When The S*** Hits the Fan

#CIA ‘Accidentally’ Destroyed 6,700 Page #Torture Report? #Snowden Calls Bullshit

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(ANTIMEDIA) The world’s most famous whistleblower, Edward Snowden, took Twitter by storm when he created an account last year. Since, he has criticized everyone from the FBI to Google, so his latest post on the CIA should come as no surprise.

Commenting on revelations the CIA “inadvertently” destroyed a copy of the 6,700-page torture report, Snowden questioned the agency’s official story.

“I worked @CIA. I wrote the Emergency Destruction Plan for Geneva. When CIA destroys something, it’s never a mistake,” he tweeted Wednesday, openly challenging the CIA’s claim. He also shared an article detailing the news.

Snowden previously worked for the CIA and as an NSA contractor before leaking documents revealing the U.S. government’s extensive mass surveillance programs and subsequently fleeing the country. He has been an outspoken voice against government overreach and privacy issues ever since.

On Monday, Yahoo News reported on the CIA’s apparent fumble that inspired Snowden’s Wednesday tweet:

“The CIA inspector general’s office — the spy agency’s internal watchdog — has acknowledged it ‘mistakenly’ destroyed its only copy of a mammoth Senate torture report at the same time lawyers for the Justice Department were assuring a federal judge that copies of the document were being preserved.”

The Senate Intelligence Committee was reportedly informed of the ‘mistake’ last summer, but it was never disclosed to the public, nor to the federal judge presiding over a Freedom of Information Act case seeking access to the lengthy document.

Douglas Cox, a professor at the City University of New York School of Law, who specializes in “tracking the preservation of federal records,” commented on the CIA’s self-described mistake. “It’s breathtaking that this could have happened, especially in the inspector general’s office — they’re the ones that are supposed to be providing accountability within the agency itself,” he said. “It makes you wonder what was going on over there.”

The clandestine organization came under fire for its use of torture after 9/11 (and before, though it’s lesser-known), as exposed by a Senate investigation in December 2014. Following embarrassing reports of everything from sexual assault and forced rectal feeding to beatings, sleep deprivation, and other degrading practices, the CIA has since tried to clean up its image. Amid presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s calls to implement waterboarding and more torture, in general, CIA Director John Brennan disavowed the agency’s infamous practice. “I will not agree to have any CIA officer carry out waterboarding again,” he said in April.

But the CIA has a track record of deception, and has had at least one issue with destroyed documents before — that time concerning records on the agency’s coup in Iran in 1953.

The 2014 Senate report “relied on the CIA’s own records to document a pattern of an agency consistently understating the brutality of the techniques used on detainees and overstating the value of the information they produced,” the Associated Press reported in 2014.

“This is a tremendous amount of CIA misrepresentation. It is difficult to read these pages and wonder whether a system of accountability can work,” Mother Jones observed, in a thorough article examining the many ways the CIA deceived lawmakers and multiple federal agencies about its torture program.

As Democratic Senator Mark Udall flatly said, “The CIA lied.”

No doubt, according to Snowden, the CIA continues to lie — and his tweet highlights growing mistrust of establishment narratives as Americans increasingly lose faith in government and other institutions.

Read Snowden’s recent article on political resistance here.

This article (CIA ‘Accidentally’ Destroyed 6,700 Page Torture Report? Snowden Calls Bullshit) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Carey Wedler and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article at edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

What Hillary #Clinton Has in Common With #Communist #China

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(ANTIMEDIA) What do Hillary Clinton and the communist government of China have in common? Aside from their shared support for subverting freedom, lack of respect for human rights, and support of invasive surveillance, they both possess armies of trolls who manipulate online narratives.

According to a new report from researchers at Harvard’s Department of Government, the Chinese government employs millions of people to make posts praising government on their behalf. The internet mercenaries are deemed, collectively, “The 50 Cent Party,” because of rumors they are paid per post (the report concluded they do not appeared to be paid and most are government employees to begin with). They are believed to make 488 million posts per year.

After a blogger leaked hacked official email archives, the long-suspected program was confirmed to be real. Those leaks “reported activities of Internet commentators, including numerous 50c posts from workers claiming credit for completing their assignments, and many other communications.” The posts were often “cheerleading” for government, sometimes to “distract the public, although this activity can be also be used to distract from other events, general negativity, specific grievances, etc.” Posts that reflected positively on government made up the majority of so-called 50 centers’ activity, and the researchers theorized it “is a strategy designed to actively distract and redirect public attention from ongoing criticism, other grievances, or collective action.”

Perhaps such behavior is to be expected of an overarching communist regime, but Hillary Clinton’s internet army made headlines before China’s. As Anti-Media reported last month, the Clinton campaign has invested $1 million to fund an army of internet crusaders to challenge negative conversations about her online. That army, called “Barrier Breakers” and is a division of her organization, Correct the Record, which describes itself as “a strategic research and rapid response team designed to defend Hillary Clinton from baseless attacks.”

According to Correct the Record’s website, Barrier Breakers is intended to “serve as a resource for supporters looking for positive content and push-back to share with their online progressive communities, as well as thanking prominent supporters and committed superdelegates on social media.” (By “committed superdelegates,” perhaps they mean “paid lobbyists.”)

The project is extensive, “including the more than tripling of its digital operation to engage in online messaging both for Secretary Clinton and to push back against attackers on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and Instagram.”

It appears 50 centers and Barrier Breakers are performing the same function: creating potentially artificial perceptions that the Chinese government and Hillary Clinton, respectively, enjoy enthusiastic support (it’s likely some members of both the Chinese and Clinton social media teams do genuinely believe the things they post). But there are differences.

For one, the Chinese government has attempted to keep its operations secret. In contrast, the Clinton campaign has made its intentions public, seizing the opportunity to couch their attempts to control the conversation in proactive language that conflates itself with combating online harassment. “The task force currently combats online political harassment, having already addressed more than 5,000 individuals who have personally attacked Secretary Clinton on Twitter,” they boast. They do not disclose whether task force members’ individual identities are public or private.

Correct the Record claims Hillary supporters are “oftentimes are discouraged from engaging online and are ‘often afraid to voice their thoughts’ because of the fear of online harassment,” using this, evidently, as justification for paying people to post positive sentiments about the candidate, who currently suffers a likeability problem as severe as reviled presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump.

The biggest difference between Clinton and the Chinese government in their efforts to sway conversations online concerns the degree of defensive engagement they display: according to the researchers, the Chinese government’s posters “do not step up to defend the government, its leaders, and their policies from criticism, no matter how vitriolic; indeed, they seem to avoid controversial issues entirely,” preferring, rather, to use cheerleading efforts to distract and redirect. “Letting an argument die, or changing the subject, usually works much better than picking an argument and getting someone’s back up,” the researchers explained.

In contrast, Clinton’s Barrier Breakers project openly admits its active engagement in countering anti-Hillary narratives. Referencing “Bernie Bros,” Barrier Breakers vows to use what they’ve learned to “quickly and forcefully [respond] to negative attacks and false narratives.” This reaches beyond the Chinese government’s designs to distract with cheerleading; it’s an unabashed effort to change minds — even as Barrier Breakers fails to elaborate on the “false narratives” they plan to challenge.

Their goal conveniently ignores Clinton’s own proclivity for dishonesty and manipulating narratives. Indeed, her collective of paid public supporters extends to cable news, where many pundits praise her but fail to disclose they are on her payroll.

Hillary Clinton and the Chinese government are not the only entities who attempt to mold narratives and public perception to their benefit. Donald Trump was caught hiring real-life actors to drum up enthusiasm for his campaign. In the social media sphere, the Israeli government has a student program, called “Hasbara,” meant to counter online speech critical of Israel. British spy agency, GCHQ, which wokrks closely with the NSA, has a program to manipulate online political narratives and destroy the reputations of activist movements. And of course, the American government, namely — that we know of — the military, uses sock puppet accounts to spread pro-American propaganda.

While Barrier Breakers is, perhaps, more permissible than the Chinese government’s program, in that it is not officially sponsored by government, Clinton has given the populace no reason to believe her manipulative practices will cease should she make it to the White House.

This article (What Hillary Clinton Has in Common With Communist China) by Elizabeth Montag is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Carey Wedler and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article at edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

We Found a Preview of the 28 Redacted Pages — and It’s a 9/11 Game-Changer

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(ANTIMEDIA) United States — On Tuesday, the New York Times revealed a document published by the National Archives that appears to offer a glimpse into potentially damning information contained in the so-called ‘missing’ 28 pages concerning the attacks on September 11, 2001.

Those 28 pages are “an entire section within the official report of the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks … Conducted by the House and Senate intelligence committees, its 838-page report was published in December 2002.”

Over the past several weeks, discussion has reignited debate over the need to release the redacted section for several reasons — the most striking being a bill to allow the families of 9/11 victims sue Saudi Arabia over its potential involvement in the attacks. In what cannot be considered a coincidence, also on Tuesday, the Senate voted to approve that exact legislation — called Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) — in direct defiance of vows from Pres. Obama that he will summarily veto the bill should it land on his desk.

“I think we easily get the two-thirds override if the president should veto,” stated Sen. Charles Schumer on the bill’s passage.

Separate legislation, which coincides with JASTA — S.B. 1471, Transparency for the Families of 9/11 Victims and Survivors Act of 2015 — would require the president to declassify those currently-redacted pages. This would almost certainly be imperative for JASTA to have the teeth necessary for affected families to pursue justice.

Tuesday’s disclosure from the National Archives appears to show why those families might, indeed, have a justifiable reason to hold the Saudis at least partly responsible for damages — despite its contents only hinting at information potentially contained in the 28 pages.

Former member of the 9/11 Commission, John Lehman, came forward in the past week calling for a new and thorough investigation into Saudi involvement in the attacks. In measured and precise language, Lehman noted that “we have found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded the organization” — but also stressed “our report should never have been read as an exoneration of Saudi Arabia.”

Perhaps, as Lehman suggested, the institution of the Saudi government did not play a role; however, as found in the document in the Times, at least a partial connection already stands.

A shady cast of characters are briefly outlined in the document under the heading, “A Brief Overview of Possible Saudi Government Connections to the September 11th attacks” — and simply in context it appears a number of notable associations may have been made.

Omar Al-Bayoumi, a Saudi national, encouraged two of the hijackers to move to the San Diego area where he was located. As the document describes:

“Al-Bayoumi has extensive ties to the Saudi Government and many in the local Muslim community in San Diego believed that he was a Saudi intelligence officer. The FBI believes it is possible that he was an agent of the Saudi government and that he may have been reporting on the local community to Saudi Government officials.”

Osama Bassnan “received considerable funding from Prince Bandar and Princess Haifa, supposedly for his wife’s medical treatments. According to FBI documents, Bassnan is a former employee of the Saudi Government’s Educational Mission in Washington, D.C.”

Though some officials privy to the redacted section have claimed any connection to kingdom officials is tenuous, at best, one solid link already stands. Fahad al-Thumairy, a former diplomat at the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles, associated himself with al-Bayoumi in San Diego before the revocation of his visa and his subsequent return to Saudi Arabia in May 2003.

