Tuesday, July 31, 2018

The Real “Fake News” from Government Media

ORIGINAL LINK

Facebook has announced its campaign against “fake news.” But, according to some workers’ own admission, conservatives are being censored. And Google also wants to censor “fake news.” But Google also was shown to treat conservative websites, but not liberal ones, as “fake news.” The same thing seems to be going on with Twitter. And again, conservatives are complaining.



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They Are Calling It “The Tech Bloodbath” – 10 Facts About This Tech Stock Crash That Will Take Your Breath Away

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Thanks to crashing tech stocks, Americans have lost hundreds of billions of dollars in paper wealth over the past three trading days.  As you will see below, we have just witnessed “the biggest market cap loss in history”, and many analysts believe that this is only just the beginning.  At this point, even the mainstream media is fearing the worst.  CNN is boldly proclaiming that “the tech bloodbath is here”, and there is a flood of mainstream articles giving advice to investors about how to ride out this crisis.  But the amount of money that has already been lost is absolutely huge, and it isn’t going to take much to turn this panic into a full-blown stampede.  In a lot of ways, what we are watching is very reminiscent of 2001.  When the original tech bubble burst, the crash was so rapid and so dramatic that many ordinary investors were not able to react in time.  As I have explained so many times before, markets tend to go down a whole lot faster than they go up, and the events of the last three trading days have been completely breathtaking.

A lot of people are responding as if this tech stock crash is a complete surprise, but the truth is that it shouldn’t be a surprise at all.

The only surprise is that the bubble lasted for as long as it did.

Even after the declines of the past three days, some of these tech companies still have some of the most absurd valuations that we have ever seen.  There has been warning after warning that something like this could happen, but the optimists on Wall Street wanted to believe that the party would never come to an end.

Well, now the party is ending, and people are starting to understand the gravity of what we are facing.  The following are 10 facts about this “tech bloodbath” that are almost too crazy to believe…

#1 The 10 leading U.S. tech companies lost an astounding 82.7 billion dollars in stock value on Monday.

#2 Overall, FANG stocks have lost 220 billion dollars in stock value over the last 3 trading days.  According to Zero Hedge, that represents “the biggest market cap loss in history”.

#3 Last Thursday, Facebook had the worst day for a single company in the history of the stock market.

#4 The amount of money that Facebook investors have lost is greater than the entire market value of some of the biggest corporations in America

The gargantuan one-day loss in the social media company’s market value eclipses the total value of warehouse club Costco, drug maker Bristol-Myers Squibb, investment powerhouse Goldman Sachs, defense contractor Lockheed Martin and credit-card company American Express, according to Bloomberg data.

The wealth destroyed also is more than the total value of farm equipment maker Caterpillar, home-improvement retailer Lowe’s, coffee seller Starbucks and drugstore chain CVS.

#5 One prominent ETF manager is saying that he doesn’t “see us being heavily invested in Facebook ever again”.

#6 FANG stocks are collectively down more than 10 percent from the record high last month.

#7 The 5 most valuable companies in the United States are all in the tech sector and they are all located on a stretch between Silicon Valley and Seattle.

#8 Thanks to all of the panic, investors are being forced to pay more for Nasdaq downside protection than they ever have before.

#9 Morgan Stanley’s chief U.S. equity strategist is warning that “the selling has just begun and this correction will be biggest since the one we experienced in February.”

#10 One major investor has told CNBC that he believes that the major tech stocks could ultimately lose 30 or 40 percent of their value

Ahead of Apple earnings scheduled for Tuesday evening, Larry McDonald, editor of the Bear Traps Report, warns to stay away from what has been one of the hottest areas of the market this year.

“These are stocks you want to run away from,” McDonald told CNBC’s “Trading Nation” on Friday. “I see potentially 30 percent to 40 percent downside on the FAANGs.”

Tech stocks led the way up during the first Internet bubble, and they also led the way down.

Will the same thing happen again this time around?

If some people think that the broader market will be immune as tech stocks continue to crash, they are just deceiving themselves.  To a very large extent, it has been the tech industry that has been responsible for holding the market up in these troubled times.  Right now the housing industry is slowing down substantially, we are in the midst of the worst “retail apocalypse” in American history, and big agriculture is being absolutely devastated by foreign tariffs.

There aren’t too many other bright spots for the U.S. economy at the moment, and so if the tech sector implodes we are going to see a lot of others go down with it.

Look, there is a reason why Mark Zuckerberg and other Facebook insiders dumped billions of dollars worth of Facebook stock in the months leading up to this crash.  They all knew that trouble was brewing, and they wanted to get out while the getting out was good.

As I have told my readers so many times before, you only make money in the stock market if you get out at the right time, and those Facebook insiders picked the right time.

Earlier this month, Ron Paul warned that the stock market could be cut “in half” when the “biggest bubble in the history of mankind” finally bursts, and a lot of people laughed at him.

Are they still laughing now?

Hopefully the market will settle down tomorrow, and without a doubt we will see a bounce at some point.  But it is certainly starting to feel like 2001 and 2008 all over again, but this time the bubble is far bigger than ever before.

How will this story ultimately end?

I think that we all know the answer, and it isn’t going to be pretty…

Michael Snyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is publisher of The Most Important News and the author of four books including The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.

The post They Are Calling It “The Tech Bloodbath” – 10 Facts About This Tech Stock Crash That Will Take Your Breath Away appeared first on The Economic Collapse.



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Monday, July 30, 2018

Refusing to Defend Assange, Mainstream Media Exposes Its True Nature

https://theantimedia.com/defend-assange-mainstream-media/

MH370 Mystery Grows as Final Report Says Someone “Manipulated” Controls

ORIGINAL LINK
MH370(ZHE) — A comprehensive final report made public by investigators on Monday has stirred fresh controversy as Malaysian authorities say they “cannot determine with any certainty” why Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 disappeared on March 8, 2014. However one key irregular finding in the 495-page report is that the Boeing 777’s controls were most likely deliberately manipulated to take the plane off course, perhaps putting […]

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Selma Blair quits Twitter after Disney fires director James Gunn from “Guardians of the Galaxy”

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“If people are punished despite changing, then what does that teach people about owning mistakes and evolving?”

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Government-Pharma collusion in mass deaths by opioids

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by Jon Rappoport

July 30, 2018

(To join our email list, click here.)

—The 2016 law, hamstringing the DEA, still has not been repealed—

The major pipeline for trafficking opioid drugs starts with pharmaceutical manufacturers, who are intentionally distributing opioids far beyond any legitimate need.

2 MILLION OPIOID ADDICTS IN THE US.

300,000 DEATHS SINCE THE YEAR 2000 IN THE US.

A significant percentage of this human carnage results from illegal distribution of opioids.

Here is the open secret:

A 2016 LAW SIGNED BY OBAMA SHACKLED THE DEA (DRUG ENFORCEMENT ADMINISTRATION) IN ITS EFFORTS TO CRACK DOWN ON BIG PHARMA TRAFFICKERS.

