When The S*** Hits the Fan

The Video That Could Bring Down #Hillary #Clinton’s Campaign

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Claire Bernish
April 20, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) After New York’s stunningly disorganized and questionable primary results proved, yet again, our elections are rigged to ensure establishment darling Hillary Clinton garners the Democratic nomination, a new video from Abby Martin’s Empire Files could topple Clinton’s entire campaign.

Evidence of said rigging isn’t difficult to find — it’s written directly into the electoral process in superdelegates, whose 700 “unpledged” votes remain uncommitted to a candidate until the nomination. This is “to ensure nominees are hand-picked party insiders,” as Martin explains in the video.

“The single vote of a superdelegate is worth thousands of ours,” Martin notes. “Many of these people are current and former members of Congress, and dozens more are literally corporate lobbyists working on behalf of every industry from healthcare to private prisons.”

In fact, the employment of superdelegates was initiated precisely for situations when the people’s choice doesn’t align with the establishment’s — such as the current overwhelming popularity of Bernie Sanders.

But the web of corporate media executives and insiders contributing directly to Hillary Clinton’s campaign couldn’t possibly explain the extreme bias, lack of criticism, and virtual media blackout on Sanders’ success, right? And her campaign, dripping with corporate lobbying cash, wouldn’t concern the American voting public, even though lobbyists literally act as superdelegates — would it?

Watch Empire Files: Abby Martin Exposes What Hillary Clinton Really Represents to see the proof the establishment doesn’t want you to discover.

This article (The Video That Could Bring Down Hillary Clinton’s 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: Gage Skidmore. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

From theantimedia.org Team

Primary Chaos: #NY #Elections Face Audit After 126,000 Mysteriously Denied Right to Vote

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Claire Bernish

April 19, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) Amid further reports of numerous problems with today’s primary election — including reports of some 126,000 voters purged from the rolls — New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer announced on Tuesday he will be auditing the city’s Board of Elections.

“There is nothing more sacred in our nation than the right to vote, yet election after election, reports come in of people who were inexplicably purged from the polls,” the Comptroller stated. “The people of New York City have lost confidence that the Board of Elections can effectively administer elections and we intend to find out why the BOE is so consistently disorganized, chaotic and inefficient.”

Stringer was so alarmed, he penned a letter to NYC BOE Director Michael J. Ryan about the audit, noting his “deep concern over widespread reports of poll site problems and irregularities” — and demanded the BOE provide viable explanations for each.

“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,” he wrote.

“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.”

Stringer’s concerns were echoed by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio this afternoon, who issued a statement cited by Politico about the ongoing turmoil and outrage:

“It has been reported to us from voters and voting rights monitors that voting lists in Brooklyn contain numerous errors, including the purging of entire buildings and blocks of voters from the voting lists. I am calling on the Board of Elections to reverse that purge and update the lists again using Central, not Brooklyn borough, Board of Election staff.”

In fact, a spokesman for State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman claimed his office has already received “by far the largest volume of complaints” from any election since 2011, Politico reported.

In concurrence with Stringer’s audit announcement, de Blasio added:

“We will hold the BOE commissioners responsible for ensuring that the Board and its borough officers properly conduct the election process to assure that voters are not disenfranchised. The perception that voters may have been disenfranchised undermines the integrity of the entire electoral process and must be fixed.”

Despite these telling public statements from officials, Ryan told the Observer:

“I bristle at the suggestion that some folks might be making that there are widespread problems. We’re just not seeing it.” He added the snafus occurring Tuesday were “what we typically see during elections.”

Ryan did mention he’d been away from his office most of the day, yet repeatedly rebuffed suggestions the voluminous number of reports were anything out of the ordinary for an election.

“Comptrollers audit agencies, that’s why comptrollers are there,” Ryan told the Observer about Stringer’s intent to audit. “If Comptroller Stringer believe that it is a worthy use of his agency resources to investigate the Board of Elections, we’re no different than any other city agency.”

With voters increasingly irate over inexplicable difficulties in simply casting a primary vote, we may be in for quite the ride in November.

This article (Primary Chaos: NY Elections Face Audit After 126,000 Mysteriously Denied Right to Vote) 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

#Spy Agency Apologizes for Chemical #Castration and Horrific Treatment of #LGBT People #turing

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Michaela Whitton
April 19th, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) United Kingdom — Britain’s secret intelligence agency has apologized for the “horrifying” treatment of one of its most famous members, as well as for the organisation’s historic prejudice against homosexuality. Speaking at a conference organised by LGBT rights charity, Stonewall, Robert Hannigan — director of Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) — paid tribute to former staff member Alan Turing, who was dismissed by the espionage service over his sexuality in the 1960s. Hannigan went on to apologise to all those unfairly dismissed as a result of the archaic policies, which included a ban on LGBT people joining the agency until the 1990s.

Described as a visionary and a brilliant mathematician, codebreaker Alan Turing’s skills are said to have shortened World War Two by two or more years, yet he was hounded from the secret service because of his sexuality. Known as the father of the modern computer, Turing led the well-known Bletchley Park codebreakers who cracked the encryption devices used by the Nazis.

When his home was burgled in 1952, the resulting police investigation uncovered that Turing was in a relationship with a young man. Homosexuality was still illegal in Britain, and he was ousted from his job following a conviction for indecency. Given the choice between prison and being treated with an experimental hormone to “fix” his sexual orientation — essentially chemical castration — he chose the latter. The treatment rendered him impotent and, in 1954, he took his own life by eating an apple laced with cyanide.

Hannigan said he attended the Stonewall conference to champion the right of people to be themselves. Apologising for the treatment of Alan Turing and many others discriminated against by the intelligence agency, he added:

“The fact that it was common practice for decades reflected the intolerance of the times and the pressures of the cold war, but it does not make it any less wrong and we should apologise for it.

“Their suffering was our loss and it was the nation’s loss too because we cannot know what Ian and others who were dismissed would have gone on to do and achieve. We did not learn our lesson from Turing.”

This article (British Spy Agency Apologizes for Chemical Castration and Horrific Treatment of LGBT People) 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.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

#Clooney Raised $15 Million for #Hillary & DNC, Denounced #Money in Politics a Day Later

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Elizabeth Montag
April 18, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) George Clooney held a $353,000-per-couple fundraiser for Hillary Clinton just one day before he called the amount of money in politics “obscene.” On Sunday, he discussed his two-day San Francisco event on MSNBC’s “Meet the Press,” where he defended the pricey dinner galas — even as he acknowledged the problem of out-of-control spending in elections.

Clooney went on to justify the fundraiser, estimated to have generated $15 million in two days, by arguing the money raised goes not only to Hillary Clinton, but the Democratic National Committee (DNC) — the institution currently under fire for subverting the electoral process to satisfy the party’s establishment machinery which, of course, includes the Clintons.

Asked point blank by host Chuck Todd if he felt the fundraiser pooled an “obscene” amount of money, as Bernie Sanders alleged, Clooney acknowledged it was over the top:

“Yes, I think it’s an obscene amount of money,” he said, adding that protesters showed up to the event to voice their disapproval.

“[W]e had some protesters last night when we pulled up in San Francisco. And they’re right to protest, they’re absolutely right — it is an obscene amount of money,” he added. The protesters were largely Bernie Sanders supporters, some of whom threw dollar bills at Clinton’s motorcade.

“The Sanders campaign when they talk about it is absolutely right, it’s ridiculous that we should have this kind of money in politics. I agree, completely,” he said.

