Not Just Hunter: Widespread Biden Family Profiteering Exposed

Clinton Cash author Peter Schweizer is out with a new book, "Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite," in which he reveals that five members of the Biden family, including Hunter, got rich using former Vice President Joe Biden's "largesse, favorable access and powerful position."

While we know of Hunter's profitable exploits in Ukraine and China - largely in part thanks to Schweizer, Joe's brothers James and Frank, his sister Valerie, and his son-in-law Howard all used the former VP's status to enrich themselves.

Of course, Biden in 2019 said "I never talked with my son or my brother or anyone else — even distant family — about their business interests. Period."

As Schweizer puts writes in the New York Post; "we shall see."

James Biden: Joe's younger brother James has been deeply involved in the lawmaker's rise since the early days - serving as his the finance chair of his 1972 Senate campaign. And when Joe became VP, James was a frequent guest at the White House - scoring invites to important state functions which often "dovetailed with his overseas business dealings," writes Schweizer.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/not-just-hunter-widespread-biden-family-profiteering-exposed

Clinton Foundation Whistleblower Has Home Raided by Deep State FBI for 6 Hours – Is Now Speaking Out

On the morning of November 19th, 2018, sixteen FBI agents raided the Maryland home of a DOJ whistleblower who was in possession of Clinton Foundation and Uranium One documents. The whistleblower came across the devastating documents while he was working for an FBI contractor, according to the whistleblower’s lawyer. (Note: This order was likely in the works before Jeff Sessions was fired.)

The Daily Caller exclusively reported that the whistleblower, Dennis Nathan Cain, had given these documents to Inspector General Horowitz and both the House and Senate Intel Committees.

Over a dozen FBI agents rifled through Dennis Nathan Cain’s home for over six hours even though he had already given the documents to the proper investigative channels, according to his lawyer.

The documents reveal then-FBI Director Robert Mueller failed to investigate criminal misconduct by Rosatam, the Russian nuclear firm that purchased 20% of the US’s Uranium.

In December the DOJ pushed back on requests to explain its reasons for raiding the Dennis Nathan Cain’s home.

And now a federal court refuses to unseal the documents to the public on why it was necessary for the DOJ to raid the home of a Clinton Foundation whistleblower.

Are you starting to understand that we have a two-tiered legal systems in America today?

** There is a DOJ-FBI and media complex that protects Democrats and destroys and hides any record of Democrat wrongdoing.

** There is a DOJ that arrests and jails Republicans and Trump supporters and threatens and destroys anyone associated with the Trump movement.

Dennis Nathan is now speaking out about the illegal FBI raid on his home.

Dennis Cain had his home raided by the FBI.

Will they raid anti-Trump leaker Eric Ciaramella’s home now?

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/01/clinton-foundation-whistleblower-has-home-raided-by-deep-state-fbi-for-6-hours-is-now-speaking-out/

Cancel culture strikes again and kills Apu from ‘The Simpsons’ – where does this nonsense end?

Cancel culture has shown its ugly face once again, claiming another victim, this time one of the cartoon variety. Actor Hank Azaria has announced that he will no longer voice convenience store owner Apu of the ‘The Simpsons.’

Azaria announced the decision this week and said it was one made with the producers of the show. The seeming abandonment of the character follows accusations of racism in recent years, which hit a peak after the documentary ‘The Problem with Apu,’ which debuted in 2017. Critics argued Apu played into offensive stereotypes about South Asians — ignoring other stereotypes on the show. Also ignored was the fact Apu has become not ‘cartoonish,’ but a three dimensional, complex character playing a central part of the series since debuting in 1990.

Many fans of ‘The Simpsons’ have responded negatively to the news of Apu’s seeming cancellation. Even the filmmaker behind the ‘Problem with Apu’ documentary jokingly welcomed the “death threats” to come, and said he would like to see the character continue.

‘The Simpsons’ had previously responded to accusations of racism by poking fun at the controversy in its show — which earned them plenty of criticism — but it appears they have caved to online pressure. Could it have anything to do with Fox being bought out by the always play-it-safe Disney?

There is a growing problem among people who let trending social issues and always-changing “woke” standards take up too much real estate in their heads, and that is a deep misunderstanding about the way art works. Context and nuance are becoming irrelevant to critics, who are simply hungry for anything to be angry about.

The end goal of this anger is unclear, but the journey to that doomsday finale is that many things need to simply be destroyed.

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/478602-simpsons-cancel-apu-hank-azaria/

What the Media Won’t Tell You: Bill Clinton Charged of 11 Felonies and Impeachable Offenses – Trump Accused of ZERO Felonies and 2 Non-Crimes

What the Media Won’t Tell You: Bill Clinton Charged of 11 Felonies and Impeachable Offenses – Trump Accused of ZERO Felonies and 2 Non-Crimes

Jim Hoft by Jim Hoft January 19, 2020 100 Comments

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The Trump impeachment sham is unique in a number of different ways compared to previous impeachments and most notably because no crime was committed or defined.

President Trump is accused of two offenses, neither is a crime.

Article One: Abuse of Power — broad and undefined non-criminal action.

Article Two: Obstruction of Congress — Not a crime and completely made up charge

Now compare that to the Clinton Impeachment trial in 1998.

Bill Clinton was accused of 11 separate felonies and impeachable offenses.

The Starr Report, presented on Sept. 9,1998, presented 11 impeachable offenses. Bill Clinton was eventually charged because he “…willfully provided perjuries, false and misleading testimony to the grand jury,” and made “…corrupt efforts to influence the testimony of witnesses and to impede the discovery of evidence.”

The Starr report cited 11 specific possible grounds for impeachment in four categories:

Five counts of lying under oath

Four counts of obstruction of justice

One count of witness tampering

One count of abuse of constitutional authority

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/01/what-the-media-wont-tell-you-bill-clinton-accused-of-11-felonies-and-impeachable-offenses-trump-accused-of-zero-felonies-and-2-non-crimes/

Troop Injuries "Emerged Days After": Pentagon's Shifting Iran Attack Casualty Narrative Gets More Absurd

A mere days ago the American public was still being told there were no American casualties as a result of Iran's Jan.8 ballistic missile attack on an Iraqi base hosting US forces.

