HSBC mulls overhauling its business model to charge fees for current accounts and other services as profits slump due to rock-bottom rates

HSBC saw pre-tax profit fall 36% to $3.1bn (£2.4bn) and revenues fall 11% in Q3

But it set aside less money for bad loans $785m compared to $3.8bn in Q2

The bank said that it may pay a 'conservative' 2020 dividend despite profit fall

HSBC shares closed up 3.4% to 330p in London on Tuesday

Banking giant HSBC said it could start charging for basic banking services such as current accounts as it unveiled a 36 per cent fall in third quarter profits.

But shares in the Asia-focused lender jumped after it said that it may pay a 'conservative' 2020 dividend as it set aside less money than expected for bad loans.

HSBC shares in London closed up 3.4 per cent to 330p on Tuesday. But they remain down around 42 per cent since the start of the year.

The bank made pre-tax profit of $3.1billion (£2.4billion) between July and September, down 36 per cent from $4.8billion (£3.7billion) in the same quarter last year, but above analysts' expectations.

Revenues fell 11 per cent to $11.9billion (£9.15billion) as lower interest rates hit income, with revenues from lending falling by a larger near-15 per cent.

HSBC, like other banks, is seeing income shrink due to low interest rates, which are restricting how much it can charge for loans.

The margin squeeze is set to continue, HSBC said, as rates may even turn negative in the near future, challenging 'the long-term profitability of the banking sector'. So the bank is now looking to flip its main source of income from interest rate to fee-based businesses.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/markets/article-8883391/HSBC-considers-paying-conservative-2020-dividend.html

US Space Force is Getting Its Own NCO Academy

U.S. Space Force may not have its own academy or boot camp, but the newest military branch is establishing a non-commissioned officer academy for its enlisted space members, according to the service's top leader.

"There's an NCO Academy at Peterson Air Force Base, [Colorado]; we're going to make that the NCO Academy for Space Force," Gen. John "Jay" Raymond, chief of space operations, said during a NDU Foundation virtual event Tuesday. "So if you're a member of the Space Force, you will go to that academy."

Raymond did not say when the academy would open to Space Force NCOs.

The move to create a separate institution further distinguishes Space Force and its warfighting roles from those of its parent service, the Air Force, Raymond said.

Raymond pointed to space-themed seminars that have been established in the past, such as the Shriever Scholars program, which studies long-term strategic perspectives on space and information policy at Air University in Alabama. The Air War College and the Air Command and Staff College will also get their own space curriculum in the future, and will likely spin off in a "stair-step approach" to becoming their own schools, he said.

"If you're on a Space Force base in the future, that Airman Leadership School will be designed to teach you about leadership as it relates to Space Force priorities," Raymond added.

Overall, "we've got an incremental approach to phase those into an independent capability to be able to develop the Space Force leaders that we need in the future," he said, adding that training will eventually include other military service members and troops from allied nations.

News of the academy comes after the swearing-in of seven new Space Force recruits who've begun entry-level Basic Military Training at Joint Base San Antonio, Texas, alongside Air Force trainees.

To differentiate from airmen at BMT, the Space Force recruits will be given tablets loaded with Space Force-specific doctrine and information, according to top enlisted adviser Chief Master Sgt. Roger Towberman. Along with the structured 7.5-week BMT curriculum, a little over 20 hours will be specialized instruction and mentoring from Space Force personnel, Towberman told Military.com earlier this month.

The space-specific NCO Academy will join the robust space-focused infrastructure already established in Colorado Springs, Colorado, which includes Peterson, Schriever Air Force Base, and Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station.

Peterson also hosts U.S. Space Command, the 11th unified combatant command, which stood up in August 2019 ahead of the establishment of the Space Force. SPACECOM is responsible for military operations related to space, while the Space Force organizes and trains space personnel. Like the other military branches, the Space Force has its headquarters at the Pentagon.

In May, the Air Force said it would also restart a search for a permanent headquarters for SPACECOM. Some lawmakers whose states are vying to host SPACECOM had voiced concerns the process wasn't transparent enough.

Earlier this year, the Space Force began redesignating Air Force units with a space-only mission; it will realign and rename Air Force bases to Space Force bases accordingly, officials have said.

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2020/10/27/us-space-force-getting-its-own-nco-academy.html

Russian Airstrike Hits HQ of Syrian Islamist Group Close to Turkey; 80 Killed

Russian message that it is displeased with Turkey de-stabilizing the Caucusus?

The structure bombed is far from the front-line, and there is a ceasefire that Turkey is in a technical breach of, but that is mainly nonetheless upheld. Clearly, the parading Islamists had assumed they were protected by the Russian-Turkish deal from March.

— Rebel-held Idlib is al-Qaeda dominated, but instead of hitting the latter, the Russians specifically hit the largest of the groups close to Turkey.*

— They did not leave it to Syrians to deliver the strike but carried it out themselves.