In fact, the document lists a pilot for the Saudi royal family who ferried Osama bin Laden back and forth between Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia during his “exile.” A number of others are listed with less than questionable ties to either the Saudi government, the royal family, or both.

But perhaps most telling are the questions the document appears to be proposing for the investigation — or, more specifically, what seems to be implied in those questions.

“1. How aggressively has the U.S. Government investigated possible ties between the Saudi Government and/or Royal Family and the September 11th attacks?

“2. To what extent have the U.S. Government’s efforts to investigate possible ties between the Saudi Government and/or Royal Family and the September 11th attacks been affected by political, economic, or other considerations?”

On their own, such questions seem basic, obvious, and even mundane as so essential to the investigation to be needless to state — but taken with the details of this outline and the context of what their answers may constitute in those redacted 28 pages, the repercussions become apparent. If, for instance, the U.S. decided not to thoroughly pursue avenues of investigation due to economic interests in Saudi affairs, that would show fealty to another country over the best interests of the victims of those attacks.

Perhaps that murky obstruction is best seen in the document’s discussion of an FBI informant located in San Diego. Buried among other questions, the document asks: “Why did the FBI, Department of Justice, and White House refuse to allow the Joint Inquiry to interview or depose the informant?”

With the firestorm swirling once again around the redacted 28 pages, this basic outline of a document offers a serious glimpse into what might prove to be a fundamental shift in the narrative of 9/11 the U.S. government has spoonfed for over a decade.

As U.S.-Saudi relations have recently deteriorated to an arguable new low, perhaps it remains just a matter of time before we all know the truth.

This article (We Found a Preview of the 28 Redacted Pages — and It’s a 9/11 Game-Changer) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Claire Bernish and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

The #FBI Has 80,000 Documents on #Saudi Ties to 9/11 It Tried to Suppress

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(ANTIMEDIA) The classified 28-pages of the 9/11 report have made global headlines lately as a handful of lawmakers battle to release them to the public. Those pages are believed by activists and members of Congress — who have seen them — to expose the role of Saudi Arabia, including government officials, in the terrorist attacks.

But according to a new report based on years of investigative journalism, it turns out there are far more than 28 classified pages on Saudi Arabia and 9/11 — there are 80,000 kept secret by the FBI. And though not all 80,000 are expected to concern the Saudi family — and the FBI insists their investigation of the documents came up empty-handed — journalists, at least one lawmaker, and heavily-redacted documents suggest otherwise.

As the Daily Beast reported, the discovery of the 80,000 pages came when Irish investigative journalists Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan were contacted by an unnamed counterterrorism official in 2011. The reporters were preparing to publish a book on the 10th anniversary of the terror attacks and were told  by the source that a Saudi family who had been living in Sarasota, Florida, prior to the attacks had connections to the attackers. Specifically, they were linked to Mohamed Atta, the Egyptian terrorist widely recognized as the ringleader of the attacks.

The unnamed official’s tip conflicted squarely with the FBI’s prior conclusions on that family. Abdulazzi al-Hiijjii, his wife Anoud, and their three small children lived in an upscale Sarasota community, along with Anoud’s father, Esam Ghazzawi, a financier and interior designer, who owned the home, and Ghazzawai’s American-born wife. The FBI had received multiple calls from the family’s neighbors expressing concerns over erratic behavior. Two weeks before 9/11, they left the house in a huge hurry, leaving dirty diapers and toys strewn about, a fully stocked refrigerator, and three cars in the driveway.

Though the FBI opened an investigation in April 2002, it still insists it never found any significant connection between the family and Atta. The agency acknowledged they had suspected a connection, but “not until after the Tampa field office opened an investigation that claimed to find ‘numerous connections’ between the family and the 9/11 hijackers,” the Daily Beast explained. The 80,000 classified pages in question stemmed from that investigation.

The FBI says “the bureau’s own agents did initially suspect the family was linked to some of the hijackers.” But “on further scrutiny, those connections proved unfounded, officials now say.”

But Summers and Swan contacted Dan Christensen, a veteran Florida reporter, and together they published an exposé on these connections in Sarasota in September 2011. As they reported, following the 9/11 attacks:

“[L]aw enforcement agents not only discovered the home was visited by vehicles used by the hijackers, but phone calls were linked between the home and those who carried out the death flights — including leader Mohamed Atta — in discoveries never before revealed to the public.”

They were also never revealed to lawmakers. The 2011 story caught the attention of Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat who has since led the campaign to release the 28 pages on the Saudi connection, which are said to contain information showing Saudi government officials were involved in orchestrating the attack.

At the time, he said the journalists had “open[ed] the door to a new chapter of investigation as to the depth of the Saudi role in 9/11.” Graham attempted to view some of the documents, and told the Daily Beast (for a forthcoming article) they did show a connection between the family and three hijackers. He was soon after confronted by then-deputy director of the FBI, Sean Joyce. According to Graham, he said, “Basically everything about 9/11 was known and I was wasting my time and I should get a life.”

Christensen filed a Freedom of Information Act request in the hopes of either confirming or refuting their original reporting. Thomas Julin, his lawyer, said the FBI initially denied having any records. When Graham said he was willing to testify he had seen some, the Department of Justice conveniently admitted to having 35 relevant pages. They released them, but they were heavily redacted. In spite of the overt censorship guarding that information, they reportedly still made clear the FBI had suspicions about the family — and that they had found several connections between them and the hijackers. The pages also include the FBI’s dismissals of those suspicions.

U.S. District Court Judge William Zloch, who presided over the Freedom of Information case, was unconvinced and demanded the FBI conduct another search of its records. This time,“the FBI found some additional responsive documents which it produced,” Juline told the Daily Beast. “But it also found 80,266 pages of material in the Tampa Field Office of the FBI which had been marked with the file number for the FBI’s PENTTBOM investigation.”

PENTTBOM was the FBI term for its investigation into the 9/11 attacks. Though the New York Post had previously reported on these 80,000 pages, the DoJ’s small release of documents clarified suspicions. Zloch ordered the FBI to hand over all the documents in May 2014 — and he is still going through them to determine which pages can be released. He has given no indication of when he will be finished.

The Daily Beast explained “Zloch’s task is made all the more painstaking by the strict security rules governing review of classified documents, even for a sitting judge. The files are kept in a secure facility, and he can only remove a portion at a time.”

It remains unclear how many of the 80,000 pages pertain directly to the Tampa FBI field office’s investigation of the family in Sarasota — and their ties to the attackers. Though Christensen says he’s ready to be proven wrong, he believes “those files will reveal the underlying reasons for the FBI’s early suspicions.”

As the Daily Beast laid out:

“The FBI, for instance, says that phone records searches showed no links to the house and the hijackers. Christensen’s confidential source says the opposite is true. If the FBI is right, Christensen asks, then why not just release the information and put the dispute to rest?”

The FBI has attempted to discredit the pages, claiming the agent who filed the first reports on the family and their potential connection to the hijackers was “not a good writer and should not be taken as the last word,” according to Graham. However, that agent was promoted shortly after 9/11, casting doubt on assertions they were incompetent.

In a similar evasion of accountability, President Obama vowed to block a legislative effort to release the 28 pages amid pressure from the Saudi Arabian government, which threatened to remove $750 billion in American assets should the legislation pass. The president cited concerns that allowing families of 9/11 victims to sue a foreign government could, in turn, open the United States government up to prosecution, itself. The White House has since indicated it intends to release part of the 28 pages.

Though Julin says the 28 pages likely aren’t linked to the Sarasota Saudi family, he hopes their eventual release “might help Judge Zloch see the wider significance of the events in Sarasota and persuade him that some or all of the records have not been properly classified.”

Last week, a former member of the 9/11 commission said he believes six Saudi officials supported the 9/11 hijackers. John F. Lehman said Wednesday, “There was an awful lot of participation by Saudi individuals in supporting the hijackers, and some of those people worked in the Saudi government,” he said. “Our report should never have been read as an exoneration of Saudi Arabia.”

The FBI’s trove of documents also requires further examination. Julin dismissed suspicions Judge Zloch is intentionally lagging in his investigation of the 80,000 pages. “I believe this is not a stalling tactic at all,” he said. “The judge is doing what he has to comply” with the stringent rules surrounding the release of the classified documents. “But I would urge him to speed it up,” he said.

This article (The FBI has 80,000 Documents on Saudi Ties to 9/11 It Tried to Suppress) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Carey Wedler and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article at edits@theantimedia.org.

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From theantimedia.org Team

Did the #Nevada Democratic Party Just Steal Another State From #Bernie Sanders?

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(ANTIMEDIA) Nevada — In what might best be described as a minor electoral coup, the Nevada Democratic Party did its utmost to ensure a caucus victory for Hillary Clinton — and it appears they succeeded.

“We need civility in the Democratic Party — civility,” bemoaned Sen. Barbara Boxer to the largely outraged crowd, amid boos and shouts of “recount,” in the Paris hotel in Las Vegas on Saturday. “When you’re booing me, you’re booing Bernie Sanders,” asserted Boxer, a Hillary supporter, fanning the flames. “You know something, I grew up in Brooklyn and I’m not afraid of bullies. I’m for Hillary Clinton because she’s for all of us. So keep yourselves booing and boo yourselves out of the election.”

Boxer’s obstinate fealty to Clinton did nothing to pacify the thousands milling about, jeering — especially when she added, “We had our Nevada Caucus and Hillary Clinton won.”

As Nevada State Democratic Party Chairwoman and member of the national DNC’s Executive Committee, Roberta Lange, stood at the podium before thousands of mostly irate party members, an unidentified woman — as captured in video footage uploaded to Facebook — made a request on behalf of the crowd:

“I am asking you to have a recount. 9:30 was too soon for a preliminary vote. The petition did not get to everyone.”

Many attendees demanded that 64 excluded Sanders delegates, listed in a “minority report,” be allowed to participate. But Lange instead swiftly called for a voice vote to implement a temporary change of party rules on a permanent basis. Then she took it upon herself to affirm the result — which, as video shows the obstreperous reaction, was at least debatable — abruptly adjourned the meeting with an impotent slam of the gavel, and simply walked out, leaving pandemonium in her wake.

Stunned at Lange’s unceremonious departure, the throngs of Sanders devotees screamed incredulously at the now vacant podium, demanding an explanation for what had just taken place. Murmurs showed resolve to wait in the convention room until just democracy could be carried out — to no avail.

Shortly after Lange’s exit, which was followed by other party officials who then had to be escorted by police offstage, hotel security and armed local law enforcement officers appeared at the front of the auditorium.

“I don’t know if anyone can see this,” says Adryenn Ashley, who uploaded video to Facebook as events unfolded. “I don’t know if you can hear this, but there are 20 armed sheriffs here to help them steal the election … They’re saying leave now or else.”

At one point, a Hillary T-shirt-adorned woman even called for Bernie supporters to be ‘arrested.’

As hotel security can be heard on video saying, as officers ushered the outraged attendees from the meeting floor, “it is now in the hands of the attorneys,” and “[p]lease leave peacefully. Please leave, it is not safe here.”

But as one Sanders supporter rightly intoned, “If we do not leave, it becomes a big issue. I’m not leaving.”

Eventually, attendees disbursed — however disenfranchised they felt.

