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President Barack Obama today promised the U.S. would "take action" in response to Russia's pre-election hacking, >>>
(*all because we didn't do as we were told , and elect CLINTON)
Under the guise of countering foreign "propaganda," the GOP-controlled Congress quietly passed a bill last week that will unleash even more government propaganda on humanity, while at the same time establishing what critics blasted as an Orwellian "Ministry of Truth." The "bipartisan" but flatly unconstitutional scheme, dubbed the Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act, also calls for providing tax funding and training to "journalists," media outfits, and other propagandists willing to parrot the U.S. government's viewpoints. According to its sponsors, the goal is to help promote Washington, D.C.'s "foreign policy goals." The potential for abuse, though, is nearly endless, and the bipartisan establishment's "foreign policy goals" are often at odds with the Constitution — not to mention common decency, human liberty, and peace. And so, critics are speaking out forcefully.
Facebook is adding a new feature wherein a group that the Washington Post calls an 'independent third party fact checker' will decide whether stories are real or fake, and flag ones the group decides are fake.
WaPo leaves out of its report that the 'independent fact checker', the Poynter International Fact-Checking Network, receives funding from a US government-funded group, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which award-winning, independent journalist Robert Parry and author William Blum document was created to perform tasks previously performed by the CIA.
NED was created when "[t]he Agency was getting an exceedingly bad name, and it was causing the powers-that-be much embarrassment", notes Blum.
It wasn't widely reported during the debate of the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), nor indeed was it mentioned in either the House or Senate versions of the bill, but the NDAA has a provision within it that would allow the US to send shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles to rebel factions in Syria.
This bill is basically setting up the population of California for state regulatory agencies to fill in the blanks later, to make specific controls out of the vague generalities in the bill. Get it?
"Medical care and nutrition and parenting and education are what we say they are. We define and enforce, you obey."
SB18 is also an invitation to immigrants anywhere in the world who can get to California with their children, or will give birth to children after arriving: "Just be here and we'll take care of you."
The last gasp of the Nanny State?
Putin has had enough of the relentless barrage of US accusations that he, personally, "hacked the US presidential election."
The Russian president's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said on Friday that the US must either stop accusing Russia of meddling in its elections or prove it. Peskov said it was "indecent" of the United States to "groundlessly" accuse Russia of intervention in its elections.
"You need to either stop talking about it, or finally show some kind of proof. Otherwise it just looks very indecent", Peskov told Reporters in Tokyo where Putin is meeting with Japan PM Abe, responding to the latest accusations that Russia was responsible for hacker attacks.
Peskov also warned that Obama's threat to "retaliate" to the alleged Russian hack is "against both American and international law", hinting at open-ended escalation should Obama take the podium today at 2:15pm to officially launch cyberwar against Russia.
Putin is asking the right question here; if there is incontrovertible proof by the US government that Russia hacked the election, why are they not presenting it?!?
And I would like to politely point out to the US government, that because of all the lies they have been telling the American public - and the world - Americans have become very skeptical of any accusations coming out of the mouths of any government official.
So, to the Obama Administration, I say; either prove this allegation, or please just go away quietly!!
So, this entity chosen by Facebook for its alleged "fact checking", is Poynter International Fact-Checking Network, which receives its money from a US government-funded group, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED)?
And NED was originally created to do things the CIA used to do, but, in essence, created "plausible deniability" for some of the CIA's more horrific actions, by being, technically, "one step away", so the CIA could not be blamed?!?
So folks, it's on: we are going to start to see massive censorship at Facebook, because it is a US government-funded which is doing its "fact checking."
It is very interesting to me that NED has historically been complicit in creating its own fake news, to further various government-desired agendas and outcome, including regime change in foreign countries, and the consolidation of power by US-centric regimes in those countries through practices like the use of death squads.
And Mark Zuckerberg, to think, for one millisecond, that you could pull a fast one on the American people, by using Poynter International Fact-Checking Network, funded by US-government sponsored NED, as your "filter" at Facebook, you have another thing coming.
So congratulations; you have now been exposed for being a superlative tool for the Deep State, by doing this.
So I will now move off your platform entirely, moving to alternatives which will not censor, and I encourage others to do so as well.
I think the best public response to this choice is a massive downturn n your company's profitability; and when people become aware of what you have done here, and they start to get angry, this may well be the outcome you see.
There is a giant push by governments and mainstream corporate media to censor criticism of the American government as somehow helping Russia.
That's honestly one of the most anti-American, pro-Communist kinds of bullshit I've ever heard.
In reality, dissent is one of the most uniquely American values. As someone born and raised in the U.S., who has lived here my whole life, and who values the Constitution and the rule of law, I'm furious that idiots are pushing a Soviet version of censorship which would destroy what our forefathers fought and died for: freedom. I'm pissed off that they're trying to destroy what makes us Americans.
As Georgetown history professor Michael Kazin wrote in the Washington Post:
Now, as throughout its history, the most effective way to love our country is to fight like hell to change it.
As a Christian Pacifist activist, I logically, peacefully, call my government out when its actions do not appear to be supporting We the People, but almost exclusively the mega-corporations, which fund politicians' campaigns, and those incidents seem to be rising exponentially these days.
I never advocate violence, because I understand that violence is something the Federal Government understands how to put down with extreme prejudice.
But I will continue to shine the light of witness on the lies the Federal Government consistently tells its citizens with impunity; and if, because those lies get exposed for what they are, and people have almost zero faith in the US Federal Government, it is that government's own fault, and not that of people out there attempting to analyze what the government is saying, and which of its agendas those lies support.
I will continue to advocate against these horrific, pre-emptive wars, which have broken this country, both fiscally and morally, and constantly urge the US government to resolve its geopolitical differences with other countries through hard-won good faith negotiations.
So, I really want to know; how in the name of heaven, is requesting logical, rational, citizen-centric behaviour from my government "somehow helping Russia"?!?
As of 1 December, there were 259 journalists jailed worldwide, according to the annual census conducted by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) – the highest number on record.
By far the largest group, 81 journalists, are detained in Turkey, followed by China (38) and Egypt (25).
Israel is holding 7 journalists, according to CPJ, which puts it on a par with Syria and Bahrain, just behind Iran (8) and ahead of Saudi Arabia (6).
In early December, a blizzard struck North Dakota, blanketing the Oceti Sakowin, Rosebud, and Sacred Stone water protector camps with heavy snow in below freezing temperatures. As the Standing Rock Sioux and allies battled the crippling cold, the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers (USACE) handed the native community a victory by denying the permit for the final construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. The USACE said they will conduct an environmental impact assessment and consider possible alternative routes.
Although fireworks rang out above the camps following the Army Corps decision, there was also a sense of hesitation. Water protectors remained uncertain over whether the fight had really been won or if the decision was simply a ploy to delay an inevitable conclusion. It quickly became apparent that the fight was not over as word spread that the company behind the pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners, would continue with their plans to complete the project.
With $20 million a day at stake in revenues, my guess is, that what we are seeing now, is simply a series of delaying tactics, and a hope, on the part of Energy Transfer Partners, that the issue will go away.
Although many of the Standing Rock Souix have returned home, due to extreme winter weather conditions, this issue, of the protection of both their water, land environment, and sacred burial grounds, will not go away.
The boycotting of those financial institutions supporting DAPL, coupled with legal challenges against the project, are good moves, but may not be strong enough to stop the project in the long run.
SWISS politicians have sparked outrage after ignoring a historic referendum vote to end freedom of movement.
A majority of voters backed a proposal to cap immigration from EU member states in the landmark poll, held two years ago.
But MPs today defied the will of the people by voting against placing any cap on EU migrants.
It came after fears the country, which is part of the European Free Trade Association, could lose its access to the single market.
And sure enough, on Thursday evening CNN reported that President Barack Obama vowed retaliatory action against Russia for its meddling in the US presidential election, in effect telling Russia he is about to declare cyberwar on it.
"I think there is no doubt that when any foreign government tries to impact the integrity of our elections that we need to take action and we will at a time and place of our own choosing," Obama told National Public Radio. He is certainly right: the only doubt is that a foreign government did in fact try to "impact the integrity of our elections." Webmaster addition: It's worse than that. A few years back, the administration declared that cyber attacks would be considered an outright act of war justifying military response!
President Barack Obama has vowed to take action against Russia for its apparent interference in the US presidential election.
"I think there is no doubt that when any foreign government tries to impact the integrity of our elections that we need to take action and we will at a time and place of our own choosing," Mr Obama told National Public Radio.
Speaking at the State Department on Thursday, US Secretary of State John Kerry refused to comment on "anonymous intelligence reports" alleging that Russian President Vladimir Putin was personally involved in hacking into US election in favor of president-elect Donald Trump.
Of course he won't confirm it!
It appears that NBC has rather "stepped in it" with allegation; let's see if they try to walk it back!
Koch Brothers Secretly Allied w. George Soros for Hillary Clinton … The leading financiers of the Republican Party, the Koch brothers, were exposed ... by the great investigative journalist Lee Fang, as being solid supporters and heavy financiers of congressional candidates who have been leaders in expanding the U.S. military budget and moving America toward a police state (including militarization of the police).
The leading financier of the Democratic Party, George Soros, has long been known to provide major financial backing for the most-neoconservative Democratic candidates, such as Hillary Clinton, who favor every possible military invasion and coup (and see this, for more on that).
My heaven, what a (slightly strange) collection of connected bedfellows, in this attempt to thrououghly destroy America's Constitutional Republic!!
I have to wonder just what the heck these people are going to do if they are unable to turn the number of electors Clinton needs to steal the election from Trump on Monday?!?
Unfortunately, and because they have extensive experiences in doing this to effect "regime change" in other countries, Soros' organisations and the CIA may well be scheming to generate national riots against the Trump Presidency, and have Obama (during his allegedly "last days in Office") suspend the Constitution and Bill of Rights, invoking martial law; and declaring November's elections null and void, promising to schedule a replacement election at a later point in time.
Unfortunately, should they pull this off successfully, I am very concerned that the excrement will hit the ventilation system, and we may well see a civil war in this country.
I hope (and pray) that our current political circus doesn't move the country in this direction.
But to all of our readers and listeners, please make sure that you have everything you need if there is a major emergency, and can either shelter in place comfortably, or know how - and where - you will bug out, if you need to do so.
California Über Alles!
From AP's blog:
The fight against fake news
As part of its broader fact-checking efforts, The Associated Press announced Thursday that it will work with Facebook to help identify and debunk trending "news" stories being shared online that are false.
In an unrelated news release AP announces it will be shutting down after 170 years in the business in order to comply with the new polocies outlined by Zuckerburg. For moron Zuckerburg news goto FB!
Facebook has announced a new plan today that will very quickly transform the social media site into an "echo chamber" of left-wing media lies and delusional propaganda (just like we've recently seen pushed by the Washington Post).
