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Newly released text messages between FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page reveal that the agency’s top brass was considering appointing former U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald as a special counsel in the Hillary Clinton email investigation. 

The idea is pitched in a March, 2016 exchange between Strzok and Page – relatively early on in their investigation into Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information. Of note, Attorney General Loretta Lynch or one of her deputies would have had to make the ultimate decision to appoint a special prosecutor to look into the “matter.” 

“Thought of the perfect person [FBI Director James Comey] can bounce this off of?” Strzok wrote to Page in a March 18, 2016 text. “Pat….You got to give me credit if we go with him….And delay briefing him on until I can get back and do it, Late next week or later.”

“We talked about him last night, not for this, but how great he is,” Page responded.

“I could work with him again….And damn we’d get sh*t DONE,” Strzok wrote.

 

judiciary.senate.gov

 

Strzok noted that Fitzgerald was brought in by Comey as a special counsel in the investigation into who leaked the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame.

 

 

Appointed in 2001 by President George W. Bush, Fitzgerald was the longest-serving U.S. Attorney in Chicago history – and has led several high profile federal investigations and prosecutions.

In a follow-up text exchange on May 13, 2016, Page asks Strzok “Hey forgot to ask if you mentioned the whole special counsel thing to andy?” (referring to current Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe). 

No special prosecutor was selected for the Clinton email investigation despite calls by Republicans to do so as early as February, 2016. 

Instead, former FBI Director James Comey had originally determined Clinton’s conduct fit the legally consequential charge of “gross negligence” which Peter Strzok later downgraded to “extremely careless” – which is not a legal term of art. The agency ultimately recommended that the Department of Justice not press charges. 

In a Thursday letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley asked if whether the FBI had approached the DOJ to appoint a special counsel. “If not, why not?” wrote Grassley, who also demanded all written communications on the subject.

judiciary.senate.gov

Politics as usual…

The newly released batch of text messages also reveal that the pair of anti-Trump FBI agents were concerned over reprisal from Hillary Clinton, should they aggressively pursue her. 

“One more thing: she might be our next president,” Page wrote, adding “The last thing you need us going in there loaded for bear. You think she’s going to remember or care that it was more doj than fbi?”

“Agreed,” Strzok replied.

Th texts also reveal that Page was engaged in a lengthy phone conversation with then-Wall St. Journal (now WaPo) reporter Devlin Barrett – several days after the journalist published a story on FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s wife receiving over half a million dollars in campaign donations from a committee tied to then-Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D-VA). Barrett also reported on an “internal feud” at the FBI over investigating the Clinton Foundation, leading some to suggest that he was a conduit for the FBI to leak information to the public. 

Strzok-Page texts show that Page spoke on phone to WSJ (now WaPo) reporter @DevlinBarrett as story of Weiner laptop emails broke. Close enough relationship that she called him Devlin. https://t.co/IdUshxPfAf

Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) January 26, 2018

Page was on the phone with Barrett just as news broke that the FBI had found State Department emails on a laptop it seized while investigating former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) for sexting with minors.

“Still on with devlin,” Page wrote. “Mike’s phone is ON FIRE,” she added, apparently referring to FBI public affairs chief Michael Kortan.

“You may want to tell Devlin he should turn on CNN, there’s news going on,” Strzok replied.

“He knows. He just got handed a note,” Page said.

“Ha. He asking about it now?” Strzok asked.

“Yeah. It was pretty funny,” Page wrote.

The text messages don’t indicate what information, if any, Page provided to Barrett or whether her discussions with the reporter were authorized by FBI management. –Politico

The texts released by Sen. Grassley on Thursday were included in a 384-page document delivery to Congressional investigators by the DOJ. While Justice officials said in a cover letter that five months of texts were “missing” and unable to be recovered due to a technical glitch, DOJ Inspector General (DOJ OIG) Michael Horowitz told lawmakers on Thursday that his office has managed to retreive the missing correspondence between Page and Strzok. 

The new batch of text messages along with Grassley’s full letter can be viewed below: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Authored by Kevin Muir via The Macro Tourist blog,

$11,589.01.

That’s the US dollar amount of American stocks the Swiss National Bank owns on behalf of every man, woman and child in Switzerland. Let that sink in.

A Central Bank has taken on itself to expand its balance sheet and invest in the proceeds, not in gold, nor sovereign debt – heck not even in corporate bonds. Nope, the SNB has taken it upon itself to “invest” that money in another country’s most risky part of the capital structure – equity.

