Why Is The Media Warning A Recession Is Expected “By The End Of 2020” That Will Be “Worse Than The Great Depression”?

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The mood of the mainstream media is really starting to shift dramatically.  At one time they seemed determined to convince all of us that happy days were here again for the U.S. economy, but now some mainstream news outlets are openly warning that the next recession will be “worse than the Great Depression”.  Do they really believe that this is true, or is there some other purpose behind their bold headlines?  Of course it isn’t exactly difficult to predict that another recession is coming, because the U.S. economy has experienced recession after recession ever since the Federal Reserve was first established in 1913.  But the phrase “worse than the Great Depression” implies that what we will soon be facing will be the worst economic downturn in all of U.S. history.  That is a very bold statement to make, and it should not be done lightly.

That is why I have been absolutely astounded by some of the mainstream headlines that I have been seeing lately.  For example, the following comes from a New York Post article entitled “Next crash will be ‘worse than the Great Depression’: experts”…

“We think the major economies are on the cusp of this turning into the worst recession we have seen in 10 years,” said Murray Gunn, head of global research at Elliott Wave International.

And in a note, he added: “Should the [US] economy start to shrink, and our analysis suggests that it will, the high nominal levels of debt will instantly become a very big issue.”

And here is an excerpt from an article posted on MSN entitled “Experts warn the next recession will be ‘worse than the Great Depression’ and predict it will hit US within two years as $247 trillion global debt outdoes 2008”…

The next recession could put the 2008 financial crash to shame if two experts’ predictions about the worldwide debt of $247 trillion are correct.

Expected to hit the United States within the next two years, the impact has been compared to the severe worldwide economic crisis which started 1929 and last until 1939.

It is particularly interesting that the author of the last article chose to use the phrase “within the next two years”.

That strongly implies that the U.S. economy will have plunged into the next recession before the next presidential election takes place.

Other mainstream outlets are using similar language.  For example, the following comes from a Bloomberg article entitled “Two-thirds of U.S. business economists see recession by end of 2020”…

Two-thirds of business economists in the U.S. expect a recession to begin by the end of 2020, while a plurality of respondents say trade policy is the greatest risk to the expansion, according to a new survey.

About 10 percent see the next contraction starting in 2019, 56 percent say 2020 and 33 percent said 2021 or later, according to the Aug. 28-Sept. 17 poll of 51 forecasters issued by the National Association for Business Economics on Monday.

Those are stunning numbers.

If they are correct, and I have no reason to doubt them, that means that 66 percent of mainstream economists believe that the next recession will strike in either 2019 or 2020.

Of course those that follow my work on a regular basis already know that there are a multitude of signs that indicate that the U.S. economy is already slowing down.

I wanted to share another one of those signs with you today.  For years, the real estate market in Manhattan was red hot, but now we just witnessed “the fourth straight quarter of double-digit declines”…

Total real estate sales in Manhattan fell 11 percent in the third quarter compared with a year ago, marking the fourth straight quarter of double-digit declines, according to new data from Douglas Elliman Real Estate and Miller Samuel Real Estate Appraisers & Consultants. It was also the first time since the financial crisis that resales of existing apartments fell for four straight quarters.

Prices fell, inventory jumped and discounts were higher and more common. Real estate brokers say the Manhattan real estate market is suffering from an oversupply of luxury units, a decline in foreign buyers and changes in the tax law that make it more expensive to own property in high-tax states.

At this point, the housing market in New York City has become “a buyer’s market”, and there are no signs that things are going to turn around any time soon…

“Offers 20 percent and 25 percent below asking prices began to flow in, a phenomenon last seen in 2009,” wrote Warburg Realty founder and CEO Frederick W. Peters in the report, which surveys real estate conditions around the city.

Warburg’s report dovetails with separate data showing a definitive cooling in New York’s housing market. The number of homes for sale in the city recently hit a record, according to StreetEasy data, amid fewer sales transactions. Meanwhile, September’s report from real estate firm MNS showed Manhattan apartment rental prices — the most expensive in the city — on the decline.

Of course this is not just happening in New York City.  Home sellers all over the nation are slashing their prices at the fastest rate that we have seen in at least eight years.