The new effort will rely on left-wing "fact checker" organizations like Politifact and Snopes to determine the "truthiness" of news stories, reports Business Insider. Those stories deemed by left-wing "fact checkers" to be inaccurate will be buried in Facebook users' feeds as a form of organized totalitarian censorship.
Which is why people are dropping Facebook for the new startup social media like seen.life !
Not wanting to be left out of the giant farce that is the "The Russians did it" narrative, Republican senator from North Carolina Lindsey Graham told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Wednesday that not only did Russia hack the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta's emails, but they also hacked into his very own personal presidential campaign account.
First, Graham had a presidential campaign? Next, one has to wonder what is used to blackmail Lindsey? Perhaps pictures of him playing dominos over pasta!?!
snip: If the FBI and CIA don't hunt down the person who divulged this "secret report," it was an authorized release. You're being misled on purpose.
Now, getting back to the story, let's note that there is zero evidence given. Just "it was a secret report, trust us." Not one of the "officials" is named.
It should also be noted that Julian Assange has flatly denied that Russia was the source of the leaks. And Assange, unlike 99% of all Washington, has a reputation for truth-telling.
There were earlier reports blaming Russia for the Wikileaks hacks, and they, likewise, provided zero evidence. They say things like "consistent with Russian methods," implying, it would seem, that Russia has some kind of patent on hacking techniques. They expect us to believe that Putin's crews run their hacks from Russian companies and Russian IP addresses.
The United States is deploying troops to Poland, the Baltic states and Romania next month as part of raising the security of the region, Polish and U.S. defense officials said Wednesday.
Polish Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz made the announcement following talks with the commander of U.S. land troops in Europe, Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, in Zagan, western Poland. An Armored Brigade Combat Team from Fort Carson, Colorado will be deployed there early next month, while another U.S. force, a battalion, will be deployed April 1 to Orzysz, in the northeast.
Macierewicz said he was "very happy that a decision has been taken by the U.S. side for an earlier deployment."
But the U.S. Army told The Associated Press that the deployment was not accelerated and is taking place as had always been scheduled.
If, in fact, this deployment has been accelerated, it is reason to worry; the 1st of January will be upon us in 17 days.
And apparently, it appears that fact-checking is something AP doesn't do anymore, when the facts do not support the US government's narrative, which is clearly the case here.
The US and NATO understand that Russia did NOT annex Crimea in 2014, so they are using this lie as their justification to provoke some kind of war against Russia even before Trump has the opportunity to take the Oath of Office.
This is the American "deep state" at its worst.
Something wicked this way comes, folks.
Villagers in al-Hayma told The Intercept they heard rumbling around 3 o'clock in the afternoon. Soon after, they saw a jet from the Saudi-led coalition circling over the coast. Assisted by the U.S. with weapons and intelligence, Saudi Arabia has been bombing and blockading Yemen for 21 months.
"The warplane was hovering toward the shoreline before I saw something with parachutes falling down," said Yahya Qassem Zabah, a local fisherman. "For a moment I thought that soldiers were landing. Then I heard a number of explosions soon after that."
What Zabah saw was not a soldier parachuting toward the coast, it was a cluster weapon. In mid-air, its shell casing opened and released cylinder-shaped bomblets, which scattered as they plummeted to the beach.
All at once, like deafening firecrackers, explosions ripped across the sand, splintering, smashing, and overturning fishing boats.
That the US government is complicit in war crimes is an absolute given here, as this government continues to militarily enable the Saudi military.
However, as reported at motherjones.com in September of this year, regarding Textron's phasing out of the manufacture of cluster munitions in the US:
This week, states parties and advocates meet in Geneva for the Meeting of States Parties to the Convention on Cluster Munitions. But as former Navy explosive ordnance disposal officer turned public radio reporter John Ismay notes, the United States doesn't have the best track record when it comes to arms treaties. "We haven't signed the land mine treaty. We still have nuclear weapons. We still have napalm bombs in the inventory," he says. "I have a feeling these are things we'll hang on to." Plus, they're still legal under US law. While Textron Systems is ending its cluster bomb program, the Pentagon could turn to a different manufacturer. Or Textron may be willing to license its technology to other defense contractors. On that point, the company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Textron has been made enormously profitable by the sale of these weapons; my best bet would be that they would license the technology to other defense contractors who are out of the country, so that their executives could say, with a reasonably straight face, that they no longer made these bombs, and technically, they would be correct in that statement.
Today is Bill of Rights Day in America.
Happy Bill of Rights Day!
This post explains the liberties guaranteed in the Bill of Rights – the first 10 amendments to the United States Constitution – and provides a scorecard on the extent of the loss of each right.
The CIA is up to its old tricks: overthrowing a democratically elected government. Only this time it's our government.
But why would the CIA, in particular, have a special aversion to Trump? Marcy Wheeler, whose analytical abilities I respect despite our political disagreements, has this to say:
You microchip your dog and your cat to keep them safe. So why not human beings?
That is the idea being pushed in H.R. 4919, a bill so vaguely worded that we should all be very, very concerned.
While it's currently being promoted as a way to keep track of those who are "mentally incompetent" due to Alzheimer's, dementia, mental health issues, or developmental disabilities, I think we can all see the potential for abuse.
Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan and associate of Julian Assange, told the Dailymail.com he flew to Washington, D.C. for emails He claims he had a clandestine hand-off in a wooded area near American University with one of the email sources.
The leakers' motivation was 'disgust at the corruption of the Clinton Foundation and the 'tilting of the primary election playing field against Bernie Sanders' Murray says: 'The source had legal access to the information. The documents came from inside leaks, not hacks'.
'Regardless of whether the Russians hacked into the DNC, the documents Wikileaks published did not come from that,' Murray insists.
Murray is a controversial figure who was relieved of his post as British ambassador amid allegations of misconduct but is close to Wikileaks.
His account contradicts directly the version of how thousands of Democratic emails were published before the election being advanced by U.S. intelligence.
At this point, I would tend to believe Murray's account over ANYTHING the CIA had to say.
Though construction on the Dakota Access Pipeline has halted for now, the lessons for law enforcement and protesters are still percolating. For the former, they'll likely find themselves one day studying the event as they prepare for future mass gatherings, maybe in a guide just like the one distributed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to North Dakota law enforcement in September.
Looking at some of the weapons approved for crowd control that DHS is permitted to use, toward the end of this article, is very, very scary.
Mainstream, corporate media and the U.S. political establishment has once again proved the depth of their hypocrisy in thus far unsubstantiated claims Russia directly interfered with the presidential election — because the United States has done so, itself, with multiple countries.
Including Russia.
Twenty years ago, TIME Magazine exclusively reported on the feats of American political consultants who'd managed — much to the joy of the United States government — to ensure Boris Yeltsin won re-election to the Russian presidency.
20 years ago, TIME praised America's propaganda campaign to elect Yeltsin. Today, they have appeared to change their tone.
Those who wished to read the full text of the notorious Senate report on documenting the CIA torture of detainees after 9/11 will have to wait for 12 years. The White House ordered it kept under seal after Barack Obama leaves office. Seven US senators urged the Obama administration to declassify the 6,770-page Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on the CIA's detention and interrogation program so the public could have a full account of past torture practices.
White House counsel Neil Eggleston, in responding to the request, said the president had told the National Archives and Records Administration that access to the classified material should be shielded from public access requests for 12 years.
No, Mr. President: this report on CIA torture should be released immediately.
The American people deserve to know what was done, in their names, and with their tax dollars, to torture prisoners of war into confessions. Consider the case of one Benyam Mohammed, as reported in the working papers, 2006, of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Council, and I warn you: the language is very graphic, but I think Americans should definitively know what went on in the torture sessions the US military did directly, or outsourced, as was the case here.
206. At its worst, the torture involved stripping Binyam naked and using a doctor's scalpel to make incisions all over his chest and other parts of his body: "One of them took my penis in his hand and began to make cuts. He did it once and they stood for a minute, watching my reaction. I was in agony, crying, trying desperately to suppress myself, but I was screaming. They must have done this 20 to 30 times, in maybe two hours. There was blood all over. They cut all over my private parts. One of them said it would be better just to cut it off, as I would only breed terrorists."
207. Eventually Binyam began to co-operate in his interrogation sessions in an effort to prevent being tortured: "They said if you say this story as we read it, you will just go to court as a witness and all this torture will stop. I could not take any more... and I eventually repeated what they read out to me. They told me to say I was with bin Laden five or six times. Of course that was false. They continued with two or three interrogations a month. They weren't really interrogations —more like trainings, training me what to say."
The bottom line here is, torture will get the tortured person to say anything their torturers want them to say in order to get the torture to stop; they were getting precisely the false confessions his torturers wanted from this guy, which he gave in order to get the torture to stop.
It does not produce actionable intelligence.
One of the finest interrogators of all times, Germany's Hanns-Joachim Scharff, during World War 11, never used any torture; only kindness, but wound up with great intel from the process. In fact, after the war, because he was so respected by the American military, he was invited to give courses in his methods of interrogation here in the states.
Hanns Scharff
And I will tell you what else happens, when the US government either tortures, or outsources torture.
1. It demonstrates to the world that the United States does not believe in the rule of law at all, so its treatment of prisoners of war absolutely does not follow the Geneva Conventions, which provide for the humane treatment of these prisoners.
2. It gives carte blanche to leadership of other countries to torture American civilians and military personnel.
3. It demonstrates, both at home and abroad, that US leadership has utterly no moral compass whatsoever.
Dallas Police resignations soar after withdrawals are halted from the insolvent city pension system.
40 Electors are demand a full briefing on Russian Interference in the U.S. election before they vote.
Maki said that eight to 10 special agents with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service entered his shop that day, asking him repeated questions about whether the ciscoes he sells came from the U.S. or Canadian side of the international border. Maki said he told agents that Ely's Bob LaTourell, who nets the ciscoes for him, does so exclusively on the U.S. side of the border.
"It's a witch hunt, in my opinion," said Maki, who has operated the shop for 34 years.
I guess the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is out to prove what a useful agency they are so that they don't get hit with Trump's budget ax!
Presented below with little comment is an epic rant, culminating in what might have been an actual on-air nervous breakdown, by Keith Olbermann about the "Russian coup" that is currently in process and threatens "the end of the United States as an independent country."
"The nation and all of our freedoms hang by a thread. And the military apparatus of this country is about to be handed over to scum who are beholden to scum, Russian scum. As things are today, January 20th will not be an inauguration but rather the end of the United States as an independent country. It will not be a peaceful change of power. It will be a usurpation. And the usurper has no validity, no credibility and no authority under the constitution. This is a reality that will become the only reality until this country rids itself of Donald John Trump. He is not a President."
I have listened to this from beginning to end.
Olbermann is either in severe need of a psychological intervention, or whatever the Democratic Party is paying him, it cannot possibly be enough.
