Saturday, December 1, 2018

In Europe "Criticism Of Migration" Set To Become A Criminal Offense

ORIGINAL LINK

Europeans concerned about borders, language and culture may soon find themselves in the hot seat after Dutch politician and European Parliament member Marcel de Graaff issued a dire warning over the "definition of hate speech" which will criminalize speech opposing mass migration, as first reported by Joe Schaeffer of LibertyNation

In a press conference, de Graaff raised the alarm over an international conference in Marrakech, Morocco on Dec. 11 and 12 where the U.N. Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration is to be signed. Though the pact is said to be non-binding, it is meant to establish the groundwork for an Orwellian campaign to cement mass migration as a human right legally above any and all criticism.

One basic element of this new agreement is the extension of the definition of hate speech,” de Graaff says. “The agreement wants to criminalize migration speech. Criticism of migration will become a criminal offense. Media outlets that give room to criticism of migration can be shut down.” -LibertyNation

Meanwhile, the UN Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner posted a transcript of a November 20 speech from Andrew Gilmour, Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights, entitled: "Words Matter: Role and Responsibility of the media in shaping public perceptions about migrants and refugees and promoting inclusive societies."

Gilmour calls "hate crimes against migrants" an "especially unpleasant manifestation of what I see as an almost global backlash against human rights." 

Gilmour explains how his office will help states “to distinguish free speech from hate speech” that, of course, has no right to exist. He points out that media reporting that is not sufficiently pro-migration cannot be tolerated. “It is clear to us all that many media outlets are deliberately failing to promote the concept of common humanity,” Gilmour says, again defining mass migration as a basic human right. “Words obviously do matter: dehumanising racist rhetoric frequently leads to hatred, tensions, violence and conflict. It requires a greater effort from the international community to confront those in the media who seek to stir up hatred.” -LibertyNation

The EU is set to criminalize speech that criticizes migration.
“The criticism of migration will be a criminal offense.”
“Media outlets that give room for criticism of migration,can be shut down.“
Insane & this is what people want to bring here? BTW censoring is the start of it pic.twitter.com/eiFoqrhIkZ

— Kaya Jones (@KayaJones) November 30, 2018


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Friday, November 30, 2018

Leaked Google Emails Reveal Internal Discussion On Burying Articles From Conservative Outlets

ORIGINAL LINK

Google - which was exposed trying to help Hillary Clinton win the 2016 election, and who were beside themselves after she lost - discussed whether to bury conservative media outlets in the company's search function after Donald Trump became president, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation's Peter Hasson. 

Internal communications obtained by the Caller reveal that The Daily Caller and Breitbart were specifically singled out for potential censorship. 

Communications obtained by TheDCNF show that internal Google discussions went beyond expressing remorse over Clinton’s loss to actually discussing ways Google could prevent Trump from winning again.

This was an election of false equivalencies, and Google, sadly, had a hand in it,” Google engineer Scott Byer wrote in a Nov. 9, 2016, post reviewed by TheDCNF.

Byer falsely labeled The Daily Caller and Breitbart as “opinion blogs” and urged his coworkers to reduce their visibility in search results.

How many times did you see the Election now card with items from opinion blogs (Breitbart, Daily Caller) elevated next to legitimate news organizations? That’s something that can and should be fixed,” Byer wrote.

I think we have a responsibility to expose the quality and truthfulness of sources – because not doing so hides real information under loud noises,” he continued. 

“Beyond that, let’s concentrate on teaching critical thinking. A little bit of that would go a long way. Let’s make sure that we reverse things in four years – demographics will be on our side.” -DCNF

Not all Google employees agreed with the notion of censoring conservative outlets; engineer Uri Dekel - a self-described Clinton supporter, argued that manipulating search results was the wrong approach. 

"Thinking that Breitbart, Drudge, etc. are not ‘legitimate news sources’ is contrary to the beliefs of a major portion of our user base is partially what got us to this mess. MSNBC is not more legit than Drudge just because Rachel Maddow may be more educated / less deplorable / closer to our views, than, say Sean Hannity," Dekel wrote Byer in a reply, adding "I follow a lot of right wing folks on social networks you could tell something was brewing. We laughed off Drudge’s Instant Polls and all that stuff, but in the end, people go to those sources because they believe that the media doesn’t do it’s job. I’m a Hillary supporter and let’s admit it, the media avoided dealing with the hard questions and issues, which didn’t pay off. By ranking ‘legitimacy’ you’ll just introduce more conspiracy theories"  

Another engineer, Mike Brauwerman, suggested that the company could avoid "accusations of conspiracy or bias" by using technology to "trace information to its source, to link to critiques of these sources, and let people decide what sources they believe." 

"Give people a comprehensive but effectively summarized view of the information, not context-free rage-inducing sound-byte," added Brauwerman. 

Other Google employees also advocated for providing context to sources in order to "help" users consume information. Unfortunately, the search giant's solution was to employ fact-checking organizations with a liberal bias that "target conservative outlets almost exclusively," according to the Caller. Google eventually pulled their fact-checkers in January, crediting an investigation by the Daily Caller in their decision

Google claims that the email conversation did not lead to the manipulation of search results for political purposes. 

“This post shows that far from suppressing Breitbart and Daily Caller, we surfaced these sites regularly in our products. Furthermore, it shows that we value providing people with the full view on stories from a variety of sources,” the spokeswoman told TheDCNF in an email. 

Google has never manipulated its search results or modified any of its products to promote a particular political ideology. Our processes and policies do not allow for any manipulation of search results to promote political ideologies.” -DCNF

Right - then why does a Google search for "Idiot" return pictures of the Trump family, while the same search in DuckDuckGo is completely different: 

vs:

This isn't the first time Google employees have sought to alter search results either: 

After Trump announced his initial travel ban in January 2017, Google employees discussed ways to manipulate search results in order to push back against the president’s order.

A group of employees brainstormed ways to counter “islamophobic, algorithmically biased results from search terms ‘Islam’, ‘Muslim’, ‘Iran’, etc,” as well as “prejudiced, algorithmically biased search results from search terms ‘Mexico’, ‘Hispanic’, ‘Latino’, etc.”

Meanwhile, President Trump suggested to the Daily Caller in September that Google and Facebook are trying to manipulate election outcomes. 

"I think they already have," said Trump. "I mean the true interference in the last election was that — if you look at all, virtually all of those companies are super liberal companies in favor of Hillary Clinton," he added. 

"“Maybe I did a better job because I’m good with the Twitter and I’m good at social media, but the truth is they were all on Hillary Clinton’s side, and if you look at what was going on with Facebook and with Google and all of it, they were very much on her side." 



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Never, Ever Forget The Guardian/Politico Psyop Against WikiLeaks

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For the first few hours after any new “bombshell” Russiagate story comes out, my social media notifications always light up with poorly written posts by liberal establishment loyalists saying things like “HAHAHA @caitoz this proves you wrong now will you FINALLY stop denying Russian collusion???” Then, when people start actually analyzing that story and noting that it comes nowhere remotely close to proving that Donald Trump colluded with the Russian government to steal the 2016 election, those same people always forget to come back afterward and admit to me that they were wrong again.

