Saturday, February 18, 2017

Democracy: The God That's Failing

ORIGINAL LINK

Submitted by Jeff Deist via The Mises Institute,

When Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe made his famous argument against democracy back in 2001, the notion that voting was a lousy way to organize society was still radical even among many libertarians. Virtually everyone raised in a western country over the past century grew up hearing “democracy” used as a synonym for wonderful, good, just, and valid. It takes a great deal of unlearning to overcome this as an adult, and to question the wisdom of representative government installed via democratic mechanisms.   

Fast forward to 2017, however, and the case against democracy is being made right in front of our eyes. Witness Hillary Clinton, who not long ago gushed about our “sacred” right to vote — that is until her stupendous loss to Trump. Today she clings to the specious nonsense that the Russians somehow influenced our election by planting stories and using social media, which if true would be an excellent argument against voting rights. If the natives are so easily duped by a few silly posts in their Facebook feeds, why on earth is their vote meaningful or sacred?

Other progressives like Michael Moore demand that Trump be arrested, presumably for treason. Left-leaning cable news pundits openly call for Trump to resign or be impeached. Mainstream newspapers wonder whether he’ll even finish his four-year term. The overwhelming message from the media is that Trump is a disaster, an existential threat that must be stopped.

But it’s not just progressives questioning democratic outcomes. Neoconservative Bill Kristol tweets that he’d rather be governed by an unaccountable deep state than Trump. Mild-mannered conservative moralist Dennis Prager, a reasonable and likeable right winger in my view, argues quite seriously that we are in the midst of a second civil war with those who simply reject their electoral defeat. And the libertarianish jurist Richard Epstein, writing for the somnambulant Hoover Institution, unloads a litany of grievances against Trump that would make Bill Maher blush.

We should recall that as democratic elections go, Trump’s victory was perfectly legitimate. Nobody seriously challenges his margins in the key states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Florida. Lamentations about Clinton winning the so-called popular vote are irrelevant and blatantly partisan — the Electoral College is as much a part of the “rules” as having two senators per state.

Meanwhile in the UK, former Prime Minister Tony Blair employs the language of revolution in urging Remain forces to “rise up” against Brexit and overturn the referendum in Parliament. Never mind that Blair is no longer an elected official and holds no government office, never mind that both the referendum process and the Brexit vote were perfectly valid: he just doesn’t like the results. His argument that Leave voters had “imperfect knowledge” is both hilarious and disingenuous: voters always have imperfect knowledge about candidates and policies prior to elections; pertinent new information always comes to light after elections. If Blair thinks we can start overturning elections based on any degree of voter ignorance, then I must suggest he begin with the vote in the House of Commons that made him PM. And why does he, a democrat, imagine some right to overturn election results at all?

It’s time to call a spade a spade. All of this angst hardly comports with our supposed reverence for democracy. Again, Trump handily and fairly won a democratic election just three months ago. If he’s the devil, a wrecking ball that cannot be stopped by the other branches of government, then our entire constitutional system and its democratic mechanisms are defective. Why doesn’t the #neverTrump movement take its arguments to their logical conclusion, and insist an electorate that would install Donald Trump never be allowed to vote again or have any say in organizing society?

The reality is becoming clear, even as it remains uncomfortable for many: democracy is a sham that should be opposed by all liberty-loving people. Voting and elections confer no legitimacy whatsoever on any government, and to the extent a democratic political process replaces outright war it should be seen as only slightly less horrific.

As I stated before the election last year:

… no matter who wins, millions of people — maybe 40 percent of the country — are going to view the winner as illegitimate and irredeemable.

 

In fact a recent Gallup poll cites that fully one-third of Americans won’t trust the election results anyway — which is to say they don’t trust government to hold an honest election.

 

Trump vs. Hillary represents something much bigger: what we might call the end of politics, or at least the limits of politics. Americans, and Europeans too, are witnessing the end of the myth of democratic consensus. Democratic voting, so called, doesn’t yield some noble compromise between Left and Right, but only an entrenched political class and its system of patronage.

Great libertarians like Thomas Jefferson have long warned against democracy, even as they uneasily accepted it as a necessary evil. Both Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek were democrats, men who championed both the virtues of an intellectual elite and the necessity of having that elite gain legitimacy for its ideas through public acceptance. Mises termed democracy a “method for the peaceful adjustment of government to the will of the majority.” Hayek viewed democracy as potentially wise if tempered by built-in safeguards to protect individual liberty.

But these men lived in very different times, coming as they did from pre-war Old Europe. We can’t know what they would think of modern social democratic welfare states, or Trump, or Brexit. I suspect they would find democracy quite wanting, in terms of producing what either would consider a liberal society. Both were utilitarians (of a sort) in their economic thinking, and it’s not hard to imagine they would take a consequentialist view of a society gone awry via democracy.

Things are getting strange in America when Michael Moore and Dennis Prager start to sound the same, and that’s arguably a very good development. We are close to a time when the democracy illusion will be shattered, for good and all. Democracy was always a bad idea, one that encourages mindless majoritarianism, political pandering, theft, redistribution, war, and an entitlement mentality among supposedly noble voters. It’s an idea whose time has passed, both on a national and international scale. The future of liberty is decentralized, and will be led by smaller breakaway nations and regions where real self-determination and real consensus is not an illusion. Jefferson and Hoppe were right about democracy, but it took Trump and Brexit to show the world how quickly elites abandon it when they don’t prevail.



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Friday, February 17, 2017

NYT commits TREASON in fake news attempt to overthrow the United States Government… is it time to start arresting traitors who pretend to be journalists?

ORIGINAL LINK

from Natural News:

The New York Times is now actively engaged in deliberate acts of treason against the United States government. Following in the “journo-terrorism” practices of the Washington Post, the NYT has just published a wildly irresponsible innuendo piece that, predictably, cites anonymous intelligence officials in an attempt to discredit the Trump administration and enrage opponents.