Minor strikes close to the front line when there are cease-fire violations are not unheard of, but something like this is not at all business as usual (has not been since March).

This points to it being a message to Turkey from the Russian military. Moscow doesn’t hold much love for the current Armenian PM, but at the same time it can not be happy that Turkish backing and encouragement for Azerbaijan was pivotal in starting the ongoing Armenian-Azeri war.

Moscow wants decent relations and a measure of influence with Armenia and Azerbaijan both — if for no other reason then so that they’re not applying for NATO in the manner of neighboring Georgia — but a war between the two complicates that goal.

The Russian message is clear: if Turkey insists on fueling the Armenian-Azeri war in the Caucasus, Russia can in turn re-open the Idlib front and back another Syrian government push to retake it from the rebels grouped around al-Qaeda.

https://www.anti-empire.com/russian-airstrike-hits-hq-of-syrian-islamist-group-close-to-turkey-80-killed/

Hacker steals $24 million from cryptocurrency service 'Harvest Finance'

Hacker returned $2.5 million while Harvest Finance authors put out a $100,000 reward for anyone who can return the rest of the funds.

A hacker has stolen roughly $24 million worth of cryptocurrency assets from decentralized finance (DeFi) service Harvest Finance, a web portal that lets users invest cryptocurrencies and then farm the price variations for small profit yields.

The hack took place earlier today and was almost immediately confirmed by Harvest Finance administrators in messages posted on the company's Twitter account and Discord channel.

According to these messages, a hacker invested large quantities of cryptocurrency assets in its service and then used a cryptographic exploit to siphon the platform's funds to their own wallets.

In total, the hacker stole $13 million worth of USD Coin (USDC) and $11 million worth of Tether (USDT), according to a transaction ID singled out by Harvest Finance administrators in a subsequent post-mortem investigation.

Two minutes after the attack, the hacker also returned $2.5 million back to the platform, but the reasoning behind this operation remains unclear.

Company claims to have identified the attacker

In a message posted on its Discord channel, Harvest Finance claimed the attack left "a significant amount of personally identifiable information on the attacker" and described them as "well-known in the crypto community."

harvestfinance-discord.png

https://www.zdnet.com/article/hacker-steals-24-million-from-cryptocurrency-service-harvest-finance/?ftag=CMG-01-10aaa1b&ftag=TRE-03-10aaa6b&bhid=21735961543072688253262375158449&mid=13136421&cid=717936240

Large corporate landlords have filed eviction actions against 10,000 tenants in five states since September - despite a federal ban on evicting residents impacted by COVID-19 until the end of the year

Some of the country’s largest residential landlords have moved to oust thousands of tenants from their homes during the coronavirus pandemic despite federal eviction protections, according to a new report.

Big corporate landlords have filed nearly 10,000 eviction actions in courts across five states, even though a nationwide eviction moratorium, issued by the CDC in September, bars them from evicting tenants impacted by COVID-19 for non-payment of rent.

But while the CDC says such tenants can’t be physically removed from their homes before the end of the year, landlords are permitted to begin eviction proceedings now and aren't required to tell tenants about the protections available to them.

Thousands of those actions have since been filed in 23 counties in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee and Texas since early September, according to NBC.

Among the large landlords filing numerous evictions include prosperous US public companies like Invitation Homes, which owns and leases 80,000 single-family homes nationwide.

Court records show the company has filed 122 eviction notices across the five states since September, despite the fact the company is thriving, with earnings rising 54 percent in the first six months of 2020, and its stock price jumping 80 percent since the market tanked in March.

Another company filing the eviction actions is Progress Residential, which owns and leases 40,000 homes nationwide.

Progress tenant, Cristina Velez, of Boco Raton, Florida, told NBC how the company issued her an ultimatum on September 8 to pay the rent or deliver the premises.

Just over two weeks later, Progress filed eviction proceedings against Velez, demanding $4,210.14 in rent and legal fees, delivering the papers to her door, she said.

‘I told them I was affected by Covid, but it didn't matter to them,’ Velez said. ‘They are not very patient.’

Velez had recently lost her job running the staffing team on a Covid-19 treatment trial.

The mother-of-one claimed not once did a Progress representative tell her about the CDC’s nationwide eviction moratorium.

‘I said, “There's got to be something for people affected by Covid and being furloughed,"’ the 46-year-old said she told Progress. ‘There's nothing we can do,’ the company representative replied, she said.

Velez said she ended up selling her car to settle the dispute and stave off eviction. Her eviction action is one of 97 filed by Progress Residential against their tenants since the CDC announced its ban on evictions.

Progress, a large and well-funded landlord, is owned by Pretium Partners, a $3 billion hedge fund that invests in distressed properties.

http://www.hideoutnow.com/2020/10/large-corporate-landlords-have-filed.html

Texas prepares to send 1,000 troops to five major cities, DC boards up its stores and Washington state puts the National Guard on alert as the US braces for post-election violence

Texas is preparing to send in 1,000 troops to five major cities across the state 'to deter any civil disturbance' post-election while stores in Washington DC begin to board up their windows Monday.

