Category: zerohedge

The UN Quietly Pushes International Gun Control

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

The United Nations’ International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA) is finishing up their Global Week of Action Against Gun Violence. According to IANSA, the goal of the week-long meeting is “for us to advocate collectively for an end to illicit trade and misuse of small arms and light weapons.”

We all know what that really means: the United Nations presumes they have authority over every human being on earth, and as such, seeks to ban guns from the slaves they want to control.  Of course, they aren’t going to come right out and say it just it.  It took liberals decades before they simply admitted what we already knew: they are coming for our guns.

According to Townhall, the week-long initiative took place one month before the Third Review Conference (RevCon3) on the UN Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons. 

In 2005 the UN also adopted the International Tracing Instrument (ITI), which is a “politically binding instrument” requirung States to ensure that weapons are properly marked and that records are kept. Moreover, it provides a framework for cooperation in weapons tracing – fulfilling one of the commitments governments made in the Programme of Action. Improving weapons tracing is now part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Of course, anyone who has read into the 2030 Agenda understands it’s nothing more than a blueprint for the global enslavement of humanity under the boot of elitist corporate masters. Mike Adams with Natural News perfectly translates the 2030 Agenda. Goal 11 perfectly outlines the UN’s need to eliminate guns from the public and put them in the hands of those who will be ruling the masses.

*For those who aren’t entirely sure what’s in the UN’s 2030 agenda, please click here for Adams’ simple and complete break down of the goals.

Goal 11) Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable

Translation: Ban all gun ownership by private citizens, concentrating guns into the hands of obedient government enforcers who rule over an unarmed, enslaved class of impoverished workers. Criminalize living in most rural areas by instituting Hunger Games-style “protected areas” which the government will claim are owned by “the People” even though no people are allowed to live there. Force all humans into densely packed, tightly controlled cities where they are under 24/7 surveillance and subject to easy manipulation by government. -Natural News

The IANSA group listed their goals on their website, saying they want to urge governments to:

• Exert greater control over ammunition–the component that makes guns lethal.

• Make concrete commitments to increasing women’s participation in small arms control.

• Provide greater support for survivors of gun violence.

• Crack down on corruption that facilitates the illicit trade in small arms and ammunition.

• Enact or strengthen legislation to disarm domestic violence abusers.

They will also attempt to continue to use the mainstream media’s anti-gun propaganda campaign to program the minds of the public into willingly disarming in order to accept their slavery.  The propaganda campaign, similar to that of all totalitarian regimes is stated as:

 Engaging media outlets to ensure gun control and disarmament remain a priority in your country – linking it with the upcoming RevCon3. –IANSA website

This is nothing to thumb one’s nose at, yet it is important to remember that those in power are few and the rest are many.  The more eyes that can be opened to the horrific future we all will suffer at the hands of the global elitists can be changed if we stick together and declare our freedom as ours and no one can take away our basic fundamental human rights.

Mike Adams said it best when he wrote: “The UN is planning nothing less than a global government tyranny that enslaves all of humanity while calling the scheme ‘sustainable development’ and ‘equality.’”

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Congress Reviewing 2017 Fusion GPS Testimony After Reports Of Spy In Trump’s Campaign

Congressional investigators are reviewing 2017 testimony by Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson, who said that “a human source from inside the Trump organization” had “decided to pick up the phone and report something” to the FBI. 

Fusion GPS is a Democrat-linked opposition research firm which produced the infamous anti-Trump “Steele Dossier,” compiled from a series of memos provided by former MI6 spy Christopher Steele and paid for in part by the Clinton campaign.

Simpson told Congressional investigators on August 22 that Steele told him the FBI had corroborated parts of his dossier with “a human source from inside the Trump organization.” 

As the Daily Caller‘s Chuck Ross notes, Fusion’s allies quickly began to backpedal from Simpson’s statement, telling news outlets that there was no mole…

“Instead, he was referring to George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign adviser whose encounter with an Australian diplomat in May 2016 was reportedly the catalyst for the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation. The diplomat, Alexander Downer, reportedly claimed that Papadopoulos discussed Russian dirt on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.” –Daily Caller

That’s all out the window now… 

In light of last week’s bombshell that the DOJ was forced to hand over intelligence to House Intel Committee Chair Devin Nunes which points to a mole within the Trump campaign, both House and Senate oversight panels are taking a fresh look at Simpson’s testimony about that “human source.” 