In order for people to be able to afford to buy expensive homes, they need good jobs, and more good jobs just keep getting shipped out of the country.

For example, Verizon just announced that they will be shipping thousands of information technology jobs to India…

Earlier this week, Verizon confirmed that it offered a voluntary severance package (VSP) to about 44,000 employees and that it will transfer over 2,500 IT staff – some rumors suggest the figure to be closer to 5,000 employees – to India-based Infosys as part of a $700 million outsourcing deal.

The layoffs and transfers will impact more than 30% of Verizon’s 153,100-employee workforce – as of the end of June – and are part of a 4-year plan to save the largest U.S. wireless carrier $10 billion by 2021.

If you get angry when you read such stories, that is good, because they should make you angry.

The middle class in America is being systematically eviscerated, and the U.S. economy is steadily being hollowed out.

And now the mainstream media is boldly pronouncing that the next recession will arrive within the next two years, and many are suggesting that it will be even more painful than the last one…

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 Last Days Warrior Summit is the premier online event of 2018 for Christians, Conservatives and Patriots.  It is a premium-members only international event that will empower and equip you with the knowledge and tools that you need as global events begin to escalate dramatically.  The speaker list includes Michael Snyder, Mike Adams, Dave Daubenmire, Ray Gano, Dr. Daniel Daves, Gary Kah, Justus Knight, Doug Krieger, Lyn Leahz, Laura Maxwell and many more. Full summit access will begin on October 25th, and if you would like to register for this unprecedented event you can do so right here.

The post Why Is The Media Warning A Recession Is Expected “By The End Of 2020” That Will Be “Worse Than The Great Depression”? appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

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Pope Francis: Divisive Devil Responsible For Catholic Pedophile Epidemic

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Pope Francis - who stands accused of covering up widespread sexual abuse within the Catholic Church, says that the devil is trying to divide and attack the organization. So apparently all of the child rape isn't the priests' fault, since the devil apparently made them do it.

"(The Church must be) saved from the attacks of the malign one, the great accuser and at the same time be made ever more aware of its guilt, its mistakes, and abuses committed in the present and the past," said Francis in a September 29 message. 

Francis, who has made clear that he believes the devil to be real, suggested that Catholics worldwide pray every day in the month of October to stave off the Devil and his pedophile-encouraging ways. 

"We should not think of the devil as a myth, a representation, a symbol, a figure of speech or an idea. This mistake would lead us to let down our guard, to grow careless and end up more vulnerable." 

"I renew the invitation to everyone to pray the Rosary every day of the month of October ending it with the antiphon 'Under Your protection' and the prayer to St. Michael the Archangel, to repel the attacks of the devil who wants to divide the Church," said Francis, who described the devil as "the great accuser." 

The prayer reads:

"St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, O Prince of heavenly hosts, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan, and all evil spirits, who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls."

Perhaps the power of 1.2 billion praying Catholics October will be enough to overcome the Devil's influence over the preying priests. 

Francis' description of Satan as "the great accuser" has rubbed one of the pope's adversaries the wrong way - Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the Vatican's former ambassador to Washington D.C. 

Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, former Apostolic Nuncio to United States.

In an 11-page statement published on Aug. 26, Viganò launched an unprecedented broadside by a Church insider against the pope and a long list of Vatican and U.S. Church officials.

He accused Francis of knowing about sexual misconduct by a former U.S. cardinal with male adult seminarians but not doing anything about it.

Viganò, concluding that his former boss had singled him out as the devil in disguise, complained in his next statement that Francis “compared me to the great accuser, Satan, who sows scandal and division in the Church, though without ever uttering my name”. -Reuters

Archbishop Viganò then said in his written statement that Pope Francis “continued to cover” for McCarrick and not only did he “not take into account the sanctions that Pope Benedict had imposed on him” but also made McCarrick “his trusted counselor.”  Vigano said that the former archbishop of Washington advised the Pope to appoint a number of bishops in the United States, including Cardinals Blase Cupich of Chicago and Joseph Tobin of Newark.