This happens every single time, including this past Tuesday when the Guardian published a new “bombshell” report saying that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort had had secret meetings with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. When experts all across the political spectrum began pointing out that the story contained no evidence for its nonsensical claims and was entirely anonymously sourced, nobody ever came back and said “Hey sorry for calling you a Russian propagandist, Caitlin; turns out that story wasn’t as fact-based as I’d thought!” When evidence for a single one of the article’s claims failed to turn up for a day, then two days, then three days, nobody came back and said “Gosh Caitlin, I owe you an apology for mocking you and calling you Assange’s bitch; turns out WikiLeaks and Manafort are suing that publication and its claims remain completely unproven.”

And of course they didn’t. They weren’t meant to. They were meant to absorb the Guardian’s false claims as fact, add it to their Gish gallop mountain of false evidence for Trump-Russia-WikiLeaks collusion, and then be shuffled onward by the relentless news churn of the corporate propaganda matrix like always. But I’m never going to let them forget that this happened, and neither should you.

Politico publishes article by CIA officer using pen name. Carl Bernstein wrote about CIA using US media in 1977: "...400 US journalists who in the past 25 yrs have secretly carried out assignments for the CIA." "...full-time CIA employees masquerading as journalists abroad.

 — @pierpont_morgan

If it wasn’t obvious to you last week that there is an unelected power establishment which needs above all else to control the public narrative about what’s going on in the world, it should certainly be obvious to you this week. The Guardian hit piece was so spectacularly desperate in its over-reaching to advance a narrative which has been used to manufacture support for longtime CIA/MI6 agendas like arresting Julian Assange, stopping WikiLeaks, censoring the internet and subverting Russia that it completely exposed itself as the establishment psyop firm that it is.

If that wasn’t evidence enough, in the wake of the Guardian controversy Politico took the downright shocking step of allowing an anonymous former CIA officer to publish a lie-filled article speculating, on no evidence whatsoever, that if the story proves untrue it will be because false information was fed to the Guardian by Russia-linked operatives. The article’s anonymous author claims that there are exactly two main possibilities here: (1) that the article is 100% true and will be vindicated, or (2) that the article is based on disinformation which was planted in “an attempt to make [Guardian author Luke] Harding look bad.”

This is obviously absurd for two reasons. The first reason is because no Kremlin operative could possibly make Luke Harding look worse than Luke Harding already did in his pathetic, fumbling attempts to argue his case for collusion while promoting his book Collusion to a less-than-sycophantic interviewer in December of last year, in which Harding grew frustrated and hung up on his own interview. The second reason is that there is another far more likely possibility than the two offered by Politico’s anonymous spook.

My latest: The Guardian's latest vilifying of Julian Assange without offering a shred of evidence for its claims was no mistake. It fits a pattern by the paper of damaging those who threaten to disrupt the entrenchment of the existing neoliberal order https://t.co/YiMjfOHxEh

 — @Jonathan_K_Cook

Former Guardian employee Jonathan Cook explains that from what he learned while working at the outlet, the most likely explanation is that the editors permitted the article to be published because its anonymous sources came from within an intelligence or defense agency. As we’ve seen time and time again, from the Iraq WMD narrative to the Russian hacking narrative, western mass media outlets have a ubiquitous standing policy of printing assertions by opaque, dishonest, unaccountable government agencies as objective fact. When asked why she unquestioningly printed a false assertion that real social media users who deny any connection to Russia were Russian “bots”, the Guardian’s own political editor Heather Stewart unapologetically stated, “It’s not my analysis — as the piece makes quite clear — it’s the government’s.” As long as it comes from the government, the mass media stenographers will print what they’re told to print. But tell me more about how awful RT is because it’s “state media”.

Cook writes as follows:

“I worked for the Guardian for a number of years, and know well the layers of checks that any highly sensitive story has to go through before publication. In that lengthy process, a variety of commissioning editors, lawyers, backbench editors and the editor herself, Kath Viner, would normally insist on cuts to anything that could not be rigorously defended and corroborated.

“And yet this piece seems to have been casually waved through, given a green light even though its profound shortcomings were evident to a range of well-placed analysts and journalists from the outset.

“That at the very least hints that the Guardian thought they had ‘insurance’ on this story. And the only people who could have promised that kind of insurance are the security and intelligence services — presumably of Britain, the United States and / or Ecuador.

“It appears the Guardian has simply taken this story, provided by spooks, at face value.”

It's not my analysis - as the piece makes quite clear - it's the government's. https://t.co/50C7Ozhv8m

 — @GuardianHeather

The claims made by Luke Harding and the Guardian will never be proven true, and they know it. They knowingly printed claims that they were one hundred percent aware they’d never be able to provide proof of, and the clicks their viral story generated rewarded them with a shower of cash. Their fake story was then passed along by news outlets everywhere, including an MSNBC panel which hilariously kept informing its readers that if this Guardian report is confirmed it would be the first ever actual evidence linking Trump to WikiLeaks in a meaningful way.

We must never forget that this was done. We must keep bringing up the undeniable fact that the Guardian published false claims about a longtime target of western intelligence and defense agencies, then was backed up by a longtime insider from one of those agencies who was permitted to publish anonymously in an ostensibly unrelated outlet. This is one of those jaw-dropping glimpses behind the puppet stage we must never permit the world to forget, much like the time CNN knowingly staged a fake interview with a Syrian girl reciting scripted war propaganda. We must keep bringing this up at every opportunity in our efforts to give people glimpses behind the propaganda curtain, continuing to remind them next week, next month, next year, and ten years from now.

Forgiveness is overrated. Forgiveness is a key foundational element in most abusive relationships, wherein the abusee is manipulated or bullied into forgiving the abuser again and again, without ever holding a grudge. This is true of a battered spouse, and it is true of an oppressed populace. The ability to hold a grudge is therefore of paramount importance in fighting the propaganda machine on which our rulers have built their oppressive empire. Otherwise we will be shuffled forward in the news churn, just like the goldfish-brained Russiagaters who are moved along from one false story to the next into the amnesia of the endlessly spewing news churn.

Forgiveness Is Overrated "From the Pope down, we've been anesthetized with this mind-virus that in order to be good people we just put our head down, work hard, die poor, and let God do the judging. How convenient for power is that story?" https://t.co/8ONzKpc2BM

 — @caitoz

Don’t forget. Remember this one. Remember it, and keep bringing it up.

____________________________

Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to 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, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone, or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers.

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3 Things That Happened Just Before The Crisis Of 2008 That Are Happening Again Right Now

ORIGINAL LINK

Real estate, oil and the employment numbers are all telling us the same thing, and that is really bad news for the U.S. economy. It really does appear that economic activity is starting to slow down significantly, but just like in 2008 those that are running things don’t want to admit the reality of what we are facing. Back then, Fed Chair Ben Bernanke insisted that the U.S. economy was not heading into a recession, and we later learned that a recession had already begun when he made that statement. And as you will see at the end of this article, current Fed Chair Jerome Powell says that he is “very happy” with how the U.S. economy is performing, but he shouldn’t be so thrilled. Signs of trouble are everywhere, and we just got several more pieces of troubling news.

Thanks to aggressive rate hikes by the Federal Reserve, the average rate on a 30 year mortgage is now up to about 4.8 percent. Just like in 2008, that is killing the housing market and it has us on the precipice of another real estate meltdown.

