Tag: news

In 1945, most French people thought that the Soviet Union deserved the most credit for Nazi Germany's defeat in World War II – even though the Soviets did not play much of a role in France's liberation, relative to the US and Britain.

By 1995 and 2004, however, the French had changed their minds, and were crediting the US as the biggest contributor to victory in Europe (survey data from the French Institute of Public Opinion)…

Source: Olivier Berruyer at Les Crises blog

Assessing the "biggest contributor to victory" in a rigorous way is exceptionally difficult. They tend to devolve into comparisons of counterfactuals, and the truth is that nobody has any strong idea how the war would have turned out absent US involvement, or if the German-Soviet non-aggression pact had held, etc. Soviet Union's successful resistance of Nazi invasion and subsequent reclamation of Eastern Europe was the most important of many factors in defeating Germany. As historian Richard Overy Explains In His book Why the Allies Won :

If the defeat of the German army was the central strategic task, the main one was the conflict on the eastern front. The German army was first weakened and then driven back, before the main weight of Allied ground and air forces was brought to bear in 1944. Over four hundred German and Soviet divisions fought along more than 1,000 miles. Axis divisions between 1941 and 1945. The scale and geographical extent of the eastern front dwarfed all earlier warfare. Losses on both sides far exceeded anywhere else in the military contest. The war in the east was fought with a ferocity almost unknown on the western fronts. The battles at Stalingrad and Kursk, which broke the back of the German army, drew from the soldiers of both sides the last ounces of physical and moral energy.

If you are looking at the human toll of the war, the Soviets clearly incurred the heaviest losses. Tony Judt's Postwar cites Estimates Suggesting There Were 8.6 million Soviet Military Deaths and over 16 million civilian Deaths in World War II. The US lost 418.500 Military and Civilians in all theaters of the war – still a staggering figure, but not on the scale as Sami Soviet Losses. Of course, it's possible – and highly preferable! – to contribute to the success of the process. But it's worth reflecting on just how massive the sacrifice the Soviet people made was.

Source: Olivier Berruyer at Les Crises blog

"The victors are those who write History. It is this one that is written in our school books, not the true History as it unfolded, but a History that caresses the camp of the winners. History has ceased long ago to be the sum of the humanities today it belongs only to a handful of individuals. "

[Maxime Chattam, The mysteries of chaos ]

via http://ift.tt/2jcFqer Tyler Durden

Submitted by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

“This light of history is pitiless; it has a strange and divine quality that, luminous as it is, and precisely because it is luminous, often casts a shadow just where we saw a radiance; out of the same man it makes two different phantoms, and the one attacks and punishes the other, the darkness of the despot struggles with the splendor of the captain. Hence a truer measure in the final judgment of the nations. Babylon violated diminishes Alexander; Rome enslaved diminishes Caesar; massacred Jerusalem diminishes Titus. Tyranny follows the tyrant. Woe to the man who leaves behind a shadow that bears his form.” ? Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

Let’s talk about President Obama’s legacy, shall we?

This was a candidate who was ushered into office promising hope and change, pledging to put an end to the endless wars that were bankrupting the country (he was actually awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in anticipation of his efforts to bring about world peace), and vowing to put an end of the corporate revolving door that had turned our republic into an oligarchy.

After eight years in office, Barack Obama leaves our nation with a weakened Constitution that has been dealt one crippling blow after another by court rulings and government overreach, with more militarized police empowered to shoot first and ask questions later, with more SWAT team raids, with more government corruption, with more debt than ever before ($19 trillion and rising), with more racial tensions bubbling over into confrontations, with even greater surveillance intruding into the privacy of the citizenry, with less tolerance for free speech and thought, with taxpayers groaning under the weight of even more taxes disguised as fines and fees, with a more “imperial” president empowered to act unilaterally through the use of signing statements and executive orders, with a greater risk of blowback from military occupations, drone strikes and endless wars abroad, and with a citizenry more broken and oppressed than ever.

In other words, Obama leaves our nation worse off than when he took office.

You won’t hear any of this from Obama, who believes he would have been re-elected had he been permitted to run for a third term. Nor will you hear it from the celebrities who are quick to sing Obama’s praises, while likening Donald Trump to Hitler. And you certainly won’t hear it from those who are staging sit-ins, marches and acts of civil disobedience to protest Trump’s election, while having failed to voice even a whisper of protest over Obama’s long list of civil liberties abuses.

