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Has our government spent over $21 trillion (with a T) of our money without telling us?

Laurence Kotlikoff and Mark Skidmore
Forbes
Mon, 18 Dec 2017 17:34 UTC
money drain government waste
© cincy.blog
"No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time." ~ Article I, Section 9, Clause 7, The US Constitution
On July 26, 2016, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) issued a report "Army General Fund Adjustments Not Adequately Documented or Supported". The report indicates that for fiscal year 2015 the Army failed to provide adequate support for $6.5 trillion in journal voucher adjustments. According to the GAO's Comptroller General, "Journal vouchers are summary-level accounting adjustments made when balances between systems cannot be reconciled. Often these journal vouchers are unsupported, meaning they lack supporting documentation to justify the adjustment or are not tied to specific accounting transactions.... For an auditor, journal vouchers are a red flag for transactions not being captured, reported, or summarized correctly."

(Note, after Mark Skidmore began inquiring about OIG-reported unsubstantiated adjustments, the OIG's webpage, which documented, albeit in a highly incomplete manner, these unsupported "accounting adjustments," was mysteriously taken down. Fortunately, Mark copied the July 2016 report and all other relevant OIG-reports in advance and reposted them here. Mark has repeatedly tried to contact Lorin Venable, Assistant Inspector General at the Office of the Inspector General. He has emailed, phoned, and used LinkedIn to ask Ms. Venable about OIG's disclosure of unsubstantiated adjustments, but she has not responded.)
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Vader

Britain takes only four days to declare a Cold War

Thierry Meyssan -Translation Pete Kimberley
Voltaire Network
Tue, 20 Mar 2018 16:01 UTC
Theresa May
© Reuters Toby Melville
Although it has the fourth largest army in the world, the United Kindom is unable to defy Russia without the support of allies. It therefore has to invent a casus belli to make its partners react and lead them to stand beside it.
The week that has just ended was exceptionally rich in events. But no media were able to report it, because they had all deliberately masked certain of their number in order to protect the story that was being woven by their government. London had attempted to provoke a major conflict, but lost to Russia, President Trump and Syria.

The British government and certain of its allies, including US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, have attempted to launch a Cold War against Russia.

Their plan was to fabricate an attack against an ex-double agent in Salisbury and at the same time a chemical attack against the « moderate rebels » in the Ghouta. The conspirators' intention was to profit from the efforts of Syria to liberate the suburbs of its capital city and the disorganisation of Russia on the occasion of its Presidential election. Had these manipulations worked, the United Kingdom would have pushed the USA to bomb Damascus, including the Presidential palace, and demand that the United Nations General Assembly exclude Russia from the Security Council.
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Stock Down

Europe running out of dollars as US monetary policy brings currency back home


RT
Tue, 20 Mar 2018 17:14 UTC
euro dollars
© Tim Brakemeier / Global Look Press
The European inter-bank market is going through the biggest shortage of US-dollar liquidity in nearly nine years. According to analysts, US tax reform may be behind the largest deficit since the financial crisis.

As the Federal Reserve took a more hardline position towards the US monetary policy, LIBOR, a benchmark rate tied to finance products and debts of over $350 trillion, soared to the highest level in over eight years. Current unsecured dollar loans for the last three months are forcing European banks pay 2.2 percent in annual interest, according to financial news website Finanz.ru

The figure shows that dollar loans nearly doubled in price in the past six months. In November, there was a 1.38 percent interest rate to borrow dollars. The monthly rate increased to 1.82 percent compared to 0.15 percent in 2015.
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Document

UK lawyer claims to have letter confirming BBC puts negative messages about Jeremy Corbyn in its imagery


RT
Tue, 20 Mar 2018 15:16 UTC
bbc emblem
© Matt Cetti-Roberts / Global Look Press
A top UK barrister has claimed to be in possession of a letter that "unambiguously" confirms the BBC codes negative messages about Jeremy Corbyn in its imagery. Jo Maugham QC said the letter was sent to him by a senior BBC figure.