Maj. Gen. James K. Brown, of The Texas National Guard, told The Express News the move would offer support to local law enforcement 'as we did previously to deter any civil disturbance at sites in various cities within Texas'.

In the nation's capital businesses close to the White House began to board up their windows Monday. Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills will also board up ahead of November 3. The US will vote on November 3 to choose between Incumbent President Donald Trump and his Democratic Party challenger Joe Biden.

In Washington state up to 300 National Guard soldiers are undergoing training to to handle civil unrest and Seattle police officers have had their time off canceled. New York City has similar plans in place, as the NYPD is training every day and deploying hundreds of extra cops as it braces for Election Day and its aftermath.

Federal and state law enforcement officials have already begun expanded preparations for the possibility of widespread unrest at the polls on Election Day, a response to extraordinarily high tensions among voters and anxieties about safety stoked in part by President Donald Trump.

Brandon Jones, a spokesman for the Texas Guard, said troops would be sent to Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin and San Antonio. He said: 'Right now we could go to 1,000 troops in support of civil disturbance operations.

'We’re going to guard buildings just like we did during the George Floyd protests earlier this year. We are not going anywhere near polling locations. That has not been requested.'

http://www.stationgossip.com/2020/10/texas-prepares-to-send-1000-troops-to.html

Senator: College Board Gave Chinese Influence Op Advanced Placement in U.S. High Schools

Blackburn demands answers from education giant over Confucius Institute ties

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R., Tenn.) is demanding that the College Board explain its decades-long partnership with a Chinese front group that has allowed Beijing to influence thousands of American students.

Blackburn asked the educational nonprofit to explain the nature of its long-standing partnership with the Confucius Institute, also known as Hanban—a Chinese government-backed group that the federal government says is a propaganda arm of the Chinese Communist Party. The Republican senator said the lucrative relationship could unduly influence the College Board, which administers the SAT as well as college-level "Advanced Placement" courses for high school students.

"It is my concern that the Chinese government is manipulating this [College Board] partnership to characterize China in a wholesome light and stifle conversation that might be detrimental to the reputation of the Chinese Communist Party," Blackburn said in a letter obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. "College Board's relationship with Hanban creates momentous security concerns."

An August report from the National Association of Scholars found that the College Board received nearly $700,000 from the Confucius Institute to develop the Chinese curriculum for its Advanced Placement program, shaping the education of thousands of U.S. high school students who take the course each year. The College Board also helped place hundreds of Chinese teachers—vetted by the Confucius Institute—in schools across the country and cohosts the largest conference for Chinese teachers with the regime-backed group. Blackburn asked College Board CEO David Coleman to explain what role institute officials play in teacher selection and test criteria, as well as whether the relationship could give regime figures "undue influence" over American students.

The College Board did not return a request for comment about its dealings with the Confucius Institute.

The senator's letter, which was sent Tuesday, is the latest in the bipartisan push to rein in the activities of the Confucius Institute, which had more than 100 branches in U.S. colleges and K-12 schools across the country at its height in 2017. Congress prohibited American universities from diverting Pentagon funding to support Confucius Institute programming in 2018, and the Senate unanimously passed a bill in June that would require all federally funded universities to exercise "full managerial control" of the China-backed programs.

https://freebeacon.com/campus/senator-college-board-gave-chinese-influence-op-advanced-placement-in-u-s-high-schools/

Adware found in 21 Android apps with more than 7 million downloads

Six of the 21 apps are still available on the Google Play Store.

Google has removed 15 of 21 Android applications from the official Play Store over the weekend following a report from Czech antivirus maker Avast.

The security firm said the apps were infected with a type of malware known as HiddenAds.

Discovered in 2019, this Android adware strain operates by showing excessive and intrusive ads and by opening mobile browsers on ad-heavy or promotional pages.

In a report published today, Avast malware analyst Jakub Vávra said the apps mimicked popular games, and the criminal group behind this operation relied on social media ads and marketing to draw users to their Play Store pages.

Once users installed any of these apps, the HiddenAds malware would hide the app's icon (to make it difficult for users to delete the app in the future) and then start bombarding users with ads.

The names and Play Store URLs of all the 21 apps are available in this spreadsheet.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/adware-found-in-21-android-apps-with-more-than-7-million-downloads/?ftag=TRE-03-10aaa6b&bhid=21735961543072688253262375158449&mid=13136421&cid=717936240

Facebook Removes Black Man’s Anti-Biden Ad

Social media platform cites fact check

Facebook removed a black man's ad that criticized Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden's record on crime and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement just days before the election.

The censorship comes in the midst of an uproar over social media platforms' alleged bias against conservative writers and causes in the closing days of the 2020 campaign.

The advertisement, which Brandon Wallace wrote for the conservative American Principles Project, spotlights Biden's record of supporting policies that "keep black men from raising their children," pointing to his support for enhanced criminal sentencing during his four-decade career and praise for Black Lives Matter, which has openly called for the end of the nuclear family.

