Judge demands answers from FBI on faulty surveillance applications

The presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court signaled grave concern about the Justice Department inspector general’s findings

Public fallout from a Justice Department watchdog’s revelations of failures in the FBI’s handling of intelligence-related surveillance warrants spread to the courts on Tuesday, as a key judge slammed the government for presenting inaccurate, misleading and incomplete information.

https://www.politico.com/news/2019/12/17/judge-fbi-surveillance-applications-086709

Report: Durham Is Seeking John Brennan’s Emails And Call Logs

U.S Attorney John Durham is seeking the emails, call logs and other communications of former CIA Director John Brennan as part of a broad investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe, according to a report.

The New York Times, citing three sources familiar with the matter, reported that Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, is looking at the role that Brennan played in assessing that the Russian government interfered in the 2016 election specifically to help Donald Trump.

Durham also wants to know about Brennan’s views of the Steele dossier, the Democrat-funded opposition research that alleged a “well-developed conspiracy of co-operation” between the Trump campaign and Russian government.

https://dailycaller.com/2019/12/19/john-durham-john-brennan-emails-steele-dossier/

Spate of historical employee suicides sees telecom firm Orange fined & ex-CEO sent to prison in landmark case

French telecoms company Orange has been found guilty of multiple employee suicides in a case that could open the door for other firms to be charged with “institutionalized moral harassment.”

Multinational firm Orange is France’s first corporation to be tried on such a charge, and the landmark court ruling could set a legal precedent.

A Paris court fined the company €75,000 (more than $83,000) on Friday over 39 cases in the 2000s. They include 19 suicides, 12 suicide attempts and eight cases of serious depression. Other employees’ suicides couldn’t be linked directly and solely with their jobs.

Conflicting media reports suggest various time periods for the peak in suicides as some say it was between 2006 and 2009 while others name a period between 2008 and 2010. Le Figaro also linked the incidents to the “company’s policies between 2007 and 2008.”

The suicides happened while Orange – formerly known as France Telecom – was making 22,000 people redundant and redeploying 10,000 workers after the state-run company was privatized.

Former CEO Didier Lombard denied wrongdoing, but he was sentenced to prison and fined €15,000. The company also offered compensation to the victims and relatives of the deceased on the last day of the trial. The judge estimated that claims for compensation could so far amount to a total of €2 million ($2.25 million).

Lombard, his right-hand man Louis-Pierre Wenes, and human resources director Olivier Barberot were accused of leading a “policy of destabilization.” All three were jailed for a year, although eight months were suspended.

https://www.rt.com/news/476494-orange-telecom-employee-suicides/

Tremors felt in India & Pakistan as powerful earthquake strikes north-eastern Afghanistan

A strong 6.1-magnitude earthquake has shaken Afghanistan’s Badakhshan Province in the north east. Tremors were felt as far away as New Delhi, India and northern regions of Pakistan.

The quake struck at a depth of 210km (130 miles) in the mountainous Hindu Kush area, 51km (32 miles) north-west of Jarm, which is itself located more than 370km (230 miles) away from the capital Kabul, according to the US Geological Service.

Earthquake In Lahore😭😭🙏🙇Yaa Allah Reham Farma😭#earthquake#Lahore#YaAllahpic.twitter.com/c700IRshnE

— Imaan❤ (@butterflymano78) December 20, 2019

It was apparently so powerful that it also affected vast areas of northern Pakistan and India, including the capitals of both nations. In Pakistan, the tremors were felt in Islamabad as well as the Punjab capital of Lahore and half a dozen of other cities.

https://www.rt.com/news/476507-powerful-earthquake-afghanistan-india-pakistan/

Trump Signs ‘Groundbreaking’ Legislation Supporting Historically Black Colleges And Universities

President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he signed “groundbreaking” legislation supporting historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs).

The legislation will permanently fund HBCUs and simplify federal financial aid applications for millions of families, the president said in a statement Thursday.

“President Obama and the Obama Administration were unable to get this done. I got it done,” Trump said, arguing that HBCUs have never had a champion in the White House before his presidency.

https://dailycaller.com/2019/12/19/donald-trump-hbcu-legislation/

The greening of the earth means more food for animals and greater crop yields for humans.

Ridley: Rejoice, the Earth Is Becoming

Amid all the talk of an imminent planetary catastrophe caused by emissions of carbon dioxide, another fact is often ignored: global greening is happening faster than climate change. The amount of vegetation growing on the earth has been increasing every year for at least 30 years. The evidence comes from the growth rate of plants and from satellite data.

In 2016 a paper was published by 32 authors from 24 institutions in eight countries that analysed satellite data and concluded that there had been a roughly 14% increase in green vegetation over 30 years. The study attributed 70% of this increase to the extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The lead author on the study, Zaichun Zhu of Beijing University, says this is equivalent to adding a new continent of green vegetation twice the size of the mainland United States.