In other words – did Steele tell Simpson about the FBI’s alleged mole in the Trump campaign?

Simpson’s lawyer said in a January letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee that his initial testimony was accurate.

Mr. Simpson stands by his testimony,” said Joshua Levy, Fusion’s attorney in the January 18 letter. Levy had been asked in a January 11 letter whether Simpson’s testimony about the whistleblower (and now potential mole) within the Trump campaign was a mischaracterization, as news reports claimed.

“Glenn Simpson said that in what was closed testimony. Then it became public. Now he’s confirmed that he was telling Congress the truth, which is probably a good idea,” California Rep. Devin Nunes said on “Fox & Friends” Tuesday. “We believe he was telling the truth. And what we’re trying to do is get the documents to figure out — did they actually have, what methods were used to open this counter intelligence investigation?” 

“I think if the campaign was somehow set up, I think that would be a problem. Right? If they were somehow meetings that occurred and all of this was a setup,” Nunes said, adding. “Because we have yet to see any credible evidence or intelligence that led to the opening of this investigation.”

Last month Nunes revealed that after waiting eight months for the DOJ to turn over the “electronic communication” (EC) – the document which the FBI used to launch the original counterintelligence investigation against the Trump campaign, that no intelligence was shared with the U.S. from any of the members of the “Five Eyes” agreement – that being Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand and the USA.

“We are not supposed to spy on each other’s citizens, and it’s worked well,” he said. “And it continues to work well. And we know it’s working well because there was no intelligence that passed through the Five Eyes channels to our government. And that’s why we had to see that original communication.”

This is relevant because the FBI says that the Trump investigation was kicked off after Australian diplomat Alexander Downer told the FBI that Trump campaign associate George Papadopoulos drunkenly admitted in a London pub that the Russians had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. The New York Times reported last December that “Australian officials passed the information about Mr. Papadopoulos to their American counterparts, according to four current and former American and foreign officials with direct knowledge of the Australians’ role.”

This was clearly not true according to the EC, which states that no intelligence passed through Five Eyes official channels.

To summarize: it appears that the counterintelligence investigation launched against Donald Trump and his team was not based on any type of official intelligence, as many have speculated over the past year, and that the FBI had a mole in the Trump campaign – which Christopher Steele knew about. 

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Millennial Candidates Embrace Socialism, While Venezuela Chokes On It

Authored by Doug French via The Mises Institute,

Franklin Bynum was unchallenged and won the Democratic nomination to become a criminal court judge in Houston. Mr. Bynum is an avowed socialist and he’s not alone in that conservative state. At least 16 other socialists appeared on the ballot in primary races across Texas.

Socialism has oozed out of college classrooms and into the ballot box.

“Yes, I’m running as a socialist,” Mr. Bynum told the New York Times. “I’m a far-left candidate. What I’m trying to do is be a Democrat who actually stands for something, and tells people, ‘Here’s how we are going to materially improve conditions in your life.’”

Wannabe-Judge Bynum is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which is growing by leaps and bounds after Trump’s election, even in conservative states.

The NYT reports, “D.S.A.’s membership has increased from about 5,000 to 35,000 nationwide. The number of local groups has grown from 40 to 181, including 10 in Texas. Houston’s once-dormant chapter now has nearly 300 members.”

Texas, a hot bed for socialism? Who would have thunk it?

“We want to see money stop controlling everything. That includes politics,” said Amy Zachmeyer, 34, a union organizer who helped revive the moribund Houston DSA chapter.

“That just resonates with millennials who are making less money than their parents did, are less able to buy a home and drowning in student debt.” 

Ms. Zachmeyer’s student loan payment burden of $1,000 a month convinced her to become a socialist. Good grief.

Don’t worry about a blue wave, worry about a red (commie) wave.

Unsurprisingly, the NYT recently featured an opinion piece by Jason Barker entitled, “Happy Birthday, Karl Marx. You Were Right!” Just a few paragraphs in, Associate Professor Barker gets off this doozy of a paragraph,

educated liberal opinion is today more or less unanimous in its agreement that Marx’s basic thesis — that capitalism is driven by a deeply divisive class struggle in which the ruling-class minority appropriates the surplus labor of the working-class majority as profit — is correct. Even liberal economists such as Nouriel Roubini agree that Marx’s conviction that capitalism has an inbuilt tendency to destroy itself remains as prescient as ever.