And don’t think it’s a small number. It’s almost $100 billion US dollars.

In a strange twist of fate, the Swiss National Bank is not only Switzerland’s Central Bank, but also a publicly traded security. I know, it makes little sense, but in this day and age, what does? Anyways, the financial community is all abuzz with SNB’s rocket ship chart formation.

The SNB’s equity price market capitalization is only 584 million CHF, so when you consider that the S&P 500 is up almost 6% since the start of the year, and that the SNB owns $100 billion of stocks which are up $6 billion USD during the last two months, maybe it makes sense to take a punt of buying some SNB equity. Now, who really knows how to value this security? Those gains should accrue to Swiss citizens as opposed to SNB equity holders, but it’s easy to understand the excitement.

The real problem

It’s all fun and good to speculate on the SNB equity price, but I am more interested in what the SNB’s behaviour means for the global markets going forward.

The real problem is that a Central Bank just monetized their balance sheet against another country’s equity market, and instead of getting punished for this reckless behaviour, the markets are celebrating the Swiss good fortune. And I ask you – have you ever seen Central Bankers not behave like a bunch of antelopes on the Serengeti? It is an amazingly disturbing precedent.

The Swiss National Bank has gone down a rabbit hole from which it will be extremely difficult to surface. Not only does every Swiss citizen own indirectly through the Central Bank more than $10k of US stocks, but their total assets per capita is over $94,000 each!

Since the 2007 Great Financial Crisis, the SNB has taken the size of their balance sheet from 20% of GDP all the way to 125%!

And look at the period from 2014 to today. From 80% to 125%. And that was during a period of relative calm in both the markets and the economy.

What’s going to happen when the global economy rolls over?

This sort of balance sheet expansion, and especially with the corresponding move out the risk curve, is complete madness.

I know many market strategists are issuing warnings about markets due to forecasted global Central Bank asset tapering. I sure hope they are correct that this insanity ends soon. But I worry that we are being naive.

Have you looked at the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet lately? I know they are on a schedule to taper, but it’s at a glacial pace.

I worry that right now, Central Banks are being rewarded for keeping their balance sheets as big and risky as they can stomach. It appears to be a trade with no cost, and in fact, helps out by both keeping their currency weak, and in the meantime, making some money. It encourages them to be extremely slow easing off the accelerator.

The idiocy of Central Banks taking this sort of risk is beyond description, but no sense arguing about it – it is what it is. But make no mistake, it’s like wearing jeans, a denim shirt, and a jean jacket at the same time (the Canadian tuxedo), it just shouldn’t be done (unless you are Ryan Gosling and then somehow the ladies seem to like it – go figure…)

I don’t have any conclusions to draw from this diatribe. I don’t think you should take this as some sort of apocalyptic warning about a coming crash. In fact, it’s probably just the opposite. If this sort of Central Bank insanity continues at this pace even though the global economy is firmly in the green, then it only affirms my belief that Bill Fleckenstein was correct when he said, “the bubbles will continue until the bond market takes away the keys.”

PS: If the Federal Reserve decided to invest $11,589 in the US stock market per American citizen, they would need to buy $3.75 trillion of stocks… That would mean they would have to almost double the already inflated balance sheet. That’s the level of absurdity from the Swiss National Bank.

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Algebris Investments’ CEO/CIO Davide Serra reflected pointedly on ‘Davos Man’ and their generally herd-like behavior:

“I’ve been coming here for 10 years and the current Davos attendees are the most into momentum trading I’ve ever seen.“

“If the share prices are down they’re bearish; if markets are up, they’re all bullish. They’re trend followers.”

Talking to Bloomberg TV’s Erik Schatzker, Serra explained the reason for their short-sightedness…

“Trying to forecast the future for [the average Davos Man] is too hard and so they simply say ‘where are we today'” and that informs their worldview.

Serra uses the example that three years ago, everyone at Davos was mournfully wondering around declaring the disintegration of the euro – and now look where Europe is.

Critically, Serra notes of Davos and the world – “it’s almost impossible to find a contrarian” today.

Serra is confirming much of what we noted yesterday as the big bank CEOs sang the praises of the world economy and stocks to whichever TV audience they could get in front of, while explaining how terrified they were of the complacency when they are behind closed doors.

