Thursday, June 29, 2017

Sheriff backs claims of FBI-lawbreaking in Oregon standoff

ORIGINAL LINK
The Hammond family

The Hammond family

In a stunning development a year after the standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, where two-dozen armed supporters gathered to protest the courts’ extension of sentences for two ranchers, a sheriff has backed claims of FBI misbehavior.

The declaration came from Deschutes County Sheriff Shane Nelson just as FBI agent W. Joseph Astarita was pleading not guilty to three counts of making false statements and two counts of obstruction of justice in federal court in Portland, Oregon.

The FBI agent was accused of firing at the protesters, then picking up shell casings to conceal that fact and lying to investigators.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Oregon said Astarita falsely stated he had not fired his weapon during the attempted arrest of protester LaVoy Finicum, who was shot dead by another officer during the incident, “when he knew he had in fact fired his weapon.”

“Astarita also knowingly engaged in misleading conduct toward Oregon State Police officers by failing to disclose that he had fired two rounds during the attempted arrest,” the statement said.

Nelson said, as the Washington Times reported, that the actions by “multiple members of the FBI Hostage Rescue Team” had “damaged the integrity of the entire law enforcement profession, which makes me both disappointed and angry.”

Get David Kupelian’s culture-war blockbusters, “The Marketing of Evil,” “How Evil Works” and his latest, “The Snapping of the American Mind” at the WND Superstore. Also available in e-book and audiobook versions.

Nelson said he told Justice Department and FBI officials, including now-acting Director Andrew McCabe, over a year ago about “possible criminal conduct” by some involved FBI Hostage Rescue Team agents.

And while the case against Astarita is in court, new evidence also is arising from the makers of an acclaimed documentary about the incident.

WND reported earlier on the armed standoff that has been variously described by opponents as “militia terrorism” and by defenders as rebellion against government tyranny.

The 41-day standoff ended in mass arrests after law enforcement fatally shot one of the occupiers.

The documentary is “American Standoff,” and while it aired previously on DirecTV, it can now be viewed in its entirety at this website. Among the people interviewed in the documentary is best-selling author and WND Vice President David Kupelian.

The “American Standoff” story starts with Dwight and Steven Hammond, Oregon ranchers who were controversially convicted and sentenced for setting a controlled land-management fire on their property that went out of control onto federal land. But after they served their sentences and were released, a judge – at a federal prosecutor’s insistence – ordered them back into court, where they were sentenced to further time in prison under an anti-terrorism law, even though there was no evidence presented that the ranchers had planned or engaged in terrorism in any way.

Sympathetic ranchers and others – encouraged by the federal government’s stand-down from a previous armed confrontation in Nevada two years earlier on the land of rancher Cliven Bundy – protested the new injustice and ended up staging an armed occupation of the refuge.

They succeeded in keeping federal officers at bay until they were finally taken into custody when police staged a highly dangerous highway stop of vehicles carrying the protesters and shot two men.

Ryan Bundy, one of Cliven Bundy’s sons, was injured, while LaVoy Finicum was killed.

Eventually, seven of the others who were arrested were acquitted of federal charges related to the standoff. The feds even dismissed charges against a self-described independent broadcaster, Peter Santilli, who documented the occupation near Burns, Oregon, but was accused by prosecutors of being part of the protest group.

However, one of the FBI agents was charged with serious infractions of the law for the final confrontation. So far, Astarita is the only FBI agent to be indicted.

In addition to the feature-length “American Standoff” documentary, director Josh Turnbow and his film-making crew have now produced a series of “Aftermath” short video segments that have been posted online.

In the first, Jeanette Finicum, the widow of LaVoy Finicum, explains how the government, after killing her husband, also canceled the lease she needed to continue her family’s ranching operation.

She said she has lawyers fighting to restore the lease.

And she said a wrongful death case is inevitable against the government after a certain legal time period passes.

She insists her husband had his hands in the air and was surrendering but “was murdered.”

“He was mowed down in cold blood.”

Then, the video explains, the federal agents were “caught on camera, picking up casings before the forensic team arrived at the site of the shooting.”

Also, the video shows, Finicum’s gun, which he reportedly had been reaching for, wasn’t found for eight hours after the shooting.

“How many people tended to his body without finding it?” the video asks.

See the footage of the first segment:

The rest of the videos are available online here.

Turnbow told WND the “Aftermath” series continues the stories of people affected by the standoff.

In addition to conducting in-depth interviews with nearly everyone involved on all sides of the conflict, Turnbow said he tapped WND’s managing editor, David Kupelian, to offer a journalist’s perspective and analysis.

“I think Josh Turnbow did a terrific job in ‘American Standoff,'” said Kupelian, “not just in fairly and sensitively presenting all sides of a complex and troubling situation, but in telling a riveting, deeply thought-provoking true story about today’s America.”

Kupelian said the documentary “captures the classic modus operandi of an oppressive government: Perpetrate injustice, provoking widespread public outrage, which always includes a small number of people who seriously overreact and, however well-meaning, do something illegal or irresponsible – and then portray them as the real problem, or in this case as ‘criminals’ and ‘terrorists.'”

He said the main provocation in the story was “convicting two Oregon cattle ranchers, a father and son team whose controlled burn on their own property had gotten out of control and migrated onto federal land, with arson under an anti-terrorism statute that mandates a minimum five-year prison sentence.”

“Even the presiding judge said such a severe and unjust sentence would ‘shock the conscience.’ Well, it did shock the conscience of a lot of other ranchers – and the Malheur standoff was the result,” he said.

Get David Kupelian’s culture-war blockbusters, “The Marketing of Evil,” “How Evil Works” and his latest, “The Snapping of the American Mind” at the WND Superstore. Also available in e-book and audiobook versions.

Turnbow said he would like to find out what really happened and consider what the outcome should have been, especially with regard to the still-imprisoned ranchers serving a five-year “terrorism” sentence.

“We should be talking about it,” Turnbow says.

The larger issue at hand – federal control over land in the American West – continues to loom large.

The federal government is the largest landowner in the Rocky Mountain and Western states, owning contiguous parcels of millions of acres.

Conflicts between ranchers, who in some instances have owned and worked their land for generations, and a federal government seemingly always hungry for more, are common.

President Trump’s recent executive order to review the possibility of shrinking the boundaries of federal monuments could help defuse the longstanding tensions between America’s ranchers and the government.

See the trailer for “American Standoff”:

 



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Venezuelan Coup Attempt Against Maduro Linked to DEA, CIA

ORIGINAL LINK
More than 80 people miraculously avoided injury or death in a helicopter attack that targeted Venezuelan government buildings this week. The attack may have been part of an attempted coup supported by the U.S. as it seeks to topple Venezuela’s government to gain access to its massive oil reserves.

(MPN) — Opposition efforts to topple Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s government are rapidly heating up, as months upon months of opposition protests have failed to make the inroads desired by the more extremist elements of the opposition and their foreign backers, particularly the United States.

With the current regime still hanging on to power despite years of economic sabotage and the funneling of millions from the U.S. to right-wing Venezuelan opposition parties, those determined to see Maduro removed from power have now turned to more drastic, violent measures in order to spark a coup.

On Tuesday, one of the more dramatic incidents of the most recent phase of the Venezuelan crisis took place when a stolen police helicopter opened fire on the Supreme Court and the Interior Ministry. At the time the attack occurred – about 5 p.m. local time – there were an estimated 80 people still inside the Interior Ministry and the Supreme Court was in session. No deaths or injuries were reported, a fact that the Venezuelan government attributed to a quick response by national guard forces, who repelled the attacking helicopter before it could do more damage.