As the Daily Caller points out, the hysterical NYT article is nothing more than a “rehashed” collection of innuendo and paranoia that lacks any real journalistic substance. “While the story states that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has found no evidence of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign and essentially is a rehash of a previous story, journalists have gone bonkers over it,” reports the Caller.

The entire story is bogus, right from the false insinuation of the headline itself, which even the story refutes. As explained by The News Commenter:


The New York Times bombshell headline reads “Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence”. But note the third paragraph in, it reads “The officials interviewed in recent weeks said that, so far, they had seen no evidence of such cooperation.”.

Shouldn’t the headline read “No Evidence Trump Campaign Had Contacts With Russian Officials”? What a joke. New York Times is #FakeNews.

This new habit of the anti-Trump “fake news” media of citing “unnamed” intelligence officials to roll out wild, unsubstantiated accusations is the new modus operandi of the treasonous, anti-American media. The NYT, Washington Post, CNN, the Atlantic and other Trump-hating media outlets are now focused almost entirely on waging a “soft coup” overthrow attempt against President Trump, and they’re all willing to blatantly lie or fabricate “facts” in order to pull it off.

“The fake news media is going crazy with their conspiracy theories and blind hatred,” Trump tweeted last night. “MSNBC and CNN are unwatchable. Fox and Friends is great!”

Read More @ NaturalNews.com



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Why Heating Your Food With Microwave Radiation Might Be A Terrible Idea

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A few decades from now, will it be common knowledge that using microwave radiation to heat food is harmful to human health? It’s certainly a possibility, and information is already emerging which shows cause for concern. Microwaves work by causing water molecules to resonate at very high frequencies, converting them into steam and thereby heating your food. While this might be a convenient way to prepare your food, using microwave radiation in this way actually changes the chemical structure of that food.

The fact that they are approved as safe doesn’t mean much these days, as we’ve seen with several other examples from Tobacco, PCBs and Asbestos and Glyphosate. Just because a government agency, like the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), or a government health agency approves something as safe, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s safe.

You might be wondering how this is any different from heating your food on the stove or steaming it, and that’s a fair question. The difference is that microwaves deform and distort the molecules in food, while conventional heating methods do not.

This is problematic in the medical field as well. We know, for example, that during blood transfusions, microwaves are often used to heat the blood before it is transferred to the patient. But using microwave radiation to this actually damages components found in blood. In fact, one woman even died after receiving a blood transfusion of microwaved blood. (source)

It is starting to look like microwaving can completely rid your food of most essential nutrients, but more research on this phenomenon needs to be done. That being said, there are some publications we can refer to if you’d like to find out more information regarding the harmful effects of microwaves on nutrients.

One example comes from 2003. A study published in The Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture examined what microwaves do to broccoli, finding that broccoli, after being microwaved, lost up to 97 percent of its beneficial antioxidants. By comparison, when researchers steamed broccoli, they discovered that it only lost 11 percent or fewer of its antioxidants. (source)

A study out of Australia showed that microwaves cause a greater level of “protein unfolding” than conventional heating. It found that “microwaves cause a significantly higher degree of unfolding  then conventional thermal stress for protein solutions heating to the same maximum temperature.” (source)

A study using garlic found that just 60 seconds in a microwave can render its principle active ingredient (alliinase) as useless. Microwaves have also been found to destroy immune-boosting agents that are found in breast milk. These are disease fighting nutrients which are essential to the health and development of the child. For example, one study found that microwaving breast milk caused a decrease in lysozyme activity and antibodies, and aided the growth of more pathogenic bacteria. (source) The interesting thing about this study is that the researchers found that more damage was done to the milk from microwaving compared to any other method of heating.

“Microwaving appears to be contraindicated at high-temperatures, and questions regarding its safety even exist at low temperatures.” (source)

A Japanese study found that only 6 minutes of microwave heating turned approximately 40 percent of the B12 found in milk dead and completely void of any nutritional value. (source)

Three recent studies of historical food composition have shown up to 40 percent declines in some of the minerals commonly found in fresh produce, and another one found the same thing for their protein source. (source)

A Scandinavian study conducted in 1999 also found that cooking asparagus in the microwave results in a reduction in vitamins. (Kidmose U and Kaack K. Acta. Agriculturae Scandinavica B1999:49(2).110-117.)

What Type of Container Are You Using To Microwave Your Food?

Not heating your food in plastic containers should be a no brainer at this point. This is precisely why the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommends that any plastic containers should be labelled for microwave use, but even if they are labeled as safe, it’s still probably not a good idea. For more more information on what happens when you microwave your food in plastic containers, you can check out this article.

Many studies have shown that multiple plastic products contain various hormone disrupting chemicals, and heat is the worst culprit when it comes to increasing the rate of chemical transfer from the container to your food.

As written in the journal Toxicology Letters:

Using a sensitive and quantitative competitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, BPA was found to migrate from polycarbonate water bottle at rates ranging from 0.20 ng/h to 0.79/h. . . . At room temperature the migration of BPA was independent of whether or not the bottle had been perviously used. Exposure to boiling water increased the rate of BPA migration by up to 55-fold.

Again, heat increases chemical leaching, so be cautious of what you use to heat your food. Even plastic containers which are labelled as microwave safe (or even BPA free, which does not account for other worrisome chemicals) are still dangerous.  According to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), “what the term ‘microwave-safe’ basically means is that any chemicals leaching from the container into food do so at levels far below those shown to have any health effects.  There is cause to be wary of this claim, however. In particular, #7 polycarbonate plastic should not be used in a microwave, even if it is labeled ‘microwave-safe,’ because it leaches hormone-disrupting bisphenol A (BPA), especially when heated.” (source)

This may be frightening to consider, but examining the products we choose to use on a daily basis is important. We have seen many examples in recent human history of information coming to light about a product or drug which completely changes our understanding and attitude towards it. We only have to look at cigarettes to see the proof of that.

