Tag: news

Watch Epic Meltdown By Vape Shop Employee Triggered By Trump-Supporting Customer

An Atlanta vape shop employee with a prominent neckbeard is out of a job after getting megatriggered by a customer wearing a Trump t-shirt and a “Make America Great Again” hat. 

The employee of Xhale City denied service to the Trump-supporting customer, screaming “If you do not stop recording in my store, I’m going to call the police and ask you to leave,” to which the customer encouraged the employee to call the cops. 

“F*ck off dude! F*ck off! Get the f*ck out of here!,” screeched the employee, who then went on a rant calling President Trump a “treasonous asshole,” before assaulting the customer.

“Leave the store! Leave the store! Leave the store! F*ck off! Get the f*ck out!” screamed the employee, as an African American customer stood by watching the incident. 

In response to the incident, Xhale City announced over Facebook that the employee had been terminated. They have since shut down their Facebook page. 

“Tonight, we had an employee act improperly toward a customer,” reads the statement. “Xhale City does not tolerate this kind of behavior from its employees.  When we identified the employee at fault, we fired him immediately. We’ve also spoken to the customer and apologized. We value our clients and treat them with respect and dignity, regardless of their political views.” 

(h/t The Gateway Pundit)

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“Election Meddling” Enters Bizarro World As MSM Ignores Democrat-Linked “Russian Bot” Scheme

For over two years now, the concepts of “Russian collusion” and “Russian election meddling” have been shoved down our throats by the mainstream media (MSM) under the guise of legitimate concern that the Kremlin may have installed a puppet president in Donald Trump. 

Having no evidence of collusion aside from a largely unverified opposition-research dossier fabricated by a former British spy, the focus shifted from “collusion” to “meddling” and “influence.” In other words, maybe Trump didn’t actually collude with Putin, but the Kremlin used Russian tricks to influence the election in Trump’s favor. 

To some, this looked like nothing more than an establishment scheme to cast a permanent spectre of doubt over the legitimacy of President Donald J. Trump. 

Election meddling “Russian bots” and “troll farms” became the central focus – as claims were levied of social media operations conducted by Kremlin-linked organizations which sought to influence and divide certain segments of America. 

And while scant evidence of a Russian influence operation exists outside of a handful of indictments connected to a St. Petersburg “Troll farm” (which a liberal journalist cast serious doubt over), the MSM – with all of their proselytizing over the “threat to democracy” that election meddling poses, has largely decided to ignore actual evidence of “Russian bots” created by Democrat IT experts, used against a GOP candidate in the Alabama special election, and amplified through the Russian bot-detecting “Hamilton 68” dashboard developed by the same IT experts. 

Democratic operative Jonathon Morgan – bankrolled by LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, pulled a Russian bot “false flag” operation against GOP candidate Roy Moore in the Alabama special election last year – creating thousands of fake social media accounts designed to influence voters. Hoffman has since apologized, while Morgan was suspended by Facebook for “coordinated inauthentic” behavior. 

Jonathon Morgan, Roy Moore, Reid Hoffman

As Russian state-owned RT puts it – and who could blame them for being a bit pissed over the whole thing, “it turns out there really was meddling in American democracy by “Russian bots.” Except they weren’t run from Moscow or St. Petersburg, but from the offices of Democrat operatives chiefly responsible for creating and amplifying the “Russiagate” hysteria over the past two years in a textbook case of psychological projection.” 

A week before Christmas, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report accusing Russia of depressing Democrat voter turnout by targeting African-Americans on social media. Its authors, New Knowledge, quickly became a household name.

Described by the New York Times as a group of “tech specialists who lean Democratic,” New Knowledge has ties to both the US military and intelligence agencies. Its CEO and co-founder Jonathon Morgan previously worked for DARPA, the US military’s advanced research agency. His partner, Ryan Fox, is a 15-year veteran of the National Security Agency who also worked as a computer analyst for the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). Their unique skill sets have managed to attract the eye of investors, who pumped $11 million into the company in 2018 alone.