It gets better, while millennials struggle under the weight of student loan payments and underemployment, Barker writes,

The inroads that artificial intelligence is currently making into medical diagnosis and surgery, for instance, bears out the argument in the “Manifesto” that technology would greatly accelerate the “division of labor,” or the deskilling of such professions [doctors, lawyers, and well, all jobs].

The good philosophy professor then throws Black Lives Matter and the MeToo movement into the Marxist class struggle bucket.

Of course, accelerating the division of labor is a good thing. Jörg Guido Hülsmann explained,

The economic incentives springing from the division of labor explain the origin and nature of human societies. The basic economic laws that here come into play are therefore the starting point of [Ludwig von] Mises’s entire social philosophy, just as it has been the starting point of the greatest social philosophers before him.

Professor Hülsmann continues,

Plato pleads for a division of labor and gives three reasons:

  1. there are natural productive differences between the individuals, which make one person a better tailor, while another one might be a better farmer, and so on;

  2. the daily exercise resulting from specialization improves the workmanship;

  3. many jobs need to be done at the right moment in time and therefore require permanent availability of some person charged with this task.

Meanwhile, today’s young socialists believe they’ve stumbled on to something new. However, Mises proved years ago that socialism must fail because the price of goods cannot be calculated in a government controlled economic system. Mises student Murray Rothbard wrote,

Socialism is that system in which the State forcibly seizes control of all the means of production in the economy. The reason for the impossibility of calculation under socialism is that one agent owns or directs the use of all the resources in the economy…. there is no possibility of calculation anywhere in the production structure, since production processes would be only internal and without markets. There could be no calculation, and therefore complete economic irrationality and chaos would prevail.

If Mr. Bynum and Ms. Zachmeyer want proof, they can look to Venezuela. That country’s government has practiced socialism for years and the result is a 9,000 percent inflation rate, empty shelves and grinding poverty. The country saw its economy shrink 16 percent last year and is expected to shrink 15 percent this year.

According to The Independent, “It is estimated that 10 percent of the population has emigrated. Almost two thirds of all households have at least one family member living abroad. And among those 3 million migrants are young and competent workers who have escaped from a country that sinks deeper into crisis.”

Market Mogul reports,

Price controls have made private business unprofitable, meaning as governments have struggled to maintain imports through dwindling funds, Venezuelan farmers are unable to meet the shortfall, put off by price controls that make their business wholly unprofitable.

In a state of complete dysfunction, Venezuelans are going hungry, to the point of illness and malnutrition. The Washington Post estimate that 11.5% of children under 5 suffer from “moderate to severe malnutrition”, with 48% “at risk of going hungry”. International groups offer aid, but Venezuela is not a charity case, according to its benevolent quasi-dictator Maduro, and such aid is rejected.

That’s what socialism looks like.

Implementation of Marx’s ideas make nobody happy, other than spoiled millennials who aren’t suffering under it.

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Satellite Images Show North Korea Starts To Dismantle Nuclear Test Site

Just days after North Korea said it would start dismantling its (potentially collapsed) nuclear test site, satellite images from The Wall Street Journal and 38 North show that, for now, Kim is living up to his word, removing buildings and “sanitizing” the site.

A satellite image captured Monday, indicating where buildings have been removed or are being removed at North Korea’s Punggye-ri nuclear-test site.

While this makes for positive headlines, it is worth remembering that, as we noted previously, six months after a group of Chinese scientists warned that the North Korean Punggye-ri nuclear test site was on the verge of collapse, and following reports from Japan’s Asahi TV that more than 200 North Koreans had died when a tunnel collapsed at the test site, the South China Morning Post reported that North Korea’s mountain nuclear test site has completely collapsed, putting China and other nearby nations at unprecedented risk of radioactive exposure, two separate groups of Chinese scientists studying the issue have confirmed.

The collapse also likely explains the sudden willingness of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to declare last Friday that he would freeze the state’s nuclear and missile tests and shut down the site, a researcher cited by the SCMP said.

And now, as WSJ reports, North Korea has begun to remove buildings from around its nuclear-test site in a step toward dismantling the facility, new satellite imagery shows, as the regime seeks to build trust with the U.S. after declaring its nuclear arsenal complete.