That law is the Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act of 2016, passed by Congress and signed by President Obama on 4/9/16.

And that is the federal government’s role in perpetuating and expanding the opioid crisis.

Honest agents inside the complacent DEA want to have the right to march into a pharmaceutical company headquarters and say, “We know you’re shipping millions of opioid pills to little pharmacies and clinics that, in turn, are selling the pills to street dealers. We’re going to freeze those shipments now, and we’re going to arrest key executives.”

But that 2016 law raises the bar so high, the whole law-enforcement effort is hamstrung, throttled, and loaded down with legal complications.

In essence, the US Congress gave drug companies a free pass.

And no one in the Congress is admitting it or talking about it.

The Washington Post, on October 15, 2017, talked about it. The article was headlined, “The Drug Industry’s Triumph Over the DEA”: “In April 2016, at the height of the deadliest drug epidemic in U.S. history, Congress effectively stripped the Drug Enforcement Administration of its most potent weapon against large drug companies suspected of spilling prescription [opioid] narcotics onto the nation’s streets.”

“A handful of members of Congress, allied with the nation’s major drug distributors, prevailed upon the DEA and the Justice Department to agree to a more industry-friendly law, undermining efforts to stanch the flow of pain pills, according to an investigation by The Washington Post and ‘60 Minutes’…”

“The law was the crowning achievement of a multifaceted campaign by the drug industry to weaken aggressive DEA enforcement efforts against drug distribution companies that were supplying corrupt doctors and pharmacists who peddled [opioid] narcotics to the black market. The industry worked behind the scenes with lobbyists and key members of Congress [to pass the 2016 law], pouring more than a million dollars into their election campaigns.”

“The new [2016] law makes it virtually impossible for the DEA to freeze suspicious narcotic shipments from the companies, according to internal agency and Justice Department documents and an independent assessment by the DEA’s chief administrative law judge in a soon-to-be-published law review article. That powerful tool [freezing opioid shipments] had allowed the agency to immediately prevent drugs from reaching the street.”

EVERYONE IS NOW AWARE OF THE LAW’S HORRENDOUS IMPACT. WHY DOESN’T THE CONGRESS REPEAL IT?

The fact that no one is stepping up to the plate with a fast repeal is proof that multiple parts of the federal government are, in fact, tacitly supporting the opioid crisis and its devastating impacts on human life.

Failure to act swiftly amounts to collusion in Death by Opioids.

President Obama, the Congress, and key officials within the Justice Department and the DEA are all guilty.


The Matrix Revealed

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here.)


Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.



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Government-Pharma collusion in mass deaths by opioids « Jon Rappoport's Blog

https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2018/07/30/government-pharma-collusion-in-mass-deaths-by-opioids/

Trump, the NY Times, and fake news

https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2018/07/30/trump-the-ny-times-and-fake-news/

Is The US "The Worst Place In The World To Give Birth"?

ORIGINAL LINK

Authored by Andrea Germanos via CommonDreams.org,

A new USA Today investigation offers a searing indictment of maternal care in the United States, and says the country "is the most dangerous place in the developed world to give birth."

"Deadly Deliveries," the result of a four-year investigation, references federal data showing that more than 50,000 women are "severely injured" and roughly 700 die during childbirth each year. Perhaps even more staggering is that "half of these deaths could be prevented and half the injuries reduced or eliminated with better care," the investigation found.

The findings, based on interviews with women and a trove of internal hospital records, "reveal a stunning lack of attention to safety recommendations and widespread failure to protect new mothers."

Such failures often stem from inadequate or delayed responses to hemorrhages and dangerously high blood pressure.

A disturbing trend noted in the report: from 1990 to 2015, in most developed nations the number of maternal deaths per 100,000 births was steady or dropped. Not so in the U.S., where the figure soared. In Germany, France, Japan, England, and Canada the number had fallen to below 10 in the time frame. In the U.S., meanwhile, the figured soared to 26.4.

California, though, is an exception. The state's maternal death rate fell by half—a drop attributed to it adopting "the gold standard" of safety measures.

Looking at the overall picture in the U.S., though, "it's a failure at all levels, at national organization levels and at the local hospital leadership levels as well," Dr. Steven Clark, a leading childbirth safety expert and a professor at Baylor College of Medicine, said to USA Today.

One of the investigative reporters, Alison Young, talked with "CBS This Morning" about the report:

The investigation follows a related analysis out late last year by ProPublica. Affirming previous studies, its analysis found "that women who hemorrhage at disproportionately black-serving hospitals are far more likely to wind up with severe complications, from hysterectomies, which are more directly related to hemorrhage, to pulmonary embolisms, which can be indirectly related. When we looked at data for only the most healthy women, and for white women at black-serving hospitals, the pattern persisted."



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Sunday, July 29, 2018

Health Insurance Mafia & The Heroin Of 'Signing Up' For Obamacare

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Authored by Eric Peters via EricPetersAutos.com,

A good friend urges me to “sign up” for Obamacare.

He knows about the extortion letters I have been receiving from the federal thugs who are now the enforcers for the health insurance mafia – which succeeded in getting a law passed which forces us to buy their services.

Or else.

The “or else” being punishing fines – plus interest. These are called “shared responsibility” payments but – in the first place – nothing is being “shared” (I am being forcibly mulcted) and in the second place  for whom am I “responsible”?

Note the increase SRP for future years. NTTC Training 2014.

Myself, certainly.

But that is precisely the point and the fulcrum of my objection to Obamacare – to this business of being forced to be responsible for other people’s “care” at the expense of my own.

I could afford a high-deductible, catastrophic care insurance policy – something which would “cover” just that, a catastrophic and therefore not-likely event, such as a heart attack or cancer. And precisely because such an event is unlikely, the cost of such a “plan” would actually be insurance and so affordable.

I could therefore afford to be responsible for myself.

But Obamacare has turned the concept of insurance on its head. What is going on now is not insurance. It is wealth redistribution – mostly to the insurance mafia. The law forces me – and you – to pay for things we don’t need or use (for example, maternity care “coverage” for a divorced middle-aged man and “substance abuse counseling” for a man who doesn’t abuse any substances) which means no value received for the money extorted. The money lines the pockets of the mafia, which may perhaps dole out a portion to “cover” some portion of other people’s maternity care or substance abuse counseling.

I resent being mule-hitched to the insurance mafia’s profit wagon and also having the bit shoved into my mouth so that I may be forced to pull other people’s wagons rather than my own wagon – the only wagon for which I am morally “responsible.”

Which brings me back to my dilemma – and my friend’s solution.

Obamacare has made it financially impossible for me to afford “coverage” and so am not “covered,” which makes me all of a sudden a criminal for seeking to take care of myself and not filch other people’s pockets.

