from X22 Report:
One of the Largest Banks in the World Just Accused of Laundering Millions for Drug Cartels
by Claire Bernish, The Free Thought Project:
Commonwealth Bank of Australia stands accused by the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC) of a stupefying 53,700 violations of money laundering and counter-terrorism-financing laws, in which the financial institution failed to notify in a timely fashion — and, sometimes, not at all — transactions topping a mountainous A$77 million.
As the case unfolds, it should be noted, each breach of the act carries a jaw-dropping potential penalty of A$18 million — meaning Commonwealth Bank could be slapped with an astonishing level of fines.
Alleging ‘serious and systemic non-compliance’ with the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 (AML/CTF Act), the regulator commenced civil penalties proceedings against CommBank on Thursday, after the tentative conclusion of an investigation — the heft of which focused on the bank’s use of intelligent deposit machines (IDMs) — revealed rampant breaches of the act, according to acting CEO Peter Clark.
“The effect of CommBank’s conduct in this matter has exposed the Australian community to serious and ongoing financial crime,” asserted AUSTRAC in a statement.
.@AUSTRAC is seeking penalty orders against CBA for serious non-compliance with anti-money laundering lawhttps://t.co/AWYHcaTIa3 #auspol pic.twitter.com/ToYjo4eF83
— Capital Monitor (@capitalmonitor) August 3, 2017
Bloomberg notes of IDMs, “Commonwealth Bank’s automated cash deposit machines, which allow anonymous deposits to recipient accounts that can then be funneled offshore or to other domestic accounts, Austrac said in documents lodged with the Federal Court in Sydney on Thursday. The cash deposit machines were used by drug rings to move the proceeds of crime, the agency said […]
“The automated machines were introduced in May 2012, and the amount of cash flowing though them grew exponentially, the court documents say. In the six months to November 2012 about A$89.1 million was deposited. By May and June 2016 this had risen to more than A$1 billion per month. About A$8.9 billion in cash was put through the system before the bank conducted any assessment of the money laundering risk, Austrac said.”
In this post-9/11 world, Western governments take seriously the tracking of larger banking transactions, under the premise that watching the money by moved terrorists and other high-level criminals through such institutions could stem the spread of violence. But machines like those at the center of the controversy make apparent avenues for significant anonymous banking indeed still exist — if skirting the lines of legality — or, at least, did until recently.
Five money laundering syndicates opportuned CommBank’s IDMs, AUSTRAC claims, with just one drug case totaling A$21 million distributed across eleven separate accounts. Even an alert from the Australian Federal Police to the bank about multiple accounts used for illicit purposes failed to provoke a substantial response — with several tacitly permitted to continue operating afterward.
Suspect accounts attempted to divert suspicion by keeping deposits small and inconspicuous, as well as by moving funds into offshore accounts.
“CommBank permitted several of the accounts to remain open even after this time and further transactions occurred. Eight individuals have been charged with dealing in proceeds of crime, with 6 of these individuals already having been convicted,” the Guardian reports.
“In another case,” Bloomberg continues, the agency “alleges A$20.6 million was deposited into 30 accounts, 29 of which were in fake names, which shortly after was transferred abroad. After the bank identified ‘repeated, suspicions and connected’ patterns of cash deposits, it permitted a further approximately A$9.1 million to be transferred from these accounts to Hong Kong, Austrac said.”
By statement, cited by the Sydney Morning Herald, CommBank contends, “On an annual basis, we report over 4 million transactions to Austrac in an effort to identify and combat any suspicious activity as quickly and efficiently as we can.”
Read More @ TheFreeThoughtProject.com
Lies, Damnable Lies And Downright Dangerous Lies
by Janet Phelan, Activist Post:
The founders of the United Nations would be heaving convulsively in their graves. A vision, forged out of the carnage of WWII for a world at peace, a world where disputes could be solved by dialogue and diplomacy rather than by bombs, has apparently succumbed to the duplicity of its moving party.
When US President Franklin Roosevelt drafted the initial Declaration of the United Nations in 1941, he penned a document that was a rallying cry for the Allies, in the face of what he termed “savage and brutal forces seeking to subjugate the world.” The document boldly stated that “complete victory over their enemies is essential to defend life, liberty, independence and religious freedom, and to preserve human rights and justice in their own lands as well as in other lands…”
In the intervening seventy plus years, the UN has grown in scope and in reach, with divisions and treaty bodies to address trade, commerce, health, communications, human rights, disarmament, food security, refugees, education and more. It now employs over 44,000 people in offices and satellites across the globe.