Pyongyang appears to be “sanitizing” the site, at the foot of Mount Mantap in the country’s northeast, to protect secrets before journalists arrive, said Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, Calif.

Steps beyond dismantling Punggye-ri will be needed to demonstrate a bona fide commitment to denuclearize, said David Albright, founder of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington.

“Closing the Punggye-ri underground test site, while welcome, is not sufficient,” Mr. Albright said.

However, while several key operational support buildings, located just outside the North, West and South Portals, have been razed since our last analysis – with some of the rails for the mining carts, which had led from the tunnels to their respective spoil piles, have apparently been removed…

Significant changes took place at the North and South Portals between April 20 and May 7 consistent with site closing.

Before…

Source: 38North

After…

Source: 38North

But, 38North reports  that other more substantial buildings around the facility remain intact, including the two largest buildings at the Command Center, and the Main Administrative Support Area.

Support buildings at the Main Administrative Area have been taken down.

Before…

Source: 38North

After…

Source: 38North

Moreover, no tunnel entrances appear to have yet been permanently closed.

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The Top 20 Cities For Blockchain Jobs In America

Via CryptoFundResearch.com,

What are the top US cities for blockchain and cryptocurrency jobs? This question has been asked before, but never adequately answered. Previous attempts have focused solely on an analysis of internet job postings. But is a simple tally of job board postings truly the best and most complete way to evaluate the true climate for blockchain jobs? We didn’t think so. So we set off on a months-long mission to put together the most exhaustive and comprehensive ranking of the best US cities for blockchain jobs.

We utilized a data-driven approach consisting of an analysis of five key indicators of the overall health of blockchain job markets in more than 300 cities across the US.

We started by examining over 3 millions job listings across four sites and isolated blockchain-specific jobs. But this was the easy part and this factor makes up only 30% of our overall ranking.

Next, we evaluated cities by the number of top blockchain startups, the number of new blockchain companies in the last 120 days, the number of crypto funds, and the status of the overall employment market.  This results in a far more thorough and holistic examination of the current climate for blockchain jobs in each city, and also serves as an indicator for potential growth of the job market.

View Full Study Methodology

Blockchain Jobs Criteria

Job boards give an incomplete picture of a city’s true job market. Many companies don’t advertise on public boards and instead rely on headhunters, recruiters, and referrals. Job boards are also, at best, a static snapshot in time. A few companies engaging in a brief hiring spree may distort the findings.

Instead of relying purely on job board postings, we employed a multi-factor approach and examined five key indicators of the health of each city’s blockchain jobs market. Those factors are:

  • # Blockchain Job Postings – 30%

  • Top 300 Blockchain Companies (weighted) – 30%

  • # of New Blockchain Startups in Last 120 Days – 10%

  • Crypto Hedge Funds and Venture Capital – 20%

  • Overall Health of Job Market – 10%

We feel this data-heavy, multi-factor approach gives a much more complete picture of the true vibrancy of a given blockchain job market than relying on job postings alone. The number of blockchain companies headquartered in each city is less prone to day-to-day gyrations than job postings and gives a macro view of the blockchain landscape. We supplement this with data on new blockchain startups from the last 120 days.

The number of crypto and blockchain funds, particularly venture capital, is a good indicator of investors’ outlook for the technology and blockchain sectors. Investors figuratively put their money where their mouth is. And if their money is in a given city, you can bet they see a strong future for growth. As an example of this phenomenon, Robinhood, a cryptocurrency exchange based in Palo Alto completed a $363 million Series A financing round in May 2018.  Four of the six investors were Bay Area venture firms.

Lastly, we look at employment numbers for each metropolitan area as a broader indicator of the health of each city’s employment market.

View Full Study Methodology Save & Exit

Top 20 US Cities for Blockchain Jobs

Enough about methodology, let’s get to the list of the top US cities for blockchain jobs:

Few will probably be surprised that New York and San Francisco lead the list of top cities for blockchain and cryptocurrency jobs. Both have thriving technology sectors, an abundance of talent from the top universities in close proximity, well developed financial and capital markets, and are generally viewed as desirable places to live.

That Chicago, Los Angeles, and Boston round out the top five is also likely not a surprise for many of the same reasons. However, some may find Austin, TX coming in at number seven a bit unexpected. Yet Austin is quite deserving of this rank, placing among the top 10 in four of the five criteria.  Other cities making the top 20 that may not have been obvious contenders are Atlanta, Denver, Portland, and Nashville.