For this I am the object of punishment – like any criminal – except I fail to see how I am one given I’ve harmed no one. Not even myself – and even if I do harm myself, that is a matter between me and myself – the aggrieved party. Certainly I have aggrieved no one else, assuming I am not the property of someone else.

Which of course I am, apparently. And you, too. We will get to that momentarily.

At any rate, I am the object of punishment. “Shared responsibility”  fines – technically, taxes – which is how the federal thugs legitimated the illegitimate, arguing that the Congress (more thugs) having empowered themselves to tax us – that is, to steal our money as and how they wish, by voting to do so – therefore has the power to vote to tax us for failing to send money to the insurance mafia as ordered by their other edict.

So, $695 so far –  plus interest, accumulating. My punishment for failing to be “covered” last year. It will be another $695 plus interest for this year, too.

I cannot afford this, either – not without being unable to afford the care I actually do need, such as the old filling I just had replaced and the crown I had to have done last year, which together cost me about what my “shared responsibility” payment would be for last year and this year except I decided to be responsible for myself instead.

My friend urges me to “sign up” for Obamacare” on the “exchanges.” He says it will cost less – and by “signing up” I will avoid the “shared responsibility” fines (taxes) going forward.

This is all true – but entirely beside the point. Or rather, it is exactly the point.

If I “sign up,” I will be as Lee at Appomattox. I will have surrendered. I will have accepted the idea that I am not a sovereign individual who owns himself absolutely – and the corollary of that, which is the absolute right of others to ownership of themselves. That we are each free individuals, responsible for ourselves and our actions only.

Not for the actions of others, nor they for ours.

If we “sign up,we have accepted that we are all somehow each others’ collective property and as such are subject to being used and controlled by our owners, just like a mule or any other form of property.

That we are enslaved – to each other.

This is why I will not “sign up” – in the spirit of Giles Corey, the refusnik of Salem Witch Trials fame, who declined to go along to get along by witnessing falsely against his neighbors. More weight was all he said – with a contemptuous smile – as his tormentors attempted to get him to “share responsibility” by piling stones upon his chest.

If it comes to it, they can do that to me as well.

won’t  go to the “exchanges.” Will not voluntarily send a single penny of my money to the cretinous insurance mafia. I will not pay the “shared responsibility” tax, either.

I will continue to be responsible for myself.

If that makes me a criminal in a system gone criminal, so be it.

More weight...



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Ordinary US Citizens Now Surveilled By Air Marshals As Part Of Secret New Program

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If you're a law abiding US citizen, a team of armed undercover US Air Marshals could be following you on your next flight, taking minute-by-minute notes whether or not you engage in such threatening behavior as sleeping on the plane, using a phone, going to the bathroom or talking to other passengers. 

The Boston Globe has revealed a new federal program that profiles and surveils ordinary US citizen travelers who otherwise have no legitimate reason for being profiled. The secret program, called "Quiet Skies", was set up to monitor US citizens with no prior record and who don't result in red flags being raised at the airport. The people surveiled and followed in this program are, according to a TSA memo cited by the Globe article, "not under investigation by any agency and are not in the Terrorist Screening Data Base".



In essence, the program gives the TSA the option to monitor and track whoever it likes for any reason whatsoever, effectively granting TSA agents a green light to violate anyone's personal privacy even as the legal and constitutional implications of such profiling remain unknown. And, understandably, internal pushback against the relatively new program  has emerged as some Federal Air Marshals have noted that it is a drain on resources and is way too time consuming and costly.

Further, concerns have been raised by legal experts, like Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor, who said that "if this was about foreign citizens, the government would have considerable power. But if it’s US citizens — US citizens don’t lose their rights simply because they are in an airplane at 30,000 feet."

Predictably, the TSA defended the program to the Boston Globe when asked and declined to note for the article whether or not the program has been successful in stopping any threats. In fact, it wouldn’t even confirm that the program existed. But documents provided to the Boston Globe by FSA sources confirm that this highly controversial program does, in fact, exist.



So if you're not on any terrorist watch list and you are not under investigation by the Federal Government, what exactly do armed Air Marshals look for when a "small team of them" watches you as you fly or home to visit relatives for the holidays?

Amazingly, the red flag "triggers" for in depth surveillance involve behaviors that essentially all passengers are susceptible to, such as:

  • whether or not passengers fidget
  • whether or not they are using a computer on the flight
  • whether or not they stare off into space
  • face touching
  • exaggerated emotions
  • whether or not a subject has lost or gained weight from the information provided to authorities
  • whether or not the subject has facial hair, tattoos, piercings,
  • whether not they slept during the flight
  • whether not they use the bathroom on the flight
  • how they were picked up when they arrive.

The full "behavior checklist", uploaded on the Boston Globe website,  is both astonishing and frightening.

A casual skim of the above "threats" narrows down the list of potential suspects to - well, everybody who flies or has ever flown in an airplane.

And yes, Air Marshal have been instructed to focus especially on people who have "gained weight", have a beard, checked their baggage, and either talk on the phone or have a computer: almost as if the government has granted explicit permission for the FSA to profile just about anyone, for any reason whatsoever.

The article did not reveal how people are initially chosen for the screening, and the TSA naturally refused to share the information. However, what we do know is that once one has made the list and is selected for surveillance...

...a team of air marshals is placed on the person’s next flight. The team receives a file containing a photo and basic information — such as date and place of birth — about the target, according to agency documents.

The teams track citizens on domestic flights, to or from dozens of cities big and small — such as Boston and Harrisburg, Pa., Washington, D.C., and Myrtle Beach, S.C. — taking notes on whether travelers use a phone, go to the bathroom, chat with others, or change clothes, according to documents and people within the department.

Despite its relative recency, the program is already operational across virtually all major airports.

And just like Edward Snowden and the NSA, the Globe points out that pushback against this kind of indescriminate profiling is rising as "dozens of air marshals have raised concerns about the Quiet Skies program with senior officials and colleagues, sought legal counsel, and expressed misgivings about the surveillance program, according to interviews and documents reviewed by the Globe."

Sensing an avalanche of legal fees, experts that specialize in civil liberties and citizens' rights believe that the program may not be lawful:

Experts on civil liberties called the Quiet Skies program worrisome and potentially illegal.

“These revelations raise profound concerns about whether TSA is conducting pervasive surveillance of travelers without any suspicion of actual wrongdoing,” said Hugh Handeyside, senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project.

“If TSA is using proxies for race or religion to single out travelers for surveillance, that could violate the travelers’ constitutional rights. These concerns are all the more acute because of TSA’s track record of using unreliable and unscientific techniques to screen and monitor travelers who have done nothing wrong.”

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said Quiet Skies touches on several sensitive legal issues and appears to fall into a gray area of privacy law.

The biggest irony, as several Air Marshals observed, is that that potentially illegal program which infringes on the privacy and constitutional rights of US citizens, is also being paid for by those very same US citizens. Just like with the NSA.