…

On December 19, a New York Times story revealed that Morgan and his crew had created a fake army of Russian bots, as well as fake Facebook groups, in order to discredit Republican candidate Roy Moore in Alabama’s 2017 special election for the US Senate.

Working on behalf of the Democrats, Morgan and his crew created an estimated 1,000 fake Twitter accounts with Russian names, and had them follow Moore. They also operated several Facebook pages where they posed as Alabama conservatives who wanted like-minded voters to support a write-in candidate instead.

In an internal memo, New Knowledge boasted that it had “orchestrated an elaborate ‘false flag’ operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet.”

It worked. The botnet claim made a splash on social media and was further amplified by Mother Jones, which based its story on expert opinion from Morgan’s other dubious creation, Hamilton 68. –RT

Moore ended up losing the Alabama special election by a slim margin of just 

In other words: In November 2017 – when Moore and his Democratic opponent were in a bitter fight to win over voters – Morgan openly promoted the theory that Russian bots were supporting Moore’s campaign. A year later – after being caught red-handed orchestrating a self-described “false flag” operation – Morgan now says that his team never thought that the bots were Russian and have no idea what their purpose was. Did he think no one would notice? –RT

Even more strange is that Scott Shane – the journalist who wrote the New York Times piece exposing the Alabama “Russian bot” scheme, knew about it for months after speaking at an event where the organizers bragged about the false flag on Moore. 

Shane was one of the speakers at a meeting in September, organized by American Engagement Technologies, a group run by Mikey Dickerson, President Barack Obama’s former tech czar. Dickerson explained how AET spent $100,000 on New Knowledge’s campaign to suppress Republican votes, “enrage” Democrats to boost turnout, and execute a “false flag” to hrt Moore. He dubbed it “Project Birmingham.” –RT

Shane told BuzzFeed that he was “shocked” by the revelations, though hid behind a nondisclosure agreement at the request of American Engagement Technologies (AET). He instead chose to spin the New Knowledge “false flag” operation on Moore as “limited Russian tactics” which were part of an “experiment” that had a budget of “only” $100,000 – and which had no effect on the election. 

New Knowledge suggested that the false flag operation was simply a “research project,” which Morgan suggested was designed “to better understand and report on the tactics and effects of social media disinformation.”  

While the New York Times seemed satisfied with his explanation, others pointed out that Morgan had used the Hamilton 68 dashboard to give his “false flag” more credibility – misleading the public about a “Russian” influence campaign that he knew was fake.

New Knowledge’s protestations apparently didn’t convince Facebook, which announced last week that five accounts linked to New Knowledge – including Morgan’s – had been suspended  for engaging in “coordinated inauthentic behavior.” –RT

They knew exactly what they were doing

While Morgan and New Knowledge sought to frame the “Project Birmingham” as a simple research project, a leaked copy of the operation’s after-action report reveals that they knew exactly what they were doing. 

“We targeted 650,000 like AL voters, with a combination of persona accounts, astroturfing, automated social media amplification and targeted advertising,” reads the report published by entrepreneur and executive coach Jeff Giesea. 

The rhetorical question remains, why did the MSM drop this election meddling story like a hot rock after the initial headlines faded away?  

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Coach Nick Saban Could Get a $2.4 Million Annual Pension, Courtesy of Alabama Taxpayers

University of Alabama head football coach Nick Saban is America’s highest paid public employee, pulling down a cool $11 million from the publicly funded college this year.

On its own, that fact is probably not too surprising. College football coaches are the highest paid public employees in most states, and Saban is the best college football coach in the country. When his Crimson Tide take the field on Saturday in one of the national semifinal games, he will be two wins away from a second consecutive national championship (and a sixth in just 12 seasons at Alabama).

Yes, $11.25 million is a heck of a lot of money for a public employee, especially since Alabama’s football program is $225 million in debt. In the fundamentally corrupt world of college sports, however, Saban is at least a winner.

