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2016-10-14

Lawyer: Dark Web Child Porn Site Ran Better When It Was Taken Over by the FBI

Lawyer: Dark Web Child Porn Site Ran Better When It Was Taken Over by the FBI

https://motherboard.vice.com/read/lawyer-dark-web-child-porn-site-ran-better-when-it-was-taken-over-by-the-fbi

By:
Date: 2016-08-23

In February 2015, the FBI took control of Playpen, the largest dark web child pornography site at the time. But instead of shutting the site down, the agency kept it going for just under two weeks, in order to deliver malware to its visitors in the hope of identifying suspects in its investigation.

Newly filed court exhibits now suggest that the site performed substantially better while under the FBI's control, with users commenting on the improvements. The defense for the man accused of being the original administrator of Playpen claims that these improvements led to the site becoming even more popular.

“The FBI distributed child pornography to viewers and downloaders worldwide for nearly two weeks, until at least March 4, 2015, even working to improve the performance of the website beyond its original capability,” Peter Adolf, an assistant federal defender in the Western District of North Carolina, writes in a motion to have his client’s indictment thrown out.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Exposed 1000s of Pornographic, Racist Government Emails But Now Faces Her Own Scandal

Pennsylvania Attorney General Exposed 1000s of Pornographic, Racist Government Emails But Now Faces Her Own Scandal

http://abcnews.go.com/US/pennsylvania-attorney-general-exposed-1000s-pornographic-racist-government/story?id=40030106

By: Byron Pitts, Michelle Kessel, and Geoff Martz
Date: 2016-06-21

Pennsylvania’s Attorney General Kathleen Kane is used to going up against criminals, not her own colleagues, but after she helped expose an email scandal win the state government, her career has been in jeopardy.

In 2014, Kane’s office released close to 400 pages of emails between state government employees, including some high-ranking state officials, exchanged on the state’s email server that were full of racism, sexism and pornography. The scandal was dubbed Porngate, and Kane said it involved a number of judges, prosecutors and law enforcement officials.

“I couldn’t believe there was violence involved, and I couldn’t believe this wasn’t just some Playboy photos ... 398 pages, much of it hard-core porn,” Kane told “Nightline.”

“The hard-core pornography shared on state computers, on state time, between state actors … That is not boys being boys,” she continued. “It's assault upon our criminal justice system and quite honestly it’s unacceptable.”

Embattled Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane sat down for an interview.

2016-10-13

Pope Francis: Capitalism Is ‘Terrorism Against All of Humanity’

Pope Francis: Capitalism Is ‘Terrorism Against All of Humanity’

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/pope_francis_capitalism_is_terrorism_against_all_of_humanity_20160802

By: Nika Knight
Date: 2016-08-02

Pope Francis surprised reporters on a flight from Krakow to the Vatican late Sunday when he blamed the “god of money” for extremist violence in Europe and the Middle East, saying that a ruthless global economy leads disenfranchised people to violence.

“Terrorism grows when there is no other option, and as long as the world economy has at its center the god of money and not the person,” the pope told reporters, according to The Wall Street Journal. “This is fundamental terrorism, against all humanity.”

Pope Francis during a 2013 visit to Brazil. (Tânia Rêgo / ABr - Agência Brasil / CC BY-SA 3.0)

'Be Afraid': Largest Corporations Wealthier Than Most Countries

'Be Afraid': Largest Corporations Wealthier Than Most Countries

The power of corporations is so great within our society that they have undermined the idea that there is any other way to run society'

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/09/12/be-afraid-largest-corporations-wealthier-most-countries

By: Nika Knight
Date: 2016-09-12

Corporations are running the world, according to new figures released Monday from the U.K.-based Global Justice Now.

The economic and social justice advocacy group discovered (spreadsheet) that the ten largest corporations are wealthier than most countries in the world combined.

Banks Get Tax Deductions for Paying Out Huge Bonuses to Execs

Banks Get Tax Deductions for Paying Out Huge Bonuses to Execs

http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/banks-get-tax-deductions-for-paying-out-huge-bonuses-to-execs-new-report-reveals

By: Mark Karlin
Date: 2016-09-01

The Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC released a report yesterday that details how taxpayers are subsidizing banks and massive CEO bonuses. The 34-page "Executive Excess 2016: The Wall Street CEO Bonus Loophole" confirms that Wall Street financial firms and their executives make out like bandits at the expense of everyday taxpaying Americans:

The more U.S. corporations hand out in CEO bonuses, the less they pay in taxes. This is the result of a loophole that allows firms to write off unlimited amounts of executive pay from their federal taxes, as long as it is in the form of so-called "performance-based" compensation.