Eight of the top 20 cities for blockchain jobs are in the Bay Area. All have become hubs for technology companies over the last decade and it’s no shock that blockchain companies are opening up in an area with what’s arguably considered the most concentrated and developed technology ecosystem in the world.

Read City-by-City analysis here…

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Global Synchronous Recovery Collapses As Japanese GDP Plunges In Q1

Despite all the hype of a global synchronous recovery, Japan’s Q1 Real GDP tumbled 0.6% QoQ (on an annualized basis) – the worst drop since Q4 2015 – and well below expectations.

Under the hood it’s just as ugly…

  • Nominal GDP dropped 0.4% QoQ (vs expectations of a 0.1% gain)
  • Business Spending dropped 0.1% QoQ (vs expectations of a 0.4% rise)
  • Private Consumption was unchanged QoQ

And after 8 straight quarters of improvement – no matter how modest – Japan’s economy shrank again in Q1…(and the previous quarter got revised sharply lower)

 

Of course, the great news is that this gives Kuroda and Abe ever more excuses to repress ever more financial instruments and monetize ever more debt for just a little bit longer.

If you look carefully you will see USDJPY reacting to this dismal number…

As Bloomberg’s Mark Cranfield remarked: “The jokes about the BOJ never being able to exit QE might not be as funny to Japanese policy makers after this. “

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Cell Phone Carriers Are Secretly Selling Your Real-Time Location Data

Four of the country’s largest cellular providers have been selling your real-time location information, allowing a Texas-based prison technology company, Securus, to track any phone “within seconds,” without a warrant.  The system uses data sold by AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon and other carriers – who provide it through an intermediary called LocationSmart. 

The service can find the whereabouts of almost any cellphone in the country within seconds. It does this by going through a system typically used by marketers and other companies to get location data from major cellphone carriers, including AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon, documents show. –New York Times

Last week Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) sent a letter to the FCC demanding an investigation into Securus, after the New York Times revealed that former Mississippi County sheriff Cory Hutcheson used the service almost a dozen time to track the phones of other officers, and even targeted a judge. 

Between 2014 and 2017, the sheriff, Cory Hutcheson, used the service at least 11 times, prosecutors said. His alleged targets included a judge and members of the State Highway Patrol. Mr. Hutcheson, who was dismissed last year in an unrelated matter, has pleaded not guilty in the surveillance cases. –NYT

Hutcheson has pleaded not guilty to charges of unlawful surveillance. 

How did this happen?

How is it that LocationSmart obtained real time location data on millions of Americans? Moreover, who else has access to that information?

Kevin Blankston, director of New America’s Open Technology Institute told ZDNet in a phone call that the Electronic Communications Privacy Act only restricts telecom companies from disclosing data to the government. It does not restrict carriers from disclosing information to other companies – a loophole Blankston calls “one of the biggest gaps in US privacy law.” 

“The issue doesn’t appear to have been directly litigated before, but because of the way that the law only restricts disclosures by these types of companies to government, my fear is that they would argue that they can do a pass-through arrangement like this,” he said.

LocationSmart, a California-based technology company, is one of a handful of so-called data aggregators. It claimed to have “direct connections” to cell carrier networks to obtain real-time cell phone location data from nearby cell towers. It’s less accurate than using GPS, but cell tower data won’t drain a phone battery and doesn’t require a user to install an app. Verizon, one of many cell carriers that sells access to its vast amounts of customer location data, counts LocationSmart as a close partner. –ZD Net

LocationSmart boasts coverage of 85 percent of the country due to its relationships with major US carriers – including Virgin, Boost, MetroPCS and US Cellular, along with Canadian providers Rogers, Telus and Bell.

We utilize the same technology used to enable emergency assistance and this includes cell tower and cell sector location, assisted GPS and cell tower trilateration,” said a case study on the company’s website.

“With these location sources, we are able to locate virtually any US based mobile devices,” the company claimed. The precise location of a target can be returned in as little as 15 seconds, according to a different study.

LocationSmart sells its data to companies for all sorts of reasons. In some instances it’s used to help local businesses send marketing text messages to customers visiting rival stores. In others, location data can be used by companies to track deliveries or shipments – or allow banks to track fraud if a person is making suspicious transactions within close proximity of each other. 

