Many US Agencies have their own “Big Brother” autonomous person monitoring programs

Fourth amendment? What's a "fourth amendment"?

-Joe Average American Citizen

This is a compilation of articles, thoughts, information and data that I threw together for my personal use. It dates from the time period of 2013 through to 2018, and has not really been updated to account to the enormous expansion of the surveillance capabilities of the various alphabet organizations under President Trump.

Essentially, it became too overwhelming. It was impossible to keep up with the massive effort under-weigh to convert the United States government into a totalitarian utopia for the oligarchy.

Looking at the sole enormity of this information shows an overwhelming preponderance of evidence that the United States is not only no longer “free”, but that it has become a prison-state. It somehow by-passed or slid past the military totalitarian state mode and went straight to wall-less prison.

“Im just setting up a barebones linux laptop to go to Panama with.  All the essentials will be kept on an encrypted thumb drive just incase I need to access client machines.  Installed Skype, remote software and password safe, but the data is on the thumbdrive that gets wiped after 10 tries at the password.  Its a shame that americans have to be like this for doing nothing illegal.”

-Skype message to the Author on 13JAN18.

We are witnessing the integration of spying on two levels, the government level (federal, state and local) and the corporate level (via telecom providers, web services and credit card companies). It’s “Full Metal” Orwell.

The term "full metal Orwell" is a play on words.

Full Metal
Full Metal Jacket is a 1987 British-American war film directed and produced by Stanley Kubrick. The screenplay by Kubrick, Michael Herr, and Gustav Hasford was based on Hasford's novel The Short-Timers (1979). Its storyline follows a platoon of U.S. Marines through their training, primarily focusing on two privates, Joker and Pyle, who struggle to get through camp under their foul-mouthed drill instructor, Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, and the experiences of two of the platoon's Marines in the Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War. The film's title refers to the full metal jacket bullet used by soldiers. The film was released in the United States on June 26, 1987. In slang the term “full metal” means “to go into combat or to fight”.

Orwell
Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel, often published as 1984, is a dystopian social science fiction novel by English novelist George Orwell.It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and final book completed in his lifetime. Thematically, Nineteen Eighty-Four centres on the consequences of totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and repressive regimentation of persons

If you are a user of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Craigslist or another popular site, the U.S. security state is watching you. An increasing number of federal agencies are employing sophisticated means to monitor Americans’ use of social networking sites.

1984 was not supposed to be an instruction manual.

Federal entities from the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Defense Department to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to even the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) are involved in developing programs to track the American public online.

Criminals are running the United States government; call them what you will, but they all serve their own interests. 

“There’s nothing more destructive to a society than the institutionalization of immunity for elite criminals, yet that’s exactly what’s happened since the financial crisis. Top tier predators, whether they operate within government or mega corporations, recognize that the system they control will never hold them accountable for anything they do.” 

Read more here; https://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2018/01/22/we-can-do-a-lot-better-than-this/

This is not, not, NOT how a function government acts. Not how ANY functioning goverment acts. Let alone one that was set up as a “Republic” for the people, by the people.

“Today the path to total dictatorship in the U.S. can be laid by strictly legal means, unseen and unheard by Congress, the President, or the people. 

Outwardly we have a Constitutional government. 

We have operating within our government and political system … a well-organized political-action group in this country, determined to destroy our Constitution and establish a one-party state.... 

The important point to remember about this group is not its ideology but its organization… 

It operates secretly, silently, continuously to transform our Government.... 

This group ... is answerable neither to the President, the Congress, nor the courts. It is practically irremovable.”

— Senator William Jenner, 1954 speech

This corruption of what the United States is has many facets. But in this article we will look at a very specific, tiny portion of this corruption. It is, to put it in a nutshell, the abrogation of the powers of Congress to agencies; the “alphabet organizations”. And the powers that they have grabbed for themselves when Congress stopped policing their behaviors.

In short, Congress has created numerous “Frakenstein monsters”. (Named CIA, FBI, IRS, ATF, DHS, etc…)

A metaphorical Frankenstein monster is a situation —political, financial, ecclesiastical, or domestic—which has been created through folly, and which has become so potent and uncontrollable that it is now a menace to social stability.

Meaning of “A Frankenstein Monster” phrase of Idiom

To each one they granted it their own regulation-making and law-making powers. And to each one they allowed it to grow and get big with no limits on behaviors, no oversight in what they were doing, and no controls or rules over their ability to run “roughshod” over the Bill of Rights.

Particuliarly the 9th and the 4th amendments.

The Ninth Amendment was James Madison’s attempt to ensure that the Bill of Rights was not seen as granting to the people of the United States only the specific rights it addressed. In recent years, some have interpreted it as affirming the existence of such “unenumerated” rights outside those expressly protected by the Bill of Rights.

The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. It prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. In addition, it sets requirements for issuing warrants: warrants must be issued by a judge or magistrate, justified by probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and must particularly describe the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.

Here is a brief summary of some of the programs that now exist un-constitutionally within the alphabet organizations that Congress has created.

WARNING: Specific examples come from both Conservative and Progressive websites. There, apparently, is more conservative examples of progressive abuses being illustrated than the other way around. Sorry about that. I use what is available to me.

Let it be well understood that the two political parties are both THE SAME PARTY. It is the party of the rich and powerful. They conduct theater to keep you and I occupied while they rob us blind. So do not get all caught up on “he did this”, or “she was innocent”, nonsense.

The examples used are illustrative only. So please do not be offended that I am using Hillary Clinton as an example, or Donald Trump as an example. Stop thinking of them as being the “flag bearers” of your own personal ideology.

They are both actors playing a role. Nothing more.

Justice Department

“To block exposure of their misdeeds, these officials falsely claimed that national security would be damaged.”

-Michael Goodwin

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) released a report from the DOJ’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property section, “Obtaining and Using Evidence from Social Networking Sites,” that describes how evidence from social networking sites can reveal personal communications that might help “establish motives and personal relationships.”

It reports that monitored data from such sites can provide location information and “prove and disprove alibis.”

Perhaps most illuminating, it advises agents that “going undercover” on social media sites can enable law enforcement to communicate with suspects and targets, gain access to nonpublic information and map social relationships.

The DOJ document notes that Twitter retains the last login IP address, but does not preserve data unless legally required to do so. However, that means nothing. Twitter censors, deletes, and fabricates lies to meet whatever objective that it deems appropriate.

It was in 2016, when angry tweeters alleged that Jack Dorsey et al., were purposefully censoring and "suppressing" certain content on Twitter, 

[1] namely anything to do with the leaked DNC and John Podesta emails, as well as 

[2] hashtags critical of Hillary Clinton 

[3] while "shadow-banning" pro-Donald Trump content. (http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-31/twitter-shadow-banning-donald-trump) 

We can now confirm that at least one part of the above was true, because during the late 2017 Senate hearing, Twitter admitted it "buried", which is another word for censored, significant portions of tweets related to hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chair John Podesta in the months heading into the 2016 presidential campaign. 

Twitter’s systems hid 48 percent of tweets using the #DNCLeak hashtag and 25 percent of tweets using #PodestaEmails, Twitter general counsel Sean Edgett said in his written testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.

Twitter.

Can you just imagine all the issues related to twitter with Donald trump? Oi Vey! I’ll tell youse guys. You are either convinced that there is no such thing as freedom of speech or not. It’s not my job to prove it to anyone.

“While the FISA court’s activities are secret, the court did admit in 2013 that it had, during its several decades in existence, approved over 99.9 percent of the US government’s surveillance requests.”

-Adam Dick via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity


There is an American idiom for this. It is known as “rubber stamping” something. It means to approve something without any consideration, as a formality.  Obviously any court that approves 99.97 percent of anything isn't doing jack shit as far as doing its job is concerned. 

Hence, rubber stamps became one of the symbols of excessive bureaucracy, and a rubber stamp, in your sentence, would be someone whose role was merely to signify their approval of something, to endorse uncritically. The OED says of "rubber stamp" as a verb: "To endorse or approve uncritically; to pass routinely or automatically."

Rubber stamp - phrase meaning and origin

The IRS

“The gov is so rotten that it’s going to take an incredible, massive, long effort to expose, indict, charge, try, convict, and sentence the evil doers. It won’t always be pretty. But it HAS to be done.”

-2/8/2018, 5:24:35 AM by little jeremiah

The IRS uses a variety of social media sites like Facebook, Google, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube and Second Life to investigate taxpayers.

It seems to have started this practice in 2009 (shortly after Obama became President), providing agents with special training on social networking operations, and user habits. The EFF posted the IRS’ 38-page training that offers detailed tips to agents on how to conduct searches, locate relevant taxpayer information, narrow down and refine results.

Some Links:

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence

This office is seeking a tool that integrates all online information, including web searches, Wikipedia edits and traffic webcams.

The DOD Social Media Strategic Communications Program (SMISC).

The Defense Department has solicited proposals through DARPA for a $42 million “Social Media Strategic Communications” (SMISC) program, a tool that tracks social media and weeds out information.

It has set four goals for the project: [1] to detect, classify and measure the development of ideas, concepts in hidden social media messages; [2] specify the structure of the campaign and influence in social media sites and the community they create; [3] identify the participants and intention in conducting a social media campaign of persuasion and measure its effect; and [4] develop an effective counter-message to an identified campaign carried out against the enemy.

The FBI

If not, we are no longer America. We are a banana republic where it’s acceptable for the government to use its police powers against political opponents.”

-Michael Goodwin

There should be no doubt in the mind of the reader as to just how corrupt the FBI has become. Permitting serial felonious treason, while at the same time operating “secret societies” within the government, are all crystal clear indicators of dangerous behaviors. Behaviors that can turn on the American people at any time for any reason.

“Earlier this morning, I examined the classified, four-page memo from @HouseIntelComm regarding the FBI, DOJ, and the so-called #RussianCollusion. To put it simply, “WOW.” I joined the call to #ReleaseTheMemo. Americans deserve truth and transparency. pic.twitter.com/r2RJnLNaUL”

— Rep. Jody Hice (@CongressmanHice) January 19, 2018

The FBI has become a dangerous and out of control anti-American organization.

“Several other GOP Congressmembers have weighed in. "I have read the memo," tweeted Rep. Steve King (R-IA), adding "The sickening reality has set in. I no longer hold out hope there is an innocent explanation for the information the public has seen. I have long said it is worse than Watergate. It was #neverTrump & #alwaysHillary. #releasethememo."

Along with the four-page memo, Congressional investigators learned from a new batch of text messages between anti-Trump FBI investigators that several individuals within the Department of Justice and the FBI may have come together in the "immediate aftermath" of the 2016 election to undermine President Trump, according to Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX) who has reviewed the texts.”

-From the article; “Comey, Rosenstein, McCabe All Named In FISA Memo, First Leak Reveals”

Unfortunately, for all the scandal, most people watching the mainstream media (run by the oligarchy) would be unaware of the turmoil inside of the FBI.

The FBI operates as a secret police. They are completely armed with military grade weapons, and they have their own secret court system. They do not follow the rule of law, and make it up as it suits them. It has gotten worse over time, and most alarming (after “upgrading” by President Obama) they have become dangerously political.

We can only imagine the terrible capabilities that they must now have after a Trump Presidency, and a Mike Pompeo Secretary of State.

This is pretty darn sad.

“So it was — and, look, this is scary stuff, right? I mean, these are secret courts. And I have long supported these because it’s mainly to go after terrorists and people abroad who are looking to do bad things. Never did I think that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act would be used to go after a political campaign. And, you know, there’s gonna have to be some major reforms done to these programs. And what shocks me is that the people at these institutions aren’t worried about this.

I mean, you know, we have a hard enough time, Rush, trying to track down terrorists and bad guys around the world. And just the fact that they would have wasted our intelligence agencies’ time to go after somebody like Carter Page to try to get into the Trump campaign is really scary stuff and really a waste of taxpayer money, and I think every American should be concerned about this no matter if you’re a Republican or Democrat or don’t even pay attention to politics, you ought to care about this.”

- Congressman Devin Nunes of California (chairman of the House Intelligence Committee) discussing the abuse by the FBI and how it was weaponized by Hillary Clinton for political purposes to attack American citizens.

The truth is, that today, the FBI was involved in activities more suited to Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, China under Mr. Mao, and Cuba under Fidel Castro than their constitutionally stated purpose.

They not only went far and above the law, they created their own internal “secret society”.

While the "secret society" reference may have been in jest, a “whistleblower” has (allegedly) confirmed the existence of clandestine meetings. Of which high ranking U.S. intelligence officials met "offsite" to conspire against a sitting President. 

This is according to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI).

“...we have an informant talking about a group holding secret meetings off-site,” Johnson said. “We have to continue to dig into it,” he added. “This is not a distraction. This is biased, potentially corruption at the highest levels of the FBI.” 

-The Hill

On the night of 22JAN18, Reps. John Ratcliffe (R-TX) and Trey Gowdy (R-SC) told Fox News what they had learned from a batch of communications between two FBI investigators. These FBI communications were contained within a 384-page batch of text messages that were delivered to Congress from the DOJ on 19JAN18.

Of particular note is that Ratcliffe says that Strzok and Page were included in the clandestine anti-Trump cabal. This was at the highest levels of the American intelligence community. This is disturbing stuff no doubt.

These meetings are evidence of a secret society, or club. It’s a secret society where they gathered together and determined how to achieve their own internally-determined objectives. Often, if not always, that ran counter to the needs of the American people.

I wonder if they wore robes, had secret handshakes, and performed satanic rituals…

“The thousands of texts @TGowdySC and I reviewed today revealed manifest bias among top FBI officials against @realDonaldTrump. 

The texts between Strzok and Page referenced a "secret society."”

— John Ratcliffe (@RepRatcliffe) January 23, 2018

It is critical to the “powers that be” that this information be kept secret and hidden from the American people.

Therefore, of course, the oligarchy is fighting back hard.

Sen. Feinstein, Rep. Schiff urged Facebook and Twitter to investigate involvement of Russian bots in pushing "Release the Memo" campaign:"

If these reports are accurate, we are witnessing an ongoing attack by the Russian government through Kremlin-linked social media actors." pic.twitter.com/SkAci5NefK” (https://t.co/SkAci5NefK)

— ABC News (@ABC) January 23, 2018 (https://twitter.com/ABC/status/955830690381254659?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)

The letter's claims were immediately shot down by Facebook, which told the Daily Beast (https://www.thedailybeast.com/source-twitter-pins-releasethememo-on-republicans-not-russia/) that #ReleaseTheMemo hashtag has been pushed by actual Americans. 