CBS News spoke by telephone to Viganò, who confirmed he wrote the statement and said he was speaking out now "to combat the grave situation in the church, to protect the church and also to stop future abuse." He told CBS News producer Anna Matranga that he had no agenda and was stating facts.

Viganò, who retired in 2016 at age 75, described an exchange with Francis on June 23, 2013, shortly after he became pope, about Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, D.C., who resigned last month over claims he sexually abused seminary students and an altar boy.

Viganò writes that he told Francis about the allegations: "Holy Father, I don't know if you know Cardinal McCarrick, but if you ask the Congregation for Bishops there is a dossier this thick about him. He corrupted generations of seminarians and priests and Pope Benedict ordered him to withdraw to a life of prayer and penance."

Viganò then said that the pope did not respond to the statement, and McCarrick continued in his role as a public figure for the church.

"Pope Francis has repeatedly asked for total transparency in the Church. He must honestly state when he first learned about the crimes committed by McCarrick, who abused his authority with seminarians and priests. In any case, the Pope learned about it from me on June 23, 2013 and continued to cover him."

On Sunday, a top Vatican official attacked Viganò in an open letter, accusing him of mountingh a "political frame job devoid of real foundation," while refuting the accusations against Pope Francis point by point. 

Francis, meanwhile, has refused to confirm or deny Viganò's accusations. 

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Netflix Is Responsible For 15% Of Global Internet Traffic

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A new report by Sandvine has revealed the web applications responsible for the world's most downstream traffic...

You will find more infographics at Statista

Underlining the popularity of streaming services, Statista's Martin Armstrong points out that Netflix accounts for the most megabytes with 15 percent.

Youtube isn't too far behind with 11.4 percent.

Further back but still with a significant share, Amazon Prime Video is responsible for 3.9 percent.

Interestingly, the biggest streamers vary notably across geographic region...

The question is - where does Porn fit into all this?

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1-in-4 military sex-assault claims false

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Historically, experts have assumed around 8 percent of rape or sexual assault allegations are false.

But a new compilation of statistics based on actual cases in the U.S. military found as many as 26 percent of allegations are false.

The issue has been in the headlines in recent weeks because of Christine Ford’s claim that now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh assaulted her when both were in their high school 36 years ago.

In a 50-48 vote to confirm Kavanaugh, only one Democrat supported him.

“We are very fortunate that the waves of bizarre accusations against Brett Kavanaugh did not kill his nomination to the Supreme Court,” said Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness. “But the verbal assault could have worked to achieve that result.”

Her organization has looked at actual numbers of reported military sexual assault cases over recent years.

The military, which was ordered by Barack Obama to address the problem of sexual assault, notes in its 2017 report two categories of claims, those “Insufficient Evidence of Any Offense to Prosecute” and “Allegations unfounded by Command/Legal Review.”

The report explains the categories do not include instances in which the victim declined to participate in a prosecution or the statute of limitations had expired.

The total in those two categories, among all military reports of sexual assault, was 13 percent in 2009, peaking at 26 percent in 2016. In 2017, the claims were down slightly to 23 percent.

“When the allegations in an unrestricted report are investigated, one possible outcome is that the evidence discovered by the investigators demonstrates that the accused person did not commit the offense,” the report says.

“Another possible outcome is that evidence shows that a crime did not occur. When either of these situations occurs, the allegations” are “determined to be unfounded.”

“This information is important because it is not anecdotal; it is extracted from official DoD reports focusing on the behavior of young men and women who live under rules meant to encourage personal discipline,” Donnelly told WND.

A Washington Times report by Rowan Scarborough on the topic explained other studies have found up to 40 percent of sexual assault charges are false.

“There is no shortage of politicians, victims’ advocates and news articles claiming that the nationwide false report for rape and sexual assault is almost nonexistent, presenting a figure of around 2 percent,” Brent Turvey, a criminologist, told the Times.

“This figure is not only inaccurate, but also it has no basis in reality. Reporting it publicly as a valid frequency rate with any empirical basis is either scientifically negligent or fraudulent.”

Donnelly told the Times, “It appears that die-hard opponents of Kavanaugh have invented a narrative to imply that false accusations hardly ever happen.

