Saturday, May 23, 2015

FBI forced to admit Patriot Act powers led to exactly zero major terrorism cases cracked

Signs of the Times
Link
FBI agents can't point to any major terrorism cases they've cracked thanks to the key snooping powers in the Patriot Act, the Justice Department's inspector general said in a report Thursday that could complicate efforts to keep key parts of the law operating. Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz said that between 2004 and 2009, the FBI tripled its use of bulk collection under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which allows government agents to compel businesses to turn over records and documents, and increasingly scooped up records of Americans who had no ties to official terrorism investigations. The FBI did finally come up with procedures to try to minimize the information it was gathering on nontargets, but it took far too long, Mr. Horowitz said in the 77-page report, which comes just as Congress is trying to decide whether to extend, rewrite or entirely nix Section 215. Backers say the Patriot Act powers are critical and must be kept intact, particularly with the spread of the threat from terrorists. But opponents have doubted the efficacy of Section 215, particularly when it's used to justify bulk data collection such as in the case of the National Security Agency's phone metadata program, revealed in leaks from former government contractor Edward Snowden. The new report adds ammunition to those opponents, with the inspector general concluding that no major cases have been broken by use of the Patriot Act's records-snooping provisions.

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Secret Pentagon Report Reveals US "Created" ISIS As A "Tool" To Overthrow Syria's President Assad

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-05-23/secret-pentagon-report-reveals-us-created-isis-tool-overthrow-syrias-president-assad

Clinton and the Bankers — Guest Column by Nomi Prins

PaulCraigRoberts.org
Link

Clinton Destroyed The Financial System Nomi Prins points out how Wall Street and the Big Banks used money to seduce the Clintons and then used the Clintons to remake the US financial system in the interest of the maximum profits…

The post Clinton and the Bankers — Guest Column by Nomi Prins appeared first on PaulCraigRoberts.org.



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Elites Panic as Information Control Flounders

The Liberty Beacon
Link

by James Corbett | 5.20.2015 TheInternationalForecaster.com Do you want the good news…

The post Elites Panic as Information Control Flounders appeared first on The Liberty Beacon.



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Photos: Massive 1/4 mile long military train loaded with vehicles seen near Colorado Wyoming border

Intellihub
Link

Alex Thomas | A massive quarter-mile long train full of military vehicles has been spotted near the Colorado Wyoming border.

The post Photos: Massive 1/4 mile long military train loaded with vehicles seen near Colorado Wyoming border appeared first on Intellihub.



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Friday, May 22, 2015

David Cameron's New Thought Police

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-05-21/david-camerons-new-thought-police

We certainly don’t like what one might term “extremist hate preachers” and the ideas they are propagating. We are just as repulsed by people glorifying fascism, communism or Islamist fundamentalism as almost all civilized people presumably are. We too find it extremely unfortunate that a number of impressionable young people have been taken in by the slick propaganda published by outfits like the Islamic State. However, once government becomes the arbiter of what speech is and isn’t legitimate, the door is inevitably thrown wide open to the suppression of all political dissent.

Thursday, May 21, 2015

Public school violates First Amendment by firing vegan teacher over private Facebook post

NaturalNews.com
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(NaturalNews) A second-grade teacher in Smithville, Ohio, was fired from his job in December because he wrote on his Facebook page that he was against dairy farming.According to local affiliate Fox8, Keith Allison is a vegan and animal rights advocate who often openly posts his...


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How Popular Music’s Lyrics Perpetuate American Idiocy

http://theantimedia.org/how-popular-musics-lyrics-perpetuate-american-idiocy/

From a political standpoint, all this ‘dumbing down’ makes sense: indoctrination creates obedience. If music and culture focus on mindless diversion, and education lacks, well, education, then people lack the acuity necessary to question the absurdity of the system. Those who manage to liberate themselves from this mold and have the gumption to question official authority will find a cozy spot on the government’s watch list. So while we bemoan our country’s lack of intellectual prowess, it isn’t by a failure of design.

Former Foster Parent Exposes How CPS Kidnaps Kids Away from Good Homes – Puts them on Drugs

Health Impact News
Link
I became a foster parent with the intentions of putting a roof over the heads of orphaned children. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. By the time I completed the training process, I understood that the majority of the children that would be entering my home were not orphans. I was brainwashed into believing the children had come from abusive and neglectful homes. I was told the state had rescued them from horrible living environments and that I was somewhat of a hero for taking them in. They were all lies. It took several years for me to truly see what I had become a part of.