LocationSmart also said it allows some customers to obtain “implied” consent, used on a case-by-case basis, when “the nature of the service implies that location will be used.” The company said one example could be when a stranded motorist calls roadside assistance, and the event implies the person is “calling to be found.”

The company says it has access to location data “because privacy is built into its cloud-based platform.” That said, Securus was able to return real-time location data on users without a warrant, or even without a user opting-in. 

ZDNet reached out to carriers for comments. What follows is their responses:

Sprint spokesperson Lisa Belot said the company shares personally identifiable location data “only with customer consent or in response to a lawful request such as a validated court order from law enforcement.”

The company’s privacy policy, which governs customer consent, said third-parties may collect customers’ personal data, “including location information.”

Sprint said the company’s relationship with Securus “does not include data sharing,” and is limited “to supporting efforts to curb unlawful use of contraband cell phones in correctional facilities.”

When asked the same questions, Verizon spokesperson Rich Young provided a boilerplate response regarding Securus and would not comment further.

“We’re still trying to verify their activities, but if this company is, in fact, doing this with our customers’ data, we will take steps to stop it,” he said.

AT&T spokesperson Jim Greer said in a statement: “We have a best practices approach to handling our customers’ data. We are aware of the letter and will provide a response.” Our questions were also not answered.

A spokesperson for T-Mobile did not respond by our deadline.

“It’s important for us to close off that potential loophole and that can easily be done with one line of legislative language,” said Bankston, “which would also have the benefit of making every other company careful about always getting consent before disclosing your data to anyone.”

Senator Wyden has called on each carrier to stop sharing data with third parties – arguing that it “skirts wireless carriers’ legal obligation to be the sole conduit by which the government may conduct surveillance of Americans’ phone records.” 

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Yellowstone Geyser Erupts For 5th Time In Months, Prompting Supervolcano Concerns

Via Intellihub.com,

Does the USGS, NASA, and other government agencies know more than they are leading people to believe when it comes to the Yellowstone supervolcano?

The largest active geyser in the world has erupted for the fifth time this year, prompting the general public to wonder if an eruption of the supervolcano is imminent.

Scientists from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) have been trying to quell peoples fears that the magma chamber may explode by producing a series of information and awareness videos explaining how everything should be okay for the time being.

@USGSVolcanos issed the following tweet on Sunday: “#Steamboat #Geyser in @YellowstoneNPS erupts for 5th time in 2018, just before 4 AM on May 13. Steamboat also had frequent eruptions in the 1960s and early 1980s. No implications for volcanic activity, but good implications for viewing some spectacular geysering this summer!” (typo corrected)

Plus, University of Utah Seismograph Station sensor readings indicate an uptick in activity which may be acting as a red flag indicator to people in-the-know.

But, at the same time NASA has been working on a plan to drill into the molten magma chamber and pump water into it in an effort to stop such an eruption from occurring, one that could send the world into a nuclear winter scenario.

Withal, some scientists fear the current activity may go hand-in-hand with the recent activation of Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano and volcanoes located in the Pacific Northwest.

Additionally, it’s important to point out that the U.S. government has secured contractswith other countries to house displaced American citizens in the event Yellowstone were to erupt and the contracts are only open for another five-years or less, suggesting government officials may know more about the situation then they are leading people to believe.

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Mueller Trying To Shut Down Investigation Into Special Counsel Leaks

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office is trying to block an investigation into how anonymously sourced accounts of their investigation leaked to the media, claiming the leaks don’t amount to evidence of illegal grand jury leaks – which could just as easily come from defense attorneys in the Paul Manafort case or others outside the investigation, reports Politico.

Mueller’s team has asked a federal judge in Virginia to turn down a request for a hearing on the leaks, requested by attorneys representing former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

“Manafort’s speculative claim of improper conduct falls far short of the showing necessary to warrant a hearing on potential violations of [a grand jury secrecy rule] or of his constitutional rights,” prosecutors wrote. “A pretrial hearing on alleged government leaks, which would itself generate publicity on the very matters that Manafort finds prejudicial, is unwarranted.”

Manafort, who is facing separate criminal cases brought by Mueller in federal court in Washington and Alexandria, Virginia, filed a motion late last month complaining that he was unfairly attacked in a flurry of news reports that appeared to be based on illegal leaks of grand jury secrets and classified information.

