Glenn Greenwald: Mainstream US Media Is Culpable for Disseminating Deceitful News on Russia

January 5, 2017 

Democracy Now! - We are joined by Glenn Greenwald, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and one of the founding editors of The Intercept. His latest article is headlined "WashPost Is Richly Rewarded for False News About Russia Threat While Public Is Deceived." In it, he writes, "Any story that bolsters the prevailing DC orthodoxy on the Russia Threat, no matter how dubious, is spread far and wide. And then, as has happened so often, when the story turns out to be false or misleading, little or nothing is done to correct the deceitful effects."

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: We're talking about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and allegations of Russian cyber-attacks. During his interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity this week, Assange was asked whether mainstream media in the US is dishonest.

JULIAN ASSANGE: It's very dishonest. "Corrupt" is interesting; it depends on your definition. If you look at what we published in the Podesta emails --

SEAN HANNITY: Wait a minute. If they're colluding with Hillary, that's not corrupt?

JULIAN ASSANGE: It's an ethical corruption.

SEAN HANNITY: They're not identifying it to their audiences. They claim that they're objective journalists.

JULIAN ASSANGE: It's ethically corrupt, corrupt by its -- "corruption" also means something in law, which is that you're taking money in exchange.

SEAN HANNITY: OK.

JULIAN ASSANGE: So I don't that --

SEAN HANNITY: Collusion.

JULIAN ASSANGE: They're colluding, yeah.

SEAN HANNITY: Because they share her political agenda. Well, why else would they collude? Or they hate Donald Trump.

JULIAN ASSANGE: I think that's an optimistic interpretation, that they share the political agenda.

SEAN HANNITY: Well, explain that.

JULIAN ASSANGE: It's more like, "You rub my back, I'll rub yours." I'll give you -- you know, I'll give you information. You'll be -- you'll come to my -- I'll invite you to my child's christening or our next big party or -- do you know what I mean?

AMY GOODMAN: That's WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Fox News. Glenn Greenwald, your latest article for The Intercept is headlined "WashPost Is Richly Rewarded for False News About Russia Threat While Public Is Deceived." So, could you comment on what Assange said and your own findings regarding mainstream media coverage of alleged Russian cyber-attacks?

GLENN GREENWALD: So let's focus on the extraordinary behavior of The Washington Post for the moment. They have produced two of the most humiliating debacles in American journalism over the last several years. And these two humiliations have taken place just within the last six weeks, both of which were about completely fictitious and fabricated claims about the threat posed by Vladimir Putin and Russia.

The first was on November 24th, when they claimed, based on a newly formed anonymous group, that there has been a very widespread, successful effort to implant Kremlin propaganda in the American discourse. And they accomplish this by giving credence to this secret list that this anonymous group of cowards had created in which they claim that a whole range of American media outlets and websites, such as the Drudge Report and other libertarian critics of Hillary Clinton on the right and long-standing left-wing critics of the Democratic Party, like Naked Capitalism and Truthout and Truthdig on the left -- they decree them to be tools of Kremlin propaganda. And The Washington Post created this huge story, that went all over the place, based upon giving credence to this list and saying that Russian propaganda had been viewed more than 200 million times in the United States. Journalists all over Twitter, throughout the American media, mindlessly spread it, aggressively endorsed it. It became a huge story. And over the course of the next two weeks, the story completely collapsed, and there's now a major editor's note at the top of the article disclaiming the key source, saying that they did not intend to in any way vouch for the validity of the findings of the source on which the entire story was based.

But even more embarrassing was this weekend, when the Post trumpeted this story on Friday night that Vladimir Putin and Russia had hacked into the electric grid of the United States through a Vermont utility, which caused Vermont officials like the governor and Senator Pat Leahy to issue statements saying Vladimir Putin is trying to endanger the safety and the welfare of Vermonters by stealing their heat in the winter. The whole story, from start to finish, turned out to be a complete fabrication. There was no invasion of the American electric grid. The malware that was found on one laptop had nothing to do with Russia. The story was completely false. And again, the American media, in this hysteria, kept spreading and endorsing it.

And in both cases, the retractions were barely noted. So you have millions of people being misled into this hysteria, into this view that Russia is this grave threat, and when the story journalistically collapses, they barely hear about it. And it happened over and over through the election, with Slate saying that a secret server had been found between Donald Trump and a Russian bank, which turned out to be completely false. The Post aired allegations that Putin had poisoned Hillary Clinton on the day that she collapsed on 9/11. And so, it's not really just dishonesty. It's the kind of behavior we saw in 2002, where American media outlets are willing to publish anything that the US government tells them to publish, to inflate and expand the threat posed by Russia, to raise fear levels to the highest possible degree. And it's an incredibly irresponsible and dangerous form of behavior that media outlets, led by The Washington Post, are engaging in.

AMY GOODMAN: And you talk about how retractions obviously don't get anything like the play of the story, that also has to do with what's tweeted by the publication, even when they retract, and what isn't, Glenn.

GLENN GREENWALD: Right. So let me just give you two examples of just the corruption that's at play here. So, when the Post unveiled their huge story about Russia fake news based on this McCarthyite list that has been proven to be a fraud, they had Marty Baron, the executive editor, the widely respected executive editor of the paper, go onto Twitter and announce this huge exposé. And predictably, it got tweeted and retweeted and shared thousands and thousands of times by all of the biggest journalists with the biggest social media followings. When the story collapsed over the next two weeks and they appended this huge editor's note, The Washington Post did nothing to bring anyone's attention to the fact that the key claims of the story have been gutted. Marty Baron refused to answer any questions over that two weeks about what the paper did, and he uttered not one syllable on Twitter or anywhere else to tell all the followers that he alerted to this story that the story had collapsed.

