Category: zerohedge

Authored by Jeff Thomas via InternationalMan.com,

Americans were taught about Paul Revere’s ride in school. He was said to have ridden from his home in the North End of Boston, to Lexington and Concord, to warn the people there that Federal troops had landed in Boston Harbour and would soon reach the townships.

Of course, the story was tarted up a bit for the history books. First, it’s unlikely that he shouted, “The British are coming,” since, at the time of the ride, in 1775, he was in fact British – a British colonial – and would have regarded himself as British, as would the townspeople.

It’s also unlikely that he galloped through the towns shouting, “To arms! To arms!” since a major portion of the British colonists, particular those who were older and had a lot to lose, were loyalists, and taking up arms would be treasonous. (At that time, treason was one of only two capital crimes.)

So, what did he shout on his ride… or did he in fact shout anything? It’s more likely that he simply went to the back doors of select sympathisers and asked them to spread the word that the Federal troops were on the way. But, of course, that would have made for a far less colourful story.

It is likely, though, that the ride itself did actually take place and that he did succeed in rousing the townspeople. Amongst them were the minutemen, who later did quite a good job of picking off the Federal troops.

At that time, this practice was looked upon by armies as cowardly. It was considered honourable for columns of troops to march toward each other and fire. Those with the most troops to sacrifice usually won. The colonists could not have prevailed, had they followed this method of battle.

But the colonists’ cause was a laudable one, even if they were far outnumbered and not as well-trained or well-armed as the Federals. Under the circumstances, they succeeded because they swallowed their pride, used their wits and, fighting guerilla style, prevailed against a greater opponent.

In creating the United States, the founding fathers of the US endorsed the concept of a republic – a conglomerate of states in which the individual right was tantamount. They were deeply suspicious of sliding into becoming a democracy. As Thomas Jefferson said,

“Democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where 51 percent of the people may take away the rights of the other 49.”

Quite so. And yet, from the very first presidential cabinet, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton pushed for a move away from a republic toward a stronger federal government. (In 1789, he formed the Federalist Party and the contest began.)

Since that time, the US has moved away from being a republic and has become more of a federalist state.

This progression continued fairly steadily until 1913, at which time two major changes occurred. The banking interests in the US had become powerful enough to push through two bills that would serve to enrich them for generations. The source of that wealth would be the American taxpayer.

First, income tax (which had been attempted previously, but never gained full acceptance) was introduced. Second, to add insult to injury, the Federal Reserve was created. It was neither a federal body, nor was it a reserve. However, in addition to having the power to create all currency for the US, it had the power to set interest rates.

Through this control, it was possible to create steady annual inflation (defined as an increase in the currency in circulation). This had the effect of diminishing the purchasing power of the dollar by slow measures, effectively robbing the population incrementally through inflation.

Had Paul Revere been around in 1913, he might well have wished to get on his horse to warn the people that the Federals were coming. Only this time, it wasn’t the Federal troops, it was the Federal Reserve.

The Fed’s power made it possible to create large amounts of money out of thin air, to be loaned by banks. With this easy money, investors could borrow heavily and buy into the stock market a level previously regarded as impossible. This cornucopia was so forthcoming that, by 1929, a level of debt was reached that was unsustainable. If even a small increase in the interest rate was advanced, a stock market crash would occur, as debtors, who were up to their teeth in debt, would be underwater overnight.

What’s interesting here is that the very body that had taken over the economy in 1913 – the Federal Reserve – had created the artificially low interest rates, supplied the money, created the bubble, then, by raising interest rates in 1929, provided the pin to prick the bubble.

Not very sporting.

Today, the value of the dollar has been eroded by over 97% of its 1913 purchasing power and is due for replacement. If the owners of the Federal Reserve are to continue to regularly scalp the hoi polloi, the best approach would be to engineer a second major buildup of debt, trigger a crash, then introduce a new currency to “save the economy.”

This, they will most assuredly do. The debt has already been created. A crash can be triggered in many ways, including the tried-and-true method of raising interest rates.

And, after the predictable crash, the public will most assuredly cry out for those in power to “do something.” The warning signs have been in view for some time that that “something” will be digital currency – a currency that will make it necessary for virtually all economic transactions to pass through the hands of banks. Person-to-person transactions will virtually end, except for the possibility of barter, which would be likely to flourish as soon as the public have realized that they’ve been hoodwinked.

Unfortunately, our friend Paul Revere is nowhere to be seen on the horizon, but the Federals are indeed coming and the American people, in the not-too-distant future, will need to learn to survive the onslaught from the digital currency system that will take the place of the bullets of the late eighteenth century.

Once again, Americans will need to understand, as did their late eighteenth century forebears, that their only hope against a more powerful opponent is to use their wits – to adopt the minuteman approach and implement the economic equivalent of guerilla warfare.

*  *  *

Clearly, there are many strange things afoot in the world. Distortions of markets, distortions of culture. It’s wise to wonder what’s going to happen, and to take advantage of growth while also being prepared for crisis. How will you protect yourself in the next crisis? See our PDF guide that will show you exactly how. Click here to download it now.

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The American wife of a Chinese fugitive has been kidnapped and taken to a secret site commonly known as a “black jail” in order to lure her husband back to China to face criminal charges in a $1.4 billion fraud case, according to WRAL. 