However, the primary vision of the UN has been subverted by the actions of the leader of the free world. For the US is now actively misleading the UN as to the true nature of her activities.
US Lies about Human Rights
In an earlier article, the attempts by the US to create a false perception to the world human rights community were discussed relevant to specific official statements made by US authorities during the Universal Periodic Review of the Human Rights Record (UPR) of the United States, a cyclical review process held at the UN in Geneva. At the convening of the most recent review in 2015, US officials were found to repeatedly and substantially tweak pivotal statistics and reports in order to cast a false (and benevolent) light upon activities which were uncomfortably redolent of human rights deprivations rather than successes.
Now, we come to assess the truthfulness of the US’s reports to the pivotally important UN 1540 Committee. As in reports on her human rights activities, the US has omitted or falsified critical information in her multiple reports to this body.
The 1540 Committee was established as part of the UN Security Council’s 1540 Resolution, which attempts to address proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The 1540 Resolution, which was unanimously adopted on April 28, 2004, calls upon state parties to take several levels of action in order to halt proliferation of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons. In this article, we will primarily be looking at the US’s compliance with non-proliferation of chemical and biological weapons.
Biological Weapons Lies
Much has already been written about the efforts by the US State Department to lead the Biological Weapons Convention around by its nose. In 2001, just months before the anthrax attacks of September, the US delegation boycotted the efforts by an ad hoc committee to develop a verification protocol for the BWC. Due to this, the BWC remains with no way to verify compliance by its member parties and no real way to assure that violations can be reported and dealt with.
In other words, the BWC is a whole lot of words, blowin’ in the wind.
Rather than any externally verifiable reporting mechanisms, the BWC now relies on “Confidence Building Measures,” wherein each state must faithfully self-report to the Convention at large its activities surrounding bioweapons, including any changes in legislation or any stockpiles. It was confirmed by US Department of State delegate Chris Park in 2011 that the US simply “forgot” to inform the Convention that the Expansion of the Biological Weapons Statute, passed into law as part of the USA PATRIOT Act, gave the US government immunity from violating its own bioweapons laws.
Of equal concern is that the US has actively lied to the BWC. In addition, top UN Disarmament Affairs officials have refused to accept documentation that the US has launched a covert delivery system.
In looking at the US’s reports to the 1540 Committee, we find a similar pattern of omissions and outright falsehoods. Nowhere in the US’s 1540 National Reports is any mention of the aforementioned legislation, passed in the wake of September 11, giving the US government immunity from violation its own bioweapons laws. Rather, the US’s initial 1540 Report, filed in 2004, claims:
In accordance with its obligations under several international agreements, the United States has enacted national implementing statutes, which prohibit the illegal possession or transfer of such weapons. In addition,conspiracies, attempts, or threats to use such weapons are also proscribed.
Read More @ ActivistPost.com
War Danger Intensifies — We Must “Go Like Hell” To Expose and Destroy Russia-Gate
from LaRouchePAC:
The war party in the U.S. is escalating to a fever pitch for war, not only with Russia but now also with China. While the media and the Congress continue making up new excuses to attack Trump, to subvert his effort to build constructive relations with Putin and Xi Jinping, the British and their assets in the U.S. have dropped any pretense of sanity, demanding preparation for a nuclear world war.
Secretary Tillerson today drew out the battle lines in a press briefing at the State Department. Asked about the new sanctions on Russia passed overwhelmingly by the Congress, Tillerson was direct: “I think the American people want the two most powerful nuclear powers in the world to have a better relationship…. Neither the President nor I are are very happy about how Congress went about the sanctions bill, but we can’t let it take us off-track in trying to restore the relationship.”
Some people in the Administration did not get the message — or are out to wreck it. Vice President Mike Pence, speaking at a press conference Monday in Estonia with the three Presidents of the Baltic states, spoke with the coldest of Cold War rhetoric: “A strong and united NATO is more necessary today than at any point since the collapse of communism a quarter-century ago, and no threat looms larger in the Baltic states than the specter of aggression from your unpredictable neighbor to the east.” Today in Georgia, Pence claimed that Russia was occupying one-fifth of Georgian territory (referring to Abkhazia and South Ossetia), then said: “We stand here today in the gap — on a front line of freedom, a front line compromised by Russian aggression nearly a decade ago.”
The same end-game confrontation is being launched by the Congress against China, going for the kill on Trump’s effort to bring the U.S. and China together in the New Silk Road process. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-NC), speaking on NBC this morning, said that “There is a military option to destroy North Korea’s [nuclear] program, and North Korea itself. If there is going to be a war to stop [Kim Jong-un], it will be over there. If thousands are going to die, they are going to die there, they’re not going to die here.” He claimed President Trump agreed, referencing Trump saying that China could stop North Korea’s nuclear program but wasn’t doing enough.