Apparently, for this gentleman, fact checking has gone the way of the whoopie cushion and the dribble glass. As reported at zerohedge.com 5 days ago:
CIA agents told the lawmakers it was "quite clear" - although it was not reported exactly what made it "clear" - that electing Trump was Russia's goal, according to officials who spoke to the Post, citing growing evidence from multiple sources. And yet, key questions remain unanswered, and the CIA's report fell short of being a formal U.S. assessment produced by all 17 intelligence agencies the newspaper said, for two reasons. As we reported in November "The "Fact" That 17 Intelligence Agencies Confirmed Russia is Behind the Email Hacks Isn't Actually…A "Fact", and then also because aside from so-called "consensus", there is - once again - no evidence, otherwise the appropriate agencies would have long since released it, and this is nothing more than another propaganda attempt to build tension with Russia. In fact, the WaPo admits as much in the following text, which effectively destroys the article's entire argument : The CIA presentation to senators about Russia's intentions fell short of a formal U.S. assessment produced by all 17 intelligence agencies. A senior U.S. official said there were minor disagreements among intelligence officials about the agency's assessment, in part because some questions remain unanswered. For example, intelligence agencies do not have specific intelligence showing officials in the Kremlin "directing" the identified individuals to pass the Democratic emails to WikiLeaks, a second senior U.S. official said. Those actors, according to the official, were "one step" removed from the Russian government, rather than government employees. Moscow has in the past used middlemen to participate in sensitive intelligence operations so it has plausible deniability. * * * "I'll be the first one to come out and point at Russia if there's clear evidence, but there is no clear evidence — even now," said Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a member of the Trump transition team. "There's a lot of innuendo, lots of circumstantial evidence, that's it."
If the Chair of the House Intelligence Committee states that there is zero evidence of Russian complicity in this election, I think one can understand that there is no evidence, period, end of discussion.
To put it bluntly, Mr. Olbermann has lost his reality license, as evidenced by this statement, and has simply become a total apparatchik of the Democratic party; he needs to be stripped of his TV "bully pulpit", and immediately, for a complete lack of credibility.
*hyperlinks/videos live at source*
hat tips: The Anti-New York Times, Washington's Blog, InvestmentWatchBlog, Fellowship of the Minds, Consortium News, Global Research, Activist Post, InfoWars
"When we now know that all claims for war with Iraq were known lies as they were told (and verbally explained here), and CNN provides similar innuendo for war by an unsourced alleged report with concerns of what might occur in the future allegedly stated by an unnamed US source reporting on an unnamed foreign source, this is propaganda and not news." ~ My 2010 analysis of "fake news" reporting from CBS, ABC, CNN to lie Americans into illegal war on Iran.
The U.S. Department of Education has just released it's latest ranking of international education systems (Program for International Student Assessment - "PISA") and performance of U.S. students just continues to deteriorate on both absolute and relative terms.
Perhaps it's time to have a real conversation about the complete failure of "Common Core" and the idiocy of allowing teachers' unions to hold our children hostage while hiding behind ridiculous contracts that grant tenure after 6 months and make it impossible to fire underperformers. Just a thought for the incoming Trump administration.
The Washington Post's Valerie Strauss summed up the problems nicely:
The dumbing down of America's kids has been deliberate, courtesy of the Federal Government, and a system of alleged standards, under the heading of Common Core, which have failed, utterly.
When kids are not taught to be literate, both numerically and linguistically, they become incapable of critical thinking, which makes all the difference in determining what the quality of their lives will be
Critical thinking will also give them the capability to determine if what the US government is telling them is true or false.
That is not something the US government wants our kids, let alone our adults, to be able to do, because it lies to its people consistently, and it is best that kids understand this when they are very young, so as not to swallow its propaganda, but understand the narrative the government is supporting, and why.
Public schools have become a danger to the intellectual and emotional health of our kids; if you have any way of pulling your child out of public school, and either home school that child, or find a magnet school with a proven track record, please do it now now.
Your child will thank you for it later.
You've got to see this video. Carruesco's smug, flippant, arrogant, dismissive confident reply is indicative of a severe rot, a moral filth, or psychosis among those in power who seemed to be trained to slaughter the innocent. I can't put into words how vile and disgusting this guy's response is. You can judge for yourself. Here is the video and Carruesco's contact info, and his Facebook page. Bakersfield Police Department Gary Carruesco, Sergeant Phone: (661)326-3803 Email: email@example.com
but he's of Lebanese descent so it's OK.
wolf! wolf! wolf! Why doesn't anyone believe me!?
26-year-old rookie cop Reagan Sellman, a former Marine, shot and killed a 73-year-old grandpa suffering from dementia Monday morning at 12:30AM. The rookie cop unloaded his gun on Francisco Serna claiming he had a gun, when in reality it was a Catholic crucifix. The police had even been to the house several times before and were familiar with the man. A paranoid neighbor woman, who didn't even know her own neighbor who lived across the street from her, initiated the whole thing when she freaked out and called the cops on Serna, claiming the confused elderly man had a gun and was posing a threat to her. When Francisco came across the street to talk to them, the paranoid woman and her husband ran into their house and police open-fired, murdering him.
Wikileaks reveals leaked emails came from a Bernie Sander's supporter frustrated with the DNC rigging the primaries for Hillary Clinton.
In a surprise move, the United States has announced that they will halt sales certain munitions sales to Saudi Arabia yesterday, citing growing concerns about "flaws" in Saudi targeting in the Yemen war, which is leading to a huge number of civilian deaths. Officials quoted in Reuters described a "systemic, endemic" problem with Saudi targeting in the war, and decided that they could no longer sell certain "air-dropped" weaponry to the Saudis. The shift is surprising, as US officials have repeatedly claimed support for the Saudi war, but it isn't necessarily a huge shift.
Georgia is calling on Donald Trump to investigate the Department of Homeland Security after the discovery of 9 more attempts by the agency to hack the state's election system.
Fraud Audit Underway: Scanners in 248 of Detroit's 392 disqualified precincts counted more ballots than the actual number of voters.
Pennsylvania denies Jill Stein's recount on 6 separate grounds including hacking accusations "border on irrational"
Wisconsin Vote Fraud goes unexplained in Day 12 of Wisconsin recount as Trump picks up votes and announced the winner.
A NATO-Russia confrontation has been deemed a top risk by by the CFR survey, conducted by foreign policy experts. This placed it alongside the risk of a nuclear crisis with North Korea, a highly disruptive cyberattack, and a severe terrorist attack on the US among the events with the highest impact on the US.
The likelihoods for the biggest potential conflicts coming true were split into two groups – those with a moderate likelihood of happening, but causing a high impact; and those with a high likelihood of happening, but causing a moderate impact.
Unlike prior years, in 2017 no scenario was deemed both highly likely and highly impactful to U.S. interests, a change from last year when an intensification of Syria's civil war was considered the most urgent threat. Respondents still considered a worsening of Syria's civil war to be highly likely in 2017, but downgraded its impact on U.S. interests from high to moderate.
I certainly wish that the esteemed members of the CFR could prove one incident of alleged "Russian Aggression"; because all I have seen is the polar opposite fact that NATO has been surrounding Russia with weapons and troops, calling for more expanded moves in that direction for next year!
Russia NEVER "annexed Crimea"; in the Spring of 2014, the US government, in collusion with the IMF, NATO, and various Soros organisations, threw the duly elected Yanukovich under the proverbial bus, then anointed Poroshenko as Ukraine's President, in an election even more crooked than a dog's hind leg!!
Victoria Nuland, in a presentation, even bragged about how much the US had spent to destabilize Ukraine, in a presentation:
Victoria Nuland's Admits Washington Has Spent $5 Billion to "Subvert Ukraine"
At that point, Crimean officials understood that there was no honest representation in Kiev, so they first asked their people, in an observed, and honest, referendum as to whether they wanted to stay with Ukraine, or request to join the Russian Federation. The Crimean people voted overwhelmingly to join the Russian Federation. A petition was put forward to the Russian Federation, asking if Crimea could be accepted as a member, and the Russian Federation accepted.
But this act of peaceful self-determination by the Crimeans made the governments of the Ukraine and US so angry, that they accused Russia of having "annexed" Ukraine, so punished them with sanctions, and insisted that the EU follow along.
NATO, Ukraine, and the US government continue to lie about something which Russia never did, and THAT is their basis for characterizing Russia's behaviour as "aggressive".
In fact, this headline should more clearly read "NATO WANTS WAR WITH RUSSIA"; with all the verbal belligerence on the part of NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, against Russia recently, particularly concerning its involvement with getting rid of Jihadists, that headline would be more real.
NATO to increase its combat readiness amid Russian activity - Stoltenberg
What is needed here is a pullback from the rhetoric, and the introduction of some common-sense, intelligent negotiations here between Russia, NATO, AND THE US Government.
War does not have to be inevitable here.
Russia is not the enemy here, despite NATO's best efforts to paint it as such.
I have been reporting on the DMV stats periodically since California's AB60 was passed. The law allows those who aren't citizens or permanent residents to get a driver license if they provide proof of residence, pass a written-knowledge exam and a behind-the-wheel driving test. The DMV has stopped publishing the numbers on their website as they had promised, but I contacted them and they politely sent me all the latest stats. (Since the law was enacted, 168,000 AB60 applicants failed to get their license, so can we presume that they aren't driving around?)
Enough with "the Russians" already. This "Russian Disinformation" and "Russian Hacking" stuff is getting more ridiculous by the day.
This is a war on the Trump presidency. It's an attempted coup.
Maybe it's even another effort to outright steal the presidency from Trump. Maybe there's someone with a lot of money to throw into this "OMG THE RUSSIANS" rhetoric who really hates Russia and who really wanted Hillary Clinton to be the President. Maybe his name rhymes with "Doros." I don't know this for sure, but it's at least a more likely story than "The Russians" hacking our election and deliberately spreading propaganda.
And it's working. Ten of the Electoral College delegates have asked to be briefed on the Russian "interference" before they cast their votes on the 19th.
But that isn't all. This is a two-for-one deal.
There is more at stake here than the elections. Without the power of the White House behind her, Hillary is looking at multiple lawsuits, courtesy of her arrogance and corruption, which may well lead to jail time.
The Benghazi lawsuit, filed by survivors of those who were slaughtered there, is just the beginning.
The Saudi government paid 20% of her campaign costs, which amounted to a cool $240 million dollars, but - as the saying goes - they bet on the wrong horse. The influence they THOUGHT they would get from a Clinton White House ... will never happen.
The Clinton Foundation is toast, due to all the revelations about it being simply a slush fund and influence-peddling, pay-to-play operation. They will never get their money back. So what now?!?
Will Saudi Arabia file yet another lawsuit, or be called for testimony to the US Senate as to what that money was really supposed to buy?!?
And will there be more lawsuits from Judicial Watch, stemming from her corruption as Secretary of State?!?
The mounting possibilities of lawsuits yet to be filed against her, any one of which could see her in the slammer, are deliciously diverse, unless Obama gives her a blanket pardon, which will make both of them look cheesy and sleazy.
An in-depth documentary revealing the history of Stuxnet being just a very small part of an apocalyptic cyber warfare arsenal known as Nitro Zeus.
