Another gem to add to the Hillary files.
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Year: 2016
Introducing “I Will Look Into It.com”
At a Democratic primary debate a couple of weeks ago, Hillary Clinton was asked about releasing the content of her Goldman Sachs speech transcripts. Here’s how she responded.
Fortunately, someone created a website to track the former Secretary of State’s progress…
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Japanese Government Cracks Down Hard on the Media Amid Pitiful Economic Performance
Their imminent departure from evening news programmes is not just a loss to their profession; critics say they were forced out as part of a crackdown on media dissent by an increasingly intolerant prime minister, Shinzo Abe, and his supporters.
Only last week, the internal affairs minister, Sanae Takaichi, sent a clear message to media organizations. Broadcasters that repeatedly failed to show “fairness” in their political coverage, despite official warnings, could be taken off the air, she told MPs.
Momii caused consternation after his appointment when he suggested that NHK would toe the government line on key diplomatic issues, including Japan’s territorial dispute with China. “International broadcasting is different from domestic,” he said. “It would not do for us to say ‘left’ when the government is saying ‘right’.”
From the Guardian article: Japanese TV Anchors Lose Their Jobs Amid Claims of Political Pressure
I’ve commented on the spectacular failure of Japan’s “Abenomics” several times in the past, most recently in last summer’s post, Japan’s Economic Disaster – Real Wages Lowest Since 1990, Record Numbers Describe “Hard” Living Conditions. Here’s what we learned:
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe came to power vowing to drag Japan out of deflation and stagnation. His logic was that rising prices would drive higher salaries and increased consumption. More than two years on, prices are rising, but wages adjusted for inflation have sunk to the lowest since at least 1990.
A record 62 percent of Japanese households described their livelihoods as “hard” last year in a survey on incomes. A sales-tax increase in 2014 helped drive up living costs faster than wage gains. At the same time, the Bank of Japan’s quantitative easing drove down the currency, boosting the cost of imported energy.
Fast forward a few months and things aren’t getting any better.
Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported:
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Trump Sides with the FBI Against Apple; On Torture Proclaims “Water Boarding Is Fine but Not Tough Enough”
When Donald Trump was asked about Apple’s decision, Trump did not bring up the complexity of the situation, the constant battle between government and individual, between private and public selves, between technology and law enforcement. He did not commend Apple for trying to stave off government’s incursion into our personal details. He did what Trump does: He came up with the easiest, simplest, basest possible reaction to an endlessly complicated issue, and he ran with it.
On Fox & Friends this morning, Trump said, “To think that Apple won’t allow us to get into her cellphone? Who do they think they are? No, we have to open it.”
– From Bloomberg
One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned from the 2016 election season is the obvious fact that the GOP base has absolutely no interest in freedom, civil liberties or the Constitution. The huge success of the megalomaniac statist Donald Trump, as well as the pitiful performance of Rand Paul, has proven this beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Many people will argue this has been obvious for quite some time, but the reason I bring it up is because both Ron Paul and his son Rand believed that the Republican party could serve as a useless albeit unwilling vessel to bring back liberty to these United States. The 2016 GOP primary has proven once and for all that this was pure fantasy.
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Apple Vows to Defend Its Customers as the FBI Launches a War on Privacy and Security
Some would argue that building a backdoor for just one iPhone is a simple, clean-cut solution. But it ignores both the basics of digital security and the significance of what the government is demanding in this case.
In today’s digital world, the “key” to an encrypted system is a piece of information that unlocks the data, and it is only as secure as the protections around it. Once the information is known, or a way to bypass the code is revealed, the encryption can be defeated by anyone with that knowledge.
The government suggests this tool could only be used once, on one phone. But that’s simply not true. Once created, the technique could be used over and over again, on any number of devices. In the physical world, it would be the equivalent of a master key, capable of opening hundreds of millions of locks — from restaurants and banks to stores and homes. No reasonable person would find that acceptable.
The government is asking Apple to hack our own users and undermine decades of security advancements that protect our customers — including tens of millions of American citizens — from sophisticated hackers and cybercriminals. The same engineers who built strong encryption into the iPhone to protect our users would, ironically, be ordered to weaken those protections and make our users less safe.
We can find no precedent for an American company being forced to expose its customers to a greater risk of attack. For years, cryptologists and national security experts have been warning against weakening encryption. Doing so would hurt only the well-meaning and law-abiding citizens who rely on companies like Apple to protect their data. Criminals and bad actors will still encrypt, using tools that are readily available to them.