And over a week ago, days following the attack, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said there was only damage to property at Al-Asad air base, going so far as to underscore: "Most importantly, no casualties, no friendly casualties, whether they are US, coalition, contractor, etc.," according to an official statement at the time.

But after on Friday it was revealed that eleven US soldiers were injured in the attack — some of them significantly given they were flown out of Iraq to be treated for head injuries — belatedly confirmed by US officials, the Pentagon is now pretending there was never a discrepancy in its clearly shifting accounts. Eight were actually flown all the way to medical facilities in Germany for advanced treatment, with three flown to Kuwait.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/troop-injuries-emerged-days-after-pentagons-shifting-iran-attack-casualty-narrative

False Flag? Fmr CIA Officer Suggests US Hacked Ukrainian Plane Transponder To Provoke Iran Shootdown

Philip Giraldi, a former counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer of the CIA, penned a piece in the American Herald Tribune speculating that the U.S. launched several cyber-attacks, one on an Iranian missile defense system, and another on the transponder of the doomed Ukrainian plane.

Giraldi explains the Iranian missile operator experienced extreme "jamming" and Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752's transponder was switched off several minutes before the two Russian made Tor missiles were launched.

"The shutdown of the transponder, which would have automatically signaled to the operator and Tor electronics that the plane was civilian, instead automatically indicated that it was hostile. The operator, having been particularly briefed on the possibility of incoming American cruise missiles, then fired," he said.

Giraldi said the Tor missile system used by Iran is vulnerable to being hacked or "spoofed," and at the same moment, Flight 752's transponder was taken offline "to create an aviation accident that would be attributed to the Iranian government."

The Pentagon has reportedly developed technologies that can trick enemy radars with false and deceptively moving targets, he said.

"The same technology can, of course, be used to alter or even mask the transponder on a civilian airliner in such a fashion as to send false information about identity and location. The United States has the cyber and electronic warfare capability to both jam and alter signals relating to both airliner transponders and to the Iranian air defenses. Israel presumably has the same ability," Giraldi said.

Iran made the claim Wednesday that "enemy sabotage" cannot be ruled out in the downing of the plane.

Iranian Brigadier General Ali Abdollahi suggested the U.S. hacked missile defense systems to make it appear Flight 752 was an incoming missile.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani also accused the U.S. of being responsible for the downing of the plane, saying that:

"The root of all sorrows goes back to America… this cannot be a reason for us not to look into all the root causes."

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/false-flag-fmr-cia-officer-suggests-us-hacked-ukrainian-plane-transponder-provoke-iran

Putin & Erdogan set stage for Libya peace talks at Berlin meeting

The Libyan peace talks in Berlin were yet to begin, but Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan already voiced their positions on the conflict, Erdogan speaking against Haftar and Putin calling for dialogue.

As the two presidents met ahead of the Sunday conference, Erdogan was direct in showing his animosity towards Libya’s Khalifa Haftar, whose forces have been closing in on the UN-backed government in Tripoli.

“Haftar has proven himself to be in favor of a military solution [to the conflict]. Here in Berlin, the ceasefire must be confirmed. Haftar’s aggressive behavior must be stopped so the political process and settlement can happen,” Erdogan said.

Putin in turn recalled how, during their Istanbul meeting on January 8, the two had “taken a very good step by calling on the warring parties in Libya to end hostilities.”

Despite several violations of the ceasefire, “both sides have listened to our call and have ended large-scale military actions,” Putin said.

We don’t lose hope that the dialogue will continue, as we seek to resolve the conflict [in Libya].

Erdogan also noted that Turkey and Russia have enjoyed "very good" relations lately, and sent an obvious signal to some Western nations.

"Despite the pressure that we faced, we have decisively implemented the deal for the S-400s, without compromising our national interests," the Turkish leader said.

The US has repeatedly tried to sway Ankara into scrapping the purchase of the Russian-made S-400 air defense missile systems, but Turkey refused to do so.

Some 11 countries, including Russia, Turkey, Britain, France, Germany, and the US, and several international organizations attended the event aimed at reaching a lasting ceasefire between Haftar and his rival Fayez al-Sarraj, the prime minister of the UN-backed Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA).

https://www.rt.com/news/478652-putin-erdogan-set-stage-berlin/

Schiff: Intelligence Community Is Withholding Ukraine Documents from Congress

House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) warned on Sunday’s broadcast of ABC’s “This Week” that the U.S. intelligence community was beginning to withhold documents on Ukraine from Congress.

Schiff said, “The intelligence community is beginning to withhold documents from Congress on the issue of Ukraine. They appear to be succumbing to pressure from the administration. The NSA, in particular, is withholding what are potentially relevant documents to our oversight responsibilities on Ukraine, but also withholding documents potentially relevant that the senators might want to see during the trial. That is deeply concerning, and there are signs that the CIA may be on the same tragic course.”

https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2020/01/19/schiff-intelligence-community-is-withholding-ukraine-documents-from-congress/

Rod Rosenstein Approved Release Of Strzok-Page Text Messages, He Tells Court

Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein acknowledged in a court filing Friday that he authorized the release of text messages between FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page to media outlets.

Rosenstein said in a declaration filed in response to a lawsuit Strzok has pending against the Justice Department and FBI that he authorized releasing the text messages to media outlets Dec. 12, 2017, the eve of his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee.

“The disclosure obviously would adversely affect public confidence in the FBI, but providing the most egregious messages in one package would avoid the additional harm of prolonged selective disclosures and minimize the appearance of the Department concealing information that was embarrassing to the FBI,” said Rosenstein, who left the Justice Department in May 2019.

Strzok, the former deputy chief of the FBI’s counterintelligence division, sued the Justice Department and FBI on Aug. 6, 2019, for unlawful termination, infringement of due process, and violations of the Privacy Act.