And some of the markets that were once the hottest in the entire country are leading the way down. For example, just check out what is happening in Manhattan

In the third quarter, the median price for a one-bedroom Manhattan home was $815,000, down 4% from the same period in 2017. The volume of sales fell 12.7%.

Of course things are even worse at the high end of the market. Some Manhattan townhouses are selling for millions of dollars less than what they were originally listed for.

Sadly, Manhattan is far from alone. Pending home sales are down all over the nation. In October, U.S. pending home sales were down 4.6 percent on a year over year basis, and that was the tenth month in a row that we have seen a decline…

Hope was high for a rebound (after new-home-sales slumped), but that was dashed as pending home sales plunged 2.6% MoM in October (well below the expected 0.5% MoM bounce).

Additionally, Pending Home Sales fell 4.6% YoY – the 10th consecutive month of annual declines…

When something happens for 10 months in a row, I think that you can safely say that a trend has started.

Sales of new homes continue to plummet as well. In fact, we just witnessed a 12 percent year over year decline for sales of new single family houses last month

Sales of new single-family houses plunged 12% in October, compared to a year ago, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 544,000 houses, according to estimates by the Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

With an inventory of new houses for sale at 336,000 (seasonally adjusted), the supply at the current rate of sales spiked to 7.4 months, from 6.5 months’ supply in September, and from 5.6 months’ supply a year ago.

If all of this sounds eerily similar to 2008, that is because it is eerily similar to what happened just before and during the last financial crisis.

Up until now, at least the economic optimists could point to the employment numbers as a reason for hope, but not anymore.

In fact, initial claims for unemployment benefits have now risen for three weeks in a row

The number of Americans filing applications for jobless benefits increased to a six-month high last week, which could raise concerns that the labor market could be slowing.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits rose 10,000 to a seasonally adjusted 234,000 for the week ended Nov. 24, the highest level since the mid-May, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Claims have now risen for three straight weeks.

This is also similar to what we witnessed back in 2008. Jobless claims started to creep up, and then when the crisis fully erupted there was an avalanche of job losses.

And just like 10 years ago, we are starting to see a lot of big corporations start to announce major layoffs.

General Motors greatly upset President Trump when they announced that they were cutting 14,000 jobs just before the holidays, but GM is far from alone. For a list of some of the large firms that have just announced layoffs, please see my previous article entitled “U.S. Job Losses Accelerate: Here Are 10 Big Companies That Are Cutting Jobs Or Laying Off Workers”.

A third parallel to 2008 is what is happening to the price of oil.

In 2008, the price of oil shot up to a record high before falling precipitously.

Well, now a similar thing has happened. Earlier this year the price of oil shot up to $76 a barrel, but this week it slid beneath the all-important $50 barrier

Oil’s recent slide has shaved more than a third off its price. Crude fell more than 1% Thursday to as low as $49.41 a barrel. The last time oil closed below $50 was in October 4, 2017. By mid morning the price had climbed back to above $51.

Concerns about oversupply have sent oil prices into a virtual freefall: Crude hit a four-year high above $76 a barrel less than two months ago.

When economists are asked why the price of oil is falling, the primary answer they give is because global economic activity is softening.

And that is definitely the case. In fact, we just learned that economic confidence in the eurozone has declined for the 11th month in a row

Euro-area economic confidence slipped for an 11th straight month, further damping expectations that the currency bloc will rebound from a sharp growth slowdown and complicating the European Central Bank’s plans to pare back stimulus.

In addition, we just got news that the Swiss and Swedish economies had negative growth in the third quarter.

The economic news is bad across the board, and it appears to be undeniable that a global economic downturn has begun.

But current Fed Chair Jerome Powell insists that he is “very happy about the state of the economy”

Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve’s chairman, has also taken an optimistic line, declaring in Texas recently that he was “very happy about the state of the economy.”

That is just great. He can be as happy as he wants, and he can continue raising interest rates as he sticks his head in the sand, but nothing is going to change economic reality.

Every single Fed rate hiking cycle in history has ended in a market crash and/or a recession, and this time won’t be any different.

The Federal Reserve created the “boom” that we witnessed in recent years, but we must also hold them responsible for the “bust” that is about to happen.

About the author: 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 3 Things That Happened Just Before The Crisis Of 2008 That Are Happening Again Right Now appeared first on The Most Important News.



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U.S. Life Expectancy Is Falling – And The 2 Biggest Reasons Why Will Absolutely Stun You…

ORIGINAL LINK

Life expectancy in the United States has been falling in recent years, and we haven’t seen a trend like this since the days of World War I. When I was growing up, life expectancy was continually rising, and it was generally believed that it would keep rising for many decades to come. But that hasn’t happened. Instead, average life expectancy started to stall and now it has been declining. You might assume that this is because rates of cancer, heart disease and diabetes are going up, but the numbers are telling a different story. In fact, brand new numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are telling us that life expectancy is going down in the United States because of a dramatic increase in drug overdoses and suicides

U.S. life expectancy declined in 2017 as more Americans died of drug overdoses and suicides, furthering a troubling trend of declining lifespans not seen in a century, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found in a report released Thursday.

Life expectancy was 78.6 years in 2017, down from 78.7 years in 2016, the CDC said.

Life expectancy also declined in 2015 and stayed flat in 2016, making this the first three-year period of general decline since the late 1910s.

In other words, this is something that we are doing to ourselves.

Let’s talk about drugs first. Last year, the rate of drug overdose deaths in the United States jumped 9.6 percent

In 2017, the rate of drug overdose deaths was 9.6 percent higher than in 2016, with 70,237 people dying from drug overdoses, many of them from the epidemic of opioid abuse.

Overdosing on drugs is now the leading cause of death for Americans under the age of 50.

I know that some of you may not want to hear this, but the United States has a bigger drug problem today than ever before in our history.

Of course the opioid epidemic is wildly out of control, but meth has made a massive comeback as well. In fact, the number of meth-related hospitalizations rose 245 percent between 2008 and 2015. The following comes from NBC News

The number of people hospitalized because of amphetamine use is skyrocketing in the United States, but the resurgence of the drug has largely been overshadowed by the nation’s intense focus on opioids.

Amphetamine-related hospitalizations jumped by about 245 percent from 2008 to 2015, according to a study published last month in the Journal of the American Medical Association. That dwarfs the rise in hospitalizations from other drugs, such as opioids, which were up by about 46 percent. The most significant increases were in Western states.

And in a previous article I discussed how cocaine is making a major comeback as well. In fact, the number of cocaine deaths in America just hit a brand new all-time record high

Cocaine deaths have hit a record high as the drug has quietly become increasingly popular while the attention of the media and health officials has been on the ongoing opioid epidemic.

In the last 12 months, 14,205 Americans died of cocaine overdoses, marking a 22 percent increase over the previous year, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

This is a major public health emergency, and yet there is not much political willpower to tackle this crisis right now.

Meanwhile, the suicide rate in the U.S. has soared to a new record high as well.

In fact, the CDC says that our suicide rate has shot up 33 percent since 1999…

Meanwhile, the suicide rate has increased a massive 33 percent since 1999, the CDC said. There are now 14 suicides per 100,000 people, up from 10.5 in 1999.

I can’t understand why anyone would ever want to do such a thing.