A knowledgeable source says that Twitter’s internal analysis has thus far found that authentic American accounts, and not Russian imposters or automated bots, are driving #ReleaseTheMemo. 

There are no preliminary indications that the Twitter activity either driving the hashtag or engaging with it is either predominantly Russian. 

In short, according to this source, who would not speak to The Daily Beast for attribution, the retweets are coming from inside the country.

The PTB, and their oligarchy, simply just doesn’t want to lose their grip on power. They need the FBI, CIA, DHS, IRS, and the DOJ on “their side”. Or else they risk swinging from nooses on scaffolding.

It appears Billionaire (Democrat mega-donor) and Rabid-Clintonite Tom Steyer (D) is surprised that the nationwide ad campaign he bankrolled to urge members of Congress to impeach President Trump hasn’t yielded any results. 

Steyer went off on both Republicans and Democrats in January 2018 after a House vote on articles of impeachment garnered a paltry 66 votes.

"This vote is not a reflection of whether or not Trump has passed the threshold for impeachment, which he did months ago, it is a failure by members of Congress to do what’s right to keep the American people safe."

- Steyer stated on Friday 12JAN18 in a press statement after the Congressional vote.

Steyer, a billionaire (former) hedge fund manager from California, launched his ‘Need to Impeach’ movement in October of 2017. While more than four million people have signed his petition, Democrats aren’t particularly happy with the initiative. Democratic leaders believe pushing for impeachment could hurt their party’s chances in the midterms later this year. 

Steyer underscored his campaign by sending copies of Michael Wolff’s book “Fire and Fury” to every lawmaker. 

Check out this video; https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-10-21/democratic-megadonor-launches-campaign-impeach-mentally-unstable-trump

To anyone reading these references, they seem so out-of-date, and boring. It’s “old news” the argument goes. Or, “Hey! it’s the democrats”, or “Hey! It’s the Republicans!” That’s not the point.

That’s not the point.

It’s both “parties”.

It’s a club and you ain’t a part of it.

Look at what is beginning to go on after the 2020 election, it’s all the same “song and dance”. It’s not to amuse Americans. It’s to control them.

Any idea of transparency in government is a FARCE.

As these dated examples indicate.

So to recap: not only were high level intelligence officials allegedly involved in clandestine meetings in which they conspired to “impair” Donald Trump, this leak in conjunction of the four-page GOP memo confirms what many have suspected all along; a highly illegal operation was conducted against a sitting President (President Trump) which goes all the way to the top of the U.S. government.

It’s a club, and you are not part of it. If you are an “outsider”, you will have zero support, and every method will be used to remove you.

“Stop and think what really happened here. We have a political candidate who lost the election. (Then) commissions an opposition research document, the Steele dossier. Which is then packaged and presented as legitimate intelligence (gathered by respected intelligence agents the world over). And it features such shocking details as the golden showers story.

We find out that Hillary Clinton’s campaign, the DNC paid for this, $10 million. We find out that Steele did not even talk to these people in Russia in person on the phone.

We then find out that the FBI uses this to get a warrant, as you say, to spy on Carter Page. They did NOT tell the court that this was a political document. This is the kind of thing that movie scripts contain and are made of.

It’s hard to get my arms around comprehending the number of people that had to be in on this and their motivation. Now, you may be nervous about going into motivation. To me, that is everything. Why? What’s the purpose here?”

-Rush Limbaugh talking to Congressman Devin Nunes of California (chairman of the House Intelligence Committee) discussing the abuse by the FBI and how it was weaponized by Hillary Clinton for political purposes to attack American citizens.

It’s a private club. It’s a “secret organization” that floats in the upper percentages of the United States population. The entire American government, all that juicy “freedom” and “mouth-watering “democracy” are just lies used to manipulate and control the American people from rising up from their roles as cash-cows under a feudal serfdom.

Bread and circuses A phrase used by a Roman writer to deplore the declining heroism of Romans after the Roman Republic ceased to exist and the Roman Empire began: “Two things only the people anxiously desire — bread and circuses.” The government kept the Roman populace happy by distributing free food and staging huge spectacles.

So, they must do everything in their power to keep their actions secret. For their actions are illegal and against the Constitution, and ultimately the citizens of the United States. They absolutely MUST keep things secret.

“In Comey's testimony where he said he did not determine not to recommend Hillary for indictment before her interrogation was held he asked that if any FBI person thought he was lying they should contact him privately before stating their opinion.

I thought that was a very odd thing to say.”

-Lostinfortwalton Jan 25, 2018 8:00 AM Permalink


A former Federal Prosecutor sat down with The Daily Caller (http://dailycaller.com/2018/01/20/obama-administration-plot-exonerate-hillary/) to give perhaps the most comprehensive rundown of the Obama Administration's "brazen plot to exonerate Hillary Clinton" and "frame an incoming president with a false Russian conspiracy."

“The FBI used to spy on Russians. This time they spied on us.

(This is) what this story is about - a brazen plot (by the FBI) to exonerate (Democrat Presidential Candidate) Hillary Clinton from a clear violation of the law with regard to the way she handled classified information with her classified (secretive) server.

(This was) Absolutely a crime, absolutely a felony.

It's about finding out why (as the Inspector General is doing at the department of justice) why Comey (head of the FBI) and the senior DOJ officials conducted a fake criminal investigation of (to exonerate) Hillary Clinton.
(They) ...

[1] Followed none of the regular rules, 
[2] gave her every break in the book, 
[3] immunized all kinds of people, 
[4] allowed the destruction of evidence, 
[5] no grand jury, 
[6] no subpoenas, 
[7]no search warrant(s).

That's not an investigation, that's a Potemkin village. It's a farce. 

And everybody knew it was a farce.

The problem was, she didn't win (the 2016 Presidential election).

And because she didn't win, the farce became a very serious opera. It wasn't a comic opera anymore, it was a tragic opera. And she was going to be the focus. 

What this is about, this is about a lavabo, a cleansing of FBI and the upper echelons of the Department of Justice. 

We're going to discover that the Attorney General, Loretta Lynch (under President Obama), her deputy Sally Yates, the head of the national security division John Carlin (under President Obama), Bruce Ohr and other senior DOJ officials, and regrettably, lying attorneys (were ALL involved in this effort).
People who were senior career civil servants violated the law, perhaps committed crimes, and covered up crimes by a presidential candidate (Hillary Clinton)

But (it was) more than that, they tried to frame an incoming president with a false Russian conspiracy that never existed, and they knew it, and they plotted to ruin him as a candidate and then destroy him as a president.

That's why this is important. That's why connecting the dots is important. 

DiGenova condemned the FBI for working so closely with the controversial Fusion GPS, a political hit squad paid by the DNC and Clinton campaign to create and spread the discredited Steele dossier about President Donald Trump.

Without a justifiable law enforcement or national security reason, he says, the FBI “created false facts so that they could get surveillance warrants.

Those are ALL crimes.”

-Daily Caller

The FBI has become a very powerful police force run for and by the oligarchy.

It is used to keep the American people under control and “in line” while America undergoes a transformation to a “new” government structure –one that favors the elite oligarchy, and closes everyone else out.

This is not my opinion.

There proof of this is out there and obvious to all who is willing to face the ugly truth;

“The leadership of the FBI and DOJ behaved in a way we would expect of the former Soviet Union, not the United States of America. I applaud Representative Nunes and other Republican members of the House Intel Committee for fighting and exposing corruption.

Americans are tired of corrupt bureaucrats and their career politician enablers.

If powerful leaders are not held accountable, the American people will never regain faith in the institutions meant to protect us. Former FBI Director James Comey was entrusted with one of the most powerful positions in the world. Sadly, he intentionally abused his power in an effort to destroy Donald Trump’s presidency.

He should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and sent to prison for his crimes. No one is above the law. No one.”

– Georgia GOP Gubernatorial candidate Sen. Michael Williams demanding the prosecution of (former) FBI Director Comey for his efforts related to treason.

The FBI is seriously corrupted, and works to further the agendas of others.

“III. Conclusion

We should all recognize the harm done to our rule of law when crimes go unpunished because government officials look the other way for the wealthy, famous, or powerful.

Americans rightly expect a single and impartial system of justice for all, not one for the well connected and a separate one for everyone else.

The information available to the Committee at this time raises serious questions about how the FBI applied the rule of law in its investigation of classified information on Secretary Clinton’s private email server. We know that:

• The FBI did not use a grand jury to compel testimony and obtain the vast majority of evidence, choosing instead to offer immunity deals and allow fact witnesses to join key interviews.

• There were substantial edits to Director Comey’s public statement that served to downplay the severity of Secretary Clinton’s actions, and that the first draft of the memo was distributed for editing two months before key witnesses were interviewed.

• Director Comey stated that he had not consulted with the Justice Department or White House, when text messages suggest otherwise.106 We have text messages in which two key investigators discuss an “insurance policy” against the “risk” of a Trump presidency, and “OUR task.”

• Messages discuss “unfinished business,” “an investigation leading to impeachment,” and “my gut sense and concern there’s no big there there.”

• Senior FBI officials—likely including Deputy Director McCabe— knew about newly discovered emails on a laptop belonging to Anthony Weiner for almost a month before Director Comey notified Congress.

• Over the period of at least four months, the FBI did not recover five months’ worth of text messages requested by DOJ OIG and two Senate committees; however, when pressed, DOJ OIG was able to recover missing texts in less than one week.

Taken together, this information warrants further inquiry. While some may discount the investigation for political reasons, we all have a great interest in ensuring the public has confidence in the integrity and independence of the FBI, the preeminent law enforcement agency in the world. Unlike prosecutors or inspectors general, the primary goal of congressional oversight is full transparency in order to promote public awareness and confidence in federal agencies. For these reasons, our important work will continue.”

- THE CLINTON EMAIL SCANDAL AND THE FBI’S INVESTIGATION OF IT. An Interim Report.  A Majority Staff Report of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs United States Senate. Senator Ron Johnson, Chairman

file:///C:/Users/Michael/Downloads/2018-02-07%20Interim%20Report_The%20Clinton%20Email%20Scandal%20and%20the%20FBI’s%20Investigation%20of%20It.pdf

To this end, the FBI has it’s hands in all kinds of ways to monitor (so they can control) Americans. Of course, we know that the 4^th amendment to the United States Constitution prevents them for collecting “unauthorized” information. They need a court document from a judge to do that. So what they are doing in the meantime (without going through a judge) is simply collecting the information…you know, “just in case”.

Democrats do it. Republicans do it. It is a policy that is rampant.

FBI’s Next Generation Identification (NGI) system

The FBI’s NGI System was developed to expand the Bureau’s biometric identification capabilities, ultimately replacing the FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) in addition to adding new services and capabilities.

-FBI Announces Full Operational Capability of the Next ...

As of 2016, the FBI has been soliciting a bid for a program that seems very similar to the DHS social-network monitoring program. Dubbed the “FBI Social Media Application,” the program would have

"[the ability] to rapidly assemble critical open source information and intelligence ... to quickly vet, identify and geo-locate breaking events, incidents and emerging threats."

In the FBI’s 12-page solicitation, it requests a program that can quickly identify, display and locate alerts on geo-spatial maps and enable users to summarize the “who, what, when, where and why” of specific threats and incidents.

Going further, it seeks to not simply detect “credible threats,” but to identify those organizing and taking part in gatherings and to predict upcoming events. According to the FBI,

"Social media will be a valued source of information to the SIOC [i.e., Strategic Information and Operations Center] intelligence analyst in a crisis because it will be both eyewitness and first response to the crisis."

An FBI spokesperson insisted,

"[We] will not focus on specific persons or protected groups, but on words that relate to 'events' and 'crisis' and activities constituting violations of federal criminal law or threats to national security. Examples of these words will include lockdown, bomb, suspicious package, white powder, active shoot, school lockdown, etc.”

Rest assured, much like the assurances voiced by the DHS, the FBI insists that its monitoring won’t be used to focus on specific individuals or groups.

The FBI’s Next Generation Identification (NGI) system is made up of fingerprints, iris scans, faceprints, and other facial recognition data. As of 2016 EPIC (Electronic Privacy Information Center) sued regarding the FBI’s plan to include tattoos and scars in the database.

According to EPIC:

“With NGI, the FBI will expand the number of uploaded photographs and provide investigators with ‘automated facial recognition search capability.’ The FBI intends to do this by eliminating restrictions on the number of submitted photographs (including photographs that are not accompanied by tenprint fingerprints) and allowing the submission of non-facial photographs (e.g. scars or tattoos).”

 “The FBI also widely disseminates this NGI data. According to the FBI’s latest NGI fact sheet, 24,510 local, state, tribal, federal and international partners submitted queries to NGI in September 2016.”

EPIC asked a judge to force the FBI to release records about its plan to share the biometric data with the U.S. Department of Defense. EPIC filed a Freedom of Information Act request in 2015, but the FBI has so far refused to release the 35 pages of responsive records.

EPIC and privacy advocates are concerned about the potential for cases of mistaken identity and abuse of the collected data. EPIC also argues

“the FBI stated that ‘increased collection and retention of personally identifiable information presents a correspondingly increased risk that the FBI will then be maintaining more information that might potentially be subject to loss or unauthorized use.”

Although very little is actually known about the database, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and EPIC have been able to uncover that the FBI would like to track every individual as they move from one location to another. In 2013, EPIC obtained a document that showed

“NGI shall return an incorrect candidate a maximum of 20% of the time.”

In 2011, EFF observed the growing biometrics trend:

"Once the collection of biometrics becomes standardized, it becomes much easier to locate and track someone across all aspects of their life. 

EFF believes that perfect tracking is inimical to a free society. 

A society in which everyone’s actions are tracked is not, in principle, free. It may be a livable society, but would not be our society.”

In 2014, EFF received documents from the FBI related to the NGI system.

Based on the records, EFF estimated the facial recognition component of NGI would include as many as 52 million face images by 2015. Indeed, the danger of abuse from facial recognition programs is on the rise.

Activist Post recently highlighted a new report from Georgetown Law University’s Center for Privacy and Technology that details how law enforcement is using facial recognition software without the knowledge or consent of the people. The report, “The Perpetual Line-Up: Unregulated Police Face Recognition in America,” examines several cases of misuse or abuse of facial recognition technology.

Facial recognition software is not the only type of surveillance tool the FBI has an interest in. The Bureau is reportedly set to sign a contract with Dataminr that will provide the feds with an upgrade to social media monitoring software.