Related CE Article:

Why You Shouldn’t Be A Part Of The 90% Percent Of Americans Who Still Use Microwaves



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THE CIA AND THE MEDIA

ORIGINAL LINK

How Americas Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up



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Thursday, February 16, 2017

Trump Left Saudi Arabia Off His Immigration Ban… Here’s the Shocking Reason Why

ORIGINAL LINK

by Nick Giambruno, International Man:

On August 15, 1971, President Nixon killed the last remnants of the gold standard.

It was one of the most significant events in US history—on par with the 1929 stock market crash, JFK’s assassination, or the 9/11 attacks. Yet most people know nothing about it.

Here’s what happened…

After World War 2, the US had the largest gold reserves in the world, by far. Along with winning the war, this let the US reconstruct the global monetary system around the dollar.

The new system, created at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944, tied the currencies of virtually every country in the world to the US dollar through a fixed exchange rate. It also tied the US dollar to gold at a fixed rate of $35 an ounce.

The Bretton Woods system made the US dollar the world’s premier reserve currency. It effectively forced other countries to store dollars for international trade, or to exchange with the US government for gold.

By the late 1960s, the number of dollars circulating had drastically increased relative to the amount of gold backing them. This encouraged foreign countries to exchange their dollars for gold, draining the US gold supply. It dropped from 574 million troy ounces at the end of World War 2 to around 261 million troy ounces in 1971.

To plug the drain, President Nixon “suspended” the dollar’s convertibility into gold on August 15, 1971. This ended the Bretton Woods system and severed the dollar’s last tie to gold.

Since then, the dollar has been a pure fiat currency, allowing the Fed to print as many dollars as it pleases.

Of course, Nixon said the suspension was only temporary. That was lie No. 1. It’s still in place over 40 years later.

And he claimed the move was necessary to protect Americans from international speculators. That was lie No. 2. Money printing to finance out-of-control government spending was the real threat.

Nixon also said the suspension would stabilize the dollar. That was lie No. 3. Even by the government’s own rigged statistics, the US dollar has lost over 80% of its purchasing power since 1971.

The death of the Bretton Woods system—which was really the US government defaulting on its promise to back the dollar with gold—had profound geopolitical consequences.

Most critically, it eliminated the main motivation for foreign countries to store large US dollar reserves and to use the US dollar for international trade.

At this point, demand for dollars was set to fall… along with the dollar’s purchasing power. So the US government concocted a new arrangement to give foreign countries another compelling reason to hold and use the dollar.

The new arrangement, called the petrodollar system, preserved the dollar’s special status as the world’s reserve currency. For President Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, it was a geopolitical and financial masterstroke.

From Bretton Woods to the Petrodollar
From 1972 to 1974, the US government made a series of agreements with Saudi Arabia, which created the petrodollar system.

The US handpicked Saudi Arabia because of the kingdom’s vast petroleum reserves and its dominant position in OPEC—and because the Saudi royal family was (and is) easily corruptible.

The US also picked Saudi Arabia for geopolitical reasons. During the Yom Kippur War of 1973, OPEC’s Arab members started an oil embargo to punish the US for supporting Israel. Oil prices quadrupled, inflation soared, and the stock market crashed.

The US was in a vulnerable position. It needed to neutralize the Arabs’ potent Oil Weapon. Turning a hostile Saudi Arabia into an ally was the key. The alliance would also help check Soviet influence in the region.

In essence, the petrodollar system was an agreement that the US would guarantee the House of Saud’s survival. In exchange, Saudi Arabia would:

1. Take the Oil Weapon off the table.

2. Use its dominant position in OPEC to ensure that all oil transactions would only happen in US dollars.

3. Invest billions of US dollars from oil revenue in US Treasuries. This let the US issue more debt and finance previously unimaginable budget deficits.

Oil is the world’s most traded and strategic commodity. If foreign countries need US dollars to trade oil, it creates a very compelling reason to hold large dollar reserves.

For example, if Italy wants to buy oil from Kuwait, it has to purchase US dollars on the foreign exchange market to pay for the oil first.

This creates an artificial market for US dollars. The dollar is just a middleman in countless transactions that have nothing to do with US products or services.

Ultimately, the arrangement boosts the US dollar’s purchasing power. It also creates a deeper, more liquid market for the dollar and US Treasuries.

Plus, the US has the unique privilege of buying imports, including oil, with its own currency… which it can print.

It’s hard to overstate how much the petrodollar system benefits the US dollar. It’s allowed the US government and many Americans to live beyond their means for decades. And it’s the reason the media and political elite give the Saudis special treatment.

Read More @ InternationalMan.com



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De Niro & RFK, Jr. Hold Press Conference To Expose Massive Corruption in Vaccine Industry

ORIGINAL LINK

by Jay Syrmopoulos, The Free Thought Project:


Washington, D.C. – Robert De Niro and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. held a press conference today at The National Press Club in Washington, D.C., where they publicly discussed their efforts to thoroughly examine the links between mercury and vaccines.

The Hollywood legend and Kennedy announced their partnership with the World Mercury Project, which was founded in November 2016, with the goal being to “find a missing piece of research associated with mercury.”

The group announced a $100,000 reward for research into exposing the connection between mercury and developmental abnormalities in children — noting that the majority of the current body of research has been tainted by conflicts of interest relating to those conducting the studies.

Kennedy currently serves as Chairman of the nonprofit advocacy group, while De Niro has publicly supported the group’s mission in the past. According to its website, the WMP works to “create a world free of the devastating effects of mercury.”

The group has publicly spoken out about against vaccines with mercury, and argue those vaccines have caused an increase in neurological disorders among children.

During the press conference, Kennedy noted that there is a vast censorship regime taking place in America, due to the massive amounts of money involved in Big Pharma, that disallows any public discussion about the issue of vaccines – with those attempting to do so being labeled “anti-vaccine” as a means of marginalizing them.

Kennedy said that he is “pro-vaccine,” but wants “safe vaccines.”

