states come later. Proxy death squads are used. They're heavily armed, trained and directed. They reign terror on Syrian civilians. They've murdered thousands of noncombatant men, women and children. At issue is ravaging and intimidating Syria to submission. Foreign militants show no mercy. Their presence has been well known all along. Media scoundrels now admit it. At the same time, their framing deceives more than explains.

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Stephen Lendman

The region's fate hangs in the balance. Perhaps much more. The potential ugly reality is chilling. Make no mistake. Washington orchestrated months of bloodbath. Obama officials bear full responsibility. They were last year against Libya. They are currently as violence wracks the country. The battle for Aleppo now rages. Syrian forces are going all out to free the city from Western sponsored death squads. They're battling thousands of hired killers. They're in neighborhoods. They use human shields. They target pro-Assad loyalists. They murder them. Washington's strategy dictates it. Wrongfully blaming Assad advances the ball closer to war.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay has much to answer for. She's playing a pro-Western role. She issued several scathing reports. They pointed fingers the wrong way. On July 27, she expressed "deep alarm" for what's happening to civilians. She blamed Assad for ongoing violence, saying: "The Government has the prime responsibility to protect civilians from all forms of violence."

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Paul Stuart

Octopus, Ilona, Seanna & Harle superyachts. (Photo: Pretre/flickr)

The Royal Dock complex, adjacent to London’s financial district at Canary Wharf, is hosting up to one hundred super yachts, including twenty of the world’s most opulent, as the Olympic Games begin.

Its transformation into a Monaco-style marina playground for the super rich is a telling rebuttal to all the official rhetoric about the “peoples’ games.”

East London’s Royal Docks, including the Royal Albert Dock, the Royal Victoria Dock and the King George V Dock, was once a centre of industry and trade employing hundreds of thousands of workers.

The games in general are dominated by the vast global social chasm. Buckingham Palace played host to an Olympic reception on Monday, where Queen Elizabeth and others received the Olympic committee. It is estimated the official functions alone will cost up to £100 million; in addition, numerous unofficial events will be held.

The global elite view staying in a hotel as passé, or “so Beijing” as one newspaper put it.

Accordingly, many have therefore brought their super yachts and will arrive at Olympic events in helicopters or speedboats along the Thames, which connects Windsor Castle and Hampton Court, the Bank of England, Houses of Parliament, Tower Bridge, and so on. Curator of the National Maritime Museum Robert Blyth made the telling comparison that “Historically, kings and queens would have travelled by river—the roads were rather uncomfortable and dangerous.”

Fully 30 miles of road lanes are reserved for Olympic VIPs and competitors. “Games Lanes” is their official title, but they have been dubbed Zil lanes—after the limousines used by Stalinist apparatchiks in Soviet Russia who travelled in lanes that were reserved for them. To stray into one will cost a member of the public a £130 fine. In addition 1,300 sets of traffic lights will be changed to facilitate Olympic traffic.

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Chris Marsden

A military intervention against Syria is being prepared, utilising the “weapons of mass destruction” pretext that was used to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Pledging a future for Syria “free of the Assad regime” to a gathering of veterans in Reno, Nevada, President Barack Obama threatened Monday that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad would be held accountable if he made the “tragic mistake” of using chemical weapons.

Earlier that day, the Assad regime issued a statement meant to call the bluff of the US and Israel and their allies, who have repeatedly raised the spectre of Syrian chemical weapons. Jihad Makdissi, the Syrian foreign ministry spokesman, declared, “No chemical or biological weapons will ever be used, and I repeat, will never be used… no matter what the developments inside Syria… All of these types of weapons are in storage and under security and the direct supervision of the Syrian armed forces and will never be used unless Syria is exposed to external aggression.”

Makdissi explicitly made the comparison to Iraq, stating that the issue of chemical weapons was being raised to “justify and prepare the international community’s military intervention in Syria under the false pretext of WMD.”

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Philip Giraldi

National Security Agency building in Fort Meade, Maryland

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) established a panel of judges (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court) who were empowered to issue warrants to federal government organizations, including the National Security Agency, to enable them to listen in on the conversations of American citizens or residents who were speaking to foreign nationals overseas or between two foreigners if the communications were intercepted at a hub located in the United States. As originally construed, there had to be a foreign intelligence angle to the investigation and the activity would be limited to the monitoring of agents of foreign countries and their contacts. The intention of FISA was to protect against egregious violations of the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee that Americans should have a “reasonable expectation of privacy” while avoiding the complications resulting from constitutional standards for what constitutes a legal search, i.e., that there be probable cause, that the court should know the name of the target, and that a fixed time frame for the activity be established. FISA lowered the bar of probable cause in general because of the supposed involvement of foreign governments, requiring only suspicion of possible illegal activity rather than demonstrating that a crime had been committed or was being planned, which was the normal basis for issuing a warrant. Fishing expeditions in which numerous communications lines were monitored in an attempt to find something incriminating were forbidden.