#Venezuela | Oscar Perez declares war after attacking supreme court. says theres union bet citizens police & soldiers to topple Maduro #OOTT pic.twitter.com/Ba2BOn3XGt

— Lee Saks (@Lee_Saks) June 28, 2017

Maduro condemned the attack soon after it occurred, calling it a “terrorist attack” that “could have caused dozens of deaths.” Ernesto Villegas, Venezuela’s Communications and Information Minister, stated that the attack was intended to be part of an attempted coup led by extremist groups within the opposition, with full U.S. government support said to be behind them.

Villegas’ assertion that the U.S. was involved in this attack is not based on mere speculation. Pérez has been known to work for Miguel Rodríguez Torres, a former general and former minister of Venezuela’s Department of Interior Relations, Justice and Peace who is currently being investigated for his ties to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the CIA. The charges first surfaced when the Venezuelan news agency Últimas Noticias obtained an official DEA document that described Rodríguez Torres as a “key information provider” for the agency and recommended that he be secured as a protected source for the DEA and U.S. government. It also noted that 40 percent of his assets and wealth are held in the U.S. under his wife’s name.

The U.S. has long sought to oust the left-wing regime that was brought to power in Venezuela by Hugo Chávez in the late 1990s. Since Chávez’s election, the U.S. is believed to have spent between $50 to $60 million to strengthen the country’s right-wing opposition in the hope that they would win elections. Former U.S. President Barack Obama alone dedicated $5 million to “support political competition-building efforts” in Venezuela.

More recently, the U.S. Senate has been mulling over new legislation that would provide an additional $20 million for “democracy promotion” efforts in Venezuela. However, some of these efforts in the past have led to right-wing politicians and their affiliates paying protesters in cash to violently escalate opposition rallies.

Such rallies have turned increasingly violent in recent weeks, with three people burned alive by opposition protesters just in the last week. Journalists have also been targeted, with some being directly shot at and others threatened with being lynched or set aflame. Despite the violence, the Venezuelan opposition is likely to continue receiving funding from the U.S., which is eager to gain control of Venezuela’s oil reserves – the largest in the world – no matter the cost.

By Whitney Webb / Republished with permission / MintPress News / Report a typo



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SYRIA: US Military Base on Iraqi Border is to Prevent Iranian “Land-Route to Syria and Palestine”

ORIGINAL LINK

Al Tanf
US Coalition targets Syrian Arab Army near Al Tanf, on border with Iraq. ( Photo: Alwaght)

Sharmine Narwani
American Conservative

DAMASCUS – As the drive to push ISIS out of its remaining territories in Syria and Iraq rapidly advances, the U.S. and its allied forces have entrenched themselves in the southeastern Syrian border town of al-Tanaf, cutting off a major highway linking Damascus to Baghdad.

Defeating ISIS is Washington’s only stated military objective inside Syria. So what are those American troops doing there, blocking a vital artery connecting two Arab allied states in their own fight against terrorism?

“Our presence in al-Tanaf is temporary,” says Col. Ryan Dillon, spokesman for the Combined Joint Task Force of Operation Inherent Resolve (CTFO-OIR), the U.S.-led campaign against ISIS, via phone from Baghdad. “Our primary reason there is to train partner forces from that area for potential fights against ISIS elsewhere…and to maintain security in that border region.”

Dillon adds for emphasis: “Our fight is not with the (Syrian) regime.”

But since May 18, when U.S. airstrikes targeted Syrian forces and their vehicles approaching al-Tanaf, American forces have shot down two Syrian drones and fired on allied Syrian troops several times, each time citing “self-defense.” In that same period, however, it doesn’t appear that the al-Tanaf-based U.S.-backed militants have even once engaged in combat with ISIS.

Bouthaina Shaaban, political and media advisor to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, is left bemused by that rhetoric: “When asked what they’re doing in the south of Syria, they say they’re there for their ‘national security,’ but then they object to the movements of the Syrian army – inside Syria?”

She has a point. Under international law, any foreign troop presence inside a sovereign state is illegal unless specifically invited by the recognized governing authority – in this case, Assad’s government, the only Syrian authority recognized by the UN Security Council. Uninvited armies try to circumvent the law by claiming that Syria is “unable or unwilling” to fight ISIS and the threat to international security it poses. But “unwilling and unable” is only a theory, and not law, and since the Russians entered the Syrian military theater to ostensibly fight ISIS with the Syrians, that argument thins considerably.

Colonel Dillon acknowledges the point but argues that the Syrian army “only just showed up recently in the area. If they can show that they are capable of fighting and defeating ISIS, then we don’t have to be there and that is less work for us and would be welcome.”

It’s not clear who made the U.S. arbiters of such a ruling. Syria’s fight against ISIS has picked up considerably in recent months, since four “de-escalation zones” were established during May negotiations in Astana among Russia, Turkey, and Iran. Reconciliation agreements among government forces and some militant groups in those zones – and the transfer of other militants to the northern governorate of Idlib – has meant that Syrian allied forces have been able to move their attention away from strategic areas in the west and concentrate on the ISIS fight in the east of the country.

An April 2017 report by IHS Markit, the leading UK security and defense information provider, asserts that the Islamic State fought Syrian government forces more than any other opponent over the past 12 months. “Between 1 April 2016 and 31 March 2017,” says the organization, “43 percent of all Islamic State fighting in Syria was directed against President Assad’s forces, 17 against the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the remaining 40 percent involved fighting rival Sunni opposition groups – in particular, those who formed part of the Turkey-backed Euphrates Shield coalition.”

In other words, during the period when IS territorial losses were most significant, Syrian forces fought ISIS more than twice as often as U.S.-backed ones.

An American Wedge Between Syria and Iraq

So what’s with the continued U.S. presence in al-Tanaf, an area where there is no ISIS presence and where the Syrian army and its allies have been making huge progress against their militant Islamist opponents?

syria_map sharmine

If you look at the map commissioned by the author above, there are approximately three main highway crossings from major Syrian centers into Iraq. The northern-most border highway is currently under the control of U.S.-backed Kurdish forces who seek to carve out an independent statelet called Western Kurdistan.

The Homs-to-Baghdad highway in the middle of the map cuts through ISIS-besieged Deir ez-Zor, where up to 120,000 civilians have been protected by some 10,000 Syrian troops since ISIS stormed its environs in 2014. While that border point to Iraq is currently blocked by the terror group, Syrian forces are advancing rapidly from the west, north, and south to wrest the region back from ISIS control.

The Damascus-to-Baghdad highway in the south of the country, which allied Syrian forces have largely recaptured from militants, could have easily been the first unobstructed route between Syria and Iraq. Until, of course, U.S.-led forces entrenched themselves in al-Tanaf and blocked that path.

The Syrians cleared most of the highway this year, but have been inhibited from reaching the border by a unilaterally-declared “deconfliction zone” established by U.S.-led coalition forces.

“It was agreed upon with the Russians that this was a deconfliction zone,” says CJTF spokesman Dillon.

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov begs to differ: “I don’t know anything about such zones. This must be some territory, which the coalition unilaterally declared and where it probably believes to have a sole right to take action. We cannot recognize such zones.”