With the story that I just talked about over the weekend of the -- of how Putin had wanted to steal the heat from Vermonters to make them suffer in the winter, Brent Staples, who works for The New York Times editorial page, went on Twitter and said, "Our friend Putin has invaded the US electric grid." And when that story collapsed and The Washington Post retracted it, he did something even worse: He just went and quietly deleted his tweet a day later, as though it never happened, and also failed to tell his 30,000 followers that what he had just told them the day before, that caused them to run around and share with all their friends on Facebook and Twitter that this has happened, was in fact a complete fiction.

And you see this over and over and over again. And remember, these are the people who keep saying that fake news is a huge problem, that Facebook has to suppress it. And yet it's America's leading journalistic outlets that are doing more to disseminate false and deceitful stories than Macedonian teenagers by a huge amount. And when they do it and it turns out that the stories are discredited, they take very little to no steps to alert the people that they've misled about the fact that the stories were false. And it's incredibly reckless journalistically. And these are the same people pretending to be crusaders against fake news, who are themselves disseminating it more aggressively than anyone else.

Pedophiles Run the Government

Pedophiles Run the Government and No One Gives a Damn - BFP Roundtable


Published by corbettreport on October 22, 2015

SHOW NOTES AND MP3: https://www.corbettreport.com/?p=16682

Today on the BFP Roundtable James Corbett talks to Sibel Edmonds, Peter B. Collins and Wayne Madsen about the Hastert scandal and cover up, the history and context of this story, and the remarkable lack of public interest in the case.

Read more at:

Pedophiles, Perverts and Psychopaths in High Places Are Manipulating the Masses Through Mind Control

An estimated 800,000 children are reported missing every year.

Trumps Signs Order Withdrawing U.S. from TPP, a Deal That Would Have Greatly Benefitted Donors to the Obama Foundation, But Will He Renegotiate a NAFTA That Expands Protection for Corporate Interests?

Anti-TPP signs seen at the Democratic National Convention in 2016. (Photo: Reuters)

Trump signs order withdrawing U.S. from Trans-Pacific trade deal

On November 21, 2016, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump released a video laying out actions he would take on his first day in office, including withdrawing the United States from a Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. Trump also said he would issue a rule cutting government regulations, direct the Labor Department to investigate abuses of visa programs, and cancel some restrictions on energy production, including shale oil and gas and coal. [Reuters] 

January 23, 2017

Reuters - President Donald Trump signed an executive order formally withdrawing the United States from the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal on Monday, following through on a promise from his campaign last year.

In an Oval Office ceremony, Trump also signed an order imposing a federal hiring freeze and a directive banning U.S. non-governmental organizations receive federal funding from providing abortions abroad.

Trump called the TPP order a "great thing for the American worker."

Barack Obama Readies for Final TPP Push, Which Could Benefit Donors to His Foundation

April 28, 2016

International Business Times - President Barack Obama last week renewed his push for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, suggesting that it will be easier to pass the deal after the elections are over. The idea is that lawmakers will then be more insulated from political influence.

Yet Obama has his own potential incentives to push for the TPP: His presidential foundation has been relying on support from industries that could profit from the agreement.

For instance, the TPP offers potential benefits to the finance sector, including expanded access to capital and investment opportunities in emerging markets, as well as what critics say are provisions that could dilute financial regulation in the United States. The progressive advocacy group Public Citizen says the deal “would undermine bans on particularly risky financial products” and “restrict capital controls, an essential policy tool to counter destabilizing flows of speculative money.”

The same financial industry that could benefit from the TPP has forged deep ties to Obama’s foundation. The organization’s current president is J. Kevin Poorman, the CEO of investment firm PSP Capital Partners. PSP was founded by billionaire Penny Pritzker, daughter to a co-founder of Hyatt hotels, a longtime Obama ally and the current head of the U.S. Commerce Department.

Other members of the foundation’s leadership team include John Doerr of the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers; Martin Nesbitt, co-founder of the private equity firm Vistria Group; John Rogers of the financial firm Ariel Investments; and Michael Sacks, chairman and CEO of the investment management firm GCM Grosvener.  

Doerr also serves on the board of directors for Google.

In addition to helping steer the Obama Foundation, Sacks has given it somewhere between $500,000 and $1 million.

The foundation also reports that it has received somewhere between $500,000 and $1 million from Mark Gallogly, founder of the investment firm Centerbridge Partners and a former senior managing director at the Blackstone Group. The same goes for James Simons, founder of the investment management firm Renaissance Technologies LLC. Hedge fund founder David Shaw, former UBS President Robert Wolf and Tim Collins, CEO of the private equity firm Ripplewood Holdings, have each given between $250,000 and $500,000. Nicholas Aleskos of the private equity firm Madison Dearborn Partners has given up to $100,000.

Similarly, the TPP has been backed by the entertainment industry because of its stronger copyright protections. It has also been supported by producers of equipment for outdoor recreation, whose trade association said the deal’s lower tariffs represent “substantial commercial benefits for outdoor product manufacturers and retailers.”

Key figures in both of those industries are also major Obama Foundation donors: the foundation of director George Lucas recently donated between $500,000 and $1 million to the president’s foundation, and Tom Campion, the co-founder of outdoor retailer Zumiez, gave between $250,000 and $500,000.

Good government activists have been sounding the alarm about presidential library fundraising for years. In a 2013 NBC News article about the George W. Bush library, Sunlight Foundation policy counsel Daniel Schuman described library contributions as “the wild, wild West of influence.”

“Presidents often start raising money for these libraries while they’re still in office, usually two or three years before they leave office, and money can come from anywhere — from foreign governments, from foreign officials, from lobbyists, from anywhere,” he said.

Though few public officials will ever be in a position to launch a presidential library foundation, other politicians have nonprofits with similar disclosure rules and no limits on contributions. For example, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has the McCain Institute Foundation, which in 2014 received $1 million from the government of Saudi Arabia.

By law, the Obama Foundation is not required to disclose all of its donors.

The TPP Is Officially Dead. Thank the People's Movement, Not Trump.

