Friday, November 16, 2018

American Politics' Unmistakable Odor Of Perfidy

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Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

I suspect there’s a hidden agenda behind the announcement in The Wall Street Journal op-ed by former Hillary Clinton aide Mark Penn that the Ole Gray Mare is actually eyeing another run for the White House in 2020. No, it’s not just that she would like to be president, as she averred on video last week in a weak moment, or that she has decided late in life to go full Bolshevik policy-wise. It is to establish her in the public mind as a serious candidate so that when she is indicted a hue-and-cry will arise that the move is a purely political act of revenge by the wicked Trump.

Of course, she’s not a serious candidate because too many people recognize her naked corruption, and she’s carrying so much noisome baggage that her entourage looks like one of those garbage truck convoys hauling New York’s trash to flyover country. Prosecutors don’t even have to search very hard for evidence of her misdeeds. It’s smeared all over the swamp-scape in the established facts about the Steele Dossier and its engineered journey through the highest levels of the FBI and Department of Justice, and the wild machinations that ensued when the cast of characters in those places scrambled to cover their asses following the debacle of Hillary’s election loss.

Little is known about what is going on inside the Mueller commission. But if, as it appears, the Special Counsel is still stalking Russian Facebook trolls and ignoring the slime-trail of  huggermugger left behind by Hillary & Company, then we are seeing one of the most fantastic failures of law enforcement in history. Still, there’s a possibility — low-percentage in my view — that Mr. Mueller might disclose a raft of charges against the Clinton gang and her errand boys.

The trouble is that such charges may lead to the some of the highest former officials in the land, including former CIA director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and perhaps even the sacred former President Obama. Even Mr. Mueller himself is suspect in the 2009 Uranium One deal that conveyed over $150-million dollars from Russian banks into the Clinton Foundation coffers.

If it turns out to be the case that Mr. Mueller’s report completely overlooks all that, then there is going to be a mighty collision between his office and the new management of the Justice Department, Mr. Whitaker, the Acting Attorney General, and whomever is finally confirmed as the new regular AG. Personally, I don’t see how Mr. Mueller can evade the questions over these matters. Too many wheels have been set in motion, and some of these wheels are coming loose — such as the mischief promulgated by the international man-of-mystery Joseph Misfud, who was likely working for US intel via the British MI6 to game George Papadopoulos into a Russian collusion set-up that he demurred from. The set-up failed spectacularly, and now that the facts are becoming known about it, Mr. Mifsud has come out of hiding, and his lawyers are preparing to serve him up to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Won’t that be fun?

Many of the other characters involved in these perfidious schemes — Comey, Strzok, Page, Ohr, McCabe, et al — have been keeping remarkably low profiles lately (except for the reckless and feckless John Brennan, who apparently can’t keep his pie-hole shut on MSNBC). Hillary has been making the rounds, too, on some kind of phony-baloney “listening” tour. But she looks sore-beset and worried on stage, slumped in her easy chair, and I’m persuaded she’s simply going through motions to pretend that she’s still a credible political figure so that when the hammer comes down on her she can issue the war whoops that will start Civil War 2 in earnest.

Meanwhile, a giant archive of documents in these matters is awaiting declassification.

The buzz is that Mr. Trump delayed this before the midterm elections due to threats from our “intel community” that the documents would compromise our relations with foreign intel outfits in friendly lands - namely the aforementioned MI6 of the UK.  The collusion was apparently done to avoid legal questions about using US intel to spy on members of the Trump election campaign.

But Theresa May’s government is imploding now, and that nation will be preoccupied with other problems going forward, so it is more likely that the garbage barge of unredacted emails, texts, and agency transcripts will sail right into public domain in the days ahead, whether Mr. Mueller likes it or not.



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There's a Good Reason Many Women Make Less Than Men

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Whenever it is reported that women make less money than men, it is automatically assumed that this must be the result of discrimination. What is seldom mentioned is the factors that go into these statistics. 

 

Are they talking about women who work the same hours as men? Who have the same level of seniority? Do the market conditions for the kinds of jobs women gravitate toward dictate that anyone in those jobs (men or women) will make less (e. g. executive assistants are easier to find than executives, so they make less)?

 

In order to prove that women are being discriminated against, all of these factors have to be taken into account.

 

A new study sheds light on one reason why women might make less than men: because they themselves make that decision.

 

In a research study at that bastion of conservative economics, Harvard University, titled, “Why Do Women Earn Less Than Men? Evidence from Bus and Train Operators,” Ph.D candidate Valentin Bolotnyy, studied unionized train and bus drivers and found something interesting. 

 

The study, which analyzed administrative data from the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) found that "Even in a unionized environment where work tasks are similar, hourly wages are identical, and tenure dictates promotions, female workers earn $0.89 on the male-worker dollar (weekly earnings). Must be discrimination, right? 

 

Wrong.

 

The data show that "the weekly earnings gap can be explained entirely by the workplace choices that women and men make." In other words women make decisions that they know will result in reduced earnings--decisions that, if men made them, would result in the same thing.

 

What decisions are they making? Here is a portion of the study's abstract:

Women value time and flexibility more than men, possibly due to a combination of preferences and personal life constraints. Women take more unpaid time off using the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and work fewer overtime hours than men. When overtime hours are scheduled three months in advance, men and women work a similar number of hours; but when those hours are offered at the last minute, men work nearly twice as many overtime hours. When selecting work schedules, women try to avoid weekend, holiday, and split shifts more than men. To avoid unfavorable work times, women prioritize their schedules over route safety and select routes with a higher probability of accidents. Women are less likely than men to game the scheduling system by trading off work hours at regular wages for overtime hours at premium wages.

In other words, women value different things than men, and they act on it, and it results in lower earnings. But that's their prerogative. And, quite frankly, so much the worse for men. 

 

This is actually good news: knowing that women still make the right choices about what things are the most valuable, even if it costs them a little in their paychecks.

 

--

 

[Image Credit: Good Free Photos]



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DOJ Inadvertently Confirms Sealed Indictment Awaits Julian Assange if Extradited to the US

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WASHINGTON — A U.S. prosecutor has inadvertently revealed that Julian Assange, the founder and former editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, has been secretly charged by the U.S. government, confirming long-held suspicions that the U.S. has had criminal charges waiting for Assange should he be extradited to the United States.