“There is a numbness out there, there is an ambivalence out there that’s concerning,”

“When the next turn comes — and it will come — it’s likely to be more violent than it would otherwise be if we let some pressure off along the way.”

So why does Serra go to Davos? Simple…

“You need to take the pulse, check the consensus and be ready, most of the time, to do the opposite,” and…

“that’s why we’re trying to get as many hedges as we can on what has been the overall market consensus.”

The Algebris CEO notes that markets are “euphoric” because central banks have pumped a cumulative $5t into the system, adding that when money-printing stops, inflation will rise and bonds will crash:

“a crash in the bond market, which is three times the equity market, will feel more painful to the average investor” than a stocks correction.

Banks will be the biggest beneficiaries from an inflation pick-up.

“Today their own margins are being crushed by basically the zero-rate policy around the world”

“It’s very hard for a bank to lend when a corporation can borrow at almost negative rates”

Algebris would short all assets manipulated by central banks, including rates, on an inflation pick-up.

Finally, Serra noted that U.S. Treasury Secretary Mnuchin  “is adding fuel on the fire by saying he likes a weak dollar because that’s going to fuel inflation even faster”

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Authored by Luis Colasante & Sergio Mazodilla via OilPrice.com,

The Southern Gas Corridor, connecting Azerbaijan to the world’s largest economic block, is one of the most important infrastructure pipeline projects worldwide, bringing Caspian gas into Europe.

 

Europe wants to become less dependent on Russian gas and use more clean energy, taking advantage of the technological advances made in the renewables sector, along with the use of natural gas.

After 2016’s 7 percent growth, European gas consumption continued to rise through 2017. Consumption levels showed a year-on-year increase of 6 percent in the first quarter, supported by low temperatures.

The Southern Gas Corridor is around 80 percent finalized, with the first gas flow for Europe expected around 2020. That’s great news not only for Europe, but also for the Azerbaijan economy, which stands to benefit from improved exported gas volumes, with the oil and gas sector accounting for up to 45 percent of their GDP and around 75 percent of state revenues.

Europe’s natural gas import needs will continue to increase through the next 10 years, a result of the Netherlands and United Kingdom’s shift from gas exporters to importers, and Norway’s energy policy to freeze new oil and gas offshore projects.

Azerbaijan will play an essential role in European energy security, not only as a European partner with a stable economy, but also a supplier with growing export potential of the much-needed commodity in a world of rising energy prices. And while the Southern Gas Corridor won’t replace Europe’s need for Russian gas, it will, however, be an outstanding actor for Southern European countries supplied by liquefied natural gas (LNG) carrying higher shipping costs.

With gas traders exploiting the price arbitrage between the global LNG market and piped gas coming through the Southern Gas Corridor, we forecast that LNG’s market shares will continue to increase in Europe, as new fields were funded in Israel and Egypt.

The Turkish Stream project into Europe will not be a competitor of the Southern Gas Corridor — that is the priority of the European Commission. The Turkish Stream project highlights several political and legal issues, exposing the region’s energy security and strategies aimed at rendering Europe less dependent on Russian gas.

Assuming that negotiations will need to take place between Russia and Europe in the following months or years, if Russia doesn’t receive an iron-clad guarantee from the European Commission, it’s very likely — in line with Gazprom’s shift to the East — they’ll walk away from the project.

Speaking of Europe’s Russian dependency, in light of the Southern Gas Corridor project’s potential impact on Europe, Russia’s pivot toward the East — Gazprom exports to China — means any additional or new supply flows into Europe will be of much use, helping the region replenish flows that will be redirected toward the growing and higher paying Asian markets of South Korea and Japan, and newcomers like Pakistan and India.

The Southern Gas Corridor will not only offer supply into Europe, but also help dampen future upside price risk as the cost of wholesale energy (in Europe) becomes significantly susceptible to global LNG markets — a change in market dynamics affected by the region’s transition from gas exporting to importing, as seen with the United Kingdom.

Despite the fact that expected volume flows may not necessarily be threatening to the dominant position of Russia within the region, global natural gas prices have been weak further out on the curve (NBP Sum’20 contracts onward) as ongoing Australian and Qatari LNG projects come into operation, flooding global markets — alongside the goliath that is U.S. shale gas post-2020 — with new LNG exporting capacities.