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The A-list actor acknowledged he likes Bernie Sanders and thinks he is fostering important conversations within the Democratic Party. He also vowed to throw a similar fundraiser should Sanders receive the nomination. Nevertheless, he reaffirmed Hillary Clinton as his first choice. Further, he justified the fundraiser by arguing, essentially, it was a necessary evil to place Democrats back in power.

“The overwhelming amount of the money that we’re raising, is not going to Hillary to run for president. … It’s going to the congressmen and senators to try to take back Congress,” he said, prefacing his statement with the suggestion the Clinton campaign has not made this clear enough.

He continued, “…we need to take the Senate back because we need to confirm the Supreme Court justice, because that fifth vote on the Supreme Court can overturn Citizens United and get this obscene, ridiculous amount of money out so I never have to do a fundraiser again. And that’s why I’m doing it.”

Indeed, much of the money raised for the Hillary Victory Fund — the beneficiary of the weekend’s fundraisers — goes to the DNC to invest in candidates, though Clooney did not explicitly mention the committee in the interview. A much smaller portion goes to state Democratic parties, leaving millions for Clinton and the national party establishment. Unsurprisingly, Todd did not press Clooney on the merits of raising millions of dollars for an organization that has admitted to suppressing the voices of Democratic voters in its tirade against Bernie Sanders.

As Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the increasingly loathed chair of the DNC, said of the Democratic Party’s political process in February:

“Unpledged delegates exist really to make sure that party leaders and elected officials don’t have to be in a position where they are running against grassroots activists.” Her statements — and the shenanigans at polling centers — enraged Sanders’s followers. Clinton’s corporate funding has also raised serious suspicions about her credibility.

When Todd pressed him, Clooney denied the possibility that — as Sanders suggested — wealthy donors will expect access to a ‘President Clinton’ for their contributions at the fundraisers. Rather, he abruptly shifted his focus to the Koch Brothers:

“No, I actually don’t think that’s true. I think there is a difference between the Koch Brothers and us. The difference is, if I succeed — if we — succeed in electing an entire Congress…and a president, you know, the tax policies that they would enact would probably cost us a lot more money, quite honestly. The Koch Brothers would profit if they [got] their way, and…there’s no profit for us in this.”

Though Clooney may not personally be making a profit (and he admits the policies he envisions would further indebt the nation), he neglected to note that under a Clinton presidency, defense contractors, private prisons, and other corporatist industries who back Clinton will expect to receive a boon to business for the investments they’ve made in her — even if they didn’t attend this particular Hollywood fundraiser. Further, considering the establishment DNC spearheads Clooney’s stated goal of winning a Democrat-dominated Congress, it’s likely those selected to run for office with the “obscene” cash he raised would favor the same interests as the corrupt party rulership.

In spite of these concerns, Hollywood’s behind-the-scenes moguls, some with interests in Washington D.C., have thrown their support and money behind Clinton; Jeffrey Katzenberg, founder of Dreamworks Animation and former top bundler for the Obama campaign, co-hosted Clooney’s fundraiser and enjoyed alone time with Clinton beforehand. Katzenberg and his staff  have enjoyed access to the White House throughout the Obama years, and he has long-promoted internet censorship legislation for the sake of stopping online piracy, along with other policies beneficial to the film industry.

Others, like Haim Saban, a proudly pro-Israel Hollywood billionaire, have supported Clinton for years. Saban currently runs Univision, which recently acquired the Onion and boasts of his contributions to Hillary, which total $6.4 million. Perhaps reflecting his purchased influence, Clinton wrote a letter to Saban last July vowing to oppose the BDS movement (boycotts, divest, sanctions), which seeks to disempower Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

As Hollywood’s behind-the scenes power players favor Clinton, so do celebrities. Many, like Beyoncé, Kerry Washington, Ellen Degeneres, and Katy Perry, are considered “empowered women,” and thus, apparently support the female presidential candidate. A majority of entertainers openly supporting nominees opt for Clinton. Clooney — and many other actors and musicians — proudly supported Barack Obama and continue to do so, even as his reign failed to live up to expectations, extended privacy violations, sanctioned and committed war crimes, and sought to bolster America’s oligarchy.

The star-studded event over the weekend undoubtedly raised millions for Hillary, but it is unclear whether the Hollywood establishment is unaware of her myriad crimes — or simply overlooking them for the chance at influence over the next president.

As Bernie Sanders said of the extravagant weekend galas:

“So it’s not a criticism of Clooney. It’s a criticism of a corrupt campaign finance system, where big money interests — and it’s not Clooney, it’s the people coming to this event — have undue influence on the political process.”

This article (Clooney Raised $15 Million for Hillary & DNC, Denounced Money in Politics a Day Later) 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: Michael Vlasaty. 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

#Whistleblower Says #CIA Behind #PanamaPapers Leak

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Carey Wedler
April 12, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) A former Swiss banker-turned-whistleblower has accused the CIA of playing a key role the Panama Papers leak, which implicated numerous foreign leaders, companies, organizations and individuals in offshore tax evasion, among other offenses. Bradley Birkenfeld, a former American banker for Swiss firm UBS, told CNBC  “the CIA I’m sure is behind this, in my opinion,” in an interview conducted Tuesday from Munich.

Birkenfeld originally blew the whistle on American tax evaders using Swiss bank accounts to divert their funds away from the reach of U.S. authorities. He served two-and-a-half years for his involvement and was released from prison in 2012. Pursuant to whistleblower policy, Birkenfeld was awarded $104 million of the $780 million settlement UBS was forced to pay as a result of his cooperation with authorities. Since his release from prison in 2012, he has said he wants “to force the government to explain why it was so aggressive in prosecuting him, but let nearly everyone else involved in the scam get off with light penalties or none at all.”

Focusing on the CIA on Tuesday, Birkenfeld was careful to note his comments were his “opinion,” but nonetheless offered strong observations on the scope of the data leak, which is the biggest in history.

“The very fact that we see all these names surface that are the direct quote-unquote enemies of the United States, Russia, China, Pakistan, Argentina and we don’t see one U.S. name. Why is that?” Birkenfeld said. “Quite frankly, my feeling is that this is certainly an intelligence agency operation.”

Asked why a U.S. spy agency would release information that damages U.S. allies, like David Cameron, Birkenfeld said he was likely “collateral damage” in the purported overarching scheme to smear American adversaries.

He suggested the CIA had a calculated role in the way the leak was presented to the public:

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“If you’ve got NSA and CIA spying on foreign governments they can certainly get into a law firm like this,” Birkenfeld said. “But they selectively bring the information to the public domain that doesn’t hurt the U.S. in any shape or form. That’s wrong. And there’s something seriously sinister here behind this.”

Birkenfeld’s comments seem even more perceptive considering German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported Tuesday that “secret agents and their informants have made wide use of [Mossack Fonseca’s] services,”as translated by Raw Story. Sueddeutsche Zeitung originally received the leaked data from an anonymous whistleblower before handing it over to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

“Agents have opened shell companies to conceal their activities… Among them are close intermediaries of the CIA,” the German publication noted. Other individuals reportedly mentioned in the leaks included players in the infamous 1980s Iran-Contra scandal, in which the CIA was involved. The Iran-Contra scheme involved the U.S. selling weapons to Iran in exchange for the release of American hostages, then using the profits to fund anti-communist rebels in Nicaragua.