Strzok was fired Aug. 8, 2018, over anti-Trump text messages that he exchanged with Page, who served as legal counsel to former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

The existence of damning text messages between Strzok and Page was first reported Dec. 2, 2017, in stories at The New York Times and Washington Post.

The Justice Department scrambled to review and produce the texts to congressional committees who requested the communications. Rosenstein said a review of some of the messages was unexpectedly finished the day before his testimony.

He said he consulted with the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Affairs, which determined that there was no legal basis preventing the release of the messages, and the authorized the Justice Department’s Office of Public Affairs to provide 375 messages to a group of media outlets.

In one exchange, dated Aug. 15, 2016, Strzok referred to an “insurance policy” that was discussed that day in McCabe’s office during a conversation about the Trump investigation.

In an Oct. 20, 2016, message, Strzok called Trump a “f*cking idiot.” On Aug. 6, 2016, Strzok wrote “F Trump” to Page.

Rosenstein asserted that Strzok and Page’s privacy interests were not violated by releasing the messages because they “were sent on government phones with the knowledge that they were subject to review by FBI” and because they “were so inappropriate and intertwined with their FBI work that they raised concerns about political bias influencing official duties.”

He said that since he was scheduled to testify before the House, “it would be in appropriate to withhold the messages” until after his testimony.

Page, who resigned from the bureau May 4, 2018, sued the FBI and DOJ on Dec. 10, 2019, alleging violations of the Privacy Act.

She responded Saturday to Rosenstein’s court filing.

“All I can say is this: I very much look forward to Rod’s deposition,” she wrote on Twitter.

https://dailycaller.com/2020/01/19/rod-rosenstein-strzok-texts/

Matteo Salvini: Muslim Immigration Is ‘Main Cause’ of Resurgent Antisemitism

The head of Italy’s leading political party said in an interview Sunday the recent surge in antisemitism in Europe is primarily the consequence of the mass immigration of Muslims on the continent.

“I think that it has to do with the strengthening of Islamic extremism and fanatism in the last years,” Matteo Salvini told Israel Hayom. “Most importantly it is connected to the fact that some academics and media are mobilized against Israel and they create hate of Israel to justify antisemitism.”

Salvini said that a certain level of antisemitism has always existed on the extreme left and the extreme right, but its current growth has to be attributed to a shift in Europe’s population.

“There is, of course, antisemitism of small political minority groups – Nazis and communists,” Salvini said. “But, now the massive presence in Europe of migrants coming from Muslim countries, among whom are many fanatics who are getting the full support of certain intellectuals, is spreading antisemitism in Italy as well.”

As Breitbart News reported last July, antisemitism in Europe has grown over the last five years and is predicted to get even worse, according to a sweeping survey of 2,700 young European Jews conducted by the E.U. Agency for Fundamental Rights.

Among the Jews surveyed, who aged between 16 and 34, nearly half (44 percent) have experienced harassment due to their faith and do not wear distinctive clothing because of safety fears.

Last March, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he was “deeply worried about an old threat that is reemerging to Israel and Jews all around the world, the threat of antisemitism.”

“It’s a cancer metastasizing in the Middle East, in Europe, and indeed, sadly here in the United States as well. In Britain, the labor party’s tolerance of antisemitism in its ranks is a national disgrace, and France’s Jews are under attack,” he said.

In Sunday’s interview, Mr. Salvini said that the liberal media tries to blame European anti-Semitism on the rise of right-wing parties, but noted that this theory does not comport with the facts.

“There is far-right anti-Semitism, and there is a far-left anti-Semitism, which is institutionalized,” he said. “Think of Jeremy Corbin, or the left activists in Germany, who didn’t want to be like the Nazis and ended up boycotting Israeli products.”

“I am sure, however, that the high number of Muslims in Europe is the main cause for the current anti-Semitism,” he said.

The leader of the Lega party and Italy’s most trusted politician, Mr. Salvini said that his party has refused to partner with parties who accept anti-Semitism.

The Lega has “no relations whatsoever with such organizations,” Salvini said.

“Those who believe in Neo-Nazi and Neo-fascist antisemitism are our enemies as those who believe in the antisemitism of the radical left and radical Islam,” he said. “It’s an obligation to fight all those, who claim that the Jews are the Nazis of our time.”

The former interior minister also said that many progressive European institutions are no friends to Judaism.

“I spent nine years at the European Parliament and I can say that the European institutions – let alone the institutions the U.N. – are no friends of Israel,” Salvini said. “The European Parliament has today a majority that is not friendly to Israel.”

“Those who want to erase the State of Israel should know that they will have in us an enemy. Israel is an ally. This should be taught in schools and universities,” Salvini said.

https://www.breitbart.com/middle-east/2020/01/19/matteo-salvini-muslim-immigration-is-main-cause-of-resurgent-antisemitism/

How the US Wages War to Prop up the Dollar

At Counterpunch, Michael Hudson has penned an important article that outlines the important connections between US foreign policy, oil, and the US dollar.

In short, US foreign policy is geared very much toward controlling oil resources as part of a larger strategy to prop up the US dollar. Hudson writes:

The assassination was intended to escalate America’s presence in Iraq to keep control of the region’s oil reserves, and to back Saudi Arabia’s Wahabi troops (Isis, Al Quaeda in Iraq, Al Nusra and other divisions of what are actually America’s foreign legion) to support U.S. control of Near Eastern oil as a buttress of the U.S. dollar. That remains the key to understanding this policy, and why it is in the process of escalating, not dying down.

The actual context for the neocon’s action was the balance of payments, and the role of oil and energy as a long-term lever of American diplomacy.