Life is such a precious gift, and I can’t imagine ever throwing that away.

But it is happening on a very large scale, and a number of recent celebrity suicides have gotten national attention. I did not realize this, but USA Today is reporting that the number of Americans that die as a result of suicide is now greater than the number of Americans that are murdered…

Americans are more than twice as likely to die by their own hands, of their own will, than by someone else’s. But while homicides spark vigils and protests, entering into headlines, presidential speeches and police budgets, suicides don’t. Still shrouded in stigma, many suicides go unacknowledged save for the celebrities – Robin Williams, Kate Spade, Anthony Bourdain – punctuating the unrelenting rise in suicide deaths with a brief public outcry.

So what is causing this trend?

Predictably, USA Today is attempting to claim that “climate change” is one of the factors

Alcohol and substance abuse are risk factors, and both are increasing. Isolation raises the risk, and nearly half of Americans say they sometimes or always feel alone. Increasing smartphone use has been linked to suicidal thoughts in teens. Even climate change has been found to have roughly the same effect on increasing suicides as an economic recession.

Seriously?

If people don’t like the minor climate fluctuations that we have been witnessing in recent years, then they really aren’t going to like what is coming next.

Ultimately, the real issue is that Americans are deeply unhappy. When people feel empty, they take drugs to make themselves feel better. And if people have no hope of things ever getting better, they commit suicide.

People need hope, and the modern lifestyle doesn’t provide that. Instead, we are taught to pursue an education and then a career so that we can make lots of money, but lots of money is never going to buy happiness.

We have now raised several generations of Americans in an environment that is virtually devoid of values and principles, and somehow we expect them to find meaning and purpose in life.

But Americans are not finding meaning and purpose in life. Instead, they are realizing that society has sold them a bunch of lies, and as a result record numbers of them are turning to drugs or suicide as the ultimate answer.

About the author: 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 U.S. Life Expectancy Is Falling – And The 2 Biggest Reasons Why Will Absolutely Stun You… appeared first on The Most Important News.



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PCR Fumes "There Is No Case Against Assange, So Lies Replace Evidence" | Zero Hedge

Assange never met Manafort. The DNC emails were downloaded by an insider. Assange never even considered fleeing to Russia. Those are the facts, and I am in a position to give you a personal assurance of them.

I can also assure you that Luke Harding, the Guardian, Washington Post and New York Times have been publishing a stream of deliberate lies, in collusion with the security services.

I am not a fan of Donald Trump. But to see the partisans of the defeated candidate (and a particularly obnoxious defeated candidate) manipulate the security services and the media to create an entirely false public perception, in order to attempt to overturn the result of the US Presidential election, is the most astonishing thing I have witnessed in my lifetime.

Plainly the government of Ecuador is releasing lies about Assange to curry favour with the security establishment of the USA and UK,and to damage Assange’s support prior to expelling him from the Embassy. He will then be extradited from London to the USA on charges of espionage.

Assange is not a whistleblower or a spy – he is the greatest publisher of his age, and has done more to bring the crimes of governments to light than the mainstream media will ever be motivated to achieve. That supposedly great newspaper titles like the Guardian, New York Times and Washington Post are involved in the spreading of lies to damage Assange, and are seeking his imprisonment for publishing state secrets, is clear evidence that the idea of the “liberal media” no longer exists in the new plutocratic age. The press are not on the side of the people, they are an instrument of elite control.


https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-11-29/pcr-fumes-there-no-case-against-assange-so-lies-replace-evidence

Wednesday, November 28, 2018

Greenwald Goes Ballistic On Politico "Theory" Guardian's Assange-Manafort Story Was Planted By Russians

ORIGINAL LINK

After The Guardian attempted to shovel what appears to be a wholly fabricated story down our throats that Trump campaign manager met with Julian Assange at the London Embassy - Politico allowed an ex-CIA agent to use their platform to come up with a ham-handed cover story ever; Russia tricked The Guardian into publishing the Manafort-Assange propaganda. 

To that end, The Intercept's Glenn Greenwald (formerly of The Guardian) ripped Politico an entirely new oriface in a six-part Twitter dress down. 

1/ Why do attacks on the US media - calling it "Fake News" - resonate so widely? Because of utterly fabricated and reckless articles like this one from @politico, by a former *CIA officer allowed to write under a "pen name"*. The whole thing is a fraud: https://t.co/kGRsiOXHHN

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) November 28, 2018

2/ The only point of the article is to *invent out of whole cloth* a wild conspiracy theory: that perhaps Russia-controlled operatives caused the @Guardian to publish a false story - its viral Assange/Manafort story - in order to discredit Luke Harding for his Russia reporting. pic.twitter.com/npCjM6HHJt

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) November 28, 2018

3/ The whole conspiracy theory is made up with no evidence. Worse, it relies on blatant fabrications, such as the one highlighted here. Everyone knows I didn't work with WL to report the Snowden story. It's a lie. But US media outlets are *willing to lie if the targets are right* pic.twitter.com/hAJr9yPj6P

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) November 28, 2018

4/ POLITICO also allowed this ex-CIA agent's to falsely claim that the only people raising doubts about the Guardian's story are people who are part of "Russia’s disinformation network." In fact, as @Emptywheel noted, a wide range of people raised doubts about the story. Compare: pic.twitter.com/kuIUMYQ5L3

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) November 28, 2018

5/ The US media has only itself to blame for the attacks on it. If you are willing to outright lie like this when it advances your narrative, invent wild conspiracy theories & malign people as Russian agents, you don't deserve the respect that media outlets demand they receive.

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) November 28, 2018

6/ In response to a highly dubious Guardian story, POLITICO allowed an ex-CIA officer to use a fake name to publish demonstrable lies and blame Russia for this potentially huge media scandal - zero self-critique. Why would a profession that acts this way expect to be trusted?

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) November 28, 2018

Greenwald also penned a harsh rebuke to the Guardian's "problematic" reporting in a Tuesday article titled: "It Is Possible Paul Manafort Visited Julian Assange. If True, There Should Be Ample Video and Other Evidence Showing This."

In sum, the Guardian published a story today that it knew would explode into all sorts of viral benefits for the paper and its reporters even though there are gaping holes and highly sketchy aspects to the story.

It is certainly possible that Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, and even Donald Trump himself “secretly” visited Julian Assange in the Embassy. It’s possible that Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un joined them.

And if any of that happened, then there will be mountains of documentary proof in the form of videos, photographs, and other evidence proving it. Thus far, no such evidence has been published by the Guardian. Why would anyone choose to believe that this is true rather than doing what any rational person, by definition, would do: wait to see the dispositive evidence before forming a judgment?

The only reason to assume this is true without seeing such evidence is because enough people want it to be true. The Guardian knows this. They knew that publishing this story would cause partisan warriors to excitedly spread the story, and that cable news outlets would hyperventilate over it, and that they’d reap the rewards regardless of whether the story turned out to be true or false. It may be true. But only the evidence, which has yet to be seen, will demonstrate that one way or the other. -Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept

In short, The Guardian tried to proffer a load of easily disprovable claims - which if not true, are pure propaganda. Once it began to blow up in their face, Politico let an ex-CIA operative try to save face by suggesting Russia did it. Insanity at its finest. 