Though the CIA was not explicitly named in Sueddeutsche Zeitung’s report, their “intermediaries” were. Regardless, these revelations taken alongside Birkenfeld’s suspicions can mean one of two things: either Birkenfeld is wrong, or the CIA actually is involved with the Panama Papers and considered reports on their “intermediaries” to be “collateral damage,” as Birkenfeld suggested of Cameron.

Regardless, the Panama Papers leak has faced scrutiny beyond Birkenfeld’s. Wikileaks has called on the ICIJ to make all data from the 11,500 leaked pages available to the public.

Wikileaks also said, “If you censor more than 99% of the documents you are engaged in 1% journalism by definition.”

Gerard Ryle, Director of the ICIJ, has said, “We’re not WikiLeaks. We’re trying to show that journalism can be done responsibly,” and the ICIJ has noted it will not release all of the data. However, it will continue to release parts of the leak in the coming months.

Wikileaks also took to Twitter to accuse the ICIJ of being a “Washington DC based Ford, Soros funded soft-power tax-dodge” that “has a WikiLeaks problem.”

Further, the publishing organization accused ICIJ and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, with whom ICIJ shared the data, of launching an attack against Russian president Vladimir Putin:

“Putin attack was produced by OCCRP which targets Russia & former USSR and was funded by USAID & Soros,” Wikileaks tweeted. Another Twitter post later clarified the Panama Papers were not an “attack” against Putin, but that “DC organization [ICIJ] & USAID money tilt coverage.” USAID, the U.S. Agency for International Development, has been previously accused of corruption. Billionaire George Soros has been accused of influencing narratives in the mainstream media.

Regardless of who was behind the leak — and who may or may not be clandestinely pulling the strings on the flow of information — the CIA has faced similar accusations of media manipulation before. Otto Ulfkotte, the former editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine, a large German publication, said he was bribed by the CIA to write pro-American stories.

“It is not right what I have done in the past. To manipulate people and make propaganda,” he said in 2014. “I was bribed by billionaires, I was bribed by the Americans not to report exactly the truth.” Explaining how this relationship began, he said:

“Germany is still kind of a colony of the United States… And being a colony it is very easy to approach young journalists from transatlantic organizations.”

Noting that “all journalists from really respected and recommended big German newspapers” tend to be members of such transatlantic organizations, he said:

“They invite you [to see] the U.S. They pay for that, they pay all your expenses and everything, so you are bribed, you get more and more corrupt, because they make you good contacts. You won’t know that those good contacts are, let’s say, ‘non-official’ covers or officially people working for Central Intelligence Agency or other American intelligence agencies… so you make friends, you think you are friends, and you cooperate with them. They ask you, ‘Well, could you do me this favor? Could you do me that favor?’ And so your brain is more and more brainwashed.”

He said many reporters in countries around the world “play the [role of] respected journalists but if you look behind them you’ll find they are puppets on the string of the CIA.”

Though some may discount Ulfkotte’s account because it was not corroborated by a third party — and the interview aired on Russia Today, Russia’s state-funded news agency — the CIA has been known to work with other newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, to manipulate news stories in their favor.

Regardless of whether or not Birkenfeld is correct in his assessment of the CIA’s role in the leaks, his statements on CNBC provide, at the very least, cause for continued skepticism among the many interests and motivations driving the ongoing leak.

This article (Whistleblower Says CIA Behind Panama Papers Leak) 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

Bill #Clinton May Have Just Cost #Hillary the #Black Vote

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Nick Bernabe
April 8, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) Philadelphia, PA — Hillary Clinton has been performing well with minorities so far in the 2016 Democratic primary, but that could soon be changing. Bill Clinton may have just severely damaged the former secretary of state’s reputation among African Americans by committing a major gaffe — one he is now “almost” apologizing for.

At a campaign stop in Philadelphia on Thursday, Bill was interrupted by protesters — a common theme this presidential election. The protesters, mostly young black Americans, interrupted Bill’s speech to air their grievances about his sweeping 1994 crime bill — the largest ever passed. The bill, sold as a way to effectively fight inner-city crime, actually helped expand an already developing trend of mass incarceration that had an overwhelmingly negative impact of the black community.

Signs reading “Clinton Crime Bill destroyed our community,” and “Hillary is a murderer” could be seen waving in the audience as Bill was interrupted Thursday. He caused a major backlash in the the African-American community when he decided to comment on the people who were incarcerated because of his crime bill.

“I don’t know how you would describe the gang leaders who got 13-year-olds hopped up on crack and sent them out in the streets to murder other African-American children.“Maybe you thought they were good citizens…You are defending the people who kill the lives you say matter. Tell the truth. You are defending the people who cause young people to go out and take guns,”  he said at the campaign event.

Hillary Clinton was a major supporter of her husband’s crime bill when she was First Lady. As we reported previously:

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“Hillary Clinton lobbied Congress to pass the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. Bill Clinton signed the act into law in 1994… The largest crime bill in history, it provided $9.7 billion in prison funding. From 1992 to 2000, the amount of prisoners in the U.S. increased almost 60%.”

In another recent incident, Hillary came under scrutiny for alluding to young black males as “super-predators” in a speech in 1996. She, like Bill, has been confronted by activists for her contribution to the nation’s mass incarceration problem.

Hillary is facing eroding support from the Latino community, as well. Recent polling shows her previous popularity among this key demographic has evaporated — leaving Bernie Sanders with a slight lead of 48% to Clinton’s 47% in Latino support.

Ironically, though he defends it now, Clinton previously disowned the crime bill, admitting in an interview with CNN last year that it had “too wide a net” that resulted in “too many people in prison.”

Regardless, Hillary Clinton is still raking in major cash from the private prison industry despite her haunting past with mass incarceration.

This article (Bill Clinton May Have Just Cost Hillary the Black Vote) 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.

From theantimedia.org Team

Yes, the #PanamaPapers Could Really End Hillary #Clinton’s Campaign

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Op-Ed by Jake Anderson
April 6, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) With Senator Bernie Sanders winning seven of the last eight delegate battles — the most recent was Tuesday night’s Wisconsin victory — there’s a feeling in the air that most progressives haven’t felt since the Iowa caucus. It speaks to a hard truth Hillary Clinton and her choleric campaign staffers will encounter when they wake up in the morning: Bernie really could still beat Clinton and become the Democratic nominee for president.

No way, some of you are saying. The television faces said the delegate math was too hard. The superdelegates make it impossible. Hillary wins the primaries, Bernie only wins caucuses; America won’t elect a socialist; the nation won’t rally behind free healthcare and college tuition.

Despite the supposedly ineluctable logic of Sanders’ unelectability, many pundits now believe there has been a seismic shift in the 2016 presidential race. It is becoming increasingly obvious that Americans are sick to death of the two corporatist political establishments and will do anything to send them a message. The evidence of this is that the two most popular candidates in the 2016 election are a Jewish democratic socialist and a reality TV star who referred to his penis during a nationally televised debate.

Then there’s the matter of the Panama Papers. In case you haven’t heard about them over the roar of mainstream media’s ‘round-the-clock anti-Trump coverage, it’s being referred to as the biggest data leak in history. For the last year, 400 journalists have been secretly decoding 11.5 million documents leaked from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. The 2.6 terabytes of data show billions of dollars worth of transactions dating back 40 years.

Acquired from an anonymous source by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and then shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the documents present a jaw-dropping paper trail of how the upper echelon of the 1 percent has used shell companies and offshore tax havens to avoid paying billions of dollars in taxes. In less than a week of exposure, the Panama Papers have already implicated 140 world leaders from 50 different countries. Top executives and celebrities who appear in the leaked emails, PDFs, and other documents may also be indicted in money laundering, tax evasion, and sanctions-busting activities.