2016-10-12

I Am A Syrian Living in Syria: “It was Never a Revolution nor a Civil War. The Terrorists are sent by your Government”

I Am A Syrian Living in Syria: “It was Never a Revolution nor a Civil War. The Terrorists are sent by your Government”

http://www.globalresearch.ca/i-am-a-syrian-living-in-syria-it-was-never-a-revolution-nor-a-civil-war-the-terrorists-are-sent-by-your-government/5544450

By: Mark Taliano
Date: 2016-09-07

Two years ago, “Majd” wrote these words on a Facebook posting:

“ I am Syrian… living in Syria in the middle of everything. We have seen horrors. It was never a revolution nor a civil war. The terrorists are sent by your goverment. They are al Qaeda Jabhat al Nusra Wahhabi Salafists Talibans etc and the extremist jihadists sent by the West, the Saudis, Qatar and Turkey. Your Obama and whoever is behind him or above him are supporting al Qaeda and leading a proxy war on my country.

We thought you are against al Qaeda and now you support them.

The majority here loves Assad. He has never committed a crime against his own people… The chemical attack was staged by the terrorists helped by the USA and the UK,  etc. Everyone knows that here.

American soldiers and people should not be supporting barbarian al Qaeda terrorists who are killing Christians, Muslims in my country and everyone.

Every massacre is committed by them. We were all happy in Syria: we had free school and university education available for everyone, free healthcare, no GMO, no fluoride, no chemtrails, no Rothschild IMF- controlled bank, state owned central bank which gives 11% interest, we are self-sufficient and have no foreign debt to any country or bank.

High Hitler: how Nazi drug abuse steered the course of history

Clerk Note: {forgotten}

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High Hitler: how Nazi drug abuse steered the course of history

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/sep/25/blitzed-norman-ohler-adolf-hitler-nazi-drug-abuse-interview

By: Rachel Cooke
Date: 2016-09-25

The German writer Norman Ohler lives on the top floor of a 19th-century apartment building on the south bank of the river Spree in Kreuzberg, Berlin. Visiting him there is a vertiginous experience. For one thing, he works – and likes to entertain visitors – in what he calls his “writing tower”, a flimsy-seeming, glass-walled turret perched right on the very edge of the roof. (Look down, if you dare, and you will see his little boat moored far below.) For another, there is the fact that from this vantage point it is possible to discern two Berlins, one thrusting and breezy, the other spectral and grey. To our left, busy with traffic, is the Oberbaum Bridge, where there was once a cold war checkpoint, and beyond it the longest remaining section of the Berlin Wall, its doleful length rudely interrupted by the block of luxury flats that went up in 2013. As for the large building immediately opposite, these days it’s the home of Universal Music. Not so very long ago, however, it was the GDR’s egg storage facility.

Does all this press on Ohler as he sits at his desk, the light bouncing off the screen of his laptop? Is it ghostly sometimes? “Yes, it is strange,” he says, smiling at my giddiness. But then he has long believed in a certain kind of time travel. “I remember the 90s. The wall had just come down, and I was experimenting with party drugs like ecstasy and LSD. The techno scene had started up, and there were all these empty buildings in the east where the youth [from east and west] would meet for the first time. They were hardcore, some of those guys from the east – they didn’t understand foreigners at all – and the ecstasy helped them to lose some of their hatred and suspicion. Sometimes, then, you could step into a room, and you could just see the past. Of course, it’s not like that now. I don’t take drugs any more. But I can remember it, and maybe that was why I was able to write this book.”