Even the president of the Air Marshal Association has spoken out against the program:

Several air marshals, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly, told the Globe the program wastes taxpayer dollars and makes the country less safe because attention and resources are diverted away from legitimate, potential threats. The US Federal Air Marshal Service, which is part of TSA and falls under the Department of Homeland Security, has a mandate to protect airline passengers and crew against the risk of criminal and terrorist violence.

John Casaretti, president of the Air Marshal Association, said in a statement: “The Air Marshal Association believes that missions based on recognized intelligence, or in support of ongoing federal investigations, is the proper criteria for flight scheduling. Currently the Quiet Skies program does not meet the criteria we find acceptable.

“The American public would be better served if these [air marshals] were instead assigned to airport screening and check in areas so that active shooter events can be swiftly ended, and violations of federal crimes can be properly and consistently addressed.”

Finally, for those unlucky enough to have "gained weight" since their last observations - or heaven forbid grew a goatee - and triggered the TSA's red flag, once selected for the list they are surveilled for up to 90 days or for their next three encounters, whatever comes first.

While the long running practice of Air Marshals Performing surveillance on those who are the focus of government investigations makes sense – this clear abuse of power and disregard for the rights of US citizens is so egregious that even those tasked with enforcing it can’t get behind it.



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Saturday, July 28, 2018

"There's No Way To Make This Work" Martenson Warns "A Big Reset Is Locked In"

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Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com,

Futurist and economic researcher Chris Martenson says we are not at the end of a business cycle but “. . . at the end of a credit cycle.”

Martenson warns, “Here’s why people need to be concerned. Credit cycles, when they blow up, are really, really destructive..."

"2008 to 2009 was very destructive. Instead of realizing the error of their ways, they went for a third. This is the most comprehensive credit cycle that we have seen. Remember, bubbles have two things that they need. Number one, a good story that people can believe in and, of course, it’s a false story. Number two, ample credit. That’s what the Fed and central banks of Japan and Europe have done. They just flooded the world with credit. Now, we have bubbles everywhere. When these burst, it will be the worst bursting in anybody’s lifetime because we have never seen anything like this.”

Martenson says a debt reset is locked in, and somebody is going to pay. 

When you have as much debt that the United States has... the overall debt level in the United States, including auto loans, mortgages, consumer debt, student loans and corporate debt and whatever, we’re sitting at about $60 trillion right now. It’s a huge number, and when you get to this level of indebtedness, plus those unfunded or underfunded liabilities...when you get to this level of indebtedness, there is really only one question left to be resolved, and that is who is going to eat the losses. That’s it.

So, when you start asking that question, the banks and people writing the laws are pretty sure they are not going to take the losses. The person relying on the pension is the person that is going to eat the losses. . . . There is no way to make this work. Here’s where the social tension comes in. Even as ordinary middle class people are being destroyed in this process, the rich are taking more and more out of the system. That is courtesy of the policies of the Federal Reserve...

But the big risk is when these printing sprees, these credit cycles finally burst. They are wildly destructive. They are fast. They are hard. They are sharp and they hurt.

Martenson says people can protect themselves with real assets as opposed to paper assets. Martenson says,

“Real assets are the place you need to be if and when a paper tower comes crumbling down. I am diversified myself. I believe in land. I believe in real estate. I believe in gold. I believe in silver. I believe in other metals. I believe in these hard assets because this is where we are going to have to hide out because if you held hard assets in Turkey, in Venezuela, in Argentina and in places where the currency collapsed and declined, these would have been great places to be hiding out...

When this worm turns, it’s going to be a lot faster than it has in the past. There is no free lunch, and if you can see that, there is a wealth transfer coming. The wealth transfer is going to have a bright red line, and people are going to get trapped on the side where they hold paper claims, and the people that are going to preserve their wealth are going to be on the other side of the line with their wealth tied up in real things. That’s the period of history that is about to unfold.”

Chris Martenson added this ominous statement: “We are one sinking of an aircraft carrier away from the U.S. dollar being revealed as a fraud.”

Join Greg Hunter as he goes One-on-One with Chris Martenson of PeakProsperity.com.

(To Donate to USAWatchdog.com Click Here)



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Friday, July 27, 2018

In Bizarre Response, Twitter Tells Trump It Does Not "Shadowban" While Admitting It Does

ORIGINAL LINK

In response to growing outrage over the practice of "shadow banning" conservatives, as confirmed last week by the liberal publication VICE and promptly tweeted about by President Trump, Twitter issued a strange explanation to "set the record straight," where they explicitly state that they do not engage in the practice - except then they describe how they do exactly that. 

"People are asking us if we shadow ban. We do not. But let’s start with, “what is shadow banning?”

The best definition we found is this: deliberately making someone’s content undiscoverable to everyone except the person who posted it, unbeknownst to the original poster." -Twitter 

Then, Twitter reiterates they don't shadow ban - with the caveat in parentheses that you may need to go directly to the timeline of some users in order to see their tweets. (tee hee!)

"We do not shadow ban. You are always able to see the tweets from accounts you follow (although you may have to do more work to find them, like go directly to their profile). And we certainly don’t shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology." -Twitter 

In other words, Twitter says they don't shadow ban - it's just that tweets from people you follow may never appear unless you click directly into their timeline. 

This is remarkable from $TWTR
- defines shadowbanning
- says they don't shadowban
- then says that for some accounts you have to go visit them to see their tweets@jack you might need to take the nosering out and clean house pic.twitter.com/3sTlkDWM4G

— Barbarian Capital (@BarbarianCap) July 27, 2018

Twitter's own employees admitted to the practice in a January undercover exposé, after investigative journalists with Project Veritas went undercover in San Francisco, Twitter's hometown. 

The first clip features a former Twitter software engineer who explains how/why Twitter "shadow bans" certain users:

Abhinav Vadrevu:  "One strategy is to shadow ban so you have ultimate control. The idea of a shadow ban is that you ban someone but they don't know they've been banned, because they keep posting but no one sees their content."

"So they just think that no one is engaging with their content, when in reality, no one is seeing it. I don't know if Twitter does this anymore."

Then there was Olinda Hassan, a Policy Manager for Twitter’s Trust and Safety team explains on December 15th, 2017 at a Twitter holiday party that the development of a system of “down ranking” “shitty people” is in the works:

“Yeah. That’s something we’re working on. It’s something we’re working on. We’re trying to get the shitty people to not show up. It’s a product thing we’re working on right now.”

Although Twitter presents itself as politically neutral, it’s culture behind closed doors is one of blatant censorship and systematic bias. Watch closely @jack, because you know we are. FULL VIDEO: https://t.co/Tqrd4FBr2v pic.twitter.com/DBOIcEvX8W

— James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) January 11, 2018

In the full video (see below) Twitter Content Review Agent Mo Nora explains that Twitter doesn't have an official written policy that targets conservative speech, but rather they were following "unwritten rules from the top":

“A lot of unwritten rules, and being that we’re in San Francisco, we’re in California, very liberal, a very blue state.You had to be… I mean as a company you can’t really say it because it would make you look bad, but behind closed doors are lots of rules.”