According to the Federal Business Opportunities’ official government page, the contract will provide the FBI with around 200 licenses for Dataminr’s Advanced Alerting Tool. This upgrade “will permit the FBI to search the complete Twitter firehose, in near real-time, using customizable filters.”

The FBI claims to want the social media tool for detecting and catching terrorists, but it doesn’t take a huge leap of the imagination to see how this could be applied to U.S. citizens.

The pursuit of facial recognition software and social media monitoring tools is just the latest step in the expanding war on privacy, which is itself a part of the eternal war on freedom.

This system has been in operation for a number of years now, and is toted as a success.

This Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) covers the Next Generation Identification-Interstate Photo System (NGI-IPS), which serves as the FBI’s biometric identity and criminal history records system and maintains the fingerprints and associated identity information of individuals submitted to the FBI for authorized criminal justice, national security, and civil purposes.

-PIA: NGI-Interstate Photo Systen — FBI

Finally, let it be understood that the FBI’s Next Generation Identification system exempt from Privacy Act News roundup: The FBI Next Generation Identification biometrics database is exempt from the Privacy Act.

FBI’s Next Generation Identification system exempt from …

The FBI sweeps up all your Photographs

“From Rep. Adam Schiff’s increasingly desperate attempts to stonewall the truth to the FBI’s predictable appeals to secrecy from law enforcement to cover corruption, this memo is lifting the scales from the eyes of voters all over the country.

It’s telling them the cockroaches have run out of corners to hide in.
Time to put on our pointy shoes and start kickin’.

The reaction to this memo puts paid the classic libertarian critique that an organization’s highest priority is self-preservation.  Doing what you formed the organization to do comes a distant second.

Government creates organizations that are not directly accountable to the people who fund them and therefore can dig moats around themselves to ensure their survival no matter what.

This is the essence of corruption.  It is the essence of why the Swamp needs to be drained.

The FBI is a corrupt and venal organization of power-hungry, self-righteous arbiters of arbitrary justice.  Even the good agents are tainted by the organizational rot.  The same is true in every government department.
No one sees corruption like a government employee with half a conscience.

The pressure to not release this memo comes from formerly very powerful people – Obama and his staff, the Clintons, the DNC, etc. The fallout will be an overhaul from the ground up of multiple powerful agencies within the Federal Government.”

-Tom Luongo

It’s often the case that new technologies arrive on the scene faster than our society and its legal code can keep up. Sometimes this can be a good thing. For instance, 3D printing allows people to print out unregulated gun parts, thus allowing gun owners to circumvent the onerous laws of our government, which has struggled to come up with new laws to restrict the technology.

When technology advances at a breakneck pace however, it can also be quite dangerous for our liberties. This is especially true in regards to privacy. If a new technology makes it easy for the government to track us, you can bet that the government is going to take its sweet time updating the legal code in a way that will protect us from surveillance.

That certainly seems to be the case with facial recognition software. During a recent Congressional Oversight Committee hearing, members of both political parties sounded the alarm on the FBI’s use of the technology, and read the written testimony of Electronic Frontier Foundation senior staff attorney Jennifer Lynch:

Lynch detailed the stunning scope of the FBI’s photo collection. In addition to collecting criminal and civil mug shots, the agency currently has “memorandums of understanding” with 16 states that mean every driver’s license photo from those states is accessible to the agency—without the drivers’ consent. The FBI also has access to photos from the U.S. State Department’s passport and visa records.

 Lynch argued that “Americans should not be forced to submit to criminal face recognition searches merely because they want to drive a car. They shouldn’t have to worry their data will be misused by unethical government officials with unchecked access to face recognition databases. And they shouldn’t have to fear that their every move will be tracked if face recognition is linked to the networks of surveillance cameras that blanket many cities.”

 “But without meaningful legal protections, this is where we may be headed,” Lynch stated. “Without laws in place, it could be relatively easy for the government and private companies to amass databases of images of all Americans and use those databases to identify and track people in real time as they move from place to place throughout their daily lives.”

All told, law enforcement agencies around the country have access to 400 million photos in facial recognition databases, which are connected to roughly 50% of American adults. Most of these people have never committed a crime, and obviously haven’t given any consent to this.

At first glance it may sound harmless to be in one of these databases. Movies and TV shows make it sound like this technology can help law enforcement swiftly and precisely nab suspects. So what do you have to fear if you haven’t committed a crime? It turns out that in real life, facial recognition is far from perfect.

Internal FBI documents obtained in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center indicate that the FBI’s own database, called the Next Generation Identification Interstate Photo System, or NGI-IPS, had an acceptable margin of error of 20 percent — that is, a 1-in-5 chance of “recognizing” the wrong person.

 And research published in the October 2015 issue of the scientific journal PLOS ONE by researchers at the universities of Sydney and New South Wales in Australia found that the humans who interpret such data build in an extra error margin approaching 30 percent.

If we ever allow our government to roll out facial recognition cameras on a wider scale, lots of innocent people are going to be hurt. Whether by mistake or by malice, it will become shockingly easy for law enforcement to identify ordinary people as criminals. The surveillance control grid will not only be inescapable, it will be unwieldy and rife with abuse.

It’s often said that you should never trade freedom for safety. In this case, we wouldn’t receive any kind of safety.

The FBI is operates as a “Secret Police”

In order to boost the credibility of the FBI’s investigations of the Trump team, much of the media is whitewashing the bureau’s entire history. But the FBI has been out of control almost since its birth. Here is a concise summary of some interesting history regarding this issue. Intelligence provided here was collected by James Bovard and all credit due to James Bovard.

1924

A 1924 American Civil Liberties Union report warned that the FBI had become “a secret police system of a political character.”

1930’s

In the 1930s, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court feared that the FBI had bugged the conference room where justices privately wrangled over landmark cases, as Tim Weiner noted in his “Enemies: A History of the FBI.”

1945

In 1945, President Harry Truman noted that “We want no Gestapo or Secret Police. FBI is tending in that direction.” Somehow, FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover compiled a list of 20,000 “potentially or actually dangerous” Americans who could be rounded up and locked away in one of the six detention camps the federal government secretly built in the 1950s.

1956 to 1971

From 1956 through 1971, the FBI’s COINTELPRO program conducted thousands of covert operations to incite street warfare between violent groups, to get people fired, to smear innocent people by portraying them as government informants, to sic the IRS on people, and to cripple or destroy left-wing, communist, white racist, antiwar, and black organizations (including Martin Luther King Jr.). These operations involved vast numbers of warrantless wiretaps and illicit break-ins and resulted in the murder of some black militants. A Senate Committee chaired by liberal Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) issued a damning report on FBI abuses of power that should be mandatory reading for anyone who believes the bureau deserves deference today.

1990’s

According to Politifact, the FBI is not a “secret police agency” because “the FBI is run by laws, not by whim.” But we learned five years ago that the FBI explicitly teaches its agents that “the FBI has the ability to bend or suspend the law to impinge on the freedom of others.” No FBI official was fired or punished when that factoid leaked out because this has been the Bureau’s tacit code for eons. Similarly, an FBI academy ethics course taught new agents that subjects of FBI investigations have “forfeited their right to the truth.” Are liberals so anxious to get Trump that they have swept under the rug the 2015 Washington Post bombshell about false FBI trial testimony that may have sentenced 32 innocent people to death?

Politifact absolved the bureau because “The FBI doesn’t torture or carry out extrajudicial executions.” Tell that to the Branch Davidians — 80 of whom died after the FBI assaulted their ramshackle home with tanks and pyrotechnic devices and collapsed much of the building on their heads even before fires burst out.

Politifact quotes a professor who asserts that “any use of unnecessary violence (by the FBI) would be met with the full force of the criminal law.” Is that why an internal FBI report claimed that every one of the 150 shootings by FBI agents between 1993 and 2011 was faultless?

FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi gunned down Vicki Weaver in 1992 as she stood in her Idaho cabin doorway holding her baby. After being accusing the FBI of a coverup in a Wall Street Journal oped, FBI chief Louis Freeh denounced Jim Bovard for twisting the truth. But after a confidential Justice Department report leaked out revealing the FBI’s deceits and unconstitutional rules of engagement, the feds paid a $3 million wrongful death settlement to the Weaver family. When an Idaho County sought to prosecute the FBI sniper, the Justice Department invoked the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution to torpedo the case. (Ah, the 9^th Circuit Court, rules in favor of the Progressive government.)

Politifact asserts that “just because the FBI sometimes operates in secret does not mean that it’s a ‘secret police.’” But the FBI’s secrecy is profoundly skewing American politics.

The so-called fact checkers insists that any comparison of the FBI and KGB is “ridiculous” because the FBI is “subject to the rule of law and is democratically accountable.” But there is little or no accountability when few members of Congress have the courage to openly criticize or vigorously cross-examine FBI officials. House Majority Leader Hale Boggs admitted in 1971 that Congress was afraid of the FBI:

“Our very fear of speaking out (against the FBI) ... has watered the roots and hastened the growth of a vine of tyranny ... which is ensnaring that Constitution and Bill of Rights which we are each sworn to uphold.”

The FBI is currently scorning almost every congressional attempt at oversight. Thus far, members of Congress have responded with nothing except press releases and talk show bluster.

Politifact repeatedly scoffs at the notion that the FBI is “a secret police agency such as the old KGB.” And since the FBI is not as bad as the KGB, let’s mosey along and pretend no good citizen has a right to complain. A similar standard could exonerate any American president who was not as bad as Stalin.

In the 1960s, some conservatives adorned their cars with “Support Your Local Sheriff” bumper stickers. How long until we see Priuses with “Support Your Secretive All-Powerful Federal Agents” bumper stickers? But those who forget or deny past oppression help forge new shackles for the American people.

The FBI can come after YOU!

This should be obvious, but it isn’t. Most Americans think that “it can never happen to me”. Ask anyone in prison. Life can change in a heartbeat. Especially when the corrupt and powerful is in control of your life.

“RUSH: And welcome back. We wrap up here with Congressman Nunes. I thought of one more thing I wanted to run by you during the break. And it was… I played the audio sound bite of this earlier. It’s a former CIA counterintelligence muckety-muck guy named Phillip Mudd, and there have been two other people like him over the weekend saying to President Trump, “You know what? If you’re gonna pick a fight with the FBI, you don’t want to make those guys mad.“They can really come after you.”

And I’ve heard that before. The same thing has been said by Chuck Schumer to President Trump about the CIA, the intelligence community. I’m sure you’re getting the same kind of insults. Now, with people saying, “You better not make the FBI mad! They could really come out and do you damage or come after you,” doesn’t that kind of validate what’s already going on, if we have people advocating that the FBI be used as a weapon against political opponents?

NUNES: Yeah. So those days are over, Rush. That is what they did in the Obama administration. These institutions became corrupt at the top, and it’s not just the FBI. It’s all of the departments who became just out of control. I mean, do we have to go back to Lois Lerner and the IRS and all of those games that were played?

RUSH: Right.

NUNES: And what’s happening here is that the first time in a long time Congress — which is a separate branch of government. We created the FBI.

RUSH: Right!

NUNES: We created the Department of Justice.

RUSH: You could abolish them if you want to!

NUNES: We could abolish them. We could cut their money off. But the bottom line is this. I said, “We’re done. You cross the rubicon. You abused the FISA court.” And, you know, I had to fight for these documents for months and months and months. We issued the original subpoenas back in August of last year, and it took until just a few weeks ago for us to finally put all the pieces together. So, you know, I’m not gonna take their crap. I’m not gonna be threatened. They tried to do an end run around me, and Speaker Paul Ryan said, “No. The Congress is gonna exert our authority.”

-Rush Limbaugh talking to Congressman Devin Nunes of California (chairman of the House Intelligence Committee) discussing the abuse by the FBI and how it was weaponized by Hillary Clinton for political purposes to attack American citizens.

It’s getting pretty serious. It is obvious that the FBI no longer serves the American people. It serves the oligarchy and itself only.

“I’ll tell you how serious it’s getting. Well, not how serious it’s getting. To illustrate for you just how even greater the divide is becoming, there’s a CIA analyst named Phil Mudd and we’ve got the audio sound bite coming up. This guy is on CNN, and he’s actually saying to Nunes and to Trump, “You know, you make these guys at the FBI mad at you, and they can come back and destroy you.”

What in the hell does that mean? You make these guys at the FBI mad, and they can really come get you. What is that supposed to mean? And he says that with approval and advocacy, like as though he’s in favor of the nation’s premier law enforcement agent targeting people for their politics. It’s like when Chuck Schumer warned Trump, “You better be careful of these guys in the intelligence community. They can wipe you out six ways from Sunday,” which we know to be the case, but to advocate for that.

And lest anybody have any doubt, I’m amazed at people who are just realizing this, but they are. I’ve read I don’t know how many pieces, media on our side — I’m talking about the conservative media, forget the left — who have come to a sudden shocking realization that the media is part of the establishment! I’m reading this, “Duh. You think that’s a revelation?” But, I mean, I’ll take it. I mean, the more people get it, the better.”

-Rush Limbaugh

The FBI Is Paying Geek Squad Members To Dig Around In Computers For Evidence

“Compared to the 18-minute “gap” in the White House tape during the Watergate scandal, this is the Grand Canyon^{^[i]}. So what does the Bureau have to say about it?

They blamed it on “misconfiguration issues related to rollouts, provisioning, and software upgrades.” Someone at the FBI actually wrote that.“

-Robert Knight - Sunday, January 28, 2018

[i] "The Grand Canyon". The pattern of alarming behavior at the FBI and the Justice Department deserves a recap:
On June 27, 2016, Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch held a private meeting with Bill Clinton in a jet at the Phoenix airport, even though the FBI, a branch of the Justice Department, was investigating Mr. Clinton’s wife’s conduct as Secretary of State. A more glaring conflict of interest is hard to imagine.
A week later, on July 5, then-FBI Director James Comey released a report exonerating Mrs. Clinton. He criticized her misuse of emails, but described her violation of national security protocols as “extremely careless” instead of the criminally indictable “grossly negligent” in the original draft. The ever nimble Mr. Strzok has been credited with that edit.
Mr. Strzok also revealed in a text that the FBI team had removed a reference to President Obama as having received a text from Mrs. Clinton when one of them was “on the territory of sophisticated adversaries.” Was it Russia? Alabama?
To downplay the severity of the breach, the FBI report editors cleverly demoted Mr. Obama from president into just “another senior government official,” according to The Journal. The very next day after Mr. Comey’s press conference and release of the report, Ms. Lynch announced that no charges would be filed against Mrs. Clinton, to no great surprise.
Mr. Comey also drafted a statement closing the Clinton email investigation before the FBI even interviewed Mrs. Clinton or her staff. And, Mr. Comey leaked his own memo to a reporter about a conversation with President Trump in order to trigger the Mueller investigation. This all adds up to a disturbingly convincing scenario in which partisan FBI officials bent the law to protect Hillary Clinton, sully Donald Trump before the election, and destabilize his presidency afterward.
If something here isn’t a federal crime, I really don’t know what is.