Since regime-change plans fell flat in Syria, Beltway hawks have been advocating for the partitioning of Syria into at least three zones of influence – a buffer zone for Israel and Jordan in the south, a pro-U.S. Kurdish entity along the north and north-east, and control over the Syrian-Iraqi border.

But clashes with Syrian forces along the road to al-Tanaf have now created an ‘unintended consequence’ for the U.S.’s border plans. Syrian allied troops circumvented the al-Tanaf problem a few weeks ago by establishing border contact with Iraqi forces further north, thereby blocking off access for U.S. allies in the south. And Iraqi security forces have now reached al-Waleed border crossing, on Iraq’s side of the border from al-Tanaf, which means U.S.-led forces are now pinned between Iraqis and Syrians on the Damascus-Baghdad road.

When Syrians and Iraqis bypassed the al-Tanaf area and headed northward to establish border contact, another important set of facts was created on the ground. U.S. coalition forces are now cut off – at least from the south of Syria – from fighting ISIS in the northeast. This is a real setback for Washington’s plans to block direct Syrian-Iraqi border flows and score its own dazzling victory against ISIS. As Syrian forces head toward Deir ez-Zor, U.S.-backed forces’ participation in the battle to liberate that strategic area will now be limited to the Kurd-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) from the north, while Syrian forces have established safe passage from the north, south, west – and potentially from the east, with the aid of allied Iraqi forces.

Why Washington Wants That Border

Re-establishing Syrian control over the highway running from Deir ez-Zor to Albu Kamal and al-Qaim is also a priority for Syria’s allies in Iran. Dr. Masoud Asadollahi, a Damascus-based expert in Middle East affairs explains: “The road through Albu Kamal is Iran’s favored option – it is a shorter path to Baghdad, safer, and runs through green, habitable areas. The M1 highway (Damascus-Baghdad) is more dangerous for Iran because it runs through Iraq’s Anbar province and areas that are mostly desert.”

If the U.S. objective in al-Tanaf was to block the southern highway between Syria and Iraq, thereby cutting off Iran’s land access to the borders of Palestine, they have been badly outmaneuvered. Syrian, Iraqi, and allied troops have now essentially trapped the U.S.-led forces in a fairly useless triangle down south, and created a new triangle (between Palmyra, Deir ez-Zor, and Albu Kamal) for their “final battle” against ISIS.

“The Americans always plan for one outcome and then get another one that is unintended,” observes Iran’s new envoy to Syria, Ambassador Javad Turk Abadi.

He and others in Damascus remain optimistic that the border routes long been denied to regional states will re-open in short order.

“Through the era of the Silk Road, the pathway between Syria, Iran, and Iraq was always active – until colonialism came to the region,” explains Turk Abadi.

In the same way that Western great powers have always sought to keep Russia and China apart, in the Middle East, that same divide-and-rule doctrine has been applied for decades to maintaining a wedge between Syria and Iraq.

“In the history of the last half century, it was always prevented for Syria and Iraq to get close, to coordinate. When (former Syrian president) Hafez al-Assad and (former Iraqi president) Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr almost reached a comprehensive agreement, Saddam Hussein made a coup d’etat and hung all the officers who wanted rapprochement with Syria,”msays Shaaban, who has just published a book on Hafez Assad’s dealings with former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

Saddam then launched an eight-year war against the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the latter lost road access through Iraq for more than two decades. In early 2003, U.S. troops invaded Iraq, deposed Saddam, and occupied the country for the next nine years. During that era, Iranian airplanes were often ordered down for inspections, instigated by U.S. occupation forces interested in thwarting Iran’s transfer of weapons and supplies to the Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah and other allies.

By the time U.S. troops exited Iraq in late 2011, the Syrian conflict was already under way, fully armed, financed, and supported by several NATO states and their Persian Gulf allies.

“When those borders are re-opened,” says Asadollahi, “this will be the first time Iran will have a land route to Syria and Palestine” – though others point out that the Iranians have always found ways to transport goods undetected.

“Our army is now almost at the border and Iraqis are at their border – and we are not going to stop,” insists Shaaban.

Syrian and Iraqi forces have not yet checkmated American forces operating in their military theaters. There is still talk of an escalation that may pit the United States against Syria’s powerful Russian ally, a dangerous development that could precipitate a regional or global war.

But in Baghdad, the U.S.-led coalition spokesman Colonel Dillon struck a slightly more nuanced tone from the more belligerent threats sounded in Washington:

“We’re not in Syria to grab land. If the Syrian regime can show they can defeat ISIS, then we’re fine with that. The Waleed border crossing is a good sign that shows these capabilities. We are open to secure borders both on the Syrian and Iraqi side. We’re not there with the intent to block anything, we’re there to defeat ISIS and train forces for that.”

***

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Wednesday, June 28, 2017

More Americans See Liberty In Decline. Why?

ORIGINAL LINK

According to a new Gallup survey, over the past eleven years Americans’ satisfaction with the level of freedom in the country has declined by 16 percent. The US freedom ranking in the world has dropped from 11th to 71st. No other wealthy democracies have experienced such a decline. What’s behind it? The Snowden revelations? Endless […]

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When the most basic logic fails to penetrate the mind

ORIGINAL LINK

“He has the disease, but he doesn’t have the disease.”As a freelance reporter, a main thrust of my research over the past 35 years has been medical fraud. Deep fraud. Fraud that takes place in research labs, where “new diseases” are discovered.I wrote a number of articles about the so-called SARS outbreak of 2003. Health agencies and governments built up a ton of hysteria and sold it to the global public.A few basic “facts”: Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) ...

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Tuesday, June 27, 2017

Dirty little secret: Why U.S. schools don't improve

ORIGINAL LINK

Every year, almost every industry improves.

We get more choices – usually better choices, for less money.

“But of all the products we make and the services we provide, there’s one that stands out as an exception,” according to the Cato Institute’s Andrew Coulson. “One activity in which excellence doesn’t spawn countless imitators or spread on a massive scale: schooling.”

Why not? What can be done about it? These questions are asked and often answered by Coulson’s new PBS TV series “School Inc.” It’s a wonderful three hours, reaching back years to America’s first experiments in education and traveling the world to look at schools in Chile, England, Sweden, India and Korea. In Korea, top teachers make millions.

Why haven’t American schools improved? The education establishment says, “We don’t have enough money!” But American schools spend more per student than other countries. Spending tripled during Coulson’s lifetime and class sizes dropped. But test scores stay flat.

“Schools adopted all sorts of new technologies, from projectors to personal computers to ‘smart’ whiteboards,” says Coulson. “None of these inventions improved outcomes … (E)ducational quality has been stuck in the era of disco and leisure suits for 40 years, while the rest of the world has passed it by.”

The main reason for that is that most schools are controlled by government. Government is a monopoly, and monopolies resist change.

Actually, most of us resist change. We don’t want to give up the way we’ve always done things. Certainly, few of us want to work harder, or differently. We get set in our ways.

But when there is competition, we can’t get away with that. If we don’t adopt better ways of doing things, we go out of business. That forces innovation.

But government-run schools never go out of business. Principals, school boards and teachers – especially union teachers – have little incentive to try anything new.

John Stossel’s logic is undeniable and refreshing — don’t miss his latest book, “No, They Can’t Why: Government Fails, but Individuals Succeed”

One of the documentary’s illustrations of this might be familiar because the story was also told in the movie “Stand and Deliver.”