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After the first round of Brexit talks coming to an unexpectedly smooth conclusion, Theresa May entered the new year grappling with members of her own party – notably Boris Johnson, her own foreign secretary – over a brewing crisis at the NHS.

So, in what we imagine was a badly needed getaway, May seized the opportunity for a star-making appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Thursday, where she delivered a speech and met with President Donald Trump.

Famously a Luddite, May surprised observers by focusing on the positive advances in Artificial Intelligence and its possible benefits, while touting the UK’s status as a leading innovator (behind China and the US, of course).

Speaking of flying cars and the ability to prevent pandemics, May painted a picture where many of our modern problems are ameliorated by technology.

But she also acknowleged that “as we seize these opportunities of technology so we also shape this change to ensure it works for everyone, be that in people’s jobs or their daily lives.”

May said “we need to act decisively to help people benefit from global growth now…”

“I was appalled by the reports that I read. What worries me is it’s not just about that event it’s about this wider issue in society about the progress of women…”

…I’m going to continue to work to ensure that we can get to a point where women are truly accepted and respected as equals.”

* * *

Later, while responding to a question about regulating bitcoin, May promised to consider clamping down on bitcoin as she raised concerns that cryptocurrencies are being used by criminals, Bloomberg reported.

“In areas like cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin, we should be looking at these very seriously,” May said in a television interview in Davos with Bloomberg’s Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait. Action on crypto-currencies may be needed “precisely because of the way they are used, particularly by criminals,” she said.

Given the recent volatility in the cryptocurrency market, May said “I think it’s something we do need to take a look at.”

Of course, May is entirely wrong. As CoinTelegraph recently reported, a recent report from the joint Bitcoin analysis team of FDD and Ellicit, a Bitcoin forensics company, indicates that less than one percent of all Bitcoin transactions involve money laundering.

The report, written to help analyze the flow of funds and the danger of money laundering, has indicated that money laundering isn’t nearly the problem some critics of cryptocurrency believe. The report states:

“The amount of observed Bitcoin laundering [is] small and darknet marketplaces such as Silk Road and, later, AlphaBay are [generally] the source of almost all of the illicit Bitcoins laundered through conversion services.”

May also reiterated that investors should put pressure on technology giants to respond more quickly to extremist content on social networks, a cause she has spoken out about publicly since the the Manchester arena bombing.

Social networks must stop providing a platform for terror, extremism and child abuse, she said, according to the BBC.

Such content ought to be “removed automatically”, May added.

* * *

Finally, she joined President Trump for a press conference where the president reaffirmed the “special relationship” between the US and the UK.

May added that they’d be working on a trade deal in the future to “both our benefits.” Trump promised that the trade “is going to increase many times.”

“The discussions that are taking place is going to lead to tremendous increases in trade between our two countries which is great for both in terms of jobs.”

Tomorrow is the final day of the Forum, which, thanks to a disruptive snowstorm, produced some memorable images that will no doubt live on for months, if not years…

 

Only in #Davos you get a sign with “private car pick-up” direction alongside the “A day in the life of a refugee” exhibition. #Davos2018 #tonedeaf @tictoc #tictocnews pic.twitter.com/yFWsN3oLq9

— Javier Blas (@JavierBlas2) January 22, 2018

 

Trump later tweeted his satisfaction with the meeting…

 

Great bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Theresa May of the United Kingdom, affirming the special relationship and our commitment to work together on key national security challenges and economic opportunities. #WEF18 pic.twitter.com/FPP8aRDAyt

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 25, 2018

 

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Authored by Judith Bergman via The Gatestone Institute,

• Germany’s new law requires social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, to censor their users on behalf of the government. Social media companies are obliged to delete or block any online “criminal offenses” within 24 hours of receipt of a user complaint — regardless of whether the content is accurate or not.
• Social media platforms now have the power to shape the form of current political and cultural discourse by deciding who will speak and what they will say.
• Notice the ease with which the police chief mentioned that he had filed charges to silence a leading political opponent of the government. That is what authorities do in police states: Through censorship and criminal charges, they silence outspoken critics and political opponents of government policies, such as Beatrix von Storch, who has sharply criticized Chancellor Angela Merkel’s migration policies.
• While such policies would doubtless have earned the German authorities many points with the old Stasi regime of East Germany, they more than likely contravene the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) to which Germany is a party, as well as the case law of the European Court of Human Rights.