Law enforcement has a number of informants working for it and the companies that already pay their paychecks, like UPS, for example. It also has a number of government employees working for the TSA, keeping their eyes peeled for “suspicious” amounts of cash it can swoop in and seize.

Unsurprisingly, the FBI also has a number of paid informants. Some of these informants apparently work at Best Buy — Geek Squad by day, government informants by… well, also by day.

According to court records, Geek Squad technician John "Trey" Westphal, an FBI informant, reported he accidentally located on Rettenmaier's computer an image of "a fully nude, white prepubescent female on her hands and knees on a bed, with a brown choker-type collar around her neck." 

Westphal notified his boss, Justin Meade, also an FBI informant, who alerted colleague Randall Ratliff, another FBI informant at Best Buy, as well as the FBI. Claiming the image met the definition of child pornography and was tied to a series of illicit pictures known as the "Jenny" shots, agent Tracey Riley seized the hard drive.

Not necessarily a problem, considering companies performing computer/electronic device repair are legally required to report discovered child porn to law enforcement.

The difference here is the paycheck.

This Geek Squad member had been paid $500 for digging around in customers’ computers and reporting his findings to the FBI. That changes the motivation from legal obligation to a chance to earn extra cash by digging around in files not essential to the repair work at hand.

More of a problem is the FBI’s tactics. While it possibly could have simply pointed to the legal obligation Best Buy has to report discovered child porn, it proactively destroyed this argument by apparently trying to cover up the origin of its investigation, as well as a couple of warrantless searches.

Setting aside the issue of whether the search of Rettenmaier's computer constituted an illegal search by private individuals acting as government agents, the FBI undertook a series of dishonest measures in hopes of building a case, according to James D. Riddet, Rettenmaier's San Clemente-based defense attorney. Riddet says agents conducted two additional searches of the computer without obtaining necessary warrants, lied to trick a federal magistrate judge into authorizing a search warrant, then tried to cover up their misdeeds by initially hiding records.

The “private search” issue is mentioned briefly in OC Weekly’s report, but should be examined more closely. Private searches are acceptable, but the introduction of cash payments, as well as the FBI having an official liaison with Best Buy suggests the searches aren’t really “private.” Instead, the FBI appears to be using private searches to route around warrant requirements. That’s not permissible and even the FBI’s belief that going after the “worst of worst” isn’t going to be enough to salvage these warrantless searches.

A bill that will allow homes to be searched without a warrant was passed with overwhelming support by the United States Congress.

It was signed into law by President Trump.

It happened silently with no media coverage and very little fanfare. 

On the surface, House Joint Resolution 76 looks harmless. The title of the bill claims that its purpose is “Granting the consent and approval of Congress for the Commonwealth of Virginia, the State of Maryland, and the District of Columbia to enter into a compact relating to the establishment of the Washington Metrorail Safety Commission.” 

http://thefreethoughtproject.com/congress-passes-bill-allowing-homes-searched-without-warrant/

No 4th Amendment Protections!

As Andrew Fleischman points out at Fault Lines, the government’s spin on the paid “private search” issue — that it’s “wild speculation” the Best Buy employee was acting as a paid informant when he discovered the child porn — doesn’t hold up if the situation is reversed. AUSA Anthony Brown’s defensive statement is nothing more than the noise of a double standard being erected.

Flipping the script for a minute, would an AUSA say it was “wild speculation” that a man was a drug dealer when phone records showed he regularly contacted a distributor, he was listed as a drug dealer in a special book of drug dealers, and he had received $500.00 for drugs? Sorry to break it to you, Mr. Brown, but once you start getting paid for something, it’s tough to argue you’re just doing it for the love of the game.

In addition to these problems, the file discovered by the Best Buy tech was in unallocated space… something that points to almost nothing, legally-speaking.

In Rettenmaier's case, the alleged "Jenny" image was found on unallocated "trash" space, meaning it could only be retrieved by "carving" with costly, highly sophisticated forensics tools. 

In other words, it's arguable a computer's owner wouldn't know of its existence. (For example, malware can secretly implant files.) 

Worse for the FBI, a federal appellate court unequivocally declared in February 2011 (USA v. Andrew Flyer) that pictures found on unallocated space did not constitute knowing possession because it is impossible to determine when, why or who downloaded them.

This important detail was apparently glossed over in the FBI’s warrant application to search Rettenmaier’s home and personal devices.

In hopes of overcoming this obstacle, they performed a sleight-of-hand maneuver, according to Riddet. 

The agents simply didn't alert Judge Marc Goldman that the image in question had been buried in unallocated space and, thus, secured deceitful authorization for a February 2012 raid on Rettenmaier's Laguna Niguel residence.

Courts have shown an often-excessive amount of empathy for the government’s “outrageous” behavior when pursuing criminals. The fact that there’s child porn involved budges the needle in the government’s direction, but the obstacles the FBI has placed in its own way through its deceptive behavior may prevent it from salvaging this case.

The case is already on very shaky ground, with the presiding judge questioning agents’ “odd memory losses,” noting several discrepancies between the FBI’s reports and its testimony, and its “perplexing” opposition to turning over documents the defense has requested.

In any event, it appears the FBI has a vast network of informants — paid or otherwise — working for both private companies and the federal government. Considering the FBI is already the beneficiary of legal reporting requirements, this move seems ill-advised. It jeopardizes the legitimacy of the evidence, even before the FBI engages in the sort of self-sabotaging acts it appears to have done here.

Underneath it all is the perplexing and disturbing aversion[i] to adhering to the Fourth Amendment we’ve seen time and time again from law enforcement agencies, both at local and federal levels. Anything that can be done to avoid seeking a warrant, and anything that creates an obfuscatory paper trail, is deployed to make sure the accused faces an even more uphill battle once they arrive in court[ii].

The DHS Media Monitoring capability Program (MMC).

Department of Homeland Security. A more aggressive monitoring program was revealed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC).

This occurred when it secured from the DHS a list of approximately 380 keywords that the agency tracks. The allegedly threatening terms were found in the DHS’ Analyst Desktop Binder, part of its 2011 Media Monitoring Capability (MMC) program.

A 2017 March update; https://tomfernandez28.com/2017/03/10/update-fbi-extensively-used-best-buy-geek-squad-for-secret-surveillance/

These terms are organized into nine categories:

Agencies – 26 terms, including “DHS,” “FBI”, “CIA,” “Air Marshal,” “United Nations” and “Red Cross”;
Domestic security – 52 terms, including “assassination,” “dirty bomb,” “crash,” “first responder,” “screening” and “death.”
Hazardous materials – 34 terms, including “hazmat,” “nuclear,” “leak,” “burn” and “cloud.”
Public health – 47 terms, including “ebola,” “contamination,” “wave,” “pork” and “agriculture.”
Infrastructure security – 35 terms, including “AMTRAK,” “airport,” “subway,” “port,” “electric” and “cancelled.”
Southwest border violence – 65 terms, including “drug cartel,” “decapitated,” “gunfight,” “marijuana,” “heroin,” “border” and “bust.”
Terrorism – 55 terms, including “Jihad,” “biological weapons,” “suicide attack,” “plot” and “pirates.”
Emergencies and weather – 41 terms, including “disaster,” “hurricane,” “power outage,” “ice,” “storm” and “help.”
Cyber security – 25 terms, including “cyber terror,” “malware,” “virus,” “hacker,” “worm,” “China” and “Trojan.”

The DHS has been engaged in monitoring social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and LinkedIn as well as blogs since at least 2010. Its effort is run through the Office of Operations Coordination and Planning (OPS), National Operations Center (NOC), and is entitled “Publicly Available Social Media Monitoring and Situational Awareness (Initiative).” Its ostensible purpose is to provide situational awareness and strengthen its common operating picture.

The scope of DHS’ practice of social monitoring was unexpectedly revealed in a special congressional hearing, the House Subcommittee on Counterintelligence and Intelligence, headed by Rep. Patrick Meehan (R-PA), in February. Two DHS officials, Chief Privacy Officer Mary Ellen Callahan and Director of Operations Coordination and Planning Richard Chavez, raised the representatives’ ire by appearing to be deliberately stonewalling on the scope and practice of the agency’s social media surveillance.

Most disturbing, the DHS reps appeared unsure about the monitoring program’s goals, how the gathered information would be used and whether it would be shared with other agencies. In an unusual show of bipartisan unity, Reps. Billy Long (R-MO), Jackie Speier (D-CA) and Bennie Thompson (D-MS) joined Rep. Meehan in chastising the DHS officials.

Under intense congressional probing, DHS reps revealed that the keywords chosen for monitoring were drawn from commercially available, off-the-shelf database programs that were customized to meet its specifications. The agency was particularly interested in determining first witnesses to breaking events like the 2011 Tucson shooting of Gabrielle Giffords and others and the January 2012 bomb threat at an Austin school.

The DHS reps insisted that data gathered was only used to confirm other news reports and that information on private citizens was not being collected. In addition, they claimed that that all personally identifying information was regularly scrubbed from the agency’s servers.

Few should feel comforted by the DHS assurances. At the House hearing, it was also revealed that the agency was involved in what appears to be an ongoing campaign to monitor the actions and beliefs of individual Americans engaged in community-based political activism. It compiled a report, “Residents Voice Opposition Over Possible Plan to Bring Guantanamo Detainees to Local Prison-Standish MI,” that tracked community reactions to the proposed location of Guantánamo detainees in a local Michigan prison.

The DHS report is part of the EPIC documents acquired through a Freedom of Information request. It details that information was gathered from a variety of sources, including newspaper articles and responses, blogs by local activists, and Twitter and Facebook posts.

The House hearing also shed light on the DHS practice of outsourcing keyword tracking of social media through a sole-source contract to the giant defense contractor, General Dynamics. In 2011, General Dynamics had revenues of $5.5 billion of which 84 percent ($4.6 bil) came from government contracts. Earlier it’s Advanced Information Systems division was awarded a $14 million DHS contract to (in the words of a press release) “provide constant and continual watch operations for critical communications to the agency’s National Coordinating Center.” In addition, it will “identify the possible impacts of potentially disruptive events.

In keeping with the prevailing ethos of corporate unaccountability, it turns out if the General Dynamics employees are found to have misused the information garnered from a social network user, including a journalist or public figure, the employee must take a training course or, worst case, lose his/her job. No criminal penalties are specified.

A word to the wise, Big Brother is watching you.

The US Ministry of Propaganda

In the last your of President Obama’s term of office, “a bill to implement the U.S.’ very own de facto Ministry of Truth had been quietly introduced in Congress.

As with any legislation attempting to dodge the public spotlight the Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act of 2016 marks a further curtailment of press freedom and another avenue to stultify avenues of accurate information.

Introduced by Congressmen Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) and Ted Lieu (D-CA), H.R. 5181 seeks a “whole-government approach without the bureaucratic restrictions” to counter “foreign disinformation and manipulation,” which they believe threaten the world’s “security and stability.”

Creation

Also called the Countering Information Warfare Act of 2016 (S. 2692), when introduced in March by Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH), the legislation represents a dramatic return to Cold War-era government propaganda battles.

“These countries spend vast sums of money on advanced broadcast and digital media capabilities, targeted campaigns, funding of foreign political movements, and other efforts to influence key audiences and populations,”

Portman explained, adding that while the U.S. spends a relatively small amount on its Voice of America, the Kremlin provides enormous funding for its news organization, RT. Portman stated,

“Surprisingly, there is currently no single U.S. governmental agency or department charged with the national level development, integration and synchronization of whole-of-government strategies to counter foreign propaganda and disinformation.”

Yah. Sure. What ever you say bub.

You ever hear of the NID, or the NED, or the “color revolutions” or the “Pro-Democracy” movements?

Long before the “fake news” meme became a daily topic of extensive conversation on such discredited mainstream portals as CNN and WaPo, H.R. 5181 would task the Secretary of State with coordinating the Secretary of Defense, the Director of National Intelligence, and the Broadcasting Board of Governors to “establish a Center for Information Analysis and Response,” which will pinpoint sources of disinformation, analyze data, and — in true dystopic manner — ‘develop and disseminate’ “fact-based narratives” to counter effrontery propaganda.

In short, long before “fake news” became a major media topic, the US government was already planning its legally-backed crackdown on anything it would eventually label “fake news.”

Implementation

Fast forward to December 8, 2016 when the “Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act” passed in the Senate, quietly inserted inside the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) Conference Report. And now, following Obama signing of the NDAA in the evening, the Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act is now law.

+ + +

Here is the full statement issued by the generously funded Senator Rob Portman (R- Ohio) on the singing into law of a bill that further chips away at press liberties in the US, and which sets the stage for future which hunts and website shutdowns, purely as a result of an accusation that any one media outlet or site is considered as a source of “disinformation and propaganda” and is shut down by the government. Go Here to read about this historical event.

Portman-Murphy Bill Promotes Coordinated Strategy to Defend America, Allies Against Propaganda and Disinformation from Russia, China & Others

U.S. Senators Rob Portman (R-OH) and Chris Murphy (D-CT) today announced that their Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act – legislation designed to help American allies counter foreign government propaganda from Russia, China, and other nations– has been signed into law as part of the FY 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) Conference Report. The bipartisan bill, which was introduced by Senators Portman and Murphy in March, will improve the ability of the United States to counter foreign propaganda and disinformation from our enemies by establishing an interagency center housed at the State Department to coordinate and synchronize counter-propaganda efforts throughout the U.S. government. To support these efforts, the bill also creates a grant program for NGOs, think tanks, civil society and other experts outside government who are engaged in counter-propaganda related work. This will better leverage existing expertise and empower our allies overseas to defend themselves from foreign manipulation. It will also help foster a free and vibrant press and civil society overseas, which is critical to ensuring our allies have access to truthful information and inoculating people against foreign propaganda campaigns.