Liu Changming, 53, the father, is among China’s most-wanted fugitives, accused of helping to carry out one of the country’s biggest bank frauds, in which $1.4 billion in illegal loans was issued to property developers. He fled the country in 2007.

Sandra Han was detained during a trip to a tropical Chinese island after she and her two children – Victor and Cynthia Liu, traveled on US passports to visit an ailing grandfather. Like their mother, Victor and Cynthia are US citizens. Unlike their mother, however, they were simply placed on travel restriction and not able to leave the country despite saying they are not under investigation or being charged with a crime. 

By holding the family hostage, they said, police are trying to force the siblings’ father to return to China to face criminal charges. The father, Liu Changming, a former executive at a state-owned bank, is accused of being a central player in a $1.4 billion fraud case.

The children say their father severed ties with the family in 2012, but Chinese authorities have still held them for months under a practice known as an exit ban — a growing tactic that has become the latest flash point in the increasingly rancorous relationship between the United States and China. –WRAL

Senior US diplomats have denounced the so-called “exit bans” as a violation of rights, while the State Department issued a travel warning in January – saying that the practice posed risks to foreigners traveling to China. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reportedly mentioned the Liu family to a top Chinese foreign policy official, Yang Jiechi, at a Washington meeting according to WRAL. 

The siblings have pleaded their case to U.S. officials, including John Bolton, the national security adviser. “The investigative officers have made abundantly clear that neither my brother nor I am under any form of investigation,” Cynthia Liu, 27, wrote to Bolton in an August letter obtained by The New York Times. “We are being held here as a crude form of human collateral to induce someone with whom I have no contact to return to China for reasons with which I am entirely unfamiliar.” –WRAL

State Department spokesman Robert Palladino said on Friday that the United States would continue to express concern over exit bans “until we see a transparent and fair process,” though nothing about Sandra Han being held at a black site. 

The Chinese Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, has defended their actions – saying “The people you mentioned all own legal and valid identity documents as Chinese citizens. Because they are suspected of economic crimes, they are restricted from exiting the country by the Chinese police in accordance with the law.”

The law in China states that citizenship is automatically lost when someone gains citizenship abroad – while someone like Victor Liu, who was born with US citizenship is not a Chinese citizen, regardless of his parents’ citizenship status. All three family members entered China on US passports, while the State Department is providing them with citizen services. Guangzhou police have reportedly taken Han, 51, to meet with a US consular officer. 

Massachusetts Democrats Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Ed Markey and Rep Joseph Kennedy III have all urged the US governmnt to act, as the mother is from their state. “Our office is aware of Victor’s, Cynthia’s and Sandra’s situations and is deeply concerned,” Markey’s office said in a statement. “We are working to secure their safe return and continue to be in touch with U.S. officials to ensure a positive outcome.”

The Liu children, who have attempted to leave China three times since June, are a long way from their upscale lives in America. Both attended the elite Groton boarding school in Massachusetts. Cynthia Lieu graduated from Stanford and Harvard Business School, while the family has a $2.3 million house in a Boston suburb. Their mother controls real estate holdings worth at least $10 million – including two Manhattan luxury apartments. 

They are now living in fear and limiting electronic communications out of surveillance concerns. 

“Out of concern for the security of these young Americans, we will refrain from public comment as we continue our efforts to constructively and directly engage the Chinese government to allow them to return home,” said David Pressman, a partner at Boies Schiller Flexner who is representing the family. 

Meanwhile, the president of Georgetown met with the children this month in Beijing, and Harvard has written to the Chinese ambassador in Washington. So far, China hasn’t budged – and they are more serious than ever in their efforts to crack down on corruption.

In 2014, China announced the start of a global campaign to hunt down fugitive former officials.

Many of the former officials live overseas in luxury, with new names and citizenship. China has sent secret agents to the United States to try to retrieve some. China has also asked the United States to send back former officials, but the two countries do not have an extradition treaty.

U.S. officials have been reluctant to cooperate because of China’s human rights abuses and lack of rule of law, though there have been exceptions — including the repatriation of a former vice mayor accused of stealing $39 million. –WRAL

In 2007, Chinese auditors discovered irregularities that would become the country’s largest case of bank fraud. That December, Liu Changming fled China according to state media. As the top official at the Guangzhou branch of the Bank of Communications, he was right in the middle of the scam. In 2008, he was charged with issuing illegal loans of around $1.4 billion USD, including one to a company he secretly controlled, according to financial newsmagazine Caixin. Liu’s co-conspirators were convicted, but only half the money was recovered. 

In 2015, China put Liu on its “Skynet” list of 100 most-wanted fugitives. Interpol issued a “red notice” for his arrest. His whereabouts are unknown.

The Financial Times reported in 2009 that after escaping China, Liu took part in shareholder meetings in London for Canton Property Investment Ltd., a company whose Chinese subsidiaries received the illegal loans. The company had gone public in London in August 2007 and raised $50 million, but was delisted the next year.

Public records show that a person named Changming Liu is linked to a home in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. The address matches the one Cynthia Liu lists on her Harvard alumni page. The home is owned by Sandra Han, the mother. Zillow, the real estate website, estimates its value at $2.3 million. 