In the aftermath, those aforementioned 64 excluded delegates secured Clinton’s win by 33 — with final tallies on the day at 1,695 attending for Hillary to Sanders’ 1,662.

So contentious were the totals that Nevada Democratic convention credentials committee co-chair, Leslie Sexton, claimed the action by the state party rules committee “violates the spirit and values of our state and our nation.” As reported by RealClearPolitics, she continued:

“The credentials minority report is based on the challenge of 64 Sanders delegates. Contrary to the procedures and precedents set by the committee, nearly none of these 64 people were presented with the opportunity to be heard by the committee or to demonstrate that they are registered Democrats. Without the opportunity to be heard, no delegate could be stricken. The actions of the credentials committee violate the spirit of the Nevada state delegate plan which encourages full participation in the delegate process, and it violates the spirit and values of our state and our nation.”

Perhaps Sexton absolutely characterizes the disenfranchisement of the voting public as the primary season rolls on, as state after state reports innumerable complaints from voters. Or perhaps, her statement evidences a larger pattern of usurpation of the vote — as state after state reports mysteriously cleansed voter rolls, registration ballot shortages, inexcusably long lines, and inexplicably under-trained volunteers — who often sport candidate-specific paraphernalia, in direct conflict with established electoral law.

As outrageous as the Nevada State Convention might have seemed, it stands as yet further evidence that votes will be taken by whom the establishment deems pertinent to the narrative. If the DNC touts Hillary Clinton then, voters be damned, she will be their nominee.

With rumors a contested Democratic National Convention may be in the works, it would seem more pertinent than ever to examine how vehemently the establishment guards its go-to candidate — something with which past supporters of Ron Paul have well familiarized themselves.

It now stands virtually impossible to deny — elections are nothing more than a rigged theater of political appeasement.

This article (Did the Nevada Democratic Party Just Steal Another State From Bernie Sanders?) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Claire Bernish and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. Image credit: Marc Nozell. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

From theantimedia.org Team

5 Huge Stories the Media Ignored While Arguing Over Which #Bathroom to Use

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(ANTIMEDIA) Americans are prone to obsessing over seemingly frivolous headlines. Over the past year, we’ve seen the media drive emotional feeding frenzies on everything from the Starbucks red cup scandal or the superficial Confederate flag saga that ultimately glossed over the true foundations of racism in the U.S. Regardless of what the subjective opinion may be, the United States populace tends to feel inclined to indulge in heated, dramatic conversations about the morality of apparently inanimate objects.

But sometimes, they focus on more substantive issues.

One consistent subject that repeatedly riles up the masses is the subject of transgender rights. Last year, America (and the world) erupted in glee, rage, and overall chaos after Caitlyn Jenner debuted her new identity on the cover of Vanity Fair. More recently, many Americans have zeroed in on the ongoing controversy over transgender bathroom rights — sparked by North Carolina’s recent LGBT law. Some champion equal rights for all; others lament the destruction of American values. Headlines have detailed high-profile boycotts against North Carolina, the viral petition condemning Target for allowing transgender people to use whatever bathroom they prefer, and now, the topic is trending again amid news of President Obama’s call on Friday for public schools to respect transgender bathroom rights.

As important as these developments may be — no matter your views on the subject — as tends to happen, other highly important stories have fallen by the wayside. Though they have not been wholly blacked out by the corporate media, they have implications of equal, if not more , importance than America’s obsession with transgender issues — and most Americans will likely never hear about them.

Here are five stories you might want to review before diving back into the transgender imbroglio:

1. Hillary’s Conflicts of Interest Continue to Mount: As we reported, it was revealed this week that employees at the Department of Justice — one of the agencies tasked with investigating Clinton’s allegedly improper use of private email servers — gave $75,000 in donations to the presidential front-runner. “Hillary’s donations from the Department of Justice completely swamp those of the other candidates, in fact, as Sanders’ total from 51 donors was just $8,900 and Trump garnered an inconsequential $381,” we reported. David Bossie, president of watchdog group, Citizens United, argued “Attorney General Lynch must appoint a special counsel to determine if Hillary Clinton or her agents broke the law and compromised our national security. This investigation needs to be conducted free of political influence once and for all.”

As our own Claire Bernish explained, “Critics have previously pointed to Lynch personally donating over $10,000 to Democratic candidates as evidence of her lack of impartiality — and sufficient reason she should not be charged with overseeing the investigation of Clinton’s emails.” Further, Judge Andrew Napolitano revealed Russia has obtained some 20,000 emails from Hillary’s personal server — and is debating whether or not to leak them publicly. Ultimately, this conflict of interest represents deeply-rooted, systemic glitches in American democracy, where accountability is often flouted to protect the oligarchy. This reality does not mean the transgender conversation is unimportant — however, it does provide a sad commentary on whom Americans will accept as their ruler while they trade insults over bathroom rights. In this case, it’s a corrupt career politician whose misdeeds have thus far failed to thwart her designs on power.

2. Somebody was finally arrested for voter fraud, but it wasn’t the people committing it: This week, Anti-Media also reported on a Florida-based hacker, David Michael Levin, who exposed security flaws in the website of the Lee County Elections Office and the Division of Elections in Tallahassee. He shared them with authorities in the hopes of fixing the problem, but instead was arrested and charged. “According to the somewhat redacted police report, Levin’s associate, Daniel Sinclair, sent a security report about the SQL vulnerability — including details of the security flaw and a screenshot — to ‘an employee within the Department of State, Division of Elections,’” we reported. Shortly after, a special investigation was launched and Levin was arrested. “Levin’s foray into the elections data had not been undertaken with the appropriate permission — and because he didn’t alert the authorities as soon as he discovered vulnerabilities, law enforcement is required to be blind to his good intent,” we noted. He spent six hours in jail, even though he complied with all searches and confiscation of electronic devices.

Sinclair is running for a seat on the Lee County elections board, drawing some suspicion the hack was a publicity stunt, but as we noted, “with rather overt fraud disenfranchising voters across the country, arresting the one hacker who attempted to help secure elections seems oddly ironic.” Here’s a list of the many irregularities plaguing the electoral process this year.

3. Former Facebook employees revealed how the site censors news stories: Last week, Gizmodo published an in-depth story on how journalists working for the “Facebook Trends” feature of the social networking site were mistreated and quarantined from the rest of the staff. This week, Gizmodo published a follow-up piece documenting allegations from former employees that curators of the trending section excluded stories from conservative outlets and deliberately failed to include conservative topics from the IRS discrimination scandal to Rand Paul. Though these exclusions appeared to be unintentional displays of bias from individual employees, they dominated coverage of the story. But other manipulations of the feed were more deliberate. One official policy of the department included censoring stories about Facebook from trends.

“When it was a story about the company, we were told not to touch it. It had to be cleared through several channels, even if it was being shared quite a bit. We were told that we should not be putting it on the trending tool,” said one former employee. Further, in another official policy, employees were allowed to artificially inject stories into that trending pool, even if they were not trending on Facebook — as long as they were covered by mainstream outlets.

Though Republican lawmakers demanded answers from Facebook, perhaps the real story is Facebook’s complicity in perpetuating corporate media narratives; Facebook has long-partnered with corporate outlets (and the U.S. government), and has also been accused of censoring stories critical of Hillary Clinton, while blocking grassroots groups supporting Bernie Sanders. While Facebook is ultimately a private company that can make its own decisions, its users would do well to take the revelations as an opportunity to decide whether they trust the outlet to responsibly and equitably provide them with information.

No matter one’s view on Facebook’s rights as a private institution, the news of their practices runs in direct violation of their assertion the feed is comprised of “topics that have recently become popular.” The whistleblowers expressed hope that with the increased use of algorithms, Facebook Trends will be less subject to human bias and manipulation. In case that doesn’t happen, sign up for the weekly Anti-Media newsletter to get information unfiltered by Facebook.

4. Rat DNA, Human DNA, and Pathogenic Germs… in your hamburgers: According to an independent analysis conducted on over 250 burger brands in the United States — ranging from fast food to frozen food, and even vegetarian products — America’s love for burgers faces some snags. Though the report by Clear Labs, a California-based food industry researcher, praised overall improvements in the hamburger industry, they noted severe shortcomings, particularly with product labeling and the presence of germs. Rat DNA was found in three vegetarian burger samples while human DNA was found in one — but those were not the most concerning findings, the researchers noted, because though their presence is revolting, they are not necessarily considered dangerous to humans.

More worthy of alarm, they explained, was the mislabeling of vegetarian products, the presence of meat in some of those purportedly meatless burgers, and the total absence of black beans in a black bean burger. The report notes “23.6% of vegetarian products showed some form of discrepancy between product and label, compared to the 13.6% of all samples. We found pervasive issues in food quality and end-product consistency in these non-meat samples.”

Further, they found pathogens known to cause illness in 11 samples, four of which were found in vegetarian burgers. Though their tests could not determine whether the pathogens were alive or dead, their presence at all should raise eyebrows. Another top concern of analysts was the finding that “nearly 81 percent (38 of 47) of the fast food burgers tested contained more calories than reported in the product’s nutritional information,” and that“these discrepancies are potentially worrisome for customers who make decisions about what to order based on calorie counts and other available nutritional information.”

Though food contamination in the United States is nothing new, these findings are relevant not only because they document ongoing issues with food quality, but because they represent an attempt by a private organization to pick up the FDA’s slack. As Anti-Media pointed out, “Perhaps most telling is Clear Labs’ subtle, if not unintentional, commentary on the failures of the FDA to keep food safe for consumers; they stress their goal is to improve the safety and quality in hamburgers — ‘regardless of whether or not they are acceptable according to FDA guidelines,’” ultimately providing a silver lining to the unsettling report.

5. American foreign policy continues to have unintended ramifications: Americans have by and large accepted aggressive militarism as a linchpin of U.S. policy, and though the overwhelming civilian casualties and military failures are widely-known, this week Anti-Media reported on another consequence of the longest war in U.S. history: the war in Afghanistan has turned a generation of children into heroin addicts.

“The psychological damage of war, together with the flood of cheap heroin, has led to a doubling in addiction rates over the last five years. In the Channel 4 documentary, Unreported World, Ramita Naval explores a harrowing escalation in child addiction. In the ravaged country, where access to drug treatment is severely limited, she visits a rehabilitation centre where children as young as four or five — haunted by horrors they have witnessed — attempt to regain lost childhoods,” Anti-Media noted.

A Kabul-based doctor told Naval rates of addiction had jumped 60 percent in the last two years at the only treatment center in the city that helps children. Naval spoke to a thirteen-year-old boy whose parents were killed by shelling when he was eight. He ended up working as a guard for drug dealers, eventually becoming addicted to opium himself. He said he prostitutes himself to be able to maintain his habit.

Another young boy’s addiction began when, “after witnessing a suicide bomb attack in Kabul, he went to stay with relatives in the countryside. While he was there, U.S. forces bombed his village, killing dozens of people; he described seeing bodies scattered everywhere. The young boy and other villagers had to pick up the body parts and put them in plastic bags. Claiming the war breaks his heart — and making his descent into drug use more understandable — he said, ‘I’d rather not live, than live through this war.’”

“What’s happened in Afghanistan over the last 13 years has been the flourishing of a narco-state that is really without any parallel in history,” Kabul-based journalist Matthieu Aikins told Democracy Now back in 2014.