Global greening has affected all ecosystems – from arctic tundra to coral reefs to plankton to tropical rain forests – but shows up most strongly in arid places like the Sahel region of Africa, where desertification has largely now reversed. This is because plants lose less water in the process of absorbing carbon dioxide if the concentration of carbon dioxide is higher. Ecosystems and farms will be less water-stressed at the end of this century than they are today during periods of low rainfall.

There should have been no surprise about this news. Thousands of experiments have been conducted over many years in which levels of CO2 had been increased over crops or wild ecosystems and boosted their growth. The owners of commercial greenhouses usually pump CO2 into the air to speed up the growth of plants. CO2 is plant food.

This greening is good news. It means more food for insects and deer, for elephants and mice, for fish and whales. It means higher yields for farmers; indeed, the effect has probably added about $3 trillion to farm incomes over the last 30 years. So less land is needed to feed the human population and more can be spared for wildlife instead.

Yet this never gets mentioned. In their desperation to keep the fearmongering on track the activists who make a living off the climate change scare do their best to ignore this inconvenient truth. When they cannot avoid the subject, they say that greening is a temporary phenomenon that will reverse in the latter part of this century. The evidence for this claim comes from a few models fed with extreme assumptions, so it cannot be trusted.

https://humanprogress.org/article.php?p=2018

Police official: More than 250 riot leaders arrested in Kermanshah, western Iran

Iran, December 19, 2019—The Fars news agency, known to be affiliated to the Iranian regime’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), wired a report on Wednesday, December 18, citing Ali Akbar Javidan, head of state police in Kermanshah Province, western Iran. More than 250 protesters were arrested during the November uprising in this province alone, Javidan said, describing the individuals as “riot leaders.”

“Javidan reported of more than 250 individuals among the riot leaders in this province,” according to the Fars report. “These individuals resorted to creating insecurity and riots in various cities of this province and instigated many other youths to join the riots and street clashes,” he added. This further indicates the hate among the Iranian people, especially the younger generation regarding the mullahs’ regime.

Kermanshah, western #Iran

People are throwing rocks to protect themselves from the regime's security forces attacking their protest gathering. Locals are angry over a national gasoline price hike.#IranProtestspic.twitter.com/4BjIbvZlw5

— People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) (@Mojahedineng) 16 November 2019

https://english.mojahedin.org/i/iranian-regime-november-uprising-protests-crackdown-arrests-irgc-20191219

Navy Admiral: Russian Submarine Activity Highest US Has Seen In a Long Time

The Navy is seeing a surge in Russian submarine activity, and it's posing new challenges to the U.S. and its NATO allies, a top U.S. admiral overseeing missions in Europe said.

The U.S. Navy is doing more in the undersea domain, Adm. James Foggo, commander of U.S. Naval Forces Europe and Africa, told reporters on Wednesday, as submarine competition with Russia heats up.

"This has been one of the busiest years that I can remember, and I've been doing this since 1983," he said. "… Russia has continued to put resources into their undersea domain. It's an asymmetric way of challenging the West and NATO alliance and actually they've done quite well."

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/12/19/navy-admiral-russian-submarine-activity-highest-us-has-seen-long-time.html

Day 8: Technocracy And Central Banks

t is common knowledge that the central banks of the world, like the Federal Reserve, control monetary policy for everyone, everywhere. Central banks are an exclusive lot because in each case, each bank has only one customer – namely, the host nation’s government. The Federal Reserve serves only the United States Treasury, for instance. The Bank of England serves only the British government, and so on.

The influence wielded by central banks is felt in all areas of economic activity within the home nation as well as in surrounding countries. In the case of the Federal Reserve, which manages the most important reserve currency in the world, its activities are closely watched by economists and forecasters everywhere.

What most people don’t know, however, is that the central bank collective has a central bank of its own: the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). The BIS is located in Basle, Switzerland, and the vast majority of its operations and policies are shrouded in total secrecy. The BIS invents and directs policies for all other central banks and conversely, no central bank acts outside the policy structure set by the BIS.

In a 2018 Bloomberg Markets Special Report titled Welcome to the Elite Private Club Of the World’s Central Bankers, a key fact about the BIS was revealed:

https://www.technocracy.news/day-8-technocracy-and-global-banks/

UN Peacekeepers Fathered Hundreds of Babies With Girls in Haiti as Young as 11

United Nations (UN) peacekeepers charged with protecting disaster-struck Haiti have fathered hundreds of babies with local women and girls before leaving them behind in poverty, according to a new study.

A paper published by the University of Birmingham’s Sabine Lee and Queen’s University’s Susan Bartels describes the experience of those people living under the protection of a UN Stabilisation Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH).

The studies were based on conversations with over 2,500 Haitians who shared the experiences of women and girls in the communities that hosted peace operations. Of the 2,500 talked to, about ten percent revealed stories about peacekeeper-fathered children.

Girls as young as 11 were allegedly sexually abused and impregnated by peacekeepers and left “in misery” to raise their children alone.