In that film, actor Edward James Olmos played math teacher Jaime Escalante. Escalante taught at California’s Garfield High School. The student body was, and is, composed of some of the most “disadvantaged” students in America. Yet more Garfield High students passed advanced placement calculus tests than did students from Beverly Hills High.

Escalante was the reason. He was simply a better teacher.

Coulson interviewed some of his former students, who said, “Escalante worked as if his life depended on the success of his students.”

The results were beyond belief – literally. His students did so well on the state calculus test that authorities accused them of cheating. They made them take the test again. The students aced the test the second time.

What made Escalante a better teacher?

One student tells Coulson: “He built a relationship with each student, knew them by name, knew their story. … Students didn’t want to disappoint him.”

The movie made Escalante famous, but he didn’t change. He kept teaching at Garfield, telling students that even though they were poor, “With enough drive and hard work, the sky is the limit.”

“The lessons I learned from Jaime, I apply them every day,” a former student told Coulson. “With my children, I talk about Jaime and about ‘ganas’ – desire. Nothing’s for free. You have to work really hard if you want to achieve anything.”

“Stand and Deliver” has a happy ending, but what happened in real life was no fairy tale.

Coulson says, “In any other field, we might expect this combination of success, scalability and publicity to have catapulted Escalante to the top of his profession and spread his teaching model across the country.” That isn’t what happened.

Garfield’s union teachers resented Escalante’s fame and work ethic.

A former Garfield student who now is a teacher told Coulson: “The problem was that Escalante’s classes were big. … He was setting a precedent, giving the message to the administrator: ‘If Escalante can do it, why not you?'”

The union used its organizing power to get votes to oust Escalante as math department chairman. Escalante then quit.

Unfortunately, Coulson did not live to see his TV series finished. He died while completing it. “School Inc.” is a wonderful memorial to Andrew Coulson and inspiration to all of us.

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Ben Franklin warns on seduction of political power

ORIGINAL LINK

 

cash-100-dollar-bills-money-600

The Constitutional Convention was in a deadlock over how large and small states could be represented equally. Some delegates left. Then, on June 28, 1787, 81-year-old Benjamin Franklin spoke and shortly after, the U.S. Constitution became a reality.

Franklin stated: “Groping as it were in the dark to find political truth, and scarce able to distinguish it when presented to us, how has it happened, Sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of lights. … In the beginning of the Contest with Great Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayer in this room for Divine protection. Our prayers, Sir, were heard and they were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a Superintending Providence in our favor. … And have we now forgotten that powerful Friend? or do we imagine we no longer need His assistance? …”

Franklin concluded: “We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings, that ‘except the Lord build the House, they labor in vain that build it.’ … I also believe that without his concurring aid we shall succeed … no better than the Builders of Babel.”

Ben Franklin had given another address at the Constitutional Convention several weeks earlier titled “Dangers of a Salaried Bureaucracy,” June 2, 1787: “Sir, there are two passions which have a powerful influence in the affairs of men … ambition and avarice – the love of power and the love of money. … When united … they have … the most violent effects. Place before the eyes of such men a post of honor, that shall, at the same time, be a place of profit, and they will move heaven and earth to obtain it. …”

Franklin added: “What kind are the men that will strive for this profitable preeminence, through all the bustle of cabal, the heat of contention, the infinite mutual abuse of parties, tearing to pieces the best of characters? It will not be the wise and moderate, the lovers of peace and good order, the men fittest for the trust. It will be the bold and the violent, the men of strong passions and indefatigable activity in their selfish pursuits. These will thrust themselves into your government and be your rulers. …”

Franklin explained further: “There will always be a party for giving more to the rulers, that the rulers may be able, in return, to give more to them. All history informs us, there has been … a kind of warfare between the governing and the governed; the one striving to obtain more for its support, and the other to pay less. … Generally, indeed, the ruling power carries … and we see the revenues of princes constantly increasing, and we see that they are never satisfied, but always in want of more. The more the people are discontented with the oppression of taxes, the greater need the prince has of money to distribute among his partisans, and pay the troops that are to suppress all resistance, and enable him to plunder at pleasure.”

Franklin concluded: “There is scarce a king in a hundred who would not, if he could, follow the example of Pharaoh – get first all the people’s money, then all their lands, and then make them and their children servants for ever. It will be said that we do not propose to establish kings … but there is a natural inclination in mankind to kingly government. … They would rather have one tyrant than five hundred. It gives more of the appearance of equality among citizens; and that they like. I am apprehensive, therefore – perhaps too apprehensive – that the government of the States may, in future times, end in a monarchy … and a king will the sooner be set over us.”

A lover of money is described as having “avarice” or “covetousness” – defined having “an excessive or insatiable desire for wealth or gain.”

The Law of Moses admonished the children of Israel in Exodus 18:12 to choose leaders: “Thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness.”

Plato wrote of this in “The Republic,” 380 B.C., that government would transition from being ruled by lovers of virtue, to lovers of honor, to lovers of money:

  • “Now what man answers to this form of government. … He is a … lover of honor; claiming to be a ruler. … Busy-bodies are honored and applauded. …”
  • “Is not the passionate element wholly set on ruling … and getting fame?”
  • “Not originally of a bad nature, but having kept bad company … becomes arrogant and ambitious …”
  • “Such an one will despise riches only when he is young; but as he gets older he will be more and more attracted to them, because he has a piece of the avaricious nature in him, and is not single-minded towards virtue. …”
  • “The love of honor turns to love of money; the conversion is instantaneous.”
  • “Because they have no means of openly acquiring the money which they prize; they will spend that which is another man’s.”
  • “They invent illegal modes of expenditure; for what do they or their wives care about the law?”
  • “And so they grow richer and richer … the less they think of virtue … and the virtuous are dishonored. …”
  • “Insatiable avarice is the ruling passion of an oligarchy. …”

Jefferson wrote of danger of the Executive branch bribing Congressmen and Senators: “… as a machine for the corruption of the legislature; for he avowed the opinion that man could be governed by one of two motives only, force or interest. … the interests therefore of the members must be laid hold of, to keep the legislature in unison with the Executive. … some members were found sordid enough to bend their duty to their interests, and to look after personal, rather than public good. Men thus enriched by the dexterity of a leader, would follow of course the chief who was leading them to fortune, and become the zealous instruments of all his enterprises.”

Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1796: “Either force or corruption has been the principle of every modern government.”

Plato added of this politician:

  • “He has … allowed the blind god of riches to lead the dance within him …”
  • “He will have many slavish desires, some beggarly, some knavish, breeding in his soul …”
  • “If he … has the power to defraud, he will soon prove that he is not without the will, and that his passions are only restrained by fear and not by reason.”

Frederic Bastiat explained in “The Law,” 1850, how politicians are tempted toward “legal plunder”: “Man can live and satisfy his wants only by ceaseless labor; by the ceaseless application of his faculties to natural resources. This process is the origin of property. But it is also true that a man may live and satisfy his wants by seizing and consuming the products of the labor of others. This process is the origin of plunder. Now since man is naturally inclined to avoid pain – and since labor is pain in itself – it follows that men will resort to plunder whenever plunder is easier than work. …”

Frederic Bastiat continued: “It is evident, then, that the proper purpose of law is to use the power of its collective force to stop this fatal tendency to plunder instead of to work. … But, generally, the law is made by one man or one class of men. … This fact, combined with the fatal tendency that exists in the heart of man to satisfy his wants with the least possible effort, explains the almost universal perversion of the law. Thus it is easy to understand how law, instead of checking injustice, becomes the invincible weapon of injustice. It is easy to understand why the law is used by the legislator to destroy in varying degrees among the rest of the people, their personal independence by slavery, their liberty by oppression, and their property by plunder. This is done for the benefit of the person who makes the law, and in proportion to the power that he holds.”