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Stephen Lendman

Obama achieved the impossible. He exceeds the worst of George Bush. Arrogance and unaccountability define his presidency. Rule of law principles don't matter. Imagine what's ahead if he's reelected.

Years ago, domestic spying was common. Post-9/11, it became institutionalized. Police states do it. So do faux democracies. America is no exception.

In 2007, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) established a new domestic spying operation. It's called the National Applications Office (NAO). It is described as

"the executive agent to facilitate the use of intelligence community technological assets for civil, homeland security and law enforcement purposes within the United States."

It provides sophisticated satellite imagery. Eye in the sky drone spying supplies more. The FBI, CIA, NSA, and Pentagon spy domestically. So do state and local agencies.

In the new millennium, [spying on us] and other lawless practices define America's agenda. Obama exceeds the worst of his predecessors. Everyone is suspect unless proved otherwise. It's a national sickness. With other repressive tools and harmful policies, it's destroying the fabric of society. America the beautiful doesn't exist. It never did, in fact, except in songs, verses, slogans, and other rhetoric. They wore thin long ago.

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John Rosenthal

German intelligence estimates that "around 90" terror attacks that "can be attributed to organizations that are close to al-Qaeda or jihadist groups" were carried out in Syria between the end of December and the beginning of July, as reported by the German daily Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ). This was revealed by the German government in a response to a parliamentary question.

In response to the same question, the German government admitted that it had received several reports from the German foreign intelligence service, the BND, on the May 25 massacre in the Syrian town of Houla. But it noted that the content of these reports was to remain classified "by reason of national interest", Like many other Western governments, Germany expelled Syria's ambassador in the immediate aftermath of the massacre, holding the Syrian government responsible for the violence.

Meanwhile, at least three major German newspapers - Die Welt, the FAZ, and the mass-market tabloid Bild - have published reports attributing responsibility for the massacre to anti-government rebel forces or treating this as the most probable scenario. Writing in Bild, longtime German war correspondent Jurgen Todenhofer accused the rebels of

"deliberately killing civilians and then presenting them as victims of the government".

He described this "massacre-marketing strategy" as being "among the most disgusting things that I have ever experienced in an armed conflict". Todenhofer had recently been to Damascus, where he interviewed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for Germany's ARD public television.

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Roger Young

A Declaration is Only the First Step

I received a lot of feedback after posting my latest video inspired by my previous essay, "I Hereby Secede." I also received a number of recommendations on how to make such a declaration into a physical reality. From this I realized I should make clear the nature of such a personal declaration.

Please understand that this declaration/affirmation is just a first step. It must be followed with concrete action. Many folks contacted me offering a number of viable options to choose from. I think whatever plan of action you devise and execute is only limited by your creativity. If that runs out, you have the creativity of the entire human race to draw upon, which I believe is unlimited.

I remember years ago listening to personal improvement gurus. The one belief they had in common was the power of personal affirmation as the first step toward achieving a goal. Such an affirmation settles into your subconscious and directs conscious action toward achieving this goal. By sincerely creating a personal declaration of secession/independence, you have, in a sense, wired and programmed your subconscious into directing conscious thought toward achieving your ambition.

This conscious thought manifests itself as ideas that materialize into action.

Though your plan of action is up to you, I would only caution against substituting your personal plan of action with joining a "movement" of some kind. Such movements are useful in locating and exchanging ideas with like minded individuals, but it would be unwise on counting on "mass produced" action to bring positive change to your particular, individual situation. Make sure you remain the director and not the directed. Don’t expect change (as it relates to you personally) to result from merely following and supporting the leadership of such a movement, even if they seem to share your interests and expectations.

The only real‍ power an individual has is how he lives his life – a life structured by his philosophy, his decisions, his actions. Multiply this by millions and the result is change.

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Hassan Diab Support Committee

Dear friends and supporters,

It is a sad day for justice in Canada. As you may be aware, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson recently decided to surrender Dr. Hassan Diab to extradition; see Ottawa Citizen coverage .

ng you to raise your voice against this unjust decision by writing to your local (or national) newspaper. In your letter, please consider the following points.