The revelation comes just hours after a report in the Wall Street Journal revealed that the U.S. Department of Justice is preparing to indict Assange in such a way that it would trigger his extradition to the United States to stand trial, following sensitive negotiations with foreign governments, most likely the governments of the United Kingdom and Ecuador.

Assange, a citizen of Australia and Ecuador, is currently living in Ecuador’s embassy in London as a political asylee. He has remained in the embassy for over six years in order to protect himself from extradition to the United States. However, the current Ecuadorian government led by Lenín Moreno has been eager to restore close ties to the United States and has had a tense relationship with Assange, which analysts have warned could threaten the journalist’s asylum.

A report published last night in The Washington Post detailed how the fact that the U.S. government has sealed charges awaiting Assange in the United States was inadvertently revealed by a “copy-paste error” made by assistant U.S. Attorney Kellen Dwyer.

In an indictment unrelated to Assange, Dwyer wrote that “due to the sophistication of the defendant and the publicity surrounding the case, no other procedure is likely to keep confidential the fact that Assange has been charged.” Dwyer later wrote that the charges “need to remain sealed until Assange is arrested.”

Dwyer had been urging a judge to keep the unrelated matter detailed in the indictment sealed but the language used to request that action from the judge had apparently been lifted from a document requesting that charges targeting Assange be sealed. The indictment in question pertained instead to the case of Seitu Sulayman Kokayi, who is accused of sex trafficking a minor and of having “substantial interest in terrorist acts.”

SCOOP: US Department of Justice "accidentally" reveals existence of sealed charges (or a draft for them) against WikiLeaks' publisher Julian Assange in apparent cut-and-paste error in an unrelated case also at the Eastern District of Virginia. https://t.co/wrjlAbXk5Z pic.twitter.com/4UlB0c1SAX

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) November 16, 2018

 

U.S. attorney’s office confirms “error”

A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Virginia, Joshua Steve, confirmed to the Post that the “filing was made in error. That was not the intended name for this filing.” Other sources familiar with the matter that were cited by the Post stated that what Dwyer had disclosed was true but unintentional.

Notably, Dwyer is also assigned to the U.S.’ case against WikiLeaks, which was opened in 2010 after the transparency organization published leaks exposing U.S. government wrongdoing in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

It is unclear what charges Assange faces within the sealed indictment. Past reports have indicated that U.S. prosecutors were seeking charges related to conspiracy, theft of government property or violating the Espionage Act. However, these efforts have been complicated, not for lack of effort on the part of the government but because Assange was merely the publisher, not the procurer, of the leaked classified documents.

NOTE: The US case against WikiLeaks started in 2010 and was expanded over Snowden and the largest leak in CIA history "Vault 7". The prosecutor on the order is not from Mr. Mueller's team and WikiLeaks has never been contacted by anyone from his office. https://t.co/hGuxp0Jos4

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) November 16, 2018

The charges had long been suspected after emails from the U.S.-based private intelligence company Stratfor — which were released by WikiLeaks in 2012 — had revealed that the U.S. has had a sealed indictment against Assange since 2011. However, the charges had not been “officially” confirmed until the recent error in the unrelated indictment.

In regard to the apparently inadvertent revelation in the recent indictment, Barry Pollack – one of Assange’s attorneys – told the Post in a statement:

The only thing more irresponsible than charging a person for publishing truthful information would be to put in a public filing information that clearly was not intended for the public and without any notice to Mr. Assange. Obviously, I have no idea if he has actually been charged or for what, but the notion that the federal criminal charges could be brought based on the publication of truthful information is an incredibly dangerous precedent to set.”

 

A chilling precedent

Indeed, many journalists and analysts have long noted that charging Assange for his role in publishing leaked but truthful information sets a truly troubling precedent.

For instance, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, Ben Wizner, stated:

Any prosecution of Mr. Assange for WikiLeaks’ publishing operations would be unprecedented and unconstitutional, and would open the door to criminal investigations of other news organizations. Moreover, prosecuting a foreign publisher for violating U.S. secrecy laws would set an especially dangerous precedent for U.S. journalists, who routinely violate foreign secrecy laws to deliver information vital to the public’s interest.”

Journalist Glenn Greenwald, writing at the Intercept, similarly pointed out the grave threat the U.S.’ case against Assange would pose to press freedoms. Greenwald noted that “reporting on the secret acts of government officials or powerful financial actors – including by publishing documents taken without authorization – is at the core of investigative journalism,” adding that “some of the most important journalism over the last several decades has occurred because it is legal and constitutional to publish secret documents even if the sources of those documents obtained them through illicit or even illegal means.”

Top Photo | WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange leaves after greeting supporters outside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, May 19, 2017 Frank Augstein | AP

Whitney Webb is a staff writer for MintPress News and a contributor to Ben Swann’s Truth in Media. Her work has appeared on Global Research, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has also made radio and TV appearances on RT and Sputnik. She currently lives with her family in southern Chile.

The post DOJ Inadvertently Confirms Sealed Indictment Awaits Julian Assange if Extradited to the US appeared first on MintPress News.



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Wednesday, November 14, 2018

The Fed Will Continue Tightening Until Everything Breaks

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Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

Around three years ago, in September 2015, I wrote an article titled ‘The Real Reasons Why The Fed Will Hike Interest Rates‘ in which I predicted that the Federal Reserve, in the face of criticism, would soon pursue a program of interest rate hikes into economic weakness. I argued that this plan would be somewhat similar to what the Fed did in the early 1930’s; an action that prolonged the Great Depression for many more years. So far, my prediction has proven to be correct.

Despite the fact that the Fed keeps raising rates as it tightens the noose around the supposed economic “recovery”, there are still many people out there who refuse to accept that the central bank would deliberately implode the fiscal bubble that it has spent the last ten years inflating. Even today, I still see arguments proclaiming that the Fed will be forced to pull back if stocks fall beyond 15% to 20%. I also see claims that Fed officials like Jerome Powell had "better start looking for another job" because Donald Trump won’t be happy with Fed policies that could cause a crash. This is pure delusion from people who do not understand how the Fed operates.