“You see where they are going with this,” she continued. “Any man who doubts Ford is hostile to women experiencing abuse, who make accusations truthfully 90 to 98 percent of the time. This is why hard data from the Pentagon, which shows rates of false accusations averaging 18 percent in annual reports since 2009, is important.”

There were three women who accused Kavanaugh. Claims by Ford and Deborah Ramirez were investigated, but purported witnesses didn’t back their stories.

“A third charge, Julie Swetnick’s accusation of gang rape, was deemed not credible by Republicans and wasn’t on the FBI interview list,” the Times said.

The new military emphasis on tracking sex crimes comes from an order from Obama.

“The statistics on unfounded cases are contained in an appendix of 3,567 cases last year. Of those, 729 cases were dropped because of ‘insufficient evidence’ that a crime was committed,” the Times reported.

“Another 79 were deemed ‘unfounded’ at the command/legal review level. The total — 808 — represents 23 percent of all cases that year.”

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EXPOSED: MAN HANDING OUT CASH TO KAVANAUGH PROTESTERS IDENTIFIED [VIDEO]

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There has been a man with a bag of cash paying protesters of Brett Kavanaugh on Capitol Hill. He has now been identified, and you will believe who he works for. His name is Vinay Krishnan, he is a social justice lawyer, who works at the Center for Popular Democracy. You’ll never guess who funds that group. It’s George Soros! Surprised? I know I’m not. Krishnan is a professional protester, who obviously hires professional protesters. He was at the Kavanaugh hearings at least on Tuesday and Wednesday, handing out cold hard cash for those who were willing to disrupt the hearings.

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Solomon: DOJ "Smoking Gun" Redactions Due To National Embarrassment, Not "National Security"

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The Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI have repeatedly pointed to concerns over national security in their refusals to declassify evidence in the Russia investigation. It is now clear, however, that the agencies are simply covering up embarrassing facts, according to The Hill's John Solomon. 

How do we know this? 

A previously minor footnote on Page 57, Chapter 3 of the House Intelligence Committee report on Russian interference notes that FBI general counsel James Baker met with an unnamed person in September 2016 who provided information on the Russia case, including email hacking and a possible link to the Trump campaign. 

And who was this person whose information, if released, would threaten national security? 

A top attorney for Perkins Coie, the Democratic National Committee's private law firm. 

It was the same DNC, along with Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, that funded the unverified, salacious dossier by a British intel operative, Christopher Steele, that became a central piece of evidence used to justify the FBI surveillance of the Trump campaign in the final days of the election.

And it was the same law firm that made the payments for the dossier research so those could be disguised in campaign-spending reports to avoid the disclosure of the actual beneficiaries of the research, which were Mrs. Clinton and the DNC.

And it was, in turns out, the same meeting that was so heavily censored by the intel agencies from Footnote 43 in the House report – treated, in other words, as some big national-security secret. -The Hill

So the "big scary national security secret" was nothing more than a meeting between the FBI's former top attorney and a DNC attorney to discuss information the Committee had in the Russia investigation. 

Last week Baker was interviewed by lawmakers on Capitol Hill. While it was a closed-door hearing, much of Baker's testimony has leaked because he was not interviewed in a SCIF - a "sensitive compartmented information facility" which would typically be used if, say, a witness might convey an actual threat to national security. As Solomon reports, here was no claim of classification over any of the information he provided to congress that day. 

"So we can now say with some authority that the earlier redaction in Footnote 43 was done in the name of a national-security concern that did not exist," Solomon concludes. 

The DOJ similarly tried to conceal embarrassing information contained within text messages between FBI "lovebirds" Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, which had nothing to do with national security. 

Which raises the question of what the real reason was that it was hidden from public view. I think the answer can be found in an earlier set of documents that DOJ and FBI fought hard to keep secret – the text messages of those FBI love-birds Pete Strzok and Lisa Page. What we learned from their messages was that the investigation was a whole lot more about politics and and a whole lot less about verified intelligence.

There is now a concrete storyline backed by irrefutable evidence: The FBI allowed itself to take political opposition research created by one party to defeat another in an election, treated it like actionable intelligence, presented it to the court as substantiated, and then used it to justify spying on an adviser for the campaign of that party's duly chosen nominee for president in the final days of a presidential election. -The Hill

Furthermore, when the FBI couldn't prove any collusion between Trump and the Kremlin, unverified claims were leaked to the media to keep the Russia "witch hunt" rolling. 