January 23, 2017

CommonDreams.org - President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order withdrawing the United States from the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), marking a new phase for the broad movement that sought to kill the corporate-friendly trade deal.

Progressive groups campaigned hard against the 12-nation trade agreement which they said threatened public health, environmental protections, and human rights while handing a big win to corporate interests.
Indeed, digital rights group Fight for the Future was quick to credit that movement with Monday's victory.

"The victory against the TPP belongs to the people, not to Donald Trump or any other politician," said Fight for the Future campaign director Evan Greer.

"An unprecedented international movement of people and organizations from across the political spectrum came together, and lead nothing short of an uprising that stopped an outright corporate takeover of our democratic process," Greer continued. "Together we sounded the alarm and made the TPP so politically toxic that no presidential candidate who wanted to be elected could support it."

Both Trump and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) made their opposition to the deal and others like it a cornerstone of their election platforms. And Sanders on Monday said he was "glad the [TPP] is dead and gone."

"Now is the time to develop a new trade policy that helps working families, not just multi-national corporations," Sanders said. "If President Trump is serious about a new policy to help American workers then I would be delighted to work with him."

But Trump's record since he won the election—and since he was sworn into office on Friday—don't inspire a lot of confidence on that last count.

"Donald Trump's administration is profoundly anti-worker, and his decision to pull out of the Trans Pacific Partnership doesn't change that," said Stephanie Taylor, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC). "His administration is crammed with bankers and billionaires, and his first actions were to halt overtime pay rules and make it more expensive for middle-class families to buy homes. He may talk a big game, but his actions speak for themselves."

As such, the public must stay vigilant that any "new policy," as Sanders put it, will adhere to the goals of the movement that took down the TPP in the first place. Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, outlined some of those goals in a statement on Monday.

Trump's executive order "will bury the moldering corpse of a deal that couldn't gain majority support in Congress," Wallach said, "but the question is going forward: Will President Trump's new trade policies create American jobs and reduce our damaging trade deficit while raising wages and protecting the environment and public health not just here but also in trade partner nations?"

Noting that Trump has also vowed to renegotiate the Clinton-era North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Wallach warned: "NAFTA renegotiation could be an opportunity to create a new trade model that benefits more people, but if done wrong, it could increase job offshoring, push down wages, and expand the protections NAFTA provides to the corporate interests that shaped the original deal."

Clinton Foundation's Heavily Connected Donors Get Favors on a ‘Global Scale’; the Same Will Be True for Donors to the Obama Foundation

Clinton Foundation's Heavily Connected Donors Get Favors on a ‘Global Scale’; the Same Will Be True for Donors to the Obama Foundation

October 17, 2016

IWB - When President Barack Obama asked Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton to be his secretary of state in 2009, “everybody was concerned by the obvious fact that America’s chief diplomat, who charts our foreign policy with foreign governments … is taking all this foreign money” for her family’s foundation, says Peter Schweizer, author of “Clinton Cash.”

In this second exclusive video interview for The Daily Caller News Foundation, the best-selling author discusses the bipartisan scrutiny the Clintons got in January 2009 for taking foreign money for private gain.
So, when Hillary pledged extra disclosure and transparency to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — then chaired by John Kerry — the Obama White House, and government ethics officials, it now appears she just lied to them all, says Schweizer.

Schweizer finds it “mind-boggling” that Hillary lied to Obama. He set out the specific conditions for her being secretary of state so as not to impugn his administration’s integrity and campaign promises on transparency. Instead, she created “the impression in a way that Barack Obama was working for the Clintons, not the Clintons or Hillary was working for him.”

Today, Schweizer connects the dots in this captivating interview between his 2015 research, the revelation of Hillary’s controversial private server, the WikiLeaks and Judicial Watch emails, and her effort to destroy thousands of emails.

He believes Hillary’s private and hidden emails connect directly to the favors for Clinton cash.

“They needed to have a means of communication on a global scale that allowed them to talk about favors that donors wanted, to talk about favors that could be done for donors, to talk about the flow of money in a way that could not be detected by anyone else,” he says in this video interview.

Unless held to the same rules as others, he says, this pattern by public officials using their offices for private gain will repeat itself. He notes that Obama appears already poised to repeat the pattern with his own foundation, with the help of Marty Nesbitt, a Chicago businessman.

Schweizer says for-profit education is an example of an industry targeted by government policymakers. He discusses the value of “protection money” given to connected family and friends when the government starts picking winners and losers. Schweizer uses the examples of the University of Phoenix, Laureate International and ITT Tech, which was shuttered in September. Just recently, Judicial Watch exposed a favor done for Laureate International and other Clinton Foundation sponsors.
…
The Clinton machine has responded to Schweizer’s book and research by “attacking the messenger,” claiming they are doing what everybody else in government does, and saying there is no evidence of any “quid pro quo,” he explains.
…
http://dailycaller.com/2016/10/15/hillarys-emails-allowed-clinton-foundation-donors-to-get-favors-on-a-global-scale-video/

Rothschild Family Wealth is Five Times That of World’s Top 8 Billionaires Combined

Rothschild Family Wealth is Five Times That of World’s Top 8 Billionaires Combined

January 20, 2017

Waking Times - A recent report by Oxfam International highlights the dramatic rise in income equality by noting that the combined wealth of the world’s top 8 individual billionaires is more than the lower half of the world’s population, some 3.6 billion people. The intention of the report was to bring awareness to the unfairness and injustice inherent in our global economic system.

“It calls for a fundamental change in the way we manage our economies so that they work for all people, and not just a fortunate few.” [Oxfam]

Listed below are the 8 billionaires along with their estimated wealth, which combined equals $426.2 billion.