First and foremost, let’s be clear, the Federal Reserve is an autonomous entity that does not answer to government oversight. It never has and it probably never will. This reality is supported by admissions by former Fed officials like Alan Greenspan, who publicly noted that the Fed answers to no one.

The central bank functions in quite the opposite capacity from what many people assume. As Carroll Quigley, prominent American historian and mentor to Bill Clinton, noted in his book Tragedy And Hope:

"The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world’s central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank … sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world."

In other words, governments do not assert control over central banks; central banks assert control over governments. That said, there are some exceptions to this rule. For example, an act of Congress can be used to enforce a full audit of Fed activities, something which has never been done.

Fed propaganda asserts the lie that the bank is audited annually by the Government Accounting Office (GAO), but this is NOT an audit of Fed financial actions and policy initiatives. Rather, it is an audit of minor expenditures. Knowing how many pencils and desks the Fed purchases in a year does not help us to understand the bank’s influence over our economic security. All other audits of the Fed are done internally by the Fed’s own Board of Governors. This is hardly transparent or independent.

The only time the public has gained access to even a partial government audit of Fed activities was during the audit of TARP. This alone exposed trillions of dollars in bailouts and overnight loans to various banks and corporations, many of which were foreign.

The GAO did nothing in terms of regulatory action against the Fed after it was revealed that they were funneling trillions in capital into foreign corporations. All they did was make a ledger of the transactions, and remained silent on the rest.

I remind readers of this history and the conditions surrounding Fed actions because I want to drive the point home that, for now, the Fed and other central banks dictate the rules of the game. Some may say this has changed with the election of Donald Trump, but I disagree. If anything, as long as Trump is in office, the Fed will chase higher interest rates and steeper balance sheet cuts. They will not stop until markets break. And, the only solution (shutting down the Fed entirely) also comes with a set of extreme fiscal consequences.

There is a wall of cognitive dissonance when some in the public are confronted with this notion. They prefer to believe in a set of standard lies rather than accept that the Fed is a saboteur of our financial system. Here are those lies, listed in no particular order...

Lie #1: The Fed Is Unaware Of The Bubbles it Creates

Mainstream economists and Fed officials alike use this lie regularly. Not once has the Board of Governors of the Fed ever been audited or punished in light of an economic crisis they created. When central bank culpability is obvious, they simply claim they had no idea the fiscal bubble was as inflated as it became. The disaster “surprised them”.

The Fed’s creation of easy credit and zero oversight, not to mention its opposition to any regulation of derivatives, fed the bubble prior to 2008. Then they ignored all obvious warning signs that the bubble was about to burst. But what about the current “everything bubble” that the Fed has created through near zero interest rates and endless fiat money manufacturing? Well, Fed officials openly admit to their involvement.

As the former head of the Federal Reserve Dallas branch Richard Fisher admitted in an interview with CNBC, since 2009, the U.S. central bank has made its business the manipulation of the stock market to the upside:

"What the Fed did — and I was part of that group — is we front-loaded a tremendous market rally, starting in 2009.

It’s sort of what I call the “reverse Whimpy factor” — give me two hamburgers today for one tomorrow.

I’m not surprised that almost every index you can look at … was down significantly." [After the first Fed rate hike]

The Fed knows when it is conjuring a bubble environment; they just won’t admit it as the bubble is deflating and economic pain is everywhere.

Lie #2: The Fed Is Unaware That It's Tightening Policies Cause Extreme Economic Contraction

So, if the Fed is aware when it causes a bubble, is it aware when it is popping a bubble? Absolutely. As Ben Bernanke admitted in a speech in 2002:

"In short, according to Friedman and Schwartz, because of institutional changes and misguided doctrines, the banking panics of the Great Contraction were much more severe and widespread than would have normally occurred during a downturn.

Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve. I would like to say to Milton and Anna: Regarding the Great Depression. You’re right, we did it. We’re very sorry. But thanks to you, we won’t do it again."

Bernanke was referencing Milton Friedman’s assertion that the Fed’s tightening policies in the early 1930’s, after they had made markets dependent on easy credit through the 1920’s, had caused negative feedback in the system at the perfect time, destabilizing any possible recovery for years to come.

The problem is twofold, of course. The Fed was allowed to fuel a fraudulent market bubble in the first place. Then, it was allowed to pop the bubble in the most destructive way through tightening policies (like higher interest rates), which crushed Main Street support. If this sounds familiar, it is, because the same tactic is being used by the Fed today.

In an October 2012 meeting of the Federal Reserve, minutes indicate that Jerome Powell was highly vocal about what would happen if the Fed pulled support from debt addicted markets by raising interest rates and cutting assets:

"My third concern — and others have touched on it as well — is the problems of exiting from a near $4 trillion balance sheet. We’ve got a set of principles from June 2011 and have done some work since then, but it just seems to me that we seem to be way too confident that exit can be managed smoothly. Markets can be much more dynamic than we appear to think.

When you turn and say to the market, “I’ve got $1.2 trillion of these things,” it’s not just $20 billion a month — it’s the sight of the whole thing coming. And I think there is a pretty good chance that you could have quite a dynamic response in the market.

I think we are actually at a point of encouraging risk-taking, and that should give us pause.

Investors really do understand now that we will be there to prevent serious losses. It is not that it is easy for them to make money but that they have every incentive to take more risk, and they are doing so. Meanwhile, we look like we are blowing a fixed-income duration bubble right across the credit spectrum that will result in big losses when rates come up down the road. You can almost say that that is our strategy."

Jerome Powell is now the Fed Chairman, and yet, he is following through with the same tightening actions that he warned about in 2012. He is pretending that the tightening process will be painless even though fundamental economic conditions are just as weak now as they were six years ago. Again, Powell knows the Fed is going to cause a crash, but he is moving forward anyway and he is not warning the public about the danger.

Lie #3: The Fed Is The Center Of Establishment Power, Therefore They Need The U.S. Economy To Thrive

While it is true that the Fed is currently in charge of the dollar as the world reserve currency, the idea that the Fed is somehow indispensable to the global establishment has always bewildered me. Everything the Fed has done since its inception in 1913 has been designed to diminish the U.S. economy and erode the purchasing power of our currency. I ask, at what point has the Fed ever taken an action which did NOT result in a bubble or a bubble collapse? At what point has the U.S. economy ever improved at a fundamental level because of the Fed, rather than diminished in the wake of a fake recovery the Fed conned the public into believing in?

