Monthly Archives: March 2018

There’s Only One Word to Describe Julian Assange’s Internet Being Cut Off – Pathetic, by Michael Krieger

Posted on March 28, 2018 | Leave a comment

Julian Assange Tweeted about Catalonia and Spain and had his Internet cut off by the Ecuadorian government. From Michael Krieger at libertyblitzkrieg.com:

Let’s get right to it. Earlier today, Julian Assange had his internet access severed.

Here’s a translation of the statement from the government of Ecuador, in whose embassy he’s been trapped since 2012:

The Government of Ecuador suspended the systems that allow Julian Assange to communicate with the outside world from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where the citizen remains in an international protection situation for six years due to the risk to his life and integrity.

The measure was adopted in the face of Assange’s failure to comply with the written commitment it assumed with the Government at the end of 2017, for which it was obliged not to issue messages that implied interference with other States.

The Government of Ecuador warns that the behavior of Assange, with its messages through social networks, puts at risk the good relations that the country maintains with the United Kingdom, with the rest of the States of the European Union and other nations. Therefore, to prevent potential damage, the embassy in London interrupted this March 27 communications abroad to which Assange has access.

The Executive also keeps open the way to the adoption of new measures in the face of breach of commitment by Assange.

The excuse for this egregious act against Assange is his social media activity “puts at risk the good relations that the country maintains with the United Kingdom, with the rest of the States of the European Union and other nations.” Naturally, we must ask what Assange has been tweeting about lately that prompted some bigger country, or countries, to force Ecuador’s hand. The answer is Catalonia.

I’ve been following Assange’s tweets closely following the revelation that German police seized Catalonia’s elected President Carles Puigdemont on behalf of Spain. Assange provided some much needed context and commentary about the disturbing incident over Twitter in recent days. Here are a few examples that likely ruffled the feathers of various EU governments.

To continue reading: There’s Only One Word to Describe Julian Assange’s Internet Being Cut Off – Pathetic

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It’s Right and Necessary to Let Boys Be Boys, by David French

Posted on March 28, 2018 | 1 comment

Boys will be boys, and when you try to turn them into something else, especially if they don’t have adult male role models, they often end up pretty messed up adults themselves. From David French at nationalreview.com:

What Jordan Peterson understands and Swedish preschools do not

When you spend time with boys and girls, one of the first things you notice is that they’re generally profoundly different. I say generally, of course, because there are exceptions to every human behavioral rule. All girls aren’t the same. All boys aren’t the same. But there are general truths, and those who view the world with honest eyes can see them every day.

I sometimes think back to the week I spent a few years ago chaperoning my daughter’s eighth-grade class trip to Washington, D.C. It was like shepherding two different colonies of humans. There was the girl group — quiet, dutiful, occasionally tearful, but handling their drama via text message and social media. Then there was the boy group, best described as a rolling, nonstop low-level brawl. They were constantly pushing, grabbing, and mocking. One could often discern the best friendships by finding the guys who most aggressively attacked each other, verbally and physically.

The patterns — though less pronounced, since everything is less pronounced outside of middle school — persist throughout life. Boys are stronger than girls. They’re more physically active, less willing to sit still. They’re more aggressive. In many ways, their very nature rebels against the increasing emphasis on order and quiet in American schooling. There is less room for play. There is less room for conflict. There is less room for boys.

At this point, no serious person can argue that boys as a group aren’t facing profound challenges. No recitation of statistics about the composition of boardrooms or the ranks of computer programmers (representing high-achieving outliers) can change the fundamental fact that boys by the millions are falling behind. Boys by the millions are lost. They’re losing ground at school. They’re more than three times as likely to commit suicide. They’re more than twice as likely to die in an opioid overdose. They’re almost seven times as likely to be a victim of gun violence.

To continue reading: It’s Right and Necessary to Let Boys Be Boys

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Posted in Culture, Education, Government, Society

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More Lies from the Presstitutes, by Paul Craig Roberts

Posted on March 28, 2018 | 1 comment

If gun controllers really wanted to save lives, there are many things out there that kill more people than guns on which they could concentrate. The point of gun control, of course, is not saving live, it’s control. From Paul Craig Roberts at paulcraigroberts.com:

The shameless liars that comprise the US media intentionally exaggerated the marchers against “gun violance” by four times the acutal number.

