Tag: corruption

BIDEN EMBRACES ANTISEMITISM DEFINITION THAT HAS UPENDED FREE SPEECH IN EUROPE

DURING A GRADUATION speech at the City University of New York’s law school last month, Fatima Mousa Mohammed, a Yemeni American student, criticized “Israeli settler colonialism” and advocated for “the fight against capitalism, racism, imperialism, and Zionism.”

Her words, which the university administration condemned as “hate speech,” kicked off a new round of public debate about the distinction between criticism of Israel and antisemitism. Republican members of Congress responded by introducing legislation that would deny federal funding to academic institutions that “authorize Anti-Semitic events.”

The bill cites a definition of antisemitism that the Israeli government and its supporters have been pushing in the United States and elsewhere, one that conflates prejudice toward Jews with criticism of Zionism and the state of Israel. And it comes on the heels of President Joe Biden nodding to the definition in the White House’s national strategy to combat antisemitism, released in late May.

In the 60-page document, the Biden administration referred to the IHRA definition — named after the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which promotes it — as the “most prominent” of several definitions of antisemitism and one the administration has “embraced.” But it emphasized that it has no legal value and does not supersede existing laws or constitute binding guidance for public agencies and local government.

Still, by providing neither a rejection nor a full endorsement of the definition, the Biden administration left room for further lobbying for its adoption. Indeed, conservative and pro-Israel groups hailed the strategy as a victory, even as the single reference fell far short of what they had lobbied for: a full-throated endorsement of the IHRA framework as the “sole definition” of antisemitism and as the foundation for federal policy.

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When did the Left go from Standing up to ‘The Man’ to becoming ‘The Man’?

“The Man” was the left’s bogeyman in the 1960s and 70s, representing establishment authority and oppression, from the Viet Nam war to the civil rights movement.

As the Urban Dictionary defines the term,

“The Man is the head of ‘the establishment’ put in place to ‘bring us down’. Though nobody has physically seen ‘the man’, he is assumed to be a male Caucasian between the ages of 25-40 and is rumored to have a substantial amount of acquired wealth, presumably acquired by exploiting those whom his ‘establishment’ is keeping down.”

Decades ago, The Man represented authority figures like Nixon, Kissinger, Hoover, and McNamara. In those days, Democrats and the left railed against The Man in music, protests, and activism.

But a funny thing happened in the 1990s as those Baby Boomers once protesting against The Man came of age, assuming prominent positions in society and government, in essence becoming The Man, the monster they once despised and railed against.

Looking back through history, the Nixon administration and its footnote the Ford administration was considered The Man, especially after the Viet Nam War and Watergate. The left tasted power during the Carter years, but also got a mouthful of fecklessness and misery. The country said “enough” and elected Ronald Reagan to two terms, and George HW Bush to a single term although his “kinder and gentler” approach to governance was more Carter than Reagan.

Then came Bill Clinton, the first Baby Boomer president. Clinton was against the Viet Nam war, dodging the draft, writing a letter in 1969 to an ROTC leader discussing “loathing the military”. From fighting The Man to becoming The Man as president, this was the turning point.

Hard core leftist activist actor Ron Silver inadvertently exemplified, revealed, and explained this transition during Clinton’s first inauguration,

At Clinton’s first inauguration, he saw military jets flying over the Lincoln Memorial, and was disgusted. Then he thought, “Those are our planes now.”

Instead of fighting the establishment and authority, the left became that which they were fighting. They now controlled the levers of power, including the evil CIA, FBI, DOJ, military, and other oppressive government agencies.

Democrats and the left had transitioned from standing up to The Man to becoming The Man.

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Hunter Biden laid BARE! Nearly 9,000 photos from his laptop are published by right wing group Marco Polo – a bizarre mix of the First Son taking drugs, frolicking naked with prostitutes and fetching family snaps

Almost 9,000 photos from Hunter Biden‘s laptop have been published online by right wing nonprofit Marco Polo.

The 8,864 pictures posted on bidenlaptopmedia.com include hundreds of images of the First Son taking drugs and having sex with prostitutes, as well as family photos and everyday snaps.

The photos include 7,032 mostly from Hunter’s MacBook Pro iPhoto app, 1,832 from a backup of his iPhone XS, 428 ‘live photos’ (short videos taken on an iPhone), 674 images sent in text messages, 579 screenshots, 40 sent via WhatsApp, and 111 others.

The images are dated between 2008 and 2019. Some have geographic coordinates attached, showing Hunter took photos in Hawaii, Cabo San Lucas, Kosovo, the Dominican Republic, western China, London, Paris, Rome, Belgrade and across the US.

All photos seen by DailyMail.com match photos from a copy of Hunter Biden’s laptop obtained by DailyMail.com and authenticated by cyber forensics experts in early 2021.