“There was, I would say… Twitter was probably about 90% Anti-Trump, maybe 99% Anti-Trump.”

Meanwhile, Pranay Singh reveals again just how creepy Twitter can be by digging into your profile and conversation history to determine whether or not you're a "redneck" and therefore worthy of being banned:

“Yeah you look for Trump, or America, and you have like five thousand keywords to describe a redneck. Then you look and parse all the messages, all the pictures, and then you look for stuff that matches that stuff.”

When asked if the majority of the algorithms are targeted against conservative or liberal users of Twitter, Singh said, “I would say majority of it are for Republicans.”

And in October, 2016, Dilbert creator Scott Adams was "shadowbanned" by  Twitter, which he noted on his blog: 

This weekend I got “shadowbanned” on Twitter. It lasted until my followers noticed and protested. Shadowbanning prevents my followers from seeing my tweets and replies, but in a way that is not obvious until you do some digging.

Why did I get shadowbanned?

Beats me.

But it was probably because I asked people to tweet me examples of Clinton supporters being violent against peaceful Trump supporters in public. I got a lot of them. It was chilling.

Late last week my Twitter feed was invaded by an army of Clinton trolls (it’s a real thing) leaving sarcastic insults and not much else on my feed. There was an obvious similarity to them, meaning it was organized. 

At around the same time, a bottom-feeder at Slate wrote a hit piece on me that had nothing to do with anything. Except obviously it was politically motivated. It was so lame that I retweeted it myself. The timing of the hit piece might be a coincidence, but I stopped believing in coincidences this year.

Brad Parscale, along with Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, wrote a letter in May calling for the CEOs of Facebook and Twitter to address concerns over conservative censorship ahead of the 2020 election, as well as a call for transparency.

"We recognize that Facebook and Twitter operate in liberal corporate cultures," the letter reads. "However, rampant political bias is inappropriate for a widely used public forum."



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Rand Paul Rages: John Brennan's Security Clearance Is A Danger

ORIGINAL LINK

Authored by Rand Paul, op-ed via Breitbart.com,

Clear evidence concerning the bias of multiple, high-ranking current and former intelligence community officials should make us think twice about letting retired intelligence officials keep access to classified information, especially if they become talking heads on television after leaving public service.

There is a great danger that vital, secret details may be revealed on television, even inadvertently.

John Brennan is no stranger to this problem.

In 2012, John Brennan leaked information to former counter-terrorism officials, who retained a security clearance, about an underwear bomb-making plot in Yemen.

Brennan revealed to these former officials - turned talking heads - that the underwear bomb plot never threatened the U.S. “because Washington had ‘inside control’ over it,” according to Reuters.

After Brennan’s briefing, one of the call’s participants, Richard Clarke, went on ABC and broadcast the government implying that there was a Western spy inside the Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula bomb-making group.

John Brennan’s careless leak to former intelligence officials turned television commentators helped compromise an operation and risk the life of a double agent, and who knows what other objectives it also hindered or outright prevented. This is exactly why former intelligence officials who are now talking heads on television should not continue to have a security clearance.

Allowing people like John Brennan and other retired intelligence agents to have a security clearance and appear on television presents a danger to operatives in the field, and it’s a danger we can avoid.



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Wednesday, July 25, 2018

Syrian City Rocked By Deadliest Terror Attack In The Last Two Years

ORIGINAL LINK

The deadliest terror attack in Syria in the last two years just rocked a city in southern Syria, yet few in the West will likely ever hear of it even as the reported death toll soared late in the day to over 215 civilians killed, with over 180 more wounded.

The Eiffel Tower won't be lit up with colors of the Syrian flag in memory of victims, nor will viral #neverforget hashtags make the rounds on social media — and we don't expect too many official condolences issued from European or Western political leaders, as has happened with terror attacks that hit the Western world over recent years (though to its credit the US State Department tonight belatedly condemned the "barbaric ISIS-claimed attacks that took place").

This in spite of the fact that as ISIS is on its last legs in the tiny southwest pocket of southwest Syria adjacent to the Israeli-occupied Golan and the Jordanian border, and as Syrian and Russian jets continue to pound Islamic State positions, "whole families were butchered, scores of on the spot executions, children, women & elderly killed in their homes, another dark day for Syria," in the description of Syrian-British reporter Danny Makki.

Aftermath of one of the suicide blasts in Sweida. Via SANA

Early Wednesday morning four suicide bombers stuck a popular open-air market and other locations in Sweida city, a provincial capital in the country's south. Syrian state media said a motorcycle bomber detonated himself in the marketplace just after dawn, after which a series of other ISIS attacks followed.

Islamic State media channels quickly claimed responsibility for the massacre, even as the Syrian Army continues to advance against ISIS and other al-Qaeda terrorists in Daraa and Quneitra provinces, where the particular ISIS group near the Israeli border goes by the name of Jaish Khaled Bin al-Waleed.

#SAA recaptured some villages from #ISIS/#Daesh militants since they occupied them from #FSA on 19 July #Quneitra #Syria pic.twitter.com/Shcarjm4Sc

— Islamic World Update (@islamicworldupd) July 24, 2018

Syrian State media reports that authorities thwarted other potential attacks and "hunted down two terrorist suicide bombers who had been wearing explosive belts and killed them before they were able to blow themselves up in the residential areas in the city."

The chaotic aftermath, reportedly with bodies strewn about the crowded marketplace, made casualty counts hard to come by, as initially Reuters counted 50 among the dead, but late in the day reported 215 killed and 180 injured, including 75 ISIS fighters.

Some of the terrorists involved in the coordinated attacks and who apparently survived the initial attacks were reportedly rounded up by mobs of angry Sweida residents and hung in front of a public building

If 166 people were killed anywhere other than #Syria in the world it would be breaking news, not to mention #ISIS being the main cause of those deaths. #Sweida

— Danny Makki (@Dannymakkisyria) July 25, 2018

Journalist Danny Makki, reporting from on the ground in southern Syria, observed "ISIS isn't finished, its nowhere near finished, it managed to kill over 150 people in one of Syria's safest provinces in one day."

As ISIS continues to go underground while facing defeat under Syrian and Russian bombardment, many more such suicide attacks are likely to continue. 



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Twitter Responds To Conservative Outrage As VICE Confirms "Shadow Ban" Reports

ORIGINAL LINK

A Wednesday article in VICE confirmed a report from last week by the Daily Wire's Ryan Saavedra which revealed that Twitter has been "shadow banning" conservative users by limiting the number of people who are able to view content from the affected users. 

While last week's discussion focused on a site-wide "Quality Filter Discrimination" shadow ban, which prevents anyone not already following a user from viewing their posts, Vice notes that many conservative accounts aren't able to be found when typing names into the Twitter search engine. 