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Serving Wall Street

Teacher Tom
Link


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The Political Roots of Widening Inequality

BillMoyers.com
Link

The key to understanding the rise in inequality isn’t technology or globalization. It’s the power of the moneyed interests to shape the underlying rules of the market. Continue reading

The post The Political Roots of Widening Inequality appeared first on BillMoyers.com.



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Let the Public Read the Completed Parts of the Trans-Pacific Partnership

BillMoyers.com
Link

We the People deserve to see the agreement before Congress essentially preapproves it by voting on fast track. Continue reading

The post Let the Public Read the Completed Parts of the Trans-Pacific Partnership appeared first on BillMoyers.com.



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Man Helps Boy Whose Ball Went Over Fence. Now Police Are Looking for Him

Free Range Kids
Link
. Alexandria, VA: From a country gone crazy with mandemonium (pandemonium sparked by seeing a man near a child) comes this all points bulletin, below. Notice that while “At no time did the unknown man attempt to leave the area with the child,” the police nonetheless give a detailed description of the suspect…er…Samaritan…er…suspect.  And they […]

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Raider Focus: Military war games set to include 650 vehicles, will be largest military convoy seen in Colorado since World War II

Intellihub Transfer
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Alex Thomas | The simulated war game known as Raider Focus will pack Colorado highways with military vehicles.

The post Raider Focus: Military war games set to include 650 vehicles, will be largest military convoy seen in Colorado since World War II appeared first on Intellihub Transfer.



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Rising Police Aggression A Telling Indicator Of Our Societal Decline

Unfortunately there are far too many cases where the police have acted as judge, jury and executioner to suggest that there are just a few bad apples.

Instead there’s a pervasive atmosphere of hostility and force escalation better suited to war zones than maintaining civilian order.  The lines have been drawn in many police departments: it’s us vs. them.

Trust in many departments has been utterly shattered within some communities because the police hold themselves to a different standard than they do the populace.  Police commit brazen acts of brutality and get away with it, largely because they self-investigate and/or because the local District Attorney office is unwilling to press charges.

But the recent cases of police brutality are simply a symptom of a much larger problem. Society in the US is breaking down, civility has been lost, and the country is rapidly becoming uncivilized.

This extends within and across all of the most important institutions. Congress is known to work for corporations first and foremost. Democracy itself is bought and sold by the highest bidders. The Federal Reserve protects big banks from the costs of their misdeeds and enriches the already stupidly rich as a side benefit.

http://www.peakprosperity.com/blog/92427/rising-police-aggression-telling-indicator-our-societal-decline

No Jail Time for Bankers

From comments at
http://www.peakprosperity.com/blog/92663/4-factors-signaling-volatility-will-return-vengeance

As happened, yet again, today:

Global Banks to Pay $5.6 Billion in Penalties in FX, Libor Probe

May 20, 2015

Officials said a 19-month investigation in which FBI agents conducted 175 interviews and reviewed a terabyte of trading data showed traders withholding bids or offers to avoid moving the rate in directions that would hurt open positions held by other members of the group, in violation of antitrust laws.

Members of the group discussed whether to allow one Barclays trader to join the chat room and ultimately decided to let him in for a “1 month trial,” but advised him: “mess this up and sleep with one eye open at night,” according to the New York Department of Financial Services.

The fines, which include penalties from the Federal Reserve and other regulators, come on top of a combined $4.3 billion many of the same banks paid in November to resolve similar charges from U.S. and U.K. regulators.

Bank of America Corp. will also pay a $205 million penalty to the Fed to resolve the regulator’s foreign exchange probe. Bank of America didn’t face similar action from the Justice Department.

Citigroup, which was accused of being involved in the misconduct from December 2007 through January 2013, is paying the largest criminal fine of $925 million, in addition to a Fed penalty of $342 million. The other banks were accused of engaging in the conduct for various periods within that time frame.

Note that not one single person will be facing any jail time. No indictments were handed down. This is despite specific email exchanges with people’s names on them.

Were this a normal prosecution of something or some entity that the Justice Department really hated and wanted to make an example out of, say an environmental organization or perhaps a raw milk collective, the normal procedure would have been to start with the persons on the email strings, threaten them with hundreds of potential years in the Federal Penitentiary, and then lean on them to name names higher up the ladder. You don’t stop until you reach as high into the organization as you can.