Afghanistan now produces 90 percent of the world’s opium, and even the CIA has been linked to key players in that trade. Clandestine operations aside, however, a generation of children lives in a country where opium is cheaper than food — and where unrelenting violence chronically traumatizes their young psyches, driving them deeper into addiction.

Of course, it is possible to care about transgender rights and political corruption, censorship, contaminated food, and the unintended victims of the Afghanistan War. As Facebook highlights transgender rights and Americans preach from the bully comment thread pulpits, however, it’s important to remember the broad view of current affairs.

This article (5 Huge Stories the Media Ignored While Arguing Over Which Bathroom to Use) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Carey Wedler and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article at edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

You Know Those Missing #Hillary #Emails? #Russia Might Leak 20,000 of Them

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(ANTIMEDIA) Hillary Clinton sits at the center of a raging firestorm concerning her arrangement of a private email account and server set up in her home — from which top secret information may have been deleted. But despite Bernie Sanders’ apparent annoyance with the “damn emails,” the scandal just exponentially intensified, when Judge Andrew Napolitano revealed on Monday that Russia has possession of around 20,000 of Clinton’s emails — leaving open the possibility her deletions might not have been permanent after all.

“There’s a debate going on in the Kremlin between the Foreign Ministry and the Intelligence Services about whether they should release the 20,000 of Mrs. Clinton’s emails that they have hacked into,” Napolitano told Fox News’ Megyn Kelly in an interview for The Kelly File.

With Clinton’s repeated claims she employed the personal email server only for mundane communications and non-sensitive State matters having been proven outright lies, the deletions of 31,830 emails — in the new context of Napolitano’s statement — have suddenly become remarkably relevant.

As the FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton’s questionable email practices deepens, the question of who had access to what information previously located on the former secretary of state’s server is now more critical than ever.

One such individual, Romanian hacker Guccifer, who was abruptly extradited to the United States, revealed he had easily and repeatedly accessed Clinton’s personal server — and he wasn’t the only one.

“For me, it was easy,” the hacker, whose given name is Marcel Lehel Lazar, exclusively told Fox News; “easy for me, for everybody.”

If Guccifer and Napolitano are right, Russia may, indeed, have possession of highly-sensitive information courtesy of Clinton’s arrogant failure to adhere to the obligation to use a government email account during her tenure as secretary — a situation worsened by the now-mendacious claim no sensitive information had been sent through the personal account.

In fact, if Guccifer is to be believed — as his extradition by the U.S. indicates — news of the Kremlin having obtained potentially top-secret material may be the tip of a gargantuan iceberg. Using a readily available program, the Romanian hacker also claimed he observed “up to 10, like, IPs from other parts of the world” during sessions on Clinton’s personal server. If just one of those unknown parties was connected to Russia, who the other nine might be could be central to the FBI’s decision whether or not to charge Clinton for mishandling classified information.

Adding yet another nail in the coffin case against Hillary on Thursday, the Hill reported conservative watchdog Judicial Watch revealed, pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act request, frustration with technical difficulties in obtaining a secure phone line led the secretary to direct a top aide to abandon the effort and call her without the necessary security in place.

“I give up. Call me on my home [number],” Clinton wrote in a February 2009 email from the newly-released batch — on the also notoriously unsecured server — to then-chief of staff, Cheryl Mills.

Though the email thread contains no confirmation such a call was ever made on the unsecured phone line, it evidences still more of the same flagrant disregard for national security apparently peppering Clinton’s practices during her time at the State Department.

“This drip, drip of new Clinton emails show Hillary Clinton could not care less about the security of her communications,” noted Judicial Watch president, Tom Fitton, in a statement cited by the Hill. “How many other smoking gun emails are Hillary Clinton and her co-conspirators in the Obama administration hiding from the American people?”

For a putative presidential hopeful, Hillary Clinton certainly doesn’t appear to appreciate the imperative for keeping matters of national security obscured from … anyone.

This article (You Know Those Missing Hillary Emails? Russia Might Leak 20,000 of Them) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Claire Bernish and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

#UK Government Urged To Answer for Policy of Targeted #Killing

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(ANTIMEDIA) When is it acceptable for a state to take a life outside of armed conflict? Is assassinating someone in order to protect other lives justified? If so, who gets to decide what constitutes a threat? In order to clarify the answers, a parliamentary committee in the U.K. has called into question the government’s interpretation of the law when it comes to the targeted killings of suspected terrorists outside the scope of armed conflict.

A new report by the Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) has called for more accountability from the British government when it uses such force. However, campaigners claim the new recommendations risk legitimising extrajudicial killing. Although the inquiry was triggered by the RAF drone strike that targeted and killed 21-year-old Reyaad Khan in Syria last August, the JCHR focused on the wider legal issues surrounding the U.K’s targeted killing policy. They concluded the legal basis for the policy requires urgent clarification.

The U.K. government currently considers the use of drone attacks outside of armed conflict justified, as long as it complies with international law governing the use of force on the territory and the Law of War. However, the report highlighted a number of areas where the government’s legal basis for its own policy remains unclear, urging it to provide more clarity.

It also recommended the government establish its understanding of key concepts, such as what constitutes an “imminent threat” under international law. In addition, it stated the government must make clear its legal basis for contributing to the use of lethal force by other countries abroad, such as the U.S. Jennifer Gibson, a lawyer from Reprieve, called the report a wake-up call. She warned the U.K. risks “following the US down the slippery slope of kill lists and targeted killings.”

Chris Cole from Drone Wars U.K. also issued a word of caution. “We must be careful not to fall into the trap of putting in place policies and procedures that normalise and legitimise extrajudicial killing,” he said. “The UK must not follow the US down the path of adding suspects to a ‘kill list’ in order that they will be assassinated at the first opportunity in an ever-expanding, global battlefield.”

Claiming part of the problem is that the issue is being examined in legal terms, Cole pointed to additional serious ethical and security issues raised by the increased use of drone technology. Acknowledging the growing recognition that drones are lowering the threshold for the use of lethal force, he added:

“The constant presentation of targeted drone strikes as ‘precise’ and ‘pinpoint accurate’ has serious implications for the public’s understanding and debate of these issues.

“Due to the nature of today’s military interventions, few people in the UK have first-hand accounts of the impact on the ground, creating in the minds of many the idea that such strikes are clean, safe and even bloodless.”

Although Cole acknowledged the report is an important step in opening up the debate, he said there is a need for more serious debate on whether targeted killing should be happening at all.

This article (UK Government Urged To Answer for Policy of Targeted Killing) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Michaela Whitton and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

 

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From theantimedia.org Team

Jon #Stewart Just Slammed Hillary #Clinton But the Media Ignored It

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(ANTIMEDIA) While it’s hardly shocking that mainstream media targeted Jon Stewart’s latest jab — in which he described Donald Trump as a “man-baby” — the mainstream media establishment mouthpiece virtually ignored his lambasting of Hillary Clinton.

“What I think about Hillary Clinton is, you know … I imagine [her] to be a very bright woman … without the courage of her convictions — ‘cause I’m not even sure what they are,” Stewart told David Axelrod for his podcast, The Axe, to which the audience erupted in applause.

Though the slam represented more than corporate media has managed thus far during the former secretary of state’s troubled run for the presidency, Jon Stewart took the description to a hilarious next level. For reference, Magic Johnson once had a talk show that ultimately failed because … well … witness Stewart’s comparison of Johson to Hillary:

“Magic Johnson was a charming individual, but he wasn’t a talk show host … so, he would sit and he would go, [Stewart affected a flat tone here] ‘Uh, my first guest tonight … my first guest tonight is [with lots of enthusiasm] CHER, everybody!’ But he never seemed authentic and real to his personality. It seemed like he was wearing an outfit designed by someone else for someone else to be someone else, and that is not to say that [Clinton] is not preferable to Donald Trump — because at this point, I would vote for Mr. T over Donald Trump. But I think she will be in big trouble if she can’t find a way, and maybe I’m wrong. Maybe a real person doesn’t exist underneath there. I don’t know.”

Axelrod then asked the former host of the Daily Show about Clinton’s appearance as a guest — and the criticism continued:

“What was that like?” Axelrod inquired about the former secretary’s interview.

“Really cool,” Stewart deadpanned. “It’s — look, there are politicians who are either rendering their inauthenticity in real enough time to appear authentic, and then their are politicians who render their inauthenticity through — it’s like, when your computer … if you have a Mac and you want to play a Microsoft game on it …”

AXELROD: Yes, yes.

STEWART: … and there’s that weird lag.

AXELROD: Yes. No, I mean …

STEWART: That’s Hillary Clinton.

AXELROD: … that’s a big problem. There’s like a seven-second delay and all the words come out in a perfectly …

STEWART: Right.

AXELROD: … politically calibrated sentence.

STEWART: Right. Now, what gives me hope in that is that there’s a delay, which means she’s somehow fighting something. I’ve seen politicians who don’t have that delay and render their inauthenticity in real time, and that’s when you go, ‘That’s a sociopath.’

So, there you have it. Jon Stewart described Hillary Clinton as inauthentic and not bold enough to follow through on issues she stridently touts — but stopped just short of calling the presidential hopeful a ‘sociopath.’

For the full podcast, visit this link.

This article (Jon Stewart Just Slammed Hillary Clinton But the Media Ignored It) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Claire Bernish and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

#DOJ Employees Investigating Hillary Email Scandal Gave $75K to Her Campaign

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(ANTIMEDIA) United States — In what must be described as a massive conflict of interest, Hillary Clinton has amassed nearly $75,000 in campaign donations from individuals listing their place of employment as “Department of Justice.” Considering Clinton is the subject of a sweeping investigation by the FBI — for which the DoJ will determine whether or not charges will be levied — such donations seem at least somewhat dissonant.

As the Washington Free Beacon reported, of all the presidential hopefuls, Clinton received by far the heftiest sum from DoJ employees — $73,437 total, including 228 individuals contributing the maximum allowable by law, $2,700. On its own, the total could be considered substantial, but as the Free Beacon noted, Clinton’s previous presidential run wasn’t favored as heavily by DoJ employees — in 2008, she raised just $15,930 from 23 contributors.

Hillary’s donations from the Department of Justice completely swamp those of the other candidates, in fact, as Sanders’ total from 51 donors was just $8,900 and Trump garnered an inconsequential $381.

“I’m not surprised in the least to see more evidence that shows the politicization of the Justice Department,” said watchdog group, Citizens United, president David Bossie, in a statement to the Free Beacon. “How can Democrat political appointees fairly investigate someone who is about to become their nominee for president? That’s why last July I called on Attorney General Lynch to appoint an impartial special counsel to investigate the private Clinton email server.

“Today, I renew my call that Attorney General Lynch must appoint a special counsel to determine if Hillary Clinton or her agents broke the law and compromised our national security. This investigation needs to be conducted free of political influence once and for all.”

Critics have previously pointed to Lynch personally donating over $10,000 to Democratic candidates as evidence of her lack of impartiality — and sufficient reason she should not be charged with overseeing the investigation of Clinton’s emails.

As if the DoJ connections to the Clinton investigation weren’t enough, the former secretary has also received a number of hearty contributions from the private prison industry.