What else does the Fed do besides sabotage?

I believe the truth is that the Fed does not care about the U.S. economy, or even the survival of the dollar, as is obvious in their actions. The Fed is merely a puppet entity of larger institutions like the Bank for International Settlements or the International Monetary Fund. These institutions seek centralization at a global level, with a global currency system and global economic authority, as they have openly admitted to in their own publications. The U.S. economy as we know it today, and the Fed by extension, are expendable in this pursuit.

The Fed will continue on its current course no matter the cost, because there is a greater strategy in play. In fact, some elites may even welcome a shutdown of the Fed at this time because this opens the path for the death of the dollar as the world reserve currency and the introduction of a new world monetary system, while all the consequences surrounding the shift can be blamed on political chaos and coincidence.

To drive the point home, I leave readers with a revealing quote from Christine Lagarde, the head of the IMF, as she outlines why crisis in national economies is actually good for the IMF:

"When the world around the IMF goes downhill, we thrive. We become extremely active because we lend money, we earn interest and charges and all the rest of it, and the institution does well. When the world goes well and we’ve had years of growth, as was the case back in 2006 and 2007, the IMF doesn’t do so well both financially and otherwise."

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More Americans Died From Drug Overdoses In 2017 Than Guns, Car Crashes, & Suicide Together

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Authored by Anna Giaritelli via The Washington Examiner,

Drug overdoses led to more deaths in the U.S. in 2017 than any year on record and were the leading cause of death in the country, according to a Drug Enforcement Administration report issued Friday.

More than 72,000 people died from drug overdoses in 2017according to the NIH — about 200 per day. That number is more than four times the number who died in 1999 from drug abuse: 16,849.

The figures are up about 15 percent from 63,632 drug-related deaths in 2016.

Since 2011, more people have died from drug overdoses than by gun violence, car accidents, suicide, or homicide, the DEA report stated.

In 2017, 40,100 people died in vehicle incidents; 15,549 were fatally shot, not including suicide; 17,284were homicide victims, though an unspecified portion of this number includes gunshot victims; and nearly 45,000 committed suicide.

The DEA attributed last year's uptick in deaths to a spike in opioid-related fatalities. The agency said 49,060 people died as a result of abusing opioids, up from 42,249 in 2016.

Of those opioid deaths, synthetic opioids were responsible for nearly 20,000. More people died from them than heroin. The DEA report said synthetic fentanyl and comparable types of drugs are cheaper than heroin, making them more attractive to buyers.

The DEA also found heroin-related drug overdoses had doubled from 2013 to 2016 because manufacturers illegally producing synthetic fentanyl have laced the heroin with opioids.

President Trump declared the opioid epidemic a "national emergency" in October 2017. Last month, he signed a comprehensive bill that included $8.5 billion in funding for related projects to reduce addiction and deaths.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions noted one positive trend in the study.

"Preliminary data from the CDC shows that drug overdose deaths actually began to decline in late 2017 and opioid prescriptions fell significantly," Sessions said in a statement.



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Tuesday, November 13, 2018

The Welfare Generation: Over Half Of America's Kids Live In Households Getting Govt Assistance

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Authored by Terence Jeffrey via CNSNews.com,

The Census Bureau has released new data that strengthens the case for calling the current generation of American children “The Welfare Generation.”

Among American residents under 18 years of age in 2017, according to the Census Bureau, 51.7 percent lived in households in which one or more persons received benefits from a means-tested government program.

That was down slightly from the 52.1 percent of Americans under 18 in 2016who lived in households receiving means-tested government assistance. (Also, because this new Census Bureau estimate is for 2017, it predates the significant economic and job growth the United States has seen in 2018).

But in each of the last five years on record (2013 through 2017), according to the Census Bureau, at least 51 percent of Americans under 18 have lived in households receiving means-tested government assistance.

In fact, the 51.7 percent in 2017 was the lowest percentage in any of the last five years on record.

The programs the Census Bureau includes in its estimate of how many people are living in households receiving means-tested government assistance include the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps), Supplemental Security Income, Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, Medicaid, public housing, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and the National School Lunch Program.

The data on the number of people living in households in which one or more persons received means-tested government assistance comes from Table POV-26 of the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey, 2018 Annual Social and Economic Supplement.

The table enumerates, by various characteristics, “[p]eople who lived with someone (a nonrelative or relative) who received aid.”

“Not every person tallied here,” Table POV-26 says, “received the aid themselves.”

In 2017, the Census Bureau estimates, according to the table, that there were approximately 322,549,000 people living in the United States. Of these, 114,637,000 - or 35.5 percent - lived in a household that received means-tested government assistance.

Of the 322,549,000 people in the United States in 2017, 73,356,000 were under 18 years of age. Of these children, 37,908,000 - or 51.7 percent - lived in a household that received means-tested government assistance.

Even when the school lunch program was excluded from the group of means-tested government programs, there were still 32,467,000 people in America under 18 (or 44.3 percent of that demographic) living in a household receiving means-tested government assistance.

The 51.7 percent of people under 18 on means-tested government assistance in 2017 was a slight declined from the 52.1 percent on means-tested government assistance in 2016.

In 2016, according to the Census estimate, there were 73,586,000 people under 18 in the United States (compared to 73,356,000 in 2017) and 38,365,000 (compared to 37,908,000 in 2017) were living in households receiving means-tested government assistance.

The percentage of persons under 18 living in households receiving means-tested government assistance also varied by the type of household the person was living in, according to the Census data.

But it was above 40 percent even in married-couple families.

  • In married couple families in 2017, according to Table POV-26, there were 49,436,000 related children under 18. Of these, 20,230,000—or 40.9 percent—lived in households in which one or more persons received means-tested government assistance.

  • There were 5,330,000 related children under 18 living in households headed by a male householder with no spouse present. 3,371,000 of these children—or 48.7 percent—lived in a household receiving means-tested government assistance.

  • There were 17,766,000 related children under 18 living in households headed by a female householder with no spouse present. 13,702,000 of these children—or 77.1 percent—lived in a household receiving means-tested government assistance.