Maugham stirred controversy after he tweeted on Monday that a senior BBC figure had "explicitly and unambiguously" outlined the broadcaster's methods. He said he would "swear" on the truth of his tweets.

It comes after BBC Two's flagship Newsnight program was accused of "extreme bias" as Corbyn was shown alongside Russian imagery during a report on the Sergei Skripal poisoning. Guardian columnist Owen Jones accused the program of photoshopping the Labour leader after he called for more evidence on the ex-spy's poisoning before squarely accusing the Kremlin of being behind the attack. A claim the BBC denied.

"Yesterday the background of your program you had Jeremy Corbyn dressed up against the Kremlin skyline, dressed up as a Soviet stooge. You even photoshopped his hat to look more Russian," Jones said. "People should complain to the BBC about that kind of thing," the left-wing columnist told presenter Evan Davis on Friday.
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Eye 1

#DeleteFacebook: Cambridge Analytica scandal sends Facebook shares tumbling and leaves users furious


RT
Tue, 20 Mar 2018 14:59 UTC
facebook
© Thomas White / Reuters
The hashtag #DeleteFacebook is trending, after it was revealed that Cambridge Analytica bought data harvested from 50 million Facebook users and used it to target voters during the 2016 US presidential election.

The data mining was revealed on Saturday by the Observer, which found that the firm - which worked with Donald Trump's election team - bought the harvested data from a company called Global Science Research. Cambridge Analytica has denied knowing the data was improperly obtained.

Facebook users weren't exactly thrilled to find out that they had been analyzed in such a way. They've now taken to Twitter to express their anger under the hashtag #DeleteFacebook. The campaign is calling for users to unsubscribe from everything related to Facebook, including Instagram and WhatsApp.

Stock market trader and political analyst @Ian56789 accused Facebook of being "part of the Big Brother system of control," while referencing George Orwell's novel '1984.' He added that it sells data to governments and corporations, manipulates what see and don't see online, and "even tries to manipulate your current mood."

Comment: Further fall out from the scandal: British MPs want Zuckerberg to testify over the scandal. In addition, Cambridge Analytica could have their London offices raided if a search warrant is approved. The US Federal Trade Commission is also reportedly going to investigate Facebook over the scandal. Looks like Zuckerberg sure made an enemy of someone in power.

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Sherlock

Evidence before accusations: Austria asks for full-fledged Skripal investigation before casting blame


RT
Tue, 20 Mar 2018 14:51 UTC
Skripal Salisbury
© Henry Nicholls / Reuters
Police officers get dressed in protective suiting at a car recovery depot in Norton Enterprise Park, where Sergei Skripal's car was originally transported, in Salisbury, Britain, March 13, 2018.
It's premature to pin the blame in the Skripal poisoning case without first conducting a proper investigation, Austria's foreign minister has said. The UK has already picked Russia as a boogey man in the incident.

Speaking in Brussels on Monday, Karin Kneissl said that she viewed the poisoning of former double-agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, England, as "abhorrent." However, unlike its British counterparts, Austria wants to have the full picture before casting blame on someone specifically.

"Our position is: First there is the need to establish a full picture of events in joint cooperation with the Chemical agency [Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)] and all those involved" the foreign minister said.
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Yoda

Margarita Simonyan : Why Russia doesn't respect the West any more

Margarita Simonyan
The Saker
Mon, 19 Mar 2018 14:01 UTC
putin speech reelection 2018
Essentially, the West should be horrified not because 76% of Russians voted for Putin, but because these elections have demonstrated that 95% of Russia's population supports conservative-patriotic, communist and nationalist ideas. That means that liberal ideas are barely surviving among measly 5% of population.

And that's your fault, my Western friends. It was you who pushed us into "Russians never surrender" mode.