"Twenty-six years ago, Vice President Biden admitted that crime in the black community was caused by society," the ad's female narrator says. "Democrats said there was no hope for blacks like my grandfather. They left him in jail, even though he changed… Soon, I was born—no father and no grandfather."

The narrator claims that Biden "supports the BLM organization that also wants to keep black men from raising their children."

Wallace noted that now-deleted language in the Black Lives Matter platform supporting the disruption of the "Western-prescribed nuclear family structure." The group called for "extended families" and "villages" instead before deleting the language because of criticism.

"If you examine the since-deleted passage, there are several messages hidden within that, when examined from the perspective of a father in a nuclear family as I am, paint a clear picture of BLM's true belief," Wallace said. "What it means to me is that fathers, as a head of the family, have no place in their organization."

Facebook cited a fact check from a website called Lead Stories, which said that Wallace's claims have "no proof" and that Biden has not "formally endorsed" Black Lives Matter. Biden has spoken favorably in campaign advertisements about the activist movement but has resisted endorsing many of the group's proposals.

Lead Stories further argued that the abolition of the nuclear family does not specifically "refer to Black men raising children" and that the movement's website contains "no reference to wanting to keep Black men from raising their children."

Politifact also fact checked the claim that BLM supports the abolition of the nuclear family.

"We found that while Black Lives Matter seeks change in how ‘family' is defined, especially with respect to public policy, it’s a leap to conclude that it wants to eliminate traditional family structures," it stated.

American Principles Project executive director Terry Schilling said the advertisement's removal is further evidence of social media companies trying to swing the election in favor of Biden.

Facebook also removed a September American Principles Project ad that criticized Biden and Michigan senator Gary Peters (D.) for their support of the Equality Act. Politifact had deemed the advertisement "potentially misleading" but did not point to specific factual errors.

Facebook did not respond to a request for comment.

https://freebeacon.com/media/facebook-removes-black-mans-anti-biden-ad/

https://freebeacon.com/media/facebook-removes-black-mans-anti-biden-ad/

From a Wealthy Socialite to an Israeli Govt Censor, Facebook’s New “Free Speech Court” Is Anything but Independent

Freedom of speech on the Internet is all but extinct, and on the eve of the 2020 US elections, a de facto “free speech court” is going to make sure it never comes back. On Facebook at least.

Days away from the most polarized electoral contest in American history, social media companies like Facebook have vowed to censor any voices which they and their partners in the federal government consider inconvenient. According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook is ready to implement election information strategies that have been in the works for years.

Company spokesman Andy Stone told the WSJ that the social media giant will be applying the “lessons” learned from previous elections in accordance with the designs of “hired experts” and vague references to “new teams,” who are leveraging their “experience across different areas to prepare for various scenarios.”

Mark Zuckerberg’s de facto monopoly over online peer-to-peer communication tools has given Facebook an inordinate amount of influence over the political narratives at both national and regional levels, which it has shown a willingness exercise with topics like the Philippines and Palestine.

Last week, the company took a major step in solidifying its grip over the content purveyed on its platform with the official launch of the Facebook Oversight board. A body that is to function like a ‘Supreme Court’ for chat rooms, if you will, with the power to review any decisions regarding post removals or deplatforming and to make policy recommendations. Members have been drawn from “law experts… rights advocates” and journalists from around the world. The oversight board currently boasts 20 members.

Four members – two of which have extensive experience in the U.S. judicial system – serve as the board’s co-chairs and were handpicked by Facebook, according to The Guardian. Other board members include former Danish prime minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, who is also a co-chair and is perhaps only remembered outside of Denmark for her selfie faux pas at Mandela’s funeral in 2013 when she was photographed taking a group photo with Barack Obama and David Cameron during the commemoration.

https://www.mintpressnews.com/facebook-free-speech-court-oversight-board-independent/272330/

A New World Monetary Order Is Coming

The global coronavirus pandemic has accelerated several troubling trends already in force. Among them are exponential debt growth, rising dependency on government, and scaled-up central bank interventions into markets and the economy.

Central bankers now appear poised to embark on their biggest power play ever.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, in coordination with the European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), is preparing to roll out central bank digital currencies.

The globalist IMF recently called for a new “Bretton Woods Moment” to address the loss of trillions of dollars in global economic output due to the coronavirus.

In the aftermath of World War II, the original Bretton Woods agreement established a world monetary order with the U.S. dollar as the reserve currency.

Importantly, the dollar was to be pegged to the price of gold. Foreign governments and central banks could also redeem their dollar reserves in gold, and they started doing so in earnest in the 1960s and early 1970s.

In 1971, President Richard Nixon closed the gold window, effectively ushering in a new world monetary order based solely on the full faith and credit of the United States. An inflation crisis followed a few years later.