The 2016 NDAA becomes law, blacklisted "fake news" sites now subject to treason investigations.
NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden warns newly enacted legislation gives governments a backdoor to all technology.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took off Tuesday morning for Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, pointing to his trip to the two Muslim countries as an indication that rather than being politically isolated, Israel is courted by countries around the world.
During his two-day visit, aimed at fostering security, economic, and diplomatic ties, Netanyahu will become the first sitting Israeli prime minister to visit the region in almost 25 years of diplomatic relations between Jerusalem and the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. Visits by Israeli leaders to non-Arab Muslim-majority countries are rare.
Speaking to reporters at the airport, the prime minister said the trip was a further indication of Israeli success in developing relationships with Muslim counties.
"...courted country.", my ASTROLABE: Netanyahu is in these two countries on a weapons-selling junket. As reported by the Jerusalem Post yesterday:
Iranian adversary reveals it bought $5 billion of weapons from Israel
What is that old line from the Middle East, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend"; that is what is going on here.
The Israelis manufacture superlative weapons; Azerbaijan's government wants more of them.
It is just that simple.
The US political and media establishment is in a state of mounting frenzy over alleged Russian interference in the presidential election in favor of Donald Trump. The source of what has been called a "swell" of "circumstantial evidence" is the CIA, an agency which has been known to interfere with an election or two itself, and isn't really a paragon of honesty.
And what exactly are the claims made by these Putin-did-it stories? That were it not for Russian chicanery, Hillary Clinton would have won the popular vote by five million and not almost three million? That displaced machinists on the banks of Lake Erie were so incensed by the Podesta emails that they voted for Trump instead of Clinton? That Putin was pulling FBI director James Comey's strings in his investigation of the Clinton emails? That those scheming Russians were clever enough to hack into voting machines but not clever enough to cover their tracks?
Obama's parting shot across the bow is his order of a full review into hacking aimed at influencing US elections going back to 2008.
Instead of targeting the CIA or the NSA, WikiLeaks went after an organization Democrats actually care about - the Democratic National Committee - and exposed its internal corruption. If Obama could, he would declare Wikileaks a Terrorist Organization and anyone who published its stuff should be thrown in prison.
What Obama has accomplished, with his directive to cause the CIA to make this fully unsubstantiated claim on Friday, is to make the political intrigues in this country look like those of a banana republic to the rest of the world, and completely delegitimize the American election process.
Smoothe move there, Mr. President!!
MEPS have voted to introduce yet more rules reducing the number of written questions leaders face.
It is infuriating how Jews are made victims again in Germany, and how philosemitism has substituted anti-Semitism. On the other hand, Germans who engage for the end of the illegal occupation of Palestine, are defamed and excluded. The bad conscience of the perpetrators' progeny is not entitled to label the victims' progeny with a kosher stamp for human rights and international law violations. Since Germans know what a system based on injustice was and is able of doing.
The United States has decided to limit military support to Saudi Arabia's campaign in Yemen because of concerns over widespread civilian casualties and will halt a planned arms sale to the kingdom, U.S. officials told Reuters.
The United States will also revamp future training of the kingdom's air force to focus on improving Saudi targeting practices, a persistent source of concern for Washington.
The decision reflects deep frustration within President Barack Obama's government over Saudi Arabia's practices in Yemen's 20-month-old war, which has killed more than 10,000 people and sparked humanitarian crises, including chronic food shortages, in the poorest country in the Middle East.
It could also further strain ties between Washington and Riyadh in the remaining days of Obama's administration and put the question of Saudi-U.S. relations squarely before the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump, who takes office on Jan. 20.
A memo to President Obama; Mr. President, in enabling the Saudi Government to buy their bombs from companies like General Dynamics, you, sir, have allowed this country's government to become complicit in Saudi war crimes in their "scorched earth" campaign in Yemen.
There is no polite way around this sir, and somewhere, in your heart of hearts, you know that this is true.
If gun manufacturers are to blame for gun crime, then the United States is responsible for the war crimes being committed in Yemen.
Saudis strike schools, hospitals, and open air market places with utter impunity; their actions in Yemen border on genocide.
(Warning: very graphic images follow)
dead and wounded Yemeni children, as a result of Saudi air strikes
Oh, and the blockade of Yemen's ports has meant that no food supplies can be delivered, which translates to children who are starving to death, slowly and painfully.
Images of Yemeni children, dying from starvation because of the Saudi blockade of Yemen's ports
When you kill or starve children to death, you take away the potential for a country's future, and it appears, even though you are a father yourself, that you are perfectly comfortable with this slaughter of Yemeni children.
That you use the starving children in Syria as "justification" to prolong that atrocity, is the rankest of hypocrisy.
But then, such an attitude, which dismisses these children as "merely collateral damage",is completely consistent with a sociopathic personality.
This military enabling of Saudi Arabia against the Houthis, rather than developing a strategy of engaging elements of both the Al Hadi government and the Houthi rebels in negotiations to end the bloodshed here, will go down as one of the worst, epic fails of your administrations, worse even than your attempt to keep the fighting in Syria going so you could "dump" your inability to regime-change Damascus on Trump.
History, sir, will not judge you kindly; and I can guarantee that it will judge you on the content of your character, and how that has been made evident by your failure to stop the wars you promised to stop; a further involvement in more wars; the embracing of the horribly immoral act of extrajudicial assassination; and your success at creating more wealth for the one percent, while leaving an economy in which 94 million American workers are not participating in the labor force.
As you strut around the country, and the world, on your "victory lap" before leaving office; please remember that the above is your "true legacy", both to Americans, and to the world.
We've all been warned that it is coming, but what is disturbing is that while technology surrounds us and some have concerns about privacy, most shrug at the massive amounts of data they are collecting about our lives, and the incredible level of control the system now has over each individual. This bill passed, clinging to the broadest base of "good intentions" that it could muster, i.e. caring for those with disabilities and decline with age. But in reality, it is a nose under the tent for a system that needs the ability to microchip dissenters, and to force cooperation on the part of the general population.
Donald Trump could have the election legally stolen from him on either December 19th when the Electoral College casts their votes or on January 6th when a joint session of Congress gathers to count those votes. As The Economic Collapse blog's Michael Snyder notes, the establishment is in full-blown panic mode at this point, and they seem to have settled on "Russian interference in the election" as the angle that they will use to unleash this 'soft coup' as today, the Hill reports more Democratic electors are joining the call for an intelligence briefing before they cast their votes for president on Monday.
Twenty-nine electors now are pressuring Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to disclose more information about the CIA's conclusion that Russian interference helped sway the election in President-elect Donald Trump's favor.
This reeks of the rotting essence which rests at the heart of the Clinton Cartel "ethos"; if they cannot get something honestly, they will move heaven and earth to steal it from its rightful owner, including the Presidency.
Should Clinton manage to flip the 38 electors necessary to claw the Presidency back from Trump, this action may well trigger a real civil war in this country; and then, it will be a question of whose side the US military will take in such a conflict.
Will they take the side of We the People; or the side of an oozingly illegitimate, Soros-installed, drug money-corrupted New World Order warmonger?!?
The key point about the electors demanding a Russia security investigation snip: Only one was from a state Trump carried (Texas), all others from Hillary-won states - including 17 from California, six from New York and five from Massachusetts - meaning they'll vote for her on Monday no matter whether DNI complies with their request or not, regardless of what information Clapper may or may not have.
As President Barack Obama's administration comes closer to an end, the number of civilians killed by United States drone strikes in Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen is at least 500, according to data compiled by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Nearly all of the drone strikes were a part of the Obama administration's institutionalization of a targeted assassination policy, where alleged terrorism suspects or individuals with ties to terrorism organizations were placed on kill lists for execution without charge or trial.
The Obama administration put out a report [PDF] on December 5 summarizing the "legal and policy frameworks" it relied upon in pursuing war. The second half of the report particularly focused on "targeting efforts" or targeted assassinations, which "comply with all applicable international obligations, domestic laws, and policies."
Extrajudicial assassinations are among the worst examples of Obama's "rule by terror" in the Middle East.
The people in the Middle East do not hate us "because of our freedoms"; they hate us because the US military has killed, and mailed, their families and their friends, and there is utterly no legal recourse they have to hand to stop this madness.
I have often thought that these extrajudicial assassinations were a ploy the US government uses to perpetuate jihad in the countries where this practice is carried out; now, I am reasonably certain I am correct on this.
War makes incredible profits for the banks, and for the military industrial complex, and the captains of both industries have one bond in common; before taking the jobs they now have, they have collectively had their consciences surgically removed.
If we smell precisely the stench of the totality of steps taken in NATO countries in recent months, especially in the United States and the European Union, we can smell the stench of totalitarian rule or some would call it, fascism, being quietly imposed on our basic human freedoms. Some recent examples give pause for reflection as to where we are allowing our world to drift.
Censorship is not helpful to democracy--rather, it is the death of democracy.
The mainstream media is awash with hyper-active headlines about "fake news." How can we make sense of this sudden obsession?
Perhaps we can start by separating "news" from "analysis" from "commentary." "News" is "he said this, she did that, this happened." Analysis tries to make sense of trends that are apparent in the news longer-term--for example, why did Trump win? Is the economy actually healthy or not? "Commentary" is opinion that establishes a point of view and defends it while attacking other POVs.
All three of these news flows are constantly being spun /manipulated to support specific agendas and narratives. Now we are being told some of these news flows are false/ misleading and their intent is to disrupt democracy.
GERMANY'S defence minister has sparked fury in Saudi Arabia after she willingly refused to wear a hijab during an official visit to the Kingdom.
According to an Iranian newspaper, Von der Leyen said: "No woman in my delegation will be required to wear the abaya, as the right to choose one's attire is a right shared by men and women equally."
Shortly after her meeting with the Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman al Saud, Saudis took to twitter to express their disdain for her actions.
Der Leyen wore a dark blue suit while donning the traditional ghutrah head covering.
Michael Ohnmacht, a German Embassy official, quickly tried to change the focus on the debate.
He said: "The talks between Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed and the German minister focused on ways and means to beef up Saudi German cooperation in different areas, including high-level exchanges, personally education and training, defence, mutual visits and security affairs."
The above is diplo-speak for the reality that Von der Leyen was most likely in Saudi Arabia to push weapons sales, now that Obama has denied the sales of some weapons to Saudi Arabia because of the war crimes they are committing with them in Yemen, and the reality that the Saudis funded approximately 20% of Clinton's campaign through the Foundation, and were expecting some quid pro quo, if she got elected.
Nature abhors a vacuum; that may well account for the timing of this visit.
Profits uber alles, right?!?
And please remember; back in March of this year, Germany sold choppers to Saudi Arabia.
Germany Approves Sale of Military Helicopters to Saudi Arabia.
The Hamilton Elector's website claims that the Founding Father intended the Electoral College to be a safety gaurd against electing an "unfit man" as president, which isn't entirely true. In reality the Electoral College was intended to give voters in rural areas an equal voice in choosing their president, otherwise urban voters and their priorities would always overcome them.