Germany’s new censorship law, which has introduced state censorship on social media platforms, came into effect on October 1, 2017. The new law requires social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, to censor their users on behalf of the German state. Social media companies are obliged to delete or block any online “criminal offenses” such as libel, slander, defamation or incitement, within 24 hours of receipt of a user complaint — regardless of whether the content is accurate or not. Social media companies are permitted seven days for more complicated cases. If they fail to do so, the German government can fine them up to 50 million euros for failing to comply with the law.

The new censorship law, however, was not fully enforced until January 1, 2018, in order to give the social media platforms time to prepare for their new role as the privatized thought police of the German state. Social media platforms now have the power to shape the form of current political and cultural discourse by deciding who will speak and what they will say.

On January 1, 2018, however, the law was immediately enforced. Twitter began by suspending the account of the deputy leader of the Alternative for Germany party (AfD), Beatrix von Storch, for 12 hours, after she tweeted the following in response to a New Year’s greeting issued in Arabic by the Cologne Police:

“What the hell is happening in this country? Why is an official police site tweeting in Arabic? Do you think it is to appease the barbaric, gang-raping hordes of Muslim men?”

(During New Year’s Eve of 2015/16, over 1,000 mainly Muslim men sexually assaulted around 1,200 women in Cologne.)

Von Storch also had her Facebook account suspended for repeating her tweet there. Facebook told her that her post contravened German law, as it constituted “incitement to hatred”.

It did not stop there. Cologne police filed charges against von Storch for “incitement to hatred”, which is punishable under section 130 of the German Criminal Code. According to the Cologne police chief, Uwe Jacob, multilingual tweets at major events are an important part of the police’s communication strategy:

“The campaign was really well received by most people – however, some were bothered by the fact that we tweeted in Arabic and Farsi – they were very prominent right-wingers, who then felt that they had to make tweets that incited to hatred. We simply filed charges”.

Notice the ease with which the police chief mentioned that he had filed charges to silence a leading political opponent of the government. That is what authorities do in police states: Through censorship and criminal charges, they silence outspoken critics and political opponents of government policies, such as von Storch, who has sharply criticized Chancellor Angela Merkel’s migration policies.

While such policies would doubtless have earned the German authorities many points with the old Stasi regime of East Germany, they more than likely contravene the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) to which Germany is a party, as well as the case law of the European Court of Human Rights. Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights states:

1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers…

2. The exercise of these freedoms… may be subject to such… restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.

In its case law, the European Court of Human Rights has stated that Article 10

“…protects not only the information or ideas that are regarded as inoffensive but also those that offend, shock or disturb; such are the demands of that pluralism, tolerance and broad-mindedness without which there is no democratic society. Opinions expressed in strong or exaggerated language are also protected”.

Even more important in the context of charges against politicians is the fact that according to the European Court of Human Rights’ case law:

“…the extent of protection depends on the context and the aim of the criticism. In matters of public controversy or public interest, during political debate, in electoral campaigns… strong words and harsh criticism may be expected and will be tolerated to a greater degree by the Court”.

When leading politicians are criminally charged for questioning the actions of the authorities, such as in this case the actions of the police, we are no longer dealing with a democracy, but with a regular police state.

Several other accounts on Twitter and Facebook were also suspended under the new censorship law in the first days and weeks of January. One such Twitter account was the satirical magazine, Titanic, which was blocked for parodying von Storch’s tweet about the “barbaric hordes” of Muslim men. The privatized Twitter thought police, in their eagerness to censor, had overlooked that Titanic was just poking fun. The suspension of the Titanic account alerted some politicians — a mere three months after the law went into force — to the problematic nature of the law. Leader of the Green party, Simone Peter and Secretary-General of the FDP, Nicola Beer were both critical of the law. “The law is messed up and must be replaced by a decent one”, Beer said.

Another politician, Martin Sichert, AfD member of the Bundestag for Nürnberg and state Chairman for the AfD, had a Facebook post deleted for violating “community standards”. In the post, which he substantiated with links to factual sources, he drew attention, among other things, to the way women are treated in Afghanistan. He also drew attention to the sexual abuse of small children in Afghanistan:

“It is scary and at the same time shameful that our state is preventing the enlightenment of citizens by simply censoring factual opinions, publicly available citations and links to reputable sources.”

Sichert and von Storch are just the most famous people to have their speech shut down on social media. There are countless others, whose stories never reach the media.

