Vatican Caught Using Charity Donations To Cover Budget Shortfalls

While Pope Francis has long preached about the ills of economic inequality and sins of capitalism, the Catholic church has been robbing Peter's Pence to the tune of over $50 million annually to plug holes in their out-of-control budget - after paying over $3 billion in pedophile priest settlements around the world.

According to the Wall Street Journal, most of the roughly $55 million the church takes in annually goes towards "plugging the hole in the Vatican’s own administrative budget, while as little as 10% is spent on charitable works."

The little-publicized breakdown of how the Holy See spends Peter’s Pence, known only among senior Vatican officials, is raising concern among some Catholic Church leaders that the faithful are being misled about the use of their donations, which could further hurt the credibility of the Vatican’s financial management under Pope Francis. -Wall Street Journal

Of note, Peter's Pence is an annual collection event held every June, billed as a fundraising event for the needy. It is described as a "gesture of charity, a way of supporting the activity of the Pope and the universal Church in favoring especially the poorest and Churches in difficulty. It is also an invitation to pay attention and be near to new forms of poverty and fragility."

A section of the website dedicated to “works realized” describes individual grants, such as €100,000 in relief aid to survivors of last month’s earthquake in Albania or €150,000 for those affected by cyclone Idai in southeastern Africa in March. -WSJ

"The purpose of the Peter’s Pence Collection is to provide the Holy Father with the financial means to respond to those who are suffering as a result of war, oppression, natural disaster and disease," according to the website of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/vatican-caught-using-substantial-charity-donations-cover-budget-shortfalls

US Senate advances bill giving State Department right to call Russia ‘sponsor of terrorism’

The US Senate Foreign Relations Committee has approved a bill asking the State Department to determine whether Russia falls under criteria of a state sponsor of terrorism, potentially opening a way stricter sanctions.

The US Senate Foreign Relations Committee has approved a bill asking the State Department to determine whether Russia falls under criteria of a state sponsor of terrorism, potentially opening a way stricter sanctions.The pretentiously titled ‘Stopping Malign Activities from Russian Terrorism (SMART) Act’ could potentially bring the already strained relations between Moscow and Washington to a new low.

Introduced by Senator Cory Gardner (R-Colorado) in April, it requires the Secretary of State to give “appropriate congressional committees” a straight answer on whether Russia could be designated a sponsor of terrorism.The bill also requires the State Department to determine and report to Congress whether the militia in the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk republics in eastern Ukraine can be considered “foreign terrorist organizations.” The report should be presented “no later than 90 days” after the proposed law comes into force, should it pass in both Senate and the House and be signed by the president.

So far, the Foreign Relations Committee cleared it to be further debated – and potentially passed – by the Senate.Only a handful of countries have been designated by Washington as state sponsors of terrorism, including Iran, Syria, North Korea and Sudan. Should this bill be approved, it would give the anti-Russian interests in Washington yet another opportunity to slap Moscow with more sanctions.

The committee’s action just a day after Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov visited Washington and met with both State Secretary Mike Pompeo and President Donald Trump. His visit sparked yet another wave of anti-Russian hysteria, among the House Democrats in particular. Congressman Adam Schiff (D-California), who spearheads the Trump impeachment efforts in the House, called it no less than a “success of Russian propaganda.” Lavrov replied by calling such a reaction to “ministerial-level contacts normal to any country” patently absurd.

https://www.rt.com/usa/475637-us-senate-russia-sponsor-terrorism/

The FBI and the media joined together to launch an attack on me of unparalleled proportion in the history of his nation – Richard Jewell

Clint Eastwood’s timing could not be better.

“The FBI and the media joined together to launch an attack on me of unparalleled proportion in the history of his nation … It was all a lie … The Justice Department cannot be trusted to investigate itself.”

— Richard Jewell, July 30, 1997,

House hearing

JAMES BOVARD: Inspector General report on FBI’s FISA abuse tells us one thing: We need radical reform.

Yesterday’s IG report was only the latest in a long series of revelations about FBI misconduct at the FISA court:

*In 2002, the FISA court revealed that FBI agents had false or misleading claims in 75 cases and a top FBI counterterrorism official was prohibited from ever appearing before the court again.

*In 2005, FISA chief judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly proposed requiring FBI agents to swear to the accuracy of the information they presented; that never happened because it could have “slowed such investigations drastically,” the Washington Post reported. So FBI agents continued to have a license to exploit FISA secrecy to lie to the judges.

*In 2017, a FISA court decision included a 10-page litany of FBI violations, which “ranged from illegally sharing raw intelligence with unauthorized third parties to accessing intercepted attorney-client privileged communications without proper oversight.”