Basically, the US's propensity for driving up massive budget deficits has created a need for immense amounts of deficit spending. This can be handled through selling lots of government debt, or through monetizing the debt. But what if there isn't enough global demand for US debt? That would mean the US would have to pay more interest on its debt. Or, the US could monetize the debt through the central bank. But that might cause the value of the dollar to crash. So, the US regime realized that it must find ways to prevent the glut of dollars and debt from actually destroying the value of the dollar. Fortunately for the regime, this can be partly managed, it turns out, through foreign policy. Hudson continues:

The solution [to the problem of maintaining the demand for dollars] turned out to be to replace gold with U.S. Treasury securities (IOUs) as the basis of foreign central bank reserves. After 1971, foreign central banks had little option for what to do with their continuing dollar inflows except to recycle them to the U.S. economy by buying U.S. Treasury securities. The effect of U.S. foreign military spending thus did not undercut the dollar’s exchange rate, and did not even force the Treasury and Federal Reserve to raise interest rates to attract foreign exchange to offset the dollar outflows on military account. In fact, U.S. foreign military spending helped finance the domestic U.S. federal budget deficit.

https://mises.org/power-market/how-us-wages-war-prop-dollar

Xenobots are here: Tiny bio-robots inside your veins may heal you & will definitely be weaponized by West to take out ‘bad guys’

Peter Andrews is an Irish science journalist and writer, based in London. He has a background in the life sciences, and graduated from the University of Glasgow with a degree in Genetics

Xenobots — tiny, biological robots swarms designed by a computer — are upon us. What does the birth of these strange not-quite-alive creatures mean for robotics — and for us?

Real robots are not two-legged steel boxes with a metallic voice

Mankind has been imagining advanced robot technology for a long time — pop culture is full of Terminators, Cylons, and Droids. But in fact, these humanoid designs show a distinct lack of imagination. Why have we always assumed that robots would be designed to have the same basic form as us: slightly ungainly primates trotting about on two feet, perhaps even toting a gun? The latest models make that particular notion look a bit 1950s.

One such model are the fearsome xenobots unleashed by American scientists a this week. These are biological robots less than a millimetre wide, that can move, release a payload and repair themselves. Grown from stem cells (cells that can turn into any type of body cell) that were cut into specific shapes designed by a supercomputer, they can swim inside the human body for weeks on end, working together to achieve a task.

They can walk and swim, meaning they are just one sport short of a triathlon. On top of all this, they have one more superpower — Wolverine’s healing factor. Well, it may not be ripped from Marvel comics, but they can repair themselves without any help. And when the poor little xenobots reach the end of their short but glorious lives (are they alive?) inside your body, you can rest easy with the thought that since they are entirely organic, they will biodegrade naturally. What could be more comforting than artificial creatures dying inside your veins made of nothing but harmless African clawed frog DNA?

Supercomputer creates sentience

Jokes aside, this is an astonishing leap forward in the game of playing God. But who exactly is the Dr Frankenstein to these xenobot monsters? Unnervingly, their specific shapes — they come in a range of shapes that look a bit like Tetris blocks — were designed not by the clever scientists, but rather by a supercomputer.

https://www.rt.com/news/478530-biological-robots-designed-by-computer/

Israeli agritech profits from military occupation

Israeli agritech companies “are deeply complicit in the occupation of Palestinian and Syrian land,” according to a new report by the corporate watchdog Who Profits.

Technology developed in the context of the occupation is used by Israel’s seemingly benign precision agriculture industry. This civilian application allows Israeli military companies to promote “a sanitized version of their repressive technologies” as tools to combat climate change and world hunger.

Israeli agritech companies “develop and market smart irrigation systems, crop protection solutions and specialty fertilizers to farmers across the world, raking in billions of dollars in annual sales, while enjoying a positive ‘green’ image,” Who Profits states.

This industry contributes to agriculture in West Bank and Golan settlements, as well as the de-development of the Palestinian economy.

The Jordan Valley, the main agricultural region in the West Bank, is under full Israeli military control.

Israel transferred ownership of lands seized in the Jordan Valley to the World Zionist Organization during the 1980s. The organization leases the land to settlers for agricultural production.

Produce from Jordan Valley settlements, such as pomegranates, almonds, dates and olives, are exported to Europe, often mislabeled as “Product of Israel.”

The World Bank conservatively estimated the value of settlement agricultural production in the Jordan Valley to be $251 million in 2013.

That same year, the World Bank estimated that agricultural cultivation of West Bank land currently under full Israeli military control would deliver an additional $700 million per year to the Palestinian economy.

Palestinians are prevented from cultivating their land and are deprived of income, forcing many to “seek employment in settlement agriculture, often under deeply exploitative conditions,” Who Profits notes.

Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, promise to unilaterally annex the Jordan Valley.

Entrenchment of unilateral annexation

Israel has already claimed to have annexed the Golan Heights, Syrian territory captured by Israel during the 1967 war. The UN Security Council declared that move “null and void and without international legal effect.”

Approximately 340 Syrian villages and farms in the Golan Heights were destroyed by Israel, which built Jewish settlements in their place.

Some 26,000 Israeli settlers enjoy control over 95 percent of the Golan – a landmass of 1,860 square kilometers representing 1 percent of Syria’s total territory. Approximately the same number of Syrians have control over the rest of the Golan’s land.

“In the occupied Syrian Golan, settlement agricultural production also contributes to land grab, de-development of the local Syrian economy and entrenchment of Israel’s unilateral annexation of the territory,” Who Profits states.

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israeli-agritech-profits-military-occupation

Warmonger Cotton Accuses Antiwar Think Tank of Anti-Semitism

If you wonder what the post-Trump Republican Party will look like, take a glimpse at Tom Cotton, one of the US senators from Arkansas (where I live). Cotton has waged a relentless campaign for war against Iran and has supported every horror produced by the US foreign-policy establishment for the last 20 years. He makes other American hawks look like pacifists. Cotton once said that his only criticism of the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where people are held indefinitely without charge or trial, is that too many beds are empty.

Typical of take-no-prisoners warmongers, Cotton savages critics of the pro-war policy that has characterized US foreign policy in the 21st century. No baseless charge is beneath him. He recently attacked the Quincy Institute in the course of remarks about anti-Semitism. (You can see what’s coming.) According to Jewish Insider, Cotton said that anti-Semitism “festers in Washington think tanks like the Quincy Institute, an isolationist blame America first money pit for so-called ‘scholars’ who’ve written that American foreign policy could be fixed if only it were rid of the malign influence of Jewish money.”