And that, is extremely embarrassing to say the least - not to mention extremely illegal. 

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Johnstone: Forgiveness Is Overrated

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Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

Journalist David Sirota has just published an excellent op-ed titled “America’s new aristocracy lives in an accountability-free zone”, which begins with the observation that “Enron executives were among the last politically connected criminals to face any serious consequences for institutionalized fraud.” Sirota goes on to remind readers how there was never any attempt by either mainstream political party to bring accountability to anyone responsible for monstrous offenses ranging from the disastrous invasion of Iraq to the ecocidal manipulations of fossil fuel plutocrats to the Wall Street plundering which led to the 2008 global financial crisis.

Sirota’s argument is solid: there is an aristocratic class which has successfully neutered all the institutional mechanisms which were meant to protect the powerless from the powerful. The government is bought and owned by the plutocrats and so is the media, as the continued forgiveness of unforgivable transgressions which those institutions have been bestowing upon the aristocracy clearly reflects. This means that the only thing left protecting the populace from the powerful is the populace itself.

My new column: Accountability is for the little people, immunity is for the ruling class — Kavanugh’s nomination is the culmination of a bipartisan political movement whose goal is to create an accountability-free zone for America’s aristocracy https://t.co/U4KzQ6HYqc

— David Sirota (@davidsirota) October 5, 2018

A couple of years back I read a Shaun King article titled “Stop asking black victims of white violence if they forgive their victimizers”, about a bizarre trend in which the black survivors of police shootings and racially motivated terrorism were consistently finding themselves barraged with questions about forgiveness. King wrote about how “before her son, Philando, had even been buried, his body riddled with bullets from a Minnesota police officer, Valerie Castile was asked live on CNN if she forgave the man who shot him,” which is a truly demented thing to ask someone in such a situation. Why would a newscaster bring up forgiveness when a horrific injustice has just been inflicted and no measures of any kind have even been taken to rectify it?

In response to the latest wave of sex scandals in the Roman Catholic Church, “masses of forgiveness” were held in August as a way to help the faithful in “healing” their distrust of the institution which has upheld itself as the highest moral authority in the world for two thousand years. “I beg forgiveness for these sins and for the scandal and betrayal felt by so many others in God’s family,” said Pope Francis at a Marian shrine in Ireland in response to the degradation and abuse inflicted upon the people of that nation by trusted Church officials.

The concept of forgiveness is a recurring theme in any abusive relationship, and necessarily so, because without extensive value being placed upon that concept there wouldn’t be a relationship. You wouldn’t have a battered wife, you’d have a story about how a woman’s boyfriend hit her one time and she grabbed all her stuff and split. You wouldn’t have a brainwashed and exploited cult member, you’d have a story about how someone met a group of people and left when things got weird. You wouldn’t have a major world religion consistently embroiled in horrifying scandals, you’d have people dismissing that religion and placing their energy and attention elsewhere. You wouldn’t have a society that constantly allows itself to be manipulated into consenting to abuse and exploitation by an aristocratic class, you’d have a people’s uprising in which the vastly outnumbered elites are shrugged off and replaced with a system which benefits humanity.

"They were told their relatives didn’t want them, or they were permanently separated from their siblings. They were sexually abused. They were mutilated."
"We Saw Nuns Kill Children: The Ghosts of St. Joseph’s Catholic Orphanage", by @ChrisKenneally https://t.co/cszUOlTpAk

— Abhinav Agarwal (@AbhinavAgarwal) August 28, 2018

Forgiveness is overrated. There are only two types of people who consistently promulgate the importance of forgiveness: abusers and their codependents. The abuse can range from pedophilia and battery to war and ecocide, and the codependency can range from a wife saying she fell down the stairs again to a newscaster demanding to know when the mother of a son just gunned down by police will forgive his murderer, but the formula remains the same in each instance.