But what about when he retires? Long after the glory of Saban’s national championships fade, it turns out, the taxpayers of Alabama will continue to fork over seven-figures in annual pension payments. That’s according to Adam Andrzejewski, founder and CEO of Open The Books, a nonprofit that claims to have the largest database of state and federal spending records. In an article for Forbes, Andrzejewski calculates that Saban is due $2.4 million in annual pension payments from the state of Alabama, based on the coach’s current salary and tenure with the school.

That staggering figure reveals one of the major flaws with the so-called “defined benefit” structure used by most public pension systems. Under a defined benefit plan, an employee is guaranteed an annual pension that’s based on an employee’s years of service, final salary (or, as is common, an average of the employee’s salary during his or her last three or five years on the job), and a multiplier that’s a special bonus for employees with special status (cops will generally have a higher multiplier than desk clerks in the Department of Motor Vehicles, for example).

Plug in the numbers, do the math, and the pension amount is set. An investment portfolio’s earnings don’t matter, and neither does the state’s contributions to the pension plan. This largely why some states have fallen so far behind in their pension obligations: because the benefits keep accumulating even though they aren’t being adequately funded.

One of the problems with a defined benefit system is that, for employees at the very top of the earnings scale, the pension plan becomes a massive transfer of wealth rather than a retirement safety net. It’s certainly not in the best interest of Alabama taxpayers to continue spending $2.4 million on Saban every year for the rest of his post-retirement life. And with a state pension system that’s already more than $16 billion in the red, it’s also not in the best interest of Saban’s fellow government pensioners.

The same is true of other highly paid public employees. As I’ve previously covered, California has more than 62,000 retirees getting six-figure salaries and seven retirees getting $1 million annually—led by Earl Paysinger, a former deputy police chief in Los Angeles.

Defenders of traditional, defined-benefit pension systems will often argue that the average pension is far less than what these outliers receive. That’s true, of course, but the outliers are still a problem, even if they’re a lesser concern than the overal structure of public pensions. As America slowly reckons with its massive pension liabilities, means-testing retirement payments for recipients with seven-figure net worths—maybe even eight figures, in saban’s case—should be a no-brainer.

Saban, Paysinger, and the rest should, of course, be allowed to reclaim whatever percentage of their pensions they funded with their own contributions (a significant amount, in Saban’s case). That’s what 401k participants get.

But if Alabama, California, or any other state has to dig into its own tax revenue to fulfill pension promises, those six- and seven-figure pensions should not be part of the obligation. Better yet, switching to a 401(k)-style pension system for all public sector employees would remove those obligations from the outset, allowing the next Nick Saban to invest his massive salary and save for his own retirement without obligating taxpayers to replenish his pantry with oatmeal creampies until he croaks.

Put another way: Alabamans might worship Nick Saban for what he’s accomplished on the gridiron, but that doesn’t mean they should be forced to add to his already astounding personal wealth with their own hard-earned money.

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Deutsche Bank Is “Well-Positioned For A Crisis”, Chairman Says

Any other week the ongoing collapse in Deutsche Bank stock, which dropped to a fresh all time low, sliding below €7.00 per share and closing at €6.97 on Friday, dragging its market cap to just under $16.5 billion or below that of Expedia, would have been the primary topic of conversation.

However, in light of the numerous market “distractions” of the past week, it is understandable that the latest DB stock collapse would pass largely under the radar. And yet, for the bank with the €48 trillion in gross notional derivatives, when the market is signaling that something is wrong – which it clearly is with DB’s stock which has tumbled 56% in 2018 – it is worth paying attention.

So in an attempt to frontrun a new wave of investor concerns over the relentless implosion of the largest German lender, Chairman Paul Achleitner said in an interview with Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung that Deutsche Bank is “well-positioned to weather a crisis” without state help, i.e., without nationalization.

With a “very strong” capital base and “record” liquidity levels, “we are very well prepared, if something external happens,” Achleitner told the German weekly according to Bloomberg, adding that the bank’s new CEO Christian Sewing has the team and the personality to lead Germany’s largest lender into a “new growth phase.”