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Danny Masterson’s lawyers leaked discovery material to Church of Scientology

The ex-lawyers of “That ’70s Show” actor and convicted rapist Danny Masterson were sanctioned Wednesday for leaking confidential discovery material about his victims to the Church of Scientology — which has been accused of harassing the women for several years.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Charlaine Olmedo ruled that defense attorneys Tom Mesereau and Sharon Appelbaum sent discovery from Masterson’s criminal case to Church of Scientology lawyer Vicki Podberesky in violation of a court order and a law protecting victims’ personal info, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Podberesky is representing the church in a civil suit filed by Masterson’s victims, former members of the church who say they were threatened by the organization’s officials not to report their attacks.

The discovery materials contained sensitive information about the sexual assault victims, including their addresses and correspondence with police.

Masterson, a practicing Scientologist, was convicted last month of raping two of the women at his Los Angeles home in the early 2000s.

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Traffic cop sues city over ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ cards for NYPD friends and family

Mathew Bianchi became a Staten Island traffic cop in 2017, two years after joining the New York police department, assigned to enforcing traffic violations and issuing tickets. In the first two years on that beat, he received stellar performance evaluations.

But in November 2018 – a year into his career in the traffic unit – Bianchi issued a ticket to a civilian who held a New York City police department laminated courtesy card, an unofficial credential issued to NYPD officers based on their union affiliation that can then be distributed to family members and friends to carry with them.

What happened next is the subject of a lawsuit against the city and a police captain. According to Bianchi, who is Cuban-American, courtesy cards are used to maintain a system of impunity – a “get-of-jail-free card” for families and friends of NYPD officers to avoid traffic tickets, a growing source of revenue for the city.

Bianchi claims his superiors retaliated against him for his stance against the “corrupt” cards after he was warned by an official with the Police Benevolent Association, New York City’s largest police union, that he would not be protected by his union if he wrote tickets for people with cards. And if he continued, he’d be reassigned.

In some instances, the complaint said, Bianchi was reprimanded for writing a ticket to a relative or parent of an officer; in others, his commanding officer reviewed body-camera footage to see if he was giving motorists with cards a “hard time”.

“I see card after card. You’re not allowed to write any of them [up],” he told the Associated Press. “We’re not supposed to be showing favoritism when we do car stops, and we shouldn’t be giving them out because the guy mows my lawn.”

Bianchi told his precinct commander that he did not agree with the courtesy card policy and claims he was told: “Is it better to be right or better to be on patrol?” The lawsuit cites several instances where his NYPD colleagues complained about his ticket-writing, including on Facebook.

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Defense Contractor Funded Think Tanks Dominate Ukraine Debate

Think tanks in the United States are a go–to resource for media outlets seeking expert opinions on pressing public policy issues. But think tanks often have entrenched stances; a growing body of research has shown that their funders can influence their analysis and commentary. This influence can include censorship — both self-censorship and more direct censoring of work unfavorable to a funder — and outright pay–for–research agreements with funders. The result is an environment where the interests of the most generous funders can dominate think tank policy debates.

One such debate concerns the appropriate level of U.S. military involvement in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Since Vladimir Putin’s illegal and disastrous decision to launch a full–scale invasion of Ukraine, the United States has approved approximately $48.7 billion in military spending.1 Despite the very real risk that escalations could lead to direct U.S. military involvement in the war, few think tanks have critically scrutinized this record setting amount of U.S. military assistance.

Within the context of public debate about U.S. military involvement in the Ukraine war, this brief investigates Department of Defense (DoD) and DoD contractor funding of think tanks, those organizations advocacy efforts for policies that would benefit those funders, and the media’s predominant reliance on think tanks funded by the defense sector. The analysis finds that the vast majority of media mentions of think tanks in articles about U.S. arms and the Ukraine war are from think tanks whose funders profit from U.S. military spending, arms sales and, in many cases, directly from U.S. involvement in the Ukraine war. These think tanks also regularly offer support for public policy solutions that would financially benefit their funders without disclosing these apparent conflicts of interest. While this brief did not seek to establish a direct causality between think–tank policy recommendations and their arms industry funding in the case of the Ukraine war, we find a clear correlation between the two. We also found that media outlets disproportionately rely on commentary from defense sector funded think tanks.

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FBI helps Ukraine censor Twitter users and obtain their info, including journalists

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has aided a Ukrainian intelligence effort to censor social media users and obtain their personal information, leaked emails reveal.

In March 2022, an FBI Special Agent sent Twitter a list of accounts on behalf of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), Ukraine’s main intelligence agency. The accounts, the FBI wrote, “are suspected by the SBU in spreading fear and disinformation.” In an attached memo, the SBU asked Twitter to remove the accounts and hand over their user data.

The Ukrainian government’s FBI-enabled targets extend to members of the media. The SBU list that the FBI provided to Twitter included my name and Twitter profile. In its response to the FBI, Twitter agreed to review the accounts for “inauthenticity” but raised concerns about the inclusion of myself and other “American and Canadian journalists.”

The FBI’s attempt to ban Twitter accounts at the request of Ukrainian intelligence is among the most overt requests for censorship revealed to date in the Twitter Files, a cache of leaked communications from the social media giant.