Though the source of the leak opted not to do a Wikileaks-style data dump and is instead allowing media outlets to curate the information, international tax reform could be imminent.

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The revelations are relevant to the 2016 presidential election because they once again illustrate the stark contrast in judgement between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. The transgressions documented in the Panama Papers were directly facilitated by the Panama-United States Trade Promotion Agreement, which Congress ratified in 2012. In 2011, Sanders took to the floor of the senate to strongly denounce the trade deal:

“Panama is a world leader when it comes to allowing wealthy Americans and large corporations to evade US taxes by stashing their cash in offshore tax havens. The Panama free trade agreement will make this bad situation much worse. Each and every year, the wealthiest people in this country and the largest corporations evade about $100 billion in taxes through abusive and illegal offshore tax havens in Panama and in other countries.”

Clinton, on the other hand, completely ignored the tax haven issue, and instead, regurgitated the same job-creation platitude she used to peddle NAFTA, which has decimated American manufacturing jobs and led to an economic refugee crisis in Mexico.

Beyond just exposing her unwillingness to understand how modern free trade agreements benefit the rich and punish impoverished countries, Clinton may have a more nefarious connection to the Panama Papers.

In lobbying for the Panama-United States Trade Promotion Agreement, Clinton paved the way for major banks and corporations, most notably the Deutsche Bank, to skirt national laws and regulations. After she resigned as Secretary of State, the Deutsche Bank paid her $445,000 for a speech. While criminality can’t yet be definitively established, this may change when the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” publishes its comprehensive list at the end of the month. In addition to the aforementioned connection, Clinton’s name has already surfaced in connection to a billionaire and a Russian-controlled bank named in the files.

The fallout from the Panama Papers is being felt around the world. On Tuesday, Iceland’s Prime Minister resigned after it was revealed his family had used a shell company to hold millions of dollars worth of bonds in a collapsed bank. After an interview in which Prime Minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson had a meltdown when asked about the company’s assets, over 20,000 citizens of Iceland protested. For context, that’s approximately 10% of the country’s population.

How does this lead to Bernie Sanders defeating Hillary Clinton? The Sanders campaign has been run on the premise that Clinton is inextricably linked to political corruption, disastrous military interventions, and collusion with Wall Street. If it can be shown that Clinton was involved in criminal improprieties exposed by the Panama Papers, this will constitute yet another major line of attack for Sanders headed into the April 14th debate in New York. If Sanders wins the New York primary a few days later and scoops up its 95 delegates, the narrative of the election will dramatically shift.

When added to the myriad other Clinton scandals and political vulnerabilities, the Democratic party’s gatekeeper superdelegates could decide that Clinton is too big of a liability going into the general election. It all comes down to New York, though — Sanders must win New York. If he does, you will see historic chaos unleashed upon the American electorate. And if the Panama Papers leak sets off an unstoppable domino effect, the DNC may soon find its fractured party looking just as ghoulish as the clown’s autopsy being conducted on the Republican Party.

This article (Yes, the Panama Papers Could Really End Hillary Clinton’s Campaign) is an opinion editorial (OP-ED). The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of Anti-Media. This article 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 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article to edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

#WikiLeaks Spokesperson Says #PanamaPapers Should Be Made Available to Public

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Michaela Whitton
April 6, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) United Kingdom — A spokesperson for WikiLeaks has called for the Panama Papers to be published in full in order to ensure the public is fully informed of the revelations. In a snippet of an interview set to air on RT’s “Going Underground” Wednesday, the Icelandic investigative journalist-turned-Wikileaks representative criticized the media’s current coverage. “When they are saying this is responsible journalism, I totally disagree with the overall tone of that,” he said.

Kristin Hrafnsson, who became a spokesperson for WikiLeaks after Julian Assange became engulfed in legal battles, also told RT’S Afshin Rattansi:

“I do have a sympathy towards stalled releases, we certainly did that in WikiLeaks in 2010 and 2011 with the Diplomatic Cables and we were actually highly criticised for holding back the documents. But in the end the entire cache was put online in a searchable database.”

Saying this is what he wants to see with the Panama Papers, he said the leaked data should be available to the general public — not just the group of journalists directly working on reporting on the revelations. He added that while he understands there may be a slight delay in the release of the information — in order to maximise impact — ultimately, the public should have full access to it. “That’s the new way, it’s the way that WikiLeaks operates and it is highly appreciated by the general public.” Hrafnsson insisted.

In an attempt to combat what appears to be a mainstream news monopoly on the biggest data leak in history, by Tuesday evening WikiLeaks had made 149 of the of 11.5 million Panama Papers available to the public by sharing them via DocumentCloud.

In a Twitter poll, WikiLeaks asked people if the Panama Papers should be made public and searchable. Of the 85,000 who responded, 95% said they should be.

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This article (WikiLeaks Spokesperson says Panama Papers should be Made Available to Public) 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.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

The #TSA Spent $1.4 Million on an #App That Only Cost This Guy $10 to Reproduce

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Clarice Palmer
April 5, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) The International Business Machines Corporation, commonly known as IBM, has been named in a series of reports tied to the TSA’s “randomizer” app. Though many news sources have focused on the cost of the app, few have looked deeper into the relationship between Washington D.C. and IBM’s powerful lobbyists.

Geek.com reported the Department of Homeland Security’s TSA awarded IBM with a $336,413.59 contract for the production of an app that randomly chooses a left or a right arrow. The function is used in U.S. airports, and its goal is to make lines more efficient by randomly choosing which travelers get to skip the extensive security checks.

The information was made available promptly after web developer Kevin Burke filed a Freedom of Information Act request. As a result of the query, Burke received a copy of the contract between IBM and the TSA, which shows the app cost taxpayers at least $336,000 (in a Twitter reply to Burke, Time Magazine’s Partheek Rebala advised that a summary of the total cost tied to the app could be also found online.)

That summary shows that between September of 2014 and August of 2015, IBM was awarded at least seven contracts, all of which were tied to software development. All services and products add up to $1,444,315. According to Geek.com, “It could be IBM supplied all the iPads and training as well as the app itself.” But even then, “the cost of the project is crazy.” After all, the product is just “an app that is [sic] just randomly selects left or right.”

To Chris Pacia, a Bitcoin expert and lead backend developer for OpenBazaar, the cost the TSA paid for the app made no sense. After all, how expensive could an app that acts like a digital a coin flip actually be?

To demonstrate how easy — and cheap — it is for anybody to come up with an app just like TSA’s randomizer, Pacia posted a video on YouTube demonstrating the entire process. Pacia’s app took him less than 10 minutes to develop, according to his video’s description. It cost about $10 worth of labor to build.

truth-cancer-ad

Though Pacia demonstrated the TSA’s inefficient budgeting, the underlying cause of these indulgent expenditures can be understood through the agency’s relationship with IBM.

While important details regarding the contracts between the Department of Homeland Security and the company are not listed on the government’s accounting website, the tech giant is no stranger to the establishment’s favoritism game.

According to the Center for Responsible Politics, IBM Corp. spent over $9 million on lobbying efforts between 2014 and 2015 alone. Defense and information technology, the group claims, are some of IBM’s top issues. In many cases, IBM also lobbied for anti-privacy measures.