■ It is shocking that France has not yet charged Hassan or decided whether to put him on trial, meaning Hassan may languish in pre-trial detention for years on mere suspicion while a 32-year-old investigation drags on.
■ It is unacceptable that Minister Nicholson did not seek assurances that France will not use anonymous and unchallengeable intelligence - that may be the product of torture - as trial "evidence" against Hassan.
■ Minister Nicholson should have sought assurances that Hassan would be allowed to effectively challenge the French handwriting reports, which were found by international experts to be deeply flawed.
■ Minister Nicholson should have sought assurances that Hassan would be allowed to present exonerating evidence, such as the fact that his palm and finger prints do not match those of the suspect.
■ The standard of evidence for extradition from Canada is outrageously low and does not meet the standards for fair trial. The case against Hassan would be tossed out of court if he were tried in Canada.
■ It is unacceptable that Canada’s extradition treaty with France is one-sided, in that France does not extradite its own citizens.

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Stephen Lendman

U OF O WATCH: St. Lewis v. Rancourt - In A Nutshell
Denis G. Rancourt: Why Donate to My Legal Fund?

Injustice defines Western societies. America long ago spurned rule of law principles. Canada marches in lockstep. Democratic values are quaint and dying. So are honor, integrity, righteousness, and believing right over wrong matters. Even university officials and complicit staff members are tainted. Academia proves not so hallowed ground.

Denis Rancourt is a distinguished tenured University of Ottawa physics professor. He's a recognized expert in his field. His students called him a "phenomenal teacher." His classrooms provided an enriching learning experience. He inspired student confidence and academic achievement. He also champions equity, justice, and human rights. Political activism led to his dismissal. On U of O's campus, it's not safe to advocate right over wrong.

Beginning in September 2005, university officials targeted him unfairly. They oppose his support for Palestinian rights.

The Palestinians are some of the world's most oppressed people. They live under militarized occupation hell. Institutionalized racism harms them. Israeli state terror is policy. Palestinians are treated like subhumans. Their crime is praying to the wrong God. Rancourt eloquently supports them.

He also expresses views forthrightly on political and environmental issues, professional ethics, lobbying, scoundrel media influence, and the right of all persecuted people to live free. He does it in articles, broadcasts, blog postings, at public venues, and in classrooms when he taught. He did the right thing and got punished.

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Arthur Silber

Introduction by Chris Floyd: Arthur Silber writes with power and eloquence about the Aurora killings -- and the monstrous hypocrisy of our national "leaders," who mouthed saccharine pieties about fragile and precious life is, and how tragic it is that innocent lives are so cruelly taken from us...this while raining down terror and mass murder on innocent human beings all over the world. Go [on], read the whole thing.

Some years ago, I saw a man in profound emotional distress. The sobs which wracked his body had caused him to collapse to the ground, so weak did they make him. Every few minutes, he emitted a howl of pain, a sound so piercing and unnerving that I hope never to hear its like again. People passed the man in the street. A few of them would pause for a moment, looking awkwardly in his general direction, as if they thought that perhaps they should offer aid in some manner. Then they all walked on. The man remained on the ground, helpless in his immense pain.

After approaching him very slowly, taking care not to move too quickly or unexpectedly, I gently took him in my arms. "I'm here," I kept repeating. "I'll help you in any way I can. I'm here." I held him for many long minutes, softly murmuring the phrases over and over. He eventually began to breathe somewhat more normally. "I'll help you if I can. Please tell me what I can do."

"It's just..." He offered the words so tentatively that I could barely hear them. "It's just...?" I quietly asked. After a few more minutes had passed, he managed to tell me what had upset him so deeply.

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Denis G. Rancourt

U OF O WATCH: St. Lewis v. Rancourt - In A Nutshell

This is an appeal to donate to my legal fund (the Denis Rancourt Legal Fund) in order to provide a moderately fair trial in what some observers have characterized as a SLAPP (strategic litigation against public participation) against me.

I am committed to obtaining justice but justice is illusive when there is a large asymmetry of means between the opposing parties. At this point I will have exhausted all my financial savings within a month or so.

I was wrongly fired in 2009 from my tenured full professorship in physics at the University of Ottawa by a president, Allan Rock, who had a personal mission to get me. He instructed his executives and hired lawyers to fire me, and this was executed without due process.

Under false pretence, in November 2008, my students and I were locked out of our laboratory and offices without warning.

My research associate of 12 years was summarily fired (she sued and won a settlement).