As The Intercept reported nearly a year ago, two of Clinton’s top campaign donors are Corrections Corporation of America and the Geo Group — two of the biggest private prison corporations on the planet.

For Clinton to not only claim to follow the letter of the law in the face of evidence to the contrary — in her use of a private email server for official State business — but to also tout her devotion to minorities and social justice, while accepting donations from for-profit prisons, belies the flimsiest of façades.

As usual, Hillary Clinton’s stances run the gamut of personal convenience while flouting the public interest. Though evidence grows stronger by the day that at least one of her many wrongs is deserving of an indictment, the levying of charges remains an open question — if not downright doubtful.

This article (Dept. of Justice Investigating Hillary Email Scandal Gave $75K to Her Campaign) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Claire Bernish and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. Image credit: Marc Nozell. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

Hacker #Arrested and Jailed After Exposing Flaws in #Election Website

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(ANTIMEDIA) Lee County, FL — A hacker in Florida exposed security vulnerabilities in one county’s elections web domains so officials could fix the problem — but, instead, he ended up behind bars.

Hacker David Michael Levin, owner of Vanguard Cybersecurity, was arrested on Wednesday after the Florida Department of Law Enforcement received a referral from the Lee County Sheriff’s Office after his apparently misguided attempt to help prevent election fraud by pointing out online vulnerabilities.

After spending six hours in jail, where he was held on $15,000 bond, Levin now faces three counts of gaining unauthorized access to a computer, network, or electronic instrument — despite the fact he had not only been doing his job, but also alerted the county to a potentially serious security concern.

To hack the Lee County Elections Office and the Division of Elections in Tallahassee, Levin performed Structured Query Language (SQL) injection attacks — which he documented on video and later uploaded to YouTube. According to the somewhat redacted police report, Levin’s associate, Daniel Sinclair, sent a security report about the SQL vulnerability — including details of the security flaw and a screenshot — to “an employee within the Department of State, Division of Elections.”

That employee then forwarded all the information to Special Agent Christopher Tissot, and the investigation began.

Though superficially, the case appears to be one of an unwelcome security breach despite that it was attempted for otherwise laudable purposes. But some aspects of what led to Levin’s arrest deserve further consideration.

Levin’s associate, Sinclair, is currently running against incumbent Sharon Harrington, Lee County Supervisor of Elections — whose name and password were used in the SQL hack. In the YouTube video about the attack, Levin and Sinclair explain how they obtained data from the elections website, which wasn’t even encrypted.

The possibility Levin chose Harrington’s account to perform the SQL injection as a publicity stunt to make Harrington’s job performance appear untenable must be taken into consideration. That being said, Levin’s foray into the elections data had not been undertaken with the appropriate permission — and because he didn’t alert the authorities as soon as he discovered vulnerabilities, law enforcement is required to be blind to his good intent.

However, in Levin’s defense, the privacy concerns of millions of voters — and any other potential issues with unencrypted and unsecured information — on the official Elections website should perhaps trump the strictures of law. Levin cooperated fully during a raid of his property — during which electronics were confiscated — and has in no way been deceitful regarding the hack.

Considering the sheer volume of complaints so far during the 2016 election cycle, it would seem counterproductive for law enforcement to go after a credentialed individual who obviously has the voting public’s best interests in mind.

With rather overt fraud disenfranchising voters across the country, arresting the one hacker who attempted to help secure elections seems oddly ironic.

This article (Hacker Arrested and Jailed After Exposing Flaws in Election Website) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Claire Bernish and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

Here’s Why Ron Paul Just Said #Hillary Could Have Run as a #Republican

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Former Republican congressman and presidential candidate, Ron Paul (TX), made some interesting comments in an interview with Fox Business Monday.  Paul insisted the neoconservative Republicans could actually back Hillary Clinton, instead Trump.

“Hillary is a Wall Street person and she is a neocon and she wants to spend money on the military. So, a lot of them will go there. They’re not going to get Romney to run. I think it will shift a lot of people over to Hillary because I’ve always argued that Hillary could have possibly run as a Republican with some of her positions.”

From theantimedia.org Team

The Disastrous #2016 #Election Has Triggered a Third Party Revolution #LP

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(ANTIMEDIA) United States — While tumultuous, chaotic, contentious, outrageous, erratic, fraudulent, random, disheartening, and certainly unpredictable, could simultaneously describe this presidential election cycle, perhaps the most unanticipated development surrounds the categorical shunning of the soured, traditional duopoly — despite its previously adamantine grip on American politics.

This year, constant evidence substantiates the people’s collective scream: Enough!

In particular, once Ted Cruz and John Kasich abruptly halted their bids for the nomination this week — sending shockwaves across the already tempestuous election climate — the country’s umbrage against the establishment gained momentum. Again. Third parties and alternative candidates — and not just anti-establishment candidates conniving the system by running on one of the duopoly’s tickets — began blowing up the previously gaining trend in popularity.

In just one example following the sudden void in options for GOP voters, the Libertarian Party experienced massive and atypical interest in their platform — a doubling of applications for new members. More to the point, LP Executive Director Wes Benedict told the Washington Examiner in an email there hadn’t been a recent recruitment push for new members on social media — and surmised the sudden interest must be due to Trump’s unofficial clinching of the Republican nomination.

Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson noted the surge of interest yesterday on Facebook:

“Of course they are scared of Trump,” Benedict penned. “Trump sounds like an authoritarian. We don’t need a deal-maker. We need more transparency, and a smaller, less intrusive government that provides a level playing field for all and has fewer deals for special interests.”

In the last few months, in fact, once the primary season began in earnest, new donor contributions to the LP skyrocketed — even more so once Trump became the all-but-presumptive GOP nominee.

April 2015, simply for reference, saw 106 new donors to the Libertarian Party; but, as the Examiner noted of statistics Benedict provided, “in February 2016, after Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina held their caucuses and primaries, the LP saw 323 new donors. In March, they had 546 new donors, and in April, after everyone but Trump, Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich had dropped out, the LP signed up 706 new donors.”

Benedict’s conclusion that the LP’s spike in popularity came from, essentially, fear of a Trump presidency, further illustrates the abysmal sentiment regarding establishment politics in the U.S. However polarizing Trump might be, an astonishing approval rate has helped slingshot what many originally wrote off as a publicity stunt into a direct counter-establishment torpedo with the potential to win the White House.

On the flip side, Bernie Sanders similarly continues to garner fanatical support — while his campaign’s very foundation took root by countering establishment rhetoric. Sanders, an Independent running on the Democratic ballot, remains wildly popular despite media suppression of his success and continued election fraud almost certainly employed to obstruct his possible nomination.

Disillusionment and voter disenfranchisement collided in a mid-April Gallup poll, perhaps revealing another underlying motivation in the mass exodus from the traditional political duopoly — just a hair over one-quarter of the U.S., 27 percent, believe the election process currently functions as it should.

Sick of politics-as-usual, the American populace appears to have cleaved chasms in both the traditional Republican and Democratic Parties. Whether more interest in third parties comes now or after November’s election results are final, it’s clear the political climate in this country will never be exactly as it was before 2016.

This article (The Disastrous 2016 Election Has Triggered a Third Party Revolution) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Claire Bernish and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

Video: #Hillary Confronted by #Coal Miner Whose Jobs She Vowed to Destroy

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Claire Bernish
May 4, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) United States — Hillary Clinton already has an issue with being truthful, but her latest waffling on coal — and, specifically, coal miners’ livelihoods — has most of the country crying foul.

“Instead of dividing people the way Donald Trump does, let’s reunite around policies that will bring jobs and opportunities to all these undeserved poor communities,” Clinton boasted at a town hall meeting in March — immediately, hypocritically, and even jovially following up with this zinger:

“So, for example, I’m the only candidate which has a policy about how to bring economic opportunity using clean, renewable energy as the key into coal country. Because we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”

Granted, the chameleon presidential candidate elucidated, however vaguely, that “we don’t want to forget those people” — and she did ultimately apologize for the original remark. But the damage from such a powerful dismissal of the livelihoods of generations of Americans had already been indelibly marked in the hearts of coal mining families — as well as in the minds of members of West Virginia’s Republican Party.

Clinton has been touring West Virginia ahead of the state’s primary — and coal miners clearly can’t let her promise to put them out of work fall by the wayside.

Hillary sat down for a roundtable discussion with local residents on Monday as throngs of protesters could be heard outside, chanting “Go home!” One of the locals, Bo Copley, who recently lost his coal mining job, pleaded with Clinton to explain her statement from March.

“The reason you hear those people out there saying some of the things that they say,” Copley said, noting the loud protesters just outside the room, “is because when you make comments like ‘we’re going to put a lot of coal miners out of jobs,’ these are the kind of people that you’re affecting.”

Copley then thrust a picture of his family in front of an obviously uncomfortable — or possibly bored — Clinton, demanding to know if his family members would “have a future in this state” were she to be elected president.

“What I said was totally out of context from what I meant, because I have been talking about coal country for a very long time,” Clinton asserted during the conversation.

Hillary’s backtracking seems disingenuous at best considering her track record is more replete with mendacity than honesty. As you can see in the following footage, Clinton has more in common with a desperate chameleon than she does with the honest voters she actively attempts to court.

And, judging by the fully extended middle fingers greeting her in coal country, it seems more and more people realize they’re likely to hear Clinton say just about anything to win votes.

This article (Video: Hillary Confronted by Coal Miner Whose Jobs She Vowed to Destroy) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Claire Bernish and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

Watch #RonPaul Destroy the Two-Party System on Live TV

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“I’ve never bought into this idea that the lesser of two evils is a good idea.” — Ron Paul

Nick Bernabe
April 4, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) San Diego, CA — Longtime congressman and former presidential candidate Ron Paul made it clear in a recent interview on CNN that he will vote 3rd party if the presidential race comes down to Donald Trump versus Hillary Clinton.

Though Paul didn’t specify which candidate he would vote for, he did say Libertarian or Independent party candidates are a possibility. Paul also said he couldn’t support Ted Cruz, who has since dropped out of the race, because he’s a “theocrat” who wants to rule with religion. Paul didn’t comment on his specific reasons for not supporting Clinton, but one can speculate the fiercely anti-war Paul opposes her militaristic tendencies.

Then Paul went even further, saying both the Republican and Democratic parties — from Reagan to Obama — are controlled by the “Deep State” and powerful special interests. Watch the interview below:

This article (Watch Ron Paul Destroy the Two-Party System on Live TV) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Nick Bernabe and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

Author: Nick Bernabe

Nick Bernabe founded Anti-Media in May of 2012. His topics of interest include civil liberties, the drug war, economic justice, foreign policy, geopolitics, government corruption, the police state, politics, propaganda, and social justice. He currently resides in Chula Vista, California, where he was born and raised.

From theantimedia.org Team

Over Half of #Americans Now Believe the #Voting System Is Rigged

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AnonHQ Staff
May 3, 2016

(ANONHQ) This American primary season has been unlike any other election in recent memory, if not United States history. Between the Donald Trump phenomenon, Sanders supporters claiming voter fraud after what seems like every single state election and candidates in rivaling parties both publicly stating that the system is rigged, one thing is clear, there is something very strange happening.