In response, the Federal Reserve took the painful step of jacking up interest rates to defend its wilting Federal Reserve Note and tame rising prices.

Fast forward to 2020, and the Fed has assumed for itself novel policy mandates that are a precursor to a new monetary system.

But the monetary masters aren’t contemplating a return to sound money. Rather, they’re planning for even more debt, more inflation, and picking of winners and losers in the economy.

The Fed has unceremoniously thrown its statutory dual mandate of full employment and stable prices out the window. It now gives itself an unlimited mandate to inject stimulus and bailout cash wherever it sees fit (including, recently, “junk” bond exchange-traded funds).

Instead of pursuing stable prices, the Fed is now explicitly embarking on an inflation-raising campaign with the goal of generating annual price level increases above 2% for an undefined period. The next frontier of the Fed’s unlimited mandate could be “FedCoin” – a central bank digital currency.

Earlier this month Chairman Powell participated in an IMF panel on international payments and digital currencies. He touted electronic payments systems and raised the possibility of integrating them into a central bank digital currency regime.

Powell has so far declined to outright endorse a move toward a fully cashless system which countries including China and Sweden are spearheading. But he is on board with the larger globalist agenda of expanding the role of monetary policy in shaping economic and social outcomes.

https://www.activistpost.com/2020/10/a-new-world-monetary-order-is-coming.html

Judicial Watch: Briefing Memo Shows Democratic Lobbying Firm Met with U.S. Officials in Ukraine in February 2019, Discussed Burisma Holdings

Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it received 116 pages of records from the State Department which includes a briefing checklist of a February 22, 2019, meeting in Kyiv between then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch and Sally Painter, co-founder and chief operating officer of Blue Star Strategies, a Democratic lobbying firm which was hired by Burisma Holdings to combat corruption allegations.

The briefing checklist notes that Painter also planned to meet with Foreign Commercial Service (FCS) Officer Martin Claessens “regarding the Burisma Group energy company.” (Painter was implicated in the Clinton-era fundraising scandal exposed by Judicial Watch that involved the alleged sale of seats on Commerce Department trade missions to Democratic National Committee donors.)

The records were obtained by Judicial Watch in response to a FOIA lawsuit filed in January 2020 seeking records of communications from the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv mentioning Burisma (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:20-cv-00229)).

At the time of the meeting, Hunter Biden, son of former Vice President Joe Biden, was serving on the board of directors for Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy firm. Hunter Biden served on the board of Burisma until April 2019.

The records obtained by Judicial Watch also include a May 18, 2016, email from a redacted sender to Amos Hochstein, senior advisor to Vice President Joe Biden on international energy affairs, under the subject “Burisma News Devon Archer.”

The email includes links to two articles, one by the New York Post on May 12, 2016, which detail how Archer, a business partner of Hunter Biden and also a member of the Burisma board of directors, had been arrested on suspicion of securities fraud in a “$60 million scam that ripped off impoverished South Dakota Sioux and others.”

The records also include several emails in which officials in the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv closely monitored media and social media reaction to John Solomon’s reporting for The Hill on Yovanovitch and Ukraine corruption. Individuals whose statements were flagged included Dan Bongino, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Jack Posobiec, and Rudy Giuliani, as well as Ukrainian journalists and politicians.

A March 23, 2019, email from a redacted sender to several Kyiv embassy officials, including Yovanovitch and Acting Deputy Chief of Mission George Kent, cites a Dan Bongino tweet reacting to Solomon’s reporting.

https://www.judicialwatch.org/press-releases/dem-lobbying-firm-ukraine/

Judge blocks DOJ from defending Trump in lawsuit over rape allegation

A federal judge on Tuesday rejected the Department of Justice's (DOJ) effort to intervene on President Trump's behalf in a lawsuit over a writer's accusation that he raped her in the mid-1990s.

Judge Lewis Kaplan, of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, ruled the president is not an employee of the government and that the allegations don't regard conduct in his official capacity.

E. Jean Carroll, a former magazine columnist, sued Trump in his personal capacity for defamation last year after he publicly denied her allegation of rape. Kaplan's ruling means Trump cannot use the DOJ to defend him in the case.

"President Trump’s comments concerned media reports about an alleged sexual assault that took place more than twenty years before he took office," Kaplan, who was appointed by former President Clinton, wrote in his 61-page decision. "Neither the media reports nor the underlying allegations have any relationship to his official duties."

Carroll published her allegation in June 2019 in New York magazine, writing that Trump, then a private businessman, sexually assaulted her in a department store dressing room.

Trump denied the allegations, saying "she's not my type."

A White House spokesman was not immediately able to comment. A spokeswoman for the DOJ declined to comment.

Roberta Kaplan, Carroll's attorney, hailed the decision.

"The simple truth is that President Trump defamed our client because she was brave enough to reveal that he had sexually assaulted her, and that brutal, personal attack cannot be attributed to the Office of the President," Roberta Kaplan said. "We look forward to moving forward with E. Jean Carroll’s defamation case against Donald Trump in his personal capacity in federal court.”