A company controlled by Han bought the home in 2009. Several real estate companies, trusts and limited liability corporations are registered to that address, and they in turn own rental properties in Massachusetts and luxury apartments in New York. –WRAL

During Liu’s ascent within Chinese banking bureaucracy, Liu became a “naked official,” someone who settles his family abroad – out of the grasp of Chinese authorities. The family in this case moved to California in 1998 – living in an Alhambra condominium. In June 1999, iu and his wife purchased a three-bedroom home in the nearby town of Arcadia, where their son Victor would be born that July.  

And after two decades of establishing themselves in the relative safety of Southern California, all it took was one trip to China for their careful planning to go awry. 

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Authored by Jonathan Tepper, via Bloomberg.com,

We need a revolution to cast off monopolies and restore entrepreneurial freedom. 

Excerpted from “The Myth of Capitalism.”

On April 9, 2017, police officers from Chicago’s O’Hare Airport removed Dr. David Dao from United Express Flight 3411. The flight was overbooked, but he refused to give up his seat. He had patients to treat the next day.

Fellow passengers recorded a video of him being dragged off the plane. You could hear gasps of disbelief from fellow passengers: “Oh, my god!” “No! This is wrong.” “Look at what you did to him.” No one could believe what they were seeing. In the video he could be seen bleeding from the mouth as police dragged him down the aisle. The video quickly went viral.

United’s CEO, however, did not apologize and instead blamed the passenger for being belligerent. Eventually, the outrage was so great that the CEO apologized and the airline reached an undisclosed settlement with Dr. Dao. Dr. Dao’s lawyer Thomas Demetrio told journalists that Dr. Dao “left Vietnam in 1975 when Saigon fell and he was on a boat and he said he was terrified. He said that being dragged down the aisle was more horrifying and harrowing than what he experienced when leaving Vietnam.”

Years ago, such a public relations disaster would have caused United’s stock to stumble, but it quickly recovered. Financial analysts agreed that it would have no effect on the airline. For all of 2016, the company reported full-year net income of $2.3 billion. The results were so good that in 2016 United’s board approved a stock buyback of $2 billion, which is the financial equivalent of spraying yourself with champagne.

Research analysts dismissed the incident, saying “consumers might not have much choice but to fly UAL due to airline consolidation, which has reduced competition over most routes.” Online news sites helpfully explained what had happened with headlines like, “Airlines Can Treat You Like Garbage Because They Are an Oligopoly.” Once investors started focusing on United’s dominant market position, the stock price in fact went up.

The analysts were right. The American skies have gone from an open market with many competing airlines to a cozy oligopoly with four major airlines.

To say that there are four major airlines overstates the true level of competition. Most U.S. airlines dominate a local hub, unironically known as “fortress hubs,” where they face little competition and have a near monopoly. They have the landing slots, and they are willing to engage in predatory pricing to keep out any new entrants. At 40 of the 100 largest U.S. airports, a single airline controls a majority of the market.

United, for example, dominates many of the country’s largest airports. In Houston, United has around a 60 percent market share, in Newark 51 percent, in Washington Dulles 43 percent, in San Francisco 38 percent and in Chicago 31 percent. This situation is even more skewed for other airlines. For example, Delta has an 80 percent market share in Atlanta and 77 percent in Philadelphia, while in Dallas-Fort Worth it has 77 percent. For many routes, you simply have no choice.

The episode became a metaphor for American capitalism in the 21st century. A highly profitable company had bloodied a consumer, and it didn’t matter because consumers have no choice.

Competition is the essence of capitalism, yet it is dying.

Rising market power by dominant firms has created less competition, lower investment in the real economy, lower productivity, less economic dynamism with fewer startups, higher prices for dominant firms, lower wages and more wealth inequality. The evidence from economic studies is pouring in like a flood.

If you believe in competitive free markets, you should be very concerned. If you believe in fair play and hate cronyism, you should be worried. With fake capitalism CEOs cozy up to regulators to get the kind of rules they want and donate to get the laws they desire.

Larger companies get larger, while the small disappear, and the consumer and worker are left with no choice.

Freedom is essential to capitalism. It is not surprising then that Milton Friedman picked “Free to Choose” as the title of his extremely popular PBS series on capitalism, and “Capitalism and Freedom” was the title of his book that sold over 1.5 million copies. He argued that economic freedom was “a necessary condition for political freedom.”

“Free to Choose” sounds great. Yet Americans are not free to choose.

In industry after industry, they can only purchase from local monopolies or oligopolies that can tacitly collude. The U.S. now has many industries with only three or four competitors controlling entire markets. Since the early 1980s, market concentration has increased severely. We’ve already described the airline industry. Here are other examples:

• Two corporations control 90 percent of the beer Americans drink.

• Five banks control about half of the nation’s banking assets.

• Many states have health insurance markets where the top two insurers have an 80 percent to 90 percent market share. For example, in Alabama one company, Blue Cross Blue Shield, has an 84 percent market share and in Hawaii it has 65 percent market share.

• When it comes to high-speed Internet access, almost all markets are local monopolies; over 75 percent of households have no choice with only one provider.

• Four players control the entire U.S. beef market and have carved up the country.

• After two mergers this year, three companies will control 70 percent of the world’s pesticide market and 80 percent of the U.S. corn-seed market.