It seems the Hamilton Electors are ramping up their efforts and investing serious money (notice they are collecting donations from their website of course) into an advertising campaign with Google, as they have been circulating ads across the Internet implying that Trump is somehow in league with Russia.
Revolutions usually are not an instantaneous occurrence, but rather have a slow buildup toward their culmination or climax. When a population suffers for a long period of time without any hope of change in a democratic fashion and their basic needs as individuals and families are not being met, many times matters are taken into their own hands. This is not necessarily a "right" or a "wrong" issue: it just is. Revolution is endemic, so to speak, of the human race.
There is circumstantial evidence that the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the rest of the presstitute media are part of a conspiracy with the oligarchs, the military/security complex, the Hillary Democrats, and neoconized Republicans to shut down the dissident Internet alternative media and to deny Donald Trump the presidency.
This bill passed, clinging to the broadest base of "good intentions" that it could muster, i.e. caring for those with disabilities and decline with age.
But in reality, it is a nose under the tent for a system that needs the ability to microchip dissenters, and to force cooperation on the part of the general population. In effect, everyone is now under their thumb with this, because anyone could doesn't go along with the mass conditioning will be labeled 'mentally –––' and branded with a track-and-control chip. Game over.
NOTE: Assume the 'Globalist Agenda' is now in full throttle mode and barring some kind of miracle will not stop until it is achieved or destroyed. Alternatives are quickly disappearing.
It's not "good reporting" that has The Washington Post leading the pack in the establishment's crusade against "fake news." Nor is it a coincidence.
President-elect Donald Trump could save U.S. taxpayers and business billions of dollars in hidden compliance costs by simplifying the nation's bloated and incomprehensible tax code.
Instead of admitting wrongdoing after this embarrassment, the MSM has decided to double down and escalate the accusation that the alternative media is "fake news." Meaning, the MSM wants people to believe that we are liars and amateurs, that they are the "professionals," and that the public should ignore everything the alternative media has to say from now on. I have to point out, though, that the narrative of mainstream news versus "fake news" seems a little thin to me. Meaning, I believe there is more going on here than the MSM simply trying to save itself.
Human Rights Watch says evidence shows Myanmar's military is behind the torching of villages belonging to persecuted Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State, urging the government to allow aid agencies and media into the troubled region.
On Tuesday, the New York-based rights body released Satellite imagery and interviews with witnesses, saying at least 1,500 buildings have been destroyed since October 2015 in Rakhine, home to a large number of Rohingya Muslims.
"The new findings refute the Myanmarese military and government's claims that Rohingya militants were responsible for burning down their own villages," said Brad Adams, Asia director at the rights group.
"The satellite imagery and eyewitness interviews clearly point the finger at the military for setting these buildings ablaze," he added.
I never, this lifetime, thought I would have to say, "Watch out: here come the Buddhists!" Unfortunately, however, in Myanmar, that seems to be the case.
This ethnic cleansing attempt, on the part of the government by destroying Rohingya homes, is a very black mark against the Mayanmarese military.
And Aung San Suu Kyi, now the State Councellor of Myanmar, shame on you! Because of your background, and your steadfastness for human rights, people in both your own country, and around the world, are thoroughly disappointed in your not taking a very strong stand against this behaviour.
Clif High of HalfPastHuman, however, has taken a different course. Since the mid-1990's High's algorithms have been scouring the internet. With the advent of social networks and tens of thousands of citizen-driven blogs, that data has gotten ever more accurate. So accurate in fact, that on October 27 High's automated "Web Bots" predicted that not only would Trump win by a landslide, but that Hillary Clinton would be "missing" following the election, a prediction that was so accurate it blew away just about every professional analysis firm in the world.
Now the Web Bots are predicting another paradigm-shifting event. According to Clif High, it appears that a massive financial shock is brewing for early 2017:
We're facing the following situation…
The confusion, the degradation of the bond market, the crumbling of everything else…
As we have counseled so many times on this blog, please don't panic: plan.
Do not have any more money in your bank account than you need to pay your bills.
Reduce your credit card balances to near zero; buy minor items on them, so the cards do not get pulled for non-use.
Buy some silver, and/or gold, if possible. Find a place where you can store it inconspicuously, so it will can not found by looters.
Find neighbours you feel comfortable with, and see what services you can barter with them, if things get really bad. Should this happen, it will be a time when members of small communities really need to support each other.
Make sure you have long-term storable food; potable water; a way to cook things if electricity goes out; extra medications for yourself, your family, and pets.
Make sure, if you are separated from your family, that you have a plan for getting back together. If you have kids in school, make sure you know what the school's policy is if you feel you need to take them home early, in case of an emergency.
Plan an escape route, identify where you need to go, and know precisely what you will take in your bugout kit.
Make sure you have communications devices with you (two way radios, and lots of batteries are a good idea if phones stop functioning) take a look at the product ratings, and see which one looks like the best; also, make sure you have equipment for self-protection ahead of any emergency situation.
The indisputable fact is that prevailing institutions of authority in the West, for decades, have relentlessly and with complete indifference stomped on the economic welfare and social security of hundreds of millions of people. While elite circles gorged themselves on globalism, free trade, Wall Street casino gambling, and endless wars (wars that enriched the perpetrators and sent the poorest and most marginalized to bear all their burdens), they completely ignored the victims of their gluttony, except when those victims piped up a bit too much — when they caused a ruckus — and were then scornfully condemned as troglodytes who were the deserved losers in the glorious, global game of meritocracy.
Here's an entry for the "Job-Doing Hall of Fame."
What if your job meant that you had to go arrest a guy who just wanted to live off the grid on his own land? What if that guy was a veteran? What if his only crime was refusing a service that he was supposed to pay for, like public water or utilities?
Is it actually acceptable to go to his place, kidnap him, and hold him against his will for that?
If YOU are the person who takes any of those actions, are you to blame if you're "just doing your job?"
Officers Rape-y not Friendly
The United States Senate pulled a fast one. On December 8, it passed the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act was added to the authorization bill.
BRUSSELS bigwigs have this afternoon passed a controversial report dubbed the 'death of democracy' which will make huge swathes of EU lawmaking totally secret from voters.
Critics blasted MEPs for showing "contempt for the electorates of Europe" after they voted for the anti-democratic measure designed to hand more power to unelected bureaucrats.
Baton Rouge police announced last week that one of their officers will not face any consequences for repeatedly punching a 16-year-old boy in the head while his fellow officers held him down.
According to the Advocate, the internal affairs complaint against the policeman, Sgt. Todd Bourgoyne, was found to be "not sustained" by Chief Carl Dabadie Jr. on August 25, according to police spokesman Lt. Jonny Dunnam, meaning investigators didn't find evidence of wrongdoing or a violation of department policy.
The Department of Justice did not want to discuss why the agency refuses to investigate alleged harassment and death threats toward Electoral College voters in states that went for Donald Trump.
"The department will decline to comment," DOJ deputy press secretary David Jacobs told The Daily Caller in an email Wednesday afternoon.
An average of 545 people killed by local and state law enforcement officers in the US went uncounted in the country's most authoritative crime statistics every year for almost a decade, according to a report released on Tuesday.
when double-dipping cops and public servants steal from their own
The simple truth is this, we have reached a moment of truth, the surprise Trump upset of the Establishment has not only exposed the perennial elitist control over the American corporate media and the entire political process, it has proven conclusively that the majority of that media has been actively engaged in a nationwide process of organized deception and perception management for the purpose of creating a false national narrative and the illusion of massive popular support for the Establishment candidate, Hillary Clinton. This false narrative came crashing down with the Trump win. The false news narrative, painted for us on the canvas of our minds in brilliant technicolor, was composed of hundreds of bits of Western "fake news", stitched together in a bizarre patchwork quilt of "called nightly news", then presented as "real news," with the intention of subverting American Democracy.
Children as young as seven are to be taught in schools to stop using the terms 'boys' and 'girls' – in case they discriminate against transgender pupils.
"From now on, you will address all people by the gender-neutral term 'slave!'" -- Official White Horse Souse
Pleading the case on behalf of McCulloch, the eminent jurist Daniel Webster argued that Maryland had no authority to tax the bank. The essence of his argument was quite simple: "An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy."
The court agreed. Speaking for a unanimous court, Chief Justice John Marshall echoed Webster's words. He wrote, "The power to tax implies the power to destroy. If the States may tax one instrument, may they not tax every other instrument…? This was not intended by the American people."
Consequently, with the help of these two highly esteemed jurists, we have conclusively settled a point of contention among many scholars — that the unlimited power to tax is the power to destroy, clear and simple. And without question, the government has an unlimited power in this respect.
Let us now examine some of the many ways in which the power to tax destroys.
by Jon Rappoport
December 12, 2016
I've been working as a reporter since 1982. Since then I've watched big-media news lie in every possible way they could. But I've never seen them race to the edge of a cliff and jump off—until now.
Here is the rough sequence, acted out in the past year.
Far too many people have been duped into the belief that happy days are here again simply because Trump won, and that rationale is utterly delusional. People are beginning to believe that Trump can somehow undo decades of damage economically, and stop the collapse of the U.S. Dollar, or the global reset… WRONG! Furthermore, do Trump supporters think that the thousands, if not tens of thousands of far-left, violent, angry, protestors were going to change their minds on carrying out the largest civil uprising in our nation's history? WRONG!
I had a call from a Guardian journalist this afternoon. The astonishing result was that for three hours, an article was accessible through the Guardian front page which actually included the truth among the CIA hype:
The Kremlin has rejected the hacking accusations, while the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has previously said the DNC leaks were not linked to Russia. A second senior official cited by the Washington Post conceded that intelligence agencies did not have specific proof that the Kremlin was "directing" the hackers, who were said to be one step removed from the Russian government.
Craig Murray, the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, who is a close associate of Assange, called the CIA claims "bullshit", adding: "They are absolutely making it up."
"I know who leaked them," Murray said. "I've met the person who leaked them, and they are certainly not Russian and it's an insider. It's a leak, not a hack; the two are different things.
The Patriot Act, The John Warner Defense Authorization Act, The Military Commissions Act, The Insurrection Act, NDAA of 2012 and Presidential Directive 51 were designed to quash the resistance to the New World Order by using the Military to take over state legislators and remove governors, local governments that will not go along with the globalist agenda. To arrest public servants and dissidents defiant to the tyrannical government coming out of Washington DC. To come after and arrest veterans, gun rights advocates, pro-life supporters and devout Christians. To remove the opposition was the goal. Now the tables might have turned where these laws can be used against them. The New World Order has a good reason to be scared.
The former intelligence analyst, British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, and chancellor of the University of Dundee, Craig Murray, wrote yesterday:
As Julian Assange has made crystal clear, the leaks did not come from the Russians. As I have explained countless times, they are not hacks, they are insider leaks – there is a major difference between the two.
I know who leaked them. I've met the person who leaked them, and they are certainly not Russian and it's an insider. It's a leak, not a hack; the two are different things.