Why?

Why are the media presstitutes involved in advocacy of agendas and not in reporting factual news?

Recent polls show that a majority of Americans believe that gun ownership makes people safer. Americans do not believe that people should be denied safety because of an occasional nutcase or a staged shooting to advance the gun control agenda. Indeed, they wonder who is behind the gun control agenda. They wonder about the dumbshits who are protesting the Second Amendment instead of Washington’s rush into conflict with Russia.

I have no doubt that gun control groups are organized by agents of the police state. The United States is falling apart. All of the increase in income and wealth is going to the One Percent. Everyone else is hurting more each day. See Chris Hedges, for example: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49082.htm

The vast majority of Americans are being ground into the dirt by government at all levels. There is no democracy. There is only looting. The One Percent fear that sooner or later even insouciant Americans might rise up. But they can’t if they are disarmed. That is all gun control is about.

Deaths from what the propagandistic “gun violance” shills for the police state hype as a massive problem are such a small percentage of US deaths that they do not even show up statistically. Yet we have all this protest over an infintestimal number of deaths, and no protests at all by opponents of “gun violence” over police killings, which are larger that “gun violence” deaths or over America’s massive murders on a world scale. Where are the “gun violence” protests over the millions of deaths and millions of displaced peoples in Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan? Where are the “gun violence” protests against Trumpt’s chosen national security adviser John Bolton’s plan to bomb Iran and North Korea into the stone age?

They are nowhere to be found. How much more evidence do you need that the “gun violence” people are totally insensitive to real violence and only serve a police state agenda?

To continue reading: More Lies from the Presstitutes

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Crime, Government, Law, Media, Politics, Uncategorized

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Tesla Gets Slammed by Tesla, by Wolf Richter

Posted on March 28, 2018 | Leave a comment

Tesla’s running out of financial options to keep its traveling mysterious show afloat. The stock has lots of room on the downside. From Wolf Richter at wolfstreet.com:

When will investors get tired of feeding their capital into this cash-burn machine?

Tesla shares plunged 8.2% during regular trading hours on Tuesday and another 2% in after-hours trading to $272.50, below where they’d been a year ago ($277.45), and down 28% from September 18, when the market still had hopes for the Model 3.

The unsecured junk bond due in 2025 with a 5.3% coupon – which Tesla sold last August when its stock was still over $357 a share – dropped to a record low of 89 cents on the dollar in after-hours trading.

During a nasty day on the stock market, wunderkind Tesla got hammered by Tesla reality.

At first it was the NTSB

The National Transportation Safety Board announced that it was sending investigators to California to investigate the fatal and fiery crash of a Model X on Friday morning that had shut down a carpool ramp and two lanes of Highway 101, the Silicon Valley artery, for almost six hours, twice as long as most accidents of this type, according to the California Highway Patrol. NTSB said it would examine various issues, including the post-crash fire and removing the vehicle from the accident site.

This is the second NTSB field investigation into the crash of a Tesla this year. In January, the NTSB opened an investigation into the crash of a Tesla — apparently in semi-autonomous mode — and a fire truck.

In the accident on Friday, the Model X hit a freeway divider, then was hit by a Mazda, and crashed into an Audi. The lithium-ion cells caught fire. The driver of the Tesla perished. The fire department ended up calling Tesla to determine how to extinguish the fire, as the exposed batteries were also an electrocution hazard.