The list of industries with dominant players is endless. It gets even worse when you look at the world of technology. Laws are outdated to deal with the extreme winner-takes-all dynamics online. Google completely dominates internet searches with an almost 90 percent market share. Facebook has an almost 80 percent share of social networks. Both have a duopoly in advertising with no credible competition or regulation.

Amazon is crushing retailers and faces conflicts of interest as both the dominant e-commerce seller and the leading online platform for third-party sellers. It can determine what products can and cannot sell on its platform, and it competes with any customer that encounters success.

Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android completely control the mobile app market in a duopoly, and they determine whether businesses can reach their customers and on what terms. Existing laws were not even written with digital platforms in mind.

So far, these platforms appear to be benign dictators, but they are dictators nonetheless.

It was not always like this. Without almost any public debate, industries have now become much more concentrated than they were 30 and even 40 years ago. As economist Gustavo Grullon has noted, the “nature of U.S. product markets has undergone a structural shift that has weakened competition.”

The federal government has done little to prevent this concentration, and in fact has done much to encourage it. Broken markets create broken politics. Economic and political power is becoming concentrated in the hands of distant monopolists.

The stronger companies become, the greater their stranglehold on regulators and legislators becomes via the political process. This is not the essence of capitalism.

Capitalism is a game where competitors play by rules on which everyone agrees. The government is the referee, and just as you need a referee and a set of agreed rules for a good basketball game, you need rules to promote competition in the economy.

Left to their own devices, firms will use any available means to crush their rivals. Today, the state, as referee, has not enforced rules that would increase competition, and through regulatory capture has created rules that limit competition.

Workers have helped create vast wealth for corporations, yet wages barely kept up with the growth in productivity and profits. The reason for the large gap is clear. Economic power has shifted into the hands of companies. Income and wealth inequality have increased as companies have captured more and more of the economic pie.

Most workers own no shares and have barely benefited from record corporate profits. As G.K. Chesterton observed, “Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists.”

When the left and right speak of capitalism today, they are telling stories about an imaginary state. The unbridled, competitive free markets that the right cherishes don’t exist today. The left attacks the grotesque capitalism we see today, as if that were the true manifestation of the essence of capitalism rather than the distorted version it has become.

In 1776 Adam Smith wrote “The Wealth of Nations,” and the American Continental Congress declared independence from Britain. Smith complained bitterly about monopolies. He wrote of the East India Company: “… the monopoly which our manufacturers have obtained … has so much increased the number of some particular tribes of them, that, like an overgrown standing army, they have become formidable to the government, and upon many occasions intimidate the legislature.”

Among the reasons the Continental Congress cited for separating from Britain in the Declaration of Independence was, “For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world: For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent.” The Boston Tea Party was in response to the East India Company’s monopoly on tea.

“The Wealth of Nations” and the Declaration of Independence were bold statements against the abuses of monopoly power. Americans wanted entrepreneurial freedom to build businesses in a free market.

Today, we need a new revolution to cast off monopolies and restore free trade.

*  *  *

Jonathan Tepper, a founder of Variant Perception, a research group for asset managers, is the author, most recently, of “The Myth of Capitalism: Monopolies and the Death of Competition,” with Denise Hearn.

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In a show of “brazen hostility,” 17 Russian fighter jets ‘buzzed’ Britain’s Royal Navy warship, HMS Duncan, in the Black Sea near Crimea.

Stunning footage of the event was broadcast on a UK Channel 5 documentary following the operations of the Type 45 destroyer in the volatile region.

Defense secretary Gavin Williamson praised the actions of the crew aboard HMS Duncan in the face of Russian aggression. Williamson said:

“Over the past year, HMS Duncan and her crew have embodied the key role the UK plays in NATO.

“As NATO flagship, she has faced down brazen Russian hostility in the Black Sea with jets buzzing overhead, been stalked by Russian spy ships and played a vital role protecting NATO allies during the British, American and French strikes against Syrian chemical weapons facilities.

“Through her deployment, this world-leading ship and her crew epitomised the nation we are going to be as we exit the EU – a truly global Britain which is outward-looking and engaged on the world stage.”

Royal Navy commodore Mike Utley said the incident involving HMS Duncan shows the challenges posed by Russian military activity. He said:

“HMS Duncan is probably the only maritime asset that has seen a raid of that magnitude in the last 25 years.”

“I think their tactics are naive. What they don’t know is how capable the ship is.

“When you see that much activity, I think it reinforces the nature of what people expect at the moment and why there is a challenge from Russia.”

The footage shows the jets circling the ship before returning to Russian airspace with one of the pilots sending a message to Duncan’s crew, saying: “Good luck, guys.”

The documentary shows one of Duncan’s sailors saying they felt the message could have been a warning to the ship while another said:

“They had 17 aircraft, we have 48 missiles – I think we’re going to win that one.”

And while the headlines around this “hostile” act are sure to raise already extremely high tensions between Ukraine and Russia, pointing to Russia as the “aggressor” in an effort to solidify public opinion (in NATO) against Putin, the dramatic video is from May of this year.

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Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

So it turns out it’s really really important for powerful people to be able to lie to us with impunity, you guys. I know this because an actual, literal spy told me that that’s what I’m meant to believe in an article published by Newsweekyesterday.