In other words, Murray – a close friend of Julian Assange – says he knows for a fact that there were no hacks at all … instead, an American insider leaked the information to Wikileaks.
Interior Minister of Iceland, Ogmundur Jonasson, reveal details of a 2011 plot by the Obama administration to frame Julian Assange.
The Washington Post reports a secret anonymous CIA assessment claims Russia tried to help Trump win the election . The Post falsely claimed there is a consensus in the CIA while Lawmakers briefed on the report say there is no direct evidence of Russian involvement, the evidence is circumstantial and not all agents agreed on the assessment.
The U.S. DHS has been caught trying to hack Georgia's election system after weeks of blaming Russia.
Despite corporate media "fake news" reports Trump is right about Boeing ripping off taxpayers for Air Force One.
Having observed the economic chaos to emerge as a result of India's shocking Nov. 8 demonetization announcement, and perhaps confident it can do better, today president Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela, Latin America's most distressed economy, mired in an economic crisis and facing hyperinflation, likewise shocked the nation when he announced on state TV that just like India, Venezuela would pull its highest denominated, 100-bolivar bill (which is worth about two U.S. cents on the black market), from circulation over the next 72 hours, ahead of the introduction of new, higher-value notes, as large as 20,000.
"I have decided to take out of circulation bills of 100 bolivars in the next 72 hours," Maduro said. "We must keep beating the mafias."
To this we would add "and cue economic chaos", but since this is Venezuela, that's a given.
The questions rightly need to be asked; at what point with the Venezuelan people revolt against their government, and when that revolt does happen, what side will the Venezuelan military be on?!?
US sanctions against the country have not helped much.
Obama Signs Venezuela Sanctions Extension
And when oil prices were deliberately crashed last year, in an attempt to hurt Russia economically, it also hurt Venezuela economically as well, which the US government knew was going to happen.
The US government has hoped for "regime change" in this country, and may well get it in the not too distant future.
Nature abhors a vacuum.
I just have to wonder just who will wind up replacing Maduro, when he ultimately falls, and how repressive he or she will be, in the process of attempting to bring back Venezuela's economy from utter collapse.
It comes after months of warnings from experts – including top military brasses – that massive economic issues, mass immigration, and terrorism will lead to a full-scale crisis.
They have predicted this will affect the entire continent, eventually leading to civil war on the streets.
In December 2015, one of the most apocalyptic warnings came from André Blattmann, the Swiss head of the armed forces.
Blattmann, who left his job just weeks later, said the combination of hybrid wars, the economy, and the refugee crisis would have "unforeseen dimensions".
He then claimed social unrest was something Europe's leaders and armies had to be prepared for.
Just weeks ago, French scholar of Islam, Gilles Kepel, told German newspaper Die Welt that the eventual goal of Islamic terrorism was not to simply murder western people in Europe.
He explained the purpose of bloody and vicious attacks on innocent people is to incite hatred among the general population of Muslims in general.
Yes, I know; this article appears both sensationalist and apocalyptic, as is thedailystar.com's style.
but I have to wonder, looking at all the disintegration we are seeing in European countries, and the problems brought on by out of control immigration, how far fetched are these assessments, and what can European politicians can actually do to prevent this predicted "civil war" in Europe?!?
I can tell you one thing; these European leaders better be thinking far ahead, and not just to the next election, before things do go wildly out of control in Europe!
This case was dismissed in 2014 but the appeal is being heard today. The oral argument will be live streamed and recorded on the Ninth Circuit's YouTube channel, permitting members of the public to watch the argument. The Court's calendar commences at 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time on December 12th; the case will likely be heard later in the morning, as it is last on the Court's calendar. UPDATE: I watched the 32-minute hearing live & did a write-up on the proceedings. Wow, 32 minutes is all our 'justice system' grants for a war with untold millions of deaths and consequences of Biblical proportions. Amazing.
Following the initial announcement, which focused on Russia's alleged role, White House spokesman Eric Schultz was forced to backtrack, saying that the review will actually "be looking at all foreign actors" and efforts to interfere in the elections, not just those by Russia.
The other day David Ignatius, a columnist at the Washington Post, declared sententiously that «truth is losing». He meant of course «the truth» according to the US government.
Truth is the greatest enemy of the state, and the purpose of the state-run media is to broadcast a sufficient quantity of lies to suffocate the truth and thereby protect state interests.
As Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels once explained:
If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.
Here are 35 huge lies the mainstream media repeatedly reported as "facts" that we now know to be total lies:
Various Trump administration officials are then commanded to show up for interviews where they are asked to respond to the content of media reports which are based entirely on other manipulated media reports….. And that's where we are today.
However, if anyone could actually pause and call out this nonsense they might find it useful to reference the already well known politicization of the entire intelligence community apparatus. The politicization was/is so severe it led to an inspector general investigation:
More than 50 intelligence analysts working out of the U.S. military's Central Command have formally complained that their reports on ISIS and al Qaeda's branch in Syria were being inappropriately altered by senior officials.
It's a good start. The $2 drug tests are great for law enforcement drug warriors, but not much good for anyone else. The cheap tests, performed in the field by officers, have been known to call everything from baking soda to donut glaze illegal substances. This is often good enough for government work, especially when the government work involves obtaining convictions.
Harris County, Texas -- where the 300 wrongful convictions were uncovered -- is also no longer accepting pleas based on field test results. But that only solves part of the problem. The other problem is what to do with those accused of drug possession. Treating the tests as fallible helps prevent wrongful convictions, but those facing drug charges remain locked up while waiting for lab test results.
So, drug enforcement agencies and police departments in this country were counting on the false positives these tests provided for convictions?!?
Absoflippinglutely unbelievable!!
This week, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter announced a new database for images and videos that promote terrorism. The database, which is hosted by Facebook, is designed as a defense against propaganda videos and imagery by terrorist groups — a tactic ISIS has aggressively embraced. Flag a single image on a single service, and any of the participating companies will be able to find and remove copies, potentially erasing it from the most popular places on the web in a single stroke.
The FBI did not corroborate the CIA's claim that Russia had a hand in the election of President-elect Donald Trump in a meeting with lawmakers last week.
A senior FBI counterintelligence official met with Republican and Democrat members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in order to give the bureau's view of a recent CIA report. The official did not concur with the CIA, frustrating Democrats.
The CIA believes Russia "quite" clearly intended to send Trump to the White House. The claim is a bold one and concerned Democrats and some Republicans who are worried about Trump's desire to mend relations with an increasingly aggressive Russia. The CIA report was "direct, bold and unqualified," one of the officials at the meeting told The Washington Post Saturday.
The FBI official was much less convinced of the claims, providing "fuzzy" and "ambiguous" remarks.
US accusations are like Pot calling Kettle black, or like the aggressor who accuses its intended victim of aggression.
Can any sensible person believe Hillary lost to Trump because of Russia? It's an absurdity on its face. Yet US, UK and other European media keep hyping it to their disgrace.
Murray called CIA charges against Russia "bullshit. They are absolutely making it up. I know who leaked them. I've met the person who leaked them, and they are certainly not Russian and it's an insider. It's a leak, not a hack; the two are different things."
There you have it from a credible source with inside knowledge. Claiming Russian responsibility is blatant agency fake news, disgraceful lying for political reasons - clearly to bash Russia, while denigrating Trump's triumph in service to Hillary and dark forces backing her.
Murray concluded saying "(t)he worst thing about all this is that it is aimed at promoting further conflict with Russia," endangering everyone.
The Washington Post has finally committed its most desperate act of credibility suicide, publishing a blatantly false, fabricated story that now claims Russia directly interfered with the election to deliver a victory to Donald Trump. Click here to read the WashPost fabrication in full.
The WashPost story does not name a single source for the accusation, and the obviously fabricated story serves primarily to provide cover for a previous story the Washington Post also faked (and then got caught faking).
"Journalism" at the WashPost, in other words, has devolved to the point where new fake stories are published to try to bolster the fabrications of old fake stories. All of them feed into the paranoid delusions of the hysterial left which has now entered the realm of clinically diagnosable mental illness when it comes to excuses for why Hillary Clinton lost the election to Donald Trump. (Next, we'll hear tin foil hat theories that aliens or Bigfoot stole the election, no doubt…)
Why let the people choose their leaders when the establishment can do it for them?
The Italian foreign minister, Paolo Gentiloni, has been chosen by Italy's president to replace Matteo Renzi as prime minister, a choice that signals continuity in the centre-left government's domestic and foreign policies at a volatile time for the eurozone's third-largest economy.
Do you ever feel as if you are living in George Orwell's 1984? A book that tells a story of how "big brother" watches, monitors and manipulates your every move. If truth be told, we truly are living the 1984 NIGHTMARE, and just this past week, the senate made sure to solidify it by seizing control of the media with hidden verbiage in the NDAA Act For Fiscal Year 2017; section 1287 reads:
"PURPOSE.—The purpose of the Center shall be to lead, synchronize, and coordinate efforts of the Federal Government to recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining United States national security interests."
The fastest way to bring down a dictatorship is to force them to act like one where everybody can see it!
Deliberately using the wrong pronoun for a transgender person is an offence under Oxford's behaviour code.
This weekend I contacted Emily Youcis, an independent animator and artist who was recently fired from her job hawking pistachios, beer, and other snacks at Philadelphia Phillies baseball games following coverage of her attendance at the NPI conference in Washington, D.C. late last month.
"This week only, more then 9 of the biggest Facebook groups of atheists and secular Arabs were closed after reports campaigns led by Islamist groups containing hundreds of thousands of members. They are abusing the Facebook report facility to remove all pages that oppose their ideology."
The link goes to a petition started in april this year but it seems the problems haven't been solved yet.
Then there was the claim about the "Mobile biological weapons laboratories". Proffered in the absence of any real laboratories in the wake of the invasion, photos of these trailers were shown on all the US Mainstream Media, with the claim they while seeming to lack anything suggesting biological processing, these were part of a much larger assembly of multiple trailers that churned out biological weapons of mass destruction.
The chief proponent of this hoax was Colin Powell, who presented illustrations such as this one to the United Nations on February 5th, 2003.
This claim fell apart when it was revealed that these trailers were nothing more than hydrogen gas generators used to inflate weather balloons. This fact was already known to both the US and UK, as a British company manufactured the units and sold them to Iraq.
As long as we are in a war between Corporate Media and Independent Media over who really is the "Fake News", it is time to remind everyone of this whopper that started a war and got a lot of people killed, including Iraqis tortured to death by the US!
In September, during a secret briefing for congressional leaders, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) voiced doubts about the veracity of the intelligence, according to officials present.
The Trump transition team dismissed the findings in a short statement issued Friday evening. "These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It's now time to move on and 'Make America Great Again,'?" the statement read.
Trump has consistently dismissed the intelligence community's findings about Russian hacking.
"I don't believe they interfered" in the election, he told Time magazine this week. The hacking, he said, "could be Russia. And it could be China. And it could be some guy in his home in New Jersey."