The Republican Party’s chair Ronna McDaniel, several conservative Republican Congressmen, and Donald Trump Jr.’s spokesman no longer appear in the auto-populated drop-down search box on Twitter, VICE News has learned. It’s a shift that diminishes their reach on the platform — and the same one being deployed against prominent racists to limit their visibility. The profiles continue to appear when conducting a full search — but not in the more convenient and visible drop-down bar. (The accounts appear to also populate if you already follow the person.)

Vice found the same wasn't true for Democrats: 

Democrats are not being “shadow banned” in the same way, according to a VICE News review. McDaniel’s counterpart, Democratic Party chair Tom Perez, and liberal members of Congress — including Reps. Maxine Waters, Joe Kennedy III, Keith Ellison, and Mark Pocan — all continue to appear in drop-down search results. Not a single member of the 78-person Progressive Caucus faces the same in Twitter’s search.

After being shown screenshots of the searches, a Twitter spokesperson told VICE News: “We are aware that some accounts are not automatically populating in our search box and shipping a change to address this.” Asked why only conservative Republicans appear to be affected and not liberal Democrats, the spokesperson wrote that “I'd emphasize that our technology is based on account *behavior* not the content of Tweets.”

The undercover investigative journalists at Project Veritas even caught a Twitter employee admitting to the shadow bans in January: 

Not only does Twitter shadow ban prominent Republicans, they also consider any Trump supporter who tweets about "God," "guns," or "the flag" a Russian bot (as seen in our undercover expose.) https://t.co/lxo0JoN2GP pic.twitter.com/MAPhk8tsvr

— James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) July 25, 2018

Abhinav Vadrevu:  "One strategy is to shadow ban so you have ultimate control. The idea of a shadow ban is that you ban someone but they don't know they've been banned, because they keep posting but no one sees their content."

"So they just think that no one is engaging with their content, when in reality, no one is seeing it. I don't know if Twitter does this anymore."

Meanwhile, Olinda Hassan, a Policy Manager for Twitter’s Trust and Safety team said on December 15th, 2017 at a Twitter holiday party that the development of a system of “down ranking” “shitty people” is in the works:

“Yeah. That’s something we’re working on. It’s something we’re working on. We’re trying to get the shitty people to not show up. It’s a product thing we’re working on right now.”

Twitter responds

Twitter's product lead Kayvon Beykpour issued a mostly useless explanation over the platform on Wednesday morning, suggesting that they're "always working to improve our behavior-based ranking models," and that their "breadth an accuracy doesn't make judgements based on political views."

CEO Jack Dorsey, meanwhile, says "It suffices to say we have a lot more work to do to earn people's trust on how we work." No word on whether that will be before or after midterms.  

A short thread addressing some issues folks are encountering as a result of our conversational health work, specifically the perception of “shadowbanning” based on content or ideology. It suffices to say we have a lot more work to do to earn people’s trust on how we work. https://t.co/MN97l7w7RF

— jack (@jack) July 25, 2018

We’ve heard questions from some of you relating to our work to drive healthy conversation on Twitter. People are asking us 1) about the breadth and precision of our work & 2) the impact of our work on the Search experience. We wanted to address these questions transparently here.

In May, we started using behavioral signals and machine learning to reduce people’s ability to detract from healthy public conversation on Twitter. This approach looks at account behavior & interactions with other accounts that violate our rules.

On 1) We’re always working to improve our behavior-based ranking models - their breadth and accuracy will improve over time. It’s important to note that these behavior signals are not binary, and they are one of many other signals that factor into ranking.

To be clear, our behavioral ranking doesn’t make judgements based on political views or the substance of tweets. We recently publicly testified to Congress on this topic https://judiciary.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Pickles-Testimony.pdf

On 2) Some accounts weren’t being auto-suggested even when people were searching for their specific name. Our usage of the behavior signals within search was causing this to happen & making search results seem inaccurate. We’re making a change today that will improve this.

We believe this work is really important to creating a healthier Twitter and we want to continue improving. Your feedback helps us do that so please keep it coming.

Meanwhile, conservative outrage erupted Wednesday in response to Vice's report. 

So now @twitter is censoring @GOPChairwoman?

Enough is enough with this crap. @Jack it’s time for you to #StopTheBias against conservatives and Trump supporters and fix this once and for all. https://t.co/JC6i6y01Ek

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) July 25, 2018

BREAKING: @Twitter deliberately targeting @RepMarkMeadows, @Jim_Jordan, @DevinNunes, & me to be #Shadowbanned.

Is it only a coincidence that these allegations would arise the week following my heated exchange with Twitter Executives before the Judiciary Committee??

WATCH. pic.twitter.com/6i1mtHLnhN

— Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) July 25, 2018

When Louis Farrakhan, Linda Sarsour, Kathy Griffin, Peter Fonda, and left wing conspiracy accounts don’t receive a search ban or censorship of any kind via Twitter but only Republican Politicians and Journalists do, it’s targeted political censorship. https://t.co/4Vso6vl1dz

— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) July 25, 2018

Hey @jack do you have time for a “short thread” addressing this? https://t.co/1ClyXJk93F pic.twitter.com/h9LdfQqWzk

— Nick Short (@PoliticalShort) July 25, 2018

Perception?? You guys are shadowbanning and lying about it. You lied to Congress too. You guys are liars. You ban, suspend and shadowban Trump supporters while boosting leftists. Despite this, Dems will still lose in November.

— Cristina Laila (@cristinalaila1) July 25, 2018

.@vicenews Twitter shadow banning story exposes a very serious issue that @Twitter needs to answer for and explain - considering only one political party is being targeted by the so called issue with the company’s algorithms.

— Sara A. Carter (@SaraCarterDC) July 25, 2018

In May, Donald Trump's 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale, along with Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, wrote a letter calling for the CEOs of Facebook and Twitter to address concerns over conservative censorship ahead of the 2020 election, as well as a call for transparency.

"We recognize that Facebook and Twitter operate in liberal corporate cultures," the letter reads. "However, rampant political bias is inappropriate for a widely used public forum."

We won’t tolerate bias toward conservatives or @realDonaldTrump supporters. We’re standing up for you and demanding answers. @GOPChairwoman and I have sent the following letter to @facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and @Twitter’s @jack Dorsey. #StopTheBias pic.twitter.com/Poz0Dne9i7

— Brad Parscale (@parscale) May 24, 2018

The letter notes "In 2016, former Facebook workers reported that they manipulated the “trending” section to exclude news tailored to conservative users, despite those topics trending on their own," while "A former trending news curator admitted in an interview that nearly all members of the trending news teams identified as liberal... Moreover, some Facebook employees in 2016 reportedly pushed to ban then-candidate Donald Trump’s Facebook posts and label them as hate speech" 

Meanwhile, conservative Twitter users have accused the company of unfairly targeting them, purging thousands of their followers in an attempt to stem “fake news” content, and unnecessarily prompting them to confirm their identity. Twitter claims its tools are free from political bias, but has allegedly targeted predominantly Republicans as part of a “shadow banning” practice, which covertly limits those accounts’ visibility on the platform.