I've been telling you for a long time to find normal advisers on Russia. Sack all those parasites. With their short-sighted sanctions, heartless humiliation of our athletes (including athletes with disabilities ), with their "skripals" and ostentatious disregard of the most basic liberal values, like a presumption of innocence, that they manage to hypocritically combined with forcible imposition of ultra-liberal ideas in their own countries, their epileptic mass hysteria, causing in a healthy person a sigh of relief that he lives in Russia, and not in Hollywood, with their post-electoral mess in the United States, in Germany, and in the Brexit-zone; with their attacks on RT, which they cannot forgive for taking advantage of the freedom of speech and showing to the world how to use it, and it turned out that the freedom of speech never was intended to be used for good, but was invented as an object of beauty, like some sort of crystal mop that shines from afar, but is not suitable to clean your stables, with all your injustice and cruelty, inquisitorial hypocrisy and lies you forced us to stop respecting you. You and your so called "values."
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Beaker

Nerve gas in Skripal case 'could have easily been cooked by Brits' - chemical weapon developer


Sputnik
Tue, 20 Mar 2018 14:26 UTC
forensic tent Skripal Salisbury
© REUTERS/ Peter Nicholls
The forensic tent, covering the bench where Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found, is repositioned by officials in protective suits in the center of Salisbury, Britain, March 8, 2018.
London is not providing Moscow with a sample of the substance that poisoned former GRU Colonel Sergei Skripal, because the Russian experts are able to quickly determine that it was not manufactured in Russia, Leonid Rink, one of the developers of the А-234, also known as the Novichok chemical weapons system, told Sputnik.

"Why do you think the British refuse to give a [nerve agent] sample to Moscow? Because no matter how hard the specialists try, the manufacturing technology always differs a little. It's a kind of a 'handwriting sample.' It will immediately become clear that this is not a Russian technology," Rink said.

Rink added that the sample from Salisbury is like a "fingerprint" for a forensic expert.

"It could be easily determined that it [the poison] was not 'cooked' in Russia," he stressed.

Comment:

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Star of David

'Kill them all': IDF soldier who executed Palestinian man has sentence reduced again


RT
Tue, 20 Mar 2018 12:48 UTC
Elor Azaria
© Debbie Hill / Reuters
Elor Azaria, the IDF soldier who killed Palestinian Abdul Fatah al-Sharif, has had his sentence reduced for the second time. Footage of the soldier shooting the already wounded attacker in the head prompted international outrage.

Azaria was convicted of manslaughter in January 2017 for shooting Sharif in the head at close range in March 2016. Graphic footage of the shooting shows Sharif lying wounded on the ground after he stabbed an IDF soldier and was shot by Israeli soldiers.

Azaria is seen cocking his M-16 before he approaches Sharif, who is lying on the ground, and shoots him in the head, despite Sharif being incapacitated and no longer posing a threat. The UN described the killing as an "extrajudicial execution."

Comment: The fact that Israel found it 'difficult and painful' to sentence Azaria shows how many share his sentiments. The following is taken from a Facebook exchange of Elor's from 2014, referring to the conflict in Gaza:
(July 15th)

Elor: Bibi you transvestite what ceasefire? Penetrate their mother!!!

(23 likes including Adir Azarya, Victor Azarya).

Charlie: All strength we need to penetrate the mother of their mother.

Elor: Yes kill them all.
After his initial sentencing thousands of Israelis came out to support him, chanting "death to Arabs" and holding signs saying "kill them all". No wonder he got off for 'good behavior'. To Israeli society, he was right all along. Occupation, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing in the 'only democracy in the Middle East'.

Further reading:

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Stock Up

Despite UK Skripal accusations, foreign investments in Russia reach new highs with Putin's re-election attracting additional $30bn


RT
Tue, 20 Mar 2018 13:40 UTC
Moscow City business district
© Dmitry Serebryakov / AFP
The Moscow City business district
Vladimir Putin's re-election as Russian president will ensure the continuation of an economic policy that has seen a major spike in foreign investment, says head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund.

"Since the elections are over, it will allow institutional investors to actively implement projects in Russia in the medium term, which can provide an additional influx of $25-30 billion into the Russian economy," RDIF's Kirill Dmitriev told reporters.

He said that "the voting results testify to the continuation of the economic policy aimed at realizing the investment potential."
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