You see, the idea behind criminal probes is that you want to both catch and punish the prior wrong doings but also deter future criminal acts.

Let’s see how they did. Citi was fined fined the most and dinged for $925 million. First quarter 2015 revenues for Citi were $19.7 billion. This means that 4.5% of a single quarter’s incoming cash flows, or roughly 0.5 weeks of operational cash flows were dinged.

This would be like you robbing a bank, being caught, and then having the prosecutor come out and hit you for a half a week’s pay.

Not only is nobody else deterred by your “punishment” but you probably aren’t either.

While the Justice Department wanted to appear they were being tough, it was yet another massive failure on their part to do anything meaningful, and that means Obama's administration is literally the very worst on record for going after Wall Street fat cats.  The bar is now so low, there's really no further to go...except to just default into overt Ukrainian style plutocracy.

Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Major Gay Marriage Study Was Fabricated, Author Admits

The Daily Caller
Link
They were just trying to start a conversation

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How the CIA tortured its detainees

US news | The Guardian
Link

Waterboarding, confinement, sleep deprivation – Oliver Laughland takes a look at some of the ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ used by the agency

First published in December 2014

Continue reading...

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Big Banks Pay $5.6 Billion, Plead Guilty To Felonies Over Currency And Rate-Fixing

News
Link
In one exchange, a broker told a trader, "mate yur getting bloody good at this libor game . . . think of me when yur on yur yacht in monaco."

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How to Live a Middle-Class Life in New York City on Less Than $5,000 a Year | Alternet

How to Live a Middle-Class Life in New York City on Less Than $5,000 a Year | Alternet:



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Latest USDA Scandal: Organic Program Dismisses Legal Complaints Targeting Factory Farms — Without Investigating

http://www.cornucopia.org/2015/05/latest-usda-scandal-organic-program-dismisses-legal-complaints-targeting-factory-farms-without-investigating/

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Obama Bans Machine Guns, Tanks, Grenade Launchers Going to Local Cops : Anything Peaceful : Foundation for Economic Education

Obama Bans Machine Guns, Tanks, Grenade Launchers Going to Local Cops : Anything Peaceful : Foundation for Economic Education:



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A Complete Case for Home Education (54 Arguments) - Jeff Till's Five Hundred Years at Liberty.me - Jeffrey Till

Liberty.me Articles: Daily Roundup
Link


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Getting Elected to Congress Should Not Be a Lifetime Gig

http://downtrend.com/donn-marten/getting-elected-to-congress-should-not-be-a-lifetime-gig

When Open Government Slams Shut

http://reason.com/archives/2015/04/30/when-open-government-slams-shu

In hindsight, Obama's oft-repeated vow to run the "most transparent administration ever" has become a punchline even among his own supporters. On March 17, the White House quietly deleted the part of the federal register requiring the White House Office of Administration to be subject to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. On March 18, the Associated Press reported Obama set a new record for the number of FOIA requests denied—over 55 percent were refused in 2014. The administration also set a record for improperly denied FOIA requests, with one out of every three denials that was appealed last year eventually getting overturned. And the White House is dragging its feet egregiously when it comes to making information public. Six years ago, over half of all speedy processing requests for FOIA claims were granted. Last year, the government granted just one in eight requests to expedite the information being sought.

Hillary Clinton's seemingly unusual email troubles have, in fact, been replicated throughout the executive branch. Obama's head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa Jackson, stepped down in February of 2013 after the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Chris Horner discovered Jackson had been using a secret email account under the name "Richard Windsor" to obscure her communications. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Attorney General Eric Holder have both used multiple email aliases, we learned in the wake of the Clinton revelations.

The Justice Department claims with a straight face that hidden email accounts do not "in any way impact compliance with FOIA requests," but most journalists have no way of knowing which nom de email contains the information they're seeking.

28 Signs That The West Coast Is Being Absolutely Fried With Nuclear Radiation From Fukushima

Before It's News | ALTERNATIVE NEWS
Link
The map above comes from the Nuclear Emergency Tracking Center. It shows that radiation levels at radiation monitoring stations all over the country are elevated. As you will notice, this is particularly true along the west coast of the United States. Every single day, 300 tons of radioactive water from Fukushima enters the Pacific Ocean.

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8th Grader Arrested, Threatened with Beatings and Held for 6 Days in Jail – For Throwing Skittles

AlterNet.org Main RSS Feed
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The boy had allegedly thrown the candy on a school bus the previous day.