If you were wondering how long it would take the imperial propagandists to ramp up their efforts to explain to us why it is good for the Trump administration to prosecute WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange after we learned that sealed charges have been brought against him by the United States government, the answer is eight days.

If you were wondering which of those propagandists would step forward and aggressively attempt to do so, the answer is Naveed Jamali.

To be clear, I do not use the word “propagandist” to refer to a mass media employee whose reliable track record of establishment sycophancy has propelled him to the upper echelons of influence within platforms owned by plutocrats who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, as I often mean when I use that word. When I say that Jamali is a propagandist, I mean he is a current member of the United States intelligence community telling Newsweek’s readers that it is to society’s benefit for the US government to pursue a longstanding agenda of the US intelligence community in imprisoning Julian Assange.

“This is not reporting, this is not journalism and Assange is not a journalist providing analysis or investigative reporting— this is the hocking of stolen secrets, with no regard for the very real damage their disclosure does.” My latest for @Newsweek https://t.co/FdNJ1vRvZh

— Naveed Jamali (@NaveedAJamali) November 25, 2018

Jamali is currently a reserve intelligence officer for the United States Navy, and is a former FBI asset and double agent. He is also like many intelligence community insiders an MSNBC contributor, and is a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a think tank which has featured many prominent neoconservative war whores like Donald and Frederick Kagan, Max Boot, and James Woolsey. 

Any think tank with the words “foreign policy” in its title is nothing other than a group of intellectuals who are paid by plutocrats to come up with the best possible arguments for why it would be very good and smart to do things that are very evil and stupid, and Naveed Jamali sits comfortably there.

His Newsweek article, titled “Prosecuting Assange is Essential for Restoring Our National Security”, begins with the sentence “Full disclosure: I am not a fan of Julian Assange or Wikileaks,” and doesn’t get any better from there. The article consists of two arguments, the first being that since Assange is “not a journalist” he is not protected by the First Amendment from prosecution by the US government. This argument is bunk because (A) this is a made-up nonsense talking point since neither the US Constitution nor the Supreme Court have made any distinction between journalists or any other kind of publisher in press freedom protections, and (B) WikiLeaks has won many awards for journalism. The second argument is that it is very important for the US government to be able to hide any kind of secrets it wants from the American people.

And really that’s the only thing these paid manipulators are ever telling you when they smear Assange or argue for his prosecution: powerful people need to be able to lie to you and hide information from you without being inconvenienced or embarrassed by WikiLeaks. If they say it often enough and in a sufficiently confident tone, some trusting, well-intentioned people will overlook the fact that this is an intensely moronic thing for anyone to believe.

Forget Jim Acosta. If you’re worried about Trump’s assault on the press, news of a Wikileaks indictment is the real scare story. Matt Taibbi’s latest https://t.co/0UB8d6GH4o pic.twitter.com/WtgQoFd3Ts

— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) November 23, 2018

I’m going to keep answering this the same way: these charges almost certainly involve pre-2016 behavior, and you might want at least try to understand what that might mean, or why people like Jeff Sessions and Mike Pompeo were gunning for a case. https://t.co/su7mB6D3NY

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) November 23, 2018

I’m going to keep answering this the same way: these charges almost certainly involve pre-2016 behavior. So you might want to try to think about what that means. https://t.co/CYRFuaYhwY

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) November 23, 2018

I’m going to keep answering this the same way: this case almost certainly pre-dates 2016, and you might want to think about what that means. https://t.co/dYHzCJqwZs

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) November 23, 2018

I guess I have to keep repeating that this case almost certainly pre-dates 2016. It’s amazing how many people aren’t interested in big-picture legal issues if the protagonist is someone they don’t like. https://t.co/iNM5PRGBk8

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) November 23, 2018

Contrary to what US intelligence operatives would have you believe, the prosecution of Julian Assange by the United States government would indeed be disastrous for press freedoms around the world. A good recent essay by Matt Taibbi for Rolling Stone titled “Why You Should Care About the Julian Assange Case” breaks down exactly why everyone should oppose this administration’s aggressive pursuit of Assange, even if they hate him and everything he stands for. In terms of speech protection there is nothing that legally distinguishes an outlet from WikiLeaks from outlets like the New York Times and the Washington Post, both of whom have published secret documents and information which was taken through illegal means. If Assange is successfully prosecuted for doing the same thing other mainstream publications do to hold power to account, there will be little stopping the US government from going after those types of outlets all around the world for publishing its secrets.

After Taibbi published his article, he spent a couple hours on Twitter explaining to Democratic Party loyalists over and over and over and overagain that the charges Assange is facing almost certainly have nothing to do with the 2016 WikiLeaks publications, and rather relate to much earlier publications of a far more classified nature than a few Democrats’ emails. He had to do this because Russiagate conspiracy theorists have been shrieking that it’s #MuellerTime ever since news broke about the sealed charges, and now you’ve got the strange scene of liberals everywhere cheering on a Trump administration agenda which threatens to cripple the free press they claim to be protecting from the very administration that they are cheering for. The concept that the prosecution of someone they’ve been trained to hate has nothing to do with the thing they hate him for is inconceivable from within the walls of the binary narrative matrix that these people have become trapped in by establishment manipulators like Jamali.

