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Adam Schiff’s inaccurate Russia tweets raise Twitter double-standard question
While Twitter has flagged some of President Trump's tweets, they have not done the same with Schiff tweets that declassified memos show are misleading.
Twitter has on more than one occasion appended or flagged President Trump’s tweets as misleading. But so far, it has not done the same with several posts by House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff that are demonstrably false or misleading, raising questions of a double standard.
For instance, Schiff tweeted in July 2018 that “the release of the Carter Page FISA application makes clear, once again, the FBI acted lawfully and appropriately” in reference to the surveillance warrant the bureau used to spy on the Trump adviser during the Russia collusion probe
In fact, the FISA application that Schiff referred to in the tweet contained 51 statements that were inaccurate, misleading or undocumented, and included 17 violations of FBI rules ranging from false and unverified information to omissions of exculpatory evidence of innocence, the Justice Department inspector general reported last December.
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DOJ IG report on Russia FISAs
Likewise, DOJ officials withdrew two of the four Page FISA applications, and the chief judge of the FISA court ruled in March that the FBI has misled the court. "There is thus little doubt that the government breached its duty of candor to the Court with respect to those applications," U.S. District Judge James Boasberg said.
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BoasbergFISARuling.pdf
And last week, an ex-FBI lawyer agreed to plead guilty to a felony and admitted he falsified a document to deceive the court.
In other words, the FBI acted unlawfully and inappropriately in the Page FISA debacle. And to date, Twitter hasn’t flagged or appended Schiff’s tweet even though he has enormous influence on the platform with 2.4 million followers.
A Twitter spokesman did not immediately return a message Sunday seeking comment.
Patrick Boland, a spokesman for Schiff, did not immediately return a call Sunday seeking comment.
Just the News identified more than a dozen tweets that Schiff has posted since 2017 that are inaccurate or misleading based on the declassified information that has been made public over the last year by the Justice Department, FBI, and intelligence community.
https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/adam-schiffs-inaccurate-tweets-russia-case-raise-double
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But the final Mueller report did not cite a single instance in which Papadopoulos talked directly with Russians about the emails, instead noting he had discussion with a Maltese-born professor named Josef Mifsud in April 2016. Mueller claimed Mifsud had links to the Kremlin without providing any specifics.
Mifsud and his lawyer deny being tied to the Kremlin, saying instead the professor had long ties to Western intelligence and worked for an Italian education institution whose visitors include the FBI and many other Western law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
Papadopoulos also talked about Mifsud’s claim about the Russians having Clinton emails with an Australian and a Greek official, but Mueller offered no evidence the Trump adviser ever talked to the Russians about it.
More importantly, recently declassified transcripts show Papadopoulos was recorded by an FBI informer in fall 2016 saying the Trump campaign had nothing to do with hacking the Democratic Party. “It’s illegal, you know, to do that sh-t,” Papadopoulos said to the FBI confidential source in a statement that further undercuts the Schiff tweet’s insinuation Papadopolous was trying to work with the Russians.
File
OIGAppendix1PapadopoulosReference.pdf
FBI officials have said they disregarded Papadopoulos's statement of innocence in the recording and did not tell the FISA court. The DOJ inspector general concluded that omission violated the bureau’s requirement to be scrupulously transparent with the court.
Papadopoulos said Sunday night in an interview from Italy that Schiff’s tweets should be taken down or flagged by Twitter.
“I want those comments retracted or censored from Twitter,” he said. “Those tweets have been archived and viewed by thousands … of people and have left a bad legacy for myself and it has been hurtful personally and damning towards my reputation.”
Likewise, Schiff indirectly peddled in a summer 2017 tweet a long-debunked conspiracy theory in the Russia case that Alfa Bank had secretly helped the Trump campaign communicate with Putin. He did so while criticizing the administration’s appointment of a former Alfa Bank lawyer.
“President nominates lawyer for Alfa Bank to head criminal division at DOJ. Really? Was counsel for Russia's Vnesheconombank unavailable?” Schiff tweeted.
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The Mossad’s trailblazing role in Middle East peace – analysis
The immediacy of the coronavirus crisis is probably what moved the UAE and potentially soon Bahrain, Oman and others, across the finish line for peace deals.
The Mossad has always played an important role in Israel's shadow foreign policy with moderate Arab countries, and the announcement last week of a peace deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates was no exception.
Imminent potential new deals about deals with Bahrain and Oman are also expected to involve the Mossad, and director Yossi Cohen has been in touch with top Bahraini officials about the next steps.
But if some of the public's focus has been on last-minute progress made by Cohen, the real story is that the spy chief has been hopping around moderate Sunni Arab countries for years.
It was Cohen and the Mossad’s secret visits and contacts that led to the 2017 announcement by Gadi Eisenkot, the former IDF chief of staff, that he was sharing intelligence with Saudi Arabia.
This announcement was in many ways as much of a geopolitical earthquake as the Israel-UAE peace deal because it was the first time that intimate Israeli-Saudi cooperation was publicized at the highest levels.