This table summarizes key data from the Census Bureau's POV-26 tables from 1994 through 2017, showing the total population each year, the total number of people in households receiving means-tested assistance, the percentage in households getting assistance, the total number of residents under 18, the total number in households receiving means-tested assistance, and the percentage of children in households getting means-tested assistance.

After the 51.7 percent of children under 18 who lived in a household that received means-tested government assistance in 2017, the next most likely age group to live in a household that received means-tested government assistance were those 18 to 24. There were 29,363,000 in that age bracket and 11,855,000—or 40.4 percent—lived in a household getting means-tested government assistance.

The age group least likely to be receiving means-tested government assistance were people 75 and older. There were 20,713,000 in that age bracket in 2017 and only 3,894,000—or 18.8 percent—lived in a household on means-tested government assistance.



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Social Media Linked To Loneliness And Depression, New Study Finds

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Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

Social media use has once again been linked to loneliness and depression. Research has been hinting at the connection for several years, but scientists from the University of Pennsylvania say that this new study is the most comprehensive and rigorous to date.

Social media is not all bad, as not much really is, but most people tend to have a difficult time using their social media accounts in moderation.  That, according to the new study, can leave a person’s mental state a little lacking. There are even therapies and rehabilitation for those who have an addiction to social media.

Ever since sites like Facebook and Instagram became part of daily life, scientists have wondered whether or not they could contribute to mental health problems. In fact, research has hinted at a connection between social media use and depression for several years, according to This InsiderWe have reached a point where people have a hard time tearing away from their social media accounts.

 Published in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, the most recent study linking poor mental health conditions to social media use has added even more evidence to back up the theory. The researchers from the University of Pennsylvania intentionally designed their experiment to be more comprehensive than previous studies on the topic. Rather than relying on short-term lab data or self-reported questionnaires, they recruited 143 undergraduate students to share screenshots of their Phone battery screens over a week to collect data on how much they were using social media apps including Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram.

According to an in-depth report on the study done by This Insider, subjects of the study were told either to maintain their typical social media behavior or limit it to 10 minutes per day. Alongside the screenshot data, the researchers also looked at how much the participants experienced fear of missing out, anxiety, depression, and loneliness.

“Here’s the bottom line,” said Melissa G. Hunt, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania and lead author of the study.

“Using less social media than you normally would lead to significant decreases in both depression and loneliness. These effects are particularly pronounced for folks who were more depressed when they came into the study,” said Hunt.

“It is a little ironic that reducing your use of social media actually makes you feel less lonely,” she added.

“Some of the existing literature on social media suggests there’s an enormous amount of social comparison that happens. When you look at other people’s lives, particularly on Instagram, it’s easy to conclude that everyone else’s life is cooler or better than yours.”

“If you spend most of your time scrolling through your newsfeed checking out other people’s lives and compare them to your own, you become more at risk of developing (or having worsening) symptoms of depression or anxiety,” psychologist Allison Abrams told Business Insider. 

“This is especially so in those with low self-esteem.”

There are definitely physical and mental health benefits to a technology detox. The results suggest social media and screens should both be used in moderation; just like most things.

 “When you’re not busy getting sucked into clickbait social media, you’re actually spending more time on things that are more likely to make you feel better about your life,” Hunt said.

“In general, I would say, put your phone down and be with the people in your life.”



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On Veterans' Day, Remember the Lies That Filled Military Cemeteries

ORIGINAL LINK

Authored by James Bovard via The Mises Institute,

Politicians will be heartily applauded for saluting American’s soldiers today. But if citizens had better memories, elected officials would instead be fleeing tar and feathers. Politicians have a long record of betraying the veterans they valorize.

Veterans Day 2018 has been dominated by the confab of political leaders in Paris to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of World War One. American media coverage fixated on President Trump’s cancellation of one of his two visits to U.S. military cemeteries. In his speech yesterday at a U.S. military cemetery in France, Trump declared that it is “our duty … to protect the peace they so nobly gave their lives to secure one century ago.” But that peace was sabotaged long before the soldiers’ corpses had turned to dust. Though the American media exalted French President Emmanuel Macron’s denunciation of nationalism at the armistice anniversary, it was conniving by French leader George Clemenceau at the Versailles Peace Treaty that helped assure that U.S. sacrifices in 1917 and 1918 were for naught.

Lying about American wars is a venerable presidential tradition. Four years ago, in a visit to Flanders Field Cemetery in Belgium, President Obama saluted the Americans who died in World War One – “the soldiers who manned the trenches were united by something larger — a willingness to fight, and die, for the freedom that we enjoy as their heirs.” In reality, that war was a disaster for freedom practically everywhere. Thanks to conscription, young American men had the choice of going to prison or being sent to fight a war on false pretenses.

Neither Trump nor Obama can compete for the title of Supreme Fabulist on World War One - an honorific that President Woodrow Wilson locked up a century ago. After he was narrowly re-elected in 1916 based on a campaign slogan, “He kept us out of war," Wilson pulled America into the war because "the world must be made safe for democracy." Wilson acted as if Congress’s declaration of war against Germany also declared war on the Constitution, and he ruthlessly censored and persecuted anyone who did not cheer the war effort. Wilson even urged Congress to authorize detention camps for "alien enemies." More than a hundred thousand American soldiers died in the war effort, and another half million Americans perished from the Spanish fluepidemic spurred and spread by the war. Rather than a new birth of idealism, World War One unleashed chaos and led directly to the rise of Lenin, Mussolini, and Hitler – and a host of tinhorn dictators elsewhere in Europe.

World War One exemplified the deceptions that propelled U.S. conflicts abroad. Veterans Day should be a time to recognize that the history of America’s wars is also a history of political rascality:

  • In 1846, President James Polk took Americans to war after falsely proclaiming that the Mexican army had crossed the U.S. border and attacked a U.S. army outpost — “shedding the blood of our citizens on our own soil,” he claimed. But he never produced evidence to support his causa belli for a conflict that placed vastly expanded the nation’s boundaries and paved the way for the Civil War.

  • In 1898, when President William McKinley took the nation to war against Spain, he pledged not to annex foreign territory. He changed his mind after deciding to “Christianize” the Filipinos (a Catholic nation). Four thousand U.S. troops and hundreds of thousands of Filipinos perished in the merciless crackdowns required to place those islands under the Stars and Stripes.