To continue reading: Tesla Gets Slammed by Tesla

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15 Years of War: To Whose Benefit? by Charles Hugh Smith

Posted on March 28, 2018 | 2 comments

Why does the US fight wars but not win them? Here’s a hint: it’s a very profitable arrangement for some. From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:

As for Iraq, the implicit gain was supposed to be access to Iraqi oil.
Setting aside the 12 years of “no fly zone” air combat operations above Iraq from 1991 to 2003, the U.S. has been at war for almost 17 years in Afghanistan and 15 years in Iraq. (If the word “war” is too upsetting, then substitute “continuing combat operations”.)
Since the burdens and costs of these combat operations are borne solely by the volunteers of the U.S. Armed Forces, the American populace pays little to no attention to the wars unless a household has a family member in uniform who is in theatre.
Permanent combat operations are now a barely audible background noise in America, something we’ve habituated to: the human costs are invisible to the vast majority of residents, and the financial costs are buried in the ever-expanding mountain of national debt. What’s another borrowed trillion dollars on top of the $21 trillion pile?
But a nation continually waging war should ask: to whose benefit? (cui bono) As near as I can make out, the nation has received near-zero benefit from combat operations in Afghanistan, one of the most corrupt nations on Earth where most of the billions of dollars “invested” have been squandered or stolen by the kleptocrats the U.S. has supported.
What did the nation gain for the tragic loss of lives and crippling wounds suffered by our personnel and Afghan civilians?
As for Iraq, the implicit gain was supposed to be access to Iraqi oil. As near as I can make out, the U.S. imports about 600,000 barrels of oil per day from Iraq, a relatively modest percentage of our total oil consumption of 19.7 million barrels a day.
(Note that the U.S. was importing around 700,000 barrels a day from Iraq before Operation Iraqi Freedom was launched in March 2003–and imports from Iraq declined as a result of the war. So what was the energy-security gain from launching the war?)
Meanwhile, Iraq exports over 2 million barrels a day to China and India, where the presumed benefit to the U.S. is that U.S. corporations can continue to produce shoddy goods using low-cost Asian labor that are exported to U.S. consumers, thereby enabling U.S. corporations to reap $2.3 trillion in profits every year.

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Posted in Business, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Government, Military, Politics, War

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Surveillance State? Nah, Can’t Happen…Because it Happened Already, by Jeremiah Johnson

Posted on March 28, 2018 | Leave a comment

A look at the surveillance state in action, from Jeremiah Johnson at shtfplan.com:

Many have argued that there is neither a surveillance state, nor a concerted effort to disarm the public door-to-door, house by house, etc. Some of these are far-leftists, masquerading as conservatives…trying to appear “skeptically cynical.” We’ll “game” the thought, to bring everyone back from opacity to transparency.

  1. The Communists, Marxists, Leftists, Progressives, Liberals, Democrats, and their ilk deliberately try to disguise the true objectives as outlined in the Planks of the Communist Party…passing themselves off as “middle-ground” in their stances.
  2. By denigrating the concept of an imminent surveillance state and ridiculing it, they draw conservatives who are still undecided (“fringe elements”) out of being proponents of the idea…further weakening and obfuscating people’s awareness.
  3. The movement of the groups mentioned never ceases: It hasn’t ceased with the fall of the Berlin Wall and subsequent reunification of Germany in 1990, nor the fall of the Soviet Union…more a “restructuring” than a fall…in 1992. The Communists are alive and well, operating within the United States at the lowest levels of society, and at the highest levels of government. We’ll stay with “Communists” as the label, as they are the end-state and will purge all the others who aren’t in complete lock step with them. They are Communists.

That being mentioned, as they craft their narratives and lie openly upon the television, radio, and within the newspapers, there is a subtle, devious operation going on right before your eyes:

The emplacement of a complete surveillance state of cameras and listening devices, all a part of the “wondrous internet of things.”

For that last paraphrase, thank David Petraeus…former head of the CIA (in name only) yet without the technical alacrity to avoid the very thing he lauded…and hence, his downfall via Paula Bridewell. Thanks, Dave, for your erstwhile contribution to crafting the surveillance state. Dave serves as the prime example: no matter how much of a “big hitter” toward the NWO (New World Order) a globalist or establishmentarian one is, they are always expendable.