One of the bills IBM lobbied to pass was H.R. 1731, also known as the National Cybersecurity Protection Advancement Act of 2015. The law places the information gathered via both the federal government and the private sector in the hands of the Department of Homeland Security. IBM also lobbied for the Cybersecurity Disclosure Act of 2015, a bill turned into law that “trump[s] possibly forthcoming federal regulatory efforts and state privacy laws” and that broadens “powers of network operators to monitor and disclose” online information.

Considering IBM’s apparent lack of respect for privacy — and its efforts to influence government policy, it is unsurprising the multinational corporation is working so closely with the Department of Homeland Security.

This article (The TSA Spent $1.4 Million on an App That Only Cost This Guy $10 to Reproduce) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Clarice Palmer 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

#PanamaPapers: #British Elite Linked to #Corruption, yet Media Only Focuses on Putin

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Michaela Whitton
April 04, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) United Kingdom — Believed to be the largest leak of secret documents in history, the Panama Papers are the latest revelations exposing global corruption. The worldwide investigation supposedly exposes the secretive offshore industry the world’s elites use to hide assets and swerve rules. Based on a library of more than 11 million leaked files, it claims to have exposed a host of characters using offshore companies to facilitate bribery, arms deals, tax evasion, financial fraud, and drug trafficking.

Few will be surprised that the global rich and famous hide their money offshore, regardless of their country of origin. While the Panama Papers are set to identify a cast of characters, from the stars of pitch and screen to political establishments, it’s worth pointing out that the 2.6 terabytes of data hail from just one law firm in one tax haven. They are the tip of the iceberg in spotlighting the shadowy corners where elites stash their cash.

Though much of the public reveres whistleblowers, as author and human rights activist Craig Murray points out, this particular leaker has made the mistake of turning to the Western corporate media to publicise the results. The crucial part of this story, according to Murray, is who is managing the leaked information: the “International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.” He explains they are funded and organised by the U.S.A’s Center for Public Integrity, which includes sponsors such as the Ford Foundation, Carnegie Endowment, Rockefeller Family Fund, W. K., the Kellogg Foundation, and the Open Society Foundation,  which is owned by George Soros.

All roads lead to Putin

Considering those guarding the information, it is unsurprising that here in the U.K., corporate press coverage has shown an overarching focus on official enemies like Putin and Assad. With the media dominated by glaring close-ups of Putin and misleading headlines, it seems the British public are only privy to information about official establishment foes while the misdemeanours of tax dodgers are practically ignored. From what Murray says, the identities of those behind managing the leak could also explain the deafening silence on the hundreds of Israeli companies and shareholders implicated.

With the enemies of the West paraded by British news outlets, by mid-morning only the Mirror and the Metro had given brief mention to the fact that David Cameron’s father and a host of senior Tory figures had reportedly used tax havens for the rich and powerful. David Cameron’s late father, Ian, is allegedly named as a client of Mossack Fonseca, the firm at the centre of the scandal. Using it it to protect his investment fund from U.K. taxes, he is said to have built up a significant legacy, part of which was inherited by the Prime Minister. The irony is not lost on many, especially in view of Cameron’s previous pledges to clamp down on tax dodgers and havens. He has described them as “morally wrong.”

Few will hold their breath for any of the rich and powerful named in the files to be held to account for the details released the latest data splurge. Undoubtedly, it will soon become clear whether there will be any real consequences of a leak of this size, particularly when most of the information will remain private. While tumbleweeds blow through the corporate media on the fact that the Tories were up to their necks in global corruption, Twitter users didn’t hold back.

This article (Panama Papers: British Elite Linked to Corruption, yet Media Only Focuses on Putin) 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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Verge of #Revolution: The Story You Aren’t Being Told About the #Brazil Uprising

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Clarice Palmer
March 31, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) São Paulo, Brazil — As online publications have hailed the major protests overtaking the streets of Brazil at the outset of an apparent political revolution, few discuss the problems that have been brewing for decades in South America’s largest nation.

While Brazilians are angry and tired of their economic hardships, they are also incensed at the country’s history of corruption, which now includes a massive presidential scandal carried out by politicians and lobbyists during the current and previous administrations. This misconduct has given residents of all walks of life enough incentive to take their demands to the streets.

But are the politicians listening?

The History of Brazil is a History of Corruption

Local sociologists often tout Brazil’s corruption problem as a “genetic disposition” to crookedness. But late economist Ludwig von Mises disagreed. In Human Action, the famed economist claimed that corruption is simply a consequence of government’s heavy intervention in all public matters. “Corruption is a regular effect of interventionism,” he wrote — not the root of a country’s woes.

As Brazilian newspapers and talking heads tend to focus on corruption scandals as the root of the political and economic issues the country faces, they are, in fact, some of the consequences of heavy government intervention — not the foundation of the nation’s ongoing problems.

Between 1930 and 1945, the country was under the rule of the populist tyrant Getúlio Vargas, whose rise as a dictator was also tied to a series of corruption scandals, political persecution, and oppression. Nicknamed “the Father of the Poor,” Vargas and his administration used images of hope and harmony to sell the leader as the country’s grassroots hero.

But the individual behind the facade and popular image was the first of many political leaders to promise — though never deliver — peace and prosperity. Vargas also maintained an amicable relationship with Germany prior to World War II, prompting the United States to wonder whether Brazil would enter the Axis orbit. The Vargas administration even aided Nazi Germany by sending Jewish refugees back to their home country, such as the revolutionary militant, Olga Benário Prestes, a German Jew who ultimately died in a concentration camp.

brazilian propaganda

Propaganda by the Getulio Vargas administration teaching children to love country first.

Getúlio Vargas is particularly relevant because Brazil’s last president, Luiz Inácio “Lula” Da Silva, who held office between 2003 and 2011, is often remembered by many as the second coming of the 20th century dictator. Lula is currently implicated in the high-level scandals currently plaguing Brazil.

Long before Lula took office, however, the anti-communist “Red Scare” mindset — the culture of fear tied to communism that existed between 1919 the late 1950s in America — finally settled in Brazil. The country began to fear the possibility that communist agitators would take over the country. With the help of democratically-elected president, João Goulart (Brazilian Labour Party), the country’s military leaders took over, replaced Congress with the National Constituent Assembly, deposed opposition members, and drafted a new Constitutional Charter. The 1964 military coup lasted until 1985.

Once Brazilians had the chance to elect a new president, they put young Fernando Collor de Mello in power, a right-wing politician who froze thousands of Brazilian savings accounts and converted them into government bonds, inciting a wave of anger across the nation.

It was only when Collor was accused of having played a role in an influence-peddling scheme that many started paying attention.

Afraid of what Congress could do to his presidency, Collor allegedly paid $2 million for falsified documents, an act that, once discovered, prompted Congress to vote for his impeachment. Only three senators voted in Collor’s favor. Seventy-three voted for his removal.

Whether or not this was a sign of things to come, Brazil’s first democratically-elected president after the military rule became the first to be impeached.

As privatization policies were put in place by President Fernando Henrique Cardoso in the 1990s, the country’s economy picked up steam. People suddenly believed they had a good, competent administration in place, despite issues with the ongoing drug war. The many years of privatization and inflation-taming measures, however, prompted younger Brazilians to become attached to the ideology behind progressive politics. Enter Lula.

In 2003, young Brazilians cheered the the election of the Workers Party’s Lula. After all, they believed a “man of the people” had been picked as the country’s president. He was the same man who would go on to become the country’s “lobbyist in chief.”