The FBI’s censorship request was relayed in a March 27th, 2022 email from FBI Special Agent Aleksandr Kobzanets, the Assistant Legal Attaché at the US Embassy in Kyiv, to two Twitter executives. Four FBI colleagues were copied on the exchange.

“Thank you very much for your time to discuss the assistance to Ukraine,” Kobzanets wrote. “I am including a list of accounts I received over a couple of weeks from the Security Service of Ukraine. These accounts are suspected by the SBU in spreading fear and disinformation. For your review and consideration.”

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FBI ‘Afraid’ Biden Whistleblower Will Get Whacked If Unmasked

The FBI is reportedly ‘afraid’ that the informant who came forward with information regarding a Biden family bribery scheme could be “killed if unmasked.“

“Just left meeting for House Oversight. The FBI is afraid their informant will be killed if unmasked, based on the info he has brought forward about the Biden family,” tweeted Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) Monday evening.

On Sunday, Luna told “Sunday Morning Futures” host Maria Bartiromo; “You know, over the last couple of months, House Oversight as well as the staff that helps us run the investigations has proven that we’ve actually been able to provide evidence. You know, before there were speculation on the Ponzi scheme for influence peddling and also the personal enrichment of the Biden family. And now what we’re finding is that these are no longer allegations and we’re creating a hard case.

“In my opinion, Maria, what we’re seeing right now, if this is true, which I do believe that it is true, in regards to Joe Biden receiving briberies and Hunter Biden, I do believe that this is grounds for impeachment. And so it’s important that we continue to move forward to bring this to the American people, but also to that we I think, do a housecleaning within our DOJ because as you had stated earlier, they are protecting this family, the FBI is protecting the Hunter Biden family, and it’s not okay,” she continued (via the Post Millennial).

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Journalists Are Asking Ukrainian Soldiers To Hide Their Nazi Patches, NYT Admits

The New York Times has been forced to very, very belatedly deal with something which had long been obvious and known to many independent analysts and media outlets, but which has been carefully shielded from the mainstream masses in the West for obvious reasons. 

The surprising Monday Times headline said that “Nazi Symbols on Ukraine’s Front Lines Highlight Thorny Issues of History.” This acknowledgement comes after literally years of primarily indy journalists and geopolitical commentators pointing out that yes indeed… Ukraine’s military and paramilitary groups, especially those operating in the east since at least 2014, have a serious Nazi ideology problem. This has been exhaustively documented, again, going back years. But the report, which merely tries to downplay it as a “thorny issue” of Ukraine’s “unique” “History” – suggests that the real problem for Western PR is fundamentally that it’s being displayed so openly. Ukrainian troops are being asked to cover those Nazi symbols please!–as Matt Taibbi sarcastically quipped in commenting on the report.

The authors of the NYT report begin by expressing frustration over the optics of Nazi symbols being displayed so proudly on many Ukrainian soldiers’ uniforms. Suggesting that many journalistic photographs which have in some cases been featured in newspapers and media outlets worldwide (typically coupled with generally positive articles on Ukraine’s military) are merely ‘unfortunate’ or misleading, the NYT report says, “In each photograph, Ukrainians in uniform wore patches featuring symbols that were made notorious by Nazi Germany and have since become part of the iconography of far-right hate groups.”

The report admits this has led to controversy wherein news rooms actually must delete some photos of Ukrainian soldiers and militants. “The photographs, and their deletions, highlight the Ukrainian military’s complicated relationship with Nazi imagery, a relationship forged under both Soviet and German occupation during World War II,” continues the report. 

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Russiagate’s Missing Pieces

The first thing to understand about John Durham is that he was a fearless prosecutor who went after organized crime and put in prison retired and active FBI agents who protected the mob for money or other enticements. One of the agents he stopped had enabled James “Whitey” Bulger Jr., once one of America’s most wanted men, the Winter Hill Gang boss who evaded arrest for sixteen years.

In his forty-five years as a state and federal prosecutor in Connecticut and Virginia, Durham worked often and closely with FBI agents, especially on cases that involved violations of federal racketeering statutes.

Durham also handled two inquiries into the CIA’s conduct in the War on Terror, and he did so without angering his superiors in the executive branch. In one case he was asked to investigate the alleged destruction of CIA videotapes of detainee interrogations, the so-called torture tapes. His final report on the matter remains secret, and he recommended that no charges be filed. He was later asked to lead a Justice Department inquiry into the legality of the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation techniques” that resulted in the death of two detainees. In that case, he was told that officers who were given and obeyed what were determined to be illegal orders—there were many of those after 9/11—could not be prosecuted. No charges were filed.

Durham’s 306-page report was made public on May 15, and it pleased no one with its focus on the obvious. The journalist Susan Schmidt, whose byline was a must-read when she was a reporter for the Washington Post, pointed out on Racket News that Durham said the FBI would have done less damage to its reputation if it had scrutinized the questionable actions of the Clinton campaign in 2016: the Feds “might at least have cast a critical eye on the phony evidence they were gathering.”

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