“Our enemies are using foreign propaganda and disinformation against us and our allies, and so far the U.S. government has been asleep at the wheel,” Portman said. “But today, the United States has taken a critical step towards confronting the extensive, and destabilizing, foreign propaganda and disinformation operations being waged against us by our enemies overseas. With this bill now law, we are finally signaling that enough is enough; the United States will no longer sit on the sidelines. We are going to confront this threat head-on. I am confident that, with the help of this bipartisan bill, the disinformation and propaganda used against us, our allies, and our interests will fail.”

“The use of propaganda to undermine democracy has hit a new low.But now we are finally in a position to confront this threat head on and get out the truth. By building up independent, objective journalism in places like eastern Europe, we can start to fight back by exposing these fake narratives and empowering local communities to protect themselves,” said Murphy. “I’m proud that our bill was signed into law, and I look forward to working with Senator Portman to make sure these tools and new resources are effectively used to get out the truth.”

Priorities

The bipartisan Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act is organized around two main priorities to help achieve the goal of combating the constantly evolving threat of foreign disinformation from our enemies:

The first priority is developing a whole-of-government strategy for countering THE foreign propaganda and disinformation being wages against us and our allies by our enemies. The bill would increase the authority, resources, and mandate of the Global Engagement Center to include state actors like Russia and China as well as non-state actors. The Center will be led by the State Department, but with the active senior level participation of the Department of Defense, USAID, the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the Intelligence Community, and other relevant agencies. The Center will develop, integrate, and synchronize whole-of-government initiatives to expose and counter foreign disinformation operations by our enemies and proactively advance fact-based narratives that support U.S. allies and interests.
Second, the legislation seeks to leverage expertise from outside government to create more adaptive and responsive U.S. strategy options. The legislation establishes a fund to help train local journalists and provide grants and contracts to NGOs, civil society organizations, think tanks, private sector companies, media organizations, and other experts outside the U.S. government with experience in identifying and analyzing the latest trends in foreign government disinformation techniques. This fund will complement and support the Center’s role by integrating capabilities and expertise available outside the U.S. government into the strategy-making process. It will also empower a decentralized network of private sector experts and integrate their expertise into the strategy-making process.

And so, with the likes of WaPo having already primed the general public to equate “Russian Propaganda” with “fake news” (despite admitting after the fact their own report was essentially “fake”), while the US media has indoctrinated the public to assume that any information which is not in compliance with the official government narrative, or dares to criticize the establishment, is also “fake news” and thus falls under the “Russian propaganda” umbrella, the scene is now set for the US government to legally crack down on every media outlet that the government deems to be “foreign propaganda.”

Just like that, the US Ministry of Truth is officially born.

Impact

The Founding Fathers protected freedom of speech and freedom of the press as the most important liberties. They are protected in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. And as discussed below, the Founders recognized that the ability to speak freely was the foundation for all other freedoms. If you remove it, the other freedoms would fall. Thousands of years of history shows how rare and valuable such freedoms really are. Please consider…

Socrates

Socrates was killed in 399 BC for “failing to acknowledge the gods that the [government] acknowledges”.

Using the Printing Press

Before the invention of the movable type printing press by Gutenberg, the church controlled the production of books. Gutenberg’s invention allowed cheap production of books. This challenged the monopoly on books by the church, and thus allowed different viewpoints to be heard.

For example, when Martin Luther posted his “95 Theses” on a church door in Germany criticizing the corrupt Catholic practice of selling “indulgences” – paying the church in return for a reduction of your time in purgatory – the printing press spread his writings throughout all of Germany in 2 weeks, and throughout “all of Christendom” within a month. This launched the Protestant Reformation, and challenged the power of the Catholic church.

So Pope Alexander VI issued an edict against unlicensed printing in 1501.

And in 1535, Francis I of France prohibited – under penalty of death – the printing of any books.

William Tyndale

William Tyndale was killed in 1536 for translating the Bible into English so that everyone could read it for themselves, and no longer had to rely on the clergy to tell them what it said.

Unlicensed Printing

In 1585, the Star Chamber assumed the right to confine printing to London, Oxford and Cambridge, to limit the number of printers and presses, to prohibit all publications issued without proper license, and to enter houses to search for unlicensed presses and publications. The search for unlicensed presses or publications was entrusted to an officer called the ” messenger of the press.”

In 1557, Henry II made the collecting of prohibited books punishable by death or imprisonment. An in 1559, he made it punishable by death to print without royal authority.

Galileo

In 1616 and 1633, Galileo was tried for saying that the Earth revolves around the Sun, instead of agreeing with the church’s “mainstream” view that the Sun revolves around the Earth.

Heretics and Critics

Many people have been killed over the centuries for saying anything that the church authorities of the day disliked. And the British monarchy punished anyone caught with materials criticizing the monarchy, which they labeled as “libelous” or “scandalous”, even if what was written was true.

(Indeed, the ransacking of houses by authorities searching for “heretical” and “libelous” material was so common that it was the main reason the Founding Fathers wrote the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting unreasonable “search and seizure”).

Benjamin Franklin

In 1773, Ben Franklin was fired as colonial Postmaster General for informing the American Colonists about what the British were really doing.

Strongmen

Strongmen of all stripes have cracked down anyone who insults the strongman or criticizes his policies.

Book Burnings

In 1933, the Nazis carried out numerous book burnings of authors such as Einstein, Freud, Kafka, Hellen Keller, Jack London, Thomas Mann, Proust, Upon Sinclair and H.G. Wells because their writing book …

“acts subversively on our future or strikes at the root of German thought, the German home and the driving forces of our people…”

There have been many other book burnings throughout history.

Mussolini

Mussolini had around 2,000 people killed because they challenged the dictator.

Stalin and the Soviet Union

Stalin murdered or through into insane asylums countless people who criticized the Soviet government or Communism.

Other Communist Regimes

China’s Mao and other Communist leaders killed people who failed to sign the Great Leaders’ praise.

CIA

In 1972, CIA director Richard Helms relabeled dissenters as “terrorists”.

Reporters

The extremely popular tv personality Phil Donahue’s show – the most popular on MSNBC – was canceled for questioning the wisdom of the Iraq war. Indeed, many reporters have been fired, harassed, spied upon and even accused of terrorism for reporting stories critical of government actions or policies.

Protect What Makes Us American

Those in power are always tempted to censor and punish critical speech and reporting. George W. Bush said “You’re either with us or your against us”, and cracked down on criticism and protest. Most powerful Democrats now want to suppress right-wing speech. But freedom of speech and of the press – no matter how much we may disagree with and even hate what someone else says – is the bedrock of America.

If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”

– George Washington

“Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.”

– Ben Franklin

“Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.”

– U.S. Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo

“The framers of the constitution knew human nature as well as we do. They too had lived in dangerous days; they too knew the suffocating influence of orthodoxy and standardized thought. They weighed the compulsions for restrained speech and thought against the abuses of liberty. They chose liberty.”

-U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Douglass

“If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”

-U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis

NGA

If you’re one of the countless Americans who was distraught to learn of the revelations made by former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden, the mere idea that there might be yet another agency out there – perhaps just as powerful and much more intrusive – should give you goosebumps.

Foreign Policy reports that the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, or NGA, is an obscure spy agency former President Barack Obama had learned to love and appreciate. Like the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the National Security Agency (NSA), the NGA is an intelligence agency, but it also serves as a combat support institution that functions under the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD).

With headquarters bigger than the CIA’s, the building cost $1.4 billion to be completed in 2011. In 2016, the NGA bought an extra 99 acres in St. Louis, building additional structures that cost taxpayers an extra $1.75 billion. Enjoying the extra budget Obama threw at them, the NGA became one of the most obscure intelligence agencies precisely because it relies on the work of drones.

A partially redacted March 2016 report released by the Pentagon revealed that drones had already been used domestically on about 20 or fewer occasions between 2006 and 2015. Though some of these operations mostly involved natural disasters, National Guard training, and search and rescue missions, quotes from an Air Force law review article found their way into the report. In it, Dawn M. K. Zoldi wrote that technology designed to spy on targets abroad could soon be used against American citizens.

Use Foreign Intelligence to Collect Intel

.@Judgenap: Three intel sources have disclosed that Pres. Obama turned to British spies to get surveillance on Trump pic.twitter.com/IghCFm7qhO

— FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) March 14, 2017

During the waning months of the Obama Administration, then President Obama used the British spy agency GCHQ to collect information on incoming President-elect Trump. This was because of both the constitutional limitations placed on him by law, as well as avoiding any connection to spying (and wiretaps like Richard Nixon had the unfortunate experience to endure) by using a “cat’s paw” to collect the intel.

MUSCULAR (DS-200B)

MUSCULAR (DS-200B), located in the United Kingdom, is the name of a surveillance programme jointly operated by Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) that was revealed by documents which were released by Edward Snowden and interviews with knowledgeable officials.

GCHQ

GCHQ is the primary operator of the program.GCHQ and the National Security Agency have secretly broken into the main communications links that connect the data centers of Yahoo! and Google.Substantive information about the program was made public at the end of October 2013.

The programme is jointly run by:

Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) (United Kingdom)
U.S. National Security Agency (NSA)

MUSCULAR is one of at least four other similar programs that rely on a trusted 2nd party, programs which together are known as WINDSTOP. In a 30-day period from December 2012 to January 2013, MUSCULAR was responsible for collecting 181 million records. It was however dwarfed by another WINDSTOP program known (insofar) only by its code DS-300 and codename INCENSER, which collected over 14 billion records in the same period.

Figure 25. Menwith Hill

According to the leaked document the NSA’s acquisitions directorate sends millions of records every day from internal Yahoo! and Google networks to data warehouses at the agency’s headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland. The programme operates via an access point known as DS-200B, which is outside the United States, and it relies on an unnamed telecommunications operator to provide secret access for the NSA and the GCHQ.

According to the Washington Post, the MUSCULAR program collects more than twice as many data points (“selectors” in NSA jargon) compared to the better known PRISM Unlike PRISM, the MUSCULAR program requires no (FISA or other type of) warrants.

Because of the huge amount of data involved, MUSCULAR has presented a special challenge to NSA’s Special Source Operations. For example, when Yahoo! decided to migrate a large amount of mailboxes between its data centers, the NSA’s PINWALE database (their primary analytical database for the Internet) was quickly overwhelmed with the data coming from MUSCULAR.

Closely related programmes are called INCENSER and TURMOIL. TURMOIL, belonging to the NSA, is a system for processing the data collected from MUSCULAR.

Blaming Others for Nefarious Activities

The WikiLeaks’ Vault 7 release contains a batch of documents, named ‘Marble’, which detail CIA hacking tactics and how they can misdirect forensic investigators from attributing viruses, trojans and hacking attacks to their agency by inserted code fragments in foreign languages. Per the WikiLeaks release:

"The source code shows that Marble has test examples not just in English but also in Chinese, Russian, Korean, Arabic and Farsi. This would permit a forensic attribution double game, for example by pretending that the spoken language of the malware creator was not American English, but Chinese, but then showing attempts to conceal the use of Chinese, drawing forensic investigators even more strongly to the wrong conclusion, --- but there are other possibilities, such as hiding fake error messages."RELEASE: CIA Vault 7 part 3 "Marble"

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) March 31, 2017

The latest release is said to potentially allow for ‘thousands’ of cyber attacks to be attributed to the CIA which were originally blamed on foreign governments.

WikiLeaks said Marble hides fragments of texts that would allow for the author of the malware to be identified. WikiLeaks stated the technique is the digital equivalent of a specialized CIA tool which disguises English language text on US produced weapons systems before they are provided to insurgents.

 It’s “designed to allow for flexible and easy-to-use obfuscation" as "string obfuscation algorithms” often link malware to a specific developer, according to the whistleblowing site.

The source code released reveals Marble contains test examples in Chinese, Russian, Korean, Arabic and Farsi.

 “This would permit a forensic attribution double game, for example by pretending that the spoken language of the malware creator was not American English, but Chinese, but then showing attempts to conceal the use of Chinese, drawing forensic investigators even more strongly to the wrong conclusion,” WikiLeaks explains, “But there are other possibilities, such as hiding fake error messages.”

 The code also contains a ‘deobfuscator’ which allows the CIA text obfuscation to be reversed. “Combined with the revealed obfuscation techniques, a pattern or signature emerges which can assist forensic investigators attribute previous hacking attacks and viruses to the CIA.”

 Previous Vault7 releases have referred to the CIA’s ability to mask its hacking fingerprints.

 WikiLeaks claims the latest release will allow for thousands of viruses and hacking attacks to be attributed to the CIA.

CIA's "Marble Framework" shows its hackers use potential decoy languages
Background: https://t.co/GsoN4BuyTz pic.twitter.com/ZT66doCnfY

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) March 31, 2017

Full release from WikiLeaks:

Today, March 31st 2017, WikiLeaks releases Vault 7 "Marble" -- 676 source code files for the CIA's secret anti-forensic Marble Framework. Marble is used to hamper forensic investigators and anti-virus companies from attributing viruses, trojans and hacking attacks to the CIA.

Marble does this by hiding ("obfuscating") text fragments used in CIA malware from visual inspection. This is the digital equivallent of a specalized CIA tool to place covers over the english language text on U.S. produced weapons systems before giving them to insurgents secretly backed by the CIA.

Marble forms part of the CIA's anti-forensics approach and the CIA's Core Library of malware code. It is "[D]esigned to allow for flexible and easy-to-use obfuscation" as "string obfuscation algorithms (especially those that are unique) are often used to link malware to a specific developer or development shop."

The Marble source code also includes a deobfuscator to reverse CIA text obfuscation. Combined with the revealed obfuscation techniques, a pattern or signature emerges which can assist forensic investigators attribute previous hacking attacks and viruses to the CIA. Marble was in use at the CIA during 2016. It reached 1.0 in 2015.

The source code shows that Marble has test examples not just in English but also in Chinese, Russian, Korean, Arabic and Farsi. This would permit a forensic attribution double game, for example by pretending that the spoken language of the malware creator was not American English, but Chinese, but then showing attempts to conceal the use of Chinese, drawing forensic investigators even more strongly to the wrong conclusion, --- but there are other possibilities, such as hiding fake error messages.

The Marble Framework is used for obfuscation only and does not contain any vulnerabilties or exploits by itself.

Intentional Fabrication of UFO lore.

And why not?

You see all the above examples, the many, many, many examples are mostly political, or used to add control “for natural security”. It’s all just excuses.

It’s not about “getting your political opponents”. Nor is it about “the children”, or “for national security”.

It’s all about control.

"I share your concern over the secrecy that continues to shroud our intelligence activities on this subject."