Taibbi’s essay wraps up with the words, “Americans seem not to grasp what might be at stake. Wikileaks briefly opened a window into the uglier side of our society, and if publication of such leaks is criminalized, it probably won’t open again.”

He’s right. They don’t grasp it. Here’s hoping they do before it’s too late.

*  *  *

Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My articles are entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone, or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers.

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Angry UK shoppers said they were shocked to find the hard core sex movie “Dad is f***ing my girlfriend” in search result when browsing Amazon for a present for their dad. The DVD, which was sold by a third-party seller called Meerkat Wholesalers, popped up uncensored and with graphic details when shoppers typed “dad gifts” into the search bar.

According to the Sun, parents were horrified their children could see the 18-rated £16.95 DVD and other sex films on the website as they appear in search results.

After The Sun contacted Amazon about the DVD, it removed the title from its website – but other porn films are still listed online. Furthermore, if one searches for “porn film” on Amazon, explicit DVDs come up even when Amazon states it has excluded “adult items” from the results.

The sale is in clear violation of the online retail giant’s terms of service: Amazon UK says that sellers are “not permitted” to sell any type of pornography on its website yet thousands of pornography items are available to buy.

The starting discovery was made by James Lock, father-of-two, who saw the porno DVD when he was looking for gift ideas for his dad. “In amongst the usual stuff like BBQ utensils, car manuals, gardening gift sets and funny T-shirts which say ‘Grumpy old git’, or ‘No 1 dad’ novelty mugs was this sex film” he said.

“I only typed in ‘Dad Gifts’ into the search menu. I wasn’t expecting something so explicit to turn up.”

“My two kids go on Amazon a lot to look for toys and ideas for presents to write on their letter to Father Christmas. I hate to think what would have happened if they’d found this DVD themselves.”

“Amazon should be far more responsible with its listings. Anything pornographic needs to be removed immediately.”

While UK residents can legally buy hardcore porn films from any shop, whether it’s online or from a licensed sex shop, Amazon could be prosecuted for selling porn films following a High Court ruling in 2005, according to The Guardian.

“There are places people can go to buy this sort of filth. You wouldn’t come across this kind of thing in Tesco so why is it ok to sell on Amazon?”

An Amazon spokesman told the Sun that “all sellers must follow our selling guidelines and those who don’t will be subject to action including potential removal of their account. The product in question is no longer available.”

By then it was too late, and social media users lashed out at Amazon calling for greater controls on the products it sells. Writing on Facebook, Gina Morris said: “Completely gobsmacked that one of the world’s biggest retailers sells porn so blatantly. Horrified it is so easy to find. How many children will be searching for gifts before Christmas and accidentally come across this DVD? The bosses of Amazon should be ashamed of themselves.”

They might be, but their billions in stock options probably let them sleep easier at night.

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Mexico’s foreign ministry presented a diplomatic note to its US government counterparts on Monday demanding a “full investigation” into what it has described as the use of non-lethal weapons directed towards Mexican territory during a Sunday incident, according to Reuters, citing the statement. 

Of note, Mexico does not appear to have made similar demands in 2013 when the Obama administration shot pepper balls into a crowd of around 100 rock-throwing migrants at the same border crossing.

The media doesn’t appear to be interested in that comparison either. 

Obama separated children at border.

Media: Silence

Obama used tear gas on a mob of migrants storming border.

Media: Silence

Trump separated children at border.

Media: Apoplectic

Trump used tear gas on mob of migrants storming border.

Media: Seizurehttps://t.co/UkSOwBqS68

— Benny (@bennyjohnson) November 26, 2018

President Trump, meanwhile, has strongly defended the use of tear gas against a horde of Central American migrants who split off from a peaceful protest and charged towards the US border while reportedly throwing rocks – prompting the use of tear gas by US Border Protection officials. 

“They were being rushed by some very tough people and they used tear gas,” Trump said on Monday. “Here’s the bottom line: Nobody is coming into our country unless they come in legally.”

Trump, asked if he’s comfortable tear gassing migrant children at the border, responds: “They had to use, because they were being rushed by some very tough people.” (via CBS) pic.twitter.com/cOvhAiQrpL

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) November 26, 2018

Mexico pledged to enhance its security near the US border following the incident, while approximately 500 migrants will reportedly be deported after the attempted border crossing, according to Mexico’s interior ministry. More than three-dozen arrested migrants were detained for disturbing the peace and other charges. 

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Two months after Paul Manafort announced he would cooperate with Robert Mueller in his probe of Russian collusion as part of a guilty plea, the ex-Trump campaign chief has once again found himself in hot water, with a late Monday filing by prosecutors accusing Manafort of lying in the Russia investigation.

In the latest just filed Joint Status Report, Robert Mueller alleges that after signing the plea agreement, in which Manafort had agreed that if he “engages in any criminal activity prior to sentencing,” he would be in breach of the agreement, “Manafort committed federal crimes by lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Special Counsel’s Office on a variety of subject matters”, which constitute breaches of the agreement.

There was no detail on the lies in question, and instead the report said that “the government will file a detailed sentencing submission to the Probation Department and the Court in advance of sentencing that sets forth the nature of the defendant’s crimes and lies, including those after signing the plea agreement herein.”

