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Star of David

US bill making it a federal crime to support BDS sends shockwaves through progressive community

Adam Schiff
Adam Schiff, one of the supporters of bill making it a crime to support BDS.
There is only one story in the news, for followers of the Israel/Palestine conflict, and that is Glenn Greenwald and Ryan Grim's report at the Intercept yesterday on new legislation in the Congress that would criminalize support for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS).

The bill is such a crude example of overreach by the Israel lobby that it is sure to backfire on its supporters as Greenwald and Grim's report ricochets around the Democratic Party:
But now, a group of 43 senators — 29 Republicans and 14 Democrats — wants to implement a law that would make it a felony for Americans to support the international boycott against Israel, which was launched in protest of that country's decades-old occupation of Palestine. The two primary sponsors of the bill are Democrat Ben Cardin of Maryland and Republican Rob Portman of Ohio. Perhaps the most shocking aspect is the punishment: Anyone guilty of violating the prohibitions will face a minimum civil penalty of $250,000 and a maximum criminal penalty of $1 million and 20 years in prison.

The proposed measure, called the Israel Anti-Boycott Act (S. 720), was introduced by Cardin on March 23. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports that the bill "was drafted with the assistance of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee." Indeed, AIPAC, in its 2017 lobbying agenda, identified passage of this bill as one of its top lobbying priorities for the year:

The bill's co-sponsors include the senior Democrat in Washington, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, his New York colleague Kirsten Gillibrand, and several of the Senate's more liberal members, such as Ron Wyden of Oregon, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, and Maria Cantwell of Washington.
There is similar legislation in the House, also sponsored by liberal heroes.

Bullseye

Flashback Government Mind Control: MKULTRA & LSD


Comment: It's been exactly 40 years since the public became aware of the US government's secret program to create mind controlled individuals, MKULTRA. In light of the occasion, it's worth reminding ourselves exactly what the "Exceptional Nation" is capable of doing to its own citizens.


Abby Martin takes a look at the US government's morbid history of mind-control, MKULTRA, and the testing of deadly chemicals on US citizens.


Map

Turkish government says not behind publication of US base locations in Syria

U.S. soldiers
© Khalil Ashawi / Reuters
The government in Ankara had nothing to do with a story published by the Turkish state-run Anadolu Agency, which revealed classified information on US bases and outposts in Syria, according to President Erdogan's spokesman.

Speaking at a news conference on Thursday, spokesman Ibrahim Kalin told the media that the government played no role in the publication, which the Pentagon criticized as "endangering" US forces, Reuters reports.

The list of 10 US outposts in the Syrian provinces of Aleppo, Hasakah and Raqqa, including detailed information about troop numbers, equipment and operational procedures, was made public by Anadolu on Monday.

The locations of most of the bases were previously completely unknown or featured only in outside reports. They are all, however, in areas controlled by Kurdish militias backed by the US but considered "terrorist" by Ankara.

Snakes in Suits

'It takes two to tango': Germany threatens Turkey with major policy overhaul

Angela Merkel and Recep Tayyip Erdogan
© Tobias Schwarz / Reuters
Berlin said it is losing its temper with Ankara, urging Turkey to release Germans detained on terrorism charges and "return to European values," or face shrinking investment, restrictions on tourism and curbs to EU financial aid.

Speaking in Berlin on Thursday, Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel promised a major overhaul of Germany's policy toward Turkey, threatening to further strain the already-tense ties between the two NATO members.

"We cannot continue on as before," Gabriel said, according to a Foreign Office press release. "We have to be clearer than before, so the authorities in Ankara understand that their policies are not without consequences."

"It takes two to tango!" he said. "I cannot see that the Turkish government is ready at the moment to go this way with us. It's pitiful!"

Laptop

Dark web marketplaces AlphaBay and Hansa shut down

AlphaBay site seizure
© USDOJ
Two of the largest dark web marketplaces have been shut down following a "landmark" international law enforcement investigation.

The AlphaBay and Hansa sites had been associated with the trade in illicit items such as drugs, weapons, malware and stolen data.