Anyone who goes around around telling everyone else how important it is to forgive is either an abuser or one of their brainwashed Stockholm syndrome victims. Forgiveness is something you do for yourself, for your own benefit, when you are ready and only for freeing yourself from energetic entanglements. Those who have truly learned the value of authentic forgiveness don’t run around telling other people to forgive those who have wronged them, because they understand that you don’t need anyone else’s help or permission to forgive somebody, and you don’t even need anyone to change necessarily. If you really want to forgive someone so that you can move on and stop thinking about it, you can do so as long as they’re not doing the bad thing to you anymore. They don’t have to repent or admit to their wrongdoing or whatever; you can forgive them for being the thing they are just like you can forgive a man-eating bear for being a man-eating bear. If it would really benefit your inner peace and undo some mental chatter, you can zoom out and see that a human being’s behavior is patterned like the veins in a leaf, and that patterning rarely changes. You unknowingly walked into that person’s path as innocently as if you’d accidentally walked in front of a bus. Forgiving someone can just be letting go of the idea that they will change, or that they would’ve done anything different or would do anything different given the chance.

Once you’ve seen that though, you don’t let them back in your life, and you certainly don’t let them go on running the world. Man-eating bear be man-eating bear, man. You don’t let a man-eating bear hang around long enough to eat another one of your children, and you don’t let a neocon hang around long enough to destroy another middle-eastern country. You know what they do, you’ve seen what they are, and you don’t let them do it anymore. Being lulled into a state of inertia with hypnotic entreaties about forgiveness and how we’re all kinda fucked up and we all make mistakes and we’re all the same is just another psychologically abusive manipulation performed by the abusers and their codependents. Some people in the highest echelons of power right now have facilitated the most extraordinary barbaric crimes on a scale that even the worst serial killer in his most horrifying fantasies could barely bring himself to imagine. Our greatest mistake as a species right now is forgiving them.

Forgiveness is a key foundational element in most abusive relationships. 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.

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) August 27, 2018

One major way that sociopaths differ from normal people is that they don’t think about things in terms of feeling bad or feeling good about doing something, they just think about the consequences. If you don’t feel guilt, you don’t worry about feeling guilty. It literally doesn’t factor into your decision-making process. “Oh, I won’t do that again because I sure do feel bad about that million people I helped kill” is not a thought that ever goes through their head. If the consequences of Iraq were a buttload of profit and a regular spot on CNN with absolutely no downside whatsoever, no uncomfortable trip to the Hague, no endless prison sentence, no stripping of wealth, status and power, then of course they want to do it again and again and again and again and again. They will do it until they are stopped.

So America’s new aristocracy must be stopped, and the only way they can be stopped is to be held to account, right here, on earth, as soon as humanly possible. Allowing them to go on for even one more day is acknowledging that there are no consequences for evil, and when there are no consequences for evil, evil will reign.

And that’s where we are right now. Evil reigns, but it’s a simple matter of restoring justice to the earth by the people taking their power back and standing in judgement of these pricks and making sure they do not do this again. Passing judgement on someone is an idea that makes good people feel uneasy, and that’s deliberate. 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? A little too convenient. Sold to us by the same people who rape children and sit on a throne of stolen riches.

I don’t buy it anymore, and neither should you.

*  *  *

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, checking out mypodcast, 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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‘F***. YOU. ALL. TO. HELL’: Google Lead Designer Attacks GOP, Conservatives, Christians Over Kavanaugh Vote

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Does big tech have a political bias problem? Companies like Facebook and Google have sworn up and down that they’re apolitical … but a growing amount of evidence is raising hard questions about the corporate culture within these brands. On Saturday, one of Google’s top people single-handedly brought those questions to the surface again. After…

The post ‘F***. YOU. ALL. TO. HELL’: Google Lead Designer Attacks GOP, Conservatives, Christians Over Kavanaugh Vote appeared first on Conservative Tribune.

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Media Silent as Senate Unanimously Votes to Declassify Docs on Saudi Arabia’s Role in 9/11

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by Matt Agorist, The Free Thought Project: As dramatic scenes of Brett Kavanaugh protests and support dominated the airwaves, the United States Senate met to vote on S. Res. 610 – A resolution urging the release of information regarding the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks upon the United States. Remarkably, the passing of this resolution on 9/11 information has […]

The post Media Silent as Senate Unanimously Votes to Declassify Docs on Saudi Arabia’s Role in 9/11 appeared first on SGT Report.