And since Manafort was found to be in breach the plea agreement, Mueller notes that “there is no reason to delay his sentencing.”

In response, while Manafort said that he has provided truthful information and does not agree with the government’s  characterization or that he has breached the agreement, he does agree that “there is no reason to delay the sentencing herein, and he asks the Court to set a sentencing date in this matter.”

Manafort was convicted on eight counts of bank and tax fraud over the summer and agreed to cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller in September in order to avert a second federal trial in Washington. He had been cooperating with Mueller’s team for roughly two and a half months.

While it is unclear as of yet what it is that Manafort lied about, it now appears that his sentencing and incarceration will be imminent as a result. Overall, it also appears that his “cooperation” with the Special Counsel’s Office was not particularly fruitful.

The full court filing is below.

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Via Disobedient Media

Below, with permission from the author, we reproduce excerpted portions of the Forensicator’s latest report.

Introduction

In this report, Forensicator analyzes metadata left in the various documents that Guccifer 2 modified and then published on his WordPress blog.  Some new discoveries are made, some revisited.  Forensicator concludes that Guccifer 2’s consistent intent was to plant clues which connected Guccifer 2 to Russia.  Except for one head fake, when Guccifer 2 was Romanian for a day.

This report builds on two previous articles: Did Guccifer 2 Plant his Russian Fingerprints? and Media Mishaps: Early Guccifer 2 Coverage.  In those reports we analyze Guccifer 2’s first batch of documents that were published on his WordPress blog.  We demonstrate that Guccifer 2 likely planted his “Russian fingerprints” into those documents.  Those “Russian fingerprints” were widely covered by mainstream media and provided circumstantial support for the idea that Guccifer 2 was in fact a Russian operative (or a team of operatives), in spite of his rather clumsy attempts to cover his tracks.

The Guccifer 2 Narrative

In this report, we take the position that most of Guccifer 2’s metadata modifications were deliberate.  Our position is at odds with mainstream media’s recital of events.

The MSM narrative, as best we understand it, is that Guccifer 2 initially slipped up – disclosing documents that were last saved using a user id written in Cyrillic; that user id made reference to a famous Russian spy chief.

Further, Guccifer 2’s first document, which he shared with two media outlets had Russian error messages embedded in the PDF’s that those media outlets published.  These error messages became known as Guccifer 2’s “Russian fingerprints”, presumably left behind by accident.  In Did Guccifer 2 Plant his Russian Fingerprints? we demonstrate that the process which Guccifer 2 likely used to plant those Russian error message was complex and deliberate.

An important point to make here is that Guccifer 2 modified 36 documents, published in several batches, and each batch has metadata that can be linked to Russia (or in one batch, Romania).  Guccifer 2 often made minimal changes to a document apparently with no rhyme or reason; yet, Russian (Romanian) indications were the only tangible result that those changes had in common.  Guccifer 2 explained away his document tweaks as simply a result of his desire to plant his hacker “water mark” (signature).  The media accepted this explanation and viewed it as a clumsy (and obvious) effort to cover his initial (alleged) mistakes.  We have a different opinion.  We think that Guccifer 2’s main intent was to implant metadata that implicates Russia.

A point that is often lost in the flurry of details swirling around Guccifer 2.0 is that a metadata change will only “stick” if something in the document is modified and then that document is saved.  This fact explains Guccifer 2’s tendency to make minimal changes to the documents that he tweaked.  For the documents that we can compare to attachments in Wikileaks emails, we see that Guccifer 2 often just added some white space, modified a header/footer, and so on.  In a typical scenario, these small changes were enough to convince the application (e.g., Microsoft Word) to record the “last saved by” user id (Guccifer 2’s “water mark”) and to record the current language setting in each modified document’s metadata.  Although the media outlets focused on Guccifer 2’s quirky user id’s, we think that the real goal was to plant more meaningful metadata.

Is Guccifer 2 Clumsy or Cunning?

In an article that came out in Motherboard (on June 16, 2016) a day after Guccifer 2 first appeared, ‘Guccifer 2.0’ Is Likely a Russian Government Attempt to Cover Up Its Own Hack [archive], Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai summarizes the circumstantial evidence that linked Guccifer 2 to Russia and Russia to the Trump campaign.  Motherboard will later interview Guccifer 2 and continue to cover his activities extensively.

The Motherboard article raises the question that we keep banging into as we analyze Guccifer 2’s long trail of breadcrumbs (emphasis added).

Could all these breadcrumbs have been left on purpose? Of course, but then the explanation would be that someone has done an awful lot of work to leave evidence pointing to Russia in a blog post where he or she was claiming to have nothing to do with Russia.

As we have shown in our previous reports (and this one), Guccifer 2 did indeed make a concerted effort to strew breadcrumbs that linked his activities to Russia.  In fact, the clues listed in the Motherboard article will prove to be just the tip of the iceberg.

Yet, in just one day, on the basis of flimsy evidence (such as Guccifer 2’s use of a “Russian smiley” in his blog post), the media was quick to conclude that Guccifer 2 was a team of Russian spies.

“Given the evidence in the docs only, it’s a weak attribution to a group in Russia,” Pwn All The Things [Matt Tait] told Motherboard in an online chat. “Given the evidence combined with everything else, I think it’s a strong attribution to one of the Russian intelligence agencies.”

