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Chief Political Commentator of The Telegraph Resigns Over HSBC Coverage – Calls it “A Fraud on its Readers”

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Screen Shot 2015-02-17 at 3.28.56 PMThe Telegraph’s recent coverage of HSBC amounts to a form of fraud on its readers. It has been placing what it perceives to be the interests of a major international bank above its duty to bring the news to Telegraph readers. There is only one word to describe this situation: terrible. 

A free press is essential to a healthy democracy. There is a purpose to journalism, and it is not just to entertain. It is not to pander to political power, big corporations and rich men. Newspapers have what amounts in the end to a constitutional duty to tell their readers the truth.

– Peter Oborne, in his article: Why I have resigned from the Telegraph

Anyone reading this website understands that most of the mainstream media has been transformed into little more than complete propaganda over the past several decades. When the various papers and televisions stations aren’t covering up for the war crimes and corruption of politicians and intelligence agencies, they are busy protecting their corporate advertisers from any potential criticism. This isn’t just speculation anymore.

We’ve had several whistleblowers emerge over the past several years warning the public about how things really work. The most stunning of these during 2014 came from Udo Ulfkotte, a former editor of one of Germany’s main daily publications, which I covered in the post: “Non-Official Cover” – Respected German Journalist Blows Whistle on How the CIA Controls the Media.

Naturally, the UK isn’t immune from such infectious corporatist or government propaganda, and the stench emanating from the Daily Telegraph simply became too thick for Peter Oborne, who just resigned in spectacular fashion as the paper’s chief political commentator.

The Guardian covered this incredible story earlier today:

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A Warning to New York City – How Singapore’s Luxury Boom in Sentosa Cove Went Bust

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Screen Shot 2015-02-17 at 2.22.14 PMAcross Singapore, the property market was booming. Interest rates were low, prompting buyers to take on more debt. Confidence was high. Banks built regional headquarters in Singapore and jobs were created. Singapore’s skyline changed drastically. A new financial district rose and Marina Bay Sands, a three-tower building housing a casino with a boatlike structure on top, was built for a reported $5.4 billion.

With the government unable to contain the heated market, the growing presence of foreigners and the rising cost of housing became a flash point for discontent. And Sentosa, with its new villas, yachts and luxury condominium towers, became a particular symbol of the rising inequality for many citizens.

Faced with simmering discontent over rising living and housing costs, the government executed a succession of cooling measures that have hit the high-end market especially hard…

On Sentosa Cove, few people are buying. Most of the unsold units from recent developments have been taken off the market and are being leased instead.

The few recent sales paint a grim picture. Most sellers have taken sizable losses.

– From the New York Times article: A High-End Property Collapse in Singapore 

My hometown of New York City is currently ground zero for a luxury apartment building boom driven primarily by oligarchs using the units as savings accounts, and foreign criminals looking to launder wealth accumulated via corruption, fraud or worse. This isn’t a new story, I’ve been writing about it for several years (links at the end), but a recent New York Times piece titled, Stream of Foreign Wealth Flows to Elite New York Real Estate, has put the issue front and center.

Naturally, New York City isn’t the first, and certainly won’t be the last place to encourage hot foreign money to flow into its real estate sector in a haphazard and harmful manner that could have severe long-term repercussions once the boom turns to bust — which it invariably always does.

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NYU Professor Uncovers How the FDA Systematically Covers Up Fraud and Misconduct in Drug Trials

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Screen Shot 2015-02-17 at 11.12.14 AM That misconduct happens isn’t shocking. What is: When the FDA finds scientific fraud or misconduct, the agency doesn’t notify the public, the medical establishment, or even the scientific community that the results of a medical experiment are not to be trusted. On the contrary. For more than a decade, the FDA has shown a pattern of burying the details of misconduct. As a result, nobody ever finds out which data is bogus, which experiments are tainted, and which drugs might be on the market under false pretenses. The FDA has repeatedly hidden evidence of scientific fraud not just from the public, but also from its most trusted scientific advisers, even as they were deciding whether or not a new drug should be allowed on the market. Even a congressional panel investigating a case of fraud regarding a dangerous drug couldn’t get forthright answers. For an agency devoted to protecting the public from bogus medical science, the FDA seems to be spending an awful lot of effort protecting the perpetrators of bogus science from the public.

The sworn purpose of the FDA is to protect the public health, to assure us that all the drugs on the market are proven safe and effective by reputable scientific trials. Yet, over and over again, the agency has proven itself willing to keep scientists, doctors, and the public in the dark about incidents when those scientific trials turn out to be less than reputable. It does so not only by passive silence, but by active deception. And despite being called out numerous times over the years for its bad behavior, including from some very pissed-off members of Congress, the agency is stubbornly resistant to change. It’s a sign that the FDA is deeply captured, drawn firmly into the orbit of the pharmaceutical industry that it’s supposed to regulate. We can no longer hope that the situation will get better without firm action from the legislature.

From the Slate article: Are Your Medications Safe? 