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Much Worse Than Expected: Experts Shocked As New Home Sales Plunge 8.9 Percent

ORIGINAL LINK

The U.S. economy is definitely deviating from the script, and we just got more evidence that “Housing Bubble 2” is bursting. Experts were expecting that new home sales in the U.S. would rise in October, but instead they plunged 8.9 percent. That number is far worse than anyone was projecting, and many in the real estate industry are really starting to freak out. And to be honest, things look like they are going to get even worse in 2019. One survey found that the percentage of Americans that plan to buy a home over the next 12 months has fallen by about half during the past year. Mortgage rates have steadily risen as the Federal Reserve has been hiking interest rates, and at this point most average Americans have been completely priced out of the market. Home prices are going to have to come way down from where they are right now, and just as we witnessed in 2008, rapidly falling home prices can put an extraordinary amount of stress on the financial system.

It is hard for me to put into words just how bad this latest number is. Even though I write about our growing economic problems on a daily basis, even I didn’t expect to see a number anywhere near this bad. Sometimes a really bad number from one part of the U.S. can drag down the overall number, but that wasn’t the case this time. According to Reuters, there were “sharp declines in all four regions”…

Sales of new U.S. single-family homes tumbled to a more than 2-1/2-year low in October amid sharp declines in all four regions, further evidence that higher mortgage rates were hurting the housing market.

The Commerce Department said on Wednesday new home sales dropped 8.9 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 544,000 units last month. That was the lowest level since March 2016. The percent drop was the biggest since December 2017.

But of course it isn’t as if this latest report is coming out of nowhere. The truth is that new home sales have fallen in four of the last six months, and so a very clear trend is now developing.

Sadly, most mainstream economists still don’t seem to be understanding what is happening. According to Reuters, the consensus estimate was that we would see new home sales rise 3.7 percent in October, and so an 8.9 percent plunge came as a real shock.

New home sales have now missed expectations for seven months in a row, and the similarities to 2008 are starting to become undeniable.

Sales of previously owned homes have been falling as well. In fact, in October we witnessed the largest drop for previously owned home sales in four years

Sales of previously owned U.S. homes posted their largest annual decline since 2014 in October, as the housing market continues to sputter due to higher mortgage rates that are reducing home affordability.

If you want to blame someone for this mess, blame the Federal Reserve.

They created a “boom” in the housing market by pushing interest rates all the way to the floor during the Obama years, and now they are creating a “bust” by aggressively jacking up interest rates at a pace that our economy simply cannot handle.

If we had allowed the free market to be setting interest rates all this time, we would not be on such a roller coaster ride.

Just like during “Housing Bubble 1”, millions of Americans have been buying houses that they cannot afford, and that could mean another massive wave of mortgage defaults as this new economic downturn intensifies. At this point, the debt to income ratio for mortgages insured by the FHA is at an all-time record high

One worrying indicator: The average debt-to-income ratio for mortgages insured by the Federal Housing Administration, which makes up about 22% of the housing market, is now at its highest level ever.

This is yet another indication that we are even more vulnerable than we were just prior to the subprime mortgage meltdown during the last financial crisis.

Let me try to shed some light on what is coming next. Even if economic conditions remained stable, housing prices would need to start falling dramatically in order to attract buyers. In fact, we are already starting to see this happen in southern California and other markets that were once extremely “hot”. As housing prices fall, millions of Americans will suddenly find themselves “underwater” on their mortgages. In other words, they will owe more on their homes than their homes are worth. During the last recession, many “underwater” homeowners ultimately decided to walk away rather than continue to service ridiculously bloated mortgages.

But the truth is that economic conditions are not likely to remain stable. In fact, many are projecting that the approaching downturn will be even worse than 2008.

In such a scenario, millions of Americans will lose their jobs, and that means that millions of Americans will suddenly not be able to make their mortgage payments. As a result, mortgage defaults will skyrocket and home prices will drop like a rock. Just like last time around, there could be people that wake up one day and realize that they owe two or three times as much money on their mortgages as their homes are currently worth, and the stampede of people walking away from “underwater” mortgages could become an avalanche.

Needless to say, millions of mortgages suddenly going bad is a scenario that our financial system is not equipped to handle. What happened in 2008 was absolutely catastrophic for our large financial institutions, and what is coming is going to be even worse.

Of course the big financial institutions will want the federal government to bail them out, but there may not be much of an appetite for more corporate bailouts this time around.

And considering the fact that we are already 22 trillion dollars in debt, we can’t exactly afford to be throwing money around.

The Federal Reserve has set the stage for a giant mess, and it is going to shake the housing industry to the core.

We should have learned from the mistakes that we made in 2008, but we didn’t, and so now we are going to pay a very great price for our negligence.

About the author: 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 Much Worse Than Expected: Experts Shocked As New Home Sales Plunge 8.9 Percent appeared first on The Most Important News.



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Don't Get Distracted By The Trump/Fed Soap Opera - The Crash Will Continue

ORIGINAL LINK

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

At the beginning of 2018 I wrote extensively on what was likely to happen under the administration of Jerome Powell, the new Federal Reserve Chairman. In my article ‘New Fed Chairman Will Trigger A Historic Stock Market Crash In 2018‘, published in February, I predicted that the Fed would continue interest rate increases and balance sheet cuts throughout the year and they would knowingly initiate a crash in equities.

To be clear, this was not a very popular sentiment at the time, just as it wasn’t popular when I predicted in 2015 that the Fed would launch interest rate hikes instead of going to negative rates in order to start a catalyst for economic crisis. The problem some people have with this concept is that they just can’t fathom that the central bank would deliberately crash the system. They desperately cling to the notion that the Fed and other central banks want to keep the machine rolling forward at any cost. This is simply not true.

The claim is that the banking elites are “required” to keep the system propped up in a state of reanimation because they are reliant on the system to provide capital and thus “influence.” The people that assert this argument don’t seem to understand how central banks operate.

As most liberty activists should know by now, central banks are essentially a legally protected counterfeiting scheme. Using fractional reserve banking at a ratio that is secret, central banks create their own capital from thin air, and they can infuse capital into international banks at will when it suits their purposes. There is no “profit motive” for the banking syndicate. They can print the cash or digitally conjure it anytime they wish, and they can use it to purchase tangible assets before their printing diminishes the buying power of the currency, passing price inflation on to regular citizens.

Thus, keeping the system in perpetual positive motion is not necessary in terms of the transfer of wealth from the population to the banking class. In fact, economic crisis events are very useful to the elites because these events allow the banks to buy up concrete assets like natural resources, businesses and properties for pennies on the dollar.

For example, this is exactly what they did during the Great Depression when major banks like JP Morgan bought out thousands of failing local banks across the U.S. and took control of mortgages and other assets being paid off by a vast portion of the American citizenry. The banking system never looked the same again, and international banks continue to dominate ever since as localized competition remains elusive.

This also occurred after the crash of 2008 when companies like Blackstone bought up billions in distressed mortgages for well below previous market value, taking control of the property market and turning bankruptcies into rentals.

The 2008 crash was an asset buying bonanza for banks and corporation bailed out by the Federal Reserve. Low interest rates provided endless cheap credit through which companies could buy anything and everything. Of course, they mostly bought their own equities through stock buybacks, artificially inflating the stock market to the point of absurdity while taking on historic levels of debt — but we’ll get to that in just a moment.