Perhaps… on the other hand it is still unclear just what new skeletons in the bank’s vault the local police found after their raid of DB’s headquarters in late November, triggered by concerns the bank, which has been implicated in virtually every possible financial scandal, was also facilitating money laundering. Indeed, amid the bank’s miserable turnaround which has seen hundreds of employees laid off, the dramatic images of police officers descending on the company’s Frankfurt headquarters last month in a money-laundering probe was just the latest dark cloud.

Still, despite all the trials and mounting investor criticism, the Chairman plans to stick it out. “The shareholders trusted me with a mandate until 2022. I stand by that responsibility,” Achleitner said in the interview.

And speaking of surviving a crisis, last week Deutsche Bank’s chief global economist Torsten Slok published a list of what he thoughts were the 30 biggest risks to the market in 2019. Not surprisingly, it was missing what some believe could be the biggest crisis catalyst: the collapse of Deutsche Bank itself.

 

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Firearms-Related Accident Deaths Plunge 41% From 1999

Authored by JD Heyes via NaturalNewscom,

While recent headlines might lead you to believe that accidental deaths from firearms are at an all-time high, the fact is they are at their lowest in decades – but unfortunately, the so-called “mainstream” media won’t report the truth.

As noted by the National Shooting Sports Foundation in a blog post on the group’s website, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is claiming that gun-related deaths in 2017 reached their highest level in the U.S. in 40 years.

As reported by Fox News:

In 2017, nearly 40,000 people were killed from gun-related incidents in the U.S., according to the data. By contrast, gun-related incidents accounted for less than 29,000 deaths in 1999.

The report went on to list some of the higher-profile shootings last year, such as the terrorist attack (because that’s what it really was) on 22,000 concert-goers in October 2017 in Las Vegas, which killed 58 people, and the following month when a former Air Force member killed 25 people at a Texas church. 

Of the 40,000-odd recorded gun deaths, the CDC said half were due to suicides and just over one-third were homicides — and while any gun deaths are tragic, those figures are still very low proportionately in a country of some 320 million people and 90 million gun owners.

Also, according to the NSSF, “thankfully, the CDC breaks down the data by unintentional fatalities, homicides, and suicides,” thereby making “a careful review of the data possible.”

“And such a review is revealing,” the Second Amendment-supporting group notes.

Since 1999, the year referenced by the CDC, the agency’s own data show that the overall number of gun-related accidents are actually down more than 41 percent, though tens of millions more firearms have been purchased. 

The CDC can and does manipulate gun data

The NSSF noted further:

Likewise, it’s understandably confusing when recent news articles proclaim that “guns killed more people than car crashes in 2017.” While this kind of clickbait is sure to get views, it is a deliberately misleading comparison of different data. In this article for example, the authors take the full sum of all firearms-related deaths, suicides, homicides and accidents, and compares it to car accidents. Why not compare firearms accidents to car accidents? Well that would show that car accidents occur at far higher rates (11.9 for cars compared to 0.1 for firearms). 

There are more anomalies in the CDC data. For instance, the agency’s numbers show that the homicide rate is flat, but other research data show that the homicide rate in the U.S. has been on a downward trend — also a good thing.

The CDC data does reflect the fact that most gun-related deaths are suicides, and that’s been the case now for years. And in fact, gun-caused suicides are actually up in nearly every state, the NSSF notes. 

“While even anti-gun extremists would have a hard time arguing that gun control laws would prevent these unfortunate but intentional acts, some will point to discredited studiesthat attempt to draw a link between gun control laws and suicide rates,” the NSSF noted.

“The fact is that there is no evidence showing a causal relationship between gun control laws and decreased suicide rates.”

There’s more as it relates to gun-related homicide rates. According to the Crime Prevention Research Center, gun homicides are concentrated in a very few U.S. counties. 