We all understand that on some level, of course the system is rigged to a degree. I mean we have all known that Hillary Clinton was going to be ‘the next President’ for over six years now. It is no surprise she is running for election in 2016, we have known this all along. This is the illusion of having a choice in American politics. The reality is that you are presented with a choice to make, the illusion though, is that your choices are narrowed down by a rigged system.

People forget that in 2012 Donald Trump was in the mix to become the next President, however he was told he could not participate in the Republican debates. The same exact thing happened to Rand Paul this year. He did not want to stop campaigning for President, the GOP literally told him they would no longer allow him on the debate stage. Like it or not, on some level the entire system is rigged to a degree and apparently the majority of American citizens now agree. According a new study conducted by Reuters News, “more than half of American voters believe the U.S. system is rigged.”

The study was conducted via an online poll between the dates of April 21 – 26 and consisted of approximately 2,215 people – 1,582 of which were Americans. According to the results, when presented with the question “Agree or disagree: The current system of presidential primaries and caucuses are ‘rigged’ against some candidates?” 47.5% of people agreed. 23.6% disagreed with the statement and 28.9% were undecided or did not have an opinion for or against. Overall 51% of perspective American voters in the upcoming election believe that the system as a whole is rigged in general.

The study also went on to reveal that 71% or respondents said they would favor a direct vote for individual candidates on a single day rather than the current prolonged state delegate based system we see today. People point to the fact that when the primary season first began the Republicans had a field of 17 candidates. Today we are still in the process, some states haven’t even had a vote and yet the field of candidates available to vote for has shrunk down 3 – hardly fair or equal for every state.

Further numbers reveal that 27% of respondents admit that they have no idea how the political process actually works, something we refer to as low-information voters. Another 44% of voters have no idea what delegates actually are or why they are involved in the voting process at all.

This Article (Over Half of Americans Now Believe the Voting System Is Rigged) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and AnonHQ.com. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. Image credit: justgrimes. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

#Obama Jokes About the “End of the #Republic,” Giving Speeches to #GoldmanSachs

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Elizabeth Montag
May 2, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) If the corporate media wasn’t gushing over Justin Bieber’s new haircut or the nation’s lingering transphobia bathroom drama this weekend, it was lauding President Obama for his speech at the final White House Correspondents’ dinner of his presidency.

The black-tie dinner draws the nation’s top celebrities, journalists, and politicians and includes a stand-up comedy routine from the president. The assemblage of attendees often resembles the elite crowd that populates the lavish capital in the Hunger Games — and the president’s statements this weekend detail an oligarchical American society similar to that depicted in the dystopic novels.

This year, the president seemed unusually candid about the country’s state of affairs — even if he articulated them in a comedic, albeit smug, way.

“It is an honor to be here at my last — and perhaps the last White House Correspondents’ dinner,” he said as he opened his set, obviously referencing the increasingly doomed presidential race.

“You all look great. The end of the republic has never looked better,” he said to laughs and applause.

“If this material works well, I’m gonna use it at Goldman Sachs next year,” he said.

The joke could have been referencing his former Attorney General, Eric Holder’s new job at a law firm that lobbies for corporate banks — or, more likely, Hillary Clinton’s exorbitant fees for giving speeches to the loathed company. His comments are particularly jarring considering he accepted massive donations from Goldman Sachs and its employees during both of his presidential campaigns, and upon taking office, invited former Goldman Sachs employees to join his cabinet. He has famously failed to take any meaningful action against big banks.

In spite of his acknowledgment of Goldman Sachs as an influential player in American politics, he appeared to indirectly endorse Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, which has been marred by the influence of special interests, including Goldman Sachs.

“Next year someone else will be standing here in this very spot, and it’s anyone’s guess who she will be,” he said. The president dished out tame insults to all of the presidential candidates, ultimately turning his attention to the chairman of the Republican Party, whom Donald Trump has said “should be ashamed of himself” for the Republicans’ attempts to thwart his nomination.

“GOP chairman Reince Priebus is here as well. Glad to see you feel you earned the night off. Congratulations on all your success. The Republican Party, the nomination process … it’s all going great,” Obama sarcastically quipped.

The president also focused his attention on journalism and freedom of the press in the United States. Whether or not he intended to highlight the revolving door between government and corporate news, he did exactly that.

“Key staff are now starting to leave the White House. Even reporters have left me. Savannah Guthrie, she’s left the White House Press Corps to host the Today show. Norah O’Donnell left the briefing room to host CBS This Morning. Jake Tapper left journalism to join CNN,” he said.

He also joked about the power of journalists to hold politicians and government accountable, referencing a recent award-winning film about reporters:

“As you know, Spotlight is a film, a movie about investigative journalists with the resources and the autonomy to chase down the truth and hold the powerful accountable. Best fantasy film since Star Wars. Look — that was maybe a cheap shot.”

Adding insult to injury, the president, who has worked tirelessly to silence journalists, told reporters in attendance that though they have not always seen eye to eye with him, he still appreciates their work:

“But we’ve always shared the same goal  — to root our public discourse in the truth; to open the doors of this democracy; to do whatever we can to make our country and our world more free and more just. And I’ve always appreciated the role that you have all played as equal partners in reaching these goals.”

Obama has presided over the country’s slip in press freedom rankings, the prosecution of whistleblowers, and the intimidation of journalists. The corporate media he addressed in his speech has, in that same time, shown its corruption and lack of concern for the truth. Amid the current election cycle, establishment news outlets have shown their role is not to educate, but to manipulate, yet Obama maintained “[their] power and [their] responsibility to dig and to question and to counter distortions and untruths is more important than ever.”

As the media celebrated his epic “mic drop” at the end of his stand-up routine, those reading between the lines of his performance witnessed the not-so-secretive mechanisms of chaos, power, and corruption in Washington — as joked about by a president who maintained them.

This article (Obama Jokes About the “End of the Republic,” Giving Speeches to Goldman Sachs) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Elizabeth Montag and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. Image credit: Edalisse Hirst. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article at edits@theantimedia.org.

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From theantimedia.org Team

#Obama Admin Denies Saying “No Boots on the Ground” in #Syria After Saying It 16 Times | #TRUMP

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Claire Bernish
April 29, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) United States — What does a government do when it’s caught in a flagrant lie? If you are the U.S. government, you simply tell another lie — and laugh at anyone who tries to call out your hypocrisy.

Setting aside his oft-parroted no-boots-on-the-ground imperative, President Obama announced Monday the U.S. would be quintupling the number of special forces troops deployed to Syria to fight Daesh (the so-called Islamic State). In fact, the announcement was made later on the same day Obama claimed to have “ruled out” the deployment of ground troops.

Though this reneging on stated foreign policy has become somewhat par for the course, State Department spokesman John Kirby not only missed the hypocritical move, he flatly and bafflingly denied the Obama administration’s repeated claim there would be “no boots on the ground.”

In fact, instead of taking responsibility for initiating military maneuvers the public might find displeasing, the Obama administration has developed an apparent affinity for nitpicking semantics.

In a press conference, this farcical denial of reality reached stupefying proportions when Kirby was asked by an Associated Press reporter about this stark reversal of policy. All emphasis has been added to highlight the absurdities.

“I’m just curious if this is, like, part of some kind of devious grand strategy to say one thing and then do the complete opposite of it,” the reporter queried.

“I just — I don’t see it that way,” Kirby responded. “There was never this ‘no boots on the ground.’ I don’t know where this keeps coming from.”

Pressing the point, the reporter expounded, “For months and months and months, the mantra — from the President and … everyone else in the Administration — has been ‘no boots on the ground,’ and now —”

“That is not true,” Kirby interrupted.

“What?!” the reporter exclaimed — apparently as baffled as the rest of the press, heard murmuring in similar disbelief around the room.

“It’s just not true,” Kirby persisted, appearing almost smug, leaning on the podium. “It’s just not true.”

Of course, it is true — and Kirby’s semantic gymnastics to justify such a brazen lie added an Orwellian twist to the already Kafkaesque press conference. And that truth is written in black and white — even on the White House website, at least as far back as August 2013, when Obama stated:

“[I]n no event are we considering any kind of military action that would involve boots on the ground; that would involve a long-term campaign.”

On August 31, 2013, Obama asserted from the Rose Garden:

“After careful deliberation, I have decided that the United States should take military action against Syrian regime targets … We would not put boots on the ground.”

Then, on September 10, 2013 — once again, as found in print on the White House site — he reiterated:

“First, many of you have asked, won’t this put us on a slippery slope to another war?

“My answer is simple: I will not put American boots on the ground in Syria.”

On September 3, 2013, he again said:

“[The U.S. involvement in Syria] does not involve boots on the ground.”

September 9, 2013, brought the same statement from the president, in an interview with PBS Newshour:

“Tomorrow, I’ll speak to the American people. I’ll explain this is not Iraq; this is not Afghanistan; this is not even Libya. We’re talking about — not boots on the ground.”

Again, Obama repeated on September 7, 2014, as the Intercept noted:

“In Syria, the boots on the ground have to be Syrian.”

Though after the last statement, Obama’s characterization of ‘no boots on the ground’ began a subtle shift in language — evidencing mission creep — he sustained the narrative troops would not be deployed on the ground.

At the White House on February 11, 2015, reported USA Today, Obama remarked:

“The resolution we’ve submitted today does not call for the deployment of U.S. ground combat forces to Iraq or Syria.”

It’s arguable the United States populace could handle an honest statement outlining policy many may not agree with — such as the deployment of boots on the ground — if the plan were forthrightly presented.

But for Obama and other officials to repeatedly claim as much, and to then have the State Department act as if the people, themselves, have collectively lost their minds when pointing out the mendacious gaffe, is downright laughable — if not profoundly insulting.

It has become clear the United States mission to fight Daesh — with the secondary goal to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad — will involve boots on the ground. But it’s questionable whether the Obama administration with ever manage to admit to as much.

This article (Obama Admin Denies Saying “No Boots on the Ground” in Syria After Saying It 16 Times) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Claire Bernish and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. Image credit: Afghanistan Matters. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

From theantimedia.org Team

Watch #Comedian Rip #US Government Over 9/11 and 28 Pages in Under 4 Minutes

by

Claire Bernish
April 28, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) While President Obama recently vowed to veto a bill offering families of victims of 9/11 the chance to seek justice from foreign governments that may be complicit, outrage largely centered on the families — for the most part ignoring what the veto intimated. Though designed to lift immunity from the litigation traditionally provided to parties culpable in terror attacks — specifically, attacks on U.S. soil, and specifically in this case, Saudi Arabia — the bill could feasibly expose the U.S. to the same.

And therein lies the problem. Because, as Lee Camp wryly highlighted on Redacted Tonight recently, the United States government nefariously meddles in global affairs — often employing terroristic tactics or direct acts of terrorism for hegemonic, imperialistic goals.

To wit, Camp’s critique of U.S. violent hegemony includes a rundown of 30 examples — a telling figure in itself — but his list constitutes an exceedingly limited overview of the stultifying hubris of American foreign policy, past and present. Is there any doubt why Obama and a bipartisan Congress sought to withhold potential justice for loved ones of victims from September 11, 2001?

Sure, the Saudis threatened to yank three-quarters of a trillion dollars in U.S. assets from the already fragile economy should Obama pass the bill — but, in consideration of the aforementioned meddling, this political and economic blackmail appears an awfully convenient excuse for a veto.