In the past week or so, I’ve come across several important articles that will leave any rational observer increasingly skeptical of the entire medial industry in the U.S. This isn’t something I say lightly, and I think it’s an absolutely horrific development for our society.

Just last week, Liberty Blitzkrieg published an article titled, Introducing “Physician Dispensing” – The Latest Troubling Medical Industry Scam, which expounded on why an erosion of trust in doctors is so troubling. If you missed that piece, I suggest going back and reading it. Here’s an excerpt:

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Some Thoughts on Presidents’ Day

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Screen Shot 2015-02-16 at 3.03.45 PM

Presidents’ Day is an American holiday celebrated on the third Monday in February. It was historically the celebration of George Washington’s birthday, which occurs on February 22, but in 1971 it was moved to the current date in order to create more three day weekends as part of the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, and henceforth became commonly known as Presidents’ Day (although the name was never officially changed from “Washington’s Birthday).

In 2015, Presidents’ Day shouldn’t be a time of celebration considering how far we have fallen as a Republic, and how completely awful and corrupt modern U.S. Presidents have become. Whereas the founding fathers of the nation were intellectual giants who incidentally also served as statesmen, every President since I’ve been alive has been little more than an empty suit politician. Cowardly, power-hungry, petty, bloodthirsty, vapid. These men wouldn’t know the definition of the word statesmen if their life depended on it. Even more worrisome, based on the crop of leading contenders for the Presidency in 2016 (another Bush and another Clinton), it doesn’t look as if we will be having any new Presidents to celebrate any time soon.

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In His Thirst for War, Senator Jim Inhofe Releases Fake Photos of Russian Troops in the Ukraine

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Screen Shot 2015-02-13 at 2.34.06 PMMembers of the Senate Armed Services Committee first viewed the graphic pictures in December. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R., Okla.) then obtained the photos and worked to independently verify and confirm the authenticity of the photos, before providing them exclusively to the Free Beacon.

Inhofe said he hopes the images act as a wake up call to the Obama administration and American people, who largely have been spared from seeing the graphic violence inflicted upon Ukraine by the Russian-backed separatists…

Following publication of this story, serious questions have been raised about the authenticity of some of the photographs provided by Sen. Jim Inhofe (R., Okla.). Several images of the Russian convoys appear to have been taken in 2008, during Russia’s conflict with Georgia. Given the similarities between the earlier images and those provided by the senator’s office, the Washington Free Beacon is investigating further and will update as necessary.

Sen. Inhofe said in a statement: “The Ukrainian parliament members who gave us these photos in print form as if it came directly from a camera really did themselves a disservice. We felt confident to release these photos because the images match the reporting of what is going on in the region. I was furious to learn one of the photos provided now appears to be falsified from an AP photo taken in 2008. 

– From the Washington Free Beacon’s article: Updated: Provenance of Photos Showing Atrocities Questioned

This is absolutely incredible. Incredible.

First of all, I don’t claim to have any idea about what is happening in Ukraine. Many people out there feel obligated to pick a side, but I can promise you that 99% of them don’t actually have a clue. I don’t think there are many “goods guys” on either side of this fight, and my assumption is that both sides are lying as much as possible. It’s a very sad situation, but very few people really knows what’s going on. That’s why I don’t comment on it much.

I wish I could say the same thing for United States Senators, you know, the people who actually play an important role in deciding when the country goes to war (that is, when Obama decides to consult them).

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FBI Documents Show Plot to Kill Occupy Leaders If “Deemed Necessary” – Yet Details Are Kept From the Public…Why?

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Paul Kennedy of the National Lawyers Guild in Houston and an attorney for a number of Occupy Houston activists arrested during the protests said he did not hear of the sniper plot and expressed discontent with the FBI’s failure to share knowledge of the plan with the public. He believed that the bureau would have acted if a “right-wing group” plotted the assassinations, implying that the plan could have originated with law enforcement. 

“[I]f it is something law enforcement was planning,” Kennedy said, “then nothing would have been done. It might seem hard to believe that a law enforcement agency would do such a thing, but I wouldn’t put it past them.”

He added that the phrase “if deemed necessary,” which appeared in the bureau’s report, further suggests the possibility that some kind of official organization was involved in the plan.

– From the June 29, 2013 TruthDig article: Redacted FBI Documents Show Plot to Kill Occupy Leaders If ‘Deemed Necessary’ 

I don’t typically cover stories that are a few years old, but the following information is so interesting and disturbing I simply had to highlight it.

First a little background. Back in 2013, a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request resulted in the discovery of a FBI document that provided knowledge of a plot to assassinate leaders of the Houston chapter of Occupy Wall Street (OWS) using snipers.

Naturally, such a plot should be big news, but the FBI and local police departments have been extremely sheepish in answering questions about it. In addition, despite evidence of such a plot, the perpetrators were never arrested or identified. This is quite bizarre, and has rightly raised a lot of questions as to whether the government, or the local police force, were behind the potential hit. If this is indeed the case, you don’t need me to tell you how disturbing that is. After all, OWS was largely a non-violent movement.