And it could be the Department of Homeland Security, which was CAUGHT hacking into Georgia's voter information system.
Leaked footage has emerged of Charles Jaco when he was the CNN anchor made internationally famous for heroically covering the 1990 Persian Gulf War.
The first part of this video shows the stage set he was on while he clowns around with fellow CNN staff. The Saudi Arabian "hotel" in the background is adorned by fake palm trees and a blue wall in a studio. This clip was leaked by CNN staff.
The second part of this video is a live CNN satellite feed recorded onto VHS showing the final cut. Charles Jaco is wearing a different jacket, but he had the same act. Even though the acting is terrible as Charles Jaco wore a gas mask, and his fellow correspondent Carl Rochelle wore a helmet—the American public were manipulated and duped en masse. The sirens and missile sound effects are part of the stage set. The camera never pans out or shows the sky as they appear terrified of chemical weapons being dropped from above.
If you want fake news, just continue watching the corporate prestitutes obediently regurgitating the propaganda, and narrative, the US government wants you to believe is real!!
The Obama administration institutionalized a global killing apparatus that is unaccountable to the judiciary, and only nominally accountable to Congress. If US citizens aren't always entitled to due process, what limits will there be on attacks on non-citizens, especially under a Trump presidency?
Now, as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office after a campaign in which he promised to carry out war crimes, such as killing the families of suspected terrorists and reviving the torture program, Awlaki's death is getting renewed attention. If Awlaki, a US citizen, could be deprived of life without judicial oversight, what limits will there be on Trump's authority to carry out similar strikes against citizens and non-citizens alike?
Jameel Jaffer, author of the new book The Drone Memos and director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, explained to me that at its core, the Awlaki case was about centralized power in the executive branch.
I would like to hope that Trump's threat to extrajudicially assassinate people and their families was simply campaign rhetoric, and nothing more.
My hope is, after having taken the Oath of Office, he will very much move to the center.
Should he choose to exercise this executive power of extrajudicial assassination, he will prove himself a profound disappointment, and moral embarrassment, to many of the people who supported him over Clinton in this last election cycle.
President Barack Obama declared during his second inauguration speech, "We, the people, still believe that enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war." However, one of the main legacies of Obama's presidency may be that his administration further institutionalized a framework for a global "war on terrorism" with no end in sight.
In a report released on December 5 on the "legal and policy frameworks" for pursuing war, Obama suggests the frameworks show the U.S. is capable of defending its interests at home and around the world in a manner consistent with the "laws, values, and traditions" that are a "source" of America's "greatest strength."
There are six "theaters" of war, which the report highlights: Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Libya, and Yemen. It omits Pakistan, where the CIA has launched drone strikes, as well as countries in Africa, like Mali.
And PLEASE, will someone from the Nobel Peace Prize Committee have the "male attributes" to call the White House, and ask for Obama's Peace Prize to be returned?!?
As warmonger-in-chief, he has hardly deserved it!!!
Stop Resisting' are the infamous words of police in America. While many times these words are warranted, all too often we hear them being repeated over and over as restrained and even unconscious victims are beaten to a pulp. Eastpointe's Frankie Taylor is an example of one these cases.
On August 10, 2015, Taylor was picked up for a routine DUI arrest and brought to the Eastpointe police department for booking. When Taylor asked the officers what he was being booked for, they became enraged.
"If you keep acting like a child, you're going to get strapped in that chair and you're going to stay there," an officer can be heard saying on the video.
When Taylor asks to use the phone, he is swarmed by police and forced into a restraint chair as police threaten to taser him. Once Taylor is in the chair, a sadistic officer is seen putting on his blue gloves before pummelling Taylor's face — over and over again.
You've just GOT to love how Michigan police interpret the phrase "to protect and serve" here.
For those Michiganders who can, vote with your feet, and move out of the state; if you are contemplating planning a conference, or any other kind of event in the state, move your venue now.
Then email Governor Rick Snyder about why you are doing this, and attach this article as your reason for doing this, which is that no visitor or resident of the state is safe from police brutality at this point.
Lost tax revenue hits a state where it hurts, and just may get enough traction to cause a change in how policing is done here.
A bill meant to help those with developmental disabilities would allow government agencies to locate people with tracking devices, which has some concerned the measure gives the federal government too much authority and power.
The legislation would permit the Justice Department to award grants to law enforcement agencies and non-profits for training and tracking devices to find individuals with autism or seniors with Alzheimer's who have wandered away.
However, some are concerned the measure goes too far. The bill's original language authorized the Attorney General to insert tracking chips into individuals involuntarily.
This is a bridge too far, and not something the Federal Government should be doing; and I can say this because such legislation can be rapidly amended to include involuntary implantation of RFID chips into the bodies of people who have the annoying habit of exposing the US government's bad behaviour, when it is NOT acting in the best interests of We the People, but acting only in the behalf of their elite, corporate buddies.
I am quite sure that there are those in the bowels of this government who would love to put Mike and me on a "waiting list" for such devices; however, they would find our travels frustratingly predictable.
We'll run out to the market; the post office; church; and back home.
The phrase "Fake News" has exploded in usage since the election, but the term is similar to other malleable political labels such as "terrorism" and "hate speech"; because the phrase lacks any clear definition, it is essentially useless except as an instrument of propaganda and censorship. The most important fact to realize about this new term: those who most loudly denounce Fake News are typically those most aggressively disseminating it.
Tensions between Donald Trump and U.S. intelligence officials boiled over Saturday as the president-elect's transition team mockingly compared a secret CIA assessment that Russia tried to sway the U.S. election in Trump's favor to the agency's misjudgments on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
The widening public rift between the incoming president and the nation's powerful intelligence community could pose high-risk problems both for his administration and for national security.
The CIA has targeted the designated US president. This can be very dangerous for Donald Trump before his inauguration.
You can really see how coordinated the effort is for political leaders and their lapdog mainstream media to call for the shutting down of free speech under the label "fake news," which is really just another way of them saying, "Things that go against our agenda" or "The only fake news you get to watch or read is *our* fake news!" *whine*
The most sadly hilarious part, even more ridiculous than Obama essentially calling for a ministry of "truthiness," was when Brian Williams actually sat in front of a camera and referred to himself as "the real news".
America is clearly inching one step closer to George Orwell's 1984… Where do you think they'll build the Ministry of Truth?
"First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. And then you win." ~ unsourced, and attributed to Gandhi's analysis of British empire response to having their hypocrisy exposed: claiming to bring Christian love and progress while looting resources with forced local labor.
The Washington Post added to President Obama's rhetoric for Americans to be aware of "fake news": easily refuted lies of omission and commission in media. This article series reveals the inversion of those claims: .01% "official" news by corporate media (six conglomerates) is easily documented as fake in our most important reporting.
'Fake news'? Time to choose article series (links added as series progresses):
Corporate media fakes us into wars that aren't even close to lawful, are Orwellian illegal Wars of Aggression (1 of 15)
So, what's the issue with having a gun shop in your local residential area? Are local lawmakers concerned someone will wake up, out of the blue, and purchase a gun for nefarious purposes?
both parties disgraced themselves but united to attack new media
Obama is trying to put the people and policies in place that he wants to outlast his presidency in the final weeks before Donald Trump takes over. And his supporters want more, way more.
Clinton's beef, however, isn't with fake news — it's with free speech. After all, Clinton has been a huge promoter of actual fake news over the years. From bimbo eruptions to the Benghazi video, the former first lady has made a career out of media manipulation.
Seven decades after Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor some truth is finally beginning to emerge from the miasma of propaganda that still clouds our vision of World War II.
(Satire) In an extraordinarily high-tech conference room, a wall of high-definition screens show six faces: Donald Trump, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, W. Bush, and GHW Bush; each about 4 feet by 3 feet in a large connected rectangle going clockwise from the top-left position. The room is dark. A male is alone in the conference room; a "Black Hat handler." Different from the first two Skype calls (one, two), the handler is visibly tired from over-work. (full adult language)
Black hat: We need to brief you on another possible endgame for our victory. Evolving events have us preparing different moves. As always, your role is to speak as you're told.
(pauses to check faces for understanding, stops at W in exasperation for ongoing lack of focus) W, are you… texting?
W: (looking up) Oh, sorry, no. I'm painting.
The US sent a "planeload of FBI agents" to Iceland in 2011 to frame WikiLeaks and its co-founder Julian Assange, according to a former Icelandic minister of interior, who refused them any cooperation and asked them to cease their activities.
In June 2011, Obama administration implied to Iceland's authorities they had knowledge of hackers wanting to destroy software systems in the country, and offered help, then-Interior Minister Ogmundur Jonasson, said in an interview with the Katoikos publication.
However, Jonasson said he instantly became "suspicious" of the US good intentions, "well aware that a helping hand might easily become a manipulating hand."
In early 2008, Cass Sunstein, a Harvard scholar and later the Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration, wrote a paper with colleague Adrian Vermeule titled simply "Conspiracy Theories." Sunstein and Vermeule argue the existence of conspiracy theories "may create serious risks, including risks of violence, and the existence of such theories raises significant challenges for policy and law."
In addition to proposing outright censorship of information the government considers"extremist theories," Sunstein and his co-author suggest using "cognitive infiltration" of groups and networks.
Instead of a covert operation resembling the FBI's Operation COINTELPRO using physical infiltration to disrupt and discredit political groups, Sunstein proposed attacking targeted groups in cyberspace.
A 1995 federal court ruling out of Pennsylvania may offer some clues to Clinton supporters as to possible legal authority for removing an elected official from office and replacing them with their erstwhile opponent.
In light of late-breaking reports Friday evening that Russians interfered with the 2016 presidential election to assist Donald Trump's victory, Clinton supporters are furiously in pursuit of remedies.
At 10:45 p.m. Friday evening, the Washington Post broke an explosive story alleging that Russians had interfered with the 2016 presidential election in order to assist Donald Trump in a victory over democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. The story reveals that a CIA assessment detailing this conclusion had been presented to President Obama and top congressional leaders last week.
This alleged CIA "assessment" has been presented as accomplished fact, with absolutely no evidence revealed of how this could have possibly come about.
And in the HufPo Article (or, what passes for journalism at this blog these days) the breathlessness, and lack of any attribution whatsoever, makes this accusation highly suspicious, and stink to high heaven.
A shocking secret CIA assessment has concluded that Russia interfered with the U.S. presidential election expressly to help Donald Trump win, according to an exclusive report Friday by The Washington Post (the same Washington Post that claimed this website was a Russian propaganda outlet, then admitted the story was fake). Until now, intelligence sources have indicated that Russian hacking throughout the campaign that repeatedly exposed information overwhelmingly embarrassing for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was an effort to undermine Americans' faith in their government. Now the intelligence community has concluded that Russia was clearly after a Trump victory and manipulated information to that end, according to sources who spoke to the newspaper. "It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia's goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected," a senior U.S. official briefed on the CIA assessment told The Washington Post. "That's the consensus view."