The center reported in April 2017 that 54 percent of counties in 2014 had zero murders, while just 2 percent of counties had more than half — 51 percent — of all gun-related murders that year.

Meanwhile, 69 percent of counties had no more than a single gun-related murder. The worst one percent of counties held 19 percent of the country’s population and featured 37 percent of all gun-related homicides, the center found.

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After “Long And Very Good” Call With Xi, Trump Says China Trade Deal “Moving Along Well”

One day after reviving his threats to close the Southern border and withhold billions of dollars in aid to Central America, President Trump took to twitter Saturday morning – as he so often does – to continue his attacks on intransigent Democrats, demanding that the party leadership drop its “presidential harassment” and start focusing on “crime and our military”.

In an unusual move, Trump inadvertently signaled publicly for the first time that he might be open to cutting a deal, after repeatedly insisted that he wouldn’t accept anything less than $5 billion for wall. Though the White House has already reportedly broached a compromise (including a funding plan that would have set aside $2.5 billion for a “wall or fence” and other border-security improvements), which the Democrats have presumably rejected.

While the border-security battle has captivated the Washington press corp over the past week, the administration is preparing for the beginning of formal negotiations with the Chinese over striking a trade deal. Trump tweeted that he had a “long and very good” call with President Xi, and that “a deal is moving along very well.”

Xi confirmed as much during a statement to China’s state media, where he said he hoped the US and China could “meet each other half way” to strike a “mutually beneficial” agreement as soon as possible.

  • CHINA’S PRESIDENT XI SPOKE WITH TRUMP BY TELEPHONE ON DEC. 29 – CHINESE STATE MEDIA
  • XI SAYS TEAMS FROM BOTH SIDES HAVE BEEN ACTIVELY WORKING TO IMPLEMENT CONSENSUS REACHED WITH TRUMP – CHINESE STATE MEDIA
  • XI SAYS HOPES TEAMS FROM BOTH SIDES CAN MEET EACH OTHER HALF WAY, REACH AGREEMENT THAT IS MUTUALLY BENEFICIAL AS SOON AS POSSIBLE – CHINESE STATE MEDIA
  • XI SAYS HOPES TO WORK WITH U.S. TO STRENGTHEN COOPERATION IN ISSUES RELATED TO ECONOMY, TRADE, MILITARY, LAW ENFORCEMENT – CHINESE STATE MEDIA
  • XI SAYS HOPES TO MAINTAIN COMMUNICATION, COORDINATION WITH U.S. ON MAJOR GLOBAL, REGIONAL ISSUES- CHINESE STATE MEDIA
  • XI SAYS HOPES TO PUSH FORWARD COORDINATED, COOPERATIVE, STABLE SINO-U.S. RELATIONSHIP – CHINESE STATE MEDIA
  • XI REITERATES CHINA ENCOURAGES, SUPPORTS NORTH KOREA, U.S. TO CONTINUE TALKS, ACHIEVE POSITIVE RESULTS- CHINESE STATE MEDIA
  • XI SAYS AT PRESENT CHINA, U.S. RELATIONSHIP IS AT IMPORTANT STAGE- CHINESE STATE MEDIA

A team of mid-level administration officials will travel to Beijing during the week of Jan. 7 to begin face-to-face talks with the Chinese. The team will reportedly be led by Deputy US Trade Representative Jeffrey Gerrish and will include David Malpass, Treasury under secretary for international affairs.

Meanwhile, as the partial shutdown enters its seventh day, the EPA, the Coast Guard and other agencies included in the nine departments affected by the shutdown are preparing to furlough even more workers.

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This Is Exactly The Kind Of Behavior That You’d Expect During A Stock Market Implosion…

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

If a doctor tells you that his patient’s condition is swinging up and down wildly, is that a good sign or a bad sign?  Of course the answer to that question is quite obvious. 

And if a doctor tells you that his patient’s condition is “stable”, is that a good sign or a bad sign? 