-Congressman Thomas L. Ashley in a letter to NICAP (National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena) on the subject of UFOs.

Numerous government employees have been actively engaged in the creation of UFO / extraterrestrial lore. This involves various people in the military; including the leadership, various government employees of various agencies that includes both contractors and direct payroll staff, and even elected officials who do so for political purposes. The reasons behind why they were involved in such activities ran the gambit from governmental projects with intentional goals, to mere mischievous pranks. These individuals are now well known in their complicity to deflect, redirect, and discredit all extraterrestrial related study and lore.

One must give pause as to why the government would want to employ someone to do this full time.

A former Air Force special investigations officer named Richard Doty has admitted to having infiltrated UFO circles. As a UFO researcher says:

"Doty had this wonderful way to sell it – 'I'm with the government. You cooperate with us and I'm going to tell you what the government really knows about UFOs, deep down in those vaults.'"

Doty and his colleagues fed credulous ufologists lies and half-truths, knowing their fertile imaginations would do the rest. In return, they were apprised of chatter from the community, thus alerting the military when anyone was getting to close to their top-secret technology. And if the Soviets thought the US really was communing with aliens, all the better.

The classic case, well-known to conspiracy aficionados, is Paul Bennewitz, a successful electronics entrepreneur in New Mexico. In 1979, Bennewitz started seeing strange lights in the sky, and picking up weird transmissions on his amateur equipment. The fact that he lived just across the road from Kirtland air force base should have set alarm bells ringing, but Bennewitz was convinced these phenomena were of extraterrestrial origin. Being a good patriot, he contacted the Air Force, who realized that, far from eavesdropping on ET, Bennewitz was inadvertently eavesdropping on them. Instead of making him stop, though, Doty and other officers told Bennewitz they were interested in his findings. That encouraged Bennewitz to dig deeper. Within a few years, he was [1] interpreting alien languages, [2] spotting crashed alien craft in the hills from his plane (he was an amateur pilot), and [3] sounding the alert for a full-scale invasion. All the time, the investigators were watching him observe them. They gave Bennewitz computer software that “interpreted” the signals, and even dumped fake props for him to discover. The mania took over Bennewitz’s life. In 1988, his family checked him into a psychiatric facility.

There’s plenty of stories like this.

Many central tenets of the UFO belief system turn out to have far earthlier origins. Mysterious cattle mutilations in 1970s New Mexico turn out to have been officials furtively investigating radiation in livestock after they’d conducted an ill-advised experiment in underground “nuclear fracking”.

Test pilots for the military’s experimental silent helicopters admit to attaching flashing lights to their craft to fool civilians. Actual photos were doctored to appear that things were being hidden, while other actual pictures were lost in the static of confusion.

It is now easy for anyone to simply say;

“There are no aliens or extraterrestrials at all.  The government has been conducting a program to hid advanced research and development programs from the public.  They use the smoke-screen of extraterrestrial activity to stigmatize observers of such actions into passive silence.”

As that is, indeed, partly the case.

But I am here, and I am telling you otherwise. Oh, the extraterrestrial presence is real. The technology is real. The government cover-up is real.

But most of what you read on the Internet, and in books are but lies and fabrications. What you see on the television, and observe on the Internet are but cleverly orchestrated efforts used to manipulate group conventional thought and placate the populace for the purposes of the government.

Conclusion

Long and drawn out.

Boring. Old “news”.

Old “subjects”.

Yeah! I get it.

These articles dated to before the Trump Administration. Now, you can well imagine that things are much tighter, the controls more restrictive, exacting, and lethal to your supposed “freedom”. You all are just animals in a big “free ranging” field. Nothing more.

And please don’t get all “hung up” on the “political song and dance”; the “progressives vs. the conservatives”. It’s all just “bread and circuses” for the mindless masses.

bread and circuses A phrase used by a Roman writer to deplore the declining heroism of Romans after the Roman Republic ceased to exist and the Roman Empire began: “Two things only the people anxiously desire — bread and circuses.” The government kept the Roman populace happy by distributing free food and staging huge spectacles.

-Bread and circuses | Definition of Bread and circuses

When Congress gave up it’s powers to the alphabet organizations, they did much more than create “Frankenstein Monsters”. They created an endless system that keep you within a stratified social construct. One that you must toil for the well-being of others, and by which you can be imprisoned and even killed if you fail to conform.

read and circuses A phrase used by a Roman writer to deplore the declining heroism of Romans after the Roman Republic ceased to exist and the Roman Empire began: “Two things only the people anxiously desire — bread and circuses.” The government kept the Roman populace happy by distributing free food and staging huge spectacles.

This means a complete subversion of the systems that are intended to help you and your family in “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.

The subversion is now complete. It is beyond redemption.

Key Point: The “fighting” for your Rights is all just a farce. The elections are all just theater. The systems are in place, and you are the cattle that toils for your new masters. Oh, the faces change on the “news” screens, but the takeover is complete. So any articles about “regaining” your “God given” Rights is just meaningless. You have NONE. It’s over. And nothing will be done when one party or the other takes power. It’s all just nonsense.

Anyone still sticking around in America is now trapped. It’s probably too late to escape. And if history has anything to say, it is that it’s only going to get worse.

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Who is actually running things in this crazy, out of control, world. You might be surprised.

The following is an outstanding article that was originally published on UNZ. It is pretty much “spot on” and tells you who is behind all the issues, the turmoil and the stress that the world is going through right now. It it good? I don’t know. Is it bad? I don’t know. But it should be worth your while to understand what is going on in this world and why.

This was originally published as “The World Through the Eyes of a Globalist(Twilight Zone 2020)” written by Steven Yates on June 23, 2020. All credit to the author.

You are a globalist.

Not you personally, gentle reader.

Let me explain. We’re going on a voyage through sight and sound and mind, unlocking that door with that key of imagination (it’s still around), crossing over into Twilight Zone 2020. When we’re done, you’ll have seen the world through the eyes of a globalist. Which one? It doesn’t matter. Not all are the same, ‘tis true. But we’re interested in what they share, not where they differ. What they share is a plan — for total control. Whether it’s called world government or the “softer” global governance, you’ll see it as an inevitable result of technology and modernity. For the past three centuries, things have gotten more centralized and consolidated. The process is now accelerating. For you and your fellow globalists, many your superiors in a vast treelike hierarchy, the world is like a game of Risk. You know the rules, you have the skills, and you’re playing to win. It is a game, after all. Populations are like pieces on a board, to be moved around or removed at will or whim, as you challenge other global players and bring everyone into your fold.

Our voyage has begun. I should warn you, gentle reader, before we go all the way through that door. When we return you may feel queasy, with an urge to take a bath. Do not be alarmed. This comes with the territory.

So you are a globalist. You were born to wealth and real privilege, educated at Harvard (or Yale or Columbia). You came of age assuming that as one of the blue bloods, your destiny is to help shape the new world order to come. Your name may be unknown. This doesn’t bother you. If visibility should come your way, you’ll accept it. But you’re not preoccupied with it. You see no reason to seek it out. More gets from behind the curtain, anyway.

You’re in awe, admittedly, of the wealth accumulated by such dynasties as the Rothschilds, how they managed to drop from sight over a century ago and remain hidden — not on lists of the rich such as Forbes publishes — despite their absolute lock on trillions through the central banks they control and hundreds of “shell” corporations whose managers have no idea, because many in the dynasty don’t use that name.

You are properly disdainful of the masses. Like your fellow globalists you don’t see them as more than cattle, fit to be caged in work cubicles and ruled. But you’ve noticed, even from their inferior genes come, every so often, intelligent men and a few women with the right attitude. Such individuals can be plucked from the mass environment, tested for their reaction when they learn how the world really works, and if they pass the test, trained. The rest — with their gleeful mass consumption, their addictions to screens, their adulation of celebrities and sports icons, their blind adherence to religion or ideology whether “left” or “right” — leave you singularly unimpressed. Most you can barely tell apart since they dress, wear their hair, and talk the same, as members of various tribes. Tribalism, you were told as a child, is our natural state, and you’ve no cause to doubt it. A few idealistic intellectuals once thought they could transcend tribes with their god Reason. They called this the Enlightenment, which had its uses. But here we are back again. You look at society and you see tribes.

If you’re anything, you’re a realist. Since the masses act like cattle, why not treat them like cattle? At some point, you might be one of the people who gets to decide who lives and who dies, as the crisis your superiors did so much to engineer and then to hide inside continues to unfold: the genetically-engineered coronavirus, the planned-emic, the fomented racial unrest, the cancellation of history through programmed destruction of monuments to it. Fairytales like “white privilege.” Whatever divides, helps, because when groups are at each other’s throats over “microaggressions” and “racism” or trans-confusion or whatever, they’re not watching you.

Are you a sociopath? You don’t know. You understand the question, but you don’t think it has much meaning. You were raised as you were, you know what you know, and you do what you have to. You can empathize with your own, you think, but who knows? You tell your wife you love her, and she was picked for you because she’s good stock, too, but should she make the slightest wrong move, or show too much curiosity about what you do during the day, she’s gone in less time than it takes to say divorce. And without the niceties of a division of assets.

You have superiors who’ll cut you out in the same way if you display weakness or remorse or guilt, especially for the fate of the cattle. This you also know. Superior breeding, intelligence, and strength of will got them where they are, and yours hasn’t hurt you any. If anything, you think those some call sociopaths might be a superior breed of human. To your superiors, emotional cravings after ethics are signs of weakness and stupidity. The cattle are as they are because they believe that stuff.

You believe in Hegelian dialectic because you’ve seen it used. Crisis  Reaction  Response. Foment a crisis, or through inaction at the right time, allow one to develop. The crisis prompts a predictable reaction. As things come to a head, your political groupies move in with the response that was wanted all along, and it usually comes hassle-free. Your media mouthpieces praise it. The cattle lap it up like warm milk. The crisis could be a planned terror attack or a threat of war or an economic downturn or the planned-emic. What you hear from the cattle is that collective cry, “Do something!”

So you and your fellows do something, and what you do brings you greater control. It could be funneling money to support a policy decision that will lead to more centralization and dominance. Or supporting a candidate who will do your bidding because he’s afraid of what will happen if he doesn’t.

Or it could be going to war against a designated target, someone in the way of globalist goals. If the masses are told they’re in danger, and that destroying your enemy will restore their safety, they’ll go along, because as you and your fellow globalists have understood from the start, they want safety more than freedom. That was the core failing of those who founded the country you grew up in but no longer recognize, so completely have its founding principles been dismantled. They believed more than a tiny minority of the human race are suited for freedom. Several of those ideals once presented the greatest potential roadblock to you and your superiors’ goals for the world. But that was long ago. Now things are falling apart, and you’re satisfied as you watch the mayhem in the streets.

What strikes you as funny is how the few who notice what you do are so easily labeled “conspiracy theorists” and how this totally shuts discussion down. If it’s on CNN or in the Washington Post, it has to be true, after all. Would these outlets lie to their readers? Even more amusing is how some kool-aid drinkers among the cattle police the herd without your help. You’ve seen this over and over on Internet forums, especially those attached to city newspapers. There’s usually some cyberbully, usually more liberal than thou, with fake superiority who calls out the “conspiracy nuts,” and he keeps the rabble in line without having the slightest idea whose interests he’s serving.

Sometimes you can’t stop laughing.

Because conspiracies by definition are hidden. You and your superiors aren’t hiding. You haven’t been hiding for decades. Some of your predecessors wrote books about globalist proposals for the world. They had major publishers with regular distribution networks. Visibility in financial media. Part of you wants to ask, is the World Economic Forum hidden from anyone? Or this, about the Great Reset, as they call the purpose of this crisis, right there on YouTube with all those links to more information?

You understand that the way to control the minds of the masses is to control the information that reaches them. This, too, was discovered long ago. Hence sending their children to public schools to learn “subjects” crafted to specification while they acquired habits of regimentation and attitudes of subservience to authority.

The way to control their bodies is through economics, which is based on incentives. Everything in this world follows its food supply, and secondarily, the need for warmth and safety and sex. The masses need to buy food and pay for shelter, and they can be led by their noses with sex appeal. Corporate machinations determine what jobs are available and in what quantities. It wasn’t hard to drive the bulk of the public into employment of one sort of another, because employment meant dependence. Advertising drives them to consume, so the economic engine keeps humming.

Schools tell them they are free, of course, because they can vote every two and four years for candidates you and your fellows have approved, at least in most cases. Trump was an odd case, but your superiors have partially bent him to their will.

All this said, you and your fellow globalists are not gods, and you don’t view yourselves as gods. There are no gods any more than there are ghosts, goblins, ghouls, poltergeists, or space aliens. You’re just a superior breed of human, that’s all. You blue bloods tamed emotions the masses can’t tame, while focusing on long-term goals, developing the right technological tools, and getting everyone and everything into alignment.

Speaking of Trump, he and a few others monkeywrenched things a little. Fortunately, most of what Trump has actually done benefited the very corporations serving your superiors — as if he actually knew who had been buttering his bread all along (his commerce secretary, Wilber Ross, who helped him out of a financial jam years ago, is a Rothschild agent, after all). And it’s not like he was going to Drain the Swamp. If he truly thought he was going to oppose globalism, he was opposing something 90 percent finished.

But getting back to the godhood question….

You’re not gods because God if He really existed wouldn’t make mistakes, and you globalists have made some epic blunders over the years. You made basically the same mistake twice, in fact! Letting a technology get away from you.

Back in the 1960s, your predecessors let television get away. Television, that new and potentially fantastic panacea for bored housewives and sports fans, that instrument for communicating propaganda passed off as news, and a source of revenue for companies great and small who threw millions into commercial ads that supported programming that would condition viewers to what your predecessors wanted them to think. But they let parts of it get away from them. It’s a cultural cesspool now, but back then, the ship had sailed.

The mistake was permitting boots-on-the-ground coverage of what was really going on in Vietnam. Kids saw the bodybags and were horrified. A critical mass of a generation came of age telling each other, “We’re not doing this anymore!” They would have sent a man to the White House to stop that war, which your predecessors wanted badly. A couple of their jackals took him out, just like a different group took out his brother five years earlier, but it was too late. The movement survived and ended that war prematurely. It wasn’t economically feasible to continue fighting it. It took a long time to build the war machine back to where it had been. Globalism lost valuable time!