Not to be outdone in the British imperial “divide and conquer” madness, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) sent a letter to the President calling for the suspension of “all mergers and acquisitions in the U.S by Chinese entities.” Keep in mind that Trump wisely invited China to bring its Belt and Road infrastructure development program to the U.S., to help restore the devestated infrastructure and industrial capacity of the nation. Schumer ranted: “It is my assessment that China will not deter North Korea unless the United States exacts greater economic pressure on China. The U.S. must send a clear message to China’s government.”
The message is clear indeed — the congressional leaders from both parties will not allow the rebuilding of the U.S. economy, and would rather launch World War III than to see Trump’s plan succeed.
Here, too, Tillerson today was a voice of reason against the war party: “We certainly don’t blame the Chinese for the situation in North Korea,” he said. “Only the North Koreans are to blame for this situation. We are trying to convey to the North Koreans: We are not your enemy, we are not your threat. But you are presenting an unacceptable threat to us, and we have to respond. And we hope that at some point they will begin to understand that, and then we would like to sit down and have a dialogue with them about the future that will give them the security they seek and the future economic prosperity for North Korea.”
It must be emphasized that the entire Russophobia rests on the now discredited “Russia stole the election” myth, which was constructed out of whole cloth by British intelligence and their collaborators in the corrupted Obama intelligence community. The LaRouche movement is now in full mobilization mode, within the U.S. and around the world, to circulate the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) July report to the President, proving definitively that the Russians did no such thing, but that angry Democrats leaked the infamous DNC emails to WikiLeaks in order to expose the Democratic Party leadership’s internal decision to prevent Bernie Sanders from getting the party nomination over war party asset Hillary Clinton. The British stole the Democratic primary election from Bernie Sanders, and then blamed Russia in order to stop Donald Trump in the November election. They failed in that effort, but are still trying to bring down his presidency today.
A special prosecutor must be appointed to bring these criminals to justice, before the U.S. destroys itself and the world in a new war.
Read More @ LaRouchePAC.com
Trump Battles the CIA: The Korea Ban & Bad Signs in the Market
by Caleb Maupin, New Eastern Outlook:
The ban on travel to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is primarily an attack on the people in the northern part of the Korean Peninsula. It is a move to further isolate the DPRK, and prevent tourist dollars from flowing in, while also preventing fraternization between Americans and citizens of the country. However, the State Department’s decision also has another target in the crosshairs, one much closer to Washington DC.
According to reports in the press, roughly 5,000 US citizens visit the DPRK each year. Most are tourist youth attracted to the mystique and adventure of traveling to a country so widely demonized in the US media. Communist organizations send political delegations and Christian sects such as the Mennonites often send missionaries and aid workers. However, one can be sure that among the 5,000 people who visit the country each year is more than a few American spies, posing as tourists.
When one looks over the recent history of Americans being arrested in North Korea prior to the tragic death of Otto Warmbier, the reasons for the arrest almost always indicate activities that could be described as espionage. Merrill Newman, for example, was a former member of the US military’s “White Tigers” division during the Korean War. The 85 year old man was arrested in the DPRK as he wore a ring with the insignia of this anti-DPRK fighting and intelligence unit. After being arrested he confessed to participating in some of the war crimes against the Korean people during the 1950-1953 war. Newman stated “I did not realize North Korea was still at war” after his eventual release.
The State Department ban on travel to the DPRK is far more extreme than the widely challenged ban on travel to Cuba, enacted as part of the blockade. Officials say that any American who visits DPRK will automatically have their passport invalidated. The constitutionality of such an extreme ban is likely to be challenged.
In the meantime, however, any efforts by the CIA to gather information inside North Korea, or to manipulate or maneuver within its internal affairs, are greatly limited.
Two divisions of the US Federal Government that have long been at odds in issues of foreign policy have been the military and the Central Intelligence Agency. The nature of the two entity’s work lays the basis for their constant disagreement and conflict. The new State Department policy has essentially declared that the DPRK will be handled with military operations, not with “color revolutions,” plots of a coup, manipulation of the youth, or the other shenanigans carried out by the intelligence agencies.
A Longstanding Fight – CIA vs. Pentagon
The US military brass is trained at West Point, and though a great deal of history and background is provided, the focus of their training is military science and the “art of war.” Meanwhile, the Central Intelligence Agency’s administrators come from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, and are trained in the subtle art of expanding US influence and quietly neutralizing those who challenge it.