"...consensus view", MY ASTROLABE! Right now, in this very dangerous geopolitical assertion against Russia, the CIA appears to be "fact free", with no mechanism, and no actual information on how this could have possibly happened.
And who the hell are the alleged "sources" on this?!? The American people deserve to know. Apparently, the WaPo has decided to blatantly ignore the basic tenants of journalism: who, what, when, where, and why.
And CIA, I have a news flash for you: the American people's faith in their government was destroyed quite a long time ago. The real erosion started when, enabled by a presstitute media, President Bush lied about Saddam Hussein's alleged "weapons of mass destruction", as the "justification" for the invasion and occupation of Iraq; and we can all see, today, just how brilliantly that has gone.
Trump Is Right, Bush Lied: A Little-Known Part of the Bogus Case for War
The American people, and the world, understand that the US government lies with impunity, to further its geopolitical, or partisan, agendas; here, we are dealing with a desperate Clinton, and desperate Democratic party, pathologically unable to learn from their mistakes, and willing to do anything to override the will of the people.
I shudder to think what the outcome will be if Trump is not verified as President Elect on the 19th of this month.
The current controversy is different. Many people in Washington are irate over Wikileaks — not because the email were untrue but because they proved what many had long suspected . . . that Washington is a highly corrupt place full of truly despicable people. For people who make their living on controlling media and information, it was akin to the barbarians breaching the walls of Rome. So the answer is to call for government regulation to combat what will be declared "fake" news or propaganda. It is only the latest effort to convince people to surrender their rights and actually embrace censorship.
– From Jonathan Turley's: Washington Post Issues Correction To "Fake News" Story
Those most likely to disseminate "fake news" are generally elements of the US government itself, enabled by the presstitutes and whorespondents, who obediently regurgitate their codswallop to the masses, in order to support a specific narrative, frequently involving war.
Who told you that "Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction"?!?
Who told you that 9/11 was the work of the Afghanis, then the Iraqis?!?
And who is NOT telling you how the US is enabling the Saudis in their genocidal war against the Yemeni people?!?
Oh, and BTW on that last one, here is what the US military enabling of Saudi Arabia is "accomplishing" in Yemen:
Warning: horrifically graphic images.
ImImages: Saudi boming raids leave dead and wounded Yemeni children
Yemeni children dying of malnutrition, due to Saudi blockading Yemeni ports
Sure makes one proud to be an American, knowing your country is a proud partner in war crimes, doesn't it?!?
And this, folks, is why the presence of the independent media is more critical to the discussion of what it means to be an American, and what should be going on in our name, and with our tax dollars, and what should not, than ever.
I know that the images I have just posted are gut-wrenching; that is precisely why I have posted them. But what coverage have you seen of this US-enabled war on any of the corporate media outlets?!?
The short answer is, zero, nada, zilch, and that is because the US government doesn't want you to look there at all, or have your mind "troubled" by what it has signed off on.
And also, did you know that the Pentagon has just signed off on a new deployment of 2,300 soldiers to Afghanistan?!?
Pentagon to deploy 2,300 more US troops to Afghanistan
Heard a peep about it from the corporate press?!?
Didn't think so.
And please remember: corporate news stations are not required to tell you the truth. One of the most outrageous examples of this is how Fox news fought a lawsuit against two reporters, who was tasked with finding the benefits of bovine growth hormone, but found horrific problems with it instead. As reported at projectcensored.com, 2003:
The Media Can Legally Lie
In her first public speech since conceding the election, Hillary Clinton on Thursday denounced "fake news," and called for Congress to essentially censor the internet. The problem with Clinton's statements however, is that her own campaign led with the widespread use of the same fake news she so roundly decries.
"My fake news is GOOOOOD! Their ... news is BAAAAAAD!" -- Shrillery
Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said Friday troops will remain in the streets to combat drug violence after his defense minister issued a rare complaint about the controversial deployment.
Although Pena Nieto acknowledged that the soldiers and marines have been doing law enforcement tasks that "don't correspond to them in the strictest sense," he said the armed forces are "determined to continue" policing the streets.
The military deployment has allowed "cities and regions in our country to return to peace and calm," he said.
Defense Minister Salvador Cienfuegos said on Thursday that the military "didn't ask" to be fighting criminals.
"We don't like it. We didn't study how to chase criminals," the general said.
"Our function is something else and it's been made into something unnatural. We are doing things that don't correspond to our training because there's no one else to do them."
My bet would be, even with Mexican military in the streets, the violence will continue, unabated.
Having troops on the streets is engineered to make the Mexican people think that President Pena is "doing something" about drug crime and violence; but the real villain here is the Mexican economy, which is stumbling badly, and which has even further impoverished countless Mexican citizens.
As reported at money.cnn.com in October of this year:
The economy posted its worst quarterly growth in two years. Mexico only grew 2% between July and September, compared to the same time a year ago, the government announced Monday. "There's a lot of headwinds in the economy," said Win Thin, head of emerging market currency strategy at Brown Brothers Harriman. Mexico is losing its step this year for a variety of reasons. The government has cut spending, manufacturing production has been weak and consumer confidence has declined, all holding down overall growth. Low oil prices, and weak demand from Americans also held back Mexico during the quarter, economists say. Trade with other nations -- largely with America -- makes up over a third of Mexico's economy.
A political discussion in a college class touched off a firestorm.
A college professor went off on president-elect Donald Trump in her Orange Coast College class.
There are now threats of expulsion and threats of legal action.
CBS2's Stacey Butler listened to the controversial rant. The human sexuality teacher — Olga Perez Stable Cox — called Trump's election "an act of terrorism."
"Our nation is divided. We have been assaulted. It is an act of terrorism," she told the students.
She added, "One of the most frightening things for me, and most people in my life, is that the people who are committing the assault are among us."
That was part of the teacher's rant about Trump.
One student was so offended by the speech, he recorded it with his cellphone.
She also criticized Trump's cabinet picks, advisers and the vice president-elect.
"A white supremacist and a vice president that is one of the most anti-gay humans in this country," she said.
Good for this kid, to recognise propaganda when he sees it, and document it!!
If this kid IS really threatened with expulsion, I hope he gets the best pro-bono, first Amendment lawyer who will just rake this college over the coals in such a way as it hurts, badly, economically.
For Olga Perez Stable Cox, to express this privately is one thing; after all, there are people who believe they have received secret messages from Elvis Presley, in the mothership, and it is perfectly their prerogative to do so, under the First Amendment.
That being said, for Soto to make it part of her classroom curriculum, as though what she was even was even close to the truth, which I cannot buy, was an abuse of her power as a teacher. That has to stop.
Turkey's ruling AKP party to submit bill to parliament Saturday to make constitutional changes switching Turkey to executive presidency, giving Erdogan more power.
Twelve years ago, a campaign of character assassination by the major U.S. newspapers drove an honest journalist to suicide. Now those papers claim to be paragons of truth-telling, says Robert Parry. By Robert Parry
Amid the mainstream U.S. media's current self-righteous frenzy against "fake news," it's worth recalling how the big newspapers destroyed Gary Webb, an honest journalist who exposed some hard truths about the Reagan administration's collaboration with Nicaraguan Contra cocaine traffickers.
Webb's reward for reviving that important scandal in 1996 – and getting the CIA's inspector general to issue what amounted to an institutional confession in 1998 – was to have The New York Times, The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times lobby for, essentially, his banishment from journalism.
I put the phrase "committed suicide" in quotes, because Webb did not commit suicide; it was simply the most "convenient explanation" for his death by those in government who never wanted his Iran/Contra story to get out, even though it was the truth.
As reported at prisonplanet.com in December of 2004:
Coroner: Gary Webb's Death Confirmed as Suicide
The article goes on to state: "We're still treating this as very suspicious. They have flip-flopped AGAIN. First it was multiple gunshot wounds, then it was just one and now it's multiple again. The coroner is right we have seen multiple wounds before in suicides, but only in Arkansas. Would somebody stealing your motorcycle really drive you over the edge? Remember what 'Freeway' Ricky Ross said? "The last time I talked to Gary he was excited and happy about life. He was thriving and looking towards the future." We owe it to Gary to exhaust all possibilities, that's what he would have wanted being the meticulous researcher he was." So, we are supposed to swallow the absolute impossibility that this guy shot himself TWICE?!?!?
BULL BISCUITS!!!! He was taken down in an extrajudicial assassination, most likely, courtesy of elements of the US government who have their assassins on "speed dial".
As someone who travels the world, I often walk by a television program and it's called program for a reason, with the local media and can't even believe what I am seeing or hearing.
And, the US and every other Western media is no different.
It is literally top down propaganda and bears little to no resemblance of reality. And, if there is any truth to it, it is so highly skewed to the local agenda that it really should be labelled as fiction.
Meanwhile, on the internet, millions of people worldwide have been easily debunking and exposing nearly all the mainstream propaganda.
And, for this reason, the US and European governments have taken a play out of Orwell's book and decided to label the real information as "fake"... and as governments often do, they're going to use violence (government law) to try to force it out of existence.
Xiao Fang thinks she's one of the luckier workers making Barbie dolls for the Christmas market at the Mattel toy factory in Chang'an.
True, she says, she works 11-hour days, six days a week, and shares a dormitory with nine other women and gets to see her husband only once a week. She had to leave her three-year-old daughter back home in Sichuan. And there is only a communal bathroom, and if they want hot water they must fetch it from another floor. But at least she has a job, she says. And others have it worse.
Xiao is one of thousands of workers in Chinese factories making some of this year's must-have Christmas toys.
An investigation with the US-based NGO China Labor Watch reveals that toys including Barbie, Thomas the Tank Engine and Hot Wheels were made by staff earning as little as 86p an hour.
This is where the American consumer has to be using a lot of what my late grandfather called "horse sense", and not allow themselves and their kids to be propagandized as to what is the "must have" toys are for this Christmas, when the toys are made through the practice of nearly slave labor conditions.
The issue of propaganda is very clear to see in commercials; buy the toy, use the product, and you will be happy, as though acquisition, and conspicuous consumption, is the "drug" that will get you there.
But the problem with this drug is, it always wares off,leaving you and your kid hungry for another "fix".
Talk to your kids, if they are of appropriate age to understand, about the fact that the toys they may have their heart set on, are made in slave labor conditions, and you cannot support buying that toy for this reason, but will find a wonderful treat for them somewhere else.
There are many local artists, in many areas, of this country, who make dolls and crafts; why not focus on something like that instead?!? It will probably last longer than any mass-produced toy, be a small way of getting money back into the American system, and be a unique, and treasured part of your kid's life for a long time.
IF you google "American hand made dolls", you will be very surprised at what you find.
If the child is old enough, share with them about alternative giving, and why it is a good thing. Make it a habit to share the gift of caring with them, by donating to a local food bank, or another local charity with which you have a strong resonance, this Christmas season.
Kids who learn to care about others early, and how important it is, grow up to be adults who care for others in this world, and act accordingly.