Yet the reality we must contend with is that the world is a far more dangerous place today than it was eight years ago, and Obama must shoulder some of the blame for that. As President Harry S. Truman recognized, “The buck stops here.”

How did we come to this?

How did a politician who showed such potential and managed to ignite such positive feelings among the citizenry, young and old alike, go from being a poster child for hope and change to being the smiling face of a government that is blind, deaf and dumb to the needs of its citizens?

Let me answer my own question in a roundabout way by quoting something Meryl Streep said recently in her recent Golden Globe acceptance speech.

Ostensibly taking aim at Trump for imitating a disabled reporter, Streep declared: “This instinct to humiliate, when it’s modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life, because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing. Disrespect invites disrespect. Violence incites violence. And when the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.”

Streep is right in one sense.

We all lose when the powerful inflict violence, humiliation, disrespect on others.

However, where Streep goes wrong is in failing to recognize that “we the people” have been on the losing end of this relationship long before Trump’s name was even being batted about as a possible candidate for the White House.

Indeed, the agents of the Obama administration—many of whom belong to that permanent government bureaucracy that is unaltered by elections and flows in a continuous line from one president to another—have been consistently and persistently inflicting violence, humiliation and disrespect on the citizenry for the past eight years.

Every time a SWAT team funded by government grants crashes through a door, that’s an infliction of violence. Every drone strike that kills innocent civilians is inflicting violence on the less powerful. Every roadside stop that ends with an unwarranted strip search is inflicting humiliation on the less powerful. Every law that criminalizes the speech or activities of those whose views may not jibe with the mainstream is tantamount to government-sanctioned bullying.

So for those lamenting the perils of a Trump presidency, who have been quick to blame racism, sexism and even the Russians for Trump’s electoral victory, you might want to consider the old Native American proverb that says “every time you point a finger in scorn—there are three remaining fingers pointing right back at you.”

As civil rights activist Cornel West concluded, “The reign of Obama did not produce the nightmare of Donald Trump – but it did contribute to it. And those Obama cheerleaders who refused to make him accountable bear some responsibility.”

West goes on to document the many missteps that contributed to Obama’s failed legacy: his allegiance to Wall Street, the drone strikes that have killed innocent civilians, the demonization of whistleblowers, the killing of U.S. citizens without due process, and his refusal to hold police accountable for excessive force and civil rights violations among others.

As West writes for The Guardian:

“[T]he mainstream media and academia failed to highlight these painful truths linked to Obama. Instead, most well-paid pundits on TV and radio celebrated the Obama brand. And most black spokespeople shamelessly defended Obama’s silences and crimes in the name of racial symbolism and their own careerism. How hypocritical to see them now speak truth to white power when most went mute in the face of black power. Their moral authority is weak and their newfound militancy is shallow.”

Let me also say that this is not only an indictment of all that Obama has failed to do in the past eight years. It is also an indictment of those administrations prior to Obama, Democrat and Republican alike, which have contributed to our present sorry state of affairs. And it is a warning to Trump as he begins to carve out a path for his own administration.

Every time I write one of these diatribes about the government, I’m always asked “what can I do to push back against the government?”

My answer, which I flesh out in greater detail in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, is always the same: When all is said and done, politicians are only as effective, trustworthy and accountable as they are made to be. And they are only made to be effective, trustworthy and accountable when the citizenry stays engaged, informed and active in the workings of government.

One of the best models I know for a citizen who took the duties of citizenship to heart every moment of the day was my good friend, mentor and hero Nat Hentoff—one of the nation’s most respected, controversial and uncompromising writers and a lifelong champion of the First Amendment—who passed away on Saturday, January 7, 2017, at the age of 91.

Nat was a radical in the best sense of the word, a feisty, fiercely loyal, inveterate freedom fighter and warrior journalist with a deep-seated intolerance of injustice and a love of America that weathered the best and worst this nation has had to offer.

Nat didn’t live to see the last days of Obama’s reign, but he saw enough to describe the nation’s 44^th president as “possibly the most dangerous and destructive president we have ever had.” A few years back, I asked Nat how he maintains his optimism in the face of the constant barrage of discouraging news about government corruption, civil liberties abuses, war, etc.