The laboratory was dismantled before I was even informed of the mock procedure to fire me that was initiated in December 2008 when I was banned from campus, again without notice, under police escort.

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Stephen Lendman

London Olympics 2012: Blood donor appeal ahead of Games

America's "war on terror" never ends. Neither does Britain's. After London was named host for this year's summer games, terrorist fears were stoked.

Former Australian/UK British civil servant Peter Ryan performs security consulting services. He's advising the International Olympic Committee on London preparations. His consultancy thrives on hyped threats, real or otherwise.

After the city was named host in 2005, he told organizers to "think the unthinkable." Besides other advice, he said:

"You are not just thinking about football hooligans, getting drunk in a pub and causing trouble." "You are dealing with a different animal, completely new threats - suicide bombers and protecting the critical infrastructure. You cannot have a power station going down and all the lights going out." [He said athletes' food and water supplies must be protected. Check for poisons, he advised.] "Specialist teams" have to "supervise bomb management, hazardous materials, athlete and VIP protection, and aviation security."

Public spaces around venues are most vulnerable, he added. Ryan's well paid for making London sound more like a war zone than host for Olympic sporting events. Terrorist threats are more hype than real. No evidence whatever suggests dangers. Secretary of State for Defense Philip Hammond said "there is no specific threat to the Games."

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Ellen Brown

At one time, calling the large multinational banks a “cartel” branded you as a conspiracy theorist. Today the banking giants are being called that and worse, not just in the major media but in court documents intended to prove the allegations as facts.

Charges include racketeering (organized crime under the U.S. Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act or RICO), antitrust violations, wire fraud, bid-rigging, and price-fixing. Damning charges have already been proven, and major damages and penalties assessed. Conspiracy theory has become established fact.

In an article in the July 3rd Guardian titled “Private Banks Have Failed – We Need a Public Solution”, Seumas Milne writes of the LIBOR rate-rigging scandal admitted to by Barclays Bank:

It’s already clear that the rate rigging, which depends on collusion, goes far beyond Barclays, and indeed the City of London. This is one of multiple scams that have become endemic in a disastrously deregulated system with inbuilt incentives for cartels to manipulate the core price of finance.

...It could of course have happened only in a private-dominated financial sector, and makes a nonsense of the bankrupt free-market ideology that still holds sway in public life.

. . . A crucial part of the explanation is the unmuzzled political and economic power of the City...Finance has usurped democracy.

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Anonymous

So much has been said of the NWO but the meaning is not clear. Well, here it is in black and white:

NWO is more of the same to the world that befell upon the American Indian Natives, the African Slaves in America and the Indians in India during the Colonial Times aka East India Company. What that means is that the world better be prepared for mass displacement of their peoples to be loosly shunted all over the world for meagre wages. Also, forget your own languages, religions and cultures. They are obsolete and forbidden. They are replaced by English, Western pant-suits and Christianity.

You are owned. Kind of like the Christianized and Westernized South Koreans - who are permanently separated by the West from their long-suffering Northerner brothers who happen to rightfully retain their own original culture intact. The problem, as is everywhere and as usual, is the West. The West wants to dominate, control and conquer the world even if it has to dismember or kill it to "save" it (from itself).

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Stephen Lendman

Almost immediately after a bus full of Israeli tourists exploded
outside of the airport in Burgas, Bulgaria, both Israel and the
United States began hurling accusations that Iran was behind
the violence. They also immediately claimed a suicide bomber
had done it. They have offered no proof of this. A remotely-
controlled bomb is just as likely. This would have been all in
a day's work for Israel's Mossad.

Israel's history is odious. State terror is policy. It's a dagger pointed at humanity's heart. False flags and targeted assassinations are specialties. Mossad and Shin Bet (Israel's Security Agency) have notorious terrorist histories. Bet on either organization's dirty hands behind the latest Bulgaria attack. Fingers point the wrong way. Israel blames Iran for its own crimes.

Unindicted war criminal Netanyahu said "Israel will respond forcefully to Iranian terror." At issue is a Bulgarian Sarafovo airport bomb attack. It's located in Burgas. It's a popular Black Sea resort destination. Israeli tourists and others were killed.

On July 19, Reuters headlined "Bulgaria says suicide bomber blew up airport bus," saying:

A bus carrying Israeli tourists and others was attacked. Eight deaths were reported. Around 30 others were injured. According to Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov:

established a person who was a suicide bomber in this attack. This person had a fake driving license from the United States."