The favorite word of those who extoll the military and disfavor the CIA is “strength.” The strategies favored by the Pentagon involve demoralizing opponents of US power with “shock and awe” style crushing of enemies. The mass bombing campaigns in Vietnam and Korea did not win credibility and respect for the US internationally, and this was not their intention. The same can be said for Bush’s unilateral invasion of Iraq. The Pentagon does not concern itself with winning friends and influencing people, but with blowing things up, and its favored foreign policy reflects this.
The CIA, on the other hand, tends to favor soft power, negotiations, and internal subversion of global rivals, all done covertly, with the USA looking like a benevolent “Mr. Nice Guy” on the surface. The CIA favors arming and training third party proxies to fight their enemies, while waging a fierce battle in the field of public relations and propaganda.
The clash between the military and the intelligence agencies has played out dramatically in recent US history. It is widely understood that John F. Kennedy began enacting policies that overwhelmingly favored the CIA prior to his death. Kennedy resisted the efforts to escalate military involvement in Vietnam, while funding and emphasizing CIA-linked operations like the Peace Corps. Kennedy’s often quoted the phrase “those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable” stated the CIA’s exact strategy for fighting Communism during the Cold War. The CIA favored “reforms” in US aligned third world regimes that made Marxist-Leninist revolution less appealing, while also presenting the US as a benevolent, charitable country that did not seek to intervene in other countries domestic affairs. The CIA worked to make sure that the hands of the USA during the rise of military dictatorships and the toppling of pro-Soviet world leaders were well hidden.
Prior to Kennedy’s assassination, a hard, right-wing mass movement against him, involving the John Birch Society and many Pentagon linked political figures, called the “Camelot” President a traitor and Soviet agent. Many sections of the military thought Kennedy’s “soft power” strategy for confronting Communism, and his ultimate refusal to invade Cuba with US troops after the CIA’s failed “Bay of Pigs” operation, showed weakness. Films like “Dr. Strangelove” widely mocked the well-known fanaticism of the military brass, which distrusted the intelligence agencies and the ability of politicians to make military decisions. Kennedy’s subtle alliance with the Civil Rights Movement, though inconsistent and widely criticized by activists, also threatened a military brass packed with the sons of wealthy southern families.
After the death of Kennedy, the US military seemed to be on top in the power struggle. Richard Nixon’s electoral victory in 1968, and his “secret plan” to win the Vietnam War with massive bombing, showed the military and its allies as the dominant force in setting policy.
But the demoralizing and unpopular war in Vietnam reversed this by the mid-1970s. Nixon found himself listening and depending more on the advice of Henry Kissinger, opening relations with the People’s Republic of China, and eventually being driven from office. Jimmy Carter took office in 1976 calling himself a “student” of CIA strategist Zbiegniew Brzezinski. Under Reagan, the CIA got stronger, with CIA chief George H.W. Bush rising to be Vice President and eventually Reagan’s successor as commander-in-chief.
The often repeated narrative that the US military’s escalation of the arms race was the key factor in defeating the USSR is said with absolute defensiveness by the Pentagon’s right-wing allies. Though the “strong man Reagan” explanation is more widely understood among the US public, within the circles of power in the USA, the CIA takes more credit.
Under the direction of Brzezinski, who boasted that he “gave the USSR a Vietnam” by funneling money and weapons to insurgents in what he called the “Afghan trap,” the CIA manipulated political situations in Eastern Europe causing unrest and a crisis that eventually toppled the USSR. The CIA widely credits itself for terminating the Soviet Union by manipulating internal problems and applying less blatant forms of external pressure.
The CIA is not a “Conservative” Organization
Many leftists and anti-war activists assume that the CIA is staffed with jingoistic conservatives due to the nature of the job. While the rank-and-file of “the company” may attract a more rightist crowd of Mormons and military types, the leaders of the CIA are not conservative in any sense of the word.
John Brennan, the director of the CIA under Barack Obama admits that he voted for Communist Party Presidential Candidate Gus Hall in the 1976 Presidential election. Brennan was stationed in Riyahl for many years, and at the time of his appointment, many voices came forward to allege that he had actually converted to the Wahabbi brand of Islam. The allegations remain unproven.
The CIA strategist who was most influential between the 1960s and the 1990s was Zbiegnew Brzezinski. To call Brzezinski conservative would be deeply mistaken. Zbeignew’s daughter, Mika Brzezinski is a host on liberal leaning MSNBC’s TV program “Morning Joe.”