Norman Ohler in Berlin

Norman Ohler photographed in Berlin last week. Photograph: MalteJaeger/laif

The book in question is The Total Rush – or, to use its superior English title, Blitzed – which reveals the astonishing and hitherto largely untold story of the Third Reich’s relationship with drugs, including cocaine, heroin, morphine and, above all, methamphetamines (aka crystal meth), and of their effect not only on Hitler’s final days – the Führer, by Ohler’s account, was an absolute junkie with ruined veins by the time he retreated to the last of his bunkers – but on the Wehrmacht’s successful invasion of France in 1940. Published in Germany last year, where it became a bestseller, it has since been translated into 18 languages, a fact that delights Ohler, but also amazes him.

Does the U.S. Ignore Its Civilian Casualties in Iraq and Syria?

Does the U.S. Ignore Its Civilian Casualties in Iraq and Syria?

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/18/opinion/does-the-us-ignore-its-civilian-casualties-in-iraq-and-syria.html

By: Chris Woods
Date: 2016-08-17

LONDON — In barely a generation, air power has shifted from indiscriminate to discriminating. Thanks to advances in precision guidance, American bombs and missiles now generally get to where they’re intended. But human or machine error, bad luck or faulty military math still lead to unforeseen civilian deaths. And as the United States and its allies continue their bombing campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, many more noncombatants are perishing than they seem prepared to admit.

During July, the number of reported civilian casualties from coalition airstrikes reached the highest level since the air war began in August 2014. On July 19, 78 or more civilians were reported killed near the Islamic State-occupied city of Manbij, Syria, many of them women and children. In the successful battle for Manbij alone, at least 200 civilians were reportedly killed.

The United States and its allies have taken care to mitigate harm to civilians, and the United States Central Command is investigating the July 19 incident. But with the fight moving deeper into the towns and cities of Iraq and Syria — where millions remain under the Islamic State’s thumb — the risk is rising. Denmark, a member of the coalition, recently warned that civilian deaths might be “unavoidable” in this new phase of the war. Yet the allies appear poorly equipped to properly assess the numbers already being killed.

2016-10-11

The Untold Financial Story of 9/11: Bailing Out Alan Greenspan’s Legacy. Billions of Financial Dealings by the Fed in Immediate Wake of 9/11

Clerk Note: Follow the money. 9/11 was a robbery on many levels, from the gold below WTC-4; to the Black Eagle & Marcos Funds used for black ops and as collateral for playing with the Russian markets whose note was to come due 9/11; to the missing Pentagon $2.3 Trillion on 9/10; to the Hallibuton-style war profiteering in Afghanistan & Iraq; to Homeland Security and TSA and TSA machines; to the billions laundered in the days after 9/11. Connect the dots and the housing bubble and financial crisis were spawns.

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The Untold Financial Story of 9/11: Bailing Out Alan Greenspan’s Legacy. Billions of Financial Dealings by the Fed in Immediate Wake of 9/11

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-untold-financial-story-of-911-bailing-out-alan-greenspans-legacy-billions-of-financial-dealings-by-the-fed-in-immediate-wake-of-911/5545246

By: Pam Mertens and Russ Mertens
Date: 2016-09-11

Today marks the 15th Anniversary of the tragic events of September 11, 2001 and yet the American public remains in the dark about critical details of hundreds of billions of dollars of financial dealings by the Federal Reserve in the days, weeks and months that followed 9/11.

What has also been lost in the official 9/11 Commission Report, Congressional hearings and academic studies, is how Wall Street, on the day the planes slammed into the World Trade Towers, was on the cusp of being exposed by the New York State Attorney General, Eliot Spitzer, as the orchestrator of a fraud of unprecedented proportion against the investing public. That investigation was stalled for more than six months. It would have been politically incorrect to do perp walks outside Wall Street’s biggest investment banks as families mourned the loss of their loved ones; as U.S. savings bonds were renamed Patriot Bonds to rally patriotism around the country; and Congress paid homage to the heroes at the big banks, the stock exchanges and the Federal Reserve for getting the system back up and running in less than a week.

The loony policies of laissez-faire capitalism of Fed Chair Alan Greenspan, who worshiped at the feet of Ayn Rand, were also bailed out by the events of  9/11. Members of the Senate Banking Committee praised him on September 20, 2001 for his performance. Amazingly, at this hearing, just nine days after the attack, not one Senator asked Greenspan how much money the Fed had spent or to whom it went. The percolating collapse of Wall Street was held off for seven more years until 2008 when it finally became impossible to deny that Greenspan’s brand of financial deregulation and the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act he had pushed for, had left Wall Street in ruins – without any assault from the skies.