Jefferson Parrish, LA — In a Jefferson Parrish School District in Louisiana, an eighth grader was handcuffed and dragged out of the classroom…for throwing skittles. He was then held for six days.

For throwing skittles.

The boy had allegedly thrown the candy on a school bus the previous day. A report from Vocativ states:

“The following day, as the boy was taking a social studies test, a police officer assigned to the school handcuffed him, dragged him out of class and arrested him. He was charged with “interference with an educational facility” and battery.

As the officer led the handcuffed teenager out of the school, both students and faculty heard him threaten to “beat the f*** out of [the boy],” or to have his son, who is about the same age, do it for him. The student, who is African-American, spent six days in a juvenile detention facility before seeing a judge, whose first comment was: “Am I to get this right? Are we really here about Skittles?”

The mother has pulled the young boy from the school.

This is no isolated incident. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Jefferson Parish School District has had over 1600 kids arrested for things like carrying a cell phone, swearing, or not adhering to dress code. Arrested. 

In what universe is this acceptable?

They also found that black students make up 80% of those arrested, despite that fact that black students make up only 40% of the school district. The SPLC has reportedly called on the Department of Justice “to intervene with the school’s unwarranted arrests of overwhelmingly minority students.”

According to SPLC attorney Eden Heilman,

“The Jefferson Parish Public School System has continued its destructive practice of arresting and jailing children for minor, and often trivial, violations of school rules and decorum. It’s nothing less than a racially biased system of criminalizing African-American children.”

The school district stated publicly that it was aware of the situation and will be working to fix it.

 

 

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Monday, May 18, 2015

Monsanto’s Worst Fear May Be Coming True

Monsanto’s Worst Fear May Be Coming True: "The decision of the Chipotle restaurant chain to make its product lines GMO-free is not most people’s idea of a world-historic event. Especially since Chipotle, by US standards, is not a huge operation. A clear sign that the move is significant, however, is that Chipotle’s decision was met with a tidal-wave of establishment media abuse. Chipotle has been called irresponsible, anti-science, irrational, and much more by the Washington Post, Time Magazine, the Chicago Tribune, the LA Times, and many others. A business deciding to give consumers what they want was surely never so contentious.

The media lynching of Chipotle has an explanation that is important to the future of GMOs. The cause of it is that there has long been an incipient crack in the solid public front that the food industry has presented on the GMO issue. The crack originates from the fact that while agribusiness sees GMOs as central to their business future, the brand-oriented and customer-sensitive ends of the food supply chain do not."



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Sunday, May 17, 2015

The Trojan Horse President

Truthout Stories
Link

President Barack Obama speaks at an event at the White House in Washington, May 11, 2015. (Photo: Doug Mills/The New York Times) President Barack Obama speaks at an event at the White House in Washington, May 11, 2015. (Photo: Doug Mills/The New York Times)

I am not an economist, not even close, but Joseph Stiglitz is. Stiglitz is actually a Nobel Prize winning economist, former Chair of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers, and former chief economist for the World Bank. Joseph Stiglitz is positively terrified of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal being pushed rabidly by President Obama. Because he is, I am also frightened by what this "deal" portends.

Stiglitz:

Fundamental to America's system of government is an impartial public judiciary, with legal standards built up over the decades, based on principles of transparency, precedent, and the opportunity to appeal unfavorable decisions. All of this is being set aside, as the new agreements call for private, non-transparent, and very expensive arbitration. Moreover, this arrangement is often rife with conflicts of interest; for example, arbitrators may be a "judge" in one case and an advocate in a related case.

If there ever was a one-sided dispute-resolution mechanism that violates basic principles, this is it. That is why I joined leading U.S. legal experts, including from Harvard, Yale, and Berkeley, in writing a letter to President Barack Obama explaining how damaging to our system of justice these agreements are.

Rules and regulations determine the kind of economy and society in which people live. They affect relative bargaining power, with important implications for inequality, a growing problem around the world. The question is whether we should allow rich corporations to use provisions hidden in so-called trade agreements to dictate how we will live in the twenty-first century. I hope citizens in the U.S., Europe, and the Pacific answer with a resounding no.

At the core of this Nobel Laureate's argument against the TPP deal is the simple fact that legal authority - basic, bedrock legal authority - would be transferred from the sovereign courts of the United States to multinational corporations if this "deal" comes to pass. Note well, also, this statement from Stiglitz: "Though corporations can bring suit, others cannot. If there is a violation of other commitments - on labor and environmental standards, for example - citizens, unions, and civil-society groups have no recourse."