After Lula’s two terms, the Workers Party managed to get Dilma Rousseff elected. Her rise to the presidency was mostly due to her proximity to Lula. She has often referred to him as  “[her] president and leader.”

Unemployment, Poverty, Inflation, and High Taxes: Brazilians are Fed Up

Brazilians experienced an economic miracle in the 1990s. But as the Rousseff administration upped sales and consumption taxes while relying on inflation, the increase in the money supply. As the country hosted the World Cup in 2014, businesses and consumers began to suffer. The first ones to feel the consequences were the poor.

Currently, Brazilians pay about 36 percent in sales taxes on most goods and services — a regressive tax that ends up hurting the poor the most. Brazilians give up about 28 percent of their income yearly. With the increase in taxes on large net gains and the country’s protectionist policies, many believe investors will begin to flee the country.

Tension built up due to the economic difficulties consumers face only worsened when the country’s judiciary launched an investigation into Rousseff’s embezzlement and crony capitalist scheme, which has made global headlines.

“Car Wash” Corruption Scheme and Its Investigation: the Beginning of the End for Dilma Rousseff

The “car wash” investigation is the largest probe of its kind in Brazilian history.

Its name comes from the network of laundromats, gas stations, and currency exchange businesses participants in the scheme used to launder money.

From Brazilian writer Alice Salles at FreedomWorks.org:

“Trouble began to brew when authorities launched an investigation into a network of currency exchanging businesses connected to Alberto Youssef. He was accused of forging contracts and moving billions of Brazilian Reais domestically and abroad using front companies and foreign bank accounts.”

Once the investigations were deepened, authorities “learned that Youssef had business relationships with Paulo Roberto Costa, the former director of the state-controlled oil giant Petrobras, major contractors and their lobbyists, and other Petrobras servicers. On March 2014, both Costa and Youssef were arrested.” Once Costa agreed to take part in the investigations in August of 2014, “Brazilians learned that he and several other directors of Petrobras received bribes and passed them along to politicians for their campaigns.” In a few weeks time, the authorities convinced Youssef to join Costa, “and revelations about one of the largest embezzlement schemes in the history of the country started flooding the news.”

Soon enough, the authorities learned the names of contractors involved in the scheme, which happened to be the country’s two top construction companies: Odebrecht and Andrade Gutierrez. André Estevez, owner of Latin America’s largest investment bank, BTG, was also involved.

By March of 2015, authorities learned 53 politicians had participated in the scheme. Even José Dirceu, the former prime minister under President Lula, was “accused of receiving payments from Odebrecht and Andrade Gutierrez.” Lula’s close friend, the farmer José Carlos Bumlai, and Senator Delcídio Amaral of the Workers Party, known as PT, were arrested. The President of the Chamber of Deputies, Eduardo Cunha, a member of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB) was also targeted, along with several other PMDB party leaders.

According to what the investigations have unearthed thus far, the embezzlement scheme benefitted political parties in charge of Petrobras’s leadership appointments.

Salles reported that “as federal judge Sérgio Moro showed signs he believed former president Lula had profited from the scheme, prosecutors from the state of São Paulo added insult to injury by accusing Lula of ‘hiding his ownership of a beach-front condominium.’” But the rumors about his future finally hit the news, and Rousseff decided to appoint her predecessor as her chief of staff. The Economist claimed Lula is a “canny political operator,” which may have helped Rousseff make the decision to bring him on board to boost her reputation. However, as Salles noted, “what the cabinet position means to Lula may have served as the sole incentive.”

As the country’s call for impeachment intensifies, a strong opposition movement in Congress is taking shape. The country’s top association of lawyers, Ordem dos Advogados do Brasil, has also announced it will present an impeachment proposal to Congress, making matters worse for Rousseff.

The proposal claims the current president has “authorized … the country to delay its payments,” and it also accuses the president of unilaterally lifting tax obligations tied to the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) during the 2014 World Cup. OAB attorneys also claim Rousseff may have “interfered with the ‘car wash’ probe, which includes her appointment of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as chief of staff.”

Unclear Future: Impeachment Alone is Not the Solution

As the “car wash” probe unveils that billions of taxpayer dollars have been tied to investments abroad that didn’t benefit Brazilians — and that members of most Brazilian political parties were involved — many of the county’s residents are showing signs of fatigue.

Impeaching President Rousseff may offer momentary relief to Brazilians under pressure, but unless a cultural change takes shape, the expulsion of Rousseff from Brasília, the nation’s capital, won’t make a difference.

According to activist Kim Kataguiri, a key figure in the anti-Rousseff protests, “the smokescreens used by the Brazilian government to disperse the population are finally gone.” He believes impeachment will come — no matter what. Even so, Rousseff says she has enough friends in Congress to avoid her downfall. Only time will tell whether Brazilians will find a way to restrict government’s interference in the country, helping to keep corrupt politicians from finding reasons to steal from the taxpayer.

This article (Verge of Revolution: The Story You Aren’t Being Told About the Brazilian Uprising) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Clarice Palmer 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 to edits@theantimedia.org.

From theantimedia.org Team

Police Forced to Apologize after Blood-Thirsty Officer Accidentally Records Himself

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Michaela Whitton
March 30, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) United Kingdom —The Metropolitan Police have finally apologized and paid out damages for the false arrest and assault of a 20-year-old man at the 2010 student demonstrations — over five years after his tooth was knocked out by a police officer.

As an evidence gatherer, PC Andrew Ott was supposed to look for troublemakers during the student protests in central London. What he didn’t realize in his excessive enthusiasm for the task was that his police radio was on record, capturing every word of his violent boasting.

“I wanna kill these f****** little lot here,” Ott said. “Mate, if that fence goes I’m gonna f****** batter them.”

The accidental recording continued: “Guys, if you happen to move forward and he’s still there, stamp all over his little f****** head,” he said of one protester.

As he bragged that he was more covert than other cops because he wasn’t wearing a jacket, Ott’s menacing threats escalated: “So I’ll go stick in play now and I’ll f****** let some people have it as well.”

William Horner, a student situated near Westminster Abbey, eventually caught the fired-up copper’s attention — and became the target of his aggression. Shortly after Ott hollered to other officers to stop the man, camera footage captured William Horner on the ground, seconds after his front tooth was knocked out by Ott’s riot shield.

Horner had jumped a fence to get away from the increasingly chaotic demonstration in an attempt to get home. Another officer explained to Ott that the man had done nothing to warrant the violence. Rather than being remorseful, the PC continued his tirade: “I f****** knocked his tooth out the c***.”

Not content with hunting down an innocent person, the aggressive cop then grappled with how to frame him. “Well he’s going to have to have done something at the moment because I just put his tooth out,” he said.

Ott was eventually convicted of Actual Bodily Harm (ABH) and sentenced to eight months in prison. This week, the Metropolitan police apologized for the incident and paid an undisclosed sum in damages to William Horner, who said, “I am of course pleased with the apology and damages but if it wasn’t for the accidental recording by PC Ott I could instead be living with a criminal record now.”

It’s unclear why it took the Met nearly six years to apologize. What is clear is that Horner isn’t the first person to be hospitalized by the British police, and he surely won’t be the last. While there is a least a glimmer of accountability for police misconduct in the U.K., this is not an isolated incident; it simply shows PC Andrew Ott was unlucky to be caught.

This article (Police Forced to Apologize after Blood-Thirsty Officer Accidentally Records Himself) 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.