He went on to note that he has worked tirelessly as an environmental crusader to get rid of mercury contamination in fish, due to the extreme danger inherent to humans, but has never been called “anti-fish.” So why, because he wants to get rid of mercury in vaccines, is he considered “anti-vaccine?”

Is there really a danger in engaging in specific research intended on determining if mercury in vaccines are causing developmental abnormalities? If the pharmaceutical industry is so confident in their mercury-containing vaccines not causing these abnormalities, then theoretically they should be the first ones to jump at the opportunity to prove how harmless these vaccines are.

Read More @ TheFreeThoughtProject.com



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The Public Should Demand to See the Michael Flynn Transcript

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Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

The United States is much better off without Michael Flynn serving as national security adviser. But no one should be cheering the way he was brought down.

The whole episode is evidence of the precipitous and ongoing collapse of America’s democratic institutions — not a sign of their resiliency. Flynn’s ouster was a soft coup (or political assassination) engineered by anonymous intelligence community bureaucrats. The results might be salutary, but this isn’t the way a liberal democracy is supposed to function.

President Trump was roundly mocked among liberals for that tweet. But he is, in many ways, correct. These leaks are an enormous problem. And in a less polarized context, they would be recognized immediately for what they clearly are: an effort to manipulate public opinion for the sake of achieving a desired political outcome. It’s weaponized spin.

In a liberal democracy, how things happen is often as important as what happens. Procedures matter. So do rules and public accountability. The chaotic, dysfunctional Trump White House is placing the entire system under enormous strain. That’s bad. But the answer isn’t to counter it with equally irregular acts of sabotage — or with a disinformation campaign waged by nameless civil servants toiling away in the surveillance state.

– From The Week article: America’s Spies Anonymously Took Down Michael Flynn. That is Deeply Worrying.

I never intended to write about the Michael Flynn affair. I figured it had been covered to death and I probably wouldn’t have anything to add to the conversation. That said, I hadn’t been following the story closely so I decided to get caught up by reading a diverse selection of articles on the topic. One of my favorite sources on such subjects is Glenn Greenwald, and I eagerly read his latest piece on the matter: The Leakers Who Exposed Gen. Flynn’s Lie Committed Serious — and Wholly Justified — Felonies.

There are several key points he outlines in the piece, most of which I agree with. First, he proves that the leakers committed serious felonies under the law. Second, he states that if illegal leaks lead to the disclosure of information that is clearly very much in the public interest, then such action is not only justified, but ethically necessary. I agree with this as well. Where he doesn’t really convince me, is the argument that this particular leak represented some sort of great public service. He writes:

This Flynn episode underscores another critical point: The motives of leakers are irrelevant. It’s very possible — indeed, likely — that the leakers here were not acting with benevolent motives. Nobody with a straight face can claim that lying to the public is regarded in official Washington as some sort of mortal sin; if anything, the contrary is true: It’s seen as a job requirement.

Moreover, Gen. Flynn has many enemies throughout the intelligence and defense community. The same is true, of course, of Donald Trump; recall that just a few weeks ago, Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer warned Trump that he was being “really dumb” to criticize the intelligence community because “they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.”

It’s very possible — I’d say likely — that the motive here was vindictive rather than noble. Whatever else is true, this is a case where the intelligence community, through strategic (and illegal) leaks, destroyed one of its primary adversaries in the Trump White House.

But no matter. What matters is not the motive of the leaker but the effects of the leak. Any leak that results in the exposure of high-level wrongdoing — as this one did — should be praised, not scorned and punished.

Glenn’s conclusion here is that the Flynn leak exposed high-level wrongdoing. What wrongdoing are we talking about specifically? Yes, it seems he clearly lied to the public and Mike Pence about the content of his conversation with the Russian ambassador. The lie to Mike Pence in particular led to Pence embarrassing himself publicly by repeating that lie, and this betrayal seems to be the primary motivator (from my seat) of why Trump fired him. Others are referring to potential violations of the Logan Act, but as we learned from Lawfare:

Flynn certainly breached protocol. He may also have broken the law by interfering with U.S. diplomatic efforts while still a private citizen, which is forbidden by the Logan Act. The centuries-old law is vague, however, and has never resulted in a conviction. Furthermore, there may be significant First Amendment problems with enforcing it. Officials became more alarmed when Flynn was not forthcoming with Vice President-Elect Pence and others, possibly including federal agents, about the conversations. Those officials feared that Flynn’s dissembling might open up him up to risks of blackmail.

Yes, Flynn was a private citizen, but he was less than a month away from being a high-level government official, and the Obama administration was doing everything it possibly could to antagonize Russia during its last few weeks in office. I’m not justifying what Flynn said in those conversations, or the lies he told about it, but there’s a key problem with this whole leak. It wasn’t really a leak meant to inform the public. It was a leak to specific journalists, at specific papers, with a clear intent of political assassination through the manipulation of public opinion via cryptic releases of filtered information.

For example, here’s how the New York Times reported on the information in its February 9 article, Flynn Is Said to Have Talked to Russians About Sanctions Before Trump Took Office:

WASHINGTON — Weeks before President Trump’s inauguration, his national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, discussed American sanctions against Russia, as well as areas of possible cooperation, with that country’s ambassador to the United States, according to current and former American officials.

Throughout the discussions, the message Mr. Flynn conveyed to the ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak — that the Obama administration was Moscow’s adversary and that relations with Russia would change under Mr. Trump — was unambiguous and highly inappropriate, the officials said.

But current and former American officials said that conversation — which took place the day before the Obama administration imposed sanctions on Russia over accusations that it used cyberattacks to help sway the election in Mr. Trump’s favor — ranged far beyond the logistics of a post-inauguration phone call. And they said it was only one in a series of contacts between the two men that began before the election and also included talk of cooperating in the fight against the Islamic State, along with other issues.

The officials said that Mr. Flynn had never made explicit promises of sanctions relief, but that he had appeared to leave the impression it would be possible.