In “The Spirit of the Laws,” 1748, Montesquieu wrote: “In a popular state, one spring more is necessary, namely, virtue. … The politic Greeks, who lived under a popular government, knew no other support than virtue. … When virtue is banished, ambition invades the minds of those who are disposed to receive it, and avarice possesses the whole community. … When, in a popular government, there is a suspension of the laws, as this can proceed only from the corruption of the republic, the state is certainly undone.”

Harvard President Samuel Langdon stated in his address “Government Corrupted by Vice,” May 31, 1775: “They were a sinful nation … who had forsaken the Lord; and provoked the Holy One of Israel to anger. … Everyone loved gifts, and followed after rewards … more than the duties of their office; the general aim was at profitable places and pensions; they were influenced in everything by bribery; and their avarice and luxury were never satisfied, but hurried them on to all kinds of oppression and violence, so that they even justified and encouraged the murder of innocent persons to support their lawless power, and increase their wealth.”

Noah Webster wrote in his “History of the United States,” 1832: “When you become entitled to exercise the right of voting for public officers, let it be impressed on your mind that God commands you to choose for rulers ‘just men who will rule in the fear of God.’ … If the citizens neglect their duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted; laws will be made not for the public good so much as for the selfish or local purposes; corrupt or incompetent men will be appointed to execute the laws; the public revenues will be squandered on unworthy men; and the rights of the citizens will be violated or disregarded. If a republican government fails to secure public prosperity and happiness, it must be because the citizens neglect the divine commands, and elect bad men to make and administer the laws.”

Lord Acton wrote to Bishop Mandell Creighton, April 5, 1881: “All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

President William Henry Harrison stated in his inaugural address, 1841: “The tendency of power to increase itself, particularly when exercised by a single individual … would terminate in virtual monarchy.”

President Andrew Jackson stated in his veto of the Bank Renewal Bill, July 10, 1832: “It is easy to conceive that great evils to our country and its institutions might flow from such a concentration of power in the hands of a few men irresponsible to the people.”

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George Washington stated in his farewell address, Sept. 17, 1796: “Of fatal tendency … to put, in the place of the delegated will of the Nation, the will of a party – often a small but artful and enterprising minority. … They are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to SUBVERT the Power of the People and to USURP for themselves the reins of Government; destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”

Colonial leader John Cotton stated: “For whatever transcendent power is given, will certainly over-run those that give it. … It is necessary therefore, that all power that is on earth be limited.”

James Madison stated at the Constitutional Convention, July 11, 1787: “All men having power ought to be distrusted.”

John Adams wrote in his “Notes” from an oration at Braintree, Massachusetts, Spring 1772: “There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with the power to endanger the public liberty.”

President Andrew Jackson warned Dec. 5, 1836: “There is no such provision as would authorize Congress to collect together the property of the country, under the name of revenue, for the purpose of dividing it equally or unequally among the states or the people. … The practical effect of such an attempt must ever be to burden the people with taxes, not for the purposes beneficial to them, but to … support a band of useless public officers. … All would be merged in a practical consolidation, cemented by widespread corruption, which could only be eradicated by one of those bloody revolutions which occasionally overthrow the despotic systems of the Old World.”

Gouverneur Morris spoke 173 times during the Constitutional Convention, more than any other delegate. He was the head of the Committee on Style, and penned the final draft of the U.S. Constitution, where he originated the phrase “We the People of the United States of America. Gouverneur Morris pioneered the Erie Canal, was a U.S. Senator and helped write New York’s Constitution. In 1785, Gouverneur Morris addressed the Pennsylvania Assembly regarding the Bank of North America: “How can we hope for public peace and national prosperity, if the faith of governments so solemnly pledged can be so lightly infringed? … This hour of distress will come. It comes to all, and the moment of affliction is known to Him alone, whose Divine Providence exalts or depresses states and kingdoms … in proportion to their obedience or disobedience of His just and holy laws.”

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Sixty percent of the public and 80 percent of doctors think drug companies are LYING about health claims from medical trials

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Big-Pharma-e1485520284119-168x95.jpg (Natural News) Drug companies don’t want to hear the latest results of a survey conducted by the Academy of Medical Sciences. The survey found that 63 percent of the general public and 82 percent of general practitioners are now skeptical of claims made by drug trials. More people now trust a friend’s advice on medicine,...


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Jaw Dropping Proof Emerges Americans Have Been Lied To For A Very Long Time – ‘Operation Popeye’ Confirms Weather Warfare And The Massive And Still Ongoing Cover-up

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by Stefan Stanford, All News Pipeline:

With parts of western America quite literally melting as seen in the viral photograph seen below from this story over at Strange Sounds, the 2nd video below from Hard News TV takes a look at a now declassified United States military weather modification program called “Operation Popeye”, a once highly classified weather modification program that took place in Southeast Asia from 1967 to 1972.

While CNN, the Washington Post and most other mainstream news media outlets will still deny weather modification until they have no viewers left to believe their neverending series of lies, shouldn’t having 100% proof that programs such as ‘Operation Popeye’ went on 50 years ago be proof that we still have such programs today?

Let’s take a quick look at the absolutely bombshell proof of weather modification that ‘Operation Popeye’ gives us, along with 100% proof that weather modificiation programs have been purposely hidden from the public. From Wikipedia:

Operation Popeye (Project Controlled Weather Popeye / Motorpool / Intermediary-Compatriot) was a highly classified weather modification program in Southeast Asia during 1967–1972. The cloud seeding operation during the Vietnam War ran from March 20, 1967 until July 5, 1972 in an attempt to extend the monsoon season, specifically over areas of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The operation was used to induce rain and extend the East Asian Monsoon season in support of U.S. government efforts related to the War in Southeast Asia.

The former U.S. Secretary of Defense, Robert S. McNamara, was aware that there might be objections raised by the international scientific community but said in a memo to the president that such objections had not in the past been a basis for prevention of military activities considered to be in the interests of U.S. national security.

The chemical weather modification program was conducted from Thailand over Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam and allegedly sponsored by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and CIA without the authorization of then Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird who had categorically denied to Congress that a program for modification of the weather for use as a tactical weapon even existed.

For those who still get most of their news from CNN and truly believe that ‘weather modification’ is a ‘tinfoil hat conspiracy’, we invite you to take a look at these extensive lists of weather modification patents going back nearly 100 years at the website of Dane Wigington. A must-read book on the subject is Steve Quayle’s book “Weather Wars & Un-Natural Disasters”, a book which outlined for us years before anyone else was talking about the technologies that have been made available to leaders of major nations for conducting secret warfare.

Reporting in his book that “techniques of weather modification could be employed to produce prolonged periods of drought or storm”, we’ve gotten much proof that Quayle’s work was right on the money. From China’s announcement they were going to be making it rain over an area the size of France, ex-CIA head John Brennan’s talk to the Council on Foreign Relations about cloud seeding and former DOD Head William Cohen warning about weather warfare once and for all proving chemtrails are above our heads daily, and not some ‘tinfoil hat conspiracy theory’.