I’ll end with Nat’s answer as he inscribed it in the foreword to my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State:

Government officials like to claim that everything they are doing is for security, to keep America safe in the so-called war against terrorism. What they are really effectuating is a weakening of why we are Americans. A lot of Americans today have a very limited idea as to why they are Americans, let alone why we have a First Amendment or a Bill of Rights. People are becoming accustomed or conditioned to what's going on now with the raping of the Fourth Amendment, for example. Too many Americans appear unconcerned about the loss of fundamental individual liberties—such as due process, the right to confront their government accusers in a courtroom, and the presumption of innocence—that are vital to being an American.  Yet the reason we are vulnerable to being manipulated by the government out of fear is that most of us do not know and understand our liberties and how difficult it was to obtain them and how hard it is to keep them.

 

I have spent a lot of time studying our Founders and people like Samuel Adams. What Adams and the Sons of Liberty did in Boston was spread the word about the abuses of the British. They had Committees of Correspondence that got the word out to the colonies. We need Committees of Correspondence now. The danger we now face is admittedly greater than any we have had before. If I were to judge what I do and write on the basis of optimism, I would probably go back to writing novels, but I figure you have to do what you feel you have to do and just keep hoping and trying to get people to understand why we are Americans and what we are fighting to preserve.

via http://ift.tt/2iyyxDN Tyler Durden

With (hyper)inflation expected to hit 1,660% this year and 2,880% next, Venezuela's President Maduro hiked the minimum wage another 50% on Sunday, the fifth increase in the past year (for a total annualized increase of 536%), to help shield workers from 'economic war'.

As Reuters reports, the measure puts the minimum monthly salary at 40,683 bolivars – about $60 at the weakest exchange level under the state's currency controls, or $12 at the black market rate.

"To start the year, I have decided to raise salaries and pensions," he said on his weekly TV and radio program.

 

"In times of economic war and mafia attacks … we must protect employment and workers' income," added Maduro, who has now increased the minimum wage by a cumulative 322 percent since February 2016.

 

The 54-year-old successor to Hugo Chavez attributes Venezuela's three-year recession, soaring prices and product shortages to a plunge in global oil prices since mid-2014 and an "economic war" by political foes and hostile businessmen.

 

But critics say his incompetence, and 17 years of failed socialist policies, are behind Venezuela's economic mess.

 

They say the constant minimum wage hikes symbolize Maduro's policy failures and fail to keep pace with real on-the-street price rises.

Fox News also notes that Venezuela's biggest employer, Fedecamaras, said that the pay increase was announced "without consultation" by the government and could reduce employment and result in the closure of companies that cannot deal with the hike.

And while the black market Bolivar rallied briefly as the bank-note ban debacle was put in place, the currency's street worth is collapsing once again…

But, as The Washington Post reports, while the government has been able to censor the country’s main newspapers, so you won’t read much about crime in the media, death is one of the few guaranteed things you can find in Venezuela.

There are no official tallies of deaths related to violence, but some NGOs put last year’s national death toll as high as 24,000, which would make a total of 252,000 deaths since the revolution came to power 17 years ago.

 

There are an estimated 200,000 members of the Venezuelan security forces, but it doesn’t seem like that is enough.

 

 

Violence permeates everyday life here. In the streets, gangs clash with one another, with the police and with the army. Sometimes, police even clash among themselves. All of these factions wield power and abuse it. Caught in the middle of all of this, ordinary citizens buy guns to protect themselves. Whether it’s the loss of a friend or a relative, everyone here has been touched by violence. Death is in the air.

 

 

Venezuela is a country that seems to be at war with itself. It’s not always clear who is who. It’s hard to know who to trust or who your enemy is, so you’re always looking over your shoulder, waiting for the next blow, unsure of where it will come from. Violence has so saturated life here that people have begun to see it as normal.

 

 

Read more here…

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Via TheAntiMedia.org,

A recent poll of cable news network viewers found that CNN’s regular audience is far more skeptical of the political news they receive than Fox News fans.

In the poll published Wednesday by Rasmussen Reports, 1,000 likely voters were asked to describe their media viewing habits. Seventy-five percent said they watch at least some form of cable news each week, with 42 percent saying they most frequently watch Fox News, 35 percent usually choosing CNN, and 19 percent favoring MSNBC.