In the motion, filed with U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis III, Manafort’s defense said the release of sensitive details about the investigation threatened his ability to get a fair trial. –Politico

“By their actions, it is self-evident that the objective of these government sources was to create unfair prejudice against Mr. Manafort and thereby deprive him of his Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights,” attorneys Kevin Downing and Thomas Zehnle wrote. “The government’s investigation, and the criminal charges that ultimately resulted from it, are the epitome of a party seeking to decide a case in the press and not the courtroom.”

Politico posits that whether or not Manafort’s claim has legal merit, his claim that the leaks have hurt his case “could bolster his chances of winning a pardon from President Donald Trump, who has railed against leaks he alleges have emerged from the Mueller investigation.” 

Mueller’s team, on the other hand, says that there’s no reason to believe the news accounts identified by Manafort’s defense team came from prosecutors or investigators leaking information that came from a grand jury.

“He cites ten articles, none of which purports to disclose grand jury information,” prosecutors wrote in the filing. “Many of the matters reported, if accurate, would have been known to the defense, to witnesses who were interviewed or subpoenaed for documents, or to other investigators examining overlapping issues.”

Mueller’s team suggests that the leaks could have come from members of Congress or their aides. 

“Multiple accounts note that Manafort was also the subject of ongoing congressional investigations,” Mueller’s team noted. “References to ‘officials’ or ‘American officials’ in the reports … could thus be to people who are not subject to [grand jury secrecy] restrictions.”

In other words – “Don’t look into this, it could have been anyone” – including someone on Manafort’s team. 

Prosecutors suggested that if a hearing was held on the leaks, it would be fair game to look into whether any of them originated with Manafort’s attorneys or his spokesman Jason Maloni. Maloni wasn’t named in the filing, but was identified as “the spokesman who has regularly accompanied Manafort to court and has often been quoted, including in some of Manafort’s cited articles.”

Mueller’s team also submitted a secret filing to Ellis “concerning one article.” Prosecutors did not say which article it was about or why the information needed to be placed under seal and withheld from Manafort’s defense. –Politico

Manafort faces trial on July 10 in Virginia on charges of tax evasion, bank fraud and failing to file reports on foreign bank accounts, among other things. The separate case in Washington D.C. is scheduled for trial on September 17, and focuses on charges of money laundering and failure to register as a foreign agent in connection with Manafort’s work for Ukraine.

Meanwhile, even anti-Trump Bloomberg editorialists are starting to get tired with the “witch hunt”…

 

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Caitlin Johnstone: 15 Thoughts About Israel

Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

1. I hate writing about Israel. The accusations of anti-semitism which necessarily go along with literally any criticism of that nation are gross enough, but even worse are the assholes who take my criticisms of the Israeli government as an invitation to actually be anti-semitic. They really do hate Jews, they really do think that every problem in the world is because of Jews and they post Jewish caricature memes and calls for genocide in the comments section on social media and it’s incredibly gross and I hate it. It feels exactly as intrusive, jarring and violating as receiving an unsolicited dick pic. But the Israeli government keeps committing war provocations and massacring Palestinians, so it’s something I’ve got to talk about.

2. Anti-semitism (or whatever word you prefer to use for the pernicious mind virus which makes people think it’s okay to promote hatred against Jewish people) is a very real thing that does exist, and I denounce it to the furthest possible extent. Anti-semitism is also a label that is used to bully the world into accepting war crimes, apartheid, oppression, and mass murder. Both of those things are true.

3. There were dozens of Palestinians killed and well above a thousand injured in the Gaza protests over the US moving its embassy to Jerusalem yesterday. I haven’t found any report of so much as a single Israeli injury. The only way to spin this as the fault of the Palestinians is to dehumanize them, to attribute behaviors and motives to them that we all know are contrary to human nature. To paint them as subhuman orc-like creatures who are so crazy and evil that they will keep throwing themselves at a hail of bullets risking life and limb just to have some extremely remote chance of harming a Jewish person for no reason. This is clearly absurd. A little clear thinking and empathy goes a long way.

4. Trump could have prevented all this violence by doing what previous administrations had done and keeping the US embassy in Tel Aviv. Experts warned that this would happen. Trump ignored them. He is ultimately responsible for the mounting pile of corpses resulting from this provocation.