Just like in the medical world, instability is not something that is a desirable thing on Wall Street, and right now we are witnessing extreme volatility on an almost daily basis.  On Thursday, the Dow was already down several hundred points when I went out to do some grocery shopping with my wife, and at the low point of the day it had fallen 611 points.  But then a “miracle happened” and the Dow ended the day with an increase of 260 points.  As I detailed yesterday, this is precisely the sort of behavior that you would expect during a chaotic bear market.

As Fox Business has noted, bear market rallies are typically “sharp, quick and usually short”.  I figured that the momentum from Wednesday would carry over into the early portion of Thursday, so I was surprised when the Dow was down by so much as we neared the middle of the day.  But then around 2 PM we witnessed an extraordinary market surge…

The Dow Jones Industrial Average posted a 865-point swing in less than two hours. The blue-chip index had been down in mid-afternoon more than 500 points to cut the previous session’s gains in half, before bargain hunters and short covering turned a big decline into a modest gain.

An 865 point swing in less than two hours is not “normal”.

In fact, it is about as far from “normal” as you can get.

Let’s talk about short covering for a moment.  During huge market downturns, speculators often try to make a lot of money very rapidly by shorting stocks.  But if momentum suddenly shifts, those short sellers can be caught with their pants down and the consequences can be quite dramatic.  The following comes from Marketwatch…

Indeed, market veterans warn that massive, one-day rallies are often more characteristic of downturns, occurring as selloffs lead to significantly oversold technical conditions that leave markets ripe for short covering only to give way to renewed selling once the frenzy of forced buying is exhausted. Investors who short a stock are essentially betting that its price will fall by first borrowing the shares, but those traders can be forced to buy shares back if prices suddenly swing higher, which, in turn, can amplify price swings.

In addition, it appears that on Thursday there was more of the “forced pension rebalancing” that Zero Hedge has been talking about…

It certainly has the smell of a massive pension reallocation as the moment stocks started to surge, bonds were dumped…

No stock market crash in U.S. history has ever gone in a straight line.  There are always huge ups and downs during every market crash, and this market crash is no exception.

Ultimately, there is no way that you can possibly interpret the behavior of the market in recent days as “healthy”…

Here’s the problem: as we discussed last night, since 1990, every comparable reversal – with a few exceptions – came during the 2008-2009 bear market.  According to Bloomberg data, in eight previous bear markets the S&P 500 experienced rallies of greater than 2.5% more than 120 times as the benchmark plunged from peak to trough. From the collapse of Lehman to the financial crisis bottom in March 2009, the S&P 500 rallied more than 4 percent on 13 different occasions.

“This is not the kind of price action you see in normal bull markets,” said Robert Baird equity sales trader Michael Antonelli. “This is just a face ripping short cover rally. I am 100 percent not saying we are in a situation like 2008 now, but look at October 10, 2008 to October 13, 2008: the market rose nearly 12 percent in one day. October 27 to October 28, 2008, it rose 11 percent.”

Meanwhile, it appears that one of America’s most iconic retailers is about to go down in flames.

For years I have been warning that Sears was eventually “going to zero”, and if a last ditch rescue attempt does not materialize by the end of the day on Friday, Sears will be liquidated…

The employer of more than 68,000 filed for bankruptcy in October. Its last shot at survival is a $4.6 billion proposal put forward by its chairman, Eddie Lampert, to buy the company out of bankruptcy through his hedge fund, ESL Investments. ESL is the only party offering to buy Sears as a whole, people familiar with the situation tell CNBC. Without that bid or another like it, liquidators will break the company up into pieces.

But as Lampert stares down a deadline of Dec. 28 to submit his offer, he is quickly running out of time. As of Thursday afternoon, Lampert had neither submitted his bid, nor rounded up financing, the people familiar said.

The inevitable demise of Sears could be seen from a mile away, and the same thing can be said about the country as a whole.

Our debt-fueled standard of living has been propped up by the biggest debt binge in the history of the world, and Wall Street has been transformed into the largest casino on the entire planet.