The point is, there is every reason for central banks and their international corporate banking partners in crime to want a controlled demolition of the economic system. As long as they always control the dominant currency mechanism and the means of wealth distribution, they can use fiscal disasters to buy up hard assets for almost nothing.

The profit motive argument against deliberately triggered market declines has no legs when we consider this reality. But there is another reason far beyond the issue of asset accumulation; namely the psychological effects these events have on the masses.

Economic panic is a very useful tool in the hands of the banking establishment for molding social conditions in a way that gives them greater psychological power over the public. In every instance of financial catastrophe it is the banker cabal that is asked to step in and save the day. In 2008 it was the Federal Reserve that was tapped to act as a hero to the mainstream, and only through the tireless efforts of alternative economists and liberty activists has this fallacy been exposed to some in the population.

In the next crisis, it will be the IMF that is used as the front organization for the next rescue as market collapse leads into a crisis in confidence in the U.S. dollar. I outlined the plan for this in my recent article ‘IMF Reveals That Cryptocurrency Is The New World Order End Game.’

The average person is completely unaware of the Hegelian con-game being played here. And, when banking institutions step in as the designated “caregivers” to the ailing economy, what we sometimes see is a kind of reverse "Florence Nightingale effect", in which the patients fall in love with the nurse merely because they have associated the extension of economic function to an extension of their lives (or at least, an extension of comfort in their lives).

The next engineered crash is shaping up to become the most epic in history, and make no mistake, it has already started.

Even now mindless optimism and blind faith in the markets continues, and the assumption on the part of the investment world is that the banks will eventually be forced to admit their “policy error” on tightening and that they will revert back to lower rates or even more QE. This is not going to happen.

An example of the Fed reversal fantasy was the reaction to Jerome Powell's recent speech in light of "criticism" by the Trump Administration.  Powell's statement included a throwaway line indicating that the Fed rate was "just below" the neutral rate, which investors and algo trading computers immediately interpreted as a "dovish" pull back from a previous statement in which Powell said they were a "long way" from the neutral rate.  Stocks spiked on the "shift" in speech patterns.

Yes, investment markets really are that desperate for a sign that the Fed will keep the party going.  But let's look at reality.

Powell is simply repeating a fact, not changing Fed policy on rate hikes - the Fed funds rate is 2.19% technically just below what the Fed considers the "neutral rate" of inflation; around 2.5% to 3%.  The assumption markets are making is that the Fed will not hike BEYOND the neutral rate of inflation.  This is a naive assumption.  At no point did Powell indicate the Fed would stop rate hikes.  In fact, Powell dared to reiterate his assertions that the US economy is healthy and well into "recovery".  This is not the statement of an institution that is about to stray from its current path.

I would also point out that all this focus on interest rates might be a distraction from the Fed balance sheet cuts.  I cannot recall if Trump ever complained about this issue, but asset cuts are a primary key to the decline in stock markets, perhaps more so than interest rates.

Hopium sellers have been peddling several scenarios lately in which the current downtrend in markets will stop and the bull rally party rekindled. The three most pervasive are…

Scenario #1: The Fed suddenly skips rate hikes in the near term under pressure from markets and the White House.

Scenario #2: The Fed fully admits to policy error in light of stock market declines and re-launches QE.

Scenario #3: Trump announces successful trade war negotiations, primarily with China, and ends tariff measures.

As I have noted many times in the past year, Jerome Powell admitted in the minutes of the October 2012 Fed meeting that tightening measures in the face of extreme market addiction to stimulus would inevitably cause a crisis event. The Fed had created a monster of a bubble, and a monster in the investment world, and they knew they were doing it. With corporate and consumer debt levels at historic highs, any interest rate increases, no matter how seemingly marginal, will kill stock buybacks, cause corporate cutbacks and derail consumer spending.

Fed asset cuts will also offset stock buybacks over time and drag markets lower.  If the suspicions of alternative economists are correct, then the Fed has been holding a massive short volatility position for years.  Powell seems to confirm this kind of market manipulation in his statements in the Fed minutes of October 2012.  If they continue to unwind this position as they dump their balance sheet, stocks will crash regardless of interest rates.

Today, Jerome Powell is taking the exact actions in policy that he originally admitted would cause a crash. Powell is not tightening out of stupidity, nor is he tightening out of a misguided error in policy. Powell is tightening because the banking elites WANT a crash. Period.

Because of this, it is highly unlikely that the Fed will stop tightening measures, let alone reverse them. The Fed does not care about “pressure” from markets, or pressure from the White House which I believe is part of a farcical Kabuki theater. The Fed will continue hiking up to the neutral rate of inflation, and probably well beyond that into 2019. This is exactly what they did during the Great Depression to escalate the crisis, and it is exactly what they will do today.

Trump’s trade war rhetoric and false media headlines are now the only levers that can be pulled to stall the market landslide. But it appears that this stalling is meant to make the crash more manageable, not stop it from happening.  With Trump's cabinet loaded with globalists, it is foolish to believe the current trend will end any other way.

Trump will jawbone markets up at times, but overall there will be no progression in negotiations. The latest Powell statement is most likely designed to help mitigate the downturn that will occur when the Trump Administration announces "no progress" with China after the impending G20 conference.  The trade war will eventually escalate to include threats to U.S. bond markets and the dollar itself.

Trump’s policies match almost exactly with the model followed by Herbert Hoover preceding the crash of 1929 and the Great Depression. His trade war is a perfect distraction for the masses as central banks, the real culprits behind the crisis, pull the plug on life support for the economy. We will at times hear rumors of new ground gained with China and other nations, and these rumors will continue to be dispelled days later as they have been for the past year.

The battle between Trump and the Fed is purely a soap opera designed to lure conservatives into the Neo-con fold as they are told that Trump is a mere victim of Federal Reserve's interest rate hikes.  The rest of the world is being told that Trump is a gigantic baby, throwing a tantrum over a collapsing stock market bubble that he originally took credit for.  They will be told that it is Trump's tariffs and populism that are destabilizing the economy, not the Fed's tightening into economic weakness.

The truth is, BOTH Trump and the Fed are working in tandem while playing a game of pretend-fighting that Trump knows well from his days in the WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) and reality TV.

The establishment wants the system to break down, but at a speed that is manageable for them and psychologically disarming for us.

The optimistic claim that what we are seeing in equities is nothing more than a “correction” is a fallacy that misrepresents the reality of conditions on the ground. It is based on assumptions that the Fed will stop tightening measures and that the trade war will end abruptly and favorably. It is also based on severe cognitive dissonance — the optimism of drug addicts, their veins filled with years of QE heroin. The truth is that the drug binge is over.

The banking elites are done with that phase of the collapse, and they are moving onto the next phase. It is clear in their actions, it is clear in their public admissions, and it is clear in the downward spiral of the economy at large. What we are seeing is not a “correction,” it’s a crash. It is time for people to accept this fact and prepare accordingly if they have not already.

*  *  *

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FDA Restricts Sale of Flavored E-Cigs

https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2018/11/28/age-restriction-for-vape.aspx

Tuesday, November 27, 2018

"You Are Well Inside The Matrix Now..."