Parscale and McDaniel pointed out that during congressional testimony, Facebook apologized for suppressing "Diamond & Silk," two popular Trump supporters with a highly popular YouTube channel, which the platform deemed "unsafe to the community" for no reason.

 

They also noted that Facebook says it's "working with a third party to encourage voter registration," and asked for transparency over how those advertisements are displayed in people's news feeds. "This is to make sure that the new feature does not become essentially an in-kind contribution to liberal candidates."

Since Facebook and Twitter are platforms used widely by the majority of voters, we request an explanation about how you will ensure all content is managed equally and fairly. How will you safeguard voters’ access to fair content on your platform? How will you guarantee that conservative voices are no longer censored, and conservative news no longer buried or otherwise hidden?

In an interview with Fox News, McDaniel and Parscale reiterated their concerns: 

McDaniel: "It’s a legitimate fear. Brad and I hear it all the time as we’re traveling the country. People are very concerned that conservative voices are going to be suppressed on social media. Of course, many of their users are conservatives and so Brad and I feel preemptively, we have to get out ahead of this, talk to Facebook, talk to Twitter, ask them for transparency, let us know what you’re going to do to make sure that every voice has a say on these social media platforms especially before this critical midterm."

Parscale: "Every day I receive thousands of messages saying, “I’m being shadow-banned.” And what we want to do in this letter is make sure that we understand what's happening. We want to ask them for transparency. I think the public deserves that transparency and we need to know that conservative voices have a chance to get their message out. This is a big problem."

Watch: 



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Radioactive Cesium-137 From Fukushima Found In California Wine

ORIGINAL LINK

Following the 2011 disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan - which left Japanese residents contending with toxic water and radioactive wild boars, World Health Organization (WHO) officials said that particles of radioactive fallout which made its way to the Western United States and elsewhere was no biggie and didn't pose a health risk.

California wine lovers will get to test that theory, after researchers at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) discovered cesium-137 in several golden-state vintages. The researchers tested 18 bottles of California rosé and cabernet sauvignon from 2009 onward - finding increased levels of the radioactive isotope in bottles produced after the Fukushima disaster. The cabernets had double the radiation of the other wine, according to the study. 

"We can measure some radioactive level that is much higher than the usual level," said Michael Pravikoff, a physicist at a French research center who worked on the study.

The French research team has in recent years examined wines from around the world, trying to correlate the level of radioactive material with the date the wine grapes were picked.

Wines made around major nuclear events, including American and Soviet nuclear tests during the Cold War and the Chernobyl accident, should show higher levels of radioactive isotopes, called cesium-137, according to the researchers. The man-made isotope cannot be found in nature and would be present only at certain levels after the nuclear events. -NYT

While ingesting cesium-137 elevates one's risk of cancer, the radioactive particles found in California wine "are not seen as a health hazard" according to Pravikoff, who said: "These levels are so low, way below the natural radioactivity that’s everywhere in the world." 

The California Department of Public Health said Friday that it had not previously heard of the study, but that there were no “health and safety concerns to California residents.”

“This report does not change that,” a department spokesman, Corey Egel, said in an emailed statement.

Mr. Pravikoff said the California bottles had radioactive levels so low that the researchers had to use a special technique to measure them: burning the wine to ashes.

In other cases, where radiation is higher, the team’s equipment can measure the radiation through the glass of the wine bottle, so the bottle does not have to be opened. -NYT

In 2016AP reported that "Radiation from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster detected on Oregon shores," however officials claimed that the samples from Tillamook Bay and Gold Beach were "at extremely low levels not harmful to humans." 

That said, as Whitney Webb of TrueActivist noted at the time, Even if we can’t see the radiation itself, some parts of North America’s western coast have been feeling the effects for years. Not long after Fukushima, fish in Canada began bleeding from their gills, mouths, and eyeballs. This “disease” has been ignored by the government and has decimated native fish populations, including the North Pacific herring. Elsewhere in Western Canada, independent scientists have measured a 300% increase in the level of radiation. According to them, the amount of radiation in the Pacific Ocean is increasing every year. Why is this being ignored by the mainstream media? It might have something to do with the fact that the US and Canadian governments have banned their citizens from talking about Fukushima so “people don’t panic.”

Also in 2016, Japanese officials admitted there was a cover-up, and there was a concerted effort to downplay the significance of the reactor meltdowns. 

Multiple reactors at Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant menlted down after 50-foot a tsunami wave crashed through barriers and knocked out the reactors' backup generators. The disaster spewed radioactive fallout into the air and water - sickening the crew of the nearby USS Ronald Reagan as they provided support.

And while the sailors were undoubtedly exposed to concentrated doses of radioactive isotopes that are nowhere near the levels which have been found along the West Coast - and now in California wine, it is premature - and perhaps highly irresponsible, for officials to claim that such small doses will have no effect, as radiation exposure is cumulative and the Fukushima disaster was an unprecedented event due to its massive release of radioactivity into the Pacific Ocean. 



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Editors of two of the most prestigious journals of medicine agree that "evidence-based medicine" might not be trustworthy or even true

ORIGINAL LINK
Microscope-Research-Study-Doctor.jpg (Natural News) Do you remember when we were all told that butter was a sure way to guarantee an early death? Now we’re hearing it isn’t so bad after all. Eggs have gone from being a recipe for high cholesterol to “nature’s perfect food.” When it comes to medicine, it can be even cloudier: Do...


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US shipped biowar materials to Iraq

https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2018/07/25/us-shipped-biowar-materials-to-iraq

Tuesday, July 24, 2018

The Burden Of Proof Is On The 'Russiagaters'

ORIGINAL LINK

Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

I saw a Twitter thread between two journalists the other day which completely summarized my experience of debating the establishment Russia narrative on online forums lately. Aaron Maté‏, who is in my opinion one of the clearest voices out there on American Russia hysteria, was approached with an argument by a journalist named Jonathan M Katz. Maté‏ engaged the argument by asking for evidence of the claims Katz was making, only to be given the runaround.

I’m going to copy the back-and-forth into the text here for anyone who doesn’t feel like scrolling through a Twitter thread, not because I am interested in the petty rehashing of a meaningless Twitter spat, but because it’s such a perfect example of what I want to talk about here.

Are you aware of what Russian agents did during the 2016 presidential election, by chance?

— Jonathan M. Katz 🐱 (@KatzOnEarth) July 19, 2018

Katz: Are you aware of what Russian agents did during the 2016 presidential election, by chance?

Maté‏: I’m aware of what Mueller has accused Russian agents of — are we supposed to just reflexively believe the assertions of prosecutors & intelligence officials now, or is it ok to wait for the evidence? (as I did in the tweet you’re replying to)

Katz: Why are you even asking this question if you’re just going to discard the reams of evidence that have supplied by investigators, spies, and journalists over the last two years?