From TruthDig:

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Chart of the Day – America’s Prison Population Over the Past 100 Years

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Screen Shot 2015-02-12 at 3.05.01 PMThere are 2.3 million Americans in prison or jail. The U.S. has 5 percent of the world’s population but 25 percent of its prisoners. One in three black men can expect to spend time in prison. There are 2.7 million minors with an incarcerated parent. The imprisonment rate has grown by more than 400 percent since 1970.

Recent research suggests that incarceration has lost its potency. A report released this week from the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law finds that increased incarceration has had a very limited effect on crime over the past two and a half decades.

– From today’s Five-Thrity-Eight article: The Imprisoner’s Dilemma

The sickening and absurd rate of incarceration in these United States has been a frequent topic of conversation here at Liberty Blitzkrieg over the years (links at the end). In our national insanity, the U.S. has only 5% of the worlds population, yet 25% of its prisoners. Many of these people have no business being locked in a cage to begin with, and are wasting their lives away for committing “victimless crimes,” i.e. for no good reason.

While the immorality of locking up so many of our fellow citizens for non-crimes should be readily apparent, today’s article from Five-Thirty-Eight offers evidence that America’s incarceration rate has become so saturated that it has absolutely no meaningful impact in lowering crimes rates anyway. The time for prison reform and the elimination of mandatory minimum sentences is long overdue.

From Five-Thirty-Eight:

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The New York Times Admits – Despite Going to Congress, Obama is Still Defending Unlimited War Powers

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Screen Shot 2015-02-12 at 10.25.44 AMPresident Obama is going before Congress to request authorization for the limited use of military force in a battle of up to three years against the Islamic State. On the surface, this looks like a welcome recognition of Congress’s ultimate authority in matters of war and peace. But unless the resolution put forward by the White House is amended, it will have the opposite effect. Congressional support will amount to the ringing endorsement of unlimited presidential war making.

People who take the Constitution seriously, on both sides of the aisle, must not allow this to happen. They should insist on the repeal of the 2001 resolution and an explicit repudiation of the “associated forces” doctrine. Only then will the next president be required to return to Congress to gain its consent if he or she wants to continue the war past the 2018 deadline. If it fails to take a stand now, its sham debate will generate another destructive cycle of distrust that will further alienate Americans from their representatives.

– From Bruce Ackerman’s New York Times op-ed: Congress, Don’t Be Fooled; Obama Still Believes in Unlimited War

First off, I want to thank Bruce Ackerman for writing this op-ed in the New York Times yesterday. Although the Obama administration already claims unlimited war powers in practice, this claim is illegitimate, which is why he is going to Congress to solidify his ability to declare worldwide warfare against a terrorist group that is a direct result of U.S. foreign policy: ISIS.

I previously covered the shadiness with which Obama was justifying his clearly illegal and unconstitutional war against ISIS last year in the post: Obama’s ISIS War is Not Only Illegal, it Makes George W. Bush Look Like a Constitutional Scholar. Here’s an excerpt:

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U.S. Falls Again in World Press Freedom Index – Now Ranked #49 Globally

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Screen Shot 2015-02-12 at 10.45.38 AMIn the United States, 2014 was marked by judicial harassment of New York Times investigative reporter James Risen in connection with the trial of Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA officer charged under the Espionage Act with giving him classified information. US journalists are still not protected by a federal shield law that would guarantee their right not to name their sources or reveal other confidential information about their work. Meanwhile, at least 15 journalists were arbitrarily arrested during clashes between police and demonstrators protesting against black teenager Michael Brown’s fatal shooting by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri.

– From Reporters Without Borders’ 2015 World Press Freedom Index

The greatest myth we Americans collectively like to tell to ourselves is that we live in the “land of the free.” We particularly pride ourselves on “freedom of the press” — enshrined in the U.S. Constitution — but how free is this press really?

According to the World Press Freedom Index, published each year by Reporters Without Borders, not that free at all. I highlighted last year’s plunge in the index in the post: U.S. Plunges to #46 in World Press Freedom Index, Below Romania and Just Above Haiti. Here’s an excerpt:

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A Father’s Personal Struggle with the Vaccine Debate

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Screen Shot 2015-02-11 at 2.35.02 PMAcross these United States, a fierce vaccination debate has started to flare up, and straw-man arguments are being paraded around as the truth. Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey said he’s for a balanced approach, in which parents have some measure of choice. Unfortunately, that’s not how things are actually done in New Jersey.

The reality is that New Jersey parents have no real choice. You have to get your child vaccinated unless you can provide a certified letter from your doctor saying that a vaccine will make the child sick, or if you can prove that it is against your religion.

Governor Christie’s comment about a “measure of choice” reveals the self-importance these politicians give to themselves. Parents living in the Christie regime don’t get full choice, but he is willing to grant them some measure of choice. Perhaps the citizenry’s ability to voice its perspective would suffice for the Governor, as long as they understand that he and his bureaucrat comrades have the final say.

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