ORIGINAL LINK

Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,

Our politicians and media are not going to allow us to see Russia, and any incidents the country can be linked to, in any other way than black and white, in which we are the good party and they are the black, evil and guilty ones. So we’ll have to do that ourselves.

More than enough has been said about why NATO should have been dismantled when the reason for its existence, the Soviet Union, was dissolved, but nobody listened and NATO has kept expanding eastward and demanding more money, more members, more weapons.

NATO demands an enemy, and their chosen enemy is Russia. This has nothing to do with anything Russia has done or is doing at the moment. We can only hope that people are willing to accept that simple fact. And not passively go along with the flow of badmouthing and smear that decides what our picture of the country is.

Russia ‘invaded’ Crimea? Russia ‘downed’ MH17? Russia sent two hapless and inept blokes to kill the Skripals? Russia launched an unprovoked attack on three Ukrainian vessels in the Sea of Azov? Russia colluded with the Trump campaign against Hillary Clinton? And collaborated with Julian Assange to make that happen?

What all these allegations have in common is that there is no evidence any of them are true.

Oh, and that nobody’s really trying to prove them anymore. Because you’ve already accepted them as gospel.

90% or so of Crimeans voted to be part of Russia, after the west had tried their hand at regime change in Kiev, with John McCain and Victoria Nuland opening the gates for various neo-nazi groups to enter government.

The MH17 investigation is led by the Netherlands, the main victim. As I told Jim Kunstler in our recent podcast, you try and find a detective story where the main victim leads the investigation. Aided by Ukraine, one of the suspects, but not Russia, the designated suspect from the get-go. We’re over 4.5 years later and there is no proof -not that that keeps anyone from assigning blame.

The Skripals were allegedly attacked with the most deadly nerve gas ever, and allegedly survived. They simply haven’t been heard from anymore. There are images of two alleged Russian spies who went out of their way to be filmed and photographed in Salisbury, but their ineptitude doesn’t rhyme with Russian secret service in any way, shape or form. The west tries to make it sound like Comedy Capers, and that just gives the west away.

As for the ‘attacks’ the other day, the Guardian of all outlets explains: “Since the completion of the bridge over the Kerch strait, Moscow has demanded that Ukrainian ships not only give notice of their intention to transit the strait but request permission, a change that Kiev has rejected. According to western diplomats, the dispatch of the three ships was intended to assert freedom of navigation..”

Sure, you can claim that Russia has no right to ask Ukraine to ask for permission to the Sea of Azov, but then Kiev should have protested that demand, not send three armed vessels to ignore the demand and sail through anyway. That is called provocation.

And Ukraine provoking Russia is a bad idea. Unless you’re NATO, and you want Ukraine as a member. And unless you’re the chocolate billionaire who took over the government and now has an approval rating in the single digits with elections coming up in March. Question: how much chocolate do Ukrainians eat?

For Ukraine to enter NATO would be the most flagrant violation against the deal the west made with Gorbachev just prior to the dissolution of the Soviet union to date. And there have been plenty such violations in the past almost 30 years; little wonder that Moscow draws a line.

It’s just that nobody in the west is aware there is such a line. The media have helped politicians, NATO and arms manufacturers in painting a picture of Russia as the evil bogeymen in the east, and there is no counterweight to that picture anywhere in what people read and watch. It doesn’t matter whether the ‘news’ is accurate, because journalists don’t do their jobs to go out and check the facts.

As for the Muller’s unending investigation into Russian collusion with the Trump campaign, we know for a fact that there’s no evidence of any such thing, since Mueller would have been forced to go public with it because it’s such a serious issue; you can’t let treason lie for months or years. And sure, Mueller today fingered Manafort for lying, but that has nothing to do with collusion.

As for Mueller’s Julian Assange allegations, he should be ashamed of himself for accusing someone he knows is barred from defending himself. Mueller can say anything he likes about Assange, and does, and it has no value, Julian has been silenced to an extent that shames us all, but Mueller first.

The problem with Robert Mueller when he uses such tactics is that he loses his credibility, or rather, what he had left after solemnly testifying that Iraq possessed WMD when he was FBI head. The man is incessantly portrayed as America’s straightest arrow, but that just makes you lament the state the country is in. The odds that Trump is the straightest arrow are much higher, and even the Donald himself wouldn’t buy into that one.

As we’re worried about fake news and Facebook and election meddling and what have you, we need to be clear on what that really is. Which is, the worst and most fake news you see every single day comes from those sources that you trust most. This is not just deliberate, it’s highly profitable too. As long as you are gullible enough to keep buying into it. So far, you are.

Whenever you read anything at all about Trump, Russia/Putin and Assange in the major news outlets, chances that it is not objective or properly due diligence researched are far higher than that it is. You have to start out with the idea that what you’re about to read or watch is not true, for the simple reason that the vast majority of it is not; it only exists to serve an agenda and a narrative.

And because reporting what is not accurate makes ‘news sources’ much more money than reporting the truth.

In the meantime, though, NATO, US/UK/EU intelligence and the military-industrial complex may be happy, but you should not be. Because you’ve landed somewhere in the middle between Orwell, Huxley and the Matrix. And that’s not going to end up doing you any good. Let alone your kids.

Shake it off, guys. You’re sinking. Information dissemination has become like walking into quicksand. Walking into a pre-processed narrative that deprives you of your ability to think. Not something we should wish upon anyone. But take this from me: you’re already in it, and you need to get out.

It’s no longer about trying not to get in, those days are long gone. You’re already there.



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"Totally False And Deliberately Libelous": Manafort Plans To Explore "All Legal Options" Against The Guardian

ORIGINAL LINK

Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort has responded to a "totally false and deliberately libelous" report in The Guardian that he had several meetings with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. 

In a Tuesday afternoon statement through a spokesman, Manafort said: 

"This story is totally false and deliberately libelous. I have never met Julian Assange or anyone connected to him. I have never been contacted by anyone connected to Wikileaks, either directly or indirectly. I have never reached out to Assange or Wikileaks on any matter. We are considering all legal options against the Guardian who proceeded with this story even after being notified by my representatives that it was false."

The Guardian reported on Tuesday - based on unnamed sources - that Manafort held secret talks with Julian Assange inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, right around the time he joined Trump's campaign. 

Sources have said Manafort went to see Assange in 2013, 2015 and in spring 2016 – during the period when he was made a key figure in Trump’s push for the White House.

It is unclear why Manafort wanted to see Assange and what was discussed. But the last meeting is likely to come under scrutiny and could interest Robert Mueller, the special prosecutor who is investigating alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

A well-placed source has told the Guardian that Manafort went to see Assange around March 2016. Months later WikiLeaks released a stash of Democratic emails stolen by Russian intelligence officers. -The Guardian

The Guardian, meanwhile, altered the story after publication with a massive hedge: 

The Guardian has weakened some of the language in their Manafort/Assange story: https://t.co/QbgnvpHNiX pic.twitter.com/bgm8fvQGxF

— Betsy Woodruff (@woodruffbets) November 27, 2018

And as Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept points out, if the story is true - there would be ample video evidence of Manafort's visits.

This leads to one indisputable fact: if Paul Manafort (or, for that matter, Roger Stone), visited Assange at the Embassy, there would be ample amounts of video and other photographic proof demonstrating that this happened. The Guardian provides none of that.