Maté‏: Why are you avoiding answering the Q I asked? If I can guess, it’s cause doing so would mean acknowledging your position requires taking gov’t claims on faith. Re: “reams of evidence”, I’ve actually written about it extensively, and disagree that it’s convincing.

Katz: Yeah I’m familiar with your work. You’re asking for someone to summarize two years of reporting, grand jury indictments, reports from independent analysts, give agencies both American and foreign, and on and on just so you can handwave and draw some vague equivalencies.

Maté‏: No, actually I’ve asked 2 Qs in this thread, both of which have been avoided: 1) what evidence convinces you that Russia will attack the midterms 2) are we supposed to reflexively believe the assertions of prosecutors & intel officials now, or is it ok to wait for the evidence?

Katz: See this is what you do. You pretend like all of the evidence produced by journalists, independent analysts and foreign governments doesn’t exist so you can accuse anyone who doesn’t buy this SF Cohen Putinist bullshit you’re selling of being a deep state shill.

Maté‏: Except I haven’t said anything about anyone being a “deep state shill”, here or anywhere else. So that’s your embellishment. I’m simply asking whether we should accept IC/prosecutor claims on faith. Mueller does lay out a case, that’s true, but no evidence yet.

Katz: No. You should not accept a prosecutor’s claims on faith. You should read independent analyses, evidence gathered by journalists and other agencies, and compare all it to what is known on the public record. And you could if you wanted to.

Katz continued to evade and deflect until eventually exiting the conversation. Meanwhile another journalist, The Intercept‘s Sam Biddle, interjected that the debate was “a big waste of” Katz’s time and called Maté‏ an “inverse louise mensch”, all for maintaining the posture of skepticism and asking for evidence. Maté‏ invited Katz and Biddle to debate their positions on The Real News, to which Biddle replied, “No thank you, but I have some advice: If everyone has gotten it wrong, you should figure out who really did it! If not Russia, find out who really hacked the DNC, find out who really spearphished American election officials. Even OJ pretended to search for the real killer.”

Biddle then, as you would expect, blocked Maté‏ on Twitter.

If you were to spend an entire day debating Russiagate online (and I am in no way suggesting that you should), it is highly unlikely that you would see anything from the proponents of the establishment Russia narrative other than the textbook fallacious debate tactics exhibited by Katz and Biddle in that thread. It had the entire spectrum:

Gish gallop— The tactic of providing a stack of individually weak arguments to create the illusion of one solid argument, illustrated when Katz cited unspecified “reams of evidence” resulting from “two years of reporting, grand jury indictments, reports from independent analysts, give agencies both American and foreign.” He even claimed he shouldn’t have to go through that evidence point-by-point because there’s too much of it, which is like a poor man’s Gish gallop fallacy.

Argumentum ad populum— The “it’s true because so many agree that it is true” argument that Katz attempted to imply in invoking all the “journalists, independent analysts and foreign governments” who assert that Russia interfered in a meaningful way in America’s 2016 elections and intends to interfere in the midterms.

Ad hominem— Biddle’s “inverse louise mensch”. You have no argument, so you insult the other party instead.

Attempting to shift the burden of proof — Biddle’s suggestion that Maté‏ needs to prove that someone else other than the Russian government did the things Russia is accused of doing. Biddle is implying that the establishment Russia narrative should be assumed true until somebody has proved it to be false, a tactic known as an appeal to ignorance.

I’d like to talk about this last one a bit, because it underpins the entire CIA/CNN Russia narrative.

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
~ Sagan
"What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."
~ Hitchens
"We have to believe that Russia is attacking our democracy because the TV and the CIA told us to."
~ Russiagaters

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) July 22, 2018

As we’ve discussed previously, in a post-Iraq invasion world the confident-sounding assertions of spies, government officials and media pundits is not sufficient evidence for the public to rationally support claims that are being used to escalate dangerous cold war tensions with a nuclear superpower. The western empire has every motive in the world to lie about the behaviors of a noncompliant government, and has an extensive and well-documented history of doing exactly that. Hard, verifiable, publicly available proof is required. Assertions are not evidence.

But even if there wasn’t an extensive and recent history of disastrous US-led escalations premised on lies advanced by spies, government officials and media pundits, the burden of proof would still be on those making the claim, because that’s how logic works. Whether you’re talking about law, philosophy or debate, the burden of proof is always on the party making the claim. A group of spies, government officials and media pundits saying that something happened in an assertive tone of voice is not the same thing as proof. That side of the Russiagate debate is the side making the claim, so the burden of proof is on them. Until proof is made publicly available, there is no logical reason for the public to accept the CIA/CNN Russia narrative as fact, because the burden of proof has not been met.

This concept is important to understand on the scale of individual debates on the subject during political discourse, and it is important to understand on the grand scale of the entire Russia narrative as well. All the skeptical side of the debate needs to do is stand back and demand that the burden of proof be met, but this often gets distorted in discourse on the subject. The Sam Biddles of the world all too frequently attempt to confuse the situation by asserting that it is the skeptics who must provide an alternative version of events and somehow produce irrefutable proof about the behaviors of highly opaque government agencies. This is fallacious, and it is backwards.

I understand why skeptics are eager to come up with counter-narratives which contradict the 2016 Russian hacking allegations, but remember: that's not how the burden of proof works. You don't need to prove the Russians didn't do it, the US government needs to prove that they did.

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) July 16, 2018

There are many Russiagate skeptics who have been doing copious amounts of research to come up with other theories about what could have happened in 2016, and that’s fine. But in a way this can actually make the debate more confused, because instead of leaning back and insisting that the burden of proof be met, you are leaning in and trying to convince everyone of your alternative theory. Russiagaters love this more than anything, because you’ve shifted the burden of proof for them. Now you’re the one making the claims, so they can lean back and come up with reasons to be skeptical of your argument. Empire loyalists like Sam Biddle would like nothing more than to get skeptics like Aaron Maté‏ falling all over themselves trying to prove a negative, but that’s not how the burden of proof works, and there’s no good reason to play into it.

Until hard, verifiable proof of Russian election interference and/or collusion with the Trump campaign is made publicly available, we are winning this debate as long as we continue pointing out that this proof doesn’t exist. All you have to do to beat a Russiagater in a debate is point this out. They’ll cite assertions made by the US intelligence community, but assertions are not proof. They’ll cite the assertions made in the recent Mueller indictment as proof, but all the indictment contains is more assertions. The only reason Russiagaters confuse assertions for proof is because the mass media treats them as such, but there’s no reason to play along with that delusion.

There is no good reason to play along with escalations between nuclear superpowers when their premise consists of nothing but narrative and assertions. It is right to demand that those escalations cease until the public who is affected by them has had a full, informed say. Until the burden of proof has been met, that has not even begun to happen.

*  *  *

The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to get on the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My articles are entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, checking out my podcast, throwing some money into my hat on Patreonor Paypalor buying my book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers.



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