This is worse than a series of malicious lies – every word is false. In fact, it’s an attempt to incite hostility toward and even disruption of one of the bright spots on the mostly desolate foreign-policy-analysis landscape.

The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft (QI) started last year with money from, among others, the Charles Koch Foundation and George Soros’s Open Society Foundations. Its officers and staff include respected and sober foreign-policy analysts and journalists such as Andrew Bacevich, Trita Parsi, Jim Lobe, and Eli Clifton. Also associated with the institute are the well-credentialed foreign-policy authorities John Mearsheimer, Paul Pillar, Gary Sick, Stephen Walt, and Lawrence Wilkerson. This is indeed a distinguished team of foreign-policy “realists” who are heroically resisting America’s endless-war-as-first-resort policy.

Named for John Quincy Adams – who as secretary of state famously declared that “America “goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy” – QI “promotes ideas that move U.S. foreign policy away from endless war and toward vigorous diplomacy in the pursuit of international peace.” The QI website goes on to state:

https://original.antiwar.com/srichman/2020/01/17/warmonger-cotton-accuses-antiwar-think-tank-of-anti-semitism/

RCFP analysis: Court orders FBI to expunge website records under Privacy Act

The order follows a Ninth Circuit ruling that may be significant in light of recent government efforts to monitor journalists.

In late November, a judge for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California directed the Federal Bureau of Investigation to expunge certain records relating to Eric Garris, an editor of the website Antiwar.com, which describes itself as promoting “non-interventionism” and posts related news and opinions.

The move comes after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held in September that federal law prohibits law enforcement agencies from maintaining records describing First Amendment activity, unless the record “is pertinent to and within the scope of an ongoing law enforcement activity.” The case marked the first time the Ninth Circuit has considered that question.

Garris v. FBI involved the FBI’s collection and maintenance of records on the editors of Antiwar.com. The site’s editors and co-founders, Garris and Justin Raimondo, challenged the bureau’s preservation of records describing their work and sought to have the records expunged under the Privacy Act of 1974. The court of appeals agreed with their arguments related to a detailed post-9/11 “threat assessment” memorandum, noting that the FBI did not demonstrate that the memo at issue was “pertinent” to ongoing law enforcement activity.

Regarding the 2004 FBI memo, the court stated: “It cannot be that maintaining a record of purely protected First Amendment activity is relevant to an authorized law enforcement activity simply on the representation that maintaining the record would ‘serve to inform ongoing and future investigative activity.’”

This decision may be significant in light of recent high-profile examples of government efforts to monitor journalists based on newsgathering activity. In May, for instance, the Reporters Committee joined a group of 103 organizations that signed a letter to the then-acting secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security raising concerns over reports of surveillance activities by U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The letter called for an end to the practice, warning that surveillance of journalists may violate the Privacy Act and infringe on the rights of the press.

The court’s decision to clarify what is permissible under the Privacy Act is also notable given the history of the law.

https://www.rcfp.org/fbi-antiwar-privacy-act/

Nearly 700 explosions recorded in Donbas on Friday

The OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine (SMM) recorded about 690 explosions in Donbas on Friday.

In Donetsk region, the SMM recorded about 260 explosions, reads the OSCE SMM daily report.

“The majority of ceasefire violations, including the majority of explosions, were recorded in areas north and north-west of Debaltseve (non-government-controlled, 58km north-east of Donetsk) and near the disengagement area close to Petrivske (non-government-controlled, 41km south of Donetsk),” reads the report.

In Luhansk region, the SMM recorded about 430 explosions.

“The majority of ceasefire violations, including the majority of explosions, were recorded in areas north-east of Berezivske (non-government-controlled, 53km north-west of Luhansk) and north and northeast of Holubivka (formerly Kirovsk, non-government-controlled, 51km west of Luhansk),” the report says.

https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-defense/2858488-nearly-700-explosions-recorded-in-donbas-on-friday.html

The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It

Until recently, Hoan Ton-That’s greatest hits included an obscure iPhone game and an app that let people put Donald Trump’s distinctive yellow hair on their own photos.

Then Mr. Ton-That — an Australian techie and onetime model — did something momentous: He invented a tool that could end your ability to walk down the street anonymously, and provided it to hundreds of law enforcement agencies, ranging from local cops in Florida to the F.B.I. and the Department of Homeland Security.

His tiny company, Clearview AI, devised a groundbreaking facial recognition app. You take a picture of a person, upload it and get to see public photos of that person, along with links to where those photos appeared. The system — whose backbone is a database of more than three billion images that Clearview claims to have scraped from Facebook, YouTube, Venmo and millions of other websites — goes far beyond anything ever constructed by the United States government or Silicon Valley giants.

Federal and state law enforcement officers said that while they had only limited knowledge of how Clearview works and who is behind it, they had used its app to help solve shoplifting, identity theft, credit card fraud, murder and child sexual exploitation cases.

Until now, technology that readily identifies everyone based on his or her face has been taboo because of its radical erosion of privacy. Tech companies capable of releasing such a tool have refrained from doing so; in 2011, Google’s chairman at the time said it was the one technology the company had held back because it could be used “in a very bad way.” Some large cities, including San Francisco, have barred police from using facial recognition technology.

But without public scrutiny, more than 600 law enforcement agencies have started using Clearview in the past year, according to the company, which declined to provide a list. The computer code underlying its app, analyzed by The New York Times, includes programming language to pair it with augmented-reality glasses; users would potentially be able to identify every person they saw. The tool could identify activists at a protest or an attractive stranger on the subway, revealing not just their names but where they lived, what they did and whom they knew.

And it’s not just law enforcement: Clearview has also licensed the app to at least a handful of companies for security purposes.

“The weaponization possibilities of this are endless,” said Eric Goldman, co-director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University. “Imagine a rogue law enforcement officer who wants to stalk potential romantic partners, or a foreign government using this to dig up secrets about people to blackmail them or throw them in jail.”