The DOJ had successfully moved the case from New York state court to federal court earlier this year. It later argued that Trump is covered by the Federal Tort Claims Act, a law that allows certain suits to be brought against government employees acting in their official capacity.

But the law does not allow for defamation cases against government officials, meaning that if the judge had sided with the DOJ over the issue, Carroll's suit would likely have been thrown out.

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/522918-judge-blocks-doj-from-defending-trump-in-lawsuit-over-rape

Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov to self-isolate after contact with COVID-19 carrier

The previously planned visits and meetings will be postponed

MOSCOW, October 27. /TASS/. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will self-isolate over a contact with a COVID-19 carrier, the Ministry press service told TASS Tuesday, adding that the minister feels well.

Read also

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"Due to a contact with a COVID-19 carrier, Sergey Lavrov will self-isolate. Previously planned visits and meetings will be postponed. The minister feels well," the Ministry said.

Lavrov had visits to Sarajevo and Belgrade planned for October 28-29. On October 26, the minister came back from Greece.

https://tass.com/society/1217061

Israel to issue building permits for 31 Hebron homes before US election

The issuance of a permit is symbolic, because a Jerusalem District Court ordered injunction prevents construction of the project.

The IDF is set to issue a building permit for 31 apartment units for what will be a new Jewish apartment complex, in the Hizkiyahu quarter in the West Bank city of Hebron.

The decision to allow the Higher Planning Council for Judea and Samaria to push forward the project, follows its advancement and approval earlier this month of plans for 5,288 settler homes.

These steps belie claims that a de facto freeze is in place with regard to settlement planning in light of the Israeli normalization deals with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. They also come in advance of the November 3 presidential election in the United States. Support for Israel and the settlement movement is viewed as part of incumbent US President Donald Trump’s campaign.

The left-wing group Peace Now linked the permit with the elections, in a statement it issued on Tuesday.

“The attempt to squeeze in this construction of 31 settlement units before the US election is an unscrupulous act that threatens Israel’s national interest and relations on the world stage,” Peace Now said.

The issuance of a permit is symbolic, because a Jerusalem District Court ordered injunction prevents construction of the project.

The state, however, notified the court that it intends to issue the permit given that it believes the injunction bars construction but not planning.

A permit for the project, which will be located on Shuhada Street in Hebron, was first issued in 2017, according to Peace Now, and NIS 21.6 million in government funds was allocated for the project the next year.

The Palestinian Hebron Municipality and Peace Now appealed to the district court against the project and the case is still pending.

Hebron’s Jewish community spokesman, Yishai Fleisher welcomed the state’s decision.

“In 1836, the land in question was bought by Avraham Yisrael Romano from Arabs and he built a large house there. It was purchased from his heirs in 1912 by Chabad Lubavitch which opened a Torah study institution there,” Fleisher said.

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/israel-to-issue-building-permits-for-31-hebron-homes-before-us-election-647149

When exactly did the AngloZionist Empire collapse?

I remember one evening in distant 1991, I was sitting with a few friends in the SAIS cafeteria discussing the future of the United States with a few very smart students, including a Pakistani Army Colonel, a US captain who served on aircraft carriers and a Spanish diplomat: we all agreed that “the system” was perfect, so to speak, and that the USA would only collapse if a strong external shock would hit it hard. We all agreed that the combination of the best propaganda machine in history, the stupidification resulting from many daily hours of watching the Idiot Tube and, finally, a very effective repression apparatus made for a quasi perfect dictatorship: the one which only gives the illusion of democracy and people power.

Years later, in 2017, I read by J.M. Greer’s brilliant book “Twilight’s Last Gleaming” which I later reviewed here. I would say that this book is one of the best one written on the topic of a future US collapse, even though this is a (very well written) fiction book because it brilliantly illustrates the kind of mindset which can get a supposed superpower in a very bad situation.

To me, this all made perfect sense, but only because I, and my SAIS friends, never even considered the possibility that the US Nomenklatura would commit national suicide and, in the process, bring down the AngloZionist Empire.

Yet this is exactly what happened.

So when did all this begin?

There are many possible answers to this question. Some say with the murder of Kennedy. Others point to Clinton, whose Presidency inaugurated a policy of armed imperialism all over the planet; this administration was also the first one to witness a major “coming out” of the Neocons (many of which had already infiltrated the GOP during Reagan). Then there is 9/11 with the subsequent GWOT. As I said, these are all valid candidates, and there are many more.

My personal view is that the main initiation of collapse was under Barack Obama, a truly exceptionally weak President who would have made an absolutely terrific used cars salesman, but who as a President lost control of his own country and even his own administration. It was under Obama that we saw the vacuum at the top resulting in various agencies (DoS, DoD, CIA, Pentagon, etc.) all developing their own “foreign policies” which resulted in total chaos on the foreign policy front. Needless to say, having harpies such as Hillary Clinton or Susan Rice or Samantha Power involved did not help!