As indicated in the length of the following far-from-complete list, the number of violent interventions the United States government would have to explain makes apparent Obama’s desire to veto this bill.

This article (Watch Comedian Rip US Government Over 9/11 and 28 Pages in Under 4 Minutes) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Claire Bernish and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

#CIA-Backed Artificial Intelligence #Palantir Firm To Spy on #WallStreet Traders

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Jake Anderson
April 27, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) — Swiss multinational bank, Credit Suisse, will collaborate with data analysis firm, Palantir, to launch a trader surveillance program. According to Bloomberg’s Jeffrey Voegeli, the joint venture, called Signac, aims to catch rogue Wall Streeters engaged in illegal trading. It comes in the wake of a number of trading scandals in recent years that have cost banks billions of dollars.

Palantir was co-founded by Peter Thiel and seed-funded by the CIA. The company was funded in part by In-Q-Tel Inc., the venture capital investment arm of the CIA that has a long, symbiotic history with startups, the NSA, the FBI, and DARPA. In fact, In-Q-Tel specifically funds tech start-ups “to advance ‘priority’ technologies of value” in the intelligence community. The group has ties to Donald Rumsfeld’s Total Information Awareness initiative and is believed by some to have worked closely with Google in its earliest years.

Palantir itself has lived in the shadows since its 2004 inception, working primarily to create a proprietary data mining system used by law enforcement agencies, finance firms, and security companies to isolate criminality. For example, Palantir’s software was used to analyze the troves of millions of documents related to the Bernie Madoff scandal.

Palantir has an extensive relationship with the U.S. government, and includes among its clients the CIA, DHS, NSA, FBI, the CDC, the Marine Corps, the Air Force, Special Operations Command, West Point, the Joint IED-defeat organization and Allies, the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Another client is the Los Angeles Police Department. A leaked document from 2013 included a quote from Sergeant Peter Jackson, who said Palantir’s technology is allowing the LAPD to become more efficient.

The new trader surveillance co-venture comes at a time when Credit Suisse finds itself in dire straits. After adhering to a so-called Pursuit of Revenue “At All Costs” policy, the company now finds itself facing $90 billion of distressed debt and rampant illiquidity.

Now bank executives view the problem as stemming largely from rogue traders, and believe Signac will help them turn things around. Signac will use algorithmic artificial intelligence to monitor unauthorized trades.

It is perhaps worth noting that Signac will monitor internal transactions that harm Credit Suisse – not any of the myriad transgressions made by the financial industry at large, such as the kinds of predatory lending we saw prior to the Great Recession. We may have to wait for a larger, more aggressive artificial intelligence presence for that kind of oversight.

This article (CIA-Backed Artificial Intelligence Firm To Spy on Wall Street Traders) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Jake Anderson and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

Cops Seize $53,000 Raised for #Charity by #Christian Band

by

 

SM Gibson
April 26, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) Muskogee County, Oklahoma – Eh Wah is a refugee from Burma who became a citizen of the United States more than a decade ago. Today, the 40-year-old resides in Dallas, Texas, where he regularly attends church and helps out as a volunteer manager for a Christian rock band from Burma, Klo & Kweh Music Team.

The group has been touring all over the United States in order to raise money for a Christian college in Burma and an orphanage in Thailand, but recently hit a setback when Eh was pulled over by a cop on his way back home to Texas to see his family. He had been on the road with the band for 19 concerts.

Eh, who is in charge of keeping up with all the money raised from the band’s merchandise and album sales, as well as donations received, had $53,249 on him when was pulled over in Muskogee County, Oklahoma for a busted taillight. And because Eh’s first language isn’t English, the officers had a difficult time understanding the explanation he provided, even when they interrogated the man for hours back at the police station.

“I just couldn’t believe it. An officer was telling me that ‘you are going to jail tonight.’ And I don’t know what to think. What did I do that would make me go to jail? I didn’t do anything. Why is he saying that?” he said.

As the Washington Post reported:

“Eh Wah even had the officers call one of the band’s leaders, Saw Marvellous Soe, who was living in Miami while the band was on a break. ‘The police officer started asking questions,’ Marvellous recalled. ‘I explained: ‘We are a music team. We came here for a tour.”‘ Marvellous tried to explain that the band was from Burma. ‘He kept telling me, “You are wrong, you are wrong,”‘ Marvellous said. ‘Everything I said, [he said,] “You are wrong.” I said: “We are doing a good thing! And now you are accusing us of being like a drug dealer or something like that.”’”

“I realized that they were seizing all of the money. I was like, ‘This can’t be happening.’ But I didn’t know what to do,” Eh said.

Although the property receipt states Eh was brought in for possession of drug proceeds, he was released that night — but five weeks later was charged with a felony for “acquir[ing] proceeds from drug activity.”  It is worth noting that absolutely no weapons or drugs were found in Eh’s possession, despite a drug-sniffing dog extensively searching the vehicle for illegal paraphernalia or items.

The officers’ theft of the money earmarked for the orphanage and college is called asset forfeiture and is perfectly legal in Oklahoma, a state that does not require any conviction whatsoever for police to remain in possession of 100% of all property confiscated from citizens.

Having taken Eh’s case on pro bono, the Institute for Justice had the criminal and civil charges against him thrown out on Monday afternoon after his case was reviewed by Muskogee County District Attorney Orvil Loge. After his decision, the District Attorney said, “I looked at the case and met with the officers, and determined that we would not be able to meet the burden of proof in the criminal case and in the civil case.” A check will be sent to Eh’s lawyers for the full amount taken from him, according to Loge.

The Institute for Justice says that despite the ultimately positive outcome in Eh Wah’s case, his is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the injustice of civil asset forfeiture laws in the United States.

Nevermind that it should have never been allowed to happen in the first place.

This article (Cops Seize $53,000 Raised for Charity by Christian Band) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to SM Gibson and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

Here’s A Rundown of #Election #Fraud in the 2016 Presidential Race So Far #feelthebern

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Op-ed by Claire Bernish
April 25, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) Supporting an anti-establishment candidate, as the 2016 election cycle has thus proven, at best amounts to little more than a maddening exercise in futility. Yet, droves continue flocking to the polls, ignoring that fixing a corrupt, authoritarian system by validating it through participating in its carrot-on-a-string illusion will somehow — this time — all work out for the greater good.

Though participation through voting might offer the feeling of power and control — as well as comfort in the illusion — the establishment maintains a thorough stranglehold on the current system, by design. If you’re still unconvinced, consider the evidence thus far — some blatant, some subtle — found in virtually every primary and caucus this year.

Iowa

To grasp how arbitrarily the popular vote can be manipulated to fit the establishment’s intended outcome, the Iowa caucus would be a good place to start. As if insufficiently trained volunteer staff, voter confusion, inadequate voter registration forms, and general disorganization weren’t telling in themselves, in multiple locations the awarding of delegates came down to coin tosses — literally.

While described as “the closest Democratic caucus in Iowa history” by the state’s Democratic Party, according to Salon, apparently the same Party felt the need to give Hillary Clinton an advantageous edge. One of Bernie Sanders’ delegates was sneakily awarded to Clinton amidst the confusion, but the Iowa Democratic Party didn’t bother to inform the precinct secretary it had done so. It then refused, despite the somewhat suspect happenings, to perform an audit.

“What happened Monday night at the caucuses was a debacle, period,” The Des Moines Register penned in an editorial afterward. “Democracy, particularly at the local party level, can be slow, messy, and obscure. But the refusal to undergo scrutiny or allow for an appeal reeks of autocracy.”

Nevada

Though Nevada didn’t have to resort to its deck-of-cards method to figure the awarding of delegates — as Iowa had done with its coin tosses — that didn’t stop anecdotal picture and video evidence from proving rampant issues and possible fraud.

Inexcusably hours-long lines, a lack of paper ballots, and poorly trained elections workers meant general disenfranchisement pervaded caucus locations. The situation so outraged voters, it was characterized a “fiasco.” Those who did manage to procure a ballot discovered Clinton propaganda in plain sight; though electioneering is prohibited at polling locations, one Reddit user posted a photo of a sign-in sheet emblazoned with the Hillary for Nevada logo at the top. Asked for an explanation, the poll worker handing out the not-at-all neutral sign-in claimed it was “for the democratic party,” US Uncut reported.

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Worse, a Twitter user discovered Hillary supporters allowed to caucus without registering, to which a precinct volunteer offered the rather effrontery explanation that they’d be permitted to register after casting a ballot — and it was all captured on video.

Worse still, another Reddit user claimed a poll volunteer registering new Democratic voters automatically marked them as favoring Clinton — and not only seemed stubbornly hesitant to correct the error, but later appeared working for the “Hillary group’s tables.”

Chaos in the Republican caucus mirrored that in the Democratic event, including reports of ballot mismanagement; one was allowed to fall to the floor and was ripped up by a volunteer unsure of its validity. Another witness tweeted “some guy voted for trump twice.” Caucus volunteers, who are required to forego campaign gear, sported Trump paraphernalia and, as another Twitter user claimed, were “Actively bullying folks. Not checking IDs.”

Super Tuesday

Super Tuesday’s primaries and caucuses offered no relief to the election madness, as Colorado and Massachusetts, in particular, similarly devolved into messy embarrassments.

Polling sites for the Democratic caucus in Colorado seemed to arbitrarily switch locations, voters were turned away upon arrival, volunteers were unprepared, and, in one case, a private residence intended to be a caucus location met voters with a locked door.

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So marred by troubles was the situation in Colorado, one Twitter user asserted, “I honestly cannot say enough negative things about the caucus system. Disorganized, undemocratic, just generally bad. Primary please!” Another voter summarily tweeted, “The caucus process in Colorado is bullshit!” Indeed, after the debacle, swaths of voters called for a return to the primary system, which had been in place until 2002.

Massachusetts saw an appearance by Bill Clinton, who took advantage of the opportunity to electioneer for Hillary, both inside and outside polling locations in a likely illegal violation of state law. So egregious and unusual was the situation, Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin told the New York Times his office “had to remind some of our poll workers that even a president can’t go inside and work a polling place. He can go in, but he can’t approach voters.”

A petition created afterward calling for Bill Clinton’s arrest and prosecution has since garnered over 127,000 signatures.

While not fraudulent, the Republican Party garnered its own firestorm of criticism by eliminating the popular vote from the nominating process — much to the ire of Trump supporters. As the Denver Post explained:

“Colorado GOP leaders canceled the party’s presidential straw poll in August to avoid binding its delegates to a candidate who may not survive until the Republican National Convention in July.

“Instead, Republicans selected national delegates through the caucus process, a move that put the election of national delegates in the hands of party insiders and activists — leaving roughly 90 percent of the more than 1 million Republican voters on the sidelines.”

“The people of Colorado,” Trump, in part, proclaimed afterward on Twitter, “had their vote taken away from them by the phony politicians.” Later, Trump expounded further, declaring in an interview, “The system is rigged. It’s crooked.”

To wit, the Colorado GOP hubristically boasted on Twitter, “We did it. #NeverTrump” — but likely realized the potentially damning repercussions of its candor and swiftly deleted the tweet.