  • In 1940, President Franklin Roosevelt capped off his reelection campaign by promising voters: “ Your president says this country is not going to war.  Though FDR portrayed World War Two as an fight for democracy, he secretly signed off on Stalin’s demand for control of almost all of eastern Europe. The result was decades of oppression for Czechs, Hungarians, Poles, and others.

  • President Lyndon Johnson vastly expanded the Vietnam War purportedly to prevent the domino-like spread of communism (which the CIA concluded would not happen regardless). A secret 1965 Pentagon memo admitted that 70% of the U.S. aim in Vietnam was simply to “ avoid a humiliating US defeat (to our reputation as a guarantor).” Almost 60,000 American troops died so politicians could ravage the national credibility they pretended to preserve.

  • After 9/11, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan to vanquish Al Qaeda. After top Al Qaeda leaders escaped, President George W. Bush pledged to help create a democracy and modernize that nation. Unfortunately, subsequent Afghan elections have been utterly fraud-ridden while corruption multiplied thanks largely to U.S. aid.

  • President Bush justified invading Iraq in 2003 because of Saddam Hussein’s Weapons of Mass Destruction. The WMDs were never found, so Bush claimed the U.S. would bring democracy to Iraqis. But the U.S. government helped rig subsequent elections and supported Iraqi rulers’ brutal repression of their opposition, helping spur pervasive conflicts that continue to ravage that nation.

Politicians disdain the soldiers they claim to adore.

U.S. troops are currently fighting in 14 foreign nations, from Afghanistan to Iraq and Syria to Chad, Yemen, and other locales. When 4 U.S. troops were killed last Fall in Niger, many members of Congress were stunned to learn of the U.S. deployment . Congress was similarly negligentregarding rat-infested, unsanitary conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in 2007. Politicians had time for hundreds of speeches touting their devotion to veterans but few congressmen noticed the dilapidated state of the showcase military hospital in their back yard.

General Patton said that an ounce of sweat can save a pint of blood. Similarly, a few hours studying the lessons of history can prevent heaps of grave-digging in the coming years. President Trump has saber-rattled against Iran, North Korea, Syria, and other nations. His bellicose rhetoric should spur Americans to review the follies and frauds of past wars before it is too late to stop the next pointless bloodbath.

The best way to honor veterans is to cancel politicians’ prerogative to send troops abroad to fight on any and every pretext. And one of the best steps towards that goal is to remember the lies for which soldiers died.



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Monday, November 12, 2018

Hedges: Assange Has Done More To Expose American Crimes Than Any Other News Organization

ORIGINAL LINK

Authored by Chris Hedges via TruthDig.com,

Julian Assange’s sanctuary in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London has been transformed into a little shop of horrors. He has been largely cut off from communicating with the outside world for the last seven months. His Ecuadorian citizenship, granted to him as an asylum seeker, is in the process of being revoked. His health is failing. He is being denied medical care. His efforts for legal redress have been crippled by the gag rules, including Ecuadorian orders that he cannot make public his conditions inside the embassy in fighting revocation of his Ecuadorian citizenship.

Source: Mr.Fish

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has refused to intercede on behalf of Assange, an Australian citizen, even though the new government in Ecuador, led by Lenín Moreno - who calls Assange an “inherited problem” and an impediment to better relations with Washington - is making the WikiLeaks founder’s life in the embassy unbearable. Almost daily, the embassy is imposing harsher conditions for Assange, including making him pay his medical bills, imposing arcane rules about how he must care for his cat and demanding that he perform a variety of demeaning housekeeping chores.

The Ecuadorians, reluctant to expel Assange after granting him political asylum and granting him citizenship, intend to make his existence so unpleasant he will agree to leave the embassy to be arrested by the British and extradited to the United States. The former president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, whose government granted the publisher political asylum, describes Assange’s current living conditions as “torture.”

His mother, Christine Assange, said in a recent video appeal,

“Despite Julian being a multi-award-winning journalist, much loved and respected for courageously exposing serious, high-level crimes and corruption in the public interest, he is right now alone, sick, in pain—silenced in solitary confinement, cut off from all contact and being tortured in the heart of London. The modern-day cage of political prisoners is no longer the Tower of London. It’s the Ecuadorian Embassy.”

“Here are the facts,” she went on. “Julian has been detained nearly eight years without charge. That’s right. Without charge. For the past six years, the U.K. government has refused his request for access to basic health needs, fresh air, exercise, sunshine for vitamin D and access to proper dental and medical care. As a result, his health has seriously deteriorated. His examining doctors warned his detention conditions are life-threatening. A slow and cruel assassination is taking place before our very eyes in the embassy in London.”

“In 2016, after an in-depth investigation, the United Nations ruled that Julian’s legal and human rights have been violated on multiple occasions,” she said. “He’d been illegally detained since 2010. And they ordered his immediate release, safe passage and compensation. The U.K. government refused to abide by the U.N.’s decision. The U.S. government has made Julian’s arrest a priority. They want to get around a U.S. journalist’s protection under the First Amendment by charging him with espionage. They will stop at nothing to do it.”

“As a result of the U.S. bearing down on Ecuador, his asylum is now under immediate threat,” she said. “The U.S. pressure on Ecuador’s new president resulted in Julian being placed in a strict and severe solitary confinement for the last seven months, deprived of any contact with his family and friends. Only his lawyers could see him. Two weeks ago, things became substantially worse. The former president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, who rightfully gave Julian political asylum from U.S. threats against his life and liberty, publicly warned when U.S. Vice President Mike Pence recently visited Ecuador a deal was done to hand Julian over to the U.S. He stated that because of the political costs of expelling Julian from their embassy was too high, the plan was to break him down mentally. A new, impossible, inhumane protocol was implemented at the embassy to torture him to such a point that he would break and be forced to leave.”

Assange was once feted and courted by some of the largest media organizations in the world, including The New York Times and The Guardian, for the information he possessed. But once his trove of material documenting U.S. war crimes, much of it provided by Chelsea Manning, was published by these media outlets he was pushed aside and demonized. A leaked Pentagon document prepared by the Cyber Counterintelligence Assessments Branchdated March 8, 2008, exposed a black propaganda campaign to discredit WikiLeaks and Assange.