[Sidebar: what is it with western women which makes them become even more bellicose than men when they reach a position of power?! Looking at women like Thatcher or Hillary, I wonder if these women are not carefully selected precisely for their nasty character and need to prove themselves as “equal” to men by being even more nasty and murderous than male politicians…]

Since his election, it has become very popular to blame Donald Trump for everything which went wrong under his Presidency and, indeed, there is much which ought to be blamed on him. But what so many people overlook is that almost everything which went wrong under Trump began with Obama! When Trumps says that he inherited an awful mess, he is absolutely correct. Not that this absolves him from his own contribution to chaos and collapse!

https://thesaker.is/when-exactly-did-the-anglozionist-empire-collapse/

Democrats Give Away the Game: They Want the Supreme Court to Unilaterally Amend the Constitution

Democrats are terrified that the Supreme Court will return to deciding cases based on the clear meaning of the Constitution and the laws duly passed by Congress, rather than usurping power to ram through a leftist agenda in the name of preserving “rights” the Founders had never conceived of. Yet Americans aren’t exactly keen on handing unlimited power to nine super-legislators in black robes.

In order to prevent a restoration of the Supreme Court’s proper role in America’s constitutional republic, Democrats have to hide their true intentions. They have to convince Americans that originalism does not mean a return to the Constitution’s rules of fair play but rather something else. No Democrat has proved quite as shameless as Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) in this regard.

In the hours leading up to Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation on the Supreme Court, Markey attempted a massive Orwellian lie about the meaning of originalism.

“Originalism is racist. Originalism is sexist. Originalism is homophobic. Originalism is just a fancy word for discrimination,” Markey tweeted.

This is gaslighting at its finest, and I’d bet most Americans are too smart to get snookered by it.

Most Democrats would not attack originalism in this brazen of a fashion, but much of their complaints about Amy Coney Barrett’s judicial philosophy boil down to exactly this argument.

Democrats see the Supreme Court as a kind of super-legislature, using the Constitution as a tool to drag history forward. They look back on Roe v. Wade (1973) and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) as positive steps toward progress rather than gross abuses of the Supreme Court’s power. Democrats supported the Court inventing new “rights” out of whole cloth because those rights involved abortion and same-sex marriage. The end justified the extremely unrepresentative means.

Democrats love to complain about how the American system is undemocratic. Donald Trump won the presidency without the popular vote. Each person’s vote matters more in small states. The Senate doesn’t represent the will of the aggregate of the American people, so #AbolishTheSenate!

Yet the Founders had good reasons for balancing the way Americans are represented in the different parts of the federal government. The democratic will of the people has the final say, but it is mediated through different institutions. Congress, which the Founders made the most powerful branch of government, directly represents the people at the district and state levels. The president, who enacts the laws Congress made, must win the vote of individual states, not just a bare majority of the country.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/tyler-o-neil/2020/10/27/democrat-senator-originalism-is-racist-sexist-homophobic-a-fancy-word-for-discrimination-n1096299

Dorsey, Zuckerberg Defend Their Section 230 'Freedoms' In Prepared Testimony Ahead Of Hearings

Less than a week before the election, the CEOs of Twitter, Facebook and Google are set to face a grilling tomorrow by Republican senators who accuse the tech giants of anti-conservative bias.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sundar Pichai agreed to testify remotely during a hearing of The Senate Commerce Committee after being threatened with subpoenas.

Beyond questioning the CEOs, senators will examine proposals to revise Section 230 - the long-held legal protections for online speech - an immunity that critics in both parties say enables the companies to abdicate their responsibility to moderate content, exposing their biases, which has become increasingly transparent as the Hunter Biden laptop stories are reported (and censored)

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg takes a more measured tone in his testimony (excerpt, emphasis ours):

…the debate about Section 230 shows that people of all political persuasions are unhappy with the status quo. People want to know that companies are taking responsibility for combatting harmful content—especially illegal activity—on their platforms. They want to know that when platforms remove content, they are doing so fairly and transparently. And they want to make sure that platforms are held accountable.

Section 230 made it possible for every major internet service to be built and ensured important values like free expression and openness were part of how platforms operate. Changing it is a significant decision. However, I believe Congress should update the law to make sure it's working as intended. We support the ideas around transparency and industry collaboration that are being discussed in some of the current bipartisan proposals, and I look forward to a meaningful dialogue about how we might update the law to deal with the problems we face today.

At Facebook, we don't think tech companies should be making so many decisions about these important issues alone. I believe we need a more active role for governments and regulators, which is why in March last year I called for regulation on harmful content, privacy, elections, and data portability. We stand ready to work with Congress on what regulation could look like in these areas. By updating the rules for the internet, we can preserve what's best about it—the freedom for people to express themselves and for entrepreneurs to build new things—while also protecting society from broader harms. I would encourage this Committee and other stakeholders to make sure that any changes do not have unintended consequences that stifle expression or impede innovation.