Under the censorship law, anyone can ask a social network operator to delete postings, even if the post does not affect him personally in any way. If the social network provider does not respond within 24 hours, the person wishing to have a post deleted can involve the Federal Office of Justice; there is even a form for this purpose on the homepage of the Federal Office of Justice. This office is responsible for the prosecution of violations, and the district court of Bonn is the sole authority permitted to examine disputes about the criminal liability of comments made on social media and to impose fines on the social media companies for failing to delete those comments within the required 24 hours.

It is regrettable that Germany, which can barely keep up with the terrorism threat and the wave of violent crime, is spending such vast resources on shutting down the free speech of its citizens on social media. The Federal Department of Justice has rented additional offices in Bonn to house approximately 50 new lawyers and administrators to implement the new law and ensure that the social media providers delete “offending posts” within 24 hours. “It was also important that we created a new file management system,” explains Thomas W. Ottersbach of the Federal Office of Justice in Bonn.

“This is the only way to ensure that deadlines are met and that a statistical evaluation can be carried out. Because it is important that we keep an eye on which [social media] operator’s complaints are piling up and where they are just isolated cases.”

The old German police state is back.

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Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

The Republicans’ delay in releasing the summary of the House Intelligence Committee’s Russiagate investigation is giving weight to the presstitutes’ claim that the report is not being released, because it is a hack attempt at a Trump coverup that is not believable. Only Republicans are stupid enough to put themselves in such a situation.

Readers ask me why the summary memo is not released if it is real. There must be some reasons besides the stupidity of Republicans. Yes, that is so. Among the many reasons that might be blocking release are:

1) Republicans are very national security conscious. They don’t want to provide precedents for the release of classified information.

2) Many Republican congressional districts host installations of the military/security complex. Upsetting a large employer and directing campaign financing to a challenger is a big consideration.

3) The George W. Bush/Dick Cheney regime was a neoconservative regime. One consequence is that Republicans are influenced by neoconservatives who stress the alleged “Russian threat.”

4) The Israel Lobby can unseat any member of the House and Senate. The Israel Lobby is allied with the neoconservatives and this alliance intends to keep the US militarily active against perceived threats to Israel’s hegemony in the Middle East and against Russia, which supports Syria and Iran, countries perceived as threats by Israel.

5) Many Republicans are themselves invested in false Russiagate allegations against Trump and would like to replace him with Pence. Other Republicans believe that Trump is undermining Washington’s expensively-purchased foreign alliances and, thereby, undermining US power.

Many Americans do not seem to understand what is at stake. What America is confronted with is a coup conspiracy organized by top officials of the Obama Justice Department, FBI, CIA, the Hillary DNC, and the presstitute media to overturn the result of a democratic election and remove the president from office. The basis of the coup is a fake dossier purchased for money that consists of unsupported allegations against Trump and that was used to obtain warrants from the FISA count to spy on Trump and various associates hoping to find something that can be used against Trump. Regardless, the false allegations could be fed to the CIA’s media assets and used to create a scandal requiring a special prosecutor to investigate Russiagate.

Once the investigation was under way, the presstitutes kept the scandal alive hoping to convince enough Americans that Trump must have done something—“where there is smoke, there is fire”—that justifies his removal. It worked against Richard Nixon, but not against Ronald Reagan, and Trump is no Reagan.

 

If the highest reaches of the police state agencies can get away with an attempted or successful coup against the president of the United States, then that is the complete end of democracy and all accountability in government. The House, Senate, and judiciary will become as powerless as the Roman senate under the caesars. We will live under a dictatorship ruled by police state agencies.

Many Americans say they don’t need the House Intelligence Report, because they don’t believe the Russiagate BS in the first place. They miss the point. They need the report, because those responsible for this attempt at a coup must be identified, charged, and prosecuted for their act of high treason.

This is not minor stuff. This goes to the heart of whether any form of liberty will exist. We all know that the ability of the people to hold government accountable is not assured by democracy. However, there is no prospect of holding government accountable if it is a police state, a road that the US has been going down for some time. The audacious coup attempt against President Trump is our opportunity to stop the momentum to a police state.