The document said the smear campaign should seek to destroy the “feeling of trust” that is WikiLeaks’ “center of gravity” and blacken Assange’s reputation. It largely has worked. Assange is especially vilified for publishing 70,000 hacked emails belonging to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and senior Democratic officials. The Democrats and former FBI Director James Comey say the emails were copied from the accounts of John Podesta, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, by Russian government hackers. Comey has said the messages were probably delivered to WikiLeaks by an intermediary. Assange has said the emails were not provided by “state actors.”

The Democratic Party - seeking to blame its election defeat on Russian “interference” rather than the grotesque income inequality, the betrayal of the working class, the loss of civil liberties, the deindustrialization and the corporate coup d’état that the party helped orchestrate - attacks Assange as a traitor, although he is not a U.S. citizen. Nor is he a spy. He is not bound by any law I am aware of to keep U.S. government secrets. He has not committed a crime. Now, stories in newspapers that once published material from WikiLeaks focus on his allegedly slovenly behavior—not evident during my visits with him—and how he is, in the words of The Guardian, “an unwelcome guest” in the embassy. The vital issue of the rights of a publisher and a free press is ignored in favor of snarky character assassination.

Assange was granted asylum in the embassy in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden to answer questions about sexual offense charges that were eventually dropped. Assange feared that once he was in Swedish custody he would be extradited to the United States. The British government has said that, although he is no longer wanted for questioning in Sweden, Assange will be arrested and jailed for breaching his bail conditions if he leaves the embassy.

WikiLeaks and Assange have done more to expose the dark machinations and crimes of the American Empire than any other news organization. Assange, in addition to exposing atrocities and crimes committed by the United States military in our endless wars and revealing the inner workings of the Clinton campaign, made public the hacking tools used by the CIA and the National Security Agency, their surveillance programs and their interference in foreign elections, including in the French elections. He disclosed the conspiracyagainst British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn by Labour members of Parliament. And WikiLeaks worked swiftly to save Edward Snowden, who exposed the wholesale surveillance of the American public by the government, from extradition to the United States by helping him flee from Hong Kong to Moscow. The Snowden leaks also revealed, ominously, that Assange was on a U.S. “manhunt target list.”

What is happening to Assange should terrify the press. And yet his plight is met with indifference and  sneering contempt. Once he is pushed out of the embassy, he will be put on trial in the United States for what he published. This will set a new and dangerous legal precedent that the Trump administration and future administrations will employ against other publishers, including those who are part of the mob trying to lynch Assange. The silence about the treatment of Assange is not only a betrayal of him but a betrayal of the freedom of the press itself. We will pay dearly for this complicity.

Even if the Russians provided the Podesta emails to Assange, he should have published them. I would have. They exposed practices of the Clinton political machine that she and the Democratic leadership sought to hide. In the two decades I worked overseas as a foreign correspondent I was routinely leaked stolen documents by organizations and governments. My only concern was whether the documents were forged or genuine. If they were genuine, I published them. Those who leaked material to me included the rebels of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN); the Salvadoran army, which once gave me blood-smeared FMLN documents found after an ambush; the Sandinista government of Nicaragua; the Israeli intelligence service, the Mossad; the Federal Bureau of Investigation; the Central Intelligence Agency; the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) rebel group; the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO); the French intelligence service, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure, or DGSE; and the Serbian government of Slobodan Milosovic, who was later tried as a war criminal.

We learned from the emails published by WikiLeaks that the Clinton Foundation received millions of dollars from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, two of the major funders of Islamic State.

As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton paid her donors back by approving $80 billion in weapons sales to Saudi Arabia, enabling the kingdom to carry out a devastating war in Yemen that has triggered a humanitarian crisis, including widespread food shortages and a cholera epidemic, and left close to 60,000 dead. We learned Clinton was paid $675,000 for speaking at Goldman Sachs, a sum so massive it can only be described as a bribe. We learned Clinton told the financial elites in her lucrative talks that she wanted “open trade and open borders” and believed Wall Street executives were best-positioned to manage the economy, a statement that directly contradicted her campaign promises. We learned the Clinton campaign worked to influence the Republican primaries to ensure that Donald Trump was the Republican nominee. We learned Clinton obtained advance information on primary-debate questions. We learned, because 1,700 of the 33,000 emails came from Hillary Clinton, she was the primary architect of the war in Libya. We learned she believed that the overthrow of Moammar Gadhafi would burnish her credentials as a presidential candidate. The war she sought has left Libya in chaos, seen the rise to power of radical jihadists in what is now a failed state, triggered a massive exodus of migrants to Europe, seen Libyan weapon stockpiles seized by rogue militias and Islamic radicals throughout the region, and resulted in 40,000 dead. Should this information have remained hidden from the American public? You can argue yes, but you can’t then call yourself a journalist.

“They are setting my son up to give them an excuse to hand him over to the U.S., where he would face a show trial,” Christine Assange warned.

“Over the past eight years, he has had no proper legal process. It has been unfair at every single turn with much perversion of justice. There is no reason to consider that this would change in the future. The U.S. WikiLeaks grand jury, producing the extradition warrant, was held in secret by four prosecutors but no defense and no judge. The U.K.-U.S. extradition treaty allows for the U.K. to extradite Julian to the U.S. without a proper basic case. Once in the U.S., the National Defense Authorization Act allows for indefinite detention without trial. Julian could very well be held in Guantanamo Bay and tortured, sentenced to 45 years in a maximum-security prison, or face the death penalty. My son is in critical danger because of a brutal, political persecution by the bullies in power whose crimes and corruption he had courageously exposed when he was editor in chief of WikiLeaks.”

Assange is on his own. Each day is more difficult for him. This is by design. It is up to us to protest. We are his last hope, and the last hope, I fear, for a free press.

“We need to make our protest against this brutality deafening,” his mother said.

“I call on all you journalists to stand up now because he’s your colleague and you are next. I call on all you politicians who say you entered politics to serve the people to stand up now. I call on all you activists who support human rights, refugees, the environment, and are against war, to stand up now because WikiLeaks has served the causes that you spoke for and Julian is now suffering for it alongside of you. I call on all citizens who value freedom, democracy and a fair legal process to put aside your political differences and unite, stand up now. Most of us don’t have the courage of our whistleblowers or journalists like Julian Assange who publish them, so that we may be informed and warned about the abuses of power.”