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"Fess Up To Reality" - Former Google Exec Exposes Silicon Valley Hypocrisy In Scathing Essay

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After overcoming the temptation to publish under a pseudonym, former Google PR executive Jessica Powell has finally dropped her long-awaited satirical novel/memoir "The Big Disruption" last week. In the highly anticipated book - and in an accompanying personal essay published on Medium - Powell offers what may be one of the most scathing critiques of Silicon Valley from a former executive at one of its biggest and most influential companies.

Some of her claims are nothing short of shocking - like when she admitted in her essay that she quit Google last August (she was the company's top PR executive, reporting directly to CEO Sundar Pichai) not to go back to school to study creative writing, as was reported at the time, but because she "got tired" defending the company's unscupulous actions. In particular, she cited YouTube's argument to UK lawmakers that it couldn't censor all of the far-right and jihadist recruitment content posted on its platform because of the sheer volume of content - a claim that Powell said was an outright lie, per the Daily Mail.

Memorably, there were some instances where Google even paid some of the accounts that posted terrorist content.

Google has been widely criticised for allowing jihadists, far-Right extremists and other hate preachers to post content on its YouTube video platform. In some cases, it funnelled cash from advertisers to the extremists posting videos.

But the firm has repeatedly told MPs it cannot stop problem content because of the sheer volume of videos that are uploaded to YouTube.

Miss Powell was in charge of the company’s response to the criticism, reporting directly to Google’s chief executive Sundar Pichai.

Her decision to quit the lucrative role in August last year surprised many in the industry. At the time, Miss Powell claimed she was leaving to go back to university to study creative writing.

However, in her essay, published for free on the Medium website, she admitted she needed to ‘take a break from the issues that I got tired of defending at parties’.

She said: ‘On the surface, things seemed really important and exciting. We were doing big things! Bringing the internet to the developing world! But also, on some level, it all felt a bit off, like when you go on vacation and find yourself wondering when it’s going to feel like the Instagram pics other people have posted.’

While Silicon Valley insiders probably think they're among the most noble people on the planet as they fight to expand Internet access in the developing world and support other similarly "noble" causes, Powell argues that there's a certain cognitive dissonance that arises from tech industry excuses about its failures to combat election hacking and its unwillingness to be transparent about how user data is monetized.

"This is an industry that takes itself far too seriously, and its own responsibility not seriously enough."

[...]

"You can’t tell your advertisers that you can target users down to the tiniest pixel but then throw your hands up before the politicians and say your machines can’t figure out if bad actors are using your platform."

"You can’t buy up a big bookstore and then a big diaper store and a big pet supply store and, finally, a big grocery store, national newspaper, and rocket ship and then act surprised when people start wondering if maybe you’re a bit too powerful."

Powell urged Silicon Valley to "end the self-delusion" and "fess up to reality" or work toward holding itself to a higher ethical standard.

"I want Silicon Valley to end the self-delusion and either fess up to the reality we are creating, or live up to the vision we market to the world each day. Because if you’re going to tell people you’re their saviour, you better be ready to be held to a higher standard."

Of course, no Silicon Valley tell-all would be complete without details of the sexual harassment that's reportedly rampant in the valley. And Powell's essay is no exception.

Should I start with the early stage companies? Like the time I was at a startup and the founder I was working for — a guy who owned a hundred shirts in the same color and quoted Steve Jobs on a daily basis — asked me whether we should hand out dildos as company swag or consider converting our social media platform into an anonymous sex club. (We even whiteboarded it.)

Or maybe I could start with the money — all the absurd valuations with seemingly little basis in reality. Or the time a partner at a VC “jokingly” offered up my female friend, his employee, as an enticement for a founder to work with his firm.

To be sure, Powell isn't saying anything new. All of these criticisms of Silicon Valley have been lodged in the past - but mostly by outsiders. The fact that she was a senior executive working her tech - and that she walked away from the money because she became disillusioned - is almost as relevant as the details of her story.

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