Despite my recent postings, many people do not understand that the somewhat redacted FISA court document that has been declassified and released and explained by myself, William Binney, and former US Attorney Joe di Genova contains admissions by the FBI and DOJ that they improperly spied and obtained warrants from the court under false pretenses. In other words, we have it on the authority of the FISA court itself that the FBI and DOJ have admitted to the court their transgressions. When Department of Justice (sic) congressional liaison Stephen Boyd says the DOJ is “unaware of any wrongdoing,” he is lying through his teeth. The DOJ has already confessed its wrongdoing to the FISA court.

(See Lendman on Boyd’s claim that releasing the memo would harm national security and ongoing investigations. This is always the claim made when government has to cover up its crimes. )

When Admiral Rodgers, director of the National Security Agency, discovered that the FBI and DOJ were misusing the spy system for partisan political reasons, he let it be known that he was going to inform the FISA court. This caused the FBI and DOJ to rush to the court in advance and confess to “mistakes” and to promise to tighten up procedures so as not to make mistakes in the future. It is these “mistakes” and corrections that the FISA court document reveals.

In other words, the information already exists in the pubic domain that proves that Russiagate was a conspiracy organized for the purpose of bringing down the elected president of the United States.

A case can be made that it would be just as well if the coup succeeds as it would bring an end to Washington’s cover as the government of a great democracy with liberty and justice for all. Most other governments, and one would hope certainly the Russian and Chinese governments, would see the coup as America’s final transition into a police state and give up their utopian ideas of reaching accommodation with Washington. The constraints on Washington’s ability to bully the world would be greatly strengthened by the universal perception that the government of the United States had devolved into a police state.

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They call them “deepfakes.”

It’s the term for pornography made using artificial intelligence-assisted technology to superimpose a person’s face on another performer’s body – essentially allowing the producer to create fake porn featuring celebrities, politicians or even average every people.

In a report published Wednesday, Motherboard recounted how they discovered a user on Reddit responsible for producing convincing porn videos featuring celebrities like Gal Gadot, Maisie Williams and Taylor Swift.

Pretty soon, the technology used to create “deepfakes” will be widely available enough to be used by extortionists and criminals with only a cursory understanding of how the software works. Another redditor discovered by Motherboard even created an app specifically designed to allow users without a computer science background to create AI-assisted fake porn. All the tools one needs to make these videos are free, readily available, and accompanied with instructions that walk novices through the process.

Two months ago, the first redditor mentioned above created a subreddit dedicated to the practice.

In that short time, the subreddit has already amassed more than 15,000 subscribers. Within the community, the word “deepfake” itself is now a noun for the kinds of neural-network generated fake videos their namesake pioneered, according to Motherboard.

Another “deepfake” auteur created an app called FakeApp, a user-friendly application that allows anyone to recreate these videos with their own datasets. The app is based on deepfakes’ algorithm, but another user who goes by deepfakeapp created FakeApp without the help of the original deepfakes. While none of these people divulged their identity to Motherboard, the user known as Deepfakeapp said in a direct message that his goal with creating FakeApp was to make deepfakes’ technology available to people without a technical background or programming experience.

“I think the current version of the app is a good start, but I hope to streamline it even more in the coming days and weeks,” he said. “Eventually, I want to improve it to the point where prospective users can simply select a video on their computer, download a neural network correlated to a certain face from a publicly available library, and swap the video with a different face with the press of one button.”

Peter Eckersley, chief computer scientist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, fears the technology will soon reach the point where fakes are virtually indistinguishable for authentic videos.

“I think the current version of the app is a good start, but I hope to streamline it even more in the coming days and weeks,” he said. “Eventually, I want to improve it to the point where prospective users can simply select a video on their computer, download a neural network correlated to a certain face from a publicly available library, and swap the video with a different face with the press of one button.”

Fakes posted in the subreddit have already been pitched as real on other websites; a deepfake of Emma Watson taking a shower was uploaded by CelebJihad, a celebrity porn site that regularly posts hacked celebrity nudes, as a “never-before-seen video” purportedly from the user’s “private collection.”

 

Here’s an example of a “deepfake”

Other redditors have taken video trained from celebrities’ Instagram accounts and used it to convincingly fake Snapchat messages.

“Deepfakes” are hardly a new phenomenon. Last July, we reported on a project conducted by Stanford’s Matthias Niessner that managed to create several faked videos of former US President Barack Obama.

Soon, this technology could create problems for everybody, from governments, to corporations to the news media – which will now find it even more difficult to distinguish veritable “Fake News” from reality.