To continue reading: Surveillance State? Nah, Can’t Happen…Because it Happened Already

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Government, Intelligence, Surveillance, Technology

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Europe All Inclusive: Understanding the Current Migration Crisis, by Václav Klaus

Posted on March 28, 2018 | 1 comment

The migratory wave into Europe has conferred few benefits and many costs. From Václav Klaus at thegatestoneinstitute.org:

  • “Multiculturalism and human-rightism promote the notion that migration is a human right, and that the right to migrate leads to further rights and entitlements including social welfare hand-outs for migrants.” — Former Czech President Václav Klaus and economist Jiří Weigl, writing in their book, Europe All Inclusive.
  • “Europe is weakened by the leftist utopia of trying to transform a continent that was once proud of its past into an inefficient solidaristic state, turning its inhabitants from citizens into dependent clients.” — Václav Klaus.
  • “There are plenty of arguments suggesting that the contemporary migration crisis is connected with the post-democratic character of the EU. That it is a by-product of the already long time existing European crisis, of the systemic errors and misconceptions of European policies, of the built-in defects of EU institutional arrangements, and of the ideological confusions and prejudices of European multicultural political elites.” — Václav Klaus.

Europe All Inclusive, a book by former Czech President Václav Klaus, co-authored by the Arab-speaking economist Jiří Weigl, recently published by Hungary’s Századvég School of Politics Foundation, has already been translated into six languages. The Századvég School of Politics Foundation is connected to the think tank Századvég, which, in turn, is close to the FIDESZ party led by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. In the book, the authors write:

“What we see today is a similarly fundamental challenge to the future of Europe… and especially its ‘integrated’ part, is riddled with hypocrisy, pseudo-humanism and other dubious concepts. [When] the most dangerous of them are the currently fashionable, and ultimately suicidal, ideologies of multiculturalism and human-rightism…These ideologies promote the notion that migration is a human right, and that the right to migrate leads to further rights and entitlements including social welfare hand-outs for migrants… Europe is weakened by the leftist utopia of trying to transform a continent that was once proud of its past into an inefficient solidaristic state, turning its inhabitants from citizens into dependent clients.”

To continue reading: Europe All Inclusive: Understanding the Current Migration Crisis

 

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Crime, Governments, Immigration, War

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What happened to the West I was born in?! by The Saker

Posted on March 28, 2018 | 1 comment

Have the powers that be and the media in the west taken complete leave of rationality and morality? From the Saker at saker.is:

Frankly, I am awed, amazed and even embarrassed.  I was born in Switzerland, lived most of my life there, I also visited most of Europe, and I lived in the USA for over 20 years.  Yet in my worst nightmares I could not have imagined the West sinking as low as it does now.  I mean, yes, I know about the false flags, the corruption, the colonial wars, the NATO lies, the abject subservience of East Europeans, etc.  I wrote about all that many times.  But imperfect as they were, and that is putting it mildly, I remember Helmut Schmidt, Maggie Thatcher, Reagan, Mitterrand, even Chirac!  And I remember what the Canard Enchaîné used to be, or even the BBC.  During the Cold War the West was hardly a knight in white shining armor, but still – rule of law did matter, as did at least some degree of critical thinking.

I am now deeply embarrassed for the West.  And very, very afraid.

All I see today is a submissive herd lead by true, bona fide, psychopaths (in a clinical sense of the word)

And that is not the worst thing.

The worst thing is the deafening silence, the way everybody just looks away, pretends like “ain’t my business” or, worse, actually takes all this grotesque spectacle seriously.  What the fuck is wrong with you people?!  Have you all been turned into zombies?!  WAKE UP!!!!!!!

Let me carefully measure my words here and tell you the blunt truth.

Since the Neocon coup against Trump the West is now on exactly the same course as Nazi Germany was in, roughly, the mid 1930s.

Oh sure, the ideology is different, the designated scapegoat also.  But the mindset is *exactly* the same.

Same causes produce the same effects.  But this time around, there are weapons on both sides which make the Dresden Holocaust looks like a minor spark.

So now we have this touching display of “western solidarity” not with UK or the British people, but with the City of London.  Now ain’t that touching?!

 

To continue reading: What happened to the West I was born in?!