The unwelcome attention to the three companies piles onto the anxieties in the tech industry, which also faces scrutiny from the Justice Department, federal regulators, Congress and state attorneys general around the country.

https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/dorsey-zuckerberg-defend-their-section-230-freedoms-prepared-testimony-ahead-hearings

WaPo Owner & World's Richest Man Jeff Bezos Reportedly In Talks To Buy CNN

His credibility rejuvenated by a series of timely scoops about the TikTok deal talks which eventually went nowhere, Fox Business Senior Business Correspondent Charles Gasparino has just broken what, if accurate, would be one hell of a media industry scoop.

Gasparino reports that Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, the proprietor of the Washington Post since he bought what was then a struggling national paper with shrinking appeal beyond the Beltway, is in talks to also buy CNN from AT&T as the telecoms giant looks to shed assets to pay down some of the massive debt accrued from building out 5G networks nationwide.

Combining CNN and the Washington Post officially under the same media umbrella, with Bezos as a kind of Rupert-Murdoch-On-Steroids, would hand the world's richest man even more power to influence public opinion and implement his agenda.

On Twitter, Gasparino's tweet is already drawing attention from MSM reporters.

To be sure, talks about massive media deals often pans out. A few years ago, people were reporting that Trump was going to resign in order to start his own competitor to Fox News. But if it did happen, some questions to keep in mind: Would Jeff Zucker, Trump's former top producer at "The Apprentice" and the head of CNN, remain in place? Or would Bezos push him out. And would he use the channel to settle petty scores with lawmakers who pushed for the breakup of Amazon?

Trump is of course a hated enemy of Bezos, and has attacked the billionaire not only on Twitter, but by pushing for the antitrust scrutiny that Amazon is now facing under Trump's watch. We can't imagine Trump would sit back and just let such a deal proceed, though if he doesn't win next Thursday, he might not have a choice.

Would he bring in his mistress, a former TV anchor, for an on-camera spot? Maybe even as management?

https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/wapo-owner-worlds-richest-man-jeff-bezos-reportedly-talks-buy-cnn

Twitter Adds Labels to ‘Preemptively Address’ Posts Ahead of Election

Twitter announced on Monday that it will message U.S. users on its platform in an attempt to “preemptively address topics that are likely to be the subject of election misinformation.”

Twitter is expanding its policies in an attempt to “preemptively address” information about the 2020 U.S. presidential election, according to a report by USA Today.

“These prompts will alert people that they may encounter misinformation, and provide them with credible, factual information on the subject,” said Twitter in a statement.

One of Twitter’s prompts talks about how voting by mail is safe and secure. From there, the prompt will direct Twitter users to a “Moment” with more information on the so-called security of voting by mail.

Breitbart Tech senior reporter Allum Bokhari documented one of Twitter’s offical fact checks on the New York Post’s Biden bombshells this week.

He wrote:

The fact check uses selective emphasis. It does not, for example, highlight the fact that the same GOP-led investigation found that Hunter Biden “cashed in” on his father’s name, using it to secure a lucrative salary from Burisma and pursue other business deals around the world.

This is acknowledged in the same New York Times article cited by Twitter.

Twitter’s fact-check also quotes liberal-leaning NPR and far-left HuffPo, making the nonsensical allegation that ” emails found on a hard drive have been proven to lack evidence,” according to the two outlets.

NPR says that the emails “have not been verified as authentic,” a journalistic sleight of hand which tells us nothing about whether NPR or any other outlet has even tried to verify them. In fact, NPR has done its best to avoid reporting on the growing scandal, stating: “We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste listeners’ and readers’ time on that stories that are just pure distractions.”

Despite Twitter’s — and other social media platform’s — attempts at “debunking” alleged “misinformation” ahead of the presidential election, there is, however, a plethora of evidence that voting by mail is not as secure as voting in person — and that it may not be secure in general.

In Brooklyn, New York, 25 percent of mail-in ballots were ruled invalid during the June Democrat primary. In a New Jersey special election, nearly 20 percent of the ballots were thrown out, and four people are being prosecuted for fraud.

In a Florida primary, more than 35,000 mail-in ballots were rejected, and over 100,000 ballots were rejected in California.

In Pennsylvania’s primary, half of the counties were still counting ballots a week after the election. Also in Pennsylvania, military ballots were found discarded, many of them were cast for Trump.

Reports in Wisconsin of three trays of mail containing absentee ballots were found in a ditch. In North Carolina, voters reported receiving two ballots in the mail.

Regardless, social media platforms appear to have taken it upon themselves to push a different narrative under the guise of debunking misinformation.

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2020/10/27/twitter-adds-labels-to-preemptively-address-posts-ahead-of-election/

Bloods Gang Members Sentenced to Life in Prison for Racketeering Conspiracy Involving Murder and Other Crimes

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/bloods-gang-members-sentenced-life-prison-racketeering-conspiracy-involving-murder-and-other

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