An even 50 percent of frequent Fox News viewers agreed with a followup question, “Do you trust the political news you are getting?” By comparison, 43 percent of frequent MSNBC viewers and just 33 percent of those who mostly watch CNN said they trust their political news.

According to a November survey by Rasmussen, 37 percent of voters still say they get most of their news from cable news networks. Voters in general were highly critical of the election coverage, with the strongest criticism coming from the 7 percent of those polled who said they mostly get their news from social media, rather than TV.

While once considered a pioneer of 24-hour TV journalism, CNN has faced criticism and accusations of bias over its political news coverage. During the 2016 election cycle, some viewers and analysts claimed CNN focused too much attention on the candidacy of Donald Trump, even to the point that it negatively impacted other candidates. Trump’s former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, worked at CNN for months as an on-air personality while maintaining notably close ties to the candidate.

In April, Bernie Sanders supporters protested outside of CNN’s offices in Hollywood, claiming the network’s reporters ignored their candidate. In October, CNN cut ties with frequent contributor-turned-interim Democratic National Committee Chair Donna Brazile after WikiLeaks’ archive of Hillary Clinton’s emails revealed Brazile gave Clinton advance notice of debate questions.

Since the election, CNN has been quick to embrace President-elect Trump. On Dec. 2, CNN reporter Cristina Alesci praised Trump’s advisory board of wealthy CEOs, calling it a “historic” gathering. She continued:

“I don’t think that I’ve ever seen anything quite like this before. … Like I said before, this list really represents a bipartisan group of people, so he’ll have some very diverse viewpoints to tap into.”

The president-elect has surrounded himself with a cadre of wealthy advisors and Cabinet members, prompting many critics to question just how much diversity they’ll actually bring to the table. “The very definition of corporate media diversity: the entire spectrum of opinion, from GE to GM,” quipped Steve Rendall, a reporter for the media analysis organization Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, on Dec. 2.

In September, FAIR also accused CNN of spreading a false claim about Black Lives Matter protests being stoked by “outside agitators” in Charlotte, North Carolina, which quickly went viral among conservatives.

From their close ties to politicians to the apparent agendas pushed by paid pundits, viewers are wise to question the political news they receive from any major TV news network.

via http://ift.tt/2iylLFg Tyler Durden

Many investors who aren’t ECP simply can’t access decent strategies for investing and practically, if you only have $100,000 to invest, it’s really not worth it in today’s world (better to ‘invest’ in your own living conditions, vehicle, tools, and other things you might actually need).  You don’t need to be a redneck to follow these simple rules, but if you want to run a ‘redneck check’ on yourself, here’s a list of signs you might be a redneck IF:

1) Your neighbor dug a big hole in his backyard he calls a ‘mud hole’ which is used on weekends.  He fills it with water and lets it sit for days, creating a ‘mud soup’ and then invites his friends over with their trucks as they drive through it one by one, until one turns over or the engine dies.

2) Your other neighbor burns their garbage, plastic bags and all.  

3) You need a monster truck to access your property.

4) You don’t have a bank account because you ‘don’t trust them suns a bitches.’

5) You’ve invested more than 50% of your yearly disposable income in your truck.

Not all southerners are rednecks – here’s a good comparison about the differences between ‘southern’ and ‘redneck’:

• Southern: Eating honeysuckle
• Redneck: Chewing tobacco
• Southern: Playing barefoot outside with your friends as a kid
• Redneck: Going to the grocery store barefoot
• Southern: Having a truck
• Redneck: Having any of the following on your truck: a lift kit, a Confederate flag, or any sticker that talks about guns, has the word “pussy”, or actually labels you as a “redneck”.
• Southern: Food with a lot of butter
• Redneck: Food with a lot of mayonnaise
• Southern: Common family nicknames include “Junior” and “Sissy”
• Redneck: Common family nicknames include “Bubba” and “Buzz”
• Southern: Cracker Barrel
• Redneck: Golden Corral
• Southern: Elvis, Johnny Cash, The Allman Brothers, Lynard Skynard
• Redneck: David Allan Coe, Toby Keith, Trace Adkins
• Southern: Having pecan pie crumbs on your mouth
• Redneck: Missing teeth from your mouth
• Southern: Having at least one relative (even if distant and you’ve met them once) who owns horses
• Redneck: Having at least one relative who’s had sex with a horse
• Southern: Having an innocent crush on one of your cousins as a kid
• Redneck: Doing literally anything about that crush
• Southern: Tailgating before a game
• Redneck: Tailgating without having tickets to the game and watching it on a TV in the parking lot
• Southern: Sweet tea
• Redneck: Mountain Dew
• Southern: Drinking moonshine borderline ironically on special occasions like weddings or weekend trips to the mountains
• Redneck: Consuming moonshine regularly like it’s not even a thing 

