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Whoopsie daisy! USAID might have 'mistakenly' funded terrorists to the tune of $700 million


RT
Thu, 01 Nov 2018 17:26 UTC
Al-Nusra
© AFP / Fadi al-Halabi
Al-Nusra Front fighter, Syria
A recent USAID audit report found that some of its humanitarian programs for war-torn Syria and Iraq might have assisted terrorist groups. The assistance in question amounts to nearly $700 million.

The agency in charge of foreign aid provided by Washington has done a poor job to mitigate risks for its projects to end up in wrong hands, Official USAID Office of Inspector General (OIG) found. The paper, highlighting the risk of terrorists benefiting from US foreign assistance among other vulnerabilities, was published on September 25.

To provide help, USAID gives awards to public international organizations (PIOs) which then deal with the troubled areas. However, the way the organizations use the funds might have some flaws and does not fully comply with the 2008 State Department's guidance. The latter is aimed to secure the money from assistance programs doesn't land in the wrong hands helping terrorist groups, according to the report.

Comment: Good news for terrorists sympathizers everywhere! Now there's no need to traverse the dangerous and seedy underbelly of making financial transfers to your favorite terrorist organization. Just donate to USAID today with quick, easy, and secure payments, and rest assured your money will be funneled 'accidentally' to your fiendish head-chopping friends!

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Eye 1

DARPA seeks FAA approval for military drones over US cities by 2030

Nicolas West
Activist Post
Wed, 31 Oct 2018 16:50 UTC
DARPA drone surveillance
Just a little over 10 years after drone surveillance inside U.S. borders was declared a conspiracy theory, it is now an indisputable fact of life. So, too, are military grade drones along the "border," which in reality constitutes a 100-mile-wide swath that encircles the continental United States and 2/3 of its population.

According to a new report from Defense One, this level of access is still seen as a restriction by the DARPA-directed military apparatus. As new forms of autonomous aircraft take to the skies such as the latest Blackhawk helicopter drones that could be ready by 2019, DARPA and aircraft developers want permission to fly over large cities as needed. Utilizing a new artificial intelligence system that is literally called MATRIX, developers see an opportunity for more flexibility in potential use. Of course, surveillance isn't mentioned among those uses:
After that, similar to Predator drone maker General Atomics, they have their eyes on FAA certification to fly large, unmanned aircraft within the continental United States, to help ferry people and supplies from the mainland to offshore oil rigs, among other potential jobs. Today, large drones likes Predators are forbidden to fly over the U.S. except in a handful of largely unpopulated areas along the U.S.Mexico border.

The FAA is now figuring out how to change guidelines to allow unmanned planes and helicopters to fly over big cities. "We are working with the FAA on that. Our stated goal is 2030. It very much depends on rule making. We are certainly hoping for sooner, for the mid-2020s, to field it," he said.
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Laptop

Facebook's vaunted transparency tool spectacularly fails to catch fake ads by 'US Senators & ISIS'


RT
Thu, 01 Nov 2018 16:41 UTC
Mark Zuckerberg
© Reuters / Charles Platiau
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and founder of Facebook Inc. at the Viva Tech start-up and technology gathering on May 24, 2018 in Paris, France.
Facebook's new political transparency disclosure tool failed to catch 100% of the fake ads submitted by journalists - even recycled "Russian troll" posts from 2016. Fake candidates, Cambridge Analytica and even ISIS were accepted.

A week after revealing it had fooled Facebook into giving it approval to run ads in the name of Vice President Mike Pence, DNC chairman Tom Perez, and even the Islamic State terrorist group, Vice attempted the ruse a second time - and found it was just as easy to pose as all 100 US senators using the same approach.
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Footprints

Saudis treated 'lying toad' Boris Johnson to £14,000 trip two weeks before Khashoggi murder


RT
Thu, 01 Nov 2018 15:54 UTC
Boris Johnson Adel al-Jubeir
© Reuters/Justin Tallis/Pool
Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir (L) is greeted by Britain's Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson.
Former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson took part in a £14,000 all-expenses-paid trip to Saudi Arabia, two weeks before the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the country's Istanbul consulate, parliamentary papers revealed.

Johnson flew to Jeddah on September 19, for a three-day visit, where he reportedly was treated to accommodation, food and travel by the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

An entry in the Commons register of members' interests read that Johnson's goal was "meeting with regional figures to promote education for women and girls."
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Boat

Russia, Iran, India seek new transport corridor to serve as quicker and cheaper alternative to Suez Canal


RT
Thu, 01 Nov 2018 15:18 UTC
freight ship
© Getty Images / Anucha Sirivisansuwan
Officials from India, Iran, and Russia are going to meet next month to negotiate a large joint project aimed at launching a new cargo transport corridor that could become a cheaper and shorter alternative to the Suez Canal.

The new shipment passage, North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), is set to connect the Indian Ocean with the Persian Gulf through Iran to Russia and Europe, according to Iranian state-owned news outlet Press TV. The 7,200-kilometers long corridor will combine sea and rail routes.

"The INSTC is the shortest multimodal transportation route linking the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf via Iran to Russia and North Europe," India's Ministry of Commerce and Industry said in a statement, adding that trilateral talks between the parties are scheduled on November 23.
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Attention

Why Mexico's president-elect Obrador is telling its citizens they "must leave their towns and find a life in the United States"...

sundance
The Conservative Treehouse
Fri, 22 Jun 2018 15:27 UTC
Andrés Manuel López Obrador

President-elect of Mexico Andrés Manuel López Obrador
We've been sharing this intensely predictable issue since late 2017. Andrés Manuel López Obrador, or "AMLO", is going to be the next President of Mexico. The self-described "soft Marxist", a Mexican Hugo Chavez, has been so far ahead of all other candidates - the outcome of the July 1st Mexican election is a foregone conclusion.

Interestingly, people are only now starting to take notice because AMLO is openly telling his fellow countrymen they must flood the U.S. border.
(From the Daily Caller) [...] "And soon, very soon - after the victory of our movement - we will defend all the migrants in the American continent and all the migrants in the world," Obrador said, adding that immigrants "must leave their towns and find a life in the United States." He then declared it as "a human right we will defend."
Most political observers read this and think it sounds crazy. They make comparisons to a U.S. presidential candidate telling Americans to flee to Canada (Daily Wire example). That type of perspective shows a disconnect. The paradigm, and frame of reference, is entirely wrong.

Comment: A dissenting view: Daily Wire misquotes Mexican presidential candidate - wrongly claims he called for 'mass exodus' to US

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Cult

The 'Russia collusion' story has revealed the Deep State scheme to obstruct President Trump

Sharyl Attkisson
The Epoch Times
Wed, 24 Oct 2018 15:00 UTC
clapper brennan mccabe comey
© Getty Images
(L-R) Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan, former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, and former FBI Director James Comey.
Special counsel Robert Mueller is more than a year and five months into his investigation into whether President Donald Trump "colluded" in some illegal fashion with Russian President Vladimir Putin (or any other Russians). But Mueller has yet to reveal what he has - or hasn't - concluded.

On the other hand, there's now an impressive body of public evidence to address another facet of this international controversy: collusion against Trump.

Evidence on this matter has trickled out slowly over the course of about two years. It has come in the form of sworn testimony from witnesses interviewed by Congress, information revealed by the Justice Department's inspector general, government documents and text messages, and court files.

Comment: The swamp is wide, deep, and stinks to high heaven. Draining it may be a matter of decades, if it's possible at all.

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Heart - Black

Aid for publicity: Saudis, UAE demanded favorable PR from UN in exchange for aid to Yemen


RT
Thu, 01 Nov 2018 11:25 UTC
UN aid Yemen
© Reuters / Abduljabbar Zeyad
A man carries aid kits received from UN agencies in Hodeidah, Yemen June 27, 2018
Saudi Arabia and the UAE demanded favorable PR from UN aid agencies at an unprecedented level, including articles written in major Western newspapers, in return for a $930 million aid package for Yemen, leaked documents reveal.

The Gulf kingdoms said future humanitarian donations to the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) would be reflected by the amount of positive humanitarian coverage both countries received for their efforts in Yemen, now in its fourth year of civil war, according to the internal UN files seen by Guardian.

Both nations are heavily involved in the conflict, joining after Houthi militants overthrew the government, with the Saudi-led bombing campaign responsible for scores of civilian deaths and casualties. The destruction caused by the air campaign has devastated infrastructure and areas essential to aid supply, with over half the Yemeni population - some 14 million - now at risk of famine, according to the UN's own statistics.
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Bad Guys

CIA coder in prison for leaking hacking secrets to WikiLeaks claims he's being tortured


RT
Thu, 01 Nov 2018 10:43 UTC
CIA Logo
© Reuters
The Central Intelligence Agency's logo seen at the agency's headquarters in Langley, Virginia
A former CIA coder who allegedly gave files about the agency's hacking tools to WikiLeaks claims he is being tortured in a Manhattan prison, where he is currently being held while awaiting trial for espionage.

In a letter to a New York judge, filed on Monday but later mysteriously removed from court records, Joshua Schulte claims he is being subjected to "torture" in Manhattan's Metropolitan Correctional Center.

"Otto Warmbier received better treatment in North Korea that I have received in America," Schulte's letter reads. "Terrorists receive better treatment in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba - I have seen the footage myself," Schulte added.

Warmbier was detained in North Korea in 2016 for attempting to steal a propaganda poster. After allegedly being tortured in detention, Warmbier was returned to the US in a vegetative state in June 2017, where he died several days later.
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USA

Trump slams Paul Ryan: 'He knows nothing' about birthright citizenship


RT
Thu, 01 Nov 2018 10:43 UTC
Donald Trump and Paul Ryan
© Carlos Barria / Reuters
President Donald Trump and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, December 2017.
President Donald Trump seems to have had enough with his Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, saying that the establishment Republican 'knows nothing' about birthright citizenship and vowing a new GOP majority would do a better job.

Ryan should be focusing on preserving the Republican majority in the House of Representatives, Trump tweeted on Wednesday, rather than giving opinions on the issue of birthright citizenship, "something he knows nothing about!"

"Our new Republican Majority will work on this," as well as securing the border and closing the immigration loopholes, Trump added.
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