As we hear in the first video below from Dane Wigington, every day we’re getting more and more signs that something is seriously wrong with our planet, from ‘mass animal death events’ increasing across the world to bizarre weather patterns not found naturally in nature wreaking havoc upon our planet. And we’d have to argue that the mainstream medias outright denial of weather modification programs and chemtrails is one of the very roots of their pushing of ‘fake news’.

Read More @ AllNewsPipeline.com



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How college can ruin your life

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The FBI: The Silent Terror of the Fourth Reich

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With every passing day, the United States government borrows yet another leaf from Nazi Germany’s playbook: Secret police. Secret courts. Secret government agencies. Surveillance. Censorship. Intimidation. Harassment. Torture. Brutality. Widespread corruption. Entrapment. Indoctrination. Indefinite detention. These are not tactics used by constitutional republics, where the rule of law and the rights of the citizenry should reign supreme. Rather, they are the hallmarks of authoritarian regimes, where the only law that counts comes in the form of heavy-handed, unilateral dictates from a supreme ruler who uses a secret police to control the populace. That danger is now posed by the FBI, whose laundry list of crimes against the American people includes surveillance, disinformation, blackmail, entrapment, intimidation tactics, harassment, governmental overreach, abuse, misconduct, trespassing, enabling criminal activity, and damaging private property, and that’s just based on what we know.

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Show Notes

Robert Gellately: Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany

Paul Craig Roberts: Gestapo America

Dr. Rafael Medoff: “The American Papers that Praised Hitler”

Christopher Hitchens: “Imagining Hitler”

Eric Lichtblau: “In Cold War, U.S. Spy Agencies Used 1,000 Nazis”

How Thousands Of Nazis Were ‘Rewarded’ With Life In The U.S.

The U.S. Government Turned Away Thousands of Jewish Refugees, Fearing That They Were Nazi Spies

How U.S. intelligence agencies used 1,000 Nazis as Cold War spies — then covered it up

SS Police State

The FBI Walks a Perilous Line Between Surveillance and Outright Spying

FBI program instructs teachers to report radical students

The FBI: An American Cheka

Robert Gellately: Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany

Monitoring America

Employers can use FBI database for real-time background checks

James Comey: Statement Before the House Appropriations Committee, Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies

How Hitler suspended the right to mail and telephone privacy

U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement

The Gestapo Still Sets the Bar for Evil

Department of Pre-Crime

The Gestapo is Born

While Nixon Campaigned, the F.B.I. Watched John Lennon

Hitler’s Silent Partners

The FBI: The Silent Terror of the Fourth Reich

Battlefield America: The War on the American People

Rutherford Institute



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Former Clinton Foundation Donors Flocking To The McCain Institute

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U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., greets Saudi Arabia's King, Salman bin Abdul Aziz in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. (AP/Carolyn Kaster)

U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., greets Saudi Arabia’s King, Salman bin Abdul Aziz in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. (AP/Carolyn Kaster)

WASHINGTON, D.C.– With the Clinton Foundation standing at the heart of the many scandals that dogged Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 presidential campaign, it was no small wonder that donations to her family’s controversial charity began to dry up soon after her loss last November. Just weeks after the election, donations to the foundation from foreign governments plummeted, some as much as 87 percent, while donations from the corporate sector dropped by 37 percent.

While this was clearly devastating news for the Clintons – essentially signaling a drastic decline in their political clout – it has now become clear that the foundation of another former U.S. presidential candidate has gained the favor of many of the Clinton Foundation’s former donors. Republican Senator John McCain (R-AZ), current chairman of the Senate’s Armed Services Committee, has seen donations to the McCain Institute surge, particularly donations from ostensibly “liberal” donors such as George Soros and other long-time Clinton backers.

The McCain Institute is meant to serve as the senator’s “legacy” upon his eventual retirement and claims to be “dedicated to advancing human rights, dignity, democracy, and freedom.” Like the Clinton Foundation, the McCain Institute is a tax-exempt, non-profit foundation with approximately $8.1 million in assets.

However, the McCain Institute’s donor list has raised eyebrows among conservative groups due to its uncanny similarity to that of the Clinton Foundation. Among its donors are the neoliberal billionaire and “activist” George Soros, Evelyn and Lynn de Rothschild, and the for-profit company Teneo. Teneo was co-founded by Doug Band, a longtime associate of the Clinton family and counselor to former President Bill Clinton, as well as an instrumental force in the creation of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI).

In addition to these individuals, many of the same foreign governments that were known to donate massive sums to the Clintons have also bestowed their favor on the McCain Institute. For instance, Saudi Arabia, a nation that funded 20 percent of Clinton’s failed 2016 presidential campaign, made a $1 million donation to the McCain Institute, a donation that the both foundation and the senator himself have refused to explain.

Watch John McCain shut down a reporter who asked about the Saudis’ $1 million donation to the McCain Institute:

Foreign governments are forbidden from donating to U.S. politicians and often donate to non-profits in order to gain privileged access to America’s most powerful lawmakers, an arrangement often called “pay-to-play.” For instance, the Clinton Foundation received between $10 and $25 million from the Saudi monarchy, with between $1 and $5 million more originating from the group “Friends of Saudi Arabia,” which was co-founded by a “Saudi prince.”


Related: Wikileaks Founder Targets Clinton’s Saudi Connection In Scathing Interview


The McCain Institute has also accepted more than $100,000 from the OCP Group, a Moroccan state-run phosphate fertilizer company that operates in territory that it has illegally occupied since 1975. Morocco has been criticized by human rights groups who argue that the Moroccan government consistently violates basic human rights and that its state-owned companies subject their workers to gruesome conditions while exploiting the disputed territory’s natural resources.

The King of Morocco, not so coincidentally, was himself a major donor to the Clinton Foundation. Hillary Clinton personally received a $12 million check from the king in return for holding a CGI regional meeting in the country.

Critics of the McCain Institute have repeatedly pointed out the conflict of interest for the Republican senator while also noting the institute’s similarities to the Clinton Foundation.“This is a very real conflict of interest,” Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist at Public Citizen, told the Daily Caller. “This is the similar type of pattern we received with the Clinton Foundation in which foreign governments and foreign interests were throwing a lot of money in the hopes of trying to buy influence.”

Concerns have also been voiced regarding the role of the institute’s donors and McCain’s personal leadership in the organization’s exclusive “Sedona Forum,” which critics say is remarkably similar to the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) in that it hosts an annual gathering of special interests and powerful political figures, resulting in the alleged creation of pay-to-play schemes.

While McCain’s coherence may be fading, his political power in Washington still stands, meaning that the McCain Institute will likely continue to attract the attention and funds of powerful special interests and foreign governments.

The post Former Clinton Foundation Donors Flocking To The McCain Institute appeared first on MintPress News.



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Monday, June 26, 2017

Three CNN Employees 'Resign' Over 'Russia Collusion' Fake News Retraction

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A few days ago we noted that CNN was forced to retract one of their bombshell 'Russian collusion' stories when it was apparently revealed that the whole thing was nothing more than their latest, anonymously-sourced fake news debacle.  Like most CNN stories on the topic, this one carried a salacious title ("Congress was investigating a Russian investment fund with ties to Trump officials") which implied some nefarious plot by the Trump administration to stage a coup in the United States. 

Within 36 hours, however, CNN was forced to retract the story and issue an apology to Anthony Scaramucci (presumably for the whole libel thing).