How do we know what was really said without the transcript?

During the Christmas week conversation, he urged Mr. Kislyak to keep the Russian government from retaliating over the coming sanctions — it was an open secret in Washington that they were in the works — by telling him that whatever the Obama administration did could be undone, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing classified material.

Federal officials who have read the transcript of the call were surprised by Mr. Flynn’s comments, since he would have known that American eavesdroppers closely monitor such calls. They were even more surprised that Mr. Trump’s team publicly denied that the topics of conversation included sanctions.

Prosecutions in these types of cases are rare, and the law is murky, particularly around people involved in presidential transitions. The officials who had read the transcripts acknowledged that while the conversation warranted investigation, it was unlikely, by itself, to lead to charges against a sitting national security adviser.

I have so many issues with the above reporting it’s hard to know where to start. Everything mentioned above is given to us secondhand via “anonymous American officials.” Nowhere do I see any specific quotes from the transcript, despite the fact that the paper admits it talked with federal officials who read it. Why not? Why must we hear about the content of the transcripts secondhand from anonymous officials? This is the most significant red flag with this whole story. If the leakers were truly interested in transparency, and wanted the public to know the truth, why not leak the transcript to Wikileaks and let the public decide?

I’ll tell you why. They didn’t do this because transparency was never the goal here. They wanted to illegally use intelligence information to take a scalp from a Trump administration they hate, and they knew they could do this via mainstream media journalists. I know what you’re thinking, Edward Snowden didn’t leak everything to Wikileaks either. He likewise picked a few journalists and trusted them to responsibly report the information. How is this any different?

It’s different in two important respects. First, we are talking about a single transcript, or a few transcripts, as opposed to the enormous intelligence data-dump that Snowden provided. Secondly, The Intercept and others who reported on the Snowden material provided a huge amount of primary source documentation for the public to see so that it could come to its own conclusion. They didn’t simply tell everyone what to think about leaked documents while refusing to share any actual content. Where are the specific, comprehensive quotes from the Flynn transcript? Why doesn’t the public have a right to see the entire thing? Instead, we are being told what happened and what to think via secondhand anonymous sources. Sorry, but this doesn’t cut it for me.

I have yet to see any excerpts from the transcript. All I’ve seen is what anonymous officials say was discussed. This is absurd. We the people should demand the content of the relevant transcripts so we can decide for ourselves just how bad Flynn’s actions were. In the absence of this, we’re essentially being manipulated on a massive scale by rogue intelligence agents and told what to think through the major newspapers. This doesn’t cut it for me. I want to see the content of these conversations so I can make up my own mind. Perhaps it’s even worse than we know. So be it. We should be treated as adults and allowed to see the actual conversation if it’s going to be made into a story of such huge national importance.

Finally, I want to end with the mind-boggling absurdity of those who wanted Edward Snowden’s head on a platter, but are somehow ok with these leaks. As Lawfare explains:

Furthermore, these leaks are criminal. As Edward Snowden has learned, the Espionage Act makes intentional disclosure of classified “communications intelligence activities” a felony if such disclosure is made in a “manner prejudicial to the safety or interest of the United States or for the benefit of any foreign government . . . .”  18 U.S.C. § 798(a). This particular group of leakers might argue their motives were in defense of U.S. interests—to protect the nation from national security policy guided by a hand tainted by Russian influence—but under current law, that argument is highly unlikely to prevail. As Snowden well knows, there is no public interest defense to prosecution for violations of the Espionage Act.

Somehow I doubt the Flynn leakers will find themselves in the same position as Snowden, scrambling to get to a country that will provide them safe haven from the vast, vindictive reach of the U.S. government. That’s because the leakers in this case are powerful operatives of the deep state. As Greenwald explained:

It’s hard to put into words how strange it is to watch the very same people — from both parties, across the ideological spectrum — who called for the heads of Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, Tom Drake, and so many other Obama-era leakers today heap praise on those who leaked the highly sensitive, classified SIGINT information that brought down Gen. Flynn.

It’s even more surreal to watch Democrats act as though lying to the public is some grave firing offense when President Obama’s top national security official, James Clapper, got caught red-handed not only lying to the public but also to Congress — about a domestic surveillance program that courts ruled was illegal. And despite the fact that lying to Congress is a felony, he kept his job until the very last day of the Obama presidency.

But this is how political power and the addled partisan brain in D.C. functions. Those in power always regard leaks as a heinous crime, while those out of power regard them as a noble act. They seamlessly shift sides as their position in D.C. changes.

Finally, if you want to get a sense of the mindset behind the most adamant defenders of the Flynn leaks, take a look at the following tweets from former NSA analyst and Naval War College professor, John Schindler.

If that’s “the resistance,” I want no part of it. As I summarized on Twitter:

Thus far, "the resistance" seems to consist primarily of violent social justice warriors, and deep state sycophants.

No thanks.

— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) February 15, 2017

The Public Should Demand to See the Michael Flynn Transcript was originally published on Washington's Blog



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Wednesday, February 15, 2017

Trump Declares War on Russia

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Eric Zuesse

U.S. President Donald Trump made unequivocally clear, on February 14th, that the new Cold War between the U.S. and Russia will continue until Russia complies with two conditions that would not only be humiliating to Russia (and to the vast majority of its citizens), but that would also be profoundly immoral. One of these two conditions would actually be impossible, even if it weren’t, in addition, immoral. For Vladimir Putin to agree to either of these two conditions, would not only be a violation of his often-expressed basic viewpoint, but it would also cause the vast majority of Russians to despise him — because they respect him for his consistent advocacy of that very viewpoint. He has never wavered from it. The support of Russians for that viewpoint is virtually universal. (This article will explain the viewpoint.)