* In October, a secret FISA court ruling was released documenting the FBI’s illegal conducted warrantless searches of vast numbers of Americans’ emails despite congressional legislation seeking to curb FBI data roundups.

FBI machinations at the FISA court are especially perilous to American democracy because that court is extremely docile to federal agencies. The FISA court “created a secret body of law giving the National Security Agency the power to amass vast collections of data on Americans,” the New York Times reported in 2013 after Edward Snowden leaked court decisions. FISA decisions have “quietly become almost a parallel Supreme Court…regularly assessing broad constitutional questions and establishing important judicial precedents, with almost no public scrutiny.” The court’s servility can boggle the imagination, such as its rubber-stamping FBI requests that bizarrely claimed that the telephone records of all Americans were “relevant” to a terrorism investigation under the Patriot Act, thereby enabling N.S.A. data seizures later denounced by a federal judge as “almost Orwellian.”

Ironically, the FISA court was created in 1978 to prevent Nixon-style political spying.

Or at least, that’s how it was sold.

THE FBI WILL TAKE DECADES TO RECOVER: IG Report: Here Are The 17 Specific ‘Inaccuracies And Omissions’ In The FBI’s FISA Warrants Against Carter Page. And its reputation has been damaged the most among those who were previously its supporters.

AND THE PRESS IS BUSY COVERING THAT UP AND DEFENDING IT: Liz Harrington: FISA abuse — Obama’s FBI turned into arm of Hillary Clinton campaign.

BLOOMBERG CONTINUES TO POACH HIS NEWSROOM TO STAFF UP 2020 CAMPAIGN.

Why, it’s as if the media are Democratic Party operatives with bylines, to coin an Insta-phrase.

ALARMING: This Is The Shocking List Of Donald Trump Hoaxes The Mainstream Media Has Reported As Fact About Him This Year – UPDATED 12/10/19

https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/the-fbi-and-the-media-joined-together-to-launch-an-attack-on-me-of-unparalleled-proportion-in-the-history-of-his-nation-richard-jewell/

Amazon Ring’s Data Maps Surveillance Network; Jeff Bezos Embraces Fascism with Amazon Military Support

“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.”― Benito Mussolini

Jeff Bezos has embraced fascism, criticizing Silicon Valley for employees of companies like Google who don’t wish to work with the military. Meanwhile, a Gizmodo investigation has revealed that Amazon’s blanket surveillance network, Ring, has lied and misrepresented “what information, if any, they share with law enforcement.”

Bezos made the comments during a Department Of Defense contractor meetup on Saturday at the Reagan National Defense Forum, Defense One reported.

“One of the things that’s happening inside of technology companies is there are groups of employees who, for example, think technology companies should not work with the Department of Defense,” Jeff Bezos said Saturday at the Reagan National Defense Forum. “People are entitled to their opinions, but it is the job of a senior leadership team to say no,” he said.

“My view is, if big tech is going to turn their back on the Department of Defense, this country is in trouble,” he said. “That just can’t happen.”

Bezos is alluding to companies like Google where their employees stand up and protest against working with the military in contracts like Project Maven assisting in drone development using artificial intelligence, as Activist Post previously reported.

There are even some Amazon employees against the company selling facial recognition technology to the government who have protested the company’s decision to aid police surveillance. In addition, over 20 groups of shareholders have sent several letters to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos urging him to stop selling the company’s face recognition software to law enforcement.

“We are concerned the technology would be used to unfairly and disproportionately target and surveil people of color, immigrants, and civil society organizations,” the shareholders, which reportedly include Social Equity Group and Northwest Coalition for Responsible Investment, wrote. “We are concerned sales may be expanded to foreign governments, including authoritarian regimes.”

Another letter was sent in January 2019, organized by Open Mic, a nonprofit organization focused on corporate accountability, and was filed by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Brentwood; both letters warned the technology poses “potential civil and human rights risks.”

Numerous civil rights organizations have also co-signed a letter demanding Amazon stop assisting government surveillance; and several members of Congress have expressed concerns about the partnerships.

Several lawmakers have even chimed in to voice concerns about Amazon’s facial recognition software, expressing worry that it could be misused, The Hill reported.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) obtained hundreds of pages of documents showing Amazon offering the software to law enforcement agencies across the country.

In a 2018 report, the ACLU called Amazon’s facial recognition project a “threat to civil liberties.”

Amazon responded by essentially shrugging off the employees’ and shareholder concerns by the head of the company’s public sector cloud computing business, stating that the team is “unwaveringly” committed to the U.S. government.

https://www.activistpost.com/2019/12/amazon-rings-data-maps-surveillance-network-jeff-bezos-embraces-fascism-with-amazon-military-support.html

>>7484719

This is true

ICE Deports Over Quarter of a Million Illegals, 5.5K Gang Members in 2019

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency deported more than a quarter of a million illegal aliens from the United States in Fiscal Year 2019, including roughly 5,500 gang members.

Between September 2018 and October 2019, ICE agents deported about 267,258 illegal aliens from the U.S. — a more than four percent increase compared to 2018 and a nearly 20 percent increase compared to 2017 deportation levels.

This year, about 85,958 of those illegal aliens were deported from the interior of the U.S., while the other more than 181,000 illegal aliens were deported after arriving at the southern border.

The overwhelming majority of illegal aliens deported from the U.S. interior, roughly 65,000, were convicted criminals, while another 13,500 illegal aliens had pending criminal charges against them. There are anywhere between 11 and 22 million illegal aliens living in the interior of the country at any given time, straining ICE’s resources.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/12/11/ice-deports-over-quarter-of-a-million-illegals-5-5k-gang-members-in-2019/

>>7484869

your bakes are shit

Attorney for Municipalities in Puerto Rico Convicted of Bribery

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/attorney-municipalities-puerto-rico-convicted-bribery

Joint U.S-EU Statement Following the U.S.-EU Justice and Home Affairs Ministerial Meeting

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/joint-us-eu-statement-following-us-eu-justice-and-home-affairs-ministerial-meeting-0

Horowitz used to work for Comey, Bush and Obama so how could he be allowed to investigate FISA abuse and not recuse??????

DOJ IG Michael Horowitz: Bruce Ohr Still Working at Justice Department

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz said Wednesday that Bruce Ohr, a senior Justice Department official under scrutiny due to his unusual role in the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign, still works at the Justice Department.

Asked by Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) if Ohr still worked at the DOJ, Horowitz responded, “My understanding is he is.”

Horowitz on Monday released a report that confirmed that Ohr, unbeknownst to his superiors at the DOJ, acted as a go-between for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and ex-British spy Christopher Steele, author of the “pee dossier,” after the FBI fired Steele as a source.

The report said Ohr had known Steele since at least 2007, and the two began discussing information Steele collected on the Trump campaign beginning in July 2016. After the FBI fired Steele as a source in October 2016, due to his sharing the information with the media, Ohr continued to consult with him.

According to the report, Ohr and Steele met at least 13 times after Steele was fired. After each conversation, Ohr would be interviewed by the FBI, so that he could pass on Steele’s information to the FBI. The FBI was aware and approved of the arrangement, but the DOJ — who would later receive and review Steele’s information — was not aware of the arrangement.

The DOJ was also unaware that Ohr’s wife’s had worked as a researcher for Fusion GPS, the same firm that Steele was working for and that was paid by the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Horowitz’s report said:

We did not identify a specific Department policy prohibiting Ohr from meeting with Steele, Simpson, or the State Department and providing the information he learned from those meetings to the FBI. However, Ohr was clearly cognizant of his responsibility to inform his supervisors of these interactions, and acknowledged to the OIG that the possibility that he would have been told by his supervisors to stop having such contact may have factored into his decision not to tell them about it.

We concluded that Ohr committed consequential errors in judgment by (1) failing to advise his direct supervisors or the [Deputy Attorney General] that he was communicating with Steele and [Fusion GPS founder Glenn] Simpson and then requesting meetings with the FBI’s Deputy Director and Crossfire Hurricane team on matters that were outside of his areas of responsibility, and (2) making himself a witness in the investigation by meeting with Steele and providing Steele’s information to the FBI.

The report said Ohr’s not telling his superiors of his role led to the late discovery that Steele had told Ohr that Steele was “desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being the U.S. President.”

Although Ohr had told the FBI this information, the FBI did not pass it on to the DOJ or the court granting surveillance warrants on Carter Page until a year after a fourth and final surveillance warrant was issued.

Horowitz’s report recommended that the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility should “review our findings related to the conduct of Department attorney Bruce Ohr for any action it deems appropriate.”

It added: “Ohr’s current supervisors in [CRM] should also review our findings related to Ohr’s performance for any action they deem appropriate.”

https://www.breitbart.com/2020-election/2019/12/11/doj-ig-michael-horowitz-bruce-ohr-still-working-at-justice-department/

>>7484977

you clowns would like that wouldn't (You)

WTF

https://twitter.com/jack/status/1204766078468911106

>>7485027

Good fuck off CLOWN

>>7485031

I thought he was leaving next year

>>7485053 You right

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Ma, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Google Sundar Pinchai, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey

https://qz.com/africa/1763757/twitters-jack-dorsey-jack-ma-visit-nigeria-ethiopia/