That story did not meet CNN's editorial standards and has been retracted. Links to the story have been disabled. CNN apologizes to Mr. Scaramucci.

Now, according to a new report from the Washington Post, the fake story has resulted in the 'resignation' of three CNN 'journalists, including the Pulitzer Prize winner, Thomas Frank

Now for the consequences. CNN announced on Monday afternoon that three network officials are leaving their jobs over the incident: Frank, the reporter on the story; Eric Lichtblau, a recent CNN addition from the New York Times who edited the piece; and Lex Haris, the executive editor of “CNN Investigates.” The moves follow an investigation carried out by CNN executives over the weekend, with the conclusion that longstanding network procedures for publishing stories weren’t properly followed. “There was a significant breakdown in process,” says a CNN source. “There were editorial checks and balances within the organization that weren’t met.”

 

The official CNN statement: “In the aftermath of the retraction of a story published on CNN.com, CNN has accepted the resignations of the employees involved in the story’s publication.”

 

Regarding the personnel changes, a CNN source said, “The individuals all stated that they accepted responsibility and wanted to resign.” A compelling wrinkle in the saga of the story springs from the careful language in the editor’s note: “That story did not meet CNN’s editorial standards and has been retracted. Links to the story have been disabled. CNN apologizes to Mr. Scaramucci,” it reads. CNN is not bailing on all the factual representations in the story, however. “We pulled it down not because we disproved it,” says a CNN source, adding that there was “enough concern” on some factual points that “given the breach in process, we decided to pull it down.”

Of course, this is hardly the first time CNN has been caught reporting fake news recently (see "Looks Like CNN's Anonymous Sources Got This One Wrong") and we doubt it will be the last.

* * *

For those who missed it, our original post on the retraction is below:

Thursday afternoon, CNN posted a story, by none other than Pulitzer-Prize-winning reporter Thomas Frank, claiming that "Congress was investigating a Russian investment fund with ties to Trump officials."

The story was perfect fodder for 'The Left' as it provided yet more 'confirmation' that sources 'confirmed' Trump and his team were up to something nefarious with The Russians...

Highlights included...

Congress is investigating a little-known Russian investment fund...

 

The fund CEO met in January with a member of the Trump transition team...

 

"If you're going to get your nose under the tent, that's a good place to start," said Ludema, a Georgetown University economics professor. "I'm sure their objective is to get rid of all the sanctions against the financial institutions. But RDIF is one [sanctioned organizations] where a number of prominent U.S. investors have been involved."

 

A fund spokeswoman says there was no discussion about lifting sanctions...

 

Scaramucci's comments alarmed Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Ben Cardin of Maryland, who asked Mnuchin investigate whether Scaramucci sought to "facilitate prohibited transactions" or promised to waive or lift sanctions against Russia.

Sounds great right? Well, despite the 'facts' they reported, 36 hours later (quietly late on a Friday night), CNN decided to delete the story and issue a retraction, apologizing to Mr. Scaramucci (presumably for lying?)

On June 22, 2017, CNN.com published a story connecting Anthony Scaramucci with investigations into the Russian Direct Investment Fund.

 

That story did not meet CNN's editorial standards and has been retracted. Links to the story have been disabled. CNN apologizes to Mr. Scaramucci.

20170624_cnn1_0.jpg

 

Mr. Scaramucci responded via Twitter...

.@CNN did the right thing. Classy move. Apology accepted. Everyone makes mistakes. Moving on. https://t.co/lyVajCKNHx

— Anthony Scaramucci (@Scaramucci) June 24, 2017

Despite their deletion of the story, thanks to The Wayback-Machine, we can see what the original story said...

 

20170624_cnn_0.jpg

Is it any wonder that Americans are becoming increasingly frustrated by the media's attention to the 'Russia' narrative that is is constantly spewed with no mind for factual reporting?



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NSA Uses Trick to Spy On Americans

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The government is spying on most Americans through our computers, phones, cars, buses, streetlights, at airports and on the street, via mobile scanners and drones, through our credit cards and smart meters, televisions, dolls, and in many other ways.

This week, ZDNet reported that the NSA uses a trick to get around the few flimsy American laws on spying … they shuttle internet traffic overseas so they can pretend they’re monitoring foreign communications:

A new analysis of documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden details a highly classified technique that allows the National Security Agency to “deliberately divert” US internet traffic, normally safeguarded by constitutional protections, overseas in order to conduct unrestrained data collection on Americans.

 

According to the new analysis, the NSA has clandestine means of “diverting portions of the river of internet traffic that travels on global communications cables,” which allows it to bypass protections put into place by Congress to prevent domestic surveillance on Americans.

 

***

 

One leaked top secret document from 2007 details a technique that allows the intelligence agency to exploit the global flow of internet data by tricking internet traffic into traveling through a set and specific route, such as undersea fiber cables that the agency actively monitors.


Leaked NSA document from 2007. (Image: source document)

 

The document’s example noted Yemen, a hotspot for terrorism and extremist activity. It is difficult to monitor because the NSA has almost no way to passively monitor internet traffic from the cables that run in and out of the country. By shaping the traffic, the agency can trick internet data to pass through undersea cables that are located on friendlier territory.

 

Goldberg’s research takes that logic and focuses it on US citizens, whose data and communications is out of bounds for the intelligence agencies without a valid warrant from the surveillance court.

 

The government only has to divert their internet data outside of the US to use the powers of the executive order to legally collect the data as though it was an overseas communication. Two Americans can send an email through Gmail, for example, but because their email is sent through or backed up in a foreign data center, the contents of that message can become “incidentally collected” under the executive order’s surveillance powers.

Thomas Drake – one of the top NSA executives, and Senior Change Leader within the NSA – blew the whistle on this deceptive practice more than a decade ago.

For his troubles, Drake was prosecuted under the Espionage Act and literally framed by the government.

Postscript:  Drake also notes that the government is storing for the long-term just about everything they’re collecting.

But don’t worry … the government would never think of doing anything bad with the information.



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Seymour Hersh actual reporting on Syria

https://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/article165905578/Trump-s-Red-Line.html

Of course, not published in US newspapers.

The mainstream press responded the way the White House had hoped it would: Stories attacking Russia’s alleged cover-up of Syria’s sarin use dominated the news and many media outlets ignored the briefer’s myriad caveats. There was a sense of renewed Cold War. The New York Times, for example – America’s leading newspaper – put the following headline on its account: “White House Accuses Russia of Cover-Up in Syria Chemical Attack.” The Times’ account did note a Russian denial, but what was described by the briefer as “declassified information” suddenly became a “declassified intelligence report.” Yet there was no formal intelligence report stating that Syria had used sarin, merely a "summary based on declassified information about the attacks," as the briefer referred to it.

The Food Industry Wants the Public Confused About Nutrition

ORIGINAL LINK

The “Fairness Doctrine” example shows to what extent the purveyors of unhealthy products will go to keep the truth from the American public.

Subscribe to Dr. Greger’s free nutrition newsletter at http://www.nutritionfacts.org/subscribe and get a free excerpt from his latest NYT Bestseller HOW NOT TO DIE. (All proceeds Dr. Greger receives from his books, DVDs, and speaking directly support NutritionFacts.org).

The trans fat story is an excellent example of this, which I just did two videos about, Controversy Over the Trans Fat Ban (http://nutritionfacts.org/video/controversy-over-the-trans-fat-ban) and Banning Trans Fat in Processed Foods but Not Animal Fat (http://nutritionfacts.org/video/Banning-Trans-Fat-in-Processed-Foods-but-Not-Animal-Fat).