Bill Gates – $75 b
Amancio Ortega – $67 b
Warren Buffett – $60.8 b
Carlos Slim Helu – $50 b
Jeff Bezos – $45.2 b
Mark Zuckerberg – $44.6 b
Larry Ellison – $43.6 b
Michael Bllomberg – $40 b

Oxfam’s assertion is that world economies are mismanaged in favor of the wealthy, which is largely true, however, the report failed to hit the mark on this serious issue by not acknowledging the greatest problem with the world’s economy, which is the global central banking model of privately owned debt-based fiat currencies.

The current banking model is the product of hundreds of years of planned development, structuring, manipulation, force and trickery which began in earnest with Mayer Amschel Rothschild, who first established banking and finance houses in Germany in the 18th century.

The careful cultivation of his wealth with the assistance of his five sons allowed Rothschild to profit immensely during the French Revolution by providing financing and war materials to Austria, which in turn allowed the budding family empire to evolve into a multi-national organization, henceforth becoming a major financier of industry and war.

“Around that time, Rothschild sent his five sons to live in the capital cities of various European countries. His goal was to have each of his children establish a banking business in Frankfurt, Naples, Vienna, Paris, and London, and throughout the 1800s, they did. With Mayer Rothschild’s children spread across Europe, the Rothschilds became the first bank to transcend borders. Lending to governments to finance war operations for the past several centuries provided ample opportunity to accumulate bonds and shore up additional wealth in a range of different industries.” [Source]

Fast forward to 2016, the Rothschild family is a dynasty of unimaginable wealth which manages to somehow conceal it for the most part, never quite being publicly credited as the richest and most influential family in the world. By dividing their capital and holdings up amongst the many members of the family, including numerous descendants and heirs, occasionally a single member of the family will appear on a list of the world’s top individuals, however, the family as a whole represents the largest fortune ever known.

“Traditionally, the Rothschild fortune is invested in closely held corporations. Most family members are employed by these corporations directly or invested in operations that generate family wealth. The remarkable success of the family has largely been due to a strong interest in cooperation, being entrepreneurs and the practice of shrewd business principles.” [Source]

Investopedia estimates the family’s total wealth at over $2 trillion in assets and holdings, including some of the world’s oldest living corporations:

“…their holdings span a number of diverse industries, including financial services, real estate, mining, energy and even charitable work.There are a few Rothschild-owned financial institutions still operating in Europe, including N M Rothschild & Sons Ltd in the United Kingdom, and Edmond de Rothschild Group in Switzerland. The family also owns more than a dozen wineries in North America, Europe, South America, South Africa and Australia.” [Source]

At $2 trillion plus, the family’s reported wealth is closing in on five times as much as the combined wealth of the world’s top 8 individual billionaires, meaning that the Rothschild family alone controls more wealth than perhaps three-fourths or more of the world’s total population.

Taxes, Chicago-Style

City Of Chicago Bag Tax - Goes In Effect February 1, 2017

Edtior's Note: This is not a price charged by the store for a bag but a tax applied by the city to each bag that a store uses to bag your purchases, which is payable to the city of Chicago.

To encourage customers to bring their own reusable bags, the City of Chicago is implementing a $.07 tax on each paper and plastic bag provided by stores to customers to carry out purchased items.  Businesses will start collecting the tax on February 1, 2017.

Some exemptions, include:

Paper and Plastic bags used to package loose bulk items, such as fruit, vegetables, nuts, grains, candy, cookies, or small hardware items or to contain or wrap frozen foods, meat or fish, whether prepackaged or not.

Bags Provided by a pharmacist to contain prescription drugs, dry cleaning, or garment bags and newspaper bags.

Bags sold in packages containing multiple bags intended for use as garbage bags, pet waste bags or yard waste bags.

Bags provided by a dine-in or take-out restaurant to contain food or drink purchased by the restaurant's customers.

It is a good time to start the new habit now.  Take your bags to the store with you!

Paper and Plastic bags used to package loose bulk items, such as fruit, vegetables, nuts, grains, candy, cookies, or small hardware items or to contain or wrap frozen foods, meat or fish, whether prepackaged or not.

For more information, visit: https://www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/depts/fin/provdrs/tax_division/news/2016/december/NewCheckoutBagTax.html

Chicago property tax bill double whammy: Increases plus an assessment hike

August 1, 2016

Michelle Obama's Face During Trump's Inauguration

Establishment media like New York Magazine photoshopped photos of Michelle Obama at the inauguration. The photo on the right in the image above is from New York Magazine's article, "Michelle Obama’s Face Perfectly Sums Up How You’re Feeling Today"; the photo on the left is from indy100.com's article below.



January 20, 2017

indy100.com - Today the exceedingly unlikely happened. Donald Trump was sworn into the highest office in America. He officially became the 45th president of the United States.

The ceremony went off without a hitch. There were no mistakes, no slip ups, everyone knew their place and what to do.

From the guests of honour, the Trump's and the Pence's - to the previous presidents, vice presidents and their families.

That, of course, included President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle Obama.

It was their responsibility to greet the Trump's, join them at the capitol building for the ceremony and then depart for a well-earned rest.

Both were of course incredibly professional, however, it was clearly a difficult day for the pair of them.

This was most evident in Michelle's facial expressions - and they certainly didn't go unnoticed by viewers of the inauguration.

The two photos below are from an article at the Daily Mirror.







The following was posted by Robert Julius on Thursday, December 29, 2011. 

The Obama family seems to be having a great holiday in Hawaii. Recently, President Obama was spotted taking Sasha and Malia to Sea Life Park. See the pics inside...

Yesterday, President Obama took daughters Malia (13) and Sasha (10) and a few friends to Sea Life Park in Waimanalo, Hawaii.

The Obamas were joined by Mr. Obama's best friend Marty Nesbitt (in the yellow), his wife Anita Blanchard (in black) and their kids, including Alex and Roxanne. 

The following are photos of Obama with Martin Nesbitt and Obama with Anita Blanchard Nesbitt.