From theantimedia.org Team

#Snowden: #Brussels Attack AND #Boston Bombing Could Have Been Stopped

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Claire Bernish
March 28, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) Edward Snowden proffered a rather damning criticism of international intelligence during a lecture last week, arguing the terror attacks in Belgium were entirely preventable and could have been stopped. As Snowden explained:

“In all the talk of Brussels, there’s a story that just recently broke, which I’m not sure has gotten the same play as the others, which is that the attack was preventable; and it was preventable through traditional means, not mass surveillance. An allied intelligence service — in this case, in Turkey — warned Belgium that this individual was a criminal, that they were involved in terrorist activities, and this individual turned out to be one of the suicide bombers.”

As Snowden noted during the University of Arizona panel discussion, which also included Professor Noam Chomsky and journalist Glenn Greenwald, these reports surfaced almost immediately after the attacks claiming Belgian and other intelligence forces had been notified of the potential danger this individual posed. In fact, an exclusive, though unverified report by Haaretz claimed “The security services knew, with a high degree of certainty, that attacks were planned in the very near future for the airport and, apparently, for the subway as well.”

But what stands as a matter of crucial importance is that we’ve witnessed, yet again, not only a failure by intel to act on credible information, but a further example of the uselessness of mass surveillance to thwart any attack. It wasn’t surveillance that gave Belgian intelligence its information, rather, it had been Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan sounding the alarm. Turkey had previously deported one of the attackers as a “foreign terrorist fighter” — and Turkish officials notified the Belgian embassy in Ankara they had done so.

“In the United States, we have the same thing, in the Boston Marathon bombings. We were explicitly warned by foreign intelligence services that one of the brothers [who] was involved in the bombings would be engaged in that kind of activity,” Snowden added.

In fact, it was Russian intelligence that alerted the FBI about about Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s links to militant Muslim terrorist groups; but the ostensibly inept U.S. intelligence community failed to do anything — due to a spelling error in his name. Whether that was actually the case or something darker might have been afoot remains unclear, but the point is the same: even when the appropriate governmental agencies have the information necessary to stop a terrorist attack, they fail to do so — every time.

Tsarnaev had been investigated, and in June 2011, the FBI concluded he had “no links to terrorism,” NBC News noted. In September, according to the Independent, “Russia’s FSB sent a cable to the CIA restating their initial warning, and a second note on Tsarnaev was entered on the TECS [U.S. Customs and Border Protection database] system, but his name was misspelled ‘Tsarnayev.’”

A few months later, he was in ‘terror training’ in Dagestan after passing through Moscow. When he returned to the U.S. via New York’s JFK Airport, his name triggered an alert but, due to the misspelling, he wasn’t considered a top priority among the “100 other names on a ‘Hot List’ of people traveling through JFK that day.”

It appears the same fumbling took place surrounding the Brussels attacks: two of the brothers involved, Khalid and Ibrahim El Bakraoui, “were listed as a potential terror threat in U.S. databases,” NBC News reported, citing unnamed and unverified U.S. officials. Congressional committees have now requested to know which databases, for how long, and “whether and how the information was shared.”

Despite these multiple intelligence blunders concerning individuals known to be dangerous, politicians immediately proposed even further truncations of civilian liberties, both in Europe and the United States. In an interview with Democracy Now, Glenn Greenwald discussed the implications:

“I think it’s really important to note a couple of things about Brussels. Number one is, the Brussels attack is now the fourth straight attack, after Boston, the Charlie Hebdo massacre, and then the Paris attacks, where siblings, brothers, were at the heart of the planning. And just like in those three previous attacks that I just referenced, the attacks were carried out by people who live in the same communities, who live very close to one another, and who almost certainly met in person in order to plan them. And yet, the exploitive mindset of Western politicians is to say, every time there’s a successful attack carried out, it means we need to wage war on encryption, we need greater surveillance, we need more police in these communities. But the reality is … none of that will actually help detect the attack.”

Indeed, it appears such crackdowns — including Cruz’ and Trump’s call for patrolling Muslim neighborhoods and Clinton’s insistence on increased surveillance and police forces — serve, instead, to fuel resentment, which ultimately breeds more terrorist activities. Greenwald explained the most facile solution to terrorism by noting what drives it. For “15 years,” he said, the United States “has been declaring itself at war and bombing multiple countries and then acts surprised when people want to come and attack us back.

“And so I think, more than saying we need more intelligence and more surveillance and wage war on encryption and more bombing campaigns, we need to be asking whether there are things that we can be doing that reduce the incentive for people to kill us … and especially the support infrastructure that they get because of the anti-American and anti-European sentiment that gets generated when we engage in all of this violence in the world.”

Snowden, Greenwald, and myriad experts continue to warn of how this cycle not only creates more terrorists, but, almost by design, seems meant to make pliable the populace for increasing infringements on privacy rights. Ultimately — and perhaps because — these attacks were preventable by traditional means, and yet still were allowed to happen, we must be more suspicious than ever of programs initiated under the pretense of increasing security.

This article (Snowden: Brussels Attack AND Boston Bombing Could Have Been Stopped) 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

#Wikileaks Drops #Hillary Email Bomb That Could End Her Campaign but FB Censored It

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Michaela Whitton
March 20, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) United Kingdom — On Wednesday, a major archive containing over 30,000 of Hillary Clinton’s emails were released. Though the State Department began releasing the emails in May last year — after a Freedom of Information Act request — it is the first time the messages have been made easily available in a searchable format, courtesy of WikiLeaks. Before the launch, the FBI was investigating the Democratic candidate’s use of a private server during her tenure as Secretary of State. The archive contains over 7,000 emails written by Clinton herself.

The scary, albeit fascinating exposé on who’s in bed with whom in the halls of global power has expanded to include Facebook, according to WikiLeaks. The organization has accused the social networking site of censorship, saying Facebook is blocking users’ access to the latest Clinton dispatch.

wikileaks-hillary

As a result of the outing, Twitter users are calling Clinton wicked, a thug, and a hypocrite. The released emails uncovered that the presidential frontrunner was instrumental in spreading chaos and extremism in Libya. They also revealed that she pushed for oil privatization in Mexico and forwarded emails claiming a Sunni-Shiite war would be good for Israel and the West.

wikileaks-hillary-2

For those who are fascinated but don’t have the time or inclination to sift through more than 30,000 documents, here is a snapshot of what Clinton’s emails revealed:

This article (Facebook, WikiLeaks and Clinton’s Warmongering Emails) 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.

From theantimedia.org Team

California Legislature Votes to Ban Some Adults From Buying Cigarettes

by

Josh Mur
March 11, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) At the age of 18, young American adults are granted the legal right to sign a contract, purchase a firearm, marry, enlist in the military, sit on a jury, and vote. These rights bear a fresh batch of life-changing choices to youth that the law views them capable of making.

California lawmakers, on the other hand, appear to perceive 18-year-olds capable of no such thing. A list of new anti-tobacco bills was passed by the state Assembly on Thursday, among it, a bill that pushes the legal age to purchase cigarettes and other tobacco products from 18 to 21 throughout California. The motion passed with a 46 to 26 vote. Governor Jerry Brown has yet to sign off on them.

In addition to raising the smoking age, the new bills seek to put further restrictions on e-cigarettes and vaporizers. If these new laws are put into effect, California will become the second state after Hawaii  to raise the smoking age. However, a handful of cities ─ San Francisco and New York being the largest ─ have adopted the same new regulation.