Then, more recently, your fellows let the Internet slip through their fingers! Originally a DARPA creation, this work of genius programmed computers to “talk to one another” within the burgeoning communications grid. It migrated from government to computer science labs in universities and from there, slow but sure, to dissident voices who hadn’t had such platforms before. It also made its way to the masses. Some turned it into the same cesspool television had become, but for others — refuseniks, you call them — it was an oasis of “free speech” and they made full use of it. Some were clever and gathered a lot of essentially truthful information about what you and your fellows have been up to all these years and decades. The “conspiracy” meme worked somewhat but didn’t carry the same weight it once had.

So your minions seeded it with all manner of bogus information and confusion and false rabbit trails. Sometimes — proving they have a sense of humor, you suppose — they pushed stuff that was outright idiotic, such as the Earth being flat and this being science’s darkest secret and the devil’s greatest triumph after convincing the world he doesn’t exist. Here your generation came in. Part of your work involves creating content that distracts and confuses. You love your work. Because you can endlessly play mind games with truthseekers. Even if there isn’t any way to prevent some truth from getting out (such as the role of a certain powerful Middle Eastern nation with Washington’s most powerful lobby in 9/11), you and your fellows can see to it that even intelligent and discerning researchers have a hard time telling what is true from what isn’t. Helping your cause is the sheer quantity of information, whether about historical events or more recent ones such as the 9/11 attacks, or even the 2008 financial crisis where you could confuse and misdirect to so people would look at unqualified loan recipients instead of manipulative Wall Streeters and their instruments. It was easy to ensure that discussions of the latter were so complex and technical, as well as written in extremely dry language, so the average reader would quickly get bored and give up.

But when all is said and done, even though you helped create the post-truth world we live in now, it wasn’t enough.

Some of the refuseniks got organized! A Global Populist Revolt was at hand!

It started slow and fractured and ultimately compromised, like Occupy Wall Street and Arab Spring. But with Brexit and the rise of Trump, the Revolt grew sharper teeth, since even if Trump was basically an asshole and had all kinds of vulnerabilities, his command of all the major media was so superior and his opponents so weak that no one really stood a chance against him back in 2016. It would have been too risky to just take him out, like your predecessors did those two brothers all those years ago. Hotheads among his supporters would have blown the lid off. So you made the best of it, you and your fellow globalists. Then Hillary Clinton self-sabotaged with her idiotic “baskets of deplorables” remark and blew the election! Clinton, who had destroyed two countries almost singlehandedly (Libya and Honduras), would have been perfect at blending the drums of war with fanning the flames of black vs white, male vs female, straight vs gay, all helping distract from the looming financial catastrophe your fellows’ central bankers were busy engineering behind the scenes to prepare for the Great Reset.

Now you had a problem on your hands!

And by 2017 too many people were awake (not “woke”). They didn’t buy “Russia-gate” (God, how you hate such terms!). Nor did they buy “Ukraine-gate” which would be your Democrat Party servants’ last straightforward gambit for getting Trump out of office.

Nor were they buying into the man-made climate change narrative.

But you globalists are nothing if not smart, and with tremendous foresight. Some of you had been anticipating just such possibilities, having funneled millions into coronavirus research in places like Wuhan, China, where nobody in the West would notice.

It would be necessary to crush the Populists and refuseniks!

Enter the “novel” coronavirus. And how the Chinese Communist Party also played it smart doing your bidding keeping the lid on until global travel ensured that the virus would spread and start infecting vulnerable populations, laying the groundwork for a broader panic: your planned-emic. Your servants in governments closes borders, locked down economies forcibly closing thousands of small businesses, while slamming corporate media viewers with 24/7 coverage of COVID-19, letting them watch death numbers rack up.

The start of the greatest redistribution of wealth upwards in world history!

Then came the George Floyd riots, which some of you helped orchestrate — brilliant moves to increase the general level of mayhem and distraction.

Through the wrecked businesses and ruined lives you hear the cries of “do something!” You are your superiors are counting on this.

What a perfect opportunity for a Great Reset!

A few of you are saying almost visibly that only a world government can address this pandemic — which has certainly caused more fear than climate change and soft-minded phrases like “global problems call for global solutions.”

They weren’t personally threatened by climate change like they are getting sick and dying, and that’s the key. The object lesson is that the masses have to feel fear personally. They have to believe they or those they care about or things they care about are in danger, otherwise they won’t get with the program.

Now it’s appropriate to use TV to show bodybags and rows of graves!

This will also be the best opportunity you and your fellow globalists have to get rid of physical cash and digitize everything. Tell the masses that cash could spread the virus, not just that drug dealers, child traffickers, and other forms of lowlife scum use physical cash. Since most people have never seen a child trafficker or drug lord, again that’s not personal enough.

Eventually you’ll criminalize cash transactions that aren’t recorded digitally and can’t be monitored. Once your financial grid is set, you’ll know every detail of who has what, where they are getting it and how, what they are doing with it, and whether there’s anything suspicious going on. Your ideal is for the masses to have credit chips implanted in them, perhaps between the thumb and index finger of their left hand. A global ID. Everybody’s birth and parentage records, educational records, employment records, health records, and financial transactions, all in one place! Nothing will any more get lost, nothing will be stolen. You’ll tell the people that identity theft is a thing of the past.

Some still won’t go along, of course. Refuseniks, ideological descendants of those who rejected modernity, don’t trust authority, and would live like savages rather than enjoy the benefits of the new world order you globalists offer.

This is not a choice, though. Your superiors’ offer isn’t coming with an opt-out button.

You’re not sure what’s in the offing, because such things are on a need-to-know basis and you don’t need to know.

You realize there are things you don’t know. You know your immediate superiors who brought you to where you are, and you know the higher-ups past them reach up through Wall Street corporations and City of London enclaves past central banks and Bank of International Settlements and Davos culture, past even Those You Can’t Criticize to still higher “alchemists” of power. And they might be answering to someone above them. There may be curtains you can’t see, much less peer behind. Maybe someday you’ll be invited to gatherings in the “grove” if you perform well. But where does this go? You’ve had a few uneasy thoughts you’ve always been able to push away.

One thing you know: no one leaves this life except in a box. A few tried. They regretted it. A handful tried to tell their tale. They discovered the truth: no one believed them. They became laughingstocks, like those glassy-eyed, disheveled loons on sidewalks bearing signs and wailing through bad teeth that the end of the world is at hand.

As to what’s planned for the refusenik brigades, it’s sure to be something nastier than this planned-emic was.

This coronavirus wasn’t lethal except for certain groups like the elderly that can’t contribute to the global economy anyway and might as well be eliminated. Some 80 percent of everyone else infected got over it. Rough estimate.

You’ve heard rumors, though — Bill Gates mentioned one in passing, like he was talking about a mere possibility — of something waiting in the wings that will be lethal. Something able to wipe out not a few million but a few billion. Maybe reduce the world’s population by well over half, given that many who survive the plague will die in food riots, croak from heart attacks, OD on drugs, or commit suicide. Many may simply starve to death. You remember reading back in 2005 that Terry Schiavo, the disabled brain damaged woman, lived without food and water for 13 days after she was unplugged from life support. You wince a little as you imagine someone mostly healthy and with normal cognition going maybe longer without food, wandering to find it anywhere he can, failing because there isn’t any food, then collapsing and doubling up in agony because his stomach and small intestines are starting to digest themselves—

Sometimes you think you can empathize after all, and you’re deathly afraid it will show at some point….

You’re a globalist, a blue blood, and above such things.

Less population is a good thing. As the Georgia Guidestones say, no more than 500 million is the ideal. With more and more robotics coming, there’s going to be less work for people to do. Are your servants in governments really supposed to pay Universal Basic Income to masses who will lay around and play video games all day for the rest of their lives?

You’re thinking: supply them with Huxleyan soma. Eventually, as your co-opted scientists learn more about how to integrate technology into the developing fetal brain (or the brain into the technosphere!), you’ll be able to go well beyond what Huxley envisioned. You’ll be able to program whole populations so they’re born to the status you want for them, and be both physically and mentally unable to question it.

Transhumanism at its finest! Eternally!

Resistance is futile, and all that….

So there you are. This is your world — and the world to come. A world with a single governing structure about to pull everyone in, willingly or not; a single world marketplace dominated by corporations some of your superiors own and control, with employment for those who got with the program; maybe a single religion of humanity (something one of your heroes, sociology-founder Auguste Comte, promoted) and whatever spiritualism and woo the masses want to mix into it (you and your superiors don’t care just so it isn’t Christianity).

Things are going well enough that your superiors think they’ll have the basics in place by 2030, and given how many people actually did fall in line behind the COVID-19 scare, you’re thinking this as well. There’s a document out there in plain view citing that year, with silly stuff about things like eradicating poverty. You know your superiors don’t care about eradicating poverty, but such sentiments play to the emotions of those you want to influence. Even the more intelligent of the masses are still, after all, creatures of emotion. Their primary emotions being fear, greed, and lust, you, your superiors, and their predecessors have known for decades how to incentivize most of them.

As for the refuseniks? In time, they’ll be dealt with—

Well, gentle reader, we’ve looked at the world — your world — through the eyes of a globalist. It is time to return you back from this journey of sight and sound and mind. Back from Twilight Zone 2020. Back through that door to the familiarity of home and hearth. The bathroom is still the first room on your left.

STEVEN YATES is an author and independent scholar with a PhD in philosophy. He works as a freelance editor and ghostwriter, and blogs at Lost Generation Philosopher. His last book was Four Cardinal Errors: Reasons for the Decline of the American Republic (Brush Fire Press International, 2011). His next book, What Should Philosophy Do? A Theory has been accepted for publication by Wipf and Stock. He lives with his wife and two spoiled cats in Santiago, Chile. Please consider supporting his work on Patreon.

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The latest details about the Trade War between the USA and China.

There are many articles about the Trade War between the United States (Donald Trump) and China. Many are written from the perspective of an American consumer sitting in America, and desirous of a return to the “golden days” of industrial might. Others are written from the point of view of a progressive “enlightened” globalist who wants a one-singular world order. This article is different. It is written from the point of view of someone who has a vested interest in both “camps of thought”.

A fresh slap of reality.

In terms of the trade war, there are some facts that do not support any of the assumptions held and promoted by the “talking heads” in the mainstream media.

None of these facts agree with the promoted narratives. This is true whether you are politically liberal or conservative.

On the conservative side...

I’m seeing a type of artificial patriotic fervor. It's an organized  attempt using memes and propaganda to convince conservatives that the trade war requires mindless fealty to the anti-China message.

Americans don’t like dictators, and many don’t like China. However, conservatives are being duped into thinking the trade war against China some type of an ideological crusade. It’s one that somehow will lead to a better America or a better world.

People! Wake up. This is not what the trade war is intended to do.

Let’s start with the assumptions surrounding the trade war and then look at the evidence that debunks them. Remember people…

The American government requires an alert and well-informed citizenry to function properly.

Fallacy #1: China needs America

The idea here is that the entire nation of China, all 1.4 billion of them, needs Americans (325 million) buying their products.

Seriously?

I’m not sure where this idea comes from specifically, but it’s not based on anything tangible. I sometimes wonder if the notion that the world depends on the American consumer (for its bread and butter) is perhaps a kind of appeal to American’s narcissism? Thus making the average American feel superior, or feel special. You know, by simply by telling them that their steady American way of life (one of debt-based consumption) keeps the engine of the global economy running.

Pretty outrageous.

In the case of China, here are the facts:

The US only comprises around 18% of Chinese exports. While this is a nice piece of the pie, it’s hardly enough leverage to bring down China’s economy. China would suffer profit losses in certain sectors as well as a possible recession, but not the kind of crisis that some in the alternative media are predicting.

There will not be riots in the streets, famine, or civil upheavals. Don’t be silly.

In 2018, China shipped 18% of its exports to the United States. That contributed to a $419 billion trade deficit. China's trade with Hong Kong, at 14%, was almost as much. Its trade with Japan, which was at 6%, and South Korea, at 4.5%, was much less. 

-The Balance

You need to know that China is NOT structured like the United States and does not operate under rule by popular opinion. They are a serious, serious nation. Their leadership got where they are through merit. (Have you ever attended school with a Chinese / Asian student? They work hard, study hard, and make informed, calculated decisions.)

Unlike the United States, around 40% of China’s GDP is generated domestically, and 80% of its GDP growth comes from private consumption.

For the last decade or so, China has been busy changing its economic model. They have moved from an export-based system to a far more self-reliant domestic-based system.

I covered this subject in another post. You can click on the link below. It will open up in a separate tab so that your reading here will not be interrupted.

Maybe they knew something that the Bush and Obama administrations didn’t. It appears that they have been preparing for a possible economic war with the US.

For the last decade, indeed since 2010, China’s domestic market has grown dramatically. This should indicate to the more alert in the audience that China has no intention of relying on the US consumer as an economic pillar.

They are a self-sufficient nation.

Meanwhile, the US consumer is almost tapped out. It’s hard to see because retail sales in certain areas remain steady. Not to mention that the mainstream media (and the Fed) has been using this to promote the idea that the economy is still “going strong”. It’s not really the true and real situation.

The reality is that US consumption is driven by historic levels of debt. Household debt is now FAR above levels last seen after the last financial crisis, with total debt at $1.2 trillion higher today than its last peak in 2008. 

The downturn in retail is more obvious in the steady closings of thousands of outlets in 2019 alone.  This year has seen a 29% increase in store closings compared to 2018,  even though 2018 saw a considerable spike in store shutdowns. Around  12,000 stores are slated to close this year.

OK, so the actual situation is quite different from the mainstream media narrative.

China is a self-sufficient nation.
America is completely engulfed in a debt hole.

So the question is, with the US consumer stretched thin by debt and US retail on the verge of a recessionary plunge, why would China feel threatened by the loss of the American consumer market?

They are losing it already by attrition.

The truth is they aren’t threatened. Which is why the trade war continues unabated. This is the situation despite the fact that so many people have argued that China would “quickly fold” to Trump’s demands.

I realize this is not what many people want to hear, but it is foolish to get caught up in a farcical mob mentality and ignore the fundamentals in the trade war. If you think that the US is going to “win” based on leverage, you are sorely mistaken.

America has NO leverage. The US is in no better shape economically than China; in many ways, we are much worse off.

“Trump’s claim that an exodus of foreign firms will force China to  capitulate to US demands to settle the trade war is wishful thinking at  best,” 

-Week In China

Fallacy #2: Manufacturing Will Return

This is perhaps the most persistent and fraudulent “carrot” that has been held out to the American people. It’s the idea that those “golden days” of American Manufacturing will return, and all will be back to “normal”.