That is utterly intolerable, and it's what the president wants.

Joseph Stiglitz is not alone. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren has essentially gone to war with the White House over the issue of the TPP. While she deplores many of the aspects of the TPP, her main concern has been the secrecy behind the whole process, and the push in Congress to give the president fast-track authority to pass this thing ... which, by the bye, got a significant boost when the Senate voted against it, and then voted for it 24 hours later, much to the dismay of many who rightly oppose this thing. Progressives are particularly distressed; with friends like these, who needs enemas?

Warren:

The president has committed only to letting the public see this deal after Congress votes to authorize fast track. At that point it will be impossible for us to amend the agreement or to block any part of it without tanking the whole TPP. The TPP is basically done. If the president is so confident it's a good deal, he should declassify the text and let people see it before asking Congress to tie its hands on fixing it.

I understand that we want to be a nation that trades, that trade creates many benefits for us. But only if done on terms that strengthen the American economy and American worker. I should say the American family, because that's what this is really about.

A Republican President could easily use a future trade deal to override our domestic financial rules.  And this is hardly a hypothetical possibility: We are already deep into negotiations with the European Union on a trade agreement and big banks on both sides of the Atlantic are gearing up to use that agreement to water down financial regulations.  A six-year Fast Track bill is the missing link they need to make that happen.

The funny part came when President Obama dismissed Sen. Warren as just another politician as a means of defusing her criticism. Richard Nixon said, "I am not a crook" while staring into a camera. He was in fact a crook, and President Obama is in fact a politician. A consummate one, if truth be told. Of course Sen. Warren is a politician, but she is endeavoring to do what the president is not: represent the people. The president, for his part, is actively representing the corporations that actually are allowed to read the details of this deal, while the rest of us are not.

Senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders agrees:

Incredibly, while Wall Street, the pharmaceutical industry and major media companies have full knowledge as to what is in this treaty, the American people and members of Congress do not. They have been locked out of the process.

The TPP follows in the footsteps of other unfettered free trade agreements like NAFTA, CAFTA and the Permanent Normalized Trade Agreement with China (PNTR). These treaties have forced American workers to compete against desperate and low-wage labor around the world. The result has been massive job losses in the United States and the shutting down of tens of thousands of factories. These corporately backed trade agreements have significantly contributed to the race to the bottom, the collapse of the American middle class and increased wealth and income inequality. The TPP is more of the same, but even worse.

TPP will allow corporations to outsource even more jobs overseas; Service Sector Jobs will be lost; manufacturing jobs will be lost; US sovereignty will be undermined by giving corporations the right to challenge our laws before international tribunals; wages, benefits, and collective bargaining will be threatened; our ability to protect the environment will be undermined; food safety standards will be threatened; prescription drug prices will increase, access to life saving drugs will decrease, and the profits of drug companies will go up; and Wall Street would benefit at the expense of everyone else.

Stiglitz, Warren, Sanders ... and they are not alone. A very interesting left-right coalition is coalescing around opposition to this mysterious, dangerous, perilous trade deal. The real mystery, however, is why President Obama - in his final years in office - would staple himself to such a divisive and damaging initiative. He has the opportunity to focus on infrastructure repair, an example made vivid by the recent rail calamity in Philadelphia. He could lean into pushing the ACA in Red states that still resist it. Hell, he could go wild and push for what they've done with solar power in Germany, panels right down the sides of the highways, free and open space to do all that green stuff he's been yapping about while approving oil drilling in the Arctic and the Atlantic Ocean. 

But no, it's this terrible thing he has chosen for his "legacy."

Is he getting bad advice? Does he seek finally the chance to say he crafted a bi-partisan agreement on something? 

Or is he what many of us have feared he is for a while now: a Trojan Horse president, presented at the gates as a progressive gift? Once let in, however, an army of Third-Way "Democrats," multinational corporations, insurance companies, banks and Wall Street masters-of-the-universe were unleashed to wreak havoc, again.

Res ipsa loquitur, the saying goes. The thing speaks for itself.



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53 ADMITTED False Flag Attacks

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/02/x-admitted-false-flag-attacks.html

There are many documented false flag attacks, where a government carries out a terror attack … and then falsely blames its enemy for political purposes.

In the following 53 instances, officials in the government which carried out the attack (or seriously proposed an attack) admits to it, either orally or in writing: