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Peter Schweizer: Stock Act means Sen. Richard Burr should be prosecuted for insider trading

Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC)
© AP Photo/Alex BrandonSen. Richard Burr (R-NC)
If Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) is not prosecuted by the Department of Justice for insider trading, then the Stock Act is "meaningless," warned Peter Schweizer, senior contributor to Breitbart News and author of Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America's Progressive Elite.

Schweizer joined Friday's edition of SiriusXM's Breitbart News Tonight with host Rebecca Mansour and special guest host John Hayward to discuss Burr's selling of between $628,000 and $1.72 million in stock ahead of coronavirus-related market declines.

"Richard Burr's [stock sell-off] is a classic case of insider trading," determined Schweizer. "If Richard Burr was an executive at a corporation and he had received a closed door briefing that said a company's sales were going to go down dramatically, and he sold pretty much all of his stock, it would be insider trading."

Comment:


Cell Phone

Mass surveillance in Israel: Is it to fight virus spread or curtail democracy?

2 with masks
© AP/Ariel Schalit
It's been several days since Israel began using a mass surveillance system - initially developed by the country's internal secret service (Shin Bet) - to track coronavirus patients and alert those who have been in proximity to them that they too could be contagious and thus should isolate themselves for 14 days.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who initiated the move, said the system was a pivotal tool to curb the spread of COVID-19, which has claimed the life of one person. More than 800 others are being treated for the virus in hospitals across the country.

The technology also enables Israeli police to ensure that those quarantined remained indoors, as images emerge showing dozens of Israelis taking to the beach despite calls to avoid crowds.

Israeli radio reports suggest that based on the system the police conducted 12,000 home visits in recent days and filed a hundred criminal complaints against those who dared to breach the newly imposed restrictions.

Comment: How much of the lockdown/surveillance is truly virus-related, security related or Netanyahu grandstanding for personal gain? It seems Coronavirus has many uses.


Calendar

Premature? The US debt crisis was supposed to happen around 2035. Is Covid-19 the stimulus?

buildings-money
© Getty ImagesIt's all up in the air!
The overall price tag of the fiscal stimulus package in the US could be around one trillion dollars. With record budget deficits and its national debt at $23 trillion, is the US hastening toward a fiscal reckoning?

The Trump administration wants to send direct cash payments to Americans in the coming weeks to help them cope with the economic ravages of coronavirus, part of a massive relief package developed between the White House and Capitol Hill. The overall price tag of the package is more than $1 trillion, making it one of the largest federal emergency fiscal packages ever assembled.

Whether this is a temporary downturn or a full-blown recession, two things will happen. Tax revenues will fall as people's income drops, and Federal spending will rise. The result will be higher deficits.

Comment: The question is not 'whether' massive spending is 'pushing US into dangerous territory and potentially out of control', it is how soon. One more trillion, just shortens the buffer with more wear and tear on the printing machines.


Propaganda

Dark money progressives spend millions to politicize coronavirus, vilify Trump and spread fear

trump leaving
© Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty ImagesUS President Donald Trump
Millions of Americans across the country are, day-by-day, adjusting their lives to better cope with the economic, social, and political impacts caused by the Chinese coronavirus pandemic, as a dark money network simultaneously works overtime to further politicize the festering crisis.

A Democrat-aligned Super PAC announced on Tuesday that it will spend $5 million on negative ads targeting President Trump's response to the coronavirus. The Washington Post reported on Tuesday:
"The campaign from Pacronym โ€” a political action committee affiliated with the nonprofit group Acronym โ€” represents the first major pivot to coronavirus-related advertising fewer than 250 days from the election."
Acronym owns the technology firm Shadow, Inc., which was responsible for developing the infamous app used in the chaotic Iowa caucuses. As RealClearPolitics noted, the firm's founder and CEO, Tara McGowan:
"worked for Barack Obama's 2012 campaign and previously served as the digital director for NextGen America, a progressive organization founded by presidential candidate Tom Steyer."
Acronym is funded by the "liberal dark money group" New Venture Fund, which is "part of a larger group called Arabella Advisors, which provides philanthropic guidance and manages four nonprofits," according to the nonpartisan ethics watchdog group Americans for Public Trust. Those also include the Sixteen Thirty Fund, Windward Fund, and Hopewell Fund.

The financial web, however, goes far beyond those connections.

Arrow Down

Cyber experts strike down Crowdstrike's allegations Russia hacked the DNC

screen code
© unknown
On June 16, 2019, we presented arguments against the Mueller gang's assertion that the DNC was hacked by Russians. Cyber expert Yaacov Apelbaum posted an incredible report with information basically proving that the DNC was not hacked by the Russians. Today we have additional information supporting the case that Russians never hacked the DNC.

Eye 2

Netanyahu pledges to resign 'without shticks & tricks' amid deadlock over coalition

netanyahu
© REUTERS / Oded Balilty/Pool
The political gridlock in Israel shows no sign of abating even after holding its third parliamentary elections in a year in early March, amid attempts by Prime Minister Netanyahu's Likud and the Blue and White alliance to form a coalition government.

In an interview with Israel's Channel 12 on Saturday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that his Likud and the Blue and White alliance led by Benny Gantz had wrapped up talks on a possible line-up of a national unity government.

This stipulates that he would first serve as prime minister to later be replaced by Gantz.

"I will leave office on the agreed date. There will be no shticks and tricks. Millions of Israelis are waiting for us", he pointed out.


Comment: Netanyahu is infamous for both those qualities - and worse - so one wonders what (other) schemes he has in mind. For now, he seems to be benefiting from the contrived coronavirus hysteria, with the indictments against him (and possibly the charges against his wife) on hold during the state of emergency.


Comment: One wonders what else Netanyahu will use the current state of emergency in Israel to his own benefit.

See also:


Attention

World War III has begun and WE are the enemy

World War III
© Corbett Report
Here's a question for you: How do you know when you're at war?

When there are troops on the streets? When mass panic hits? When there's martial law and the public is told to batten down the hatches for a months or years-long siege? When world "leaders" tell their populations that the enemy is to blame for all the carnage?

If these are the criteria, then that means we're at war right now.

Troops on the streets? Check.

Mass panic? Check.

Martial law and the public being told to batten down the hatches? Check and check.

World leaders telling their populations that the enemy is to blame for all the carnage? Check and check.

Yes, by all of those metrics, we're at war. But no one is calling it war. Why not? Because, in the minds of the public, there really is only one metric for judging our war status: Whether troops are in the battlefield shooting at each other or not. Surely that's war, right?

But then, why is Merkel invoking World War II in her attempt to explain the current crisis to the German people? Why are we being told that the times we are living through are worse than war? Why is misleader after misleader, from Trump to Trudeau to seemingly everyone else, invoking old war time emergency measures and preparing for full-scale martial law?

Still not enough to convince you that the world is now at war? Well then why did Donald Trump declare war on coronavirus and anoint himself a "war-time president"? Why did Macron look steely-eyed into the cameras and pronounce "nous somme en guerre"? Why are Boris Johnson, Moon Jae-in, and seemingly every other so-called "leader" in the world piling on in their declarations of war?

The truth is that the world is at war now. And that war is World War III. The difference is that no one (as yet) understands the nature of this war, who its combatants are, and what the objective of those waging it really is.

I know you're incredulous, so allow me to explain.

USA

Inside the Military's top secret plans if Coronavirus cripples the Government

Donald Trump
© CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTYU.S. President Donald Trump to hold coronavirus news conference on Friday, March 13.
Even as President Trump says he tested negative for coronavirus, the COVID-19 pandemic raises the fear that huge swaths of the executive branch or even Congress and the Supreme Court could also be disabled, forcing the implementation of "continuity of government" plans that include evacuating Washington and "devolving" leadership to second-tier officials in remote and quarantined locations.

But Coronavirus is also new territory, where the military itself is vulnerable and the disaster scenarios being contemplated -- including the possibility of widespread domestic violence as a result of food shortages -- are forcing planners to look at what are called "extraordinary circumstances".

Above-Top Secret contingency plans already exist for what the military is supposed to do if all the Constitutional successors are incapacitated. Standby orders were issued more than three weeks ago to ready these plans, not just to protect Washington but also to prepare for the possibility of some form of martial law.

Map

The insane choice of Baltic states to align themselves with US-NATO against Russia

Baltic states
In 2017, RAND Corporation published in its associated media Small Wars Journal an article by the researchers Marta Kepe and Jan Osburg, outlining a strategic defense plan for the Baltic countries in the event of a Russian invasion. The authors claim that Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia will manage their weaknesses to face the Russians, overcoming their population and military deficit through the participation of civilians in the conflicts, working with the armed forces to create a "total defense" plan that would make the invasion too costly and laborious for Russia.

Subsequently, the RAND Corporation article was mentioned in a paper by the National Interest magazine, authored by Michael Peck, in which the author studies the Baltic defense strategy, speculating about "total defense" and its efficiency in a possible case of Russian invasion. The researcher, finally, takes a pessimistic conclusion, stating that, despite all efforts, nothing will change the fact that Russia is a large country and the Baltic States are small and weak.

In March last year, the renowned American magazine Foreign Policy published an article by Mikheil Saakashvili, former president of Georgia, claiming that Russia's next "targets" would be European nations. In the text, Saakashvili considers the possibility of a Russian attack on the Baltic countries, saying that President Vladimir Putin sees them as real threats because they are "functional democracies on the Russian border". After developing his reasoning, the author comes to the conclusion that this invasion will not occur, pointing other countries as future "targets" of Russia. However, even though Saakashvili does not believe in the possibility of a Russian invasion, rumors about a Russian plan to invade and annex the Baltic nations have generated unfounded tensions in the region.

Comment: An irrational and politically-motivated mind-virus threatens to undermine whatever stability Estonia and other Baltic states have remaining to them:


Black Magic

The Pompeo and Netanyahu conspiracy to push Trump into declaring war with Iran failed - but try, try again

Pompeo Netanyahu
Though it narrowly averted war with Iran this January, the Trump administration is still pushing for all-out military conflict. The architects of the drive to war, Mike Pompeo and Benjamin Netanyahu, have relied on a series of cynical provocations to force Trump's hand.

The administration of President Donald Trump may escape the most recent conflict with Iran without war, however, a dangerous escalation is just over the horizon. And as before, the key factors driving the belligerence are not outraged Iraqi militia leaders or their allies in Iran, but Trump's secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has long sought to draw the US into a military confrontation with Iran.

Throughout the fall of 2019, Netanyahu ordered a series of Israeli strikes against Iranian allies in Iraq and against Lebanese Hezbollah units. He and Pompeo hoped the attacks would provoke a reaction from their targets that could provide a tripwire outright war with Iran. As could have been expected, corporate US media missed the story, perhaps because it failed to reinforce the universally accepted narrative of a hyper-aggressive Iran emboldened by Trump's failure to "deter" it following Iran's shoot-down of a U.S. drone in June, and an alleged Iranian attack on Saudi oil facility in September.

Pompeo and John Bolton set the stage for the tripwire strategy in May 2019 with a statement by national security adviser John Bolton citing "troubling and escalatory indications and warnings," implying an Iranian threat without providing concrete details. That vague language echoed a previous vow by Bolton that "any attack" by Iran or "proxy" forces "on United States interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force."

Comment: Trump has been putting the brakes on an all-out war with Iran. That Netanyahu wants war with Iran is guaranteed - it feeds his 'political relevance', keeps him in power and out of jail. Pompeo's collusion, an ex-CIA chief now in the position to influence the administration's foreign policy, is also a given. Have the events of the past year confirmed Porter's theory?