TRUMP’S DEMAND #1: “RETURN CRIMEA”

In order to understand the Russian perspective on the first of these two issues (which any American must understand who wants to understand the astounding stupidity of Mr. Trump’s position on this matter), which is the issue of Crimea (which had for hundreds of years been part of Russia, but was then suddenly and arbitrarily transferred to Ukraine in 1954 by the Soviet dictator — and the U.S. now demands that his dictat regarding Crimea must be restored), two videos are essential for anyone to see, and here they are:

The first video (click here to see it) (and no one should read any further here who hasn’t seen that video or at least the first twelve minutes of it, because it’s crucial) shows the U.S.-engineered coup that violently overthrew the democratically elected President of Ukraine in February 2014, under the cover of ‘a democratic revolution’, which was actually nothing of the sort, and which had instead started being planned in the U.S. State Department by no later than 2011, and started being organized inside the U.S. Embassy in Kiev by no later than 1 March 2013. The head of the ‘private CIA’ firm Stratfor, has rightly called it “the most blatant coup in history”.

The second video (click here to see it) shows the massacre of Crimeans who were escaping from Kiev during the Ukrainian coup, on 20 February 2014, and which massacre came to be known quickly in Crimea, as “the Pogrom of Korsun,” which was the town where the fascists whom the Obama regime had hired were able to trap the escapees and kill many of them. That’s the incident which — occurring during the coup in Ukraine — stirred enormous fear by Crimeans of the rabid hatred toward them by the U.S.-installed regime.

Finally on the issue of Crimea, all of the Western-sponsored polls that were taken of Crimeans both before and after the plebiscite on 16 March 2014 (which was just weeks after Obama overthrew the Ukrainian President for whom 75% of Crimeans had voted) showed over 90% support by Crimeans for Crimea’s return to being again a part of Russia. Everyone agrees that there was far more than 50% support for that, among the Crimeans. Furthermore, even Barack Obama accepted the basic universal principle of the right of self-determination of peoples when it pertained to Catalans in Spain, and Scotch in UK, and neither he nor anyone else has ever been able to make any credible case for applying it there and generally, but not in Crimea — especially under these circumstances.

So, on the first issue, Trump’s demand that Putin force the residents of Crimea to become subjects of the coup-regime that Obama had just established in Ukraine, it won’t be fulfilled — and it shouldn’t be fulfilled. Obama instituted the sanctions against Russia on the basis of what he called Putin’s “conquest of land” (referring to Crimea), but Russians see it instead as Russia’s standing steadfast for, and protecting, in what was historically and culturally a part of Russia not a part of Ukraine, the right of self-determination of peoples — especially after the country of which their land had been a part for the immediately prior 60 years (Ukraine), had been conquered three weeks earlier, via a bloody coup by a foreign power, and, moreover, this was a foreign power whom Crimeans loathed. Putin will not accept Trump’s demand. Nor should he.

TRUMP’S DEMAND #2: END THE UKRAINE-v.-DONBASS WAR

The way that this demand was stated on February 14th was “deescalate violence in the Ukraine,” referring to Ukraine’s invasions of its own former Donbass region, which broke away from the Obama-installed Ukrainian regime shortly after Crimea did, but which Putin (after having already suffered so much — sanctions, etc. — from allowing the Crimeans to become Russians again) refused to allow into the Russian Federation, and only offered military and humanitarian assistance to protect themselves so that not all of the roughly five million residents there would flee across the border into Russia.

Donbass had voted 90% for the Ukrainian President that Obama illegally replaced in his coup.

Francois Hollande, Angela Merkel, and Vladimir Putin, had established the Minsk negotiations and agreements, to end the hottest phase of the (Obama-caused) war between Ukraine and Donbass; and a crucial part of the Minsk-2 agreement was that Ukraine would allow the residents of Donbass a certain minimal degree of autonomy within Ukraine, as part of a new Ukrainian Federation, but Ukraine’s Rada or parliament refuses to do that, refuses to allow it, and the United States and its allies blame the residents of Donbass for that refusal by their enemies, and blame the Donbassers for the continued war, or, as Trump’s press secretary referred to it on February 14th, “violence in the Ukraine.” He’s demanding that Donbass stop the war, when Donbass is being constantly attacked by a Ukrainian regime that refuses even to fulfill a fundamental provision of the peace agreement that Hollande, Merkel, and Putin, had arranged, and that both Ukraine and Donbass signed. (Note: even Hollande and Merkel weren’t able to get the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Obama, to so much as participate in this effort for peace.)

A demand like that — for the victim to stop the fight — is impossible to fulfill. It’s like, in World War II, blaming the United States, Soviet Union, and UK, for their war against Germany, Italy, and Japan. It is a cockeyed demand, which requires only cockeyed credulous believers, for it to be taken seriously.

The way that Sean Spicer, President Trump’s press spokesperson, put this demand in his February 14th press conference, was:

President Trump has made it very clear that he expects the Russian government to deescalate violence in the Ukraine and return Crimea.  At the same time, he fully expects to and wants to be able to get along with Russia.

To some people, that combination sounds idiotic. In any event, it’s not merely unrealistic; it is downright impossible. It’s not seeking peace with Russia; it is instead reasserting war against Russia.

Spicer said, with evident pride: “The President has been incredibly tough on Russia.”

A reporter at the press conference challenged that statement: “To me it seems, and I think to a lot of Americans it seems that this President has not been tough on Russia.” Spicer answered by referring to the statement that America’s new U.N. Representative, Nikki Haley, had made. She said at the U.N. on February 2nd:

I must condemn the aggressive actions of Russia. … The United States stands with the people of Ukraine, who have suffered for nearly three years under Russian occupation and military intervention. Until Russia and the separatists it supports respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, this crisis will continue. … The United States continues to condemn and call for an immediate end to the Russian occupation of Crimea. Crimea is a part of Ukraine. Our Crimea-related sanctions will remain in place until Russia returns control over the peninsula to Ukraine.

So, Spicer said that,

with respect to Russia, I think the comments that Ambassador Haley made at the U.N. were extremely forceful and very clear that until —

Q    That was an announcement from Haley, not the President.