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Landmark study describes the link between pesticide levels in expectant mothers and autism risk in their infants – NaturalNews.com

https://www.naturalnews.com/2018-11-12-study-link-between-pesticide-expectant-mothers-autism-risk-infants.html

Top Facebook Exec Fired For Supporting Trump marketwatch.com/story/top-face… Facebook is completely unbiased /sarc off

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V5T9_nTO_normal.jpg Ian56
@Ian56789
Top Facebook Exec Fired For Supporting Trump
marketwatch.com/story/top-face…

Facebook is completely unbiased /sarc off

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Sunday, November 11, 2018

STUNNING: Removing GMO foods from your diet can improve 28 different health conditions

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GMO-Free-Sales-Tag-Label.jpg (Natural News) If you’re looking for a simple way to make a big improvement in your health, cutting GMO food from your diet can give you a lot of bang for your buck as a recent study shows that doing so can improve the symptoms of 28 different health conditions. GMOs are everywhere these days....


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Saudi Journalist Tortured To Death After Online Identity Exposed By Regional Twitter HQ

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Another Saudi journalist was reported tortured and killed at the hands of Saudi authorities last week, but this time the Saudis may have actually had assistance from Twitter in uncovering the identity behind a controversial account which led to the detention of the journalist

Arabic news source The New Khaleej was the first to report that Saudi journalist and writer Turki Bin Abdul Aziz Al-Jasser died after being tortured while in detention after his initial arrest last March. According to the report his arrest came after it was learned that he he administered the Twitter account Kashkool — which was known for highlighting human rights violations and crimes committed by the royal family and government officials. 

The Twitter account is still online after it stopped tweeting to its 183,000 followers early lost March — prior to that it appeared to tweet frequently in Arabic and sometimes in English. The New Khalieej report was the first to reveal that authorities identified Al-Jasser's online identity using informants in Twitter’s regional office located in Dubai.

And following up on the story, the UK's highest circulation newspaper Metro late last week published an explosive report that quickly went viral as it cited sources confirming leaked information out of Twitter's offices in the region led to the arrest of the dissident journalist. 

According to the Metro report:

"They got his information from the Twitter office in Dubai. That is how he was arrested," a source, who wishes to remain anonymous, told Metro.co.uk.

"Twitter has become insecure for dissidents or critics. Everyone speaks under threat and pressure."

"The accounts of Saudi dissidents are spied on. We are not safe using Twitter."

The source said Saudi authorities have placed moles inside the American social media giant's office in Dubai, making all dissident activity on Twitter unsafe amidst an increasing crackdown by Riyadh.

A former top adviser to the Royal Court, Saud al-Qahtani, recently issued threats to Twitter users, stating a year ago that authorities would seek to uncover fake online names. According to the Metro report, Qahtani said, "Does your nickname protect you from the #blacklist?’ Al-Qahtani wrote online. No. 1. States have a way of knowing the owner of the name. 2 – IP can be identified in many technical ways. 3- The secret I’m not going to say." This suggests the Saudi "secret" backdoor may have been to have an intelligence presence within the Twitter office itself. 

The Metro report found further:

The source also claimed that Saud al-Qahtani, the former adviser to the Royal Court, leads a ‘cyber spy ring’ and has contacts inside the Dubai Twitter office. They allege that a so-called ‘Twitter mole’ handed over information on Al-Jasser, leading to his arrest earlier this year.

Given the current outrage and media scrutiny of Saudi leaders in the wake of the October 2nd murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, it's surprising that the mainstream media has yet to dig further into the details of Turki Bin Abdul Aziz Al-Jasser's death.

The "Kashkool" account (@coluche_ar— believed to be run by Turki Bin Abdul Aziz Al-Jasser who was "disappeared" and now reported killed — routinely mocked crown prince bin Salman, such as in the below tweet about a state visit by President Sisi of Egypt, who appeared humiliated when MbS failed to observe protocol:

السيسي صاير ملطشة.
سفير MBS يطرد السيسي من التشريفات.
سبحان من خلق الذل والخور في قلب هذا السيسي. pic.twitter.com/IklE7TpmsB

— كشكول (@coluche_ar) March 8, 2018

Twitter sought to distance itself from these fresh allegations as al-Jasser's story went viral last week. A Twitter spokesperson issued the following statement to Metro

"We do not comment on individual cases for privacy and security reasons. Twitter has a well-documented, strong track record of protecting user information and data. We require law enforcement to meet a high legal threshold and to undergo strict process when making information requests to Twitter. As a company, we will always err on the side of protecting the voices of those who use our service.

The statement failed to mention, however, whether or not the company was conducting an internal investigation focused on its Dubai offices. 

A Middle East Eye report from last year exposed just how aggressive Saudi authorities have been in attempting to root out anonymous dissenting speech on social media. At that time and since the Saudi authorities had posted messages to official state accounts asking citizens to inform on each other over  "information crimes".



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New findings add twist to screen time limit debate

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If screens are kept at an arm’s length, measures of well-being tend to improve

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Germany secretly paid rebels in Syria nearly €50 million

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The German government paid tens of millions of Euros to the rebel forces fighting the Syrian government, The Telegraph reported on Sunday, citing a report from the Tagesspiegel newspaper.

According to the Tagesspiegel report, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Walter Lindner (Social Democrat) told MEP Evrim Sommer (Die Linke) that Germany paid millions of Euros to the rebel forces in Syria.



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John Brennan and James Clapper Should Be Prosecuted for Breaking the Law

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Recently declassified documents show that the former CIA director and former director of national intelligence approved illegal spying on Congress and then classified their crime. They need to face punishment, writes John Kiriakou. By John Kiriakou Special to Consortium News…Read more →

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We want to believe: ‘Russian hacking’ memo REVEALS how US intel pinned leaks to Kremlin

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A newly-out memo containing the Obama admin’s talking points about “Russian hacking” in the 2016 election reveals how US spy agencies attributed email leaks to Kremlin by saying it’s “consistent” with what they think Russia does.

The seven-page document was contained within the 49 pages published on Friday by BuzzFeed, which obtained them through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) inquiry from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) in late October. At the root of it is a November 29 letter by several Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, asking then-President Barack Obama to declassify documents concerning “Russian Active Measures.”



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