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Arizona

“We’ve received complaints throughout the whole day of lifelong Democrats showing up to the polls and being told they are either independent or have no party affiliations,” stated Arizona Democratic Party spokesman Enrique Gutierrez, according to the Phoenix New Times.

Though locations across Arizona experienced massive voter turnout — which, as in many states before, overwhelmed grievously unprepared volunteers — Maricopa County, home of Phoenix, reported average wait times of up to 90 minutes. Long waits had been anticipated, to an extent, as Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell had drastically cut the total number of polling places from 200 four years ago to just 60 — questionably citing expected low voter turnout for the reduction.

To grasp the magnitude of difficulty this presented, one person tweeted, “Most counties I surveyed had enough polls for 2.5K or fewer voters per site. Maricopa County? 20,833 voters per polling site.” A local NBC affiliate reporter also noted on Twitter:

“Consider: 2012 primary had 300,000 voters and 200 polling places. 2016 primary has estimated 800,000 voters at 60 polling places.”

In predominantly Latino neighborhoods, that consolidation of polling sites was exponentially magnified — so few polling sites were available to Phoenix’ nearly 41 percent Latino population, even politicians publicly rebuked Purcell’s cuts.

“In my district, there is only one polling place,” Democratic State Senator Martin Quezada noted in a written statement, cited by AZCentral.com. “In my neighboring district, LD 30, there are no polling places.”

New York

In what could only be dubbed a farce, so copious were the complaints lodged about the New York City primary, city Comptroller Scott Stringer announced the Board of Elections would be the subject of an audit — hours before the close of polling. In fact, before voting even commenced, over 126,000 voters had been wholly purged from the records.

Diplomatically describing “widespread reports of poll site problems and irregularities,” Stringer wrote in a letter to New York City Board of Elections (BOE) Director Michael J. Ryan:

“Voters across the city have complained about poll workers erroneously redirecting them to different poll sites, poll workers unable to operate voting machines, poll workers unable to produce the correct party ballot for an individual voter, and poll workers giving conflicting information.

“Of particular concern are numerous allegations of widespread removal of eligible voters from voter-registration rolls, as well as instances of incorrect party affiliations on individual registration records. These errors have conspired to bar first time and longtime voters from exercising their fundamental democratic right.”

Mayor Bill de Blasio swiftly backed the call for an audit, and despite repeated denials from Ryan any major issues had tarnished the day, State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman claimed his office had received “by far the largest volume of complaints” from any election since 2011, according to Politico. Both the comptroller’s and attorney general’s offices began investigations following the debacle.

A top official for the NYC BOE has since been suspended without pay and an internal investigation has been launched over discrepancies in voter records and purging of voter rolls in Brooklyn.

✱✱✱

This list is woefully incomplete — Ohio is now investigating its primary, and Sanders managed to lose Wyoming, despite winning by a margin of 12 percent; this article didn’t even delve into superdelegates. Even so, the pattern of suspicious activity before, during, and after elections presents clear evidence many have not been willing to admit.

Your vote — if you’re able to jump enough hurdles to cast it — doesn’t matter. But worst of all, this farce of an election simply amounts to a theater of illusion, designed to distract people who might otherwise realize the change they seek through politicians could best be implemented by all of us, now, without needing to validate the very system of our modern-day enslavement.

This article (Here’s A Rundown of Election Fraud in the 2016 Presidential Race So Far) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Claire Bernish and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

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From theantimedia.org Team

#Hillary #Clinton’s Million Dollar Professional Internet Troll Army

by

Nick Bernabe
April 24, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) Hillary Clinton-aligned Super PAC, Correct the Record, is taking a page out of Vladimir Putin’s playbook by employing a $1 million dollar professional internet troll army to build a paid, positive consensus about the Clinton campaign. The effort, called “Breaking Barriers 2016,” claims:

“While Hillary Clinton fights to break down barriers and bring America together, the Barrier Breakers 2016 digital task force will serve as a resource for supporters looking for positive content and push-back to share with their online progressive communities, as well as thanking prominent supporters and committed superdelegates on social media.

“Correct The Record will invest more than $1 million into Barrier Breakers 2016 activities, including the more than tripling of its digital operation to engage in online messaging both for Secretary Clinton and to push back against attackers on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and Instagram.”

The campaign will essentially be employing an unknown number of paid, pro-Hillary trolls to spread positive news about the candidate and counter anyone posting negative information about her. And these aren’t just ragtag trolls living in their mothers’ basements — they are industry and campaign professionals. As Correct the Record acknowledges:

“The task force staff’s backgrounds are as diverse as the community they will be engaging with and include former reporters, bloggers, public affairs specialists, designers, Ready for Hillary alumni, and Hillary super fans who have led groups similar to those with which the task force will organize.”

In response to this news, Bernie Sanders campaign staffer Mike Casca told The Daily Beast, “Our campaign and our vendors are not paying people to reply to anti-Bernie comments on social media.” He added, “Come on man, really?”

The Hillary campaign was also recently called out by The Intercept for deploying “astroturfers” into the media — people with ties to Clinton who act as experts and political commentators to promote her campaign without disclosing their ties to the candidate.

With Hillary’s highly effective media strategies employing media surrogates — and now internet trolls — it’s becoming increasingly hard to decipher a distinction between actual Clinton supporters, unbiased political commentators, and paid campaign shills.

This article (Hillary Clinton’s Million Dollar Professional Internet Troll Army) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Nick Bernabe and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. Image credit: Gage Skidmore. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

From theantimedia.org Team

New Report Proves US #Law Enforcement Preparing for #Rioting on a National Scale

by

 

Claire Bernish
April 22, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) Fascism doesn’t often sweep in overnight and take over some hapless nation’s government; rather, it gradually seeps into the cultural fabric — as is quietly taking place all around the globe, evidenced by an upsurge in sales of riot equipment that has gone largely unnoticed.

A new report from analysts with industry research group, Sandler Research, forecasts the Global Riot Control System Market for the next four years — but beyond a burgeoning market to parallel the expanding global police state, it appears world governments are also keenly aware of civilian discontent. Sandler predicts the market will have an annual growth of 3.5 percent, and makes a telling juxtaposition, emphases added, involving the United States:

“Law enforcement agencies around the world are the biggest market for riot control systems. This market is expected to generate revenues of over USD 3.5 billion by the end of 2020. Countries such as the U.S., Iran, Egypt, Russia, China, and Thailand have started procuring riot control equipment and are investing heavily in [non-lethal weapons]. Moreover, special vehicles that are equipped with water cannon and reservoirs have been designed for security personnel, for use in areas of conflict to handle large crowds and demonstration. Demand for such equipment is expected to rise during the next few years.”

Note the last sentence in its truncated time frame.

Specifically, the analysts continue:

“In North America, the prominent markets are Canada and the U.S. and law enforcement agencies in these nations are best equipped with the upgraded weapons. The militarization of the police department and other law enforcement agencies in the Americas has encouraged the use of advanced riot control equipment.”

While swaths of the country debate the finer points of which lesser evil should take the helm of the corporate plutocracy, various U.S. law enforcement agencies have been gearing up for the virtually inevitable unrest both during and following those elections.

Militarized police forces have become de rigueur, even in the nation’s smallest towns — but arming law enforcement with the weapons of war, rather than protecting civilians, has birthed a chasm of distrust and animosity on both sides. It isn’t as if this equipment is being produced by a marketplace intent on keeping civilians safe from an ostensible outside threat.

As the report, which does not offer a breakdown of specific agencies it might be referring to (though may in its body which can be purchased for $2,500 here), definitively states:

“Law enforcement agencies use riot control systems to maintain the public order and safety and to enforce laws. They are used to disperse, control, and arrest people involved in riots and protests. Riot control systems include lethal and non-lethal weapons (NWLs), body-worn cameras, armored vehicles, and communications systems.”

As if released in conjunction with one another, a report by Lloyd’s intones the necessity of preparedness as mass civil unrest can not only spark without prior warning, but flare outward, unpredictably — what the insurer calls “Political Violence Contagion.” According to the report, instances of political violence “contagion (pandemics) have become more frequent, and the contagion effect ever more rapid and impactful.”

Considering massive worldwide demonstrations in the U.S. and elsewhere — as people finally grasp how corrupt governments actually are — it becomes apparent in these reports the politicians and their enforcement agencies comprehend the greatest threat to their power. As caucuses and primaries fall into chaos — and the City of Cleveland gears up for the Republican National Convention — voters and nonvoters alike harbor greater disillusionment than ever before.

Cleveland, whose police are currently under federal oversight following a Department of Justice probe that found a general pattern of brutality, plans to spend around $20 million to beef up security measures for the RNC. While part of the sum will focus on training, personnel expenditures, and the like, Vox reported 40 percent will be earmarked for “equipment and supplies” — including, in part, 2,000 sets of full-body riot gear. Additionally, if not ominously, the city “has put out bids for, among other things, 24 sets of ballistic body armor, 300 patrol bikes, and more than 3.7 miles of interlocking steel barriers, all of which can be used to curtail protestors,” according to Vox.

Together, the reports paint a dire prediction — not as much for its illustration of a world in chaos, but for its intimation authoritarian actors may act aggressively to quash even positive and peaceful change by the rest of us.

This article (New Report Proves US Law Enforcement Preparing for Rioting on a National Scale) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Claire Bernish and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

Why #US Govt. And #SaudiArabia Don’t Want Americans Knowing the Truth About 9/11

by

 

Anti-Media Staff
April 21, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) In a rare show of bipartisanship, President Obama and top Republicans in Congress have come together to shield Americans from knowing the truth about who was behind the 9/11 terror attacks, which took the lives of 2996 people in 2001. However strange it is for neoconservative members of Congress to agree with Obama on anything, there is no doubt the issue must be serious if it warrants this level of partnership.

The issue at hand is the classified, 28-page section of the 9/11 commission report, which many experts and politicians with knowledge of the documents have said point to Saudi Arabian government officials’ direct role in the terror attacks. This is why the Saudis put out a stern warning several days ago threatening to dump up to $750 billion in U.S. assets if Senate Bill 2040 becomes law; S.B. 2040 would make public the 28 pages and also allow for victims of 9/11 to sue foreign governments found responsible.

The Saudis’ warning seems to have worked, with Obama now in the nation to “mend ties” with the monarchy and top Republicans sounding the alarm about the 9/11 bill. In an interview with Charlie Rose, President Obama claimed:

“If we open up the possibility that individuals in the United States can routinely start suing other governments, then we are also opening up the United States to being continually sued by individuals in other countries,” apparently referencing the U.S.’ own attacks overseas that have taken the lives of countless civilians.

Currently, Saudi Arabia enjoys “sovereign immunity” with the U.S., meaning even if the 28 pages proved Saudi officials were indeed behind the 9/11 attacks, Americans would not be able to seek justice for their losses. The new 9/11 bill would change that, and the Saudi response to the legislation moving through Congress reinforces suspicions the kingdom is somehow behind the 9/11 attacks.

The video below further explains why both Saudi Arabia and members of the U.S. government don’t want the 9/11 bill to pass:

This article (Why US Govt. And Saudi Arabia Don’t Want Americans Knowing the Truth About 9/11) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. Image credit: Robert J. Fisch. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

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From theantimedia.org Team