Brzezinski developed the art of propaganda, presenting the USA to the world as the homeland of Beatles Music, the paintings of Jackson Pollack, and sexual hedonism. In Eastern Europe, Brzezinski’s policies convinced millions of alienated young people that overthrowing the Marxist-Leninist governments would transform their countries into Disneyland playgrounds packed with consumer goods and never ending rock and roll concerts.
In Afghanistan, Brzezinski worked with a young Saudi billionaire named Osama Bin Laden to fight against the People’s Democratic Party. With US made weapons and funding, complimented by heroin revenue, the insurgents poured acid on women’s faces and hanged literacy campaign volunteers. Brzezinski’s slick propaganda work convinced the world that these Wahabbi extremists were actually Che Guevara-esqu freedom fighters, battling the “Soviet Empire” for freedom. CBS news was even caught airing staged, fake battle footage.
The figure known as George Soros has become a favored talking point of right-wing activists in the USA. They present him as the sinister bank-roller of leftist activism. Long before Soros was promoting Democrats and Liberals in the USA, he was bank-rolling CIA supported anti-Communist “color revolutions.” Soros is known to have funded anti-communist, pro-capitalist and pro-western protest movements in the USSR, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and elsewhere.
During the Cold War, the CIA launched a program called the “Congress for Cultural Freedom.” The program funded the art of Jackson Pollack, as well as the Trotskyist magazine “Partisan Review.” The CIA also launched a project called MK-Ultra which involved distributing hallucinogenic drugs on college campuses.
Read More @ NEO.org
Seymour Hersh Cracks ‘RussiaGate’ as CIA-Planted Lie, Revenge Against Trump
by Eric Zuesse, Global Research:
During the later portion of a phone-call, by the world’s greatest investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh, Hersh has now presented “a narrative [from his investigation] of how that whole f**king thing began,” including who actually is behind the ‘RussiaGate’ lies, and of why they are spreading these lies.
In a youtube video upload-dated August 1st, he reveals from his inside FBI and Washington DC Police Department sources — now, long before the Justice Department’s Special Counsel Robert Mueller will be presenting his official ‘findings’ to the nation — that the charges that Russia had anything to do with the leaks from the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s campaign to Wikileaks, that those charges spread by the press, were a CIA-planted lie, and that what Wikileaks had gotten was only leaks (including at least from the murdered DNC-staffer Seth Rich), and were not from any outsider (including ’the Russians’), but that Rich didn’t get killed for that, but was instead shot in the back during a brutal robbery, which occurred in the high-crime DC neighborhood where he lived. Here is the video, and here is the transcript of it:
—
Seymour Hersh
I’ll tell you what I know:
(Mumble) comes off an FBI report, don’t ask me how, I can figure out, I’ve been around long enough:
The kid gets — I don’t think he [Seth Rich] was murdered [because of this] I don’t think he was murdered because of what he knew, the kid was a nice boy, 27, he was not an ITS person, he learned stuff, he was a data-programmer, but he learned stuff, and so he was living on one street, somewhere, he was living in a very rough neighborhood, and in the exact area where he lived, there had been about, I am sure you know, there had been about 8 or 9 or 10, violent robberies, most of them with somebody brandishing a gun, and I am sure you know, his [the kid’s] hands were marked up, the cops concluded [HERSH SAW THE POLICE REPORT] he fought off the people, he tried to run, and they shot him twice in the back with a 22, small-caliber, and then the kid that did it ran, he got scared.
So, the cops do this, here’s what nobody knows, what I am telling you, now maybe you do know something about it: When you have a death like that, DC cops, as you’re [dealing now with a person who is] dead, you generally don’t zip and go, yep I know, what’s the motive, what’s going on, you have to get to the kid’s apartment and see what you can find.
If he’s dead, you don’t need a warrant, but most cops get a warrant because they don’t know if the guy has a roommate, so they get a warrant, I’m just telling you, there is such a thing. They go in and can’t do much with his computer, [to find the] password, the cops don’t know much about it, so the cops have a cyber unit in DC, and they’re more sophisticated, they come in and look at it. The idea is maybe he has had a series of exchanges with somebody who said ‘I am going to kill you motherfucker’ over a girl, and they can’t get in, the cyber guys are a little better, but they can’t make sense of it, so they call the FBI cyber unit.
The DC unit, the Russian[-monitoring] and field office is a hot-shit unit. The guy running the Washington field office, he’s like a three-star at an army-base, he’s ready [mumble], you know what I mean, he’s going to do a top job. There’s a cyber unit there that’s excellent. What you get in a warrant, the public information you get in a warrant doesn’t include the affidavits underlying why you are going in, what the reason was.
That’s almost never available, I can tell you that — the thesis of a warrant as a public document 99{5f621241b214ad2ec6cd4f506191303eb2f57539ef282de243c880c2b328a528} of the time. So they call in the feds, the feds get through, and here’s what they find [HERSH SAW THE FBI REPORT]. This is according to the FBI report. What they find is, first of all you have to know some basic facts, one of the basic facts is there is no DNC or protected email that exists beyond May 22nd, the last email from either one of those groups. So, what the report says, is:
(2:50-) At some time in late spring, which we’re talking about in June 21st, I don’t know, just late spring early summer, he makes contact with Wikileaks, that’s in his computer, and he makes contact. Now, I have to be careful because I met Julian [Assange] in Europe ten twelve years [ago], I stay the fuck away from people like that. He has invited me and when I am in London, I always get a message, ‘come see me at the Ecuadorean’ [Embassy], and I am fucking not going there. I have enough trouble without getting photographed. He’s under total surveillance by everybody.
They found, what he had done, he [Seth Rich] had submitted a series of documents, emails from DNC — and, by the way, all this shit about the DNC, you know, was it a ‘hack’ or wasn’t it a ‘hack’ — whatever happened, it was the Democrats themselves wrote this shit, you know what I mean? All I know is that, he offered a sample, he sends a sample, you know, I am sure dozens of emails, and said ‘I want money’. Later Wikileaks did get the password [SETH RICH DID SELL WIKILEAKS ACCESS INTO HIS COMPUTER.] He had a drop-box, a [password-]protected drop-box, which isn’t hard to do. I mean you don’t have to be a whiz at IT [information technology], he was not a dumb kid. They got access to the drop-box. This is all from the FBI report.
He also let people know with whom he was dealing, I don’t know how he dealt, I’ll tell you all about Wikileaks in a second, with Wikileaks the mechanism, but according to the FBI report, he shared his box with a couple of friends, so ‘If anything happens to me, it’s not going to solve your problem’, okay? I don’t know what that means. But, anyway, Wikileaks got access. And, before he was killed, I can tell you right now, [Obama’s CIA Director John] Brennan’s an asshole. I’ve known all these people for years, Clapper is sort of a better guy but no rocket-scientist, the NSA guys are fuckin’ morons, and the trouble with all those guys is, the only way they’ll get hired by SAIC, is if they’ll deliver some [government] contracts, it’s the only reason they stayed in. With Trump, they’re gone, they’re going to live on their pension, they’re not going to make it [to great wealth]. I’ve gotta to tell you, guys in that job, they don’t want to live on their pension. They want to be on [corporate] boards like their [mumble] thousand bucks [cut].
I have somebody on the inside, you know I’ve been around a long time, somebody who will go and read a file for me, who, this person is unbelievably accurate and careful, he’s a very high-level guy, he’ll do a favor, you’re just going to have to trust me, I have what they call in my business, long-form journalism, I have a narrative, of how that whole fucking thing began.
(5:50-)
It’s a Brennan operation. It was an American disinformation, and the fucking President, at one point when they even started telling the press — they were back[ground]-briefing the press, the head of the NSA was going and telling the press, the fucking cocksucker Rogers, telling the press that we [they] even know who in the Russian military intelligence service leaked it. All bullshit.
The Witch Hunt for Donald Trump Surpasses the Salem Witch Trials of 1692-93
by Paul Craig Roberts, Paul Craig Roberts
We should be scared to death that Sally Q. Yates served as a prosecutor in the Justice (sic) Department for 27 years. In the New York Times Sally takes high umbrage to Trump’s criticism of his attorney general, Sessions, and blows Trump’s disappointment with Sessions into an attack by Trump on the rule of law. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/28/opinion/sally-yates-protect-the-justice-department-from-president-trump.html
Sally has it backwards. The rule of law is being attacked by the appointment of a special prosecutor to find something on Trump in the absence of any evidence of a crime.
In 1940 US attorney general Robert Jackson warned federal prosecutors against “picking the man and then putting investigators to work, to pin some offense on him. It is in this realm—in which the prosecutor picks some person whom he dislikes or desires to embarrass, or selects some group of unpopular persons and then looks for an offense—that the greatest danger of abuse of prosecuting power lies. It is here that law enforcement becomes personal, and the real crime becomes that of being unpopular with the predominant or governing group, being attached to the wrong political views or being personally obnoxious to, or in the way of, the prosecutor himself.”