The entire U.S. economic system has become one huge Ponzi scheme, and all Ponzi schemes ultimately collapse.

Right now, we are in the early stages of a game that is going to take some time to fully play out.  The pessimism that has gripped Wall Street is starting to spread throughout the general population, and many experts were stunned to learn that consumer confidence just declined for a second month in a row…

The confidence Americans feel in the economy fell for the second month in a row and touched the lowest level since last summer, perhaps a sign that worries about the 9 1/2-year U.S. expansion have spread from Wall Street to Main Street.

The consumer confidence index dropped to 128.1 this month from a revised 136.4 in November, the Conference Board said Thursday. Economists polled by MarketWatch had forecast a 133.3 reading.

If you have been a regular visitor to my websites, then nothing that will happen over the next few months should be a surprise to you.

The inevitable consequences for decades of exceedingly foolish decisions are starting to roll in, and the bursting of “The Bubble To End All Bubbles” is going to be beyond excruciating.

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Two More Spiegel Employees Out After Fake News Scandal Expands

Two senior editors at Germany’s Der Spiegel have been fired amid the country’s largest newsroom scandal in decades. 

Ullrich Fichtner, and editor-in-chief, and Matthias Geyer, a chief editor, have been “suspended until the (magazine’s) internal commission has completed its investigation into the affair,” according to editor-in-chief Steffen Klusmann, according to AFP, citing a copy of an internal letter obtained on Friday.

“Superstar” journalist Claas Relotius, a 33-year-old reporter for Der Spiegel and several other publications, falsified at least 14 articles according to Klusmann. Relotius abruptly resigned amid the December 19 announcement by Der Spiegel. 

“The Relotius affair raises the question as to whether” Ullrich and Fichtner “can continue in their jobs after such a disaster,” said Klusmann. “The first discovered it for Der Spiegel, the second hired him and was until recently his superior.”

“We could now hold to account anyone who has dealt with Relotius, and that could continue up to the top of the hierarchy,” Klusmann added. 

Relotius, meanwhile, has “gone underground,” according to the Guardian, returning several awards for his work while being stripped of others, such as CNN’s two Journalist of the Year awards. A German publication also stripped the journalist of a similar accolade. 

At least 14 articles by Relotius for Der Spiegel were falsified, according to Steffen Klusmann, its editor-in-chief. They include an award-winning piece about a Syrian boy called Mouwiya who believed his anti-government graffiti had triggered the civil war. Relotius alleged he had interviewed the boy via WhatsApp.

The magazine – a prestigious weekly – is investigating if the interview took place and whether the boy exists. Relotius won his fourth German reporter prize this month with a story headlined “Child’s Play”.

Klusmann admitted the publication still had no idea how many articles were affected. On Thursday it was revealed that parts of an interview with a 95-year-old Nazi resistance fighter in the US were fabricated. –The Guardian

According to Relotius’ Der Spiegel colleague Juan Moreno – who busted Relotius after conducting his own research after his bosses failed to listen to his doubts, released a video in which he attempted to describe how Relotius got away with his fabrications. 

“He was the superstar of German journalism if one’s honest, and if his stories had been true, that would have been fully justified to say so, but they were not,” said Moreno. “At the start it was the small mistakes, things that seemed too hard to believe that made me suspicious.”

In addition to having several awards stripped from him, the 33-year-old Relotius now faces embezzlement charges for allegedly soliciting donations for Syrian orphans from readers “with any proceeds going to his personal account,” according to the BBC. On Thursday, Relotius denied the accusations. 

In a letter to Der Spiegel’s editor in chief earlier in the month, Grenell requested an “independent and transparent investigation” to determine how the fraud went undetected for so long, adding that the revelations “are troubling to the US Embassy, particularly because several of these fake stories focused on US policies and certain segments of the American people.”

“We are concerned that the leadership of Der Spiegel encourages this form of reporting and that the reporters appear to deliver what the leadership wants,” wrote Grenell, who accused the paper of anti-American bias, and said the German paper “routinely included information and stories which could have been proven untrue if they had checked the facts with the Embassy first.”