Look it up, Marty Nesbitt, and how convenient that Anita Blanchard Delivered the Obama children‼️#WakeUpUSA
The biggest scam EVER PERPETRATED ON THE AMERICAN PEOPLE‼️‼️‼️@realDonaldTrump @POTUS LOCK THESE BASTARDS UP‼️I’m so done, #NoMoreObama😡https://t.co/kjxEiRVpWX pic.twitter.com/3ZyjWhnKc1

— sofie 💋👠🇺🇸🙏🏼 (@sofinique1) September 7, 2018

Malia Obama strongly resembles her father Marty Nesbitt and Sasha strongly resembles her mother Anita Blanchard Nesbitt.

CBS News Ben Swann Does a "Reality Check" on Pizzagate

Is CBS is trying to rebuild viewer trust by creating controlled opposition?

Jamie Santos2 wrote at youtube:

There is an agenda here. Too many people are making phone calls to the authorities. Too many people are sharing these emails and videos. Alefantis is under investigation for threatening the life of Ryan O'Neil. This has gone viral on multiple platforms and is being censored on major social media platforms causing even more suspicion. YouTube and Reddit are actively participating in the spread of Child Pornography while censoring #Pizzagate Investigators. How in the hell does this make sense? It makes sense if these platform owners ARE involved or participating in child sex trafficking themselves.This is too big and too many are going to fall so they are publicly lynching Alefantis and the Podesta's. Just think of them as the "fall boys". Those in power think that we, the public, are so stupid that we will be satiated with the investigation of Alefantis and the Podesta's. They think that if these miscreants are found guilty and brought to justice that we, the stupid, will just resume our daily lives as nothing ever happened.They are wrong, though, in this matter. We want them ALL brought to justice. No matter if it collapses the entire rotten, filthy political and corporate system. Ben has no aurhority to report on anything his owners do not want aired. They are trying to bring the sheep back into the 'fold'.

More at the following links:

• http://theantiglobalist.com/eyes-wide-shut-suspected-pedophile-ring-exposed/
• https://dcpizzagate.wordpress.com
• https://voat.co/v/pizzagate/1497611 
• https://voat.co/v/pizzagate/

Obama Commutes Manning’s Sentence

Pfc. Manning was sentenced in August 2013 to 35 years in prison for leaking 750,000 pages of classified documents to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks. A military judge convicted Manning in July 2013, sparing the former intelligence analyst from the most serious charge of aiding the enemy. The issue of Manning's gender identity repeatedly surfaced during the court-martial. An Army psychologist called by the defense said Manning appeared to be isolated and under intense pressure as a male soldier struggling with gender identity issues. Speaking during the sentencing phase of the court-martial, Manning said the decision to leak the documents came while "dealing with a lot of issues" -- a reference to the gender identity crisis. "I am Chelsea Manning." With those words, read from a statement on NBC's "Today" show, Bradley Manning immediately shifted public conversation away from the Army private's conviction on espionage charges to gender identity." As I transition into this next phase of my life, I want everyone to know the real me," Manning said in the statement. "I am Chelsea Manning. I am a female. Given the way that I feel, and have felt since childhood, I want to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible. I hope that you will support me in this transition." [CNN]

January 17, 2017

Associated Press - President Obama has commuted the 35-year prison sentence of Chelsea Manning, paving the way for the Army intelligence analyst turned high-profile leaker to be freed on May 17, the White House announced Tuesday.

Manning was on a list of 209 commutations and 64 pardons released Tuesday, though they may not be Obama’s final acts of clemency before he leaves office at midday on Jan. 20. Edward Snowden’s name was not on the list.

Manning was convicted after leaking U.S. military incident logs and diplomatic cables, among other secret government documents, to WikiLeaks, in 2010.

In his final scheduled briefing for reporters, White House press secretary Josh Earnest described Manning and Snowden in starkly different terms.

“Chelsea Manning, as a member of the United States armed forces, went through a legal proceeding administered by the United States military under the laws that govern the conduct of members of the United States military, and there was a hearing and a conviction and a sentence,” Earnest said. “It all went through that regular process. And that’s the way we determine guilt or innocence in this country, particularly with regard to the conduct of men and women in our armed forces. And that’s the way that our system works.”

But Snowden “should return to the United States and face the serious crimes with which he’s been charged,” Earnest said. “He will, of course, be afforded the kind of due process that’s available to every American citizen who’s going through the criminal justice process. But the crimes that he’s accused of committing are serious. And we believe that he should return to the United States and face them rather than seeking refuge in the arms of an adversary of the United States that has their own strategic interests in disseminating information in a harmful way.”

Earlier this week, WikiLeaks said on Twitter that its founder, Julian Assange, would agree to be extradited to the United States if Obama granted clemency to Manning. He has been living in Ecuador’s embassy in London since June 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he has been accused of sexual assault.

The Obama administration has accused the Russian government of using WikiLeaks to influence the 2016 election. The organization published emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee and from Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Establishment Media in Collusion with the U.S. Government is Trying to Delegitimize the Trump Administration

“They’re trying to delegitimize the Trump administration as it goes into the White House,” Julian Assange said during an interview with Fox News's Sean Hannity.

January 11, 2017

ABC News - Explosive but unsubstantiated allegations suggesting Donald Trump was compromised by Russian agents and in league with Russian hackers appeared in a dossier given to the FBI in August by Democratic political operatives who later gave it to news organizations, including ABC News.

The document has circulated in the intelligence community and was reportedly raised last week during classified intelligence briefings to President Obama and President-elect Trump.

Trump and his aides expressed outrage yesterday that anyone would take the uncorroborated reports seriously.

“FAKE NEWS - A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT!” Trump wrote on Twitter, in an apparent reference to the news reports.

On ABC News’ “Good Morning America,” Trump aide Kellyanne Conway slammed the allegations, saying, “Just to smear the president-elect of the United States, we now have intelligence officials divulging information that they are sworn not to divulge.”

“I don’t even think this is fake news, I think this is just fake. I would take the ‘news’ word right out of it,” she added.