So here’s part 5 in our series Redneck Investin’ – for the ‘other’ America:

Ways to get money, food, a place to live, and other highlights of life in USA

Free Cash – Sites like Free Money Claims http://ift.tt/2gBeBlg , http://ift.tt/2grNFV0 – and many others, offer the ability to get free money.  Who doesn’t like free money?  Yes, it can be a big waste of time.  But you’ve got plenty of time – you’re unemployed, on the dole, and Wrastlin’ doesn’t come on for another 3 hours!

Food Stamp Arbitrage – THIS IS ILLEGAL – DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME.  Many rednecks trade food stamp products for cash at a huge discount, sometimes even 50%.  But they have no choice, as who else is going to pay them for 100 cases of Coca Cola but their local Quik-e-mart.  

Panhandling – THIS IS ILLEGAL – DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME.  You know the best parking lots, the best clothes to wear – to evoke that human nature in people.  Make that man shell out all the cash in his wallet, because he feels bad for you.  Keeping the family in the car is a big plus!  Take his plastic too.  DISCLAIMER – Sadly, these untrained panhandlers would fare better on Wall St. where they would be paid millions to do the same job but in a different context.

Friends are for MUNY – Rednecks have no shame to just flat out ask you for money.  If you refuse for a reason such as ‘I don’t use cash’ they offer a host of solutions such as ‘oh you can write me a check, thanks.’  There’s not a friend they won’t abuse with this question but it’s also a bit of a ‘redneck test’ because if you are a true redneck, you’d ask the friend first.

Craigslist FREE – Really, the average person would be shocked what people give away on Craigslist.  Here in the south, it’s common to find things like Televisions, Wood crates, furniture, couches, cats, bicycles, and other stuff completely free.  People just want to get rid of their junk.

Metal Scrapin’ – Dismantling America’s dwindling infrastructure one railroad tie at a time.  This can be an environmentally friendly and profitable hobby if done LEGALLY.  If you ASK people they will often have metal you can take with their permission for FREE – such as old appliances, old excercise equiptment, shopping carts, wheelchairs, all kinds of stuff.  Stealing metal is illegal and potentially dangerous, every year in the South there are at least a small handful of deaths or near deaths of copper wire theives getting electrocuted, and in LA too.  Even though the price of scrap metal is near an all time low – they still pay.  Haul it over to the yard!

For more on this series, see:

Redneck Investin Part 4 – Free on the Fringe

Redneck Investin Part 3 – Get R Dun

Redneck Investin Part 2 – The evolved Redneck – READ before RIOT 

Redneck Investin Part 1 – A look from the other side

If you order stuff online, checkout PleaseOrderIt.com which provides special discounts, savings, coupons, and free stuff too!  For a guide to the markets and how to survive with only a small amount to invest, checkout Splitting Pennies only $6.11 on Amazon.

via http://ift.tt/2iyfwBc globalintelhub

One recurring lament throughout the theatrically dramatic campaign involving reports and emotional appeals by US intelligence agencies such as the CIA (whose primary function is the creation of disinformation) to ordinary Americans, that Russia had “hacked the US presidential election” is that for all the bluster and “conviction”, there has been zero evidence.

And, as it turns out, there won’t be any, because according to the US State Department, US intelligence agencies were right to not reveal evidence of their proof that Russia interfered in US elections, and comparisons with intelligence reports that Iraq had WMDs were not relevant in the current year.

Asked by RT’s Gayane Chichakyan if Friday’s public intelligence report should have contained any proof of Russian intervention, State Department spokesman John Kirby said that no one should be surprised that US intelligence agencies were keeping evidence secret in order to protect sources and methods.

“Most American people understand that they have the responsibility to protect their sources and methods,” Kirby said, adding it would be “irresponsible” to do otherwise. Actually, with the Iraq WMD fiasco strill fresh in “American people’s” minds, it is irresponsible to think most Americans are still naive idiots who will believe whatever the “intelligence agencies” will tell them.