MR. SPICER:  She speaks for the President.  I speak for the President.  All of us in this administration.  And so all of the actions and all of the words in this administration are on behalf and at the direction of this President.  So I don’t think we could be any clearer on the President’s commitment.

Trump is continuing Obama’s war against Russia, although he had not given America’s voters to expect anything of the kind. Some voters (this writer is one) had voted for him because Trump alleged that he strongly disagreed with his opponent Hillary Clinton about that — he outright lied to the voters, on the most important thing of all. He applied mental coercion — deceit — in order to win. But as it turns out, he’s not really opposed at all to Obama’s coup in Ukraine. Perhaps he is so stupid that he’s not even aware that it was a coup, instead of a ‘democratic revolution’ (the cover-story). Maybe he’s so stupid, that he believes Obama’s lies.

At least Hillary Clinton was honest enough to make clear that she was going to continue Obama’s policies (only worse). But she was so stupid that she couldn’t even beat Donald Trump.

Anyway, all of that is water over the damn, now.

Initially, it had seemed that the only way in which Trump was aiming to satisfy the U.S. aristocracy (owners of the military-industrial complex, among other things) about increasing the ‘defense’ budget, was going to be a buildup against Iran; but, now, that war might end up playing second fiddle.

The war with Russia can only escalate, unless or until President Trump reverses course and states publicly, and provides to the American people and the world, the clear evidence of, his predecessor’s perfidy, both in Ukraine, and in Syria. Unless and until he comes clean, and admits that the problem between the U.S. and Russia isn’t Putin, but instead Obama, it will continue escalating, right up to World War III; and here is why:

When it escalates to a traditional hot war, either in Ukraine or in Syria, the side that’s losing that traditional war will have only one way to avoid defeat: a sudden unannounced nuclear all-out blitz attack against the other side. A nuclear war will last less than 30 minutes. The side that attacks first will suffer the less damage, because it will have knocked out some of the other side’s retaliatory missiles and bombs. If Donald Trump were intelligent, then one could assume that he knows this. He’s not, so he doesn’t. He plods on, toward mutual nuclear annihilation. Perhaps, like Hillary Clinton, he believes that the U.S. has ‘Nuclear Primacy’ and so will ‘win’.

It’s all so stupid. But, even worse, it’s evil. And I’m not talking about Russia or Putin here. The real problem — on this ultimate issue, of avoiding a nuclear winter — is my own country: the United States of America. To call this a ‘democracy’ is not merely a lie; it is a bad joke. The American public are not to blame for this evil. The American aristocracy are. It’s an oligarchy gone mad.

Trump promised to ‘drain the swamp’. Instead, he’s feeding the alligators.

—————

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

Trump Declares War on Russia was originally published on Washington's Blog



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Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Is Greece Really On The Verge Of Another Financial Crisis?

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Submitted by Milton Ezrati via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

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Just about every adult on earth has seen this show before. Greece faces a debt repayment that it cannot meet: for this performance, €86 billion due in July. It needs fresh bailout funds from the European Union and/or the International Monetary Fund because borrowing directly on global capital markets comes at too high a cost—10 percent to replace the maturing bonds. Germany, leading the EU, states that before Greece receives a single euro it must first commit to more severe budget policies. The IMF points out that Greece cannot possibly live up to Germany’s demands, and even if it did, the country would not be able to repay its outstanding debt burden, which at last count stood at 181 percent of Greece’s gross domestic product. The IMF goes on to hint that Greece may have to leave the eurozone. Throughout this familiar point and counterpoint, few focus on Greece’s need for the fundamental economic reforms that offer the country its only hope of using its own resources to meet its obligations.

Pretty much the same actors are playing the same roles as a couple of years ago, when Europe last staged this farce. Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras has assumed his same initial tough stance toward Greece’s creditors, just as he did last time, before he caved into EU demands. German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble insists that the EU will give no help until Greece broadens its income tax and cuts public pensions enough to create a budget surplus excluding debt service costs—known as a primary surplus—that is equal to 3.5 percent of GDP and maintain that surplus for ten years. Greece has countered by saying that it might commit to three years. The head of the IMF’s Europe department, Poul Thomsen, has argued that such goals are impossible. He has pointed out that next year Greece expects a primary budget surplus of only 1.5 percent—even after two years of severe budget constraints. He has also gone on to stress that such fiscal severity is counterproductive given Greece’s depressed economy and fragile politics.

The IMF has a point. Past budget stringency has failed to relieve Greece’s predicament. To be sure, Greece has never really lived up to its commitments in this regard, but even previous watered-down tax hikes and spending cuts have so depressed growth that progress on public finances has remained problematic. Since this crisis first emerged in 2010 and Greece first began to comply with EU budget demands, the real economy has shrunk 4.2 percent a year through 2015 (the last full year for which data is available). Unemployment has climbed to 26.2 percent of the workforce, and youth unemployment stands at 49.8 percent. Such economic reverses have increased needs for government relief, even as they have reduced government revenue flows from income and value-added taxes. As a result, public finances have suffered. German demands for more severe action along these lines seem unlikely to have a different, more favorable effect going forward.

Meanwhile, everyone seems to ignore the fundamental economic reforms that might get Greece out of its untenable situation. If Greece were to liberalize its constraining labor and product laws and ease restrictions on new business formation, then its economy could grow—even in the face of stringent budget regimes. Unfortunately, since the 2010 opening night of this farce, Greek governments left and right have resisted such steps. Instead, Greece’s established business interests have managed to keep down competition with a regime of government red tape, which is extreme even by European standards. Instead, Greece maintains a set of product regulations that stymies the free flow of goods in favor of existing buyers and suppliers. Instead, unions and others in established positions have secured themselves behind labor laws that constrain the ability of businesses to either hire or fire—at the expense of job seekers.