Meanwhile, in Russia, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has also been critical of the allegations, saying, “It’s an absolute spoof story. It’s absolute fabrication. It’s complete nonsense.”

Assange: Russian Government Not the Source of WikiLeaks Emails. "Our Source is Not a State Party"

January 2, 2017

THE HILL - WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says there's an "obvious" reason the Obama administration has focused on Russia's alleged role in Democratic hacks leading up to Donald Trump's election.

“They’re trying to delegitimize the Trump administration as it goes into the White House,” Assange said during an interview with Fox News's Sean Hannity airing Tuesday night, according to a transcript of excerpts from the network.

“They are trying to say that President-elect Trump is not a legitimate president," Assange said during the interview, which was conducted at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he has been staying.

"Our publications had wide uptake by the American people. They’re all true,” Assange continued. “But that’s not the allegation that’s being presented by the Obama White House.”

Assange reiterated the group's denial that Russia was the source of the Democratic documents released over the summer.

“Our source is not a state party, so the answer for our interactions is no,” he said.

In December, Assange told Hannity that the documents the anti-secrecy group received looked “very much like they’re from the Russians” but said his source was not them.

When asked if he thought WikiLeaks influenced the 2016 election, Assange pointed to private comments from members of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign in documents published by the group.

“Did [WikiLeaks] change the outcome of the election? Who knows, it’s impossible to tell," Assange said.

"But if it did, the accusation is that the true statements of Hillary Clinton and her campaign manager, John Podesta, and the DNC head Debbie Wasserman Schultz, their true statements is what changed the election.”

January 6, 2017

THE HILL - Toward the end of the campaign for president, WikiLeaks leaked many thousands of emails from the accounts of the Democratic National Committee and John Podesta, the chairman of the Clinton campaign.

Those emails presented a very unflattering picture of the inner workings of the Clinton campaign and the DNC.  

 

The Obama administration believes that the emails were originally hacked by agents of the Russian government to damage the Clinton campaign and enhance the chances of a Trump victory. President-elect Trump has been very skeptical of those claims, insisting that the administration and the intelligence community could be mistaken.

WikiLeaks is a self-described “multi-national media organization” that “specializes in the analysis and publication of large datasets of censored or otherwise restricted official materials[.]” 

Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange, has been in self-imposed exile in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for more than four years, because the UK wants to extradite him to Sweden, where he is the subject of an investigation into alleged sexual assault.

Mr. Assange fears that Sweden might hand him over to the US, where he might be subject to prosecution relating to classified documents illegally taken from the U.S. Army and published in 2010 by WikiLeaks.

Recently, Mr. Assange gave an interview to Sean Hannity of Fox News; the interview has been airing this week. Mr. Hannity asked whether Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks could assure the American people “one thousand percent” that they “did not get [the leaked emails] from Russia or anybody associated with Russia?”

Mr. Assange gave what, on close examination, seems to be a very careful, well-rehearsed, and lawyerly answer to the question: “We can say, we have said repeatedly over the last two months, that our source is not the Russian government and it is not [a] state party.”

The Hill reported that, very soon after Assange gave this answer, President-elect Trump tweeted: “[Assange] said Russians did not give him the info.”

Other Republicans were unconvinced. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) called Assange a “sycophant for Russia [who]…steals data and compromises national security.” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said that he has “a lot more faith in our intelligence officers” who blame Russia for the hacks “than I do in people like Julian Assange.”

There are two related, but nevertheless distinct, questions that should be considered here. Were the emails hacked by agents of the Russian government? Were the emails hacked and then leaked for the purpose of helping Trump defeat Clinton in the election?

In the course of his interview with Hannity, Assange asserts: “[T]here is one person in the world — and I think it’s actually only one — who knows exactly what is going on with our publications … And that’s me.”

It is impossible to believe that a man who has been confined to one small building in London for the last four years could know who hacked into servers in the US and stole thousands of emails that were then given to WikiLeaks.

We can safely assume that Assange did not obtain the leaked emails from someone who walked into the Ecuadorian embassy and handed him a memory device. And, even if that incredible event did occur, how could Assange know with “1000%” certainty where that person had obtained the documents?

The Ecuadorian embassy in London does not span the globe.

The CIA, on the other hand, does have agents all around the world. Certainly some of them are operating in Russia. It is much more likely, I submit, that the CIA would have accurate information regarding Russian involvement than would Mr. Assange.

But Mr. Trump insists that the Democratic Obama administration has a partisan interest in convincing Americans that Russia aided his campaign, so that his victory will be seen as illegitimate. One hopes the CIA is sufficiently independent of political influence to be free of that kind of bias.

Obama Started with a Nobel Peace Prize and is Ending His Presidency with the Pentagon’s Distinguished Public Service Medal: Sounds About Right for a President Who Bombed 7 Nations

January 9, 2017

ZEROHEDGE - Following our discussion of the unprecedented bombing-fest that has been undertaken during President Obama’s reign…

Seven years after being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” despite having been in office for less than one year and having pretty much no actual, tangible foreign diplomacy accomplishments at the time, President Obama will depart the White House having dropped 26,171 bombs on foreign countries around the world in 2016, 3,027 more than 2015.

According to an analysis of Defense Department data from the Council on Foreign Relations, a non-partisan think tank, the majority of Obama’s 2016 bombs were dropped on Syria and Iraq.  Meanwhile, Afghanistan, a country President Obama vowed U.S. troops would evacuate completely by the end of his Presidency, was also bombed over 1,300 times, a 40% increase over 2015.  Per McClatchy DC:

The U.S. dropped 79 percent of the anti-Islamic State group coalition bombs in Syria and Iraq, totaling 24,287. That figure, along with others analyzed by CFR, is likely lower than the actual number dropped because one airstrike can involved multiple bombs.