Why I Don’t Speak of 9/11 Anymore

Why I Don’t Speak of 9/11 Anymore

http://www.globalresearch.ca/why-i-dont-speak-of-911-anymore/5545103

By: Edward Curtin
Date: 2016-09-11

Tuesday, September 11, 2001, was a non-teaching day for me.  I was home when the phone rang at 9 A.M.  It was my daughter, who was on a week’s vacation with her future husband.  “Turn on the TV,” she said.  “Why?” I asked. “Haven’t you heard?  A plane hit the World Trade Tower.”

I turned the TV on and watched a plane crash into the Tower.  I said, “They just showed a replay.”  She quickly corrected me, “No, that’s another plane.”  And we talked as we watched in horror, learning that it was the South Tower this time.  Sitting next to my daughter was my future son-in-law; he had not had a day off from work in a year.  He had finally taken a week’s vacation so they could go to Cape Cod.  He worked on the 100th floor of the South Tower.  By chance, he had escaped the death that claimed 176 of his co-workers.

That was my introduction to the attacks.  Fifteen years have disappeared behind us, yet it seems like yesterday.  And yet again, it seems like long, long ago.

Over the next few days, as the government and the media accused Osama bin Laden and 19 Arabs of being responsible for the attacks, I told a friend that what I was hearing wasn’t believable; the official story was full of holes.  It was a reaction that I couldn’t fully explain, but it set me on a search for the truth.  I proceeded in fits and starts, but by the fall of 2004, with the help of the extraordinary work of David Ray Griffin and other early skeptics, I could articulate the reasons for my initial intuition.  I set about creating a college course on what had come to be called 9/11.

But I no longer refer to the events of that day by those numbers.  Let me explain why.

September 11, 2001: The 15th Anniversary of the Crime and Cover-up of the Century

September 11, 2001: The 15th Anniversary of the Crime and Cover-up of the Century

http://www.globalresearch.ca/september-11-2001-the-15th-anniversary-of-the-crime-and-cover-up-of-the-century/5544414

By: Dr. Gary G. Kohls
Date: 2016-09-07

WTC Building exploding into fine dust (it is not burning down) by pre-planted explosives in an obvious controlled demolition.

The arrow points to a “squib” of exploding gas which is commonly seen with controlled demolitions. Some of the “splinters” seen (the only solid objects that did not pulverize into dust) are actually chunks of steel beams that were being exploded upward and laterally. The nicely-sectioned steel beams and girders were soon ordered by New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani to be trucked away and shipped to China – an order that constitutes disturbing a crime scene – which is a federal crime.

I just received the latest PBS (Public Broadcasting System) monthly schedule for September and discovered that PBS’s newest documentary, entitled “9/11: Inside the Pentagon” will be broad-casting and the re-broadcasting the program a total of 8 times over the week surrounding 9/11/16!

2016-10-10

Facebook and Israeli Government Team Up to Censor Posts

Facebook and Israeli Government Team Up to Censor Posts

Justice minister says Facebook already complies with 95 percent of Israel's take-down requests

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/09/12/facebook-and-israeli-government-team-censor-posts

By: Andrea Germanos
Date: 2016-09-12

Israel and Facebook will team up to delete content the country views as inciting violence, the Associated Press reports Monday.

"The joint Facebook-Israel censorship efforts, needless to say, will be directed at Arabs, Muslims and Palestinians who oppose Israeli occupation," Glenn Greenwald writes at The Intercept.

Groups Worry About Impact Of Police Moves To Block Social Media

Groups Worry About Impact Of Police Moves To Block Social Media

http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/08/30/491826167/groups-worry-about-impact-of-police-moves-to-block-social-media

By: Martin Kaste
Date: 2016-08-30

When should police be able to deactivate your social media account?

The question is becoming more urgent, as people use real-time connections in the middle of critical incidents involving law enforcement.

In the case of Korryn Gaines in Baltimore County, Md., earlier this month, police said that a suspect actively using a social media connection makes a standoff worse.

Gaines posted videos to Instagram of the unfolding standoff with police, who were outside her apartment trying to get her to surrender. After an hours-long standoff, Gaines was shot and killed by Baltimore County police.