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Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History

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Facebook Changes Privacy Tools, Allowing Users To Delete Data, by Tyler Durden

Posted on March 28, 2018 | Leave a comment

SLL has no brief with Facebook’s privacy policies, but one comment seems in order. The Facebook matter blew up a couple of weeks ago, and in response Facebook is making changes to try to appease their customers. Facebook is a private company and it acted quickly. Contrast that with the government, which has been subject to numerous revelations about its data gathering practices the last few years and hasn’t changed a one of them. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

Responding to public and political outrage, on Wednesday morning Facebook announced a reorganization of the privacy settings that users and have long criticized as a seeming afterthought, and which will provide for better privacy data control and make it easier for users to find, download and delete data — changes that come as the company remains embroiled in a global scandal over its handling of user data which has sent its stock into a bear market in the past week. 

The changes include a new “Privacy Shortcuts” menu with written explanations of each relevant option; an “Access Your Information” feature that lets users easily delete individual posts and “likes”; and what’s billed as a streamlined way for users to download all the data Facebook has on them. The new layout will also result in a redesigned menu on mobile devices will have all sections in one single place under settings tab; users will also be able to review what’s been shared and deleted. The company also proposes updates to terms of service and data policy.

“It’s time to make our privacy tools easier to find,” Facebook officials say in a blog post Wednesday detailing the changes, which are unlikely to satisfy critics who want major reforms in the way the social media giant handles the data of its more than 2 billion users.

However, the section that will attract the most interest is the following:

Tools to find, download and delete your Facebook data. It’s one thing to have a policy explaining what data we collect and use, but it’s even more useful when people see and manage their own information. Some people want to delete things they’ve shared in the past, while others are just curious about the information Facebook has. So we’re introducing Access Your Information – a secure way for people to access and manage their information, such as posts, reactions, comments, and things you’ve searched for. You can go here to delete anything from your timeline or profile that you no longer want on Facebook.

The tweaks come a week and a half after the revelation that the Donald Trump-aligned political data firm Cambridge Analytica had obtained information on about 50 million U.S. users before the 2016 election. The resulting outrage in the U.S. and Europe has given new life to long-standing complaints that it’s too difficult for Facebook users to control or know who can view their posts, messages, photos, “likes” and other content.

To continue reading: Facebook Changes Privacy Tools, Allowing Users To Delete Data

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Let’s Investigate John Brennan, by Philip Giraldi

Posted on March 28, 2018 | Leave a comment

You’d expect a CIA guy to be pretty good at hiding his fingerprints, but John Brennan’s fingerprints are all over the fake Russiagate investigation. From Philip Giraldi at unz.com:

Time to find out if CIA interfered in the 2016 election

Former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director John Brennan, a Barack Obama friend and protégé as well as a current paid contributor for NBC and MSNBC, has blasted President Donald Trump for congratulating President Vladimir Putin over his victory in recent Russian national elections. He said that the U.S. President is “afraid of the president of Russia” and that the Kremlin “may have something on him personally. The fact that he has had this fawning attitude toward Mr. Putin …continues to say to me that he does have something to fear and something very serious to fear.”

It is an indication of how low we have sunk as a nation that a possible war criminal like Brennan can feel free to use his former official status as a bully pulpit to claim that someone is a foreign spy without any real pushback or objection from the talking heads and billionaire manipulators that unfortunately run our country. If Trump is actually being blackmailed, as Brennan implies, what evidence is there for that? One might reasonably conclude that Brennan and his associates are actually angry because Trump has had the temerity to try to improve relations with Russia.

It is ironic that when President Trump does something right he gets assailed by the same crowd that piles on when he does something stupid, leading to the conclusion that unless The Donald is attacking another country, when he is lauded as becoming truly presidential, he cannot ever win with the inside the Beltway Establishment crowd. Brennan and a supporting cast of dissimulating former intelligence chiefs opposed Trump from the git-go and were perfectly willing to make things up to support Hillary and the status quo that she represented. It was, of course, a status quo that greatly and personally benefited that ex-government crowd which by now might well be described as the proverbial Deep State.

To continue reading: Let’s Investigate John Brennan

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