Alas, none of that has filtered through to the appropriate authorities, and Kirby said that it was “up to the agencies to decide which information they share with the public. We rely on them to make that determination for themselves.” And, in this case, it meant sharing no information at all.

The assessment in Friday’s report was made “by all 17 intelligence communities. All of them came to the same basic conclusion: that Russia interfered in the US election,” Kirby said. “All of our intelligence communities came to the same basic conclusion, over and over again.”

They just couldn’t prove it, instead hoping that by repeating the same statement over and over would be sufficient.

Furthermore, the actual report, describes itself as an “analytic assessment drafted and coordinated among The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and The National Security Agency (NSA).”

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his government “aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him,” the agencies assert in the report, noting that the CIA and FBI have “high confidence” in this judgment, while the NSA – which, in theory, would have actual surveillance data to prove the assertion – had only “moderate” confidence.

Secretary of State John Kerry “believes strongly that they handled this matter in the appropriate way, in terms of how it was analyzed, how it was presented, and how it was briefed to those who needed to see a deeper level of information,” Kirby said.

When Chichakyan brought up the 2003 intelligence assessment on the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction – invoked by the Bush administration to justify the US invasion and occupation of that country – Kirby said the comparison was irrelevant, since that was a long time ago.

“We have moved on. We have learned a lot from those mistakes,” he said.

Ironically, somehow much of America ended up with the opposite conclusion.

via http://ift.tt/2iY9SeV Tyler Durden

Submitted by Joseph Jankowski via PlanetFreeWill.com,

While most Americans were likely watching the 74th Annual Golden Globes Awards and NFL football, the FBI quietly released another several hundred pages of documents from its investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email server on Sunday night.

 

FBI quietly releases new Hillary Clinton investigation documents (part 5) [as yet, no announcement] https://t.co/lmyWF5rA8H

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) January 9, 2017

The documents deal with the handling of computer hardware collected from Clinton’s lawyers for the investigation and also contains emails from FBI officials discussing the classification of Clinton’s emails.

This is the fifth dump of Clinton investigation records which can be found at the FBI’s Vault website where the agency provides information about high-profile Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) releases.

Chuck Ross of the Daily Caller reports:

The emails included in the documents are from the months prior to the formal opening of the Clinton email probe, which occurred on July 10, 2015. The exchanges show disagreements between the FBI and State Department over whether some of Clinton’s personal emails should be classified.

 

In one April 27, 2015 email, an FBI official wrote to other officials that they were “about to get drug into an issue on classification” of Clinton’s emails. The official, whose name is redacted, said that the State Department was “forum shopping,” or seeking a favorable opinion on the classification issue by asking different officials to rate emails as unclassified.

 

 

From FBI document release

 

Other email traffic sheds light on a controversy involving State Department under secretary for management Patrick Kennedy and a request he made in 2015 that the FBI reduce its classification of a Clinton email related to the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks in Benghazi.

 

Clinton investigation notes released by the FBI in October showed that an FBI official said during an interview as part of the email probe that Kennedy asked him and others at the FBI to relax classifications on some emails.

The under the radar release also contains a May 21, 2015 email in which the FBI’s assistant director of the counterterrorism division, Michael Steinbach, details a conversation with Patrick Kennedy on classification.

In the email, Steinbach recommended that one of Clinton’s emails be classified using b(1) and b(7) redactions, a technique used to protect information in the interest of national defense. Kennedy was asking Steinbach to allow just b(1) redactions.

 

An unnamed official said that the email in dispute by Kennedy and Steinbach could disclose sources and investigative methods used by the bureau, according to the released documents.

 

The official also added that the disputed email was redacted and classified on the rationale that it contained information that would cause “interference with foreign relations.”

 

“While the email does not name the particular official, this might be deduced and, given the threat of violence in the region, any surmise could be fatal for whoever cooperated with us,” the official wrote.

 

“State will say no one will know if it is redacted, but that is not how classification works,” they added.

More information will be coming out about this document dump as the week progresses, but don’t expect the MSM to harp on it at all. Remember the Russians are coming…

The FBI has not yet announced the release of the documents.