According to Europol, there were more than 250,000 listings for illegal drugs and toxic chemicals on AlphaBay. Hansa was seized and covertly monitored for a month before being deactivated.

The agency said it believed the bust would lead to hundreds of new investigations in Europe.

Info

Oil and the Global Conflict

Chinese and UN soldiers
Oil prices remain below $50 per barrel. Saudi Arabia and its longtime ally Qatar are now clashing. The situation on the Korean Peninsula is intensifying. The USA is being more and more hostile to China, while Venezuela faces an internal crisis.

How does one make sense of all this? Are these just random world events, which happen to all be occurring simultaneously? Hardly. These events can be understood and explained in the context of the ongoing global conflict. Much like during the Cold War, two different social and political systems are clashing with each other. Unlike the Cold War, the lines are not at all ideologically clear, but the underlying contradiction remains the same.

The dominant force in the world today is western liberal capitalism. Banking institutions and major corporations controlled by very wealthy people in New York City, Silicon Valley, London, Paris, and Frankfurt sit at the center of a global financial empire. They function as monopolists, collaborating with states to eliminate their competitors and keep the profits of the world market flowing directly toward them.

A bloc of independent countries are resisting their domination. The emerging bloc of nations seek to bring themselves up from poverty. They do not want to remain impoverished client states within the western financial apparatus, but rather to become modernized, self-reliant and developed countries. In order to develop and establish independence, these countries have been forced to adopt more or less state controlled, centrally planned economies.

Eye 2

Samantha Power emerges as central figure in House investigation over "unmasking" leaks to press

samantha power
Last week Fox News reported that more senior Barack Obama officials are thought to be involved in the unmasking of Donald Trump and his associates during the 2016 presidential election.

As the mainstream media foams at the mouth over "fake crime" Trump-Russia connections, the boomerang effect of Obama unmasking "real crime" is growing, and now has ensnared former UN Ambassador Samantha Power.

Propaganda

Kremlin blasts reports of a Putin-Trump secret meeting at G20 as "manifestation of schizophrenia"

Trumputin
© Carlos Barria / Reuters
The Kremlin says media reports stating that US President Donald Trump held a second "secret" meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin during G20 summit displays a lack of understanding and has prompted astonishment in Moscow.

"The use of such notion as "undisclosed" or "secret" meeting causes absolute astonishment and lack of understanding," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian state TV, Channel One.

Peskov said there was only one meeting between the two leaders on the sidelines of the summit and it was officially announced; and that Putin and Trump repeatedly exchanged their opinions during the [summit]. Putin's spokesman also said "there were no undisclosed or secret meeting," adding, that these claims are "absurd."

Peskov told Channel One that the existence of such reports in the MSM demonstrates the "unhealthy attitude" of the US establishment towards Russia.

"Presenting something like this as a meeting that could be kept secret from anybody is a manifestation of... schizophrenia," he said.

Comment: RT has more on this 'non-event":
Bremmer reported: "Never in my life as a political scientist have I seen two countries — major countries — with a constellation of national interests that are as dissonant, while the two leaders seem to be doing everything possible to make nice and be close to each other," he told Bloomberg's Charlie Rose. The two leaders spoke through Putin's interpreter, who, according to Bremmer, was the only third person to have been present during their conversation.

"There was no 'second meeting' between President Trump and President Putin, just a brief conversation at the end of a dinner. The insinuation that the White House has tried to 'hide' a second meeting is false, malicious and absurd," the administration explained in a statement.

Addressing claims that the absence of the US translator might have been a breach of national security protocol, the statement said the translator who accompanied Trump spoke Japanese but had no command of Russian; that was why the two leaders used the Russian translator.

There was nothing sensational in the exchange as all leaders who gathered for the dinner "circulated throughout the room and spoke with one another freely," the White House said. "It is not merely perfectly normal, it is part of a President's duties, to interact with world leaders."