Clearview has shrouded itself in secrecy, avoiding debate about its boundary-pushing technology. When I began looking into the company in November, its website was a bare page showing a nonexistent Manhattan address as its place of business. The company’s one employee listed on LinkedIn, a sales manager named “John Good,” turned out to be Mr. Ton-That, using a fake name. For a month, people affiliated with the company would not return my emails or phone calls.

More

https://dnyuz.com/2020/01/18/the-secretive-company-that-might-end-privacy-as-we-know-it/

Lebanon: More than 300 people wounded in Beirut clashes

It was the highest toll in some of the most intense violence since largely peaceful protests erupted across the country in October

Lebanese rescuers treated more than 300 people for injuries during hours of clashes between security forces and protesters that rocked central Beirut on Saturday night, reported Reuters.

It was the highest toll in some of the most intense violence since largely peaceful protests erupted across the country in October. As Lebanon sinks deeper into its worst economic crisis in decades, anger has boiled over at a ruling elite dominating the country since the 1975-1990 civil war.

The Lebanese Red Cross said it had treated 220 people who were wounded on both sides on Saturday night, taking 80 of them to hospital. The Civil Defence said it had helped 114 others.

Smoke enveloped a commercial district of the capital as security forces fired volleys of tear gas and unleashed water cannons. Riot police chased after men and women near Lebanon’s parliament late into the night.

Protesters, with their faces covered, hurled stones, steel barriers and flower pots. They ripped branches off trees and signposts off the ground, charging at riot police.

In three months of protests, which have gripped the country and pushed Prime Minister Saad Hariri to quit, politicians wrangling over cabinet seats have failed to agree a new government or a rescue plan.

Meanwhile, the crisis is biting – the Lebanese pound has lost nearly half its value, dollar shortages have driven up prices and confidence in the banking system has collapsed.

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200119-lebanon-more-than-300-people-wounded-in-beirut-clashes/

OPERATION ELIMINATE 2A MOVEMENT: A Special Report on the Deep State-controlled Virginia Gun Rally

What: False Flag Operation(s) at Virginia Gun Rally

When: January 20, 2020

Where: Richmond, Virginia

Who: Deep State + Virginia State Government + FBI’s COINTELPRO + C.I.A. + Mainstream Media

How: Gladio-style Mass Shooting and/or Bombing

and/or Riots Triggered by Agents Provocateurs

and/or Vandalism Perpetrated by Fake Patriots

and/or Shocking Crime Sprees by Crisis Actors

While All of These Are Dramatized and Truth is

Covered Up by the MSM

Why: To Gut the Second Amendment in Virginia, followed by the Entire Nation

This “Special Report” is being issued to each and every American patriot and gun rights advocate.

First, it’s imperative that every patriot read the following false flag THREAT ASSESSMENT for the Virginia gun rally in Richmond to be held on Monday, January 20th. This highly authoritative threat assessment was written by “a former Navy seal who really knows the deal”.

Anyone who was unable to read the preceding article ought to consider the following distillation sent to SOTN by another 2A patriot:

“Anyone showing up in Richmond on January 20th must consider these harsh realities. First, that the gun-control freaks control the entire Richmond ‘battlefield’. The globalist perps literally own and operate on every square inch of the Virginia capital. Secondly, the CIA’s Mockingbird Media will be strategically positioned throughout the rally/protest venue to capture any video and/or photos necessary to falsely indict a patriot protestor. For all anybody knows, the Mainstream Media already has ‘damning’ photos and video footage fabricated on their propaganda-producing sets in Hollywood and New York City. Thirdly, the globalists have had a lot of time to set up the Virginia battleground so that the patriots can be effectively neutralized should a false flag attack, or series of attacks, be staged. Who even knows how many fake patriots will show up as crisis actors ready to act for prime time news coverage? This kind of black operation goes deep—REAL DEEP! After all, it’s Deep State that’s overseeing the upcoming psyop, the FBI’s COINTELPRO that’s monitoring every aspect, and the CIA that designed the whole black operation while the MSM covers up all the state-sponsored crimes. When the time is right, Gladio-trained hitmen will pull the triggers and light the fuses according to plan. This thing doesn’t look good—AT ALL!”

— Intelligence Analyst & Former U.S. Military Officer

Richmond = Lexington and Concord

It’s of paramount importance for every gun rally attendee to understand that the current Richmond context is quite similar to that of Lexington and Concord in 1775.

As a matter of historical fact, which is also conveniently left out of our history books, the irrefutable truth is that the British soldiers showed up that day on April 19, 1775 specifically to confiscate the firearms possessed by all rebelling colonists. This typical act of British tyranny was nothing short of a draconian gun-grabbing mission that failed miserably. The rest, as they say, is history … known as the American Revolution.

For an in-depth treatment of this HUGE defining moment in American Revolutionary history, please read the excellent recap below.

THE 2020 VIRGINIA SHOWDOWNFolks, it doesn’t get more serious than “THE 2020 VIRGINIA SHOWDOWN”.It’s quite likely that this entire NWO enterprise was undertaken by well-intentioned patriots who were then quickly taken over and/or co-opted by the COINTELPRO G-men.Even the original idea of the rally was likely planted by the dark side in order to useVirginia as the test case for total gun confiscation.

http://stateofthenation.co/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/SOTN-A-Special-Report-on-the-Deep-State-controlled-Virginia-Gun-Rally.pdf

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Revealed — Iran’s Attack Did Cause Casualties, US/Israeli Cyberattack & Pompeo Threatens The World

Welcome to The Daily Wrap Up, a concise show dedicated to bringing you the most relevant independent news, as we see it, from the last 24 hours (1/18/19).

As always, take the information discussed in the video below and research it for yourself, and come to your own conclusions. Anyone telling you what the truth is, or claiming they have the answer, is likely leading you astray, for one reason or another. Stay Vigilant.

https://www.activistpost.com/2020/01/revealed-irans-attack-did-cause-casualties-us-israeli-cyberattack-pompeo-threatens-the-world.html

The Playbook For Poisoning Earth

Many seeds in the U.S. come precoated with neonicotinoids, one of the most common insecticides in the world.