Former Israeli officials like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ex-national security adviser Yaakov Amidror have spoken about earlier meetings with Saudi officials in the US in 2016, but these were all kept secret.
In May 2018, former top Mossad official Haim Tomer told The Jerusalem Post that Israel and the Saudis could even potentially coordinate regime change plans against Iran, signaling continuing elevated relations.
Tomer would not reveal everything he knew about relations with the Saudis, but even this comment was telling and went farther than previous comments that spoke about vague converging interests.
In January 2019, Israel National Cyber Directorate Chief Yigal Unna predicted that the coming year would “make the maritime cyberspace more secure with friends all around the Mediterranean.”
It was unclear exactly which countries would be involved, but his statement appeared to hint at high-level cyber cooperation with moderate Sunni countries.
There are also reports that Israeli cyber powerhouse NSO Group and some of its former employees have helped UAE in various roles dating back to even before 2017.
The Post has learned from NSO sources that one of the reasons it probably has such strong backing from Israel’s Defense Ministry is that it serves as another conduit of creating lines of communication for Israel with moderate Sunni countries.
In July 2019, Cohen made a rare major public speech in which he explicitly stated that his spy agency had been behind much of the progress with the moderate Sunni Gulf countries.
https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/the-mossads-trailblazing-role-in-middle-east-peace-analysis-638876
Japan Economy Shrinks Historic 7.8% In April-June
Japan's economy shrank 7.8 percent in the April-June quarter, the worst contraction in the nation's modern history, as the coronavirus deepens the country's economic woes.
The contraction from the previous quarter was slightly worse than expectations but is still significantly less severe than declines seen in many other industrial economies.
Still, it is the biggest economic contraction for Japan since comparable data became available in 1980, beyond the brutal impact of the 2008 global financial crisis.
And some analysts labelled it the worst fall since World War II, though a change in calculation methods in 1980 makes the comparison complicated.
The official data compared with the market's expectation of a 7.6 percent contraction, the median forecast of major economists surveyed by the Nikkei business daily.
It was the third straight quarter of negative growth, confirming a deepening recession for Japan, and raising the prospect that the government will consider pumping further stimulus into the economy.
"The official data are expected to again show the extreme severity of the negative economic impact of the novel coronavirus," Yoshiki Shinke, chief economist at Daiichi Life Research Institute, wrote in a note before the official release of the data.
https://www.ibtimes.com/japan-economy-shrinks-historic-78-april-june-3029316
Hollywood Dreams, Hollywood Nightmares: The Fall of Tinsel Town
For more than 100 years, Hollywood has been synonymous with dreams. Dreams of wealth, dreams of love, and dreams of heroes, Hollywood embodied something truly, uniquely American. The idea that you could be someone else, somewhere else, and be well and truly accepted.
It’s hard to imagine anything else that says “America” quite like Hollywood. And now, ruinous liberal policies and the coronavirus have combined to virtually wipe Hollywood and Los Angeles off the face of the map and replace them with a dystopian nightmare that is now the playground of addicts and whores.
Daily Mail:
A makeshift tent city made up of flapping tarpaulins and cardboard boxes surrounds the gym on all sides.
Junkies and the homeless, many of whom are clearly mentally ill, walk the palm-lined streets like zombies – all just three blocks from multi-million-dollar homes overlooking the Pacific.
Stolen bicycles are piled high on pavements littered with broken syringes.
And people are beginning to vote with their feet.
TV bulletins are filled with horror stories from across the city; of women being attacked during their morning jog or residents returning home to find strangers defecating in their front gardens.
Today, Los Angeles is a city on the brink. ‘For Sale’ signs are seemingly dotted on every suburban street as the middle classes, particularly those with families, flee for the safer suburbs, with many choosing to leave LA altogether.
British-born Danny O’Brien runs Watford Moving & Storage. ‘There is a mass exodus from Hollywood,’ he says.
Mr. O’Brien is no dummy. He’s also planning a move to Tennessee as the rich and middle class flee from the incomprehensible policies of Democrats.
‘Liberal politics has destroyed this city,’ he says. ‘The homeless encampments are legal and there’s nothing the police can do. White, affluent middle-class folk are getting out. People don’t feel safe any more.’
The name Lou Ferrigno might be familiar. He starred in the 1970s TV series The Incredible Hulk playing Bill Bixby’s alter ego. Donald Trump appointed him to the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports, and Nutrition 2018.
He, too, is heading for the hills. But not before his wife was shocked out of her shoes at what she saw one morning from her picture window.
Carla says: ‘One morning around 7am I opened the curtains in our beautiful Santa Monica home and looking up at me from our driveway were three gang members with tattoos on their faces sitting on our retaining wall. They were cat-calling me and being vulgar. I motioned I was going to call the police and they just laughed, flicking their tongues at me and showing me their guns.’
Her husband added: ‘We put the house up for sale after 40 wonderful years and moved north. We feel lucky to have made it out. Now we are in a wonderful place and very happy.’
https://pjmedia.com/columns/rick-moran/2020/08/16/hollywood-dreams-hollywood-nightmares-the-fall-of-tinsel-town-n798081