As stated earlier, 18-year-olds in America are granted a set of rights, as they are perceived to be ─ or at least capable of being ─ responsible adults worthy of making very serious and/or life-changing decisions. So let’s ask the obvious question here:

How is one seen as competent and responsible enough to join the ranks of the military to risk their lives for the agenda of corrupt power elites, sign a legal contract that could bind them to harmful terms and conditions, choose the person they want to spend the rest of their life with, have a voice in what laws are passed, and who our political leaders are, and sit on a jury with the fate of a peer in the hands of their judgement, but somehow not seen as sufficiently “adult” enough to buy a pack of cigarettes or enjoy a cold beer?

Having gained the support of nearly all of the Democratic party, the bill was largely opposed by Republican lawmakers.

“I don’t smoke. I don’t encourage my children to,” said Assemblyman Donald Wagner, R-Irvine. “But they’re adults, and it’s our job to treat our citizens as adults, not to nanny them.”

Those in support of the bill argue that raising the smoking age to 21 will significantly reduce smoking, as an approximate 95% of  smokers pick up the habit before age 21. In addition, an analysis published in March 2015 suggests raising the smoking age to 21 could possibly reduce smoking by about 12% within a decade, along with saving around 273,000 lives from lung cancer and premature deaths.

While good intentions may be found underneath these bills, it does not change the fact that they directly stifle the freedom of the American adult. One should not have a say in a presidential election if they cannot be seen as capable of choosing whether or not to smoke cigarettes. One should not have the option to carry an assault rifle and risk their life for government policy if one is not considered responsible enough to have a drink.

It would appear such basic principles are much more difficult to grasp than they seem.

This article (California Legislature Votes to Ban Some Adults From Buying Cigarettes) is an opinion editorial (OP-ED). The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of Anti-Media. This article is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Josh Mur 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 to edits@theantimedia.org.

From theantimedia.org Team

#EaglesOfDeathMetal Frontman says Guards Knew About #Paris Shooting in Advance

by

Claire Bernish
March 10, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) Eagles of Death Metal lead singer, Jessie Hughes, made a stunning statement in an interview with Fox Business Network: He believes it’s possible security guards at the Bataclan Theater knew about the Paris terror attacks in advance.

As a veteran performer, Hughes realized something was odd the night leading up to the attack, when the security guard for the backstage area didn’t make eye contact with him.

“When I first got to the venue and walked in, I walked past the dude who was supposed to be the security guard for the backstage,” Hughes recalled, noting the guard’s odd demeanor.

“I immediately went to the promoter and said, ‘Who’s that guy? I want to put another dude on,’ and he goes, ‘Well, some of the other guards aren’t here yet,’ and eventually I found out that six or so wouldn’t show up at all.”

Though Hughes refused to speculate at length “out of respect for the police investigating,” he added, “It seems rather obvious that they had a reason not to show up.”

On November 13, 2015, 89 people were killed — including the band’s merchandise manager, Nick Alexander — and 200 were injured, when attackers stormed the Bataclan during the Eagles of Death Metal show.

After the attack and a brief break, the American band returned to complete their European tour last month, though they recently canceled due to an injury.

Fox Business Network aired the first portion of Kennedy’s interview with Hughes on Wednesday, and the second part is scheduled for tonight at 8 pm, EST.

This article (Eagles of Death Metal Frontman says Guards Knew About Paris Shooting in Advance) 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

Sacred Native American Lands Could Become Nuclear Waste Dump

by

Derrick Broze
February 22, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) Nye County, Nevada — During the 1970s and 80s, a large movement of antinuclear and anti-war activists protested the growing acceptance of nuclear power and the possibility of an impending global nuclear war. The protesters were not only concerned with the Cold War breaking down into a hot war, but also with the dangers that nuclear technology presented to the environment and the health of the public.

When nuclear power is used to provide electricity or create nuclear weapons, a radioactive byproduct known as spent nuclear fuel is created. Disposing of this waste requires a very difficult and dangerous process. To deal with concerns over storing nuclear material, Congress passed the federal Nuclear Waste Policy Act in 1982, which tasked the Department of Energy (DOE) with finding a place to build and operate a geologic repository, or underground nuclear waste disposal facility.

One of the proposed waste sites was the Yucca Mountain, located 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.The DOE’s plan is to tunnel into the Yucca Mountain and store the radioactive waste for thousands of years until the material is no longer harmful. This plan, known as the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository, enjoyed the support of President George W. Bush, but was opposed by Native communities, anti-nuclear activists, and officials in Nevada. The opposition continued after President Obama was elected.

MintPress News reports:

“In 2009, environmental and anti-nuclear organizations, including Beyond Nuclear, Greenpeace, Center for Health, Environment & Justice, and the International Society for Ecology, sent a letter to President Barack Obama calling the selection of the Yucca Mountain site ‘a purely political decision.’ They argued that it has been been evident since 1992 that the site ‘could not meet the EPA’s general radiation protection standard for repositories.’”

Obama also opted to end funding for the project in 2009, setting off an ongoing legal battle. In August 2013, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ordered the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to approve or reject the DOE application for the proposed waste storage site at Yucca Mountain.

Vernon Lee, a Southern Paiute with the Moapa Band of Paiute Indians, says the dangers associated with storage of nuclear waste are disproportionately foisted upon Native communities. Lee has lived on the Moapa River Reservation, located about three hours from the planned Yucca Mountain Waste Repository, since 1973.

“There are multiple problems. Moving the waste is a problem. High risk, unnecessary risk. If the company is ever going to benefit from nuclear power they should process it and store it themselves. Stop shipping it across the country and exposing the population to a potential disaster,” he told MintPress.

Unfortunately, Native communities in the region are not new to this type of exposure to radiation. From 1951 to 1992, the U.S. government used a 1,300-square mile patch of land known as the Nevada Test Site for nuclear weapons testing. 928 American and 19 British nuclear tests were conducted at the Nevada Test Site. Although no official tests have been conducted to examine the health effects on the Paiute and the Shoshone, the communities believe the radiation has affected their health — and the health of the land.

“We hope that that [radiation] went up in the air and blew over us,” Vernon Lee told MintPress. “We know that we got some because we are just east of the testing, but we hope we got less.”

The DOE is currently accepting public comment from communities, states, tribes, and other stakeholders regarding how to establish a nuclear waste repository with respect to the community. The DOE says it aims “to establish an integrated waste management system to transport, store, and dispose of commercial spent nuclear fuel and high level defense radioactive waste.” The public comment period ends on June 15, and the DOE and Nuclear Regulatory Commission will likely issue statements shortly after.

Ian Zaparte, representative of the Western Shoshone government, says the NRC and the DOE are ignoring the possibilities for danger in the area.

“There are 26 faults, seven cinder cone volcanoes, 90 percent of the mountain is saturated with 10 percent water,” Zaparte told MintPress. “If you heat the rock, it will release that water. If the water comes up and corrodes the canisters, it will take whatever is in storage and bring it into the water and into the valley.”

However, Ian Zaparte takes his criticism of the project even further. He believes the actions taken by the U.S. government constitute acts of genocide against the Western Shoshone and other tribal nations who have been subject to the effects of nuclear testing and power. He is determined to fight for his people’s way of life and the land that his ancestors fought for.

“We have a deliberate act by the United States to systematically dismantle my living life ways for the profit of the nuclear industry and the benefit of the United States,” Zaparte said. “At the worst, this is genocide under the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide.”

This article (Sacred Native American Lands Could Become Nuclear Waste Dump) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Derrick Broze 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