5. The Trump campaign was given $25 million by billionaire oligarch Sheldon Adelson (the largest campaign donation made by anyone to any candidate), who provided a further $5 million for Trump’s inauguration. Adelson is a sociopathic pro-Israel hawk who once called on the US to drop a nuclear bomb on Iran. He was present at the opening of the Jerusalem embassy, getting what he paid for.

6. Any position on Israel that is determined by words made up by dead men thousands of years ago is intrinsically invalid. Saying the Jewish people are more entitled to Israel than those who were living there seven decades ago because of some superstitious voodoo written in obsolete religious texts is not an argument. Religious freedom is important, and it’s important to be able to believe whatever you like, but your beliefs do not legitimize your actions upon other people. If you murder someone in the name of Allah, you have murdered someone. If you kill 58 people because you feel some ancient scripture entitles you to a particular section of dirt, you have killed 58 people. Your internal beliefs do not give you a free pass for your egregious actions upon others.

7. Israel is very dangerous and completely unsustainable, but its interests are aggressively promoted by powerful plutocrats and lobby groups. It’s like if fracking was a place.

8. A nation that can’t exist without nonstop war and violence is like a house that can’t stand without nonstop construction work. If your house needs a large construction team working around the clock seven days a week to keep it from collapsing, you should probably either move or consider a new architectural design.

9. A nation that can’t exist without nonstop war and violence is not a nation at all, it’s a decades-long military operation with a few suburbs sprinkled on top. And that is exactly how Israel has functioned since its creation: as a nonstop disruption campaign that the post-World War Two western victors dropped on top of the Middle East just as humanity hit new heights of oil dependence. By 1967 Israel came within inches of a possible third world war with America’s only rival superpower, the Soviet Union, and today we have Israel leading the charge in the western empire’s regime change agendas against Iran and Syria. It’s been a consistent pattern.

10. There’s good conspiracy theory and there’s bad conspiracy theory. People who say America controls Israel or Israel controls America are engaged in bad conspiracy theory. We don’t live in a world where the lines between nations mean anything to those with real power; in reality “Israel” and “America” are both purely conceptual constructs which only exist to the extent that people believe in them. There is no actual “Israel” which can exert control over an actual “America”, and vice versa. It isn’t nations and governments pulling the strings of real power in the world, it’s a class of plutocrats who aren’t ultimately answerable to any government. This class of plutocrats uses governments like Israel, the US, the UK, and the KSA to advance its agendas to exploit, loot and plunder the rest of humanity.

11. The western empire is a cluster of tightly allied nations held together by contracts and manipulation which often function more or less as a single unit on foreign policy, war, intelligence, trade, etc. What we call Israel is functionally just the Middle Eastern disruption wing of this empire. The people in control of this alliance place no special value on Israel beyond its usefulness in advancing plutocratic agendas in the Middle East.

12. People make a big deal about Zionism in conspiracy circles, but Zionism is just one more tool of manipulation used by the elite class which only ever cares about power. The people who are actually calling the shots in this world don’t care about Judaism or the Jewish people; Zionism is just a set of ideas they use to move people around. They use Christian fundamentalism, Islamic fundamentalism, white supremacy and secular liberalism in the same way. It’s always about acquiring more power for the western oligarchs, and their insatiable drive in this pursuit is how they wound up at the top of the western power structure. They’ll use any set of beliefs to manipulate the masses toward this end.

13. Since Israel plays such a crucial role in the agendas of the western power establishment for such a key strategic region, it should be no surprise that the people who lived on that land before Israel was dropped upon them get trampled underfoot. As far as the powerful are concerned, the Palestinians are no different from the animals whose habitats are destroyed by a new military base, or the whales that get killed by navy sonar experiments. They’re a nuisance to be swatted away.

14. The reason for the extreme brutality that is being used against the Palestinian demonstrators appears to be the same as that used by the Chinese government in the Tiananmen Square massacre or the lynchings of the segregated American south: to send a message. That message is “Here is how we will deal with you whenever you hold these demonstrations.” They’re quashing the protests so violently and so aggressively not out of self defense, but to dissuade such protests in the future. All they have to do is be brutal enough to convince the Palestinians that such protests aren’t worth the cost of life, and whole generations could be dissuaded from future protests.

15. This brutality is exposing the true face of the western empire, a trend that we are seeing all over the globe in myriad ways. Despite the best efforts of the mass media machine, people are waking up to what’s really going on.

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