Robert Jackson has given a perfect description of what is happening to President Trump at the hands of special prosecutor Robert Mueller. Trump is vastly unpopular with the ruling establishment, with the Democrats, with the military/security complex and their bought and paid for Senators, and with the media for proving wrong all the smart people’s prediction that Hillary would win the election in a landslide.
From day one this cabal has been out to get Trump, and they have given the task of framing up Trump to Mueller. An honest man would not have accepted the job of chief witch-hunter, which is what Mueller’s job is.
The breathless hype of a nonexistent “Russian collusion” has been the lead news story for months despite the fact that no one, not the CIA, not the NSA, not the FBI, not the Director of National Intelligence, can find a scrap of evidence. In desperation, three of the seventeen US intelligence agencies picked a small handful of employees thought to lack integrity and produced an unverified report, absent of any evidence, that the hand-picked handful thought that there might have been a collusion. On the basis of what evidence they do not say.
That nothing more substantial than this led to a special prosecutor shows how totally corrupt justice in America is.
Furthermore the baseless charge itself is an absurdity. There is no law against an incoming administration conversing with other governments. Indeed, Trump, Flynn, and whomever should be given medals for quickly moving to smooth Russian feathers ruffled by the reckless Bush and Obama regimes. What good for anyone can come from ceaselessly provoking a nuclear Russian bear?
The new Russian sanctions bill passed by Congress is an act of reckless idiocy. It was done without consulting Europe which will bear the cost of the bill and might reject it, thus sending shock waves through the fragile American empire.
Congress’ thoughtless bill is a violation of the separation of powers. Foreign policy is the executive branch’s arena. The feckless Obama put the sanctions on. Obviously, if a president can put sanctions on, a president can take sanctions off.
Trump should take his case to the American people, not via Twitter, but with a major speech. Fox News and Alex Jones, either of which has a larger audience than CNN and the New York Times, would broadcast Trump’s speech. Trump should make the case that Congress is over-reaching its constitutional authority and also preventing a reduction in dangerous tensions between nuclear powers. Trump should ask the American people forthright if they want to be driven into war with Russia by gratuitous provocation after provocation.
Because of the powers that Bush and Obama thoughtlessly gave the presidency, Trump can declare a national emergency, cancel Congress, and arrest whomever he wishes. Of course, the presstitute media would do everything possible to sway the people and the US military against the state of emergency, but if there were a real “Russian collusion,” Trump would have Putin initiate a major crisis that would bring the people and the military to Trump’s side. That no such thing will happen is total proof that there is no “Russian collusion.”
Even the Washington Post, an initiator and leader of the breathless “Russian collusion” lie has now published an article, “The quest to Prove Collusion is Crumbling,” that concludes that the entire orchestration is a hoax. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2017/07/27/the-quest-to-prove-collusion-is-crumbling/?utm_term=.eba7acda8a67
As the Washington Post article says, “the story that never was is not happening.”
So the great “superpower America,” the “exceptional, indispensable country,” has wasted 7 months of a new presidency in a hoax when it could have been repairing the relations with Russia and China that were seriously damaged by the criminal Bush and Obama regimes. What are the utter fools that comprise the American Establishment thinking? Why do the morons want high tensions with the two powers that can remove the United States and its impotent European and British vassals from the face of the earth in a few minutes? Who gains from this? What is wrong with the American people that they cannot understand that they are being driven to their destruction? Insouciant America is clearly not a sufficiently strong term.
Read More @ PaulCraigRoberts.org
U.S. employees agree to be microchipped for “convenience” … media pushes RFID tracking as a benefit to workers
by JD Heyes, Natural News
If you had a choice in the matter, would you allow your employer to “chip” you — that is, have a tracking device medically implanted in your body so your company could keep tabs on you 24/7/365?
If you say no, you’re no doubt in the majority. But some employees of a Wisconsin-based company have actually agreed to let their employer have RFID tracking devices implanted in them.
As reported by ABC affiliate KSTP, the company will become the first in the United States to offer microchip implantation for its workers.
“It’s the next thing that’s inevitably going to happen, and we want to be a part of it,” said Todd Westby, the CEO of Three Square Market, a firm that designs software for company break rooms that are common in larger office settings.
As the local affiliate reported:
Just as people are able to purchase items at the market using phones, Westby wants to do the same thing using a microchip implanted inside a person’s hand.
“We’ll come up, scan the item,” he explained to the local station, as he demonstrated how the technology would work in an actual break room market kiosk.
“We’ll hit pay with a credit card, and it’s asking to swipe my proximity payment now. I’ll hold my hand up, just like my cell phone, and it’ll pay for my product,” he said.