With two more Spiegel employees gone in the wake of this massive scandal, one has to wonder how deep the rot goes?

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US Helicopters Flying Over Manbij As Confusion Reigns; Turkey, Russia Agree To “Coordinated” Action

As confusion and tensions mount in the Syrian Kurdish city of Manbij, located just 70 miles north of Aleppo, US helicopters have been filmed hovering above the potential battle lines, even after widespread reports of a US troop pullout from the area and following Kurdish militias quickly calling on Assad’s help to prevent a Turkish invasion. 

This as Turkish Armored Personnel Carriers (APCs), other heavy equipment, and Turkish troop reinforcements were seen crossing into Syria. Currently, the Syrian Army is deployed in and around the city saying it stands ready to protect it from nearby pro-Turkish forces after Friday Syria’s defense ministry announced it had “raised the flag of the Syrian Arab Republic” over Manbij for the first time after years of war as confirmed by Russian television footage from on the ground; however, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reportedly refused to acknowledge the Syrian Army’s presence, dismissing the Syrian statement as a “psychological action.”

However, Erdogan vowed to keep any possible Turkish action limited in press statements on Friday:

“In the current situation, we are still supporting the integrity of Syrian soil. Areas like Manbij belong to Syria. Once the terrorist organizations leave the area, we will have nothing left to do there.”

Also amid reports that American military advisers to the SDF — whose civilian council still appears in control of Manbij apparently with the blessing of Damascus — rapidly withdrew as pro-Turkish forces approached, the Pentagon on Friday issued a vague statement denying reports of “changes to military forces” saying they are “incorrect,” suggesting US forces could still be in or around Manbij. The presence of US helicopters hovering over the province seem to confirm this. 

As mentioned previously, though the situation remains highly fluid and dangerous for major escalation, especially as Turkish-backed jihadists have been for days mustered at the western border of the province declaring their willingness to “cleanse” the region of Kurds, there appears an uneasy status quo emerging and possible indirect negotiations happening between US, SDF, and Syrian Army forces, with broader negotiations between Turkey and Russia — the latter which controls the airspace above the province.

On Saturday Russia and Turkey announced plans to coordinate ground operations in Syria following last week’s surprise announcement of a full US troop draw down from Syria, according to statements by Moscow’s top diplomat, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. When it comes to Manbij, for Erdogan this will require proof of a full withdrawal of armed Kurdish YPG fighters from the town and countryside. 

Lavrov said after talks with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu in Moscow, “Of course we paid special attention to new circumstances which appeared in connection with the announced US military pullout.” He explained further, “An understanding was reached of how military representatives of Russia and Turkey will continue to coordinate their steps on the ground under new conditions with a view to finally rooting out terrorist threats in Syria.”

“We will continue active work (and) coordination with our Russian colleagues and colleagues from Iran to speed up the arrival of a political settlement in the Syrian Republic,” he said in remarks also confirmed by Cavusoglu, according to the AFP.

However, the wild card that remains is whether or not US forces will fully and truly make a complete break from the theater. Considering the Trump administration is currently considering whether or not to leave US weapons with the Kurds, it appears a full pullout is indeed happening. 

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“Nude Selfie” In Russia Case Reveals How Deep Mueller’s Probe Goes

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has gone so far down the rabbit hole in his $25 million (taxpayer funded) Russia investigation – going so far as to have “collected a nude selfie” to satisfy his probe. 

The claim, according to The Hill was contained within a court filing by Russian firm Concord Management and Consulting – one of three businesses indicted by Mueller in February along with 13 individuals for election meddling. 

In the Thursday court filing accusing Mueller’s team of illegally withholding information in the case, Concord attorney Eric Dubelier made mention of the “nude selfie,” asking “Could the manner in which he collected a nude selfie really threaten the national security of the United States?“

Have we scraped the bottom of the barrel yet? 

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