Snakes in Suits

Clintons facilitated Haiti project donor sham, defrauding the US out of millions for a project that never happened

Osorio and Clinton
© National ReviewScumbags Claudio Osorio and Bill Clinton
A federal agency rushed to approve funding for a Clinton donor's sham Haiti recovery project that ended up defrauding the U.S. government out of millions, according to court transcripts and internal government documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

Miami businessman Claudio Osorio, who is currently serving 12 years in federal prison on fraud charges, leveraged his relationship with Bill and Hillary Clinton to help his company InnoVida obtain a $10 million loan from the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) for a Haiti housing project in 2010. OPIC is an independent government agency that submits its annual budget requests through the State Department and works closely with the agency.

Bill Clinton helped arrange for a high-powered Florida law firm to represent Osorio during loan negotiations with OPIC, according to court testimony. An internal OPIC memo said Hillary Clinton was prepared to marshal State Department resources to assist with the donor's project.

InnoVida was supposed to use the funding to build houses in Haiti after the earthquake, but it defaulted on the loan and the homes were never built.

After InnoVida went bankrupt in 2011, a court-appointed investigator said it appeared that over $30 million of its funds had been diverted to foreign bank accounts and were not retrievable.

Osorio was later accused of using the company to run a Ponzi-like scheme, bilking government and private investors out of a collective $40 million and using their money to fund his lavish lifestyle—making payments on his Miami Beach mansion, buying a Maserati and maintaining his Colorado ski chalet. He pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering in 2013.
Haiti Earthquake
© Noaa.govPort-au-Prince, Haiti, homes destroyed by the January 2010 earthquake in which 222,570 people were killed, 300,000 injured and 1.3 million displaced. An estimated 97,924 houses were destroyed and 188,383 damaged in Port-au-Prince.

Comment: You have to just sit back and wonder...what was their FIRST CLUE?

From Wikipedia:
A bankruptcy court judge ordered in December 2011 that InnoVida be liquidated, after Osorio's "proposal to reorganize the debts of his former company, InnoVida Holdings, was filed in "bad faith" and includes a "nonsense" explanation for what happened to millions of dollars in missing funds."

InnoVida received $3.5 million in loans from the US Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) to build homes in Haiti after the earthquake. In September 2011, OPIC began questioning InnoVida's "negative operating cash flow." A court appointed receiver in charge of investigating InnoVida's finances indicated that "$37.5 million in funds had been moved offshore, but he had so far been unable to find out what happened to the money."

Osorio and his former company, InnoVida, have been in bankruptcy since March 2011. After several multimillion-dollar lawsuits, Osorio was forced to put his mansion on Star Island for auction.

Side note: Osorio held fundraisers for 2008 presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in his Star Island mansion in Miami and The Democratic National Committee was also forced to return tens of thousands of dollars.
Consultant and board member for InnoVida, Jeb Bush had to pay back half of the $470K he earned in fees.


Snakes in Suits

'New Atheists' and 'Counter-Extremists' Want More Regime Change, Fueling the Very Islamist Extremism They Claim to Fight

Sam Harris
© YoutubeSam Harris

Comment: In this article we get a glimpse into how accepting one lie can nullify the effort one has put into discovering and spreading the truth. For, while the author is absolutely correct in pointing out the fact that the 'New Atheist' Sam Harris' acceptance of foreign intervention makes him a useful tool for the Establishment, the author's acceptance of the lies about Donald Trump makes him a tool for their domestic intervention into US politics. In the end the goal is the same - divide and conquer, worldwide.


Sam Harris' life goal is ostensibly to defeat Islamist extremism; it is the focus of his constant diatribes. Yet he is strangely also an advocate for the very wars of regime change that have fueled the rise of Salafi-jihadist groups, from al-Qaeda to ISIS. This hypocritical approach suggests Harris has yet to wake up to the impact of the militaristic policies he proposes.

In the January episode of Sam Harris' ironically named podcast, Waking Up, the "New Atheist" ringleader played host to Maajid Nawaz, a British self-styled "counter-extremism" activist who has earned a fortune marketing his story of transitioning away from radical Islamism.

The two pundits spent much of the conversation salivating over the prospect of more U.S. military intervention in the Middle East and glossing over its well-established role in propelling the spread of Islamist extremism across the world.