– From Apple CEO Tim Cook’s letter: A Message to Our Customers
I’ve spend most of the morning reading as much as possible about the explosive battle between the FBI and Apple over consumer rights to digital privacy and security. I came away with a refined sense of just how monumental this case is, as well as a tremendous amount of respect for Apple CEO Tim Cook for his public stance against the feds.
Before I get into the issue at hand, some background is necessary. The feds, and the FBI in particular, have been very vocal for a long time now about the desire to destroy strong encryption, i.e., the ability of citizens to communicate privately. A year ago, I wrote the following in the post, By Demanding Backdoors to Encryption, U.S. Government is Undermining Global Freedom and Security:
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Debt Slavery in Action – Texas Man Arrested for Not Paying Student Loan Debt
Laws are effective only to the extent they are enforced. A law on the books has little impact if prosecution is highly unlikely.
The failure to punish big corporations or their executives when they break the law undermines the foundations of this great country: If justice means a prison sentence for a teenager who steals a car, but it means nothing more than a sideways glance at a CEO who quietly engineers the theft of billions of dollars, then the promise of equal justice under the law has turned into a lie. The failure to prosecute big, visible crimes has a corrosive effect on the fabric of democracy and our shared belief that we are all equal in the eyes of the law.
Under the current approach to enforcement, corporate criminals routinely escape meaningful prosecution for their misconduct. This is so despite the fact that the law is unambiguous: if a corporation has violated the law, individuals within the corporation must also have violated the law. If the corporation is subject to charges of wrongdoing, so are those in the corporation who planned, authorized or took the actions. But even in cases of flagrant corporate law breaking, federal law enforcement agencies – and particularly the Department of Justice (DOJ) – rarely seek prosecution of individuals. In fact, federal agencies rarely pursue convictions of either large corporations or their executives in a court of law. Instead, they agree to criminal and civil settlements with corporations that rarely require any admission of wrongdoing and they let the executives go free without any individual accountability.
– From the post: Elizabeth Warren Releases Blistering Report on Corporate Criminality – Singles Out SEC Uselessness
What a cute little Banana Republic this America has become. Our government can’t put a single bank executive in jail for destroying the global economy, but when a mere peasant is caught not paying back his student debt, a team of U.S. Marshals arrive at his door to arrest him at gunpoint.
Land of the thief, home of the slave, indeed.
Fox26 reports:
Believe it or not, the US Marshals Service in Houston is arresting people for not paying their outstanding federal student loans.
Paul Aker says he was arrested at his home last week for a $1500 federal student loan he received in 1987.
He says seven deputy US Marshals showed up at his home with guns and took him to federal court where he had to sign a payment plan for the 29-year-old school loan.
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Latest Version of Monopoly is Called “Ultimate Banking” and is Completely Cashless
The war on cash has been in the works for a very, very long time, but the propaganda campaign to convince an always gullible public to accept the scheme seems to have been hatched in earnest late last spring. For example, here are a few excerpts from the post, Martin Armstrong Reports on a Secret Meeting in London to Ban Cash:
Martin Armstrong noted at the time:
I find it extremely perplexing that I have been the only one to report that there is a secret meeting in London where Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard University and Willem Butler the chief economist at Citigroup will address the central banks and advocate the elimination of all cash to bring to fruition the day when you cannot buy or sell anything without government approval. When I Googled the issue to see who has picked it up yet, to my surprise Armstrong Economics comes up first. Others are quoting me, and I even find it spreading as the Central Bank of Nigeria, but I have yet to find reports on the meeting taking place in London when my sources are direct.
Other newspapers who have covered my European tour have stated that the “crash” of which I speak is the typical stock market rather than in government. What is concerning me is the silence on this meeting where there are more and more reports about a cashless society would be better.
If we look at the the turning points on the ECM, yes they have been to the day when there has been a concentration of capital in a particular market. However, it has also picked the turning points in political decisions such as the formation of the G5 with 1985.65, the very day Greece asked for help from the IMF in 2010, to the day of 911. What we better keep one eye open for here at night is this birth of a cashless society coming in much faster than expected. Why the secret meeting? Something does not smell right here.
To which I added my own observation:
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Victims of Billionaire Pedophile with Ties to Bill Clinton Claim Federal Prosecutors Offered “Sweetheart Deal”
Prosecutors went to great lengths to keep secret the non-prosecution agreement reached in 2007 with Jeffrey Epstein, attorneys for the victims allege, “because of the strong objection they would have faced from victims of Epstein’s abuse, and because of the public criticism that would have resulted from allowing a politically-connected billionaire who had sexually abused more than 30 minor girls to escape … with only a county court jail sentence.”