It wasn't coincidental that the attack came on the anniversary of the 1994 AMIA (Argentine Israelite Mutual Association) Buenos Aires bombing. It killed 85 and injured hundreds. Argentina has Latin America's largest Jewish population. It numbers around 200,000. Israel falsely blamed Iran.

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Jonathon Blakeley

Introduction by Gilad Atzmon: Time is ripe to look into NGOs (non-governmental organizations), what they are and who stand behind them. In the following Deliberation piece, Jonathon Blakeley explores recent shift in Russian attitude towards NGOs. I may as well confess that in the last few weeks I have been looking into Palestinian NGOs and their funders. My findings are pretty worrying...

In a wonderfully chess-like move, the Russian Parliament skillfully moved to block attempts to de-stablize Russia by using NGOs to encourage dissent. AlJazeera reported today that a new law had been passed with only one vote against and one abstention. The law would limit the operation of NGOs in Russia. Specifically foreign-funded NGOs would have to declare that they are foreign agents on all their publicity materials.

But what are NGOs exactly?

No one describes the NGOs better than Phyllis Schlafly who has watched them for decades: “The NGOs are energetic lobbyists for dramatic changes in the mission and structure of the UN to achieve global governance. Most NGOs are also members of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which originated many of the global environmental polices set forth in the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Convention on Climate Change, and Agenda 21. The most prominent NGOs are the radical environmental groups such as the Sierra Club and the feminist and population-control groups such as Planned Parenthood.”

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Stephen Lendman

Photo: Riverdale, Ill. has run operational deficits for a number of consecutive years, driven primarily by a reduction in the amount the village relies on debt financing. “The village funded itself by borrowing money from its sewer and water funds, and now carries an operating fund balance of -52.1 percent of revenues.” The city, like many others on this list, is extremely small, with a population of just over 14,000. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

In past decades, many US municipalities declared bankruptcy. Since 1981, 42 cases were filed. Ten came in the past four years. Given hard times getting harder, what's happening now is unprecedented since the Great Depression. Cities occasionally declare bankruptcy. In America, they're coming more often. Others in dire financial straits may follow.

San Bernardino, CA is the latest. On July 11, The New York Times headlined "Third City In California Votes to Seek Bankruptcy," saying:

Officials have no choice. They can't meet payroll obligations through summer. "Faced with a budget shortfall of $45 million and city coffers that have already been drained, the San Bernardino City Council voted on Tuesday to file for bankruptcy."

Interim city manager Andrea Travis-Miller said:

"I am concerned about our ability to make payroll, not only in the next 30 days but also in the next 60 to 90 days. A major restructuring of this organization is needed."

California cities have two Chapter 9 bankruptcy options. They can either hire a third-party mediator to negotiate with unions and creditors or declare a fiscal emergency. San Bernardino chose the latter way. Depression conditions ravage the city. Many others face similar problems. Stockton and Mammoth Lakes declared bankruptcy earlier. Other financially strapped cities and towns around the state and country may follow. It's hard keeping up with many troubled municipalities, counties, school systems, and other public services potentially facing bankruptcy.

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Philip Giraldi

Many Americans will cast their ballots in November based on their reckoning of which candidate would be less dangerous. Unfortunately, the disappearance of Rep. Ron Paul from the campaign will inevitably mean that the two contenders will not discuss foreign policy in any meaningful way, instead preferring to boast of how tough they would be on America’s enemies.

Given the fact that there will be no actual debate on substantive issues, thoughtful Americans who realize that it is precisely the foreign and security policy nightmare that has evolved over the past 10 years that has fueled the domestic crisis might want to consider which of the two candidates will actually make the situation worse. Based on what the candidates are saying and have actually been doing, it is possible to get some idea of what might await us in 2013.

Mitt Romney is more easily categorized. He knows nothing about foreign policy, is almost willfully ignorant, and is completely dependent on his advisers, most of whom are neoconservatives who held positions in the administration of George W. Bush. There are reports of dissent among his advisers on some key issues, but Romney has invariably personally opted to take positions that might be regarded as more extreme in that they choose to rely on military might and confrontation rather than negotiation and accommodation.

Romney was unique among the gaggle of Republican presidential candidates in calling for increasing the size of the military budget and the armed forces in order to confront America’s enemies, including Iran, Russia, and China. He also joined some other Republicans in emphasizing American exceptionalism, which confers on the United States the role of world leader together with the apparently God-given authority to act unilaterally. It is significant that Romney was recently the recipient of largess derived from a fundraiser organized by Dick Cheney.

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