Already more than 50 of the company’s employees have agreed to be chipped; the process began in late July. The chips are about the size of a grain of rice, the local network reported.
In addition to purchasing kiosk items, employees will also utilize the chip to enter the business premises and to log on to their computers.
The cost of each chip is around $300, and the company is paying for them. The device is implanted between the thumb and forefinger, and the data contained therein is encrypted and secure (until hackers figure out a way around the firewall).
“There’s no GPS tracking at all,” said Westby (for now).
He further offered that microchipping is the “next evolution” in how we electronically pay for things and even said the technology one day may replace passports.
“We foresee the use of RFID technology to drive everything from making purchases in our office break room to opening doors, use of copy machines, locking into our office computers, unlocking phones, sharing business cards, [and] storing medical/health information.”
Zero Hedge noted that a Swedish company, Epicenter, also began implanting RFID devices inside workers’ hands — and the workers were all about it. They also loved the fact that the chips made getting into work and workstations much easier — that, and the fact that co-workers even threw parties for everyone who agreed to be chipped.
“The biggest benefit I think is convenience,” Patrick Mesterson, co-founder and CEO of Epicenter, said. “It basically replaces a lot of things you have, other communication devices, whether it be credit cards or keys.”
Yeah, and such devices also replace your privacy — which is something that is not as cherished by Europeans as it is by Americans. After all, it’s part of our Constitution.
What Westby said about this technology becoming an inevitable part of the future is reallydisturbing, but he’s probably right. In a world where automation will be replacing human workers by the millions, just imagine a company requiring new hires to be chipped as part of any employment arrangement. How many people would jump at the chance to land a job when they’re hungry and desperate, even if they had to agree to be chipped? (RELATED: Lawmaker Introduces Bill To Prohibit Forced Microchipping)
And this says nothing of an eventual government requirement for the same thing. Think about it: Congress passed a law in 2005, as an “anti-terrorism” measure, called the REAL ID Act; it is a mandate on federal agencies that restrict “the circumstances under which they may accept state-issued driver’s licenses and identification cards for official purposes,” the Department of Homeland Security states. If you don’t have a federally-compliant, state-issued “ID,” you now can’t board a commercial flight or enter a federal courthouse.
This technology is not coming, it’s here. And at some point, you’ll have to decide whether it’s worth it to you to accept “the chip.”
Read More @ NaturalNews.com
Facial Recognition ID Begins To Spread From Planes To Trains
by Nicholas West, Activist Post
The march continues to accelerate toward a future of biometric ID for all travel.
Regular readers might know that over the past several months I’ve been covering some disturbing developments at airports in the U.S. and internationally that seem to show an acceleration of the plan to use biometric identification in a variety of ways.
On May 19th I reported on a new program initiated by Delta Airlines at Minneapolis-St. Paul airport to have automated baggage kiosks for “priority customers” that will first scan a traveler’s passport, then their face in order to match identity to checked luggage. It was promoted as a “pilot program” that Delta launched to seek customer feedback in the hope that it could be rolled out more widely in the future. That program has now entered phase 2 at Reagan National Airport with biometric boarding passes for rewards members.
JetBlue stated they will “test facial- and fingerprint-recognition technology at two U.S. airports to replace boarding passes, building on industry efforts to increase security and ease passage through airports.”
These stories were smaller pieces to a larger puzzle that U.S. Customs and Border Protection is attempting to solve per federal mandate. CBP announced on June 15th that they would integrate government databases with a private company to speed up biometric processing.
Moreover, the Department of Homeland Security has made it clear that biometric ID will eventually be mandatory for foreign travel, saying that “the only way for an individual to ensure he or she is not subject to collection of biometric information when traveling internationally is to refrain from traveling.” That’s right, no opt-out, just stay home.
OK, so no worries – airline travel sucks these days anyway, right? And most people probably can’t even afford it. Well, like every method of incremental control, it doesn’t stop where it begins; it just keeps gaining speed as it heads down the proverbial slippery slope.
So here we go – the BBC is reporting on “How facial recognition could replace train tickets.”
A facial recognition system designed to replace the need for tickets on trains is being tested in the UK.
An early version that uses two near-infrared lights to help a single camera determine texture and orientation of each pixel it captures was shown to BBC Click.
The system, being developed by the Bristol Robotics Lab, is being partly funded by government and the private sector.
Researchers told the programme that they believe it will successfully identify passengers without the need for them to stop walking and could replace ticket gates.
Read More @ ActivistPost.com