Obama did authorize a troop surge in Afghanistan — a conflict he pledged to end during his campaign — where the U.S. dropped 1,337 bombs in 2016. There are currently 8,400 U.S. troops left in the country, more than Obama initially wanted to keep there at the end of his term. The U.S. only dropped 947 bombs in Afghanistan in 2015.

The U.S. also dropped more bombs in Libya in 2016 than it did in 2015. Nearly 500 bombs were dropped in the North African country that has essentially been ungoverned since the fall of dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. He was captured and killed during the Libyan Civil War, kicked off by the Arab Spring protests that also began the Syrian conflict.

Ron Paul opined on the farce via his Facebook page…

Barack Obama started with a Nobel Peace Prize and is ending his presidency with the Pentagon’s Distinguished Public Service Medal.

Sounds about right for a president who bombed 7 nations and became the first in U.S. history to be at war every single day of his eight year administration.

Just remember America, as Obama signs ‘The Ministry of Truth’ act into reality, “War is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.”

January 2, 2009

JW’s “Ten Most Corrupt Politicians” of 2008

From the Desk of Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton:

Judicial Watch Announces List of Washington’s "Ten Most Wanted Corruption Politicians" for 2008

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today released its 2008 list of Washington’s "Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians." The list, in alphabetical order, includes:

Former NIST Employee Speaks Out, Says Building 7 Investigation Bogus, Government ‘Denied Evidence’

Former NIST Employee Speaks Out, Says Building 7 Investigation Bogus, Government ‘Denied Evidence’

November 30, 2016

EUROPHYSICS NEWS - A former employee of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has stepped forward and criticized the government agency for ignoring the scientific errors found in its report on the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 (WTC 7) during the September 11, 2001, attacks. Peter Ketcham, who spent almost fifteen years working at NIST, described how the flawed investigation methods were significantly different from the normal standards used by NIST, in a letter to the editor of the respected Europhysics News magazine. Ketcham’s letter was published in the November 2016 issue and comes just months after the magazine’s August 2016 report examining the Building 7 collapse in detail, which has been downloaded over 350,000 times according to the website. Peter Ketcham was a contributor to numerous scientific papers during his 14 years as a part of the High Performance Systems and Services Division and later the Mathematical and Computational Sciences Division. Ketcham wrote that he felt compelled to speak out about the NIST WTC 7 investigation after reading the report for the first time in August 2016 and comparing the results with the conventional criticism from other professionals. The NIST report on WTC 7 was published in August 2008, more than 6 years after the attacks, and it concludes that the building collapsed after structural failure due to fires caused by damage from debris when the Twin Towers collapsed earlier in the day.

The root problem with the WTC Building 7 report is that NIST could not perform a definitive study under common standards of the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) because it lacked the physical evidence. Most of the structural steel was removed and melted down beginning within days after September 11, and some beams were stolen as reported by Telegraph. NIST only had access to about 150 smaller pieces of steel, called coupons, cut from the whole sections of structural steel beams.

Due to the lack of remaining evidence, NIST instead generated computer models of the building’s structure to test collapse theories using simulated fires to recreate the conditions prior to failure. The conclusions of the report have questioned for these reasons by thousands of physicists, engineers, and architects in the 15 years since the attacks, as documented by the group Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (AE911).

The inconclusive methods used for the report are what led Ketcham to speak out after watching documentaries which criticized the report’s conclusions. He noted in his letter that he was “furious” with himself for not knowing and also at NIST for covering up the problems. “How could I have worked at NIST all those years and not have noticed this before,” Ketcham wrote.

“The NIST I knew was intellectually open, non-defensive, and willing to consider competing explanations. The more I investigated, the more apparent it became that NIST had reached a predetermined conclusion by ignoring, dismissing, and denying the evidence. Among the most egregious examples is the explanation for the collapse of WTC 7 as an elaborate sequence of unlikely events culminating in the almost symmetrical total collapse of a steel-frame building into its own footprint at free-fall acceleration,” Ketcham wrote.

The main pre-determined conclusion which Ketcham refers to is the theory created to explain why the 47-story building fell to the ground in about 12 seconds, which suggests the building suffered catastrophic failure in a short amount of time. NIST’s WTC 7 report concludes that fires led to the thermal expansion of long-span steel beams which supported the floors, causing one beam on the 13th floor to fall off of its seat. The report claims part of the 13th floor collapsed, triggering a chain reaction of floors failing around one specific vertical support column, which caused the building to fall in on itself.

NIST used computer modeling to generate the experimental environment from Building 7’s construction plans. However, professionals have criticized NIST because they have not released the models to the public for peer review. The models and methods have been questioned in many ways. However, the initial cause of the collapse receives the most scrutiny as researchers proved NIST did not accurately model the steel’s connection at the stated point of initial failure. NIST left out multiple smaller design elements shown in the construction plans which would have built a stronger connection in the computer model.

The resulting model simulation was released in a video by NIST. However, it shows the beam that failed is twisting in ways that are different from the physical properties of the steel’s connection. Researchers have shown that the NIST theory is significantly different from the possible sequences based on the construction plans and video evidence for multiple reasons.

NIST’s report on Building 7 has generated an increasing amount of controversy in academic circles and led to AE911 funding a study using computer models, which is still ongoing at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. Researchers and activists have also been working to investigate the inconsistent methods.

Obama's 'Scandal-Free' Administration Was Actually Riddled with Scandals

January 3, 2017

PJ Media - The Stalinesque "cult of personality" that surrounded Barack Obama when he campaigned for president in 2008 and for about a year after he was elected president of the United States has greatly diminished, but it never completely went away.

No one can forget the disturbing onslaught of Obama cult products circa 2008/2009: the Obama flags, perfume, soap, soda pop, basketballs, clocks, flip-flops, soap-on-a-rope -- you name it. Obama's smiling mug was slapped on practically every product you could think of -- including even sushi! -- and his devoted cultists snatched it up.