Guccifer 2’s Metadata Mosaic

The following table summarizes all the metadata indications that we have found (to date) in the 36 files that Guccifer tweaked.  Times shown are in GMT.  The email screenshots (.png files) reflect the time that they were uploaded to Guccifer 2’s blog.

Above, we see five (5) batches of documents that Guccifer 2 either modified (the Word documents and spreadsheets) or created (the email screen shots).  The “RU” entries that are in light red and the timezone offsets of GMT+3 and GMT+4 in bright red can be clearly identified as indications of possible Russian origin.

The GMT+4 indication is anomalous – before October, 2014 Western Russia followed Daylight Saving Time (during the summer months) and would have used a GMT+4 time offset .  However, Russia dropped DST after October, 2014.  In Guccifer 2’s West Coast Fingerprint we suggest that the GMT+4 time offset might be the result of using a system running Windows XP, then setting the timezone as Moscow with (default) automatic DST adjustment.  Windows XP was not updated (based on our tests) to reflect the fact that Russia dropped Daylight Saving Time in 2014.  If the OS had been updated, then in the summer of 2016 it should have used a timezone offset of GMT+3.  It is surprising that a Russian computer expert would miss this and choose to use an incorrect timezone setting.

The batch of Word files dated June 30, 2016 all have Romanian (“RO”) language settings (in light orange).  This has gone unnoticed in mainstream reporting.  Recently, an anonymous blogger (Winston Smith) noticed this setting, but not in the broader context shown above.  We discuss Smith’s findings in a following section.

The entries marked “EN” (in light blue) indicate English language settings.  There are some entries for spreadsheets (.xlsx) that have English language indications, yet other spreadsheets have Russian indications.  The batch of files dated July 6, 2016 are a special case; they were all written with LibreOffice. The version of LibreOffice indicates that it may have been installed recently and there may have been unnoticed installation issues, where the chosen language defaulted to US English.  The combination of English language settings and a timezone offset of GMT+4 is surprising given the overall metadata picture.

Below, is an overview graphic with some of the detail above left out.

At first, this looks like a mixed picture.  However, if we view the light red, dark red, and light orange blocks as being indicative of Russian origin then there were Russian attributions in every batch of modified files that Guccifer 2 published.  Mainstream media focused on the first batch (notably the “Russian fingerprints” in the Trump opposition report).  Media did notice Guccifer 2’s use of additional “watermarks” (unusual user names), but this was generally explained as a cover used to obscure Guccifer 2’s original choice of the very Russian “Феликс Эдмундович” (Felix Edmundovich) reference.

We explain in a later section that there is a scenario where the GMT-7 timezone offsets can be viewed as indications of Russian origin.  That scenario is based on the assumption that Guccifer 2 made a particular mistake when saving those files.

In subsequent sections, we will also discuss some of the anomalous results.

[Editor: In the rest of Forensicator’s lengthy report are details which describe the derivation of the newly discovered metadata.  Below, we excerpt the disclaimer and closing thoughts.]

Disclaimer

This report describes numerous examples of metadata found in documents that Guccifer 2 modified, where the metadata values can be linked to Russia.  We call these values – “Russian breadcrumbs”.  The presence of these breadcrumbs might seem at odds with the DOJ indictments of alleged Russian GRU hackers, because we are left wondering why would Guccifer 2 leave such an obvious trail to Russia?  One explanation that has been given is that the Guccifer 2 team was in a hurry and careless.  Another reason might be that the GRU agents wanted to make their presence known and were sending some sort of message.  We take no position on those theories and rationales, but simply offer our interpretation of the facts at hand.

Also, to the degree that some theories that we develop might suggest that Guccifer 2 had team members or help inside the US, we emphasize that our theories should be considered hypothetical.  We note that the DOJ indictments are not obligated to list all the facts in a case; there might be other information that hasn’t been disclosed publicly that would invalidate our theories or interpretations of the facts.

Closing Thoughts

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Federal prosecutors are fighting a request for the unsealing of any pending US criminal indictment against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, according to Reuters. 

In a Monday filing submitted to Judge Leonie Brinkema, prosecutors in Alexandria Virginia asked the court to deny the disclosure request by a journalists’ group – based on a recent disclosure in a court document filed in an unrelatedcriminal case, which was called an “unintentional error.” 

Prosecutors said the erroneous filing does not constitute a confirmation or denial by them as to whether sealed criminal charges against Assange exist, and argued that neither the U.S. constitution nor U.S. common law “require that the government provide such a confirmation or denial.”

On Tuesday, Judge Brinkema is scheduled to hear arguments in a case brought by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which has applied for the unsealing of court records “including the docket and any criminal complaint, indictment or other charging document” related to any sealed U.S. charges against Assange. –Reuters

Assange – along with WikiLeaks and several associated individuals, have been under investigation by prosecutors and an Alexandria-based federal grand jury for several years, although no public charges have been filed. Earlier in the month, Assistant US Attorney Kellen S. Dwyer wrote in a court filing that “due to the sophistication of the defendant and the publicity surrounding the case, no other procedure is likely to keep confidential the fact that Assange has been charged.” Later in the filing, Dwyer wrote that the charges would “need to remain sealed until Assange is arrested.”

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