Read the latest Clinton files below:

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via http://ift.tt/2iyeipN williambanzai7

On the verge of his last days in the White House and in a rare display of humility, President Obama admitted to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos over the weekend that it is possible, just maybe, that he, and the epic failure of his crowning piece of legislation, Obamacare, could have contributed to the stunning collapse of the Democratic party over the last 8 years.  Well, at least he kind of admitted it before enumerating all the reasons he couldn’t possibly be to blame…but it’s a step in the right direction. 

“I take some responsibility on that. I think that some of it was circumstances. If you look at what happened, I came in in the middle of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. And unlike FDR who waited — well, didn’t take office until about three years into the Great Depression, it was happening just as I was elected. I think we did a really good job in saving this economy and putting us back on the track of growth. But what that meant is in 2010 there were a lot of folks who were still out of work. There were a lot of folks who had lost their homes or saw their home values plummet, their 401k’s plummet. And we were just at the beginnings of a recovery. And the, you know, whoever is president at that point is going to get hit, and his party’s going to get hit. That then means that suddenly you’ve got a redistricting in which a lot of state legislatures are now Republican. They draw lines that give a huge structural advantage in subsequent elections. But what I think that what is also true is that partly because my docket was really full here, so I couldn’t be both chief organizer of the Democratic Party and function as commander in chief and president of the United States. We did not begin what I think needs to happen over the long haul, and that is rebuild the Democratic Party at the ground level.”

And while Obama would like for you to believe that the prolonged “great recession” caused all of those Democrats losses in Congress and state legislatures, he seems to be “mis-remembering” history.  The “great recession” is precisely what catapulted Obama into the White House and resulted in massive Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate in 2008.  The Democratic losses in the House and State Legislatures across the country didn’t come until the mid-term elections, two full years later in 2010, as Democrats were forced to go out and campaign just after passing the unpopular and wildly controversial Obamacare.

The Washington Post even created this handy graphic which charts the losses by year.

 

Moreover, if Democrat losses in 2010 were, in fact, attributable to the “great recession”, and given that Mr. Obama constantly likes to remind us that he has presided over a staggering “economic recovery” over the past 8 years, perhaps he can explain why Democrats have continued to lose seats throughout his presidency.  Surely Democrat misfortunes should have reversed in 2012 when it became glaringly obvious that his economic policies were “working,” right?

And here is the full interview with George Stephanopoulos:

via http://ift.tt/2iY1wUu Tyler Durden

Just days after we reported that the US had begun deploying some 2,800 tanks, trucks and other military equipment to Germany, from where they would be transported by rail and road to Eastern Europe as part of a buildup of NATO reinforcements against “Russian expansion”, the next US deployment has made its way to Europe over the weekend, when some 4,000 US troops arrived in the German port of Bremerheven, on their way to Wroclaw, Poland under a planned NATO operation to “reassure the alliance’s Eastern European allies” in the face of what NATO has dubbed mounting Russian aggression.

The American soldiers landed in Wroclaw, home to a key Nato and Polish air base in south-west Poland. The troops will be followed by the roughly 2,800 tanks and other pieces of military equipment which are currently en route from Germany. 

The delivery of US Abrams tanks, Paladin artillery, and Bradley fighting vehicles, as well as supporting troops, marks a new phase of America’s continuous presence in Europe, which will now be based on a nine-month rotation.

Why provoke Russia with yet another mass deployment?  Because as NATO Major General Timothy McGuire told reporters, last week, when asked if the large deployment was meant to send a message to Russia, “The best way to maintain the peace is through preparation.”  And while we are quoting, here is another good line from the movie Spice Like Us: “A weapon unused is a useless weapon.” The US military industrial complex is doing everything in its power to make sure a lot of weapons are used in the future.

US troops are being deployed in Poland under Operation Atlantic Resolve Getty

As reported previously, NATO’s latest deployment along Russia’s western border falls under Operation Atlantic Resolve, a mission designed to demonstrate to Moscow Washington’s commitment to defend allies in Europe. Atlantic Resolve was launched in the immediate aftermath of the Ukraine proxy war and the partition of the Ukraine, which sparked fears in the Baltic nations that Vladimir Putin was planning a similar land-grab there.

The Polish embassy in Washington said the troops in Wroclaw were the first to arrive in Poland as part of Atlantic Resolve. As the Independent dubs the US reinforcement, the deployment has been described as “one of the largest movements of US troops to Europe since the Cold War.“

Quoted by Reuters, Lt Gen Tim Ray, deputy commander of US European Command, said: “Let me be very clear, this is one part of our efforts to deter Russian aggression, ensure territorial integrity of our allies and maintain a Europe that is whole, free, prosperous and at peace.”