If Athens were to unwind this crony-capitalist regulatory regime, it would generate an economic dynamism that Greece desperately needs. Organic economic momentum would overcome the constraining effects of German budget demands. The country could break the vicious cycle it is in, where budget stringency fails to improve public finances because it also impedes growth and leads to more calls for greater restraint. That cycle only redoubles the weight on the country’s economy and future budgets. By promising organic growth, fundamental reforms might even give private investors enough confidence to lend Athens money at supportable rates and obviate its need to go to Europe, hat in hand.    

But such reform is unlikely to take place any time soon. Since Athens has overseen an economic disaster without tackling the entrenched interests that benefit from the status quo, then it is a good bet that the current regulatory mess will prevail. That leaves only two potential paths for Greece and Europe. In one, Greece fails, stiffs its creditors and leaves the eurozone to return to a depreciated drachma. Greece would have trouble borrowing at supportable rates for years following such an event, and though a depreciated drachma might help Greek exports and tourism, it would further impoverish an already suffering population by reducing the global buying power of its income. Such an event would also raise additional doubts about the European experiment as it is currently structured. But what is more likely is that Greece will pretend to comply with the EU’s demands, secure funding and avert a crisis until it becomes apparent that Athens cannot make the next big payment. At that time, the same players—or their understudies—will take the stage for the next remake of this show.



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Monday, February 13, 2017

How the mind treats “impossible things that couldn’t be happening”

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I recently published an article that highlighted the numbers of medically caused deaths in America.When little fragmentary stories about this fact emerge in the mainstream press, they’re one-offs. There is no serious follow-up and no deep investigation. Therefore, the public isn’t aroused.On May 3, 2016, the Washington Post ran an article detailing deaths from medical errors. This bomb dropped: doctors’ errors account for “about 9.5 percent of all deaths annually in the United States...

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Expert: “Potential Global Catastrophe” from Fukushima Unit 2 highly radioactive fuel… Reactor could be destroyed, “making Tokyo area uninhabitable”… This is “most dreaded” scenario

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from ENE news:

Akio Matsumura, Japanese Diplomat, Feb 11, 2017 (emphasis added): The Potential Catastrophe of Reactor 2 at Fukushima Daiichi: What Effect for the Pacific and the US?… It is clear to us now that the radiation level in the containment vessel of the crippled Reactor 2 is much higher than experts had believed… The danger of Reactor 2 begs us to ask many new questions

Dr. Shuzo Takemoto, professor of the Department of Geophysics, Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University — responded to Mr. Matsumura concerns: Potential Global Catastrophe of the Reactor No.2 at Fukushima Daiichi, by Professor Shuzo Takemoto — On July 28, 2016, the [Tepco] published the images of the F1 Unit 2 reactor screened by muon particles… They showed the shadow of materials equivalent to 180 – 210 tons at the lower part of the pressure vessel… It can hardly be said that the Fukushima accident is heading toward a solution. The problem of Unit 2, where a large volume of nuclear fuels remain, is particularly crucial. Reactor Unit 2 started its commercial operation in July 1974. It held out severe circumstances of high temperature and high pressure emanating [after 3/11]…  years long use of the pressure vessel must have brought about its weakening due to irradiation. If it should encounter a big earth tremor, it will be destroyed and scatter the remaining nuclear fuel and its debris, making the Tokyo metropolitan area uninhabitable.

The Tokyo Olympics in 2020 will then be utterly out of the question… [Fukushima is] situated in the aftershock area of the 2011 earthquake off the Pacific coast of Tōhoku. In this area, we must foresee a number of magnitude 7 class earthquakes. Consequently, we cannot exclude the possibility of intensity 6 and intensity 7 earthquakes befalling the Fukushima Daiichi.What is most dreaded is what could happen to the Unit 2 whose pressure vessel contain a large volume of nuclear fuel debris. This pressure vessel has endured the sudden change of temperature and pressure in the accident of March 2011, but in light of its possible weakening due to irradiation, it could be seriously damaged if a new big earth tremor occurs nearby.

Dr. Helen Caldicott, Feb 13, 2017: What the photos taken by the robot did reveal was that some of the structural supports of unit 2 have been damaged… all four buildings were structurally damaged by the original earthquake… and by the subsequent hydrogen explosions, so, should there be an earthquake greater than seven on the Richter scale, it is very possible that one or more of these structures could collapse leading to a massive release of radiation as the building fell on the molten core beneath… The reactor complex was built adjacent to a mountain range and millions of gallons of water emanate from the mountains daily beneath the reactor complex, causing some of the earth below the reactor buildings to partially liquefy

See also (from Feb 3, 2017): Collapse imminent at Fukushima — TV: Officials find large section under reactor is “unstable… about to collapse”

Read More @ ENEnews.com

Fukushima Fears In Death Of Pacific Ocean



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Sunday, February 12, 2017

The media can no longer hide the truth about Fukushima; the entire world is in danger

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We first want to thank Fox News for FINALLY reporting on a subject that has been highly censored by the mainstream media for the past 5+ years, the situation in Fukushima, Japan is completely out of control. While Fox News recently reported that radiation levels at Fukushima were now at ‘unimaginable levels’ more than 5 years after the disastrous earthquake and tsunami struck, as Steve Quayle asked in an SQNote he left while linking to that story, why has the mainstream media been silent all of ...

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Not Just Austim, Major Yale Study Shows Vaccines Tied to Multiple Brain Disorders

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vaccinesScientist found a strong correlation between vaccines and developing a brain disorder such as OCD, anorexia, ADHD, and major depressive disorders.

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Here is the Assad interview CNN will never show you, “EU is supporting the terrorists in Syria from the very beginning”

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On the 7th of February, 2017 Syrian President Bashar al-Assad told Belgian media that their country and the EU merely obey ‘the American master’ when it comes to Syria and political decision-making in general. Once again Assad shows that he is far from the dictator the western media paints him to be.



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UPDATE: 'NOAA cheated and got caught' on 'global warming'...

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UPDATE: 'NOAA cheated and got caught' on 'global warming'...


(Second column, 2nd story, link)


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