So why would any minimally rational, reasonable person possibly assume these anonymous claims are true rather than waiting to form a judgment once the relevant evidence is available? As President Obama’s former national security aide and current podcast host Tommy Vietor put it: “If these meetings happened, British intelligence would almost certainly have video of him entering and exiting,” adding: “seems dubious.” -The Intercept

The Guardian also ignores the fact that every guest visiting Assange "is logged in through a very intricate security system," notes Greenwald. 

While admitting that Manafort was never logged in to the embassy, the Guardian waves this glaring hole away with barely any discussion or attempt to explain it: “Visitors normally register with embassy security guards and show their passports. Sources in Ecuador, however, say Manafort was not logged.” -The Intercept

Why, as Greenwald asks, would Manafort visit three times but never be logged in? Why would leftist Rafael Correa allow Manafort - a life-long GOP operative, to enter the embassy undocumented? 

Greenwald further points out that The Guardian's omission is "especially inexcusable" since The Guardian itself "obtained the Embassy's visitors logs in May," and made no mention of Manafort's visits at the time - which would have been bombshell news. 



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Monday, November 26, 2018

Why We Hate the Media, Chapter 12,186 | Power Line

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/11/why-we-hate-the-media-chapter-12-186.php

General Motors And General Electric Were Both Victimized By The Same Ponzi Scheme, And They Are Both Telling Us The U.S. Economy Is In HUGE Trouble

ORIGINAL LINK

America’s twin economic “generals” are both in very deep trouble. General Electric was founded in 1892, and it was once one of the most powerful corporations on the entire planet. But now it is drowning in so much debt that it may be forced into bankruptcy. General Motors was founded in 1908, and at one time it was the largest automaker that the world had ever seen. But now it is closing a bunch of factories and laying off approximately 14,000 workers as it anticipates disappointing sales and a slowing economy. If the U.S. economy really was “booming”, both of these companies would probably be thriving. But as you will see below, both of them have been victimized by the exact same Ponzi scheme, and both firms are sending us very clear signals that the U.S. economy is heading for troubled waters.

Whenever you hear the word “restructuring”, that is always a sign that things are not going well for a company.

And it turns out that GM’s “restructuring” is actually going to cost the firm 3.8 billion dollars

General Motors said Monday it plans to effectively halt production at a number of plants in the U.S. and Canada next year and cut more than 14,000 jobs in a massive restructuring that will cost up to $3.8 billion.

Of course GM doesn’t have 3.8 billion dollars just lying around, and so they are actually going to have to borrow money in order to close these plants and lay off these workers.

Needless to say, President Trump is not very happy with General Motors right now…

Trump said he spoke Monday with GM’s CEO, Mary Barra, and ‘I told them, “you’re playing around with the wrong person”.’

He told reporters as he left the White House for a pair of political rallies in Mississippi that the United States ‘has done a lot for General Motors. They better get back to Ohio, and soon.’

There is no way that Mary Barra should have ever been made CEO of General Motors, and now the entire world is getting to see why.

In addition to the elimination of about 6,000 factory jobs, GM will also be cutting about 8,000 “white collar jobs”

In addition to the production cuts, GM said it will reduce its North American white-collar workforce by about 8,000. The deadline passed last week on a voluntary buyout for those workers, and GM spokesman Pat Morrissey told the Free Press that only 2,250 employees have asked to take the offer, meaning as many as 5,750 workers could be cut if the company keeps to its announced total. Analysts told the Free Press to expect involuntary cuts in January.

So why is General Motors doing this?

After all, if the U.S. economy really is “booming” that should mean increased sales for all of the major automakers in the coming years, right?

Unfortunately, the truth is that hard times are already here for automakers. In fact, Bob Lutz told CNBC that “we’ve got a demand problem on cars”…

Former GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz said the automaker historically would have raised sales incentives to try to sell more cars before resorting to plant closures.

“Nowadays GM looks at the hard reality, says we’ve got a demand problem on cars, what are we going to do about it. We have to shut some facilities and move production to truck plants,” Lutz said on CNBC’s “Halftime Report. ” “So I think what we are seeing is a fast-acting and reality-oriented GM management.”

In other words, sales are not good and so now is the time to shut down factories.

Of course GM is not the only one that is shutting down facilities and laying off workers. If you doubt this, please see my previous article entitled “U.S. Job Losses Accelerate: Here Are 10 Big Companies That Are Cutting Jobs Or Laying Off Workers”.

But if General Motors had been much wiser with their money, they wouldn’t have had to initiate a “restructuring” so quickly.

Over the past four years, General Motors spent a staggering 13.9 billion dollars on stock buybacks.

GM executives were able to prop up the stock price for a while, but at this point the stock is down about 10 percent from where it was four years ago. The following comes from Wolf Richter

During this four-year period in which GM blew, wasted, and annihilated nearly $14 billion on share buybacks, the price of its shares, including today’s 5.5% surge – getting rid of workers is always good news for shares – fell 10%.

These stock buybacks are a massive Ponzi scheme, and everyone that was involved in blowing such a giant mountain of cash at GM should be fired.

And now thousands of hard working Americans are going to lose their jobs, but it didn’t have to happen.

General Electric has also been victimized by the exact same Ponzi scheme, and at this point they are in a struggle for survival which they are probably going to lose.

On Monday the stock slid another couple of percent, and so far this year it is down a total of 58 percent

Not a day passes lately without GE stock getting hit by some unexpected development, and today was no exception.

GE shares, which are down 58% YTD, dropped over 2% on Monday, after sliding as much as 4.1% earlier in the session and approaching its financial crisis low of $6.66, following a research report by Gordon Haskett analyst John Inch which prompted fresh questions about the treatment of goodwill at GE Capital.

In the end, GE is probably heading for total collapse.

But if GE had not blown 40 billion dollars on stock buybacks in recent years, they would be in far, far better shape. The following comes from the Marketwatch article that I quoted the other day…

GE was one of Wall Street’s major share buyback operators between 2015 and 2017; it repurchased $40 billion of shares at prices between $20 and $32. The share price is now $8.60, so the company has liquidated between $23 billion and $29 billion of its shareholders’ money on this utterly futile activity alone. Since the highest net income recorded by the company during those years was $8.8 billion in 2016, with 2015 and 2017 recording a loss, it has managed to lose more on its share repurchases during those three years than it made in operations, by a substantial margin.

Even more important, GE has now left itself with minus $48 billion in tangible net worth at Sept. 30, with actual genuine tangible debt of close to $100 billion. As the new CEO Larry Culp told CNBC last Monday: “We have no higher priority right now than bringing those leverage levels down.”

Combined, General Electric and General Motors have blown more than 53 billion dollars on stock buybacks, and now both companies are in huge trouble.

The executives that gutted the finances of both firms by engaging in these sorts of Ponzi tactics should all be fired and should never be hired by anyone else in the corporate world.

For years, big corporations have been borrowing massive amounts of money to fund reckless stock buybacks, and that has helped to fuel an amazing bull market run.

But now the game is imploding, and the unraveling of this massive Ponzi scheme is not going to be pretty.

About the author: 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 General Motors And General Electric Were Both Victimized By The Same Ponzi Scheme, And They Are Both Telling Us The U.S. Economy Is In HUGE Trouble appeared first on The Most Important News.



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