Instead, what the deployment will do is bring the continent that much closer to a new cold, if not conventional, war.

The US troops are expected to be stationed at two training sites in western Poland in the short term before they are sent to sites at six other countries across the region.

In another faux-pacifist justification, Maj Gen Timothy McGuire, deputy commanding general of the US Army Europe, said that, “this is a tangible sign of the United States’ commitment to maintaining peace on this continent. “It is a sign of the US commitment to this alliance and to peace and prosperity in Europe.” Meanwhile, Russia has already deploy nuclear-capable ballistic missiles to Kaliningrad in response to this latest NATO build-up, from where it has a bird’s eye view of most of central Europe. It has warned further deployment would lead to even more nukes.

The US Army said the process of deploying to Europe was part of the training and tested how American forces would be sent at short notice to counter Russia in the event of an outbreak of war. Troops will be on rotation in Poland and beyond for between four and six months and will work alongside local units. 

The massive deployment means that the arrival of the 3rd Armoured Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, will see the start of a continuous presence and back-to-back rotations of US troops and equipment in the region. Among the deployments to Romania and Bulgaria will be the 1st Battalion, 8th Infantry Regiment – dubbed the ‘Iron Knights’ and the oldest armoured unit in the US Army. The US is also increasing its presence in the Black Sea and in Western Europe at bases in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany.

Russia blames the West for worsening relations and says the build-up of Nato troops in the Baltics is a provocation. Expect more complaints from the Kremlin: around 4,000 Nato troops are set be posted to Poland, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia in the coming months.

In addition, Britain will send an 800-strong battalion to Estonia, supported by French and Danish troops, beginning in May. The deployment was criticised as “truly aggressive” by Moscow.

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Meanwhile, an odd voice of reason when it comes to potential European war has emerged out of German politicians, who have raised concern about the thousands of NATO troops and equipment, along with hundreds of tanks, that have been sent to Poland and countries bordering Russia in what has been touted by Washington as “defense against Russian aggression.”

U.S. tanks, trucks and other military equipment is are unloaded in the harbour of
Bremerhaven, Germany, January 8, 2017

“It does not help us if tanks will be going up and down on both sides of the border,” Brandenburg’s leader and SPD party member, Dietmar Woidke, told RBB. “I hope everyone will keep calm. I believe that despite all the difficulties, we should seek dialogue with Russia,” he added on Thursday, warning that relations with Moscow could worsen even further.

NATO’s buildup in Europe also came under fire from Germany’s Die Linke party. “Tanks do not create peace, anywhere,” Christian Görke stressed in a statement, RBB reported. Tobias Pflueger of Die Linke slammed the stationing of US tanks and military equipment in Poland, saying this will trigger an arms race and lead to an “escalation in relations with Russia,” Focus Online reported.

Crowds of people marched through Bremerhaven on Saturday to protest the deployment and transport of NATO troops and weapons through the city, RT reported. Hundreds of American tanks, trucks, and other military equipment bound for Poland, said to be the largest arms shipment since the fall of the Soviet Union, arrived at the German port on Friday to be transferred to Eastern Europe. The protesters marched through the city holding signs and banners reading, “No NATO deployments! End the militaristic march against Russia!” and “Out of NATO.”

“There is, starting from Washington DC, a major push to do everything possible in the next two weeks to create unending hostility between the West and Russia that can’t be undone by Donald Trump or anyone else. Even at the risk of open violence, rather than simply Cold War hostility. This is highly preferable to weapons profiteers as against actual peace breaking out, which is their greatest fear,” author and journalist David Swanson told RT on Monday.

“It is clearly an escalation that involves numerous facets including propaganda about Russian crimes in the US media; that includes shipping troops and equipment to the border; that includes expanding NATO and pushing hard on other NATO members to join in this escalation where you have serious protests in Germany by those who want peace [and are] against sending Germans or Americans from Germany eastward, as they should. There are not enough of us in the US similarly protesting,” he added.

Naturally, anyone who shares Swanson’s view will be dubbed a purveyor of “fake news” and promptly deported to Russia on allegations of being a Russian spy.

via http://ift.tt/2iy3DLM Tyler Durden