It’s a lie.

It’s not going to happen.

I am sorry to break this new to you all, but factories, industrial might, scientific ability and skills are not “light switches” that you can turn on and off at will. You cannot just snap your fingers and start up a fully automated factory, producing high quality products with a skilled work force overnight.

It doesn’t work that way.

I covered this subject elsewhere. You can click on the link and it will open up in a separate tab.

The logistics of relocating a facotry from China back to the USA.

First, as it stands now manufacturing in the US makes up only 11% of total economic output. I don’t think that many people understand the consequences of this.

We have a 70% retail and service-based economy.
This means that the majority of US citizens in the job market have no experience whatsoever in the manufacturing sector.
Thus, by extension, the average US company has no guidelines for how to establish a manufacturing base using the existing American labor pool.

Second, American labor expects a certain level of wage compensation. Not to mention an expectation of union organization. Combined, this makes manufacturing far more expensive here than in just about anywhere else in the world.

The average factory worker in China makes around $3.60 per hour. So tell me, just how exactly would the American market ever be able to compete with this?

Tariff’s alone are not enough to force corporations to spend the billions necessary to rebuild factories in the US and hire American workers at $15+ an hour (let alone the $45+ an hour at union wages). It’s just not going to happen.

There's a movie called "American Factory" that might be worth your time to watch. It's a documentary that was released in August 2019.

The documentary tells an increasingly American story. In 2015, seven  years after a General Motors plant closed in Dayton, Ohio, a Chinese  company that manufactures glass for trucks and automobiles reinvests in  the factory.

The former GM workers are are ecstatic. Some went into foreclosure  and were evicted from their homes after GM pulled out — one woman, a  forklift operator named Jill Lamantia, is living in her sister’s  basement. They’re happy to have another factory job. Never mind that the  GM plant was fully unionized and paid more than $20 an hour, and Fuyao,  a non-union shop, has a starting pay of $14 an hour, it’s a job.

Cao has a bold vision: Pair U.S. workers with Chinese workers, who  are brought to Ohio to train and work alongside their American  counterparts. The idea is that the Chinese and the Americans can learn  from each other, taking the best working methods from each culture to  increase production. Although Cao visits regularly from China, the  onsite boss is an American, and management is from both cultures.

But the results don’t meet that utopian ideal. The culture divide  seems insurmountable. To start with, the Chinese workers have no problem  working long hours and overtime, while the Americans are used to  eight-hour shifts...

Download the Movie Torrent HERE.
Read reviews about it HERE.

Third, there are many, many places besides China to build a manufacturing base. No company is going to bring its factories to the US when they can build in Vietnam, or Taiwan, etc. In many cases, it is cheaper to ship raw materials and products to these countries, have them finished by cheap and motivated workers in Asia, and then have the items shipped back, than it is to build the product from start to finish in the US.

Fourth, we can talk all day about patriotism, but in the end, the average American is not going to buy “Made in the USA” for most goods out of a sense of patriotic duty if the price is twice as much or much more. Walmart and Amazon dominate the retail market for a reason – they sell things cheaply.

$19.95 Toaster – Made in China.
$79.95 Toaster – Made in the USA.

Fifth, raising tariffs on foreign exporters would only work to encourage consumption of domestically manufactured goods. If the foreign made products cost too much, then you would buy American. Right?

Why buy an Mercedes, when you can buy fifteen (x15) Kia Rio Sedans for the same amount of money?

2019 Mercedes-Benz S-Class – $253,550
Kia Rio LX, 4-Door Sedan. – $16,195

This only holds true if the US already had a large manufacturing base and produced all the items other nations produce. But it doesn’t. Many of the things that are under the tariff schedule are wholly made overseas.

Televisions – 100% made in China.
iPhones – 100% made in China.
Sneakers – 100% made in China.
Clothes Washers – 100% made in China.
Automobile Tires – 100% made in China.

The American consumer doesn’t have a choice. He can only buy imported items. Thus, it is the American consumer that ends up paying the tariff.

Entering into a trade war without a resilient manufacturing sector is backward. You don’t fight a trade war to get manufacturing to come back, you fight a trade war to promote the goods you already manufacture.

Seriously, if Trump had really intended to bring factories back to the US, he should have done things differently. For instance, he could have given corporations tax break incentives in exchange for creating manufacturing jobs on US soil.

If you do “A”, I’ll give you “B”.

Instead, he didn’t do this. He just gave American corporations tax breaks for nothing.

Fallacy #3: China Will Starve Without American Food

Uh, no. China will not experience famines, riots, or starvation. It’s all pretty darn silly.

This is a very weird argument. It’s as if some people assume that the US is China’s only potential source for food. Where do Americans get such really “off the wall” ideas? Seriously!

China buys agricultural products from all over the world and has alternative sources for foods like soybeans and pork, including Brazil, Mexico, and Russia. Not to mention that they grow, and raise their own food. It’s part of the conservative belief in self-sufficiency. Don’t you know.

I covered this subject elsewhere. The link below will open up in a new tab. It’s pretty damming and will open up a few eyes. China is not a nation to be trifled with.

Prices will rise in China, sure, but nowhere near the point of collapse. Again, the Chinese are not reliant on the US for anything, so, the idea that the US has overt leverage in the trade war is simply not true.

Fallacy #4: The World Will Side With The US Over China

This is a prime question – if they had to choose sides, would a given nation choose the USA, or choose China?

On one hand you have the debt-ridden oligarchy-ruled military state with a large consumer base or communist China’s cheap export market. What would they choose if they had to pick only one?

The US consumer is nearly tapped out.
China has the largest import/export market in the world.
The vast bulk of manufacturing is in China.
The US has little manufacturing to speak of.

I also question the validity of the idea that Europe or most other nations have loyalty to American markets. Think about it; do they really?

Do they see America as indispensable?

Or is the rest of the world being sent on a path towards globalism? Meanwhile the US is being made to look like a barbaric and archaic throwback. Like some kind of Neanderthal man that is desperately clinging to power. And one that is willing to drag everyone else down with him if he doesn’t get his way?

Why do people cling on to the power they hold, and you have to wait until they die before you can have some "new blood" and some changes done? Why won't they just let go and accept change. — Why do people cling on to the power they hold, and you have to wait until they die before you can have some “new blood” and some changes done? Why won’t they just let go and accept change.

Many in the “liberty movement” understand that this is not the case.

We know that the globalists have sabotaged this country from within. We also know that they are using Trump as controlled opposition and a useful puppet in this task.

Ah yes, but the majority of the rest of the world does NOT understand this.

If there is an economic crash which sends shock-waves through multiple economies, the trade war will most likely be blamed along with Trump and his “populist” supporters.

The rest of the world will see us as the villains, because they do not understand the nature of 4^th Generation Warfare, nor do they understand the globalists’ strategy of “order out of chaos”.

The narrative that has been pushed in the global mainstream media is quite different than what you would see on FOX.

China is the victim of US aggression.
The trade war and the economic crisis are purely a product of Trump’s madness.

Who do you honestly think the world will eventually side with?

Huawei dominates global race to 5G, inking over 50 contracts despite US crackdown

Fallacy #5: The Trade War Will Be Over Soon

We’ve been hearing this for almost three years now. Trade wars are “easy to win”, right?

Every couple of months the trade war deal hype is recycled and every couple of months the markets are hit with renewed disappointment. The latest trade talks are set for October and if they happen at all, it is unlikely they will result in anything of significance.

At most, they will be heralded as the “start of a great deal” and both sides will claim “progress was made”, and then, once again, nothing will happen and the conflict will accelerate.

You would think people would have figured it out by now, but the investment world learns very slowly and functions solely on blind hope. At the very least, economic analysts are starting to realize that no deal is coming and that the situation is only going to get tenser.

In fact, it is designed to get more tense.

Fallacy #6: The US Dollar Is Untouchable

This claim revolves mainly around the idea that because the US dollar is the world reserve currency, the US has the upper hand in all trade negotiations. Therefore, the rest of the world will follow the currency leader because there “is no other option”.

I disagree.

As Bank of England governor Mark Carney has openly admitted, the plan is to replace the dollar as the world reserve currency anyway. How? Well with a global cryptocurrency, of course.

They need a massive crash event, and they need the US dollar to go the way of the dodo.

It seems rather convenient to me that China has been preparing for just such an event. While many analysts point out that China has generated intense amounts of debt over the past decade, they seem to forget that this was a requirement in order for China to attach the Yuan to the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights basket. This is, of course, the foundation for a global currency mechanism.

Chinese economic officials and the globalists both argue that the current monetary system, based on a single national currency (the dollar) as the world reserve is inherently unstable.

Their solution? A basket of currencies monitored by the IMF, followed by a single digital currency mechanism.

I would note that China and the globalists have consistently hinted  that a major economic crisis event will act as a catalyst for this  “reset” in the world monetary order and that the dollar must be replaced  in the process.

China has also been stockpiling large amounts of gold for the past decade. This would indicate they are expecting a monetary devaluation event, most specifically in the dollar. It’s as if they know something the rest of us only suspect.

The trade war is the perfect cover for the collapse of the US dollar that the globalists desire. While some people suggest that China’s dumping of US treasuries is the “nuclear option” in the trade war, this is not exactly true.

The REAL nuclear option is for China to dump the US dollar as the reserve trade mechanism and go to a basket of currencies, which the IMF will happily aid them with.

As the largest exporter/importer in the world, China can drop the dollar and most of their trading partners will follow their lead. The US economy would crumble in response, as the dollar is the only thread holding our system together.

This is a FACT, Jack.

This is the ugly truth behind the trade war. It is nothing more than a farce, a smoke and mirrors distraction leading up the dismantling of the US dollar and paving the way for the globalist one-world digital currency system.

Whether or not the plan succeeds relies on ample resistance from people who see the danger ahead. However, make no mistake, the globalists are not afraid of an economic crash or the decline of the dollar. In truth, they WANT these things to happen so they can establish even more centralized control.

Updates

 Hot off the presses! We surveyed our members on how they are adapting to the US-China Trade War and have some surprising comparative data here from a previous survey in January 2019.  

Long story short: European companies have resigned themselves to the long-term nature of the trade war, and many have made significant shifts in strategy to mitigate its effects. That means changing suppliers, rejigging product flows through corporate global operations, and avoiding the US-China trade 'border' like the plague.  

Interestingly, roughly the same number of companies that are moving relevant production out of China (8%) are increasing investment in China (6%) as companies decide to move out affected production or further onshore supply chains respectively to avoid the tariff bite.  

However, the effects of the uncertainty coming from the trade war are increasingly significant. In January, 6% of members said they were delaying investment/expansion decisions in reaction to the conflict. That number climbed to 15% in September. 

-European Survey

Conclusion

The “Trump Trade War” is a natural progression of events that were bound to occur sooner or later. It will eventually precipitate numerous events. One of which will be a global currency. Another will be a strong ascendancy of China in the global stage. As well as some serious internal economic readjustments (collapse, maybe?) in America.

We will sit by and see what happens.

Personally, I hope that any changes that occur to be a painless as possible. To endure the changes, you might need to turn off the mainstream American media which will be shrieking, wailing, gnashing it’s teeth and flaying it’s arms all about in wild, crazed abandon.

12OCT19 Update

 Trump said the U.S. and China have "agreed in  principle" on a preliminary trade agreement. Trump acknowledged that  differences remain on major issues on which the two countries are  divided, but the White House still decided not to push ahead with a  planned increased to tariffs on $250 billion of Chinese goods next week.
The move would have raised those tariffs to 30% from 25%.

"There's  too many factors at play for him to just issue threats to governments,  China's or anybody else's, to just follow along with what he says," said  Wang, referring to the U.S. president's previous threats to slap  additional penalties on Chinese goods.

-USA Today;  Senior China adviser: Trump to blame for delays in securing final trade deal, says China has been 'accommodating'

Take a break

I know all this is very serious stuff, and a tad alarming. I would suggest that you might want to check out some of my lighter articles. Here’s four stories for starters. All open up in a separate tab for your viewing pleasure. Pick one and relax.

Links about China

Here are some links about my observations on China. I think that you, the reader, might find them to be of interest. Please kindly enjoy.

The US involvement in the HK "Democracy Now" movement.

Chinese reaction to the Trump Tariff Wars.

When the SJW movement took control of China

China and America Comparisons

As an American, I cannot help but compare what my life was in the United States with what it is like living in China. Here we discuss that.

The Chinese Business KTV Experience

This is the real deal. Forget about all that nonsense that you find in the British tabloids and an occasional write up in the American liberal press. This is the reality. Read or not.

Learning About China

Who doesn’t like to look at pretty girls? Ugly girls? Here we discuss what China is like by looking at videos of pretty girls doing things in China.

Contemporaneous Chinese Music

This is a series of posts that discuss contemporaneous popular music in China. It is a wide ranging and broad spectrum of travel, and at that, all that I am able to provide is the flimsiest of overviews. However, this series of posts should serve as a great starting place for investigation and enjoyment.

Part 3 - The contemporaneous music of China.

part 3B - The contemporaneous music of China.

Part 4 - The contemporaneous popular music of China.

Part 5 - The contemporaneous music of China.

Part 5C - The music of contemporary China.

Part 5F - The contemporaneous music of China.

Post 6 - The contemporaneous music of China.

Post 7 - The contemporaneous music of China.

Post 8 - The contemporaneous music of China.

Part 9 - The contemporaneous music of China.

Post 11 - The contemporaneous music of China.

Parks in China

The parks in China are very unique. They are enormous and tend to be very mountainous. Here we take a look at this most interesting of subjects.

Really Strange China

Here are some posts that discuss a number of things about China that might seem odd, or strange to Westerners. Some of the things are everyday events, while others are just representative of the differences in culture.

What is China like?

The purpose of this post is to illustrate that the rest of the world, outside of America, has moved on with their lives. That while they might not be as great as America is, they are doing just fine thank you.

And while America has been squandering it’s money, decimating it’s resources, and just being cavalier with it’s military, the rest of the world has done the opposite. They have husbanded their day to day fortunes, and you can see this in their day-to-day lives.

Summer in Asia

Let’s take a moment to explore Asia. That includes China, but also includes such places as Vietnam, Thailand, Japan and others…

Some Fun Videos

Here’s a collection of some fun videos taken all over Asia. While there are many videos taken in China, we also have some taken in Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Korea and Japan as well. It’s all in fun.

Articles & Links

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just clean up the mess and get on with life Yes. I love it. Great. -MM

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