Then there were the children singing Obama songs of praise, Obama's lavish birthday bashes, and his unearned Nobel Peace Prize. While most of "Obamamania" dissipated over the ensuing years, there were still occasional reminders that he still had a very fervent and devoted following -- mostly, it turned out, in the mainstream media.

For the entire eight years of Obama's presidency, we witnessed an obsequious MSM that only very reluctantly reported negative news about their hero, dropping problematic stories like a hot potato at the first opportunity. Thus, Obama's many scandals became old news in a matter of weeks.

It is largely because of this that Obama and his minions can casually drop an absurd whopper like this and not be challenged on it:

Top President Barack Obama White House advisor Valerie Jarrett said in an interview with CNN Sunday that his administration has not seen a single scandal.

“The president prides himself on the fact that his administration hasn’t had a scandal and he hasn’t done something to embarrass himself,” she said on Fareed Zakaria GPS.

“That’s because that’s who he is, that’s who they are, and I think that’s what really resonates with the American people,” she continued.

Obama and his team must be worried about his legacy now that he is on the way out the door and a Republican administration is coming in to "drain the swamp," because he and his toadies have been pushing this nonsense about his "scandal-free" presidency for months, now.

The fake narrative first emerged in 2011 when liberal journalists trotted it out ahead of Obama's 2012 reelection campaign.

WikiLeaks Founder Reveals a 'Bombshell' About Russian Hacking, Kellyanne Conway Says

January 3, 2017

CNBC - Americans should listen to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange 's denials that Russia was the source of hacked Democratic emails released by his group over the summer, said Kellyanne Conway, a senior advisor to President-elect Donald Trump .

"This was the information that [Assange] put forward. I think that's a bombshell," Conway told CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Tuesday, referring to excerpts from a transcript released by Fox News of Assange's interview with Sean Hannity.

Assange told Hannity that his source was not the Russian government, and "not a state party," adding President Barack Obama is trying to "delegitimize the Trump administration" with accusations that Russia engaged in hacking to help Trump beat Democrat Hillary Clinton .

In remarks heading into a New Year's Eve celebration at his Mar-a-Lago estate on Saturday night, Trump once again expressed skepticism that Russia was responsible for hacking Democrat emails.

Trump is well-informed by various intelligence sources about such matters, said Conway, who stepped in late in the race as the billionaire's campaign manager. She's since been named by Trump as counselor to the president.

"[Trump] receives any number of different intelligence pieces of information from a number of different sources, including the ... presidential daily briefing," Conway said.

"He [also] receives regular briefings from his security team, from outside sources, and he ... has agreed to receive this top-level intelligence briefing from the nation's top, top intelligence officials," she added.

Earthquake Swarm in California Town Gets Attention from Scientists

January 2, 2017

Los Angeles Times - A swarm of more than 250 small earthquakes have struck since New Year’s Eve near the California-Mexico border, causing unease among residents and attention from scientists.

The strongest earthquake in the sequence was magnitude 3.9, striking directly underneath the town of Brawley, about 170 miles southeast of Los Angeles.

The earthquakes struck in the southern end of the Brawley Seismic Zone, a seismically active region where tectonic plates are moving away from each other and the Earth’s crust is getting stretched out “and basically adding land,” said Caltech seismologist Egill Hauksson.

The Brawley Seismic Zone is particularly important to watch because it is the region that connects the San Andreas and Imperial faults, both of which can produce damaging earthquakes. The seismic zone extends for about 30 miles from the city of Brawley, across the Salton Sea’s southern half, and ends near Bombay Beach.

The Brawley Seismic Zone, which stretches between Brawley to an area near Bombay Beach, is important to watch because it is a region that connects the San Andreas and Imperial faults, which can produce major earthquakes. (Los Angeles Times)

Hauksson was closely monitoring the swarm that began Saturday, as there was a chance that an earthquake of magnitude 5 or larger could be triggered.“There’s always reason to be concerned for a bigger earthquake,” Hauksson said. But by Sunday night, the possibility of the swarm triggering a larger event had largely receded.

The southern Brawley Seismic Zone is close in proximity to the Imperial fault. The Imperial fault has caused two major earthquakes in recent decades.

In 1979, a magnitude-6.5 earthquake sent violent shaking into El Centro, injuring 91 and causing so much damage to the concrete Imperial County Services Building that it had to be demolished.There was major damage to the irrigation system in the Imperial Valley, a desert region that is a prolific producer of salad vegetables during the winter. Levees lining the All-American Canal, which funnels water from the Colorado River, collapsed along an eight-mile stretch.A 1979 earthquake damaged the brittle concrete columns of the Imperial County Services Building in El Centro.

The magnitude-7.1 earthquake that hit El Centro in 1940 claimed nine lives and swayed buildings as far away as Los Angeles. Irrigation systems were damaged, and railroad tracks were left warped where they crossed the fault.Earthquake swarms that occur in the other end of the Brawley Seismic Zone — to the north — could trigger a major event on the San Andreas fault, one of California’s most dangerous, that could send catastrophic shaking into Riverside, San Bernardino and Los Angeles counties.

In late September, one such swarm began in the northern Brawley Seismic Zone, with three measuring above magnitude 4. That event led the U.S. Geological Survey to warn that chances of a magnitude 7 or greater earthquake on the San Andreas fault had risen as a result of the swarm.

Another swarm of small earthquakes, topping out at magnitude 3.5, struck the town of Niland near the eastern shore of the Salton Sea on Halloween.

The last major earthquake to hit Brawley was in 2012, registering at magnitude 5.4.

Brawley Mayor Sam Couchman said the earthquakes have placed the city of 26,000 on edge since Saturday afternoon. The combination of the earthquakes and New Year’s pyrotechnics spooked some of the town’s dogs, who went missing, he said.

“We’re just kind of listening to it, and when you can hear it coming, it’ll rattle things,” Couchman said. “Last night, we had the rain, the earthquakes, and the fireworks.

“All we needed were frogs and locusts.”