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Authored by Jeremiah Johnson (nom de plume of a retired Green Beret of the United States Army Special Forces) via SHTFplan.com,

The United States was a nation founded by immigrants, and immigration has always had a clear-cut path toward American citizenship. The United States was built by successive waves of immigrants who came to America in search of a better life. There is a difference between being an immigrant and being an illegal alien. Immigrants follow the rules of the nation they emigrate to and pursue a legitimate path toward permanent citizenship or toward legal employment in the country. Illegal aliens bypass all legal systems in place…rules designed to protect citizens of the country in numerous ways.

For the past 100 years, the United States has pursued a laissez-faire policy toward illegal aliens. Much of this was because American businesses and industries such as farming and mining, for example, wanted illegal aliens to come here. They wanted to pay them under the table, avoiding the taxes and withholding, and circumventing the minimum wage. The public was also complicit: turning a blind eye, provided that it didn’t directly affect them.

But it did…and year after year, tens of thousands of illegal aliens crossed our borders and started their new lives in America…at the expense of American citizens.

Now it has changed into something completely different:

Now it is a part of the socialist playbook based on Cloward and Piven, and Alinsky’s actions and doctrines to destroy the United States from within; it has become a global movement toward the goal of global governance.

This is not immigration, either in the U.S. or worldwide. It is the planned, systematic destruction of national identities and sovereignties. This is being accomplished in several manners:

1. The religious differences are so pronounced between these aliens who are Muslims and the citizens of the traditionally-Christian nations of Europe that underlying tensions are one step away from warfare between citizens and aliens.
2. Laws in these countries are being “restructured” to facilitate the insertion of these aliens against the host-citizens’ wills.
3. The efforts (globally) are coordinated and funded by a consortium of oligarchs and politicians who are utilizing the chaos, confusion, and instability to destroy the nations and push them toward global governance.
4. Armies of NGO’s (Nongovernmental Organizations) under the guises of “humanitarian efforts” or “political dialogue” are in reality “embassies” and front-man representatives to carry out the planned dissolution of national borders and recruit citizenry in the form of “5^th columnists” to destroy these nations from within.

The world of George Orwell’s “1984” solidifies more by the day: increased surveillance, decreasing freedoms, and tensions throughout the world to keep whole populations unbalanced while fueling the war machine with money…taxed monies…of the global Military Industrial complex.

Van Jones: “Top down, bottom up.”

Encouraging “revolutions” by the stupid, uncomprehending youth, who all believe the nonsense of “making a difference” when what they are doing is playing the parts of puppets in the globalists’ hands. Guess what?  The globalists will round up the “new Bohemians,” and shoot them in the back of the head in the end.

Hungary and Czechoslovakia are now the only nations with leaders that are standing up against the tide of the invasion of Europe: the planned and purposed insertion of illegal aliens into Europe’s nations. All of this is designed to destroy the homogeneity of the populations, destroy the borders, language, culture, and religions of the nations, and enable the removal of national boundaries…thus creating gigantic, corporate “continents” for “juntas” of oligarchs and politicos to rule over.

Gefira released a piece on 1/19/18 entitled The Incredible Shrinking Population: By 2080 Italians Will Be a Minority in Their Own Nation. The article points out that mass “migration” from Asia and Africa will overwhelm and overshadow a population that already has a lowered birth rate. The article is a “representative slice” of the whole pie, as this is being duplicated in every nation in Europe except for those two previously mentioned.

The President is enforcing the laws, and the illegals in the U.S. are being deported. There is another side to the seesaw that bears mention, however, as “every rose has its thorn.” The “thorn” here being this:

The illegals being deported from the United States are not “evicted” at a rate to make a dent, and the screws are tightening down on scrutinizing individual citizens: a step away from such things as a national ID card and a permanent police state.

The evil genius of the globalists is their capability to “seesaw” the game, and as they accomplish one thing (perhaps hidden), if it appears to be “good” or in opposition to their plans? Under closer scrutiny, it shows a hidden agenda, a purpose that seems good on the surface but upon closer examination can be changed to serve nefarious intentions.

Thus, it is with the fostered insertions of illegal aliens into the countries of Europe and the United States. The ironic part is that these aliens are unwitting tools whom the globalists could care less about and are just using. Once the world is under their rule, the aliens will be dealt with in the manner outlined with the “young revolutionaries” before…along with the rest of the citizens that cannot be made compliant in the global governance coming closer to fruition every day.

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