The chemicals are at the heart of what many are calling the “insect apocalypse.”

They make the landscape toxic to bees, butterflies, birds, and potentially even large mammals.

That’s why Europe banned the insecticides.

But in the United States, documents reveal, a sophisticated information war kept them on the market.

In September 2009, over 3,000 bee enthusiasts from around the world descended on the city of Montpellier in southern France for Apimondia — a festive beekeeper conference filled with scientific lectures, hobbyist demonstrations, and commercial beekeepers hawking honey. But that year, a cloud loomed over the event: bee colonies across the globe were collapsing, and billions of bees were dying.

Bee declines have been observed throughout recorded history, but the sudden, persistent and abnormally high annual hive losses had gotten so bad that the U.S. Department of Agriculture had commissioned two of the world’s most well-known entomologists — Dennis vanEngelsdorp, a chief apiary inspector in Pennsylvania, then studying at Penn State University, and Jeffrey Pettis, then working as a government scientist — to study the mysterious decline. They posited that there must be an underlying factor weakening bees’ immune systems.

At Le Corum, a conference center and opera house, the pair discussed their findings. They had fed bees with extremely small amounts of neonicotinoids, or neonics, the most commonly used class of insecticides in the world. Neonics are, of course, meant to kill insects, but they are marketed as safe for insects that aren’t being directly targeted. VanEngelsdorp and Pettis found that even at nonlethal doses, the bees in the trial became much more vulnerable to fungal infection. Bees carrying an infection will often fly off to die, a virtuous form of suicide designed to protect the larger hive from contagion.

“We exposed whole colonies to very low levels of neonicotinoids in this case, and then challenged bees from those colonies with Nosema, a pathogen, a gut pathogen,” said Pettis, speaking to filmmaker Mark Daniels in his documentary, “The Strange Disappearance of the Bees,” at Apimondia. “And we saw an increase, even if we fed the pesticide at very low levels — an increase in Nosema levels — in direct response to the low-level feeding of neonicotinoids.”

https://theintercept.com/2020/01/18/bees-insecticides-pesticides-neonicotinoids-bayer-monsanto-syngenta/

Part 1

>>7855397

Communications staff with CropLife America compiled a list of terms to shape on search engine results, including “neonicotinoid,” “pollinators,” and “neonics.” One of the consulting firms tapped to coordinate the industry’s outreach, Paradigm Communications, a subsidiary of the public relations giant Porter Novelli, helped lead the effort to shift how pesticide products were portrayed in search engine results.

A slide prepared by Paradigm Communications showcases its push to decouple Google search results for bee decline with neonic pesticides.

The greatest public relations coup has been the push to reframe the debate around bee decline to focus only on the threat of Varroa mites, a parasite native to Asia that began spreading to the U.S. in the 1980s. The mite is known to rapidly infest bee hives and carry a range of infectious diseases.

CropLife America, among other groups backed by pesticide companies, has financed research and advocacy around the mite — an effort designed to muddy the conversation around pesticide use. Meanwhile, research suggests the issues are interrelated; neonics make bees far more susceptible to mite infestations and attendant diseases.

Bayer even constructed a sculpture of the Varroa mite at its “Bee Care Center” in North Carolina and at its research center in Germany, hyping its role as the primary force fueling the decline of pollinators.

The stunningly successful campaign has kept most neonic products in wide circulation in commercial agriculture as well as in home gardens. The result is a world awash in neonics — and massive profits for companies such as Syngenta and Bayer, which now counts Monsanto as a subsidiary.

Millions of pounds of the chemical are applied to 140 commercial crops every year. In the U.S., nearly all field-planted corn and two-thirds of soybean use neonic-coated seeds. The chemical is found in soil samples from coast to coast, in waterways and in drinking water. Neonics, which are water soluble, have been detected in the American River in California, the River Waveney in England, tap water in Iowa City, and hundreds of other streams and rivers across the world. In Brazil last year, after President Jair Bolsonaro’s government approved dozens of new pesticides, the use of neonics caused the death of more than 500 million bees across the country.

In August, a study publishing in peer-reviewed journal PLOS One found that the American landscape has become 48 times more toxic to insects since the 1990s, a shift largely fueled by the rising application of neonics.

Honeybees have captured almost all the attention for the dangers of neonics, but they are hardly the only species in decline because of the chemical. Studies have tied neonics to the disappearance of native bees, butterflies, mayflies, dragonflies, amphipods, and a range of waterborne insects, as well as earthworms and other insect invertebrates. Several species of bumblebees in the U.S. and Europe are approaching extinction, a die-off researchers say is tied to the use of neonics and other pesticides.

In September, a study released in the academic journal Science revealed that migrating songbirds suffered immediate weight loss following the consumption of only one or two seeds treated with neonics. Previous research had linked disappearing insect life to dwindling food sources for birds in the Netherlands, but the Science study provided the evidence that bird species were directly affected by the chemical.

Another groundbreaking study published in Nature’s Scientific Reports showed that neonics are likely causing serious birth defects in white-tailed deer, the first time research has shown that the chemical compound could endanger large mammals.

Part 2

>>7855416

After a hearing in which he pointed to pesticides, Jeffrey Pettis told the Washington Post that he was criticized him for failing to follow “the script.”

In almost every other state, with the exception of Vermont, Connecticut, and Maryland, lobbyists from the pesticide and agribusiness industry successfully killed any significant restriction on neonic products. The scientific community, once focused on studying the impact of pesticides, became splintered, with many of the leading voices going to work for industry or industry-backed nonprofits.

Critics of neonics were quickly sidelined. In April 2014, the House Agriculture Subcommittee on Horticulture, Research, Biotechnology, and Foreign Agriculture — then chaired by Rep. Austin Scott, a Georgia Republican — convened a hearing to discuss the pollinator crisis. The event featured David Fischer, a Bayer official, and Jeff Stone, lobbyist for commercial nurseries. Both men used the hearing to warn against any restrictions on neonics in response to bee decline. The third, Dan Cummings, a representative of the Almond Board, a trade group for almond growers, focused on the threat of the Varroa mite.