Isn’t that Fairness Doctrine example amazing? Just goes to show how powerful the truth can be. If you want to support my efforts to spread evidence-based nutrition you can donate to our 501c3 nonprofit here (https://nutritionfacts.org/donate/), and support Balanced (https://balanced.org/), an ally organization NutritionFacts.org helped launch to put this evidence into practice.

More tobacco industry parallels can be found in Big Food Using the Tobacco Industry Playbook (http://nutritionfacts.org/video/big-food-using-the-tobacco-industry-playbook), American Medical Association Complicity with Big Tobacco (http://nutritionfacts.org/video/american-medical-association-complicity-with-big-tobacco), and How Smoking in 1956 is Like Eating in 2017 (http://nutritionfacts.org/video/how-smoking-in-the-50s-is-like-eating-today).

Want to know more about that saturated fat tax idea? See: Would Taxing Unhealthy Foods Improve Public Health? (http://nutritionfacts.org/video/would-taxing-unhealthy-foods-improve-public-health).

Have a question about this video? Leave it in the comment section at http://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-food-industry-wants-the-public-confused-about-nutrition and someone on the NutritionFacts.org team will try to answer it.

Want to get a list of links to all the scientific sources used in this video? Click on Sources Cited at http://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-food-industry-wants-the-public-confused-about-nutrition. You’ll also find a transcript and acknowledgements for the video, my blog and speaking tour schedule, and an easy way to search (by translated language even) through our videos spanning more than 2,000 health topics.

If you’d rather watch these videos on YouTube, subscribe to my YouTube Channel here: https://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=nutritionfactsorg

Thanks for watching. I hope you’ll join in the evidence-based nutrition revolution!
-Michael Greger, MD FACLM

http://www.NutritionFacts.org
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Friday, June 23, 2017

The heart disease rates of meat-eaters versus vegetarians & vegans. The #1 killer in the US

ORIGINAL LINK

* Please be advised that there are multiple, heavily soured articles at the bottom of this one with a wealth of information about vegetarian/vegan diets. Please check them out if you’re interested and want to further your research.Proper nutrition is essential for good health, and it’s disturbing how little doctors learn about it in medical school. As a result, they are unable to educate their patients on how to use nutrition to improve their health, or they offer advice based on ...

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Matt Taibbi on JPMorgan Chase’s Worst Nightmare: The $9 Billion Witness

ORIGINAL LINK

by James Hall, Silver Doctors:

In reality, there is nothing surprising in Matt Taibbi’s latest piece since returning to Rolling Stone from the Intercept, as it tells a story everyone is by now is all too familiar with: a former bank employee (in this case Alayne Fleischmann) who was a worker in a bank’s (in this case JPM) mortgage operations group, where she observed and engaged in what she describes as “massive criminal securities fraud” and who was fired after trying to bring the attention of those above her to said “criminal” activity.

The story doesn’t end there…

he attention that Taibbi is receiving for the Rolling Stone essay, The $9 Billion Witness: Meet JPMorgan Chase’s Worst Nightmare, may push forward a serious debate on the systemic corruption that is common knowledge among informed observers of the financial structure. Zero Hedge can always be depended upon to incisively sum up the issue.

“In reality, there is nothing surprising in Matt Taibbi’s latest piece since returning to Rolling Stone from the Intercept, as it tells a story everyone is by now is all too familiar with: a former bank employee (in this case Alayne Fleischmann) who was a worker in a bank’s (in this case JPM) mortgage operations group, where she observed and engaged in what she describes as “massive criminal securities fraud” and who was fired after trying to bring the attention of those above her to said “criminal” activity.

The story doesn’t end there, and as Carmen Segarra already showed, when she revealed that Goldman runs the NY Fed, once Alayne was let go and tried to “whistleblow” on the house of Jimon from the outside, she found the that US Department of Justice headed by Eric Holder is just as, if not more, corrupt, and in his desperate attempt to prevent discovery and bring JPM et al to justice, he would stretch the statue of limitations on frauds committed during the crisis long enough to where nobody had any legal recourse any more, up to and including the US taxpayer.”

Well, that is a sober and tragic assessment. Even more heartbreaking is the statement made by Ms. Fleischmann as reported in Straight Line Logic.

“And now, with Holder about to leave office and his Justice Department reportedly wrapping up its final settlements, the state is effectively putting the finishing touches on what will amount to a sweeping, industrywide effort to bury the facts of a whole generation of Wall Street corruption. “I could be sued into bankruptcy,” she says. “I could lose my license to practice law. I could lose everything. But if we don’t start speaking up, then this really is all we’re going to get: the biggest financial cover-up in history.”

The only coherent response that regular citizens can exert, when dealing with the mega financial houses, is to avoid entanglements whenever possible. What good is it to establish accounts, whether as loans, savings or investments, when the rules of survival are stacked against main street customers?

Watch the Taibbi interview for his explanation of the scandal.

Firms like JP Morgan or Goldman are not terrified by fines because they are protected by the “To Big To Fail” culture. Bailouts are a way of life and infusion of easy money into the liquidity flow of balance sheets employ the most creative accounting techniques to cover up accurate net worth.

The threat of principals actually doing jail time is so remote that the probability is far greater that the next Secretary of the Treasury will come from their ranks.

This plight produces a true dilemma of confidence. In this environment only brave souls dare become a whistleblower. Public support for such individuals like Fleischmann and Segarra is faint because neither are public persons, readily recognized by most people. This lack of notoriety as individuals is far less important than the criminal activity both are documenting.

However, in a media driven and social networking society, the personality of celebrity far out paces the substance of the offenses. Matt Taibbi’s star persona, deserved or manufactured, illustrates that getting attention through the clutter and noise of the sound bites is possible. For an unknown person, getting your 15 minutes of fame requires even more creative strategies, to expose the basic purpose in the news revelations.

The dying main stream presstitutes will not confront the intrinsic nature of the abuses because their own financial futures depend upon Wall Street support. Yet, struggling Middle America foolishly rely upon their reporting and advice in most financial matters.

JPMorgan Chase’s Worst Nightmare fundamentally is the unwinding of the derivative debt black hole of their making. The essential risk of a collapse and implosion of the financial manipulated markets only grows because no effort or willingness exists to purge the system of crooked companies, practices or individuals. The culture of corruption survives because the pattern of exposing and demanding justice is so brutally punished.

How can meaningful accountability come from internal reform, when the price of disclosure is the end of your professional endeavors and even your livelihood?

Arguments, data and evidence of generational embedded fraud have been made by some of the most intuitive minds on finance and economics. Nonetheless, the degeneracy accelerates. The wolves of Wall Street target their prey when they lobby regulators to allow for more exotic financial products that are designed to fleece the public and place the entire monitory system in greater jeopardy.

Activists rally during elections cycles to pressure the establishment. The Occupy Wall Street movement, misguided on potential solutions, did muster awareness with media exposure. However, most taxpayers do not exert sufficient outrage about the selling out of their financial security.

Stopping “massive criminal securities fraud” is a true national security requirement. Internet revelations can only expose the latest schemes. As stated in the essay, Repeal of Glass-Steagall and the Too Big To Fail Culture, is a major reason for the current unsustainable breakdown in trust and lack of liability consequences for financial institutions.

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