Before any allegations of sexual misconduct surfaced in 2005, Trump and Bill Clinton spoke glowingly of Epstein, and court records have included documents and testimony suggesting both men flew with Epstein on his private jets.
Court files document long-running ties between Epstein and the former president. Bill Clinton flew on at least six trips with Epstein and his entourage in 2002 and 2003 including to international destinations such as Paris, Bangkok and Brunei, according to logs kept by one of Epstein’s pilots.
And as Epstein first faced federal prosecution a few years later, one of his lawyers, Gerald B. Lefcourt, wrote to prosecutors to tout Epstein’s pedigree as “part of the original group that conceived of the Clinton Global Initiative,” according to a letter attached to Wednesday’s court filing.
At the heart of this week’s court filings is a deal Epstein reached with federal prosecutors in September of 2007 that spared him from a federal prosecution. After an extensive investigation by the Palm Beach police and the FBI, the Justice Department effectively immunized Epstein for multiple alleged offenses involving underage girls in exchange for his guilty pleas to two comparatively minor sex crimes in Florida state court. And Epstein’s lawyers persuaded the federal government to keep the terms of the agreement secret, according to the court filing by victims’ attorneys Bradley Edwards and Paul Cassell.
On the day the deal was signed, an attorney for Epstein sent an email to the federal prosecutor handling the case which read, “Please do whatever you can to keep this from becoming public,” according to an email exchange attached to Wednesday’s filing.
If he’d been charged and convicted on the federal counts, Epstein might have spent the rest of his life in prison. Instead, he now splits his time between his permanent residence – a private island estate off the coast of St. Thomas – and homes in Paris, New Mexico and New York City, where he owns what is purported to be one of the largest single-family residences in Manhattan.
– From the ABC News article: Victims: Feds Hid ‘Sweetheart’ Deal for Sex Offender With Deep Political Ties
As I’ve said time and time again, the greatest cancer of all cancers afflicting these United States is a startling deterioration in the rule of law. Specifically, the institutionalization of a two-tier justice system in which the rich and powerful can (literally) get away with murder, while poor inner-city kids get locked up for “victimless” crimes.
One of the most egregious examples of our Banana Republic criminal justice system relates to billionaire pedophile, Jeffrey Epstein. A man who was barely punished for sexually abusing and exploiting at least 30 underage children.
This is a topic I touched upon a little over a year ago in the post, Oligarch Justice – Powerful Pedophiles Roam Free as Journalist Barrett Brown Returns to Jail. Here are a few excerpts:
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Liberty Links 2/12/16
Below are links to some of the more interesting and important reads I came across today, but will not be publishing on in detail.
Hillary Is the Candidate of the War Machine (Excellent read, Huffington Post)
Bernie Sanders-Supporting PAC Wants Superdelegates to “Follow the Will of Voters” (Reason)
Ahead of Debate, Liberal Groups Challenge Clinton to List Candidates for Treasury Secretary, Attorney General (Washington Post)
Bernie Sanders Sweeps Online Polls After Dominating Sixth Democratic Debate (Huffington Post)
Sanders Raises $7.1 Million After New Hampshire Win (Bloomberg)
Bernie Sanders Outpaces Hillary Clinton in Silicon Valley Contributions (Biz Journal)
Yanis Varoufakis on Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump and Europe (YouTube video)
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Bernie Sanders to Hillary Clinton – “I’m Proud to Say Henry Kissinger is Not My Friend”
He’s a thug, and a crook, and a liar, and a pseudo-intellectual and a murderer. Ok? Those things are factually verifiable.
Kissinger deserves vigorous prosecution for war crimes, for crimes against humanity, and for offenses against common or customary or international law, including conspiracy to commit murder, kidnap, and torture.
A good liar must have a good memory: Kissinger is a stupendous liar with a remarkable memory.
– Quotes by Christopher Hitchens
One of the more bizarre memes that continues to be parroted by the establishment media is this idea that Hillary Clinton is so much stronger than Bernie Sanders when it comes to foreign policy. Sure, if your definition of “strength” consists of cheerleading for the cataclysmic Iraq War and propagating a series of war crimes and international fiascos as Secretary of State, then I suppose that’s true.
For some of Henry Kissinger’s greatest genocidal hits, I turn to a fantastic article published in the Nation last week titled, Henry Kissinger, Hillary Clinton’s Tutor in War and Peace:
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