A fourth witness, the Department of Agriculture researcher Jeffrey Pettis — the scientist who had collaborated with vanEngelsdorp — noted that unlike traditional pesticides, neonics are found in pollen, increasing exposure to bees. Under questioning from Scott, the committee chair, Pettis reiterated that even without mites, bees would still be in decline, and pesticides raise concern “to a new level.”

After the hearing, Pettis told the Washington Post that he spoke privately with Scott, who criticized him for failing to follow “the script.”

CropLife America, notably, celebrated the hearing performance for its heavy focus on nonpesticide-related factors for bee decline. “One thing that we hope was made clear during the hearing was the crop protection industry’s commitment to addressing this issue,” Jay Vroom, then the president of CropLife America, said in a statement.

Campaign finance records show that CropLife America, just weeks after the hearing, gave $3,500 to Scott, who then sponsored legislation to solve the bee crisis through exemptions to expedite the approval of pesticides used to control the Varroa mite.

And two months after the hearing, according to the Post, Pettis was demoted, losing his role managing the USDA bee lab in Beltsville, Maryland. Pettis later left the government and now serves as president of Apimondia.

Part 3

>>7855439

ments or constant reapplication.

In other words, farmers could soak the ground and seeds with enormous amounts of the compound to avoid problems from pests in the future. The delivery mechanism saved money for farmers but set the conditions for chronic overuse of the pesticides.

Part 4

Major Antifa Website Publishes Pro-Gun Op-Ed From Virginia Resident Planning to Attend Richmond Rally

It’s Going Down, arguably the largest Antifa website on the internet, has published a lengthy op-ed in support of gun rights from a Virginia militant leftist planning to attend the Second Amendment rally in Richmond this Monday.

The anonymously penned piece titled “With Neither Tyrants Nor Fascists: An Anarchist Analysis Of The Growing Fight Against Anti-Gun Legislation In Virginia,” makes a surprisingly reasonable argument for why they oppose anti-gun legislation and mocks the theories that Antifa is planning to go to the rally just to instigate problems.

On January 20, defenders of the Second Amendment intend to take over Richmond’s “Lobby Day” in support of the Second Amendment. The rally is expected to draw tens of thousands of people, many from militias across the country — as well as at least one Antifa group from the state. The group claims that they intend to support the Second Amendment and aren’t going to protest against the patriotic Americans who are standing up for their right to protect themselves and those they love.

The author began the article by describing growing up in Virginia and how being around guns is a natural part of life. “Here, they are as divisive as they are ubiquitous. Guns are pulled out at parties and argued about over dinner. They are bought and sold at pawn shops, advertised on billboards, given away in raffles, traded informally, gifted, stolen, won in poker games, and even sold on Facebook. Anyone over 18 with a valid driver’s license and clean record can rent one at a shooting range or buy one from their neighbor,” they explained.

They note that meat hunted with guns is “used for survival, shared between neighbors, or donated to the elderly,” but that many residents of the state “know someone impacted by their violence: someone who gets into fights, a bystander, a victim of domestic violence or depression or the police. Many have family, friends, and acquaintances serving long sentences who have been criminalized for their proximity to guns and guns are everywhere.”

The piece goes on to take aim squarely at the Democratic Party for attempting to trample the rights of their citizens.

“It has felt surreal and even laughable to many Virginians that a newly Democrat-dominated state government might push through the criminalization of gun possession with proposed sweeping partial ​bans and ​regulations​. But this is 2019 in Virginia, and these days we are used to things being very absurd and very surreal. The Democrats who are proposing these laws rode in on a wave of massive structural changes, redistricting, and also growing anger at Dominion Energy’s corporate influence. The gateway to the south, the gateway to the north. Virginia exists between a suburban future and the pastoral farming past, at the intersection of old world bigotry and patronage and hyper-modern capitalism,” the author lamented.

It goes on to ponder where exactly “non-traditional” gun owners fit in to defending this right, which is something more typically associated with right-wing activism than left.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/01/major-antifa-website-publishes-pro-gun-op-ed-from-virginia-resident-planning-to-attend-richmond-rally/

“Friday Next Week Is going to be Phenomenal. It’s Going to Be EPIC!” – General Flynn’s Attorney Sidney Powell Promises Big News This Friday!

General Mike Flynn’s attorney Sidney Powell was on Mark Levin’s show on Friday.

This was an excellent interview. Sidney Powell dropped a couple of very newsworthy quotes about the Flynn case.

Sidney Powell: Every American should be terrified in what is happening in this case. It could happen to anyone that they want to target and destroy… Thank you so much, Mark. And we’re not going to quit until we win and I’m going to expose every bit of it. Friday next week is going to be phenomenal. It’s going to be EPIC!

Below is a link to the interview with Mark Levin and Sidney Powell:

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/01/friday-next-week-is-going-to-be-phenomenal-its-going-to-be-epic-general-flynns-attorney-sidney-powell-promises-big-news-this-friday/

There are many takeaways from this amazing interview.

1. General Flynn is a patriot and was set up by some criminals in the Deep State.

2. They threatened Flynn to plead guilty by threatening to indict his son

3. The judge overseeing the case is preventing General Flynn from being provided Brady material related to his case

4. Powell listed a battery of documents that the DOJ withheld from General Flynn that would have proved his innocence

5. Powell has withdrawn General Flynn’s plea of guilty

6. Prosecutor Van Grack tried to get Flynn to make a false statement and Powell has evidence of this

7. Flynn can seek an appeal upon sentencing

8. Supplemental brief will have stunning reasons to withdraw the guilty plea this Friday

Friday’s filing by Powell should be something. She already had a list of documents that no one knew even existed. She had the phone ID’s for Joseph Mifsud’s phones. She knew Mifsud was with Halper at the event that Flynn attended in 2015. Powell knows more than we know.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/01/friday-next-week-is-going-to-be-phenomenal-its-going-to-be-epic-general-flynns-attorney-sidney-powell-promises-big-news-this-friday/

PRAY FOR EACH OTHER

Full Armor of God