The children, dubbed colloquially as “Petit MINUSTAH”, “bébés casques bleus” (blue helmet babies), or “les enfants abandonnés par la MINUSTAH” (the children abandoned by the MINUSTAH) suggests the children will struggle for the unforeseeable future with a label they had no control over.

https://www.activistpost.com/2019/12/un-peacekeepers-fathered-hundreds-of-babies-with-girls-in-haiti-as-young-as-11.html

Obama Administration Documents

on Secrecy Policy

Presidential Documents

https://fas.org/sgp/obama/index.html

NSA Allowed To 'Unmask' US Citizens Without Surveillance Warrant: US Court

A US court of appeals ruled on Wednesday that the US government may collect information about a US citizen without first obtaining a surveillance warrant, as long as it was done so inadvertently while legally monitoring a non-national abroad, according to Reuters.

The appeal in question was brought by Agron Hasbajrami, a US resident arrested in 2011 who later pleaded guilty to attempting to providing material support to a terrorist organization. He was arrested at JFK International Airport in New York as he was attempting to board a flight to Turkey, after communicating with a non-American overseas believed to be associated with a terrorist organization.

Hasbajrami asked the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in New York to toss out the charges after claiming the National Security Agency (NSA) had illegally surveilled him without a warrant, a practice known as 'unmasking.'

The “incidental collection” of Americans’ communications by NSA electronic dragnet that explicitly targets people abroad and without U.S. ties was permissible under the U.S. Constitution, the court ruled. It also said, however, that examining the content of databases of stored NSA information could violate the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.

The court said the “vast majority” of evidence prosecutors had used against Hasbajrami was “lawfully collected,” but prosecutors did not provide information to the trial court about whether investigators had “queried” NSA databases. -Reuters

https://www.blacklistednews.com/article/75761/nsa-allowed-to-unmask-us-citizens-without-surveillance-warrant-us.html

Words of wisdom from a gun store’s sign board

https://www.watcherofweasels.org/words-of-wisdom-from-a-gun-stores-sign-board/

Names & Phone numbers of 267 million Facebook users exposed

The data is now available on a hacker forum to download.

Another day, another data breach putting the privacy of hundreds of millions of Facebook users at risk. It all started with a database that stored a massive trove of personal information of more than 267 million (267,140,436) users.

The database was originally discovered on December 4th by IT security researcher Bob Diachenko who partnered with Comparitech security firm for a detailed analysis. According to researchers, the database was hosted on an Elasticsearch server and left exposed for public access without any password or security protocol.

https://www.hackread.com/names-phone-numbers-of-facebook-users-exposed/

Google & Mozilla ban Avast security extensions over data snooping

Among the various products and services out there, we often find social media companies in trouble for collecting our data beyond necessity. However, recently we’ve come to find that the products supposed to protect us – anti-virus software – are also doing the very same.

In this specific case, it was Avast & AVG Security whose two browser extensions each have been found spying on users, namely Avast Online Security, Avast Safeprice, AVG Online Security and AVG SafePrice.

https://www.hackread.com/google-mozilla-ban-avast-security-extensions-data-snooping/

The Unholy Trinity: How Sex, Organized Crime, And Espionage Intersect In The Israel-Russia-Ukraine Triangle

Russian-Israeli relations are rapidly deteriorating as both countries engage in a tit for tat on visitor screening

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics had 15 “republics” and countless “autonomous regions”, but really only two republics mattered: the Russian Federation and Ukraine. The rest were window dressing. The USSR had only three capital cities that mattered, Moscow, Leningrad (St. Petersburg today), and Kiev. The rest were “provinces”.

After the fall of the USSR in 1990 and the free for all that followed, Soviet Jews, those who have not emigrated to Israel or America in the 1970’s like my family had done, did what Jews always do: split into parts. One part stood in long lines at the consulates of countries that represented Israeli interests in the now defunct USSR, which had no diplomatic ties with Israel since 1967 and begged to be allowed to immigrate to Israel under the auspices of the Law of Return. The other part became busy appropriating anything of value that could be appropriated.

https://tsionizm.com/analysis/2019/12/19/the-unholy-trinity-how-sex-organized-crime-and-espionage-intersect-in-the-israel-russia-ukraine-triangle/

Closer Everyday…Told you people this was coming…Can You Say Mark Of The Beast

Invisible Ink “Tattoos” Could Be Used to ID Vaccinated Kids

They're only visible using a special smartphone camera app and filter.

For the people overseeing nationwide vaccination initiatives in developing countries, keeping track of who had which vaccination and when can be a tough task.

But researchers from MIT might have a solution: they’ve created an ink that can be safely embedded in the skin alongside the vaccine itself, and it’s only visible using a special smartphone camera app and filter.

In other words, they’ve found a covert way to embed the record of a vaccination directly in a patient’s skin rather than documenting it electronically or on paper — and their low-risk tracking system could greatly simplify the process of maintaining accurate vaccine records, especially on a larger scale.

https://